Dekiru Otoko no Mote Life ("The Popular Life of a Dependable Guy") is a Dating Sim released by Takara Tomy for the Nintendo DS in Valentine's Day 2008. Dekiru Otoko comes in the form of two games launched side by-side: Day Life Lecture and Night Life Practice. In these games, you accompany salaryman Kanta Tateishi in his quest to get laid with one of 14 girls, 7 per game. The girls in Day Life Lecture are mostly work acquaintances you encounter in daytime situations (An office meeting, a hairdresser, an amusement park date...) while in Night Life Practice Kanta goes in nighttime dates (an office mixer, a hostess club, dinner and drinks...) with a more diverse assortment of bachelorettes.
Dekiru Otoko initially presents itself as an Edutainment Game that tutors players in the art of dating and includes a series of minigames that gauge your lovin' prowess and also your supposed compatibility with a prospective partner. However, once you launch the main Dating Sim mode all premises of seriousness go out of the window and Dekiru Otoko shows its true colors as an absurd, weirdly insane parody of Japanese dating simulators.
Dekiru Otoko no Mote Life provides examples of:
- Art Shift: Like Dr. Senbei, Kanta sometimes appears as a very handsome young man
◊. Unlike Dr. Senbei, though, this seems to be purely his imagination. - Fission Mailed: In Narumi's date in Night Life Practice, if you get enough Love Points but don't manage to confess (or you confess in an embarrasing way◊) you get the initial Bad End sequence where she leaves to fulfill her Arranged Marriage, but afterwards instead of the Bad End screen you get a Distant Finale epilogue where Kanta explains to his grandchild that he ran after Narumi's plane and they eventually got married.
- Gratuitous English: When shooing away the foreign street barker◊ in Naoko's route.
- Gainax Ending: If you spend a lot of money in Ayame's route and get enough Love Points with her, Kanta gets run over by a truck, with Ayame realizing she's in love with him and vowing to be by his side forever, with the implication that Kanta has been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It's taken completely seriously, weirdly bittersweet, and the only such ending across both games.
- Kavorka Man: Kanta isn't ugly, per se, but he's apparently 70 cm tall and has a big, eggplant-shaped head. He's still insanely popular with a whole collection of very out-of-his-league ladies, two of whom have a crush on him before the game even starts.
- Multiple Endings: Each route has a Normal End where the relationship with your chosen girl doesn't progress past "friends", and at least one (Sometimes more) Good End where you get the girl. Also, each route has a variety of Bad Ends, either from not getting the required Love Points or for doing something really stupid that immediately wrecks your chances.
- Player Nudge: As part of the game's faux-edutainment façade, after you get a Normal or a Good End you're "Graded" in your performance. This translates to the game giving you some advice on how to get a satisfactory ending with your chosen bachelorette.
- Press Start to Game Over: During the intro, Kanta asks you if you're popular with the ladies. If you answer Yes, he'll tell you this game is not for you, apologize for wasting your time, and go straight to the credits.
- Press X to Die: While normally dates use Love Points to determine the ending you get, some choices, particularly in Night Life Practice, can cause an instant Bad end.
- Reference Overdosed: Every route has a handful of references; from Doraemon to The Matrix to Luc Besson to Freddie Mercury, Tekken, Final Fantasy or Oishinbo, Kanta can't go five minutes without a Shout-Out.
