YMMV / Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side Franchise in General

• Adorkable:
  • Sakuya has goofy glasses and hairstyle, as well as a timid personality. And he's slightly awkward in dealing with a blossoming romance with the heroine.
  • Kazuma is rather dumb when it comes to his studies, but very passionate about things he likes, like basketball and Super Sentai heroes. He also tends to blush easily when his affection is high, and can be rather childish at times.
• Die for Our Ship: Unsurprisingly, the rival girls tend to get this from fans. It's very rare to see fanarts that paired the rival girl with her respective guy.
• Friendly Fandoms: The Storm Lover fandom, though this only applies to the west. This is because all of the Tokimeki Girl's Side series and Storm Lover Kai were translated by the same group around similar times, hence the overlap.
• Moe: A lots of guys and girls could invoke this to the player.
• More Popular Spin-Off: At least outside of Japan, since they're the only games in the series to date that have a complete Fan Translation.
  • The first new installment in almost a decade was for Girl's Side, so chances are this could apply in its home country.
• Older Than They Think: The "Rival" system actually existed long before the first Girl's Side game, began with TokiMemo2 Jun and Takumi.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Bombs. This means the players can't just focus on one guy while ignore the others, or the bomb wil explode, decrease all characters's affections towards the heroine. Kei, Sakuya and Hibiya are infamous due to their tendecy to bomb the playes in every routes except their own route.
  • The "Rival" mode also widely hated. During "Rival" mode, it's hard to raise the guy's affection because his affection decrease every week, the heroine's stress parameter skyrocketed and should the players fail to increase the guy's affection or reconcile with the girl, she will steal the guy, renders all the players' hard work into nothing. And even if the players manage to reconcile with the girl, it's possible that they get her ending instead of the guy's ending. While the players can just ingnore the girl completely to get the guy's confession, it's really sucks if they want all characters to have high affection rating towards the heroine in their playthrough.
• Special Effect Failure: How some fans feel about the EVS system, due to limited options and flat tone voice.
• Strangled by the Red String: How some fans feel about the forming of rival couples, because the lack of build up and few ship tease moments.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Not many fans expected Kazuma to appear in Girl's Side Days 2013 event. While he is well liked ^Note Ranked fourth, sometimes third, in 1st Love popularity polls by fans, they expected the much more popular Madoka ^Note Regularly ranked third in popularity polls to appear instead.
  • The inclusion of Tendo and Akagi in Girl's Side DAYS 2014 〜White Date〜 event came as a surprise to many fans, because of their Secret Character status.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Some of the game's outfits could invoke this feeling to the player.

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 1

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sakuya Morimura. Many fans like him because of his kindness to the heroine. However, others find him bland, too feminine and dislike his bad fashion sense and his tendency to bomb the players.
  • Shiki Mihara. Some fans hate him because of his vainness, his flamboyant fashion sense and the whole 'late for an hour' thing. His fans meanwhile like his over-the-topness and his sweet and romantic moments with the heroine.
  • Among the rival girls, Tamami Konno is the most divisive. Her fans like her shyness and sweet personality while those who dislike her cite how deceptive and out of character she is in "Rival" mode. It doesn't help that her crush, Kazuma, is a fan favorite, which made her even more unpopular among some fans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Reiichi Himuro is pretty popular among fans, rivaling Kei Hazuki as the most popular character in the game.
  • Madoka Kijyou is very popular, due to his friendly personality, romatic moments and surprisingly sad background. Overall, he is the third most popular character among fans, beaten by the above mentioned Kei and Himuro.
  • For a character who is part of the less popular archetype within the Dating Sim genre with the most Player Character disadvantage in the game—a love-interest with an unfriendly attitude at lower affection, less explored backstory, and have the friendliest girl to the Player Character to fiercely compete for his love as The Rival, Kazuma Suzuka is surprisingly popular and is the overall fourth most popular character of the game; rivaling Madoka for third place, especially at the height of the game's first release. His fans simply adore his quirks when influenced by the heroine; going from a tsundere jock, to protective Dork Knight at high affection.
  • Among the rival girls, Mizuki Sudo is the most well liked, due to her cute design and explored backstory. In one popularity◊ poll, she is the only rival girl made it to the top ten.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Among the rival couples, Sakuya/Shiho and Shiki/Mizuki tend to get the most supports by fans, due to their chemistry with each other, lack of bickering (Madoka/Natsumi) or pairing the guy with the heroine is more liked (Madoka, Kazuma).
  • On the yaoi side, Madoka/Kazuma is a popular ship, thanks to their interaction with each other, they tend to appear together in supplementary art and their personality make a fun couple. Among the guys in the game, they have the most slash fics and doujinshi.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Many fans prefer Hibiya's new hairstyle after his school trip and complaining about the fact that he doesn't keep it.
• Game-Breaking Bug: In the typing game, when playing Sakuya or Kazuma's route, an error message will appear because the game can't find the necessary sound files, thus prevents the player from typing the stage and clearing their route. Fortunately, a patch was released to fix this error.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: First Love Plus sold lower than First Love, because it's just First Love but fully voiced. Outside of Japan, many fans like it because the fan translators use it as a base for their translation patches.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the 1st DS remake, if the player watching the ending of a character in the in-game option menu after starting a new game, they can unlock that character without meeting parameters requirements. This was fixed in the 2nd DS remake, however.
  • Between June and October of the game's calendar, if the player is watching a character's best friend ending, that character wears the school's summer uniform instead of winter uniform. Unlike the aforementioned bug, this wasn't fixed in the 2nd DS remake.
  • If the player watching the ending of a character in the in-game option menu after starting a new game, they can call that character by their nickname from that save file. For example, they can call Shiki "Shiki-nyan" while watching his best friend (confession) ending, something that shouldn't be possible in a normal playthrough ^Note Best friend (confession) ending requires Shiki to be the heroine's best friend and his external relationship stage appear as Friendly, thus only let the heroine to call him by his nicknames when he is at Friendly and below stage. The heroine can only calls Shiki "Shiki-nyan" when he is at Like and above stage..
  • In the PS2 version, Kazuma won't retire from basketball club after August of the 3rd year, so he will refuse the heroine's date invitation on third Sunday of the month, when there are mandatory club practice, yet he could invite the her to go on a date on that day. For the players who aim for the other guys, this is actually very good, as asking him on a date on that day will defuse his bomb and the players won't have to waste a day to go on a date with him.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Reiichi Himuro is a good-looking math teacher who’s great on music. The vocalist for First Love’s opening and ending songs, Koshi of B'z, is a certified elementary and high school level math teacher, but was scouted to do music before he could enter the education business.
• Ho Yay: Hibiya's fanboying Kei can sometimes veer into this territory.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Some fans ship Tsukushi and the heroine together.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Considered to be the hardest game of the Girl's Side branch. Kei's status as a Nintendo Hard character is pretty much legendary.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Unless you are fan of the game's voice cast, there is no point to buy First Love Plus, because this version is just First Love but with full voice acting.
• Memetic Molester: Ikkaku Amanohashi, which probably has to do with the fact that he's way older than the heroine and basically kidnaps her in one of his events.
• Memetic Mutation: Madoka's "SEA" T-Shirt has achieved meme status, due to it's goofy design.
• One-Scene Wonder: Masuda Yoshihito appears only in two scenes during Himuro's route, but he is reasonably popular and tends to appear with Himuro in fanarts.
• Ron the Death Eater: Tamami gets vilified more than any other rival girl by Japanese fans, due to their experience with her in "Rival" mode. Fans usually turn her into a Clingy Jealous Girl, with appropriately Death Glare or Hidden Eyes, whenever she saw Kazuma and the heroine together.
• The Scrappy: Wataru Hibiya. His overenthusiastic nature can be quite a turn-off and his fanboying about Kei can get old fast.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Kei falls asleep during exams. When this happened, the heroine always has a chat with Kei. This is very annoying, especially if the player choose to romance another guy and want to hear him congratulate the heroine on ranking high in exams.
• Squick: How some feel about Ikkaku Amanohashi being a romance option in the game.
• Values Dissonance: In one of her messages, Shiho Arisawa feels insecure about being too tall for a girl, most likely for making her stick out from the others, something that is frowned upon in Japanese culture. On top of that, she is only 169cms tall, which depending on where the players live, could be considered as rather average at best or short at worst.

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 2

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Christopher Weatherfield. He has his fans but many others dislike his Chivalrous Pervert, Phenotype Stereotype and annoying accents.
  • Taro Majima is pretty divise. His route feels like Domestic Abuse to some players and how Daisy have to go along with him on everything to get his ending, while his fans say his ending make up for it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Taku Komori is arguably one of the most popular characters in GS2 despite his status as an extra character, probably due to his storyline and personnality, overall similar to Tokimeki Memorial 2 's Ensemble Dark Horse Kaori Yae's.
  • Takafumi Wakaouji, with loads and loads of fan art.
• Even Better Sequel: This game introduces shopping card, the ability to sell clothes, much more character interactions, the infamous "Love Mode" and the ability to avoid unecessary "Rival" mode.
• Ho Yay: Amachi has a definite mancrush on Shiba to the point of blushing whenever he sees him and going into raptures when Shiba remembers his name or gives him advice. Watching Shiba's passion for playing baseball in middle school is even what inspired Amachi to join the Cheerleading Squad with the hopes of cheering for him one day.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Haruhi Nishimoto.
• Memetic Molester: While he isn't usually put on the level of a molester, the fandom does tend to portray Motoharu Masaki as being more of a sexual deviant than the rest of the cast. It probably has to do with the fact that he's older than the protagonist, and that he makes some suggestive comments when poked.
• Memetic Mutation: Iraru Hikami's ridiculous-looking helmet has achieved meme status, and has also earned him the nickname of "Metty" among Japanese players. One of his more famous lines, "これは手信号だよ" (read "kore wa teshingou dayo" — or in English, "These are hand signals!") has also become a minor meme in of itself, mainly because Hikami sounds incredibly enthusiastic despite the fact that he is discussing something incredibly mundane. When written by others, the line is often accompanied by a ✰ mark at the end.
• Unnecessary Make Over: Going on online forums, it's very easy to find multiple people complaining about the fact that Taku Komori cuts his hair during his route, claiming that it wasn't necessary and he looked better before.
• Unpopular Popular Character: While not the most popular character in the game, Hikami has a respectable amount of fans in real life. Not so much in-universe, though...
• Stoic Woobie: Katsumi Shiba's got quite a bit of emotional baggage from his middle school years, but almost never talks about it to the heroine. The one time he does lose his cool in front of her, he apologizes and tells her to forget it.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: Taro's ending has him be forgiven for his treatment to Daisy, and they begin a romantic relationship. Given that he is a narcissistic, self-absorbed, emotionally flip-floppy abusive boyfriend who torments her, most fans were rather unhappy about this. Fortunately, Daisy can rejects him.
• The Woobie: Komori again, which probably accounts for a lot of his appeal.

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 3

• Accidental Innuendo: Climax Mode in the PSP port.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Chikara Oosako. He is well liked in Japan but due to his young looks, English speaking fans think he is a step back from previous games' teacher characters.
• Crossover Ship: Not in the traditional sense, since they are both from the same franchise, but Chikara Osako is shipped with Kasumi Asou from TokiMemo 2 in the Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee fanfic series as well as some fan art on DeviantArt.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tatsuya Hasumi, mainly his Ijiwaru route.
• Even Better Sequel: The 3rd game tones down bomb mechanic, revamped fashion system, the ability to have a real friendship with the girls, introduces ADV events and replaces the widely hated "Rival" mode with "Pride VS Pride" mode, making this game the least frustrating in the series.
• Les Yay: Karen completely adores the heroine and has no interest in boys.
  • She has a bit of Les Yay with Miyo as well.
• One True Threesome: The Sakurai brothers x Bambi is a fan favourite.
  • As well as the "Cutie 3" (Miyo, Karen and Bambi).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Himuro gets Demoted to Extra are this to some fans. Others don't mind this, cite he's probably still dating (or even married to) the first game's heroine and thus, no longer winnable in the game.
  • Tsukushi is Tamao's childhood friend, so he should plays some roles in Tamao's route or even apppears as a Secret Character? Nope. He appears in one of Tamao's ADV events and that's it.
• The Woobie: The Sakurai brothers.