tl;dr

The Story Itself

• There are a lot of plot lines here...
• ...And all of them are resolved neatly by the end of the story!
• Although the main plot line, Akino's and Saren's, did take a while to show up.

Difficulty

• Is Gaston a real person or not?

Translation Differences

• The word "game" is removed from the EN title, for some reason.

The Story Itself

When looking at the event promotion, you could probably tell right away that this event is going to tackle Saren's and Akino's rivalry, both in business and in love. The story does this by throwing KSKN, Saren and Akino into a love game and making them take turns pairing up with KSKN.

Being a love game, of course the three aren't the only ones involved. The story actually covers the other participants, and they actually managed to resolve their own arcs without overtaking Akino's and Saren's! This was definitely one of the better older events.

However, Akino and Saren spent most of the story just enjoying...well, the games. The drama doesn't happen until the final round and even then, Akino and Saren both resolve it without any bickering, which is natural, since they're both written as mature adults. Yes, I know they're 18 and 17 respectively, but you get my point...

Anyway, let's talk about these plot lines. I probably won't talk about the games much, because nothing really happens until the final around, and wouldn't you like to find out who are the winners of each round by yourself? Despite the games part being a nothingburger, I still had fun just reading about how the winners won.

Akino and Saren

Let's begin with the main oujosamas.

The story starts with Saren getting a dodgy invitation to a gathering, she wanted to turn it down, but thought it'd be good for making business connections. She runs into Akino, who's thinking of doing the same. They decide to have a friendly competition to see who can make the most sales.

The event begins and suddenly a bunch of guys are introducing themselves. Oh fuck, it's that kind of gathering, they thought. They decide to stick around because they thought just leaving outright would be rude, and then KSKN shows up...

They're surprised to see him, and thought he was looking for a date. Turns out, he's only there for part-time work. Phew. They try to bail him out but can't because of the contract he made. They decide to stick around again just in case anything happens because the contract he signed was a dodgy one.

The first sign of drama happens on Episode 2 where the Snowball Fight game is announced and the participants are told to find pairs. You can pair up with anyone...but when inviting someone, you have to tell them as if you're confessing your love! Akino goes for it and tells KSKN that she'd love to have him work under her. Rosemen (the event host) is disappointed because he knows that not exactly want she wants.

Episode 5, the final round. An escape game where you and your partners need to work together to leave the cave full of traps. I say "partners" and not pair because for this round, Rosemen allows you to bring an 6-woman harem if you want to. This is the final round, do whatever, just make sure there aren't any regrets!

Akino goes up to Rosemen to ask if all three people in a group of three would be all declared winners should they escape the cave first. Rosemen confirms that will be the case. However, only one can receive the rose. Akino starts to get unsure if she can be picked over Saren because she has the osananajimi (author's note: osananajimi means childhood friend) advantage. She seems to have resigned herself to not being picked, so she asks KSKN to at least genuinely consider becoming her knight.

However, now Saren is the one that gets envious of Akino for being able to speak her mind. She chastises herself for being a coward and that she's only a noble in name. As his childhood friend and his family, she only wishes for KSKN's happiness, and so decides to support Akino.

Of course, Akino and Saren being the main characters, they escape first. Rosemen congratulates the three and asks the ladies if they're ready to receive the rose. Saren immediately gives up the rose, much to Akino's bewilderment. Seeing the obvious conflict, Rosemen tells them to take a break and prepare for the closing ceremony in the night.

During the ceremony, usual ceremony things happen and Akino declares that she's ready to receive the rose. However, when Rosemen goes to ask Saren...she's not there! Akino keeps stalling for time waiting for Saren to show up.

Meanwhile, Saren is in town because she feels like she can't go with half-hearted feelings. As she walks around, she runs into the old yakisoba bread store she used to frequent. From here, she's realized that she's stuck in the past, he acknowledges KSKN has changed and she too, must change. She decides she's not satisfied dawdling in the past and dashes to the event venue.

When the time comes for Akino or Saren to receive the rose...Yukari dashes in demanding a rose for herself! I'll talk about what's her deal in a later section.

After the dealing with the terrorist attack, turns out KSKN has a rose left. The two ask what he's gonna do with it, and he answers that he's returning it to Rosemen. The two shrug, and accepts that their competition will go on for a little longer. KSKN wonders, what competition? The event has ended. The two keep it a secret between themselves.

The Terrorist Attack

The word "terrorist" from the last section probably made you raise an eyebrow, hmm? Let's start from the beginning.

At first, you might think Rosemen would be a twist villain because of the contract thing in the beginning, but nope, turns out he's just a weirdo that wants to play the role of a wingman. The real villain is Gaston, one of the participants.

Gaston is introduced in episode 2, during the interview before the dance session. The silence is deafening as everyone is being awkward...and then KSKN comes in and saves the day by matchmaking some people. During this, a guy named Will finds a ribbon. He's shy and wants to return it to the girl that looks like she dropped a ribbon. KSKN notices him being wishy washy and offers to go together. The ribbon is returned, she introduces herself, her name is Nancy, and immediately bolts off to her pair, Gaston. Will is sad, and KSKN tells him it's just the beginning of the event, don't give up just yet.

Yukari is introduced in Episode 1, but all she does there is complain about working during Christmas while everyone else gets to do Christmas things. Episode 2 is where her role starts to pick up. Being the staff, all she does is watch, but because of this she notices something off about Gaston...

During the dance, Gaston and Nancy bumped into KSKN and Saren, no biggie, shit happens. During the second session, Gaston drops a handkerchief and Saren accidentally steps on it. Well, can't help it when you're absorbed in your dance, right?

Turns out, both those things were done intentionally to sabotage KSKN. Yukari decides to investigate further.

Episode 3, Gaston is outright shown to cheat in the Snowball Fight. He used a sleep-inducing device to distract his opponents, broke away from Nancy even tough pairs are supposed to stay together, and used magic-enhanced snowballs.

This where Luis and Ucchan show up, the two guys with the super awkward introductions in episode 1. While they're annoyed at KSKN because they both got rejected by Akino and Saren in the dance because of him, they outright hate Gaston because he caused a lot of girls to just leave the game because they weren't picked by him, forcing the two to pair up together during the match.

Being stubborn, they insist themselves that the Gaston guy must be pulling some bullshit. As they were trying to launch their own investigation, Yukari approaches them...

Episode 4, Gaston cheats again during the Cooking Contest. As KSKN is going into town to shop for ingredients, he notices Gaston paying someone. Gaston plays it off that it's just someone he's buying ingredients from. They go their own ways and KSKN now bumps into Luis. Luis asks why KSKN is holding a leaf, turns out, Gaston took his shopping list! Luis asks KSKN to tell him everything and then goes off to investigate.

Back in the kitchen, Saren's stew suddenly caught on fire when she let her guard down. Gaston teases KSKN that he'd love to help, but sadly he doesn't have any ingredients left. That put an idea in KSKN's head and the two decide to ask for help from other participants. They get ingredients from Akino and Saren, and thanks to this, Gaston's plan failed.

Turns out, it wasn't the power of friendship that cucked Gaston, it was Yukari! Yukari noticed that Gaston bribed the judges and she managed to replace them in time. Sadly, none of the old judges confessed in accepting bribe so they can't go after him yet. Intel from Tamaki says that Gaston is from outside Landosol and has only recently arrived. The investigation continues...

Episode 5, Gaston continues to cheat. He outright uses a device that grants him admin privileges over the dungeon, and he only failed because Will noticed, confronted him about it, and Gaston dropped the device in surprise. This reopened the door separating KSKN with Akino and Saren.

Episode 6, when Yukari asks for the rose, she says it's not for herself and tells everyone to throw it into the sky. She puts up a barrier and all the roses exploded!?

Of course, it was Gaston that replaced the roses. He would've just left had he won the rose, but KSKN forced him to take drastic measures. Just as this was being revealed, a giant snowman suddenly starts attacking the town. Of course, it's Gaston again. Rosemen plays this off as another program and rallies all the participants. Eventually, they blow away the Snowman's head...which then landed on Gaston as he's trying to escape, making it an easy arrest for Tamaki and Mifuyu.

Will and Nancy

Will received a lot of support in the story and he actually grows from it! First, it was from KSKN that I already mentioned in a previous section, but Saren also supports him when they were paired during the Snowball Fight.

Will notices that Saren is saddened because she's paired up with KSKN and Saren notices Will is sad because he's not paired up with Nancy. Saren tells Will not to give up just yet, and Will comments on how close KSKN and Saren seem like. Saren blushes and just says it's because they're childhood friends.

Episode 5, Will decides to confess anyways because it's the final round. He's inspired by KSKN not giving up during the snowball fight and the cooking contest. Of course, he gets rejected, because Nancy shares the same dream with Gaston. Will is of course saddened by this, but is glad he now at least has closure.

Episode 6, Will goes to get Nancy who's now wallowing in despair. He confesses again, which he knows is a bad idea, but does it because it might be the last chance he gets because he's joining the fight against the snowman. During the fight, he almost gets crushed by the snowman...but a knight in shining armor comes to save him! It's Nancy! Turns out, the ribbon she dropped in the beginning was originally owned by Saren and that (somehow) inspired her to become a Nightmare knight.

Epilogue, during the after party, Nancy, still in her armor, goes to get Will and disappears from the party. What happens next isn't shown, but you can probably imagine.

Will and Ucchan

As Nancy and Will leaves, Ucchan and Luis are watching, lamenting to themselves that in the end, they didn't get any girls...until Ucchan reveals that he got himself a girl. Luis screams in horror.

Rosemen

He's saddened by the terrorist attack because all he wanted was for the participants to leave the event with happy memories. Thanks to that, it's all they'll remember. KSKN goes up to him saying that he can still fix it. And that's where the idea of having an after-party with the rain of roses came from, which Yukari was a little bit too excited to participate in.

Overall Thoughts

I already said everything I want to say before, so I'll just reiterate: lots of plotlines, all resolved. Although the main one was a bit late in the reveal. And most importantly, Yukari isn't shafted!

You can also see that with each arc's section, it gets shorter and shorter. That's another point for this event, NPCs don't overtake the playable characters in terms of importance. Really surprised at how good this event was, considering this was one of the older ones!

Difficulty

When Yukari reveals that it was Gaston behind everything, she mentions that this Gaston is a fake Gaston and that she's met the real Gaston and the real one isn't anywhere as fucked up as this one.

However, when the news of Gaston being captured reach Akino and Saren, they don't mention the captured Gaston being fake at all.

This is where I'd say maybe Tamaki and Mifuyu simply didn't tell them that it was a fake, but Akino and Saren were present when Yukari mentioned that that Gaston was a fake one.

So...I'm not sure the intention here, and I'm not sure why the story is trying to "defend" Gaston. The story would be completely unaffected even if Gaston was simply a piece of shit. This is grounds for docking points, but the rest of the story overshadows this strangeness tbh, I'm willing to overlook it. Or maybe I'm just misreading things, it's why this is in the Difficulty section.

Other than this, easy event. Perfect comprehension. 100% (1126/1126) comprehension.

Translation Differences

The tl;dr covers everything. If accurately translated it'd be "Love Game of/in/during The Holy Night".

That's all for this blogpost. See ya in the next one.

Me, I'd pick Akino because she's rich. Oh, give me a break, I'm from the SEA, I could use the money...

Notes

prologue:

• saren gets a dodgy invitiation to a nobles event
• think of business opportunity, join
• meet akino, same thinking
• the two decide to compete
• turns out it's a love event
• guys introducing themselves, boring
• until KSKN shows up

episode 1:

• what are you doing here!?
• part time
• oh
• reward explained: best couple gets special flower bud
• game is starting, so akino and saren try to leave
• try to get KSKN out as well
• can't because of contract
• tear it? would lose trust
• forgot lol
• the two decide to stay to watch over KSKN
• the competition between akino and saren continues

episode 2:

• talk before dance, awkward silence
• kskn goes around matchmaking people
• he's successful and popular, much to saren's chagrin
• one guy named Will found a handkerchief
• returned it with nancy, nancy already dancing with gaston, will sad
• first game, dance
• first dance with saren, waltz. bumped into gaston
• second dance with akino, salsa, gaston dropped a handkerchief
• second game, snowball fight
• to invite someone, you need to invite them like you'd be confessing to them
• akino confessed that she wants kskn to work under her
• host is disappointed, but allows it since akino is honest (i guess)
• will noticed that saren doesn't want to pair up with anyone but kskn
• offers to pair up with her so it's a 2v2 with akino and kskn
• saren agrees since he straight up tells his intention
• host allows
• in the back, yukari is watching. turns out gaston is trying to sabotage kskn.
• bumping into saren and dropping the handkerchief was intentional

episode 3:

• snowball game!
• rules: two teams, blue and red. pair work together, one make snowball one throw. get hit, you and you pair are out. win condition: get the other's team flag
• saren and will: blue team
• saren notices that will is saddened by nancy and gaston acting all lovey dovey
• tells him not to give up just yet
• akino and kskn: red team
• ucchan and luis both are saddened having been rejected by saren and akino both
• kinda annoyed at kskn, but they outright hate gaston
• girls all left not being picked by him, so two guys are paired
• first round: blue wins because akino can't make snowballs for shit
• second round: red wins because now kskn is the one that makes snowballs. used to making onigiris
• third round: red wins because saren warned luis and acchan that there's a trap in blue team's base
• gaston cheats. used sleepy device, broke away from nancy, used magic snowballs
• luis and acchan try to prove that there was some bullshit in the blue team
• yukari approaches them to talk to them
• meanwhile, akino and kskn get a special prize for being the best pair in the winning team
• go up in the mountain, see aurora
• akino gets too excited and clings to kskn
• akino wants to surpass her dad as a merchant and she realizes she will need support to do so
• akino wants kskn to be by her side....as a knight? yes as a knight...

episode 4:

• next round: cooking contest!
• 20 judges. theme: food that brings happiness. can use kitchen provided, have to get ingredients from town
• akino doesn't cook but gives direction to her pair
• gaston makes stew
• so do kskn and saren
• saren sends kskn to buy ingredients in town, gives him a memo
• bumps into gaston who seem to be giving someone money
• they part ways, and kskn meets luis
• luis asks why kskn is holding a leaf, turns out gaston took his notes
• kskn tells luis everything, luis goes to investigate
• back in the kitchen, saren decides to cook with whatever they have left
• saren lets her guard down and suddenly big fire breaks out
• rip food
• can't give up yet, remember theme: for something to bring happiness, doesn't need to be extravagant
• they decide to make yakisoba sandwhich, something they ate together long time ago
• gaston teases kskn, oh no! i'd help if we had any ingredients left
• oh right, i can do that! kskn goes off to ask for help
• saren asks akino, turns out akino already set aside some ingredients
• gotta help a friend in need, besides, saren, you already helped us last round...
• nancy comes running to saren to give her some ingredients, doens't like wasting food, gaston brought too much
• they make food
• judging time
• gaston and akino got a vote each
• saren got the rest of the votes
• akino's food is the best executed food
• but saren won because she adheres to the theme
• special date prize: to the castle! but saren was from nightmare, so they go shopping in landosol instead
• fanservice time: saren shows kskn a spot she only knows
• turns out, gaston really did bribe the judges, and yukari caught it and got them replaced in time
• no one confessed, so can't catch gaston yet
• intel from tamaki says that gaston is from outside landosol and just randomly came to town
• luis, acchan and yukari continue their investigation

episode 5:

• final round: escape game!
• doesn't have to be in pairs this time, can bring an 8-woman harem if you want.
• of course, kskn, saren and akino all go together
• akino is starting to have doubts because she's bad with directions
• akino is jealous of saren being kskn's osanajimi
• saren notes while it's true, kskn doesn't remember any of it.
• saren is now jealous of akino's directness at kskn outright asking him to genuinely consider him becoming akino's knight
• suddenly, a secret door closes and kskn get separated
• meanwhile, will musters up his courage to confess to nancy.
• nancy tells gaston will has been following her, and goes to see if needs anything
• gaston says go for it, because he needs nancy needs to fuck off so gaston can hack the dungeon
• will got rejected, because nancy shares a dream with gaston
• will is sad, but is glad to have closure
• will notices that gaston is fiddling with his hands
• surprised him and he dropped his hacking device
• this opened up the secret door that separated kskn with the two oujousamas
• they reunite, and dash for the exit
• the trio wins
• short break time until night for the ceremony, rosemen tell the two to get ready to receive the rose
• ceremony. rosemen asks akino if she's ready
• akino: i do
• but saren is a no show, they wait
• saren can't decide if she wants to support akino or not
• saren wanders around town until she she's the yakisoba store she used to eat in
• saren realizes she's been stuck in the past, kskn changed, she should too.
• saren dashes to the stage to receive the rose
• rosemen asks kskn to choose one
• kskn asks rosemen for one more rose, there's plenty on the tree
• rosemen: eeeerrrr
• as saren and akino were about to shrug it off, yukari suddenly jumps onto the stage asking for a rose as well...thirsty bitch

episode 6:

• turns out, she doesn't want it for herself and asks kskn to throw it to the sky
• yukari puts up a shield and the roses explode
• yukari finally reveals that gaston was the one behind all this...or the fake gaston
• yukari has met with the actual gaston, and he's nowhere near as fucked up
• fake gaston is a well known mysterious thief
• suddenly, raging snowman
• kskn saren akino luis ucchan go fight, yukari evacuate
• meanwhile, nancy is sad because she's been used
• will gets him, confesses again and joins the fight
• group is struggling
• will is about to get crushed...until a nightmare knight comes
• it's nancy! the ribbon that she dropped and will picked up in the beginning was saren's
• nancy always looked up to saren and wanted to be a nightmare knight...and now she is
• kskn comes with the cavalry, all the people he helped in the beginning join the fight
• rosemen plays it off as an extra program, they beat up the snowman and knock its head flying
• meanwhile, mifuyu and tamaki are going after the fake gaston
• snowman head flies to this way and crushes gaston, finally captured

epilogue:

• saren and akino are exhausted
• they hear the snowman head they flung away helped catch gaston, laugh a bit
• meanwhile, kskn is talking to rosemen
• rosemen is sad cus he wanted to give people happy memories
• kskn has an idea
• rosemen tells everyone if they still want to have an after-party
• yukari being the drunk bitch she is, agrees, everyone follows along
• in the party, will and nancy finally get together. ucchan gets a girl, much to luis' chagrin
• meanwhile, akino, saren, kskn and rosemen are on akino's airship
• rosemen uses the burnt petals to make a petal rain
• kskn uses his power, restores the color
• everyone down there is enjoying the sight
• one more surprise from kskn, one rose left
• saren asks kskn what he will do with it
• wants to return it to rosemen
• saren and akino "a day will arrive when the rose belongs to one of us"
• "hey, let's extend our competition"
• "what competition"
• "r u a dumb?"