Green Green (video game)

Green Green (グリーングリーン, Gurīn Gurīn) is a Japanese H-game for Windows, developed and published by Groover. The game features a story that is centered on comedy and some suggestive situations. As such, the game falls under the Adventure Novel genre.
This game has been adapted into an anime television series and an original video animation. In addition, two sequels have followed it, along with two spin-off games released on PlayStation 2.
Green Green was originally released as two CD-ROMs on October 5, 2001 by Groover. Groover rereleased the game as a DVD with additional features on March 22, 2002.
The two PlayStation 2 spin-off games carried the subtitles of ~Kanenone Romantic~ and ~Kanenone Dynamic~. Both were released by WellMADE on April 24, 2003.
Green Green takes place in Japan's countryside, in a non-descript region with forests and an isolated boarding school known as Kanenone Gakuen (鐘ノ音学園, literally translated as Sound of Bell Academy) The academy boasts of an entirely male population, and prides itself of the tradition of men growing amongst other men without any external influences to disturb them.
The protagonist is named Yuusuke Takasaki, a second year student that is indifferent to the lonely, girl-deprived atmosphere that surrounds the school. His three friends, Tadatomo "Bacchiguu" Ijuuin, Hikaru Ichibanboshi and Taizou Tenjin, however, feel as if they are being denied their youth by having no females to interact with. As the summer session at Kanenone begins, Yuusuke and friends wonder what the change of season will bring to them, when Bacchiguu brings news that a bus full of girls has arrived on school grounds.
As luck would have it, Kanenone's current administration is considering making the academy co-ed, and in order to see how the change would affect the student body, first and second year girls have been brought to live on school grounds for one month. Though Yuusuke takes the change in stride, his three hormone-driven friends see this as the true beginning of their youth.
The game takes place over the period of one month, from June 23 to the end of July (the exact date varies depending on which ending the player aims for). As such, game progression is daily, in which there are preset interactions in the early morning and late at night, with a block of time in the middle of the day that grants Yuusuke the opportunity to directly interact with one of the five lead heroines.
Some pre-set interactions are influenced by which girl Yuusuke last talked to and what choices the player made for him recently.
Should Yuusuke fail to win the heart of one of the five heroines by the end of July, the player is defaulted to a "common" ending.
Because Green Green falls into the novel genre of H-games, the player cannot change the protagonist's name, and instead assumes the role of Yuusuke.
The game engine uses common elements found in dating simulation games, and as such is viewed in first person. Backgrounds are used to display the current location, with images of characters in Yuusuke's line of sight appearing on the screen. Characters that are not speaking will blink their eyes, and those that are speaking will move their lips accordingly. The current day is displayed on the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
A panel at the bottom of the screen is used to display text. At the sides of the panel are shortcut buttons to Load and Save games, toggle the current day display, access the game's Configuration menu, skip already-seen dialogue and have the game run on automatic.
Unlike most visual novel games, Green Green does not have a text log for dialogue.
Green Green's music was composed by the two-man rock band known as Milktub, and falls under the instrumental rock and alternative rock genres.
Though the "common" ending uses the game's theme song, Green Green, each heroine has a song that is used during the closing credits:
The original CD-ROM release of Green Green contained the game and few bonus features.
The DVD rerelease of Green Green contained features not available in the original CD-ROM release. Most of these features are accessible by browsing the DVD. These included:
The two PlayStation 2 releases of Green Green were direct ports from the original CD-ROM version of the game. However, both Kanenone Romantic and Kanenone Dynamic featured two new female characters each in addition to the original five. As such, there were a total of four new girls exclusive to the PlayStation 2, each with their own closing song and ending:
In addition, new artwork, new closing songs for the original five girls and a built-in CG gallery were included. Because these were released on a video game console, all H-scenes were removed.
Green Green was adapted into a 13-episode anime television series.
The game was adapted into four light novels.
Bacchiguu & Ichibanboshi: These names are derived from the names of the two members of Milktub (Japanese), who composed the music for Green Green. Bamboo became Bacchiguu, and Ichibanboshi Hikaru became a character name. Bamboo (real name: Hiroshi Takeuchi (竹内 博, Takeuchi Hiroshi)) is also listed as Green Green's producer.
Character Names: The five lead girls are named after plants or things connected to plants. Midori means "green", Kutsuki Futaba means "twin leaves on a decayed tree", Kutsuki Wakaba means "new leaves on a decayed tree", Minami Sanae means "southern rice seedlings" and Iino Chigusa means "field of a thousand seeds".
Kutsuki vs. Kuchiki: The pronunciation of Futaba and Wakaba's last name has been the subject of debate since the release of the game. The game itself seems to have trouble deciding how to pronounce 朽木, often shifting between Kutsuki (くつき) and Kuchiki (くちき). Most of the voice actors stick to Kutsuki when talking about Futaba, while they use Kuchiki when talking about Wakaba.
In 2000, the staff involved in the work of Green Green heavily engaged in Frontwing's first work, Canary ~Kono Omoi wo Uta ni Nosete~ finally releasing the project around August 2000, shortly after the release of Canary, half of the original staff including Bamboo decided to go on a trip to the countryside as vacation time to come up with their next project which was their next main focus for their game Green Green, a supposedly planned second work following before another game Hooligan which was scheduled to be released the summer of 2001, according to the Blue Canary fan disc released on Comiket 59. However, after Bamboo's involvement in working at a company named Gungho (which has no affiliation with the one that makes online games,) Bamboo decided to discuss the Green Green project with Gungho for help on production, which was an upcoming game title for the publisher FrontWing, who was appointed as the prominent director of the game. When he was appointed the director of this work, he promised fans of the Canary work that he would go above and beyond with his future projects, including Green Green, and planned to extend upon Canary's story while working on Green Green simultaneously.
After some discussions, Gungho and Frontwing signed a verbal agreement to communicate effectively on issues regarding the game. After the scenario, CG and other game features were polished and ready for advertising. Sakamoto stepped in to produce the Canary Visual Guide Book, which revealed four pages with details of the upcoming title and character CG of the characters of Green Green. Shortly after the release of this book and a release date for summer was on the horizon, Gungho attempted to sign a payment contract with FrontWing so that they could transfer Green Green's assets for publishing under the Frontwing name. However, because of the high costs that Gungho had demanded from Frontwing for the work, FrontWing decided against the high production costs and pulled themselves out of the agreement. Bamboo had expressed disappointment that nothing was gained from the work he put so much hard work into making. Whether Bamboo was fired or left on his own accord is unknown. Still, it was confirmed after May that his credit as a director of Canary had been removed from the Canary Normal Edition Plus Re-Release and the official page for the game until the console version of the game, where his credit was exclusively reinstated.
Soon after, the official site for Green Green was finally revealed around late May, claiming that the site was a runaway site. The site unveiled Starlink as the publisher and GROOVER as the official new brand for this product. This confused fans and publishers, which caused controversy within the visual novel community in Japan. With all of the rumors, FrontWing, oblivious to what was happening in the background, posted a message on their site in June 2001 stating that there was a misunderstanding about the handling of their staff at FrontWing, claiming that Katakura Shinji, the illustrator responsible for creating illustrations was not a staff of FrontWing, but is the team responsible for the Green Green project. FrontWing also noted that half of the staff responsible for Canary were freelance writers who took their time to create stories for said companies and weren't considered official Frontwing employees.
In November 2001, Frontwing, which still believed they still held the copyright of Green Green, noticed the release of Green Green under said publisher shortly after it released their second work, Hooligan, and decided to postpone their "supposedly confidential" asset, Green Green, until further notice. With this notice, they filed a lawsuit against Sakamoto, Bamboo, and Gungho for copyright infringement. Ryuichiro Yamakawa (Representative of FrontWing) claimed that the creation was an idea jointly created with Bamboo and claimed that the product was advertised before its release, making it a work of their company. He also claimed that Bamboo needed to work more with Frontwing, as he spent most of his time working with Gungho. However, as stated before, Gungho had yet to reach a formal contract agreement on the game's sales, so Gungho asked Sakamoto Co. Ltd for assistance in advertising the product in advance. Based on the information given, it was evident that Gungho and Bamboo were working on the game. Still, because the work had little affiliation with Front Wing, as admitted by Front Wing in a short post on their site dating back to June of that year, the law sided with Gungho and Bamboo as it was already too late to decide as the release was already released, finished and published by a different entity. Bamboo broke Article 3 of Japanese law, concealing information that he was working for another company and revealing confidential assets like Green Green to Gungho without FrontWing's permission, which are hostile entities by competitive nature.
The critical lesson learned from this copyright case is the importance of clear and formal agreements, communication, and transparency in business collaborations, especially in creative industries like video game development.