Why do so many bishoujo games have a token cute animal (for varying degrees of "cute")? The Key anime adaptations featured theirs, with Piro in Kanon, Potato in Air, and Botan in Clannad. Nursery Rhyme has Azu, and Heart de Roommate had Toshibo. I first noticed this during the fake opening for the last Haruhi-chan episode, where apparently Muu-chan (a Haruhi-chan original) and Shamisen double-team this role.

I've not had much time to play Coming x Humming, and I swear that this is actually the name of the visual novel. I have no idea what it's about, except apparently some sort of local goddess from the shrine taking human form to… I don't know. Boink the player character, maybe. Characters in visual novels seem to have a surprisingly blase attitude towards plainly supernatural phenomena; it's hard to tell if this is something generally Japanese, or if it's just easier to tell a bishoujo game story like this, without having to explain all the plot contortions.

I wonder what the first bishoujo game to utilize all these conventions was. Probably something relatively old and familiar, since when I encountered them in Coming x Humming, they had this comfortingly familiar feel. Token cute pet, token childhood friend, token MAGIC… all is well with the world.