Bishop is one of the big nukige companies dealing in slave training eroge, and they have been around for a long time - over 20 years. As such, they have a formula, an audience, and while from time to time they do try to experiment a bit and throw some curveballs, the often mixed reception from their core fanbase also means their bread and butter is the same as it was 15 years ago when they nailed their success recipe with the original Mesu Kyoushi: mindbreak, sexual training and slavery in a school setting, usually alternating between games where the player goes after teachers and ones where they go after students. The latest game, Kyousei Shihai, is one of the latter.
With an ambiguous title, as "Kyousei" is written in katakana instead of Kanji (as Bishop usually does), the word could have a few meanings like "correction", "compulsion", "coercion" and "sexual stimulation", while "Shihai" (支配) means "control" or "domination". This is fitting with the game's premise, as the main character has special powers that allow him to control the libido and sexual sensitivity of his targets, using that to force them to submit to pleasure, while the protagonist himself is under threat of having his actions exposed by an unknown target.
The game follows a school nurse who suffered a grave accident that left him between life and death. Upon recovering, he discovered that now he had special powers, being able to perceive and manipulate the flow of chi inside people's bodies, particularly the one related to sexual actions, which he calls Lewd Chi. Using this newfound ability, he indulged in perverted acts until he got caught up and kicked out of his job. The debauched nature of his actions was kept under wraps to avoid a scandal damaging the school's reputation, so the protagonist eventually finds himself a new job, and now mostly stays in his lane, using his powers very occasionally and in small doses, not getting directly involved with any of the girls. However, a threatening letter is sent to him saying that if he doesn't quit his job by the end of the semester, his past will come to light.
At first, the protagonist is suspicious of Suou Miyuri, a third-year student who is always mean-spirited towards him, and after an altercation, he uses his power to drive Miyuri's sexual sensitivity beyond its limits and takes her virginity, making her experience maddening pleasure while getting raped. However, he also discovers that she is not the sender of the mysterious threatening letter. His hunch was wrong. On the other hand, having rediscovered the delight of assaulting women with the full brunt of his powers, he decides that instead of trying to track down the sender, potentially in vain, it's better to spend the time left indulging in pleasure with the girls that caught his eyes in this new school.
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| The six targets. Or rather, the soon-to-be slaves. |
An unapologetic rapist protagonist racing against the clock to turn a bunch of women into his sex slaves before a looming deadline is Bishop's bread and butter, and said protagonist having some kind of special ability so the game has a gimmick going for it is also rather common for the company. That said, I like this premise. Instead of an aphrodisiac or another lust-enhancing drug, there's a supernatural element that, in all fairness, probably will play no different during the sex scenes themselves, but I am curious to see how it will figure in the power play between the main character and the girls. To me, the thing Bishop excels at is showcasing the gap between the girls before and after their enslavement, and their best games also do a good job of sowing the seeds of their change and seeing their newfound fetishes and sexual proclivities grow despite their resistance as their routes progress. With the ability to manipulate the girls' sexual sensations themselves, the protagonist may be able to either mold or bring out perversions in them that they won't be able to deny, and that may lend itself to some pretty fun scenarios. At least that is my hope. As usual, the game has a large team of writers, so the quality and focus may vary from route to route.
Bishop is one of my favorite nukige companies, but in recent years, between lack of free time to commit to such long VNs and some amount of burnout from having played almost their entire catalog over the years, it can be hard to find the motivation to pick up a new release. Still, I do look forward to getting to it eventually. And I still wholeheartedly recommend most of their games (a Bishop recommendations post IS in the plans), and while I don't promise a review, I will cover the lead-up to the release, as Bishop puts a lot of information about their games' content and features on their site as the months go on, and I'll translate and share the more interesting tidbits of that info. See you there.
