Review by: Richard E. Rae

"Yumimi Mix Remix" is an "Ani-ge"- an interactive anime, but this one precedes "Sakura Taisen" by nearly 4 years (copyrighted 1992 and 1995)... and is a great deal simpler. It's published by Game Arts for SegaSaturn.

"Yumimi Mix Remix" is actually an interactive "shoujo anime" with "magical girl" elements. The main character, Yumimi Yoshizawa, is a 15 year-old, very cute redheaded girl, typically "every-girl" as in most shoujo stories. Her classmate Sakurako Sakurazaki is both her friend and rival; she's self-absorbed, pretty and blonde, and is seldom seen without food in her hand- she eats like a horse! She's attracted to the male lead, Shinichi Matsuzaki- a camera buff and photographer for the school newspaper, who tolerates her but has eyes for Yumimi... and Yumimi is silently attracted to him too, which doesn't sit well with the hot-tempered, jealous Sakurako-chan! Then there's Buchou, an upbeat yet irritating young man (fond of the "V" sign)... who is hung up on Yumimi, often embracing her (and getting pounded or kicked by her for his trouble)! And finally, there's Rie Morishita... a mysterious, quiet young girl with short hair and glasses who goes to Yumimi's school, but somehow has a strange connection with Yumimi...

Yumimi keeps having unusual dreams about a magical land and unicorns nuzzling.., and a unicorn falling through a hole that opens up beneath it.. then she usually wakes up on the floor of her bedroom after falling out of bed!

On her way to school that morning, Yumimi, shocked, sees several glowing round objects bouncing across her path... and later, in school as she goes to get a printout for her teacher, several mysterious green objects appear, and she blacks out. Coming to, she is shocked at finding the printout scattered and her hair ribbon on the floor. A young girl (Rie) hands her a page she dropped- but when the two of them accidentally touch hands, a blast of energy erupts from the contact point... and suddenly Rie is starry-eyed, saying something to Yumimi about being glad she's found her, telling her she loves her, and nuzzling her cheek!! Yumimi, freaked out, shoves Rie to the floor... and Rie picks herself up, staggering, wondering what happened and why she's there as she dazedly walks away from a shocked and still stunned Yumimi...

Later, Sakurako-chan, Shinichi and Yumimi (still upset and thinking about the incident with Rie), all are in the gymnasium - suddenly the glowing objects reappear and they all see bunny-like creatures hatch and quickly zip away, causing Yumimi to have another blackout... coming to in Shinichi's arms (as Sakurako yanks her back by her collar)! As the three come back to the gym that night to investigate these events, a strange dimensional tear suddenly opens up and a monstrous pair of eyes stare out from it... and as Yumimi blacks out again, something suddenly happens to her that startles and shocks her friends as they watch...

As a shoujo anime fan, I really found myself readily hooked by this tale! It has something for shoujo fans, magical girl fans, and SF fans alike. It's very nicely drawn with appealing characters (by the creator Izumi Takemoto), and the story is light-hearted and very appealing (it reminds me a lot of "Hime-chan no Ribbon" in mood and atmosphere). There's a lot of wonderful humor, good suspense and mystery, and excellent pacing and staging. Even the OP and ED sequences and introductions convey the feel of an anime series.

"Yumimi Mix" was originally for the Sega MegaCD system, and the graphics in this "Remix", at first, are a bit disappointing; they definitely look more like Genesis graphics than Saturn graphics as the color palette is limited, and the art has a "jagged" quality to it with a simple style. But sound quality is excellent (especially the theme songs and the voices), animation, though limited, is great, and the BGM score is as good as the theme songs. Though the style of backgrounds and settings is far from elaborate in detail, the characters are nicely designed, cute and very nicely animated with smooth eye-blinks, expressions, and lip-synch with the spoken dialogue.

"Game play" is really easy; periodically, the player is presented with a menu of two or three choices (not timed as with Sakura Taisen) and the player then selects the action or response and confirms it. The course of the story DEFINITELY changes depending on the choices you make; for example, if you choose not to have Yumimi get up after the alarm goes off, her mom comes in a drops an ice cube down her back! Once she's up she'll "itte kimasu" and trudge sleepily towards school, muttering because she missed breakfast... ! If she gets up in time, she can eat breakfast before going out, yet even still she may be running late for school, furiously and humorously! Alternate scenes or expositions are all entertaining and quite fun to follow, though there is an excellent core story that remains constant throughout, and a common ending to all branches.

You can save a game position any time you are presented with a "doshiyo?" choice box by pressing the B button, and you can save up to 5 positions internally as well as 5 positions in a data cartridge. Save positions are shown as minutes/seconds in the story, which makes them kind of easy to keep track of. As a matter of fact, you can select "Replay" and a timing, and the game will run the story right up to the point you selected with seamless playback using the choices you've already made and NO interruptions of decision balloons. When this happens, you ARE watching an anime! If you do it from the end position, you're treated to nearly 2 hours of great story which you assembled yourself!

One notable difference between "Yumimi Mix Remix" and "Sakura Taisen" is that ALL the dialogue is spoken, and none of it is written out. This gives one the feel of actually WATCHING an anime (or at least an animated manga) and interacting as opposed to playing an RPG.

The game of course has some well-known seiyuu in it, immediately recognizable to me... Emi Shinohara (Makoto/Sailor Jupiter), and Kumiko Nishihara (Diana in "Sailor Moon SuperS", Iris in "Sakura Taisen"), among others.

As with all Japanese SegaSaturn games, the packaging and presentation is excellent and of high quality; the game is packaged in a slipcase, with what appears to be a hard-bound book inside. The "book" is indeed hard-bound, but is actually a foam pack holding the CD "jewel box" containing the "Yumimi Mix Remix" CD-ROM and the full-color manual booklet. There IS another, large-format book inside, though- a 32 page, full-color book with character art and biographical info, several great production paintings, character model sheets, script and storyboard examples, pencil tests (done on animation stock) which were scanned and colored "in computer", lyrics for the theme songs, and more. A nice little "omake."

And speaking of omake, there's a "Yumimi Puzzle" game that also can be accessed right from the beginning, just as you can start a new game, or resume from a saved position. This game is a lot like "Shanghai" in that you remove pairs of items overlying each other to eventually reveal a large picture (a "cel" from the anime- but these are high-resolution Saturn-quality pictures!!). The items in this case are ESP cards, and it's actually both fun AND challenging. There are 46 levels to get through, and has passwords so that you can get to the next level. There's also a free play mode. Later levels are tough.

All in all, "Yumimi Mix Remix" is an impressive production well worth checking out!