Bunnies are not made for war, they are made for phone repairs!
Hello Girl Review
Platforms: PC(Reviewed), Mac, Linux
Developer/Publisher: Imo Team
Well, this was another unexpected diversion in a week chock-full of them. Regular commenter Ouran Nakagawa surprised me this past week by gifting me a short kinetic visual novel that I have never heard of called Hello Girl. I was originally planning on covering the game in last week’s Rundown, but as my write-up blossomed into a review, I figured I may as well treat it as one.
The title follows a young woman by the name of Ana Lapine, a telephone switchboard operator who lives in quaint solitude as her nation is ruptured in a vaguely defined war, the Great Effort. Her life is a simple existence of connecting calls, listening in on them even though she knows that’s super illegal, making trips to the post office, and picking up rations. Because societies used to give out free food to their citizens in times of hardships, regardless of income level or ID verification.
The story is more of a moody, slow-burn, character-driven affair. One that sees Ana’s life become complicated with the introduction of a maintenance worker who renders Ana unable to do her job for a few days. With the worker, confusingly named Courier, being an experienced yet kind soul who with familiarity and warmness. Ignoring the slightly suspicious arrangements of her work, and instead choosing to relish in the simple comfort of a human relationship.
This is pretty much the core of Hello Girl, the burgeoning bonds of these two characters as they go about their days, trying to make due with what they have. It’s peppered with some emotional highs as Ana deals with her childhood trauma, emotional anxiety, and the strain she experienced after her sister left to serve as a medic. This makes for an enjoyable human-level narrative, perhaps a bit too mundane at times, but that is mostly just a way to establish a firm normal as the story veers into a different direction. Well, I say veer, but it basically starts a horror game.
Hello Girl opens with a VHS-filtered, deliberately disorientating, introduction laced with vague ramblings of an unknown misanthropic voice talking about, of all things, idols. It gives the player a strange set of expectations, that this will be something very different, and the story makes regular hints that it will evolve into something more. Such as how Ana accidentally learns about several things she should not be privy to and greatly expand the scope of the story. Or… everything about the ramblings of a paranoid soldier by the name of Yunozha Moonbeam. A character so extra she feels like she hopped out of a different work altogether.
While the tone drifted as these elements grew more prominent, there are enough character-driven scenes to make the cast compelling. I was ready to see this story go wherever the writers had intended it to go. …But then the story just kind of stopped at the end of what feels like its first third. Not offering any real resolution, and instead continuing things with an epilogue that is a drastic tonal and directional shift, except for when it’s not.
I don’t want to say what happens in it, but it feels like something out of a ’90s suburban teen screw around summer story,’ but with dialogue that feels distinctly modern. It’s good— it’s actually my favorite slice of the game, though it’s such a deviation that I’m not even sure if anything in it is meant to be read as anything more than a pseudo-canon side story. For what it delivers, I think the overall story of Hello Girl is good, featuring funny, endearing, or intriguing moments throughout. For a cheap spruced up game jam game, it’s a solid piece of writing. …But not really a complete one, and looking at the store page, there’s nothing to imply this isn’t a story with a defined ending or part one of a series.
Presentationally, I am generally fond of Hello Girl, as the game has a hell of a mood. It boasts a soundscape that wonderfully accentuates the emotion of a given scene, and I think the art assets, and their usage, is quite good. The backgrounds are a mixture of moody, worn-out, painterly illustrations and filtered photographs that depict a world of weary beauty. Something close to our reality, but not quite, and evocative in how it transforms mundanity. It reminds me of Higurashi in that respect, and also with its sprites, as everybody is drawn in a distinctly ‘mid-2000s anime fan’s notebook doodles style.’ Oh, and everyone’s a bunny for some reason.
I have a soft spot for this kemono moeblob aesthetic, as while it might not be as technically intricate, when done right, it effectively captures the personality and mood of its characters. Their giant eyes that carry a weariness and fear. Scrawny, girlish frames that reflect their physical weakness, youth, and conveniently lack of ready access to food. And their little bunny ears function as a neat way to accentuate a character’s personality, serving as an extension of their hairstyles.
It all creates an image that’s dismal yet hopeful, and one that’s rendered with a respectable level of technical consideration. The VHS filters that assaulted my senses at the start. The deliberate way it frames phone conversations against dark flickering backgrounds. The way it switches between an NVL type presentation for scenes of isolation and pontification and an ADV format for dialogue-driven instances. The choice to use a more traditional typed fonts and quotation marks for character dialogue, which I find acceptable for a period piece like this. Or how it applies visual effects and CGs in key moments to really emphasize their importance. It’s more sophisticated than I would have expected for a project of this scale.
However, I do need to ask… why is this game 4:3? At first, I thought it was doing some pretentious analog horror thing, but this is not a horror game. The historically inappropriate VHS iconography honestly feels like a holdover from an earlier idea for this project. A strange choice to correlate the days of switchboard telephones with technology made in 1976. And, just in general, I don’t get why people would make 4:3 visual novels nowadays.
Even cheap laptops don’t have 4:3 displays, 4:3 monitors are a niche product, and the game’s not trying to use 4:3 as a phone/desktop compromise. Is this for streaming convenience? Are CRT enthusiasts taking off in a major way? Is this retro for the sake of chic? I have to ask because this is the second 2025 VN I’ve played with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and it’s weird.
Tangent aside, I quite enjoyed Hello Girl as a short visual novel diversion. While I cannot say it is a complete experience, it is a thoroughly captivating one propped up by some immaculate vibes and endearing characters. I didn’t remotely plan to cover it, but I enjoyed it from start to finish, and am curious enough to keep an eye on the developers when they come out with a sequel. Which, for a random game I was gifted by a reader, I’d say is pretty high praise.
i like 4:3 novels! theyre very cute and a lot of foundational visual novels were made in 4:3. in particular, 16:9 never felt comfortable for NVL type text rendering, and it gives it a nice and cozy feel. it would probably have come at the cost of the game to present it in 16:9 imo
Most foundational VNs were 4:3 because most screens at the time were 4:3. It wasn’t really a creative decision, it was just the way games were displayed.
I don’t agree with the notion that NVL type text rendering not feeling “comfortable” or “cozy” as it’s just stretching out text over a larger canvas. You don’t need to expand the text from both ends of the screen in a 16:9 NVL type games. There’s a reason Word and Google Docs and most websites for written content have wide-ass margins on the side.
If someone is playing a 4:3 game on a modern display, they are either playing it with big black borders on either side or as a smaller window in front of whatever they have open in the background, which gives the game less presence than a 16:9 title. With older games, you just accept that as, well, that’s how they were made. With newer games, the costs of shifting from 4:3 to 16:9 is generally inexpensive unless you are using assets made for 4:3.
I seriously do not think that Hello Girl, or any similar VN, would have LOST anything by choosing to present things in 4:3.