Say it in Red | Episode 56: Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer

Say It In Red

August is not merely a month — it is an emotion. For some, the final month of Summer rings in its hottest days and the looming dread of a new school term. For others, it's a time steeped in nostalgia and the memories of summers' past. Perhaps your August is the feeling of bittersweet romance and the distant promise of your future. Perhaps, even, as the seasons turn you feel, more strongly than anything, a longing for 1992.
This month, Sara and Runa discuss Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer, a 2022 remake of a game from thirty years prior and one of the very first dating sims to gain widespread popularity and acclaim. Playing as Takurou, an extremely horny high school senior in the final weeks of his last summer break, you find yourself wandering the city to find girls, talk to girls, flirt with girls, take girls on dates, and answer quiz questions about their outfits in exchange for cash prizes. There are no fewer than 14 girls for Takurou to pursue, five of whom are his classmates as the game's title suggests while the other nine are adult women Takurou meets around town. Even in this early entry to the genre, you can see dozens of themes, mechanics, tropes, innovations, and gags that are still common thirty years later. In fact, if you ever feel that you may have a new, fresh, and never-before-seen idea to inject into a dating sim... play Dōkyūsei first. There's a high chance that one of the original entries into the genre has already beat you to the punch.
As a heads up for listeners, Dōkyūsei: Bangin' Summer is an adult game and some routes feature explicit depictions of sexual assault and violence. We've included timestamps below for the sections where we discuss these events.
You can also play the game without the 18+ patch which excises a lot of this content, though we found that playing without the 18+ patch skips large sections of certain scenes, even those which are not H scenes along with some potential graphical bugs that are solved by applying the 18+ patch.
Content Warnings for this episode
Teacher/Student route discussion - 1:36:45 to 1:45:15
Discussion of Sexual Assault - 1:46:30 to 2:06:20