Chop Chop Fruit salad Mystery Jam DokiDoki Dating Sim THingy
[sic] is a 2014 Ren'Py-based parody Visual Novel by denvilda. It's your typical high school Dating Sim, except the characters happen to all be sentient fruit.
The story follows Apple, whose daily life is complicated by the mystery of "The Chopper," a serial killer hacking fruits in their town to pieces, and more importantly, the sexy relationships Apple develops with their fruit friends.
Chop Chop Fruit salad Mystery Jam DokiDoki Dating Sim THingy provides examples of:
- Anthropomorphic Food: The protagonists are all talking fruit, with no other anthropomorphized features.
- Artistic License – Biology: Banana squirts juice like the other fruits, despite bananas being too rich with potassium to be juiced like other fruits.
- Big Damn Heroes: In Banana's bad ending, Pineapple breaks into the classroom and holds down Chopper before they kill Apple.
- Big "NO!": Apple shouts a long "NOOOOO!" after Banana gets killed.
- Big "WHAT?!": Banana screams "EHHHH?!?!" in their route when they learn that Apple reciprocates their feelings.
- Bittersweet Ending: The "bad end" for Banana's route. The Chopper gets arrested, but they'd already killed Banana, and Apple never loves another fruit.
- Blush Sticker: When the fruits get flustered, they get little pink animesque blush marks high on their body, where their face would be.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- The scene where Apple urinates has the creator explain in the text box that the peeing noises are vague because they did not want to look up how to write peeing noises.
- Corn explains in their introduction that they're only there because the author's friend on Tumblr wanted corn in the visual novel.
- Buffy Speak: The title refers to the game as a "Dating Sim THingy".
- Crash-Into Hello: Apple meets Tomato by crashing into them in the hallways.
- Destructo-Nookie: In Banana's good ending, Apple and Banana's sex always results in them destroying the place with the fruit juice they ejaculate.
- Dying Declaration of Love: In the route where the Chopper stabs Banana, the latter confesses their love for Apple as they bleed out.
- Enforced Trope: The only reason Corn is in the visual novel is because the creator's friend wanted a corn character.
- Erotic Dream: In Banana's route, Apple has a sexy dream about Banana taking their peel off.
- Fantastic Arousal: The equivalent of an erection in this universe is the "fruit pulp" throbbing.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: If Apple tries to say something to Tomato after bumping into them, Apple panics and ask, "Do you enjoy being choked sexually?"
- GIS Syndrome: All the backgrounds and characters are images from the real world taken off the internet. The fruit images used for the characters aren't even made fully transparent.
- If I Can't Have You…: In Strawberry's bad ending, Chopper-Strawberry murders Apple because they know Apple wants to be with Banana instead of Strawberry. Apple calls it a cliche yandere scene right before they get murdered.
- Lampshade Hanging: The VN is full of dating sim tropes, and Apple makes fun of nearly all of them. The characters also draw attention to the lazy art on several occasions, like Apple remarking that Banana's room is identical to theirs (since the background used is the same).
- Laughing Mad: The Chopper lets out a loud crazy laugh after chopping their victims.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After Banana kills Strawberry in the former's good route, they tell Apple, "Now that we're done here, let's go home to me and let's never speak of this again."
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Apple walks in on Banana, who is repressing feelings for Apple, masturbating in the bathroom and squirting..."fruitjuice" everywhere.
- Moment Killer: Banana is about to confess their feelings to Apple in the bathroom, but they're interrupted by the sound of a scream. Apple lampshades the disappointment in their narration."Damn. And this was getting good. This could have become a sex scene, why did that damn fruit have to scream."
- Multiple Endings: Like many dating sims before it, the endings rely on the choices you make in the game.
- Patient Childhood Love Interest: Banana is Apple's childhood best friend with secret romantic and sexual feelings for Apple. They even refer to each other as their osananajimi. Apple lampshades this:"If this was a bad dating sim, Banana would be the osananajimi character who has feelings for the protagonist but denies this and either dies or is very unlucky in all routes but their own. But since this is a super sugoi and mega awesome game, that's not the case."
- Returning the Handkerchief: Discussed when Apple crashes into Tomato, as they remark that if they were in a "bad dating sim," they'd offer Tomato a handkerchief and exchange numbers so Tomato could return it, which would be the start of a new romance.
- Running Gag: Apple always refers to Strawberry as a "tsun piece of shit."
- Sexy Discretion Shot: When characters have a sex scene, the scene just cuts to black with Apple describing the scene (which is apparently quite graphic).
- Stylistic Suck: Words are often misspellednote , the grammar is often incorrect, all of the art is composed of random real-life images hastily edited together, and the writing exaggerates Dating Sim tropes to the point of being ridiculous. This, plus the ridiculous premise, all adds to the parody factor. The bad sprites may be an Enforced Trope, given that Corn (who has a bad blur around their sprite) explains that the author is bad at making sprites.
- Take Our Word for It: Apple's narration describes an epic fight scene with the Chopper without any accompanying visuals, because it is "far too epic to show in this game."
- Tastes Like Purple: At one point, Apple remarks that they can "feel the smell" of fruitjuice.
- Tsundere: Strawberry is a caricature of the tsundere archetype, calling Apple "baka" every five seconds while dropping very obvious hints about their attraction. Apple, however, doesn't really care as much and frequently remarks that Strawberry's all tsun and no dere, and questions why the archetype is so popular. Subverted when they turn out to be the Chopper and a yandere.
- Word Salad Title: The title is a bunch of seemingly arbitrary words mashed together, ending with "THingy".
- Yandere: Chopper-Strawberry, who slices up all the other fruits in the school, is described as a yandere. In their route, they kill Banana because they're jealous that Banana is Apple's best friend.
