YMMV / Hashihime of the Old Book Town

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The shopkeeper. A true monster, or a sad man trying to prevent a tragedy from happening? Or a man in love trying to save his beloved?
  • Tamamori in the last route.
• Awesome Music: Eyes Only
  • "Sequel"
• Broken Base: The ending and the last route.
  • The quality of the game after the first two routes.
  • Hanazawa's ending.
  • Also Minakami, arguably. While he's generally the most popular character and his route tends to be extremely well received, some Japanese reviewers pointed out that if you don't enjoy his character, the game won't have much else to offer in term of romance.
• Disappointing Last Level: The last route for many. Not only it's the shortest route of the game, being only a couple of hours long but the implications that everything up that point has been a lie and a dream, as well the incest-like relationship between Kaoru and Tamamori didn't sit well for a great part of the audience. The author later corrected that is not the case and the other routes still did happen, but the route is still considered poorly
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Kawase's route is a branch of Minakami's route, but he can generally compete with him as far popularity goes.
• Gratuitous Rape Hanazawa's sex scene, arguably.
• Gainax Ending: Hanazawa's ending for some.
  • Also the last route's ending, arguably.
• Ho Yay: Naturally, since it's a BL games, however other than the canon possible options:
  • Kawase toward Hanazawa. Even called out in-game by Tamamori.
  • Kawase toward Minakami going by his proposition to form a threesome with him and Tamomori in his own ending.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tamamori isn't the nicest guy despite being forced to witness his friends be killed multiple times and going back in time trying to prevent the tragedy. Many characters call him out on how much of a jerk he is, but it doesn't change the fact that nobody deserves to be tortured constantly for the sake of experience according to the Shopkeeper.
  • Kawase's route establishes the reason for Kawase's entire persona. Abused by his father and ended up killing him when no one helped him. Is adopted into another abusive household for the sake of remaining in the academy. Gets gaslit into believing that the people he has killed makes him an equally bad person. Kawase plays up his role as being antagonistic to everyone around him if only to make things easier for him.
• LGBT Fanbase: The main route, due to the themes it touches, it tends to be favored by people who are LGBT compared to the other routes.
• Moral Event Horizon: An in-universe example for Hanazawa in Kawase's route. Hanazawa promises he'll protect both Tamamori and Kawase from the masked man, but deliberately let's the man into the mansion and kill Kawase just to see if his theory was correct. Adding to how he admits he doesn't care for Kawase at all is enough for Tamaori to swear him as someone he will never trust again.
  • The Shopkeeper crosses it many times depending on the route whether it's pushing Minakami to suicide or intentionally killing Kawase in horrifying ways. The fact he will turn his weapon on his past self because he's "gone off the wrong path" also doesn't make things better.
• No Yay: Kaoru and Tamamori, for a lot of people. Luckily it's a different Tamamori from the other from the main game.
• One True Threesome: Kawase/Tamamori/Minakami. It still hasn't happened, despite Kawase's intentions.
• Player Punch: Usually involving Minakami.
• The Scrappy: Hanazawa's route isn't very popular, he's often antagonistic in many scenes and his screen-time time is rather limited compared to Kawase and the Professor and and he's the only one which sex scene features explicit rape
• Squick: Again, Kaoru and Tamamori's relationship for a lot of people
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Again, Hanazawa for some people.

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