Cotton Candy Carnival Vibes, Bubblegum, & Love: A Genso Manège Review

By Rae

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)

Rae here, graced with an otome game!! This time we have something absolutely magical! If you are a fan of Project Sekai’s Wonderlands×Showtime or Magic-kyun! Renaissance, you will absolutely loooove the pastel cotton candy carnival vibes found here. I am a sucker for circus and carnival themes, and an even bigger sucker when magic is involved. Let’s stop clowning around! (ehehe) That’s right, today we are looking at Genso Manège!!

Originally released by developer and publisher Love & Art and MAGES back in 2020, we are finally able to enjoy an English version in 2025 thanks to the localization from PQube. This translation seems pretty solid, and if there were any grammar or typo issues, I didn’t notice. It's available on both PC/Steam and the Nintendo Switch, though I personally suggest the Switch version simply for the touch screen. Set in an interesting time period of France’s history, albeit a “re-imagined” one, this otome game is deceptively soft. While the majority of the game is serene and almost slice-of-life territory, some of the twists had me seriously surprised. Let’s get into it!

The Story

We follow the story of our gentle and hamster-like main character, Emma. She is a 17 year old witch living with her close friend and his family due to an incident when she was 10, leaving her without memories, family, or her magic. We aren’t blatantly told what the incident was, however we do get a bit of an info dump right at the start about the situation. Emma is a nervous hermit who spends her days cleaning, cooking, and reading. Her life completely flips when she gets involved with a seemingly magical traveling amusement park La Foire du Rêve, which is filled with laughter, fun, and... automatons? Sure, why not. Everything is wonderful and evokes a nostalgic feeling in our main character. Have we been here before? The Manège looks just like the miniature Manège her late father gave her! Emma is approached by the director of said carnival with a simple request- Awaken her lost magic and release the trapped employees from their chains of the Rêve.

From there, Emma joins the crew and works at the amusement park, leading to all sorts of funny scenes, mishaps, mysteries, and even romantic connections. There are five unlocked routes and one locked route, with each one having eight chapters. This is a relatively easy game to get all the endings! The routes are chosen by one multiple choice question and splits from the main route at Chapter 3. Each route then gets a good route and a “bad” route. This makes is very easy to go back and fly through the story to get the routes that you may have missed. Some stories are more angst driven, while others are just straight fluff. I really didn’t have anyone specific love interest I disliked, and all of their routes really let their personality shine. Both the lighter and darker moments were beautifully written and deeply understood the emotions they wanted to convey. I personally REALLY loved how they expressed the realization of loving someone so dearly. However I will admit some “bad” ends were not fully realized and usually ended quickly compared to the good ends. I was pretty upset when one of the boys ended up being a secret yandere and only getting a snippet of that! Give me more!!

The Boys

The cast is amazing!! We have a varied and interesting cast, each with their own stories and distinct personalities. I was a little nervous about a few routes based off description alone- specifically Arnaud and Lyon. I’m not a fan of brother/sibling type romances, but he surprisingly got un-brotherzoned very early on. I was also worried about the adorable bunny suit being an option, but even his route was just too precious! I need to protect him!!

While I played out of the order that the developers suggested (Hugo ⇒ Serge or Crier ⇒ Lyon or Luciole ⇒ Arnaud), I never felt like I was confused or lost. There were some questions I had that were resolved by playing another characters route, but nothing outlandishly bad. I jumped headfirst into Luciole’s route due to his voice actor, and I picked every option for his bad route somehow. I had a good laugh going back through, and picking the exact opposite choices to get the good route.

Each love interest had their own form of humor, and I just adored watching them interact with our very air-headed main character. The CGs would destroy me- there is Serge or Hugo looking handsome and sauve, with a little pink bubblegum girl looking at them like (o A o). Speaking of the art, I loved everything about the art direction. The CGs were often simple in composition, but were very pretty and conveyed exactly what emotions were being shared. The shining star here is the portraits and sprites of the characters. Not only are the designs distinct and interesting, the sprites moved a lot! They would animate when characters would remove their hats and bow, or turn away from the main character, giving us lots of different angles and visuals than the norm. It really feels like you can watch the scene, rather that read it.

Sound

LET’S TALK VOICES. Oh boy these voices!! Everyone is voiced (besides Emma), and everyone understood the assignment! A really cool note- once you finish a route, you can listen to a short commentary from the voice actors. Most of it is as you would expect, but some of them are pretty funny! I really love being able to hear the thoughts of the voice cast as a little bonus.

• Luciole – Shirai Yusuke (Amemura Ramuda – Hypnosis Mic, Usui Masumi – A3!, Scarecrow - BUSTAFELLOWS)
  
• Serge - Yuichiro Umehara (Canus Espada – Cafe Enchante, Mars – Black Clover, Eugene Sevenstark – Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans)
  
• Lyon – Yuto Suzuki (Honebami Toushirou – Touken Ranbu, Sakuya Watanuki – Servamp, Chiaki Yukino – Binary Star)
  

Gameplay

Not too much to discuss here, as it’s set up as a relatively normal visual novel. There are usually only two choices when given options, and you can unlock a route after playing Hugo’s route. There is a little mini game where you collect stars in a short time frame, and try to click a star to perfectly outline her magic. You have to play it once, then the game allows you to skip it if you so desire. There are no repercussions to skipping, so if you find it tedious or you are zooming through the read chapters, there is no need to do it more than once. I did find I struggled to enjoy it when using a controller, but there was no issue at all while using the touch screen. I was curious about what happens if you play and fail, but I never got around to trying that out.

While it technically isn’t gameplay, I did also LOVE that the extras tab had a clear list!! Of course there are only two endings for each boy, but I was definitely getting dopamine hits every time I saw one of the portraits fill in with both endings listed. I would like to see that in every otome game, as it could really help with games that have more complicated ending trees.

I speak with my whole chest when I say that Genso Manège immediately put itself in my favorites list. It really itches that scratch I didn’t think I had. I don’t like to replay games much, but this might be on that list too. With the amazing cast, the simple route trees, and the skippable mini game, I would recommend this as a wonderful entry game into the otoge world.

Check Out Genso Manège on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/genso-manege-switch/

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Story: A-
Gameplay: A-
Graphics: A+
Music/Sound: A+
Value: A

Overall: A+

Pros:
+ Each love interest is rooted in a different emotion, and I think the writing team really hit the nail on how they expressed each one. The stories rarely intertwined so each play through felt fresh too.
+ Digital booklet-styled manual with the story overview and characters was honestly so cute. It really added to the world building and experience of the game.
+ Once you finish a route, there is a tab for extra dialogue that lets the characters talk about themselves in a way you don’t get in the main story, such as their age, their thoughts of Emma, etc. This also included a “side story” for each boy, usually being a super sweet and lovey-dovey conclusion to the good end for each one.
+ I didn’t have to turn off the love catch system, though it did have the option. It was very subtle and visually unobtrusive.

[WARNING SPOILER AHEAD]

+ Once you complete all the routes, you get what I always ask for. What we all truly ask for. A HAREM ENDING HELLO?! The CG for it was just too cute, I am so in love!! Immediately the best game. This is how you get good marks from me!

Cons:
- It’s hard to find any cons to this game, but if I had to complain, I hated the white text on the light purple background. I turned opacity off for the text, but even then it was too soft of a contrast and I had a hard time reading occasionally.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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So wholesome!

#GensoMenage