List of Tokimeki Memorial YMMV entries.
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Tokimeki Memorial franchise in general
- Common Knowledge: Tokimeki Idol is often misassumed to be a BEMANI game just because it's a Rhythm Game by Konami. This is not true, as Tokimeki Idol is handled by Konami Digital Entertainment, the division in charge of consumer-soft game production, while BEMANI is handled by Konami Amusement, which produces arcade and parlor games.
- Genre Turning Point: Gameplay-wise, Tokimeki Memorial wasn't all together that revolutionary upon its release in 1994. In many regards, it was clearly building on top of the gameplay elements that the new wave of Dating Sim Visual Novels for the PC market of the early 1990s, such as ELF Corporation's seminal work Dōkyūsei, had ushered in. Tokimeki Memorial would still turn to be massive influential on the genre though, in the regard that it did entirely away with the pornographic scenes that the Dating Sim genre was otherwise known for. With its massive commercial success, the game proved that the genre could also be successful in providing a Tamer and Chaster experience that appealed to a more mainstream audience, thus paving the way for a series of non-hentai Dating Sims.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: There is an entry in the TokiMemo series about high school girls who become idols as well. Are we talking about Tokimeki Idol or the Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee fanfic series? Even worse, Both also made their debut in the same year!
- Moe: So much!
- More Popular Spin Off: Noticing the series' huge Periphery Demographic of female fans, Konami launched the Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side spin-off series to appeal more directly to the female market. This was quite a successful move, to the point where the Girl's Side series arguably ended up supplanting the main series as the flagship of the franchise. It says something that the first "proper" game in the series after a Sequel Gap of about 11 years was a Girl's Side installment and not a new main series one (the game marking the beginning of the Sequel Gap in 2010 is also a Girl's Side installment).
- Once Original, Now Common: Well, it's the series which made non-H Dating Sims popular, and invented or popularized a lot of Romance and Harem Genre tropes in anime and video games. It suffers from this quite badly nowadays.
- Periphery Demographic: Despite starting out being mainly marketed towards a male audience, the series quickly garnered a large female audience. Konami themselves took notice and launched the Girl's Side spin-off series to capitalize on this.
- Scrappy Mechanic: Bombs. You can't focus on romancing one girl, because any girl who you don't take out on dates will take it personally and trash your relationships with others.
Tokimeki Memorial 1
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Saki, Miharu, and to a lesser extend Ayako are characters the fandom loves just as much as extremely well-loved heroine Shiori. Their popularity got them to each get their own Drama Series game (Nijiiro no Seishun for Saki, Irodori no Love Song for Ayako, and Tabidachi no Uta for Miharu), along with a big line of goods dedicated to them.
- Saki's Ensemble Dark Horse status was Lampshaded by the creators of Nijiiro no Seishun, the 1st game of the Drama Series, in an interview contained inside one of the game's official guide books: the reason they chose Saki as the heroine of this game was because she was extremely popular with the fans.
- Many modern players also like the Mad Scientist Yuina Himoo as well, due to her Deadpan Snarker tendencies.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Which girl of all the girls in Tokimeki Memorial history has taken the series' memetic bomb-setting habit into Bombergirl? Shiori Fujisaki.note
- Memetic Mutation:
- Two of Saki's most iconic quotes reached this status in the Japanese fandom: her cheerful “Gambatte!” from the original game, and her heartwrenching "Yubikiri shita janai!!" ("What about our crossed fingers promise!!") from "Nijiiro no Seishun".
- The "Aaah, memai ga..." (Aaah, I’m feeling dizzy…) line Mio uses each time she’s about to faint is very famous in the Japanese fandom. It was even hilariously parodied in this fan-made 4koma
. - "IT IS WHAT IT IS"
- "There is no point. You shouldn't bother trying. It would simply be a waste of effort."
- Anything Yuina or Rei says is a meme.
- Calling Rei Rei "Ijuin" Skywalker.
- Ship-to-Ship Combat: When Chapter 9 (“School Festival”) of the Radio Drama Motto! Tokimeki Memorial was aired and revealed that Yoshio and Mio are going out in the end, the Japanese Yoshio / Yuko fans were not amused.
- What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Tokimeki Memorial has brief nudity. Despite this, this game is still rated a CERO A(all ages).
Tokimeki Memorial 2
- Author's Saving Throw: Shiori's route being the hardest of the first game (she is, in a sense, the Final Boss of that game) reportedly frustrated a great many players, as she was also the game's Poster Girl. In direct response to this, the route of this game's Poster Girl, Hikari, is by far the easiest route.
- Crossover Ship: Not in the traditional sense due to both characters being from the same franchise, but Kasumi is shipped with Chikara Oosako in the Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee fanfic series as well as certain fan arts on DeviantArt.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Kaori Yae is the biggest of them all in this game, to the point she's the heroine of one of the only two Novelizations of the game (the other is dedicated to the game's main heroine, Hikari Hinomoto), and her and Hikari being referred as the "Hinohachi Combi" (Hinohachi is made with the Kanji of "Hinomoto" and "Yae", "Ya" being read in his "Hachi" alternate reading) regarding the line of goods: when Konami release official character goods, 3 characters are used, in a pattern of "1 good of Hikari, 1 of Kaori, and 1 of one of the remaining characters".
- Another Ensemble Dark Horse character in this game is Maho Shirayuki, who's one of the Secret Characters in the main game. Both she and Kaori become the main girls in the Gaiden Game Tokimeki Memorial 2: Dancing Summer Vacation.
- Hollywood Pudgy: Kaedeko Sakura
- Memetic Mutation: The maid outfit Kaori dons during the 3rd Year School Festival reached this status. If you search for Kaori fanarts, she'll be drawn with it in at least a third of them; and there's a sizeable number of official artworks and figurines of her with that outfit as well.
- Moe: A lot of the characters in the entire series can easily be labelled as such, but Miho probably embodies this trope the most amongst them all.
- Sequel Difficulty Drop: The Bomb System was made remarkably more lenient and easier to handle than in the first game, with bombs both appearing less frequently and taking longer to explode.
- Wangst: Tokimeki Memorial 2 Substories: Memories Ringing On is accused by a number of fans to be filled with this.
- The Woobie: Kaori, in spades. See her entry for more details.
Tokimeki Memorial 3
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Many fans were disappointed by the appearance of the girls that resulted from the attempt to go from 2D animated characters to fully 3D animated cel-shaded character, which, although pretty well-animated in its own right, did ultimately not look as polished as the old 2D art method.
Tokimeki Memorial 4
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Miyako Okura, due to being the game's childhood friend of the Protagonist, and due the revelation during the game that she's the series's first ever Yandere, gaining her instant love in the Japanese fandom.
- Game-Breaker: Special skills. With the correct skills and your stats will increase by hundreds in just one night, or gain stats while you are dating. Even better, the skills you unlocked can be used for a New Game Plus. With the right skils, it's possible to break the game's balance to the point of reaching max stats by just resting everyday.
- See here for more info.
- See here
