I don’t really like childhood friend stories at the best of times and Toma did not leave the best impression. There is just something off about Toma’s good guy act. Even in the other routes I just KNEW something twisted lurked beneath his big brother persona. But, the first indication that this Toma’s routes was going to be an experience was the maxed out Suspicion. None of the other love interests start their routes with 100% Suspicion. Not even Shin, and he was accused of pushing the MC off a cliff. Toma’s route is just one big red flag.
Amnesia Memories Otome Review
So I finally got around to finishing my first route in Amnesia: Memories! Yay! *throws confetti* As always, I’m a few months behind the rest of the otome community. But I can live with that. I took my time playing this one, and I’m kinda glad I did. There was a…
Amnesia Memories Toma Route Review
Nice Guy™Toma
Toma’s route starts off differently from the others in Amnesia: Memories. Tomain is the only love interest who isn’t the MC’s boyfriend in this world. After choosing the Diamond world, Orion attempts to return the MC to her location before their consciousnesses collided. But, something interrupts him and she ends up passed out in the middle of the street. While the MC is half conscious and confused Toma arrives to save the day. His appearance triggers a very important memory and causes the MC to lose the ability to see Orion.
But, before they can worry about that new development, Toma is drags the MC off to the hospital. Since she has no one to rely on, Toma offers to go to her home and retrieve some of her essentials. He even takes care of all of all the MC’s medical paperwork. Because of her condition, the MC is forced to stay in the hospital for 3 days. Without proper stimulation to help jog her memories, the MC’s condition starts to regress. The doctors run a battery of tests, but when they can’t find anything wrong they decide to release her into Toma’s care.
Toma is the typical big brother/childhood friend character. He’s protective, reliable, and sweet; at first. He takes care of the MC’s every need while she is in the hospital since her parents live far away. Toma even stays with her the day after she leaves the hospital, watching over her like a guardian angel. There’s a really sweet scene where he falls asleep at her bedside. Orion is even impressed by his dedication, gushing over how well he cares for the MC.
Something Doesn’t Seem Right About Toma
When the MC questions Toma about their relationship, he is quick to confirm that he is indeed her boyfriend. Orion is relieved that the MC is in good hands and encourages the MC to trust Toma. Hell, I found myself trusting Toma for a bit. That is until he let slip that he only sees the MC as a sister. Which is strange coming from someone who claims to be her boyfriend. But, naively I let it pass. Maybe Toma is just trying to reassure the MC that he wasn’t some type of sexual predator. He even explains the situation to her job so that the stress of working won’t interfere with her recovery.
When Toma realizes that the MC is being harassed he offers to let her stay at his place until the trouble dies down. He is a dream! If I didn’t know better Toma might have actually given Kent a run for his money as best boy. But, I did know better. The entire time Toma has been doting on the MC, I was sitting in my seat munching my popcorn, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And boy did Toma deliver!
The Ikki Fangirls Return with a Vengeance
In this route the MC has harbored an unrequited crush on Toma for over 19 years. But, big brother Toma has been too dense to notice. So the MC seeks the assistance of Ikki in winning the heart of her oblivious big bro. If you’ll think back with me for a moment to Ikki’s route. You’ll remember that Ikki has a murderous cult of fangirls following him around 24-7. So you can see where this is going. The MC’s secret meetings with her love guru senpai don’t go unnoticed by the fan club. Who begin harrassing her in retaliation for the MC getting too close to their man.
The antics of the fangirls in Toma’s route make the Ikki route fangirls look tame. Their harassment is turned up to eleven. At first they start in with threatening texts and emails. From there escalate to defacing the MC’s home and filling her mailbox with garbage and rotten food. But, their grandest prank by far is when they dox the MC and spread rumors about her online. Catching the attention perverts who follow her around and send her vulgar messages.
However, rather than calling the cops to report the abuse, the MC does nothing. She doesn’t tell anyone about the harassment. It isn’t until her accident that Toma even finds out about it. Which prompts him to assume his ultimate form: Super Protective Big Brother Toma. He then drags her to his house under the guise of monitoring her condition. But in reality he wants to keep her locked up until he can take care of the fangirl problem.
So Many Red Flags
From the moment the MC enters Toma’s home the red flags and alarms started going off. Something was just not right about him. Sure he is nice, but he’s almost too nice! Toma cooks all her meals, and even gives up his bed for her. He even secretly goes to her house everyday to clean up the damage the Ikki fan club creates. Toma buys her a new phone and hides her computer’s battery so that she doesn’t have to see all the nasty message and hate mail.
While he’s being super nice to her, Toma constantly lies to the MC and withholds information. He keeps her locked up in his house and doesn’t let her leave. His overbearing nature had me screaming at my screen for the MC to run for the hills. At one point, he catches the MC out of the house and each time he drags her back to his house. But, because she needed to gather information in order to regain her memories, she continues to escape. That is until Toma finally brings out The Cage.
First let me say that I was highly suspicious of Toma preparing all of the MC’s food. So, when she started passing out for hours at a time. I was almost positive that he was drugging her food. So when I finally saw the cage in all of it’s glory, I laughed to keep from crying at how utterly ridiculous the whole situation was. Toma gets a dog cage and assures her that the cage is for her protection and not meant as a punishment. He even promised to let her out for potty breaks and showers, because he’s not a complete jerk!
It’s for Your Protection
As if to make the situation better Toma brings her toys so she wouldn’t feel bored during her time in the cage. He gives her a jigsaw puzzle to occupy her time. To make matters worse, Toma constantly complains to the MC about the messes he has to clean up at her house! Then to add insult to injury, Orion, the MCs only companion in this hell hole blames her for being in the cage!
Toma belongs in a loony bin. He brings new meaning to the line “People do crazy things when they’re in love”. His love for the MC is so great that the thought of anyone else stealing her away pushes him over the edge. So he squashed his feelings down and contented himself with simply watching her from afar. But, when time came to act, Toma couldn’t suppress his feelings. He just couldn’t let his cute little sister get snatched away by someone else. Deep down, Toma just wants the object of his obsession affection to love him. Which I guess is sweet, but when he decided to put her in the cage, that’s when everything got out of hand!
Do I Recommend Toma’s Route?
Sometimes in life there is just no one way to react to something, this is one of those moments. Now I know why Toma is barely in any of the other routes other than Shin’s and his own. There is no way in hell any of the other routes would be possible with him around.
So the endings. The only redeeming ending in this route is the Normal ending. In that ending Shin bursts in like a Captain-Save-A-Hoe, punches Toma before he can assault the MC and drags her out of his apartment to safety. Toma disappears, never to be heard from again and Ikki and Shin take care of the fangirls. Life goes on for the MC, but she can’t help but pray that Toma is happy where ever he is. I sincerely hope that wherever he is he’s getting the help that he needs! In the Good Ending, the MC is about to get assaulted by an out of control Toma. In an act of desperation the MC calls out to the Big Brother inside of Toma to come and help her. Toma snaps out of it just and time, and backs away from her directly into his book shelf.
The MC’s bag falls from the shelf, and out pops her diary (which until this point was forgotten by everyone). Toma reads it and learns that the MC has been in love with him her entire life. They confess their love for one another, put the fangirls in their place and live happily ever after. I almost threw up when I read this! He kept her in a cage for Christ’s sake, you don’t start dating him after all of that. No, you run like hell in the opposite direction!
I actually got the Ukyo Bad Ending just to end it all! In it, after the MC escapes the cage, she runs into Ukyo. Instead of running away from the only person creepier than Toma. She decides to trust him and is rewarded by him pushing her down a well. In the other Bad Ending, the MC runs into Toma, who locks the MC back in the cage turning her into a living doll.
There is nothing more that I can say about Toma that hasn’t already been said. So my recommendation, if you haven’t already guessed it. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS ROUTE…I found myself treating this route as a joke just so I could get through the whole thing!
Lol you took the bullet. I agree-I’m very mixed on childhood friend routes. But Toma just takes it to a whole other level:( I haven’t played his route yet but I’ve already spoiled it so I enjoyed reading your review.
So glad to see you dislike him lol I just can’t understand why some like him….
I could not sympathize with him at all…The cage was too much for me…I’m glad you liked the review!
Yeah and in Shin’s route lol he wasn’t winning ANY points
He pushed her off a cliff! He was already in the negative when I started his route! Such a creep
Yep already I was like are you kidding me? Why would she ever find him attractive? Hell, even Orion thought he was a creeper lol
Yeah, even Toma questioned her taste in men! The guy who put her in an effing cage questioned her taste in men! I almost broke my iPad while playing this route! There were so many red flags and I could do nothing but watch it all happen *shaking my head*
Lol sooooooooo many flags
Those gifs made me lol, heck your whole review made me laugh. You really hit everything I felt about this route, but I still say Toma is a step above Ikki~ Probably because Ikki could’ve prepared the whole shit from starting in the first place, while Toma…you can’t fight your nature 😛
/is totally biased Toma got two cute shota CG
I also agree if Toma hadn’t brought out the cage he’d have been right next to Kent as my favourite route, sadly the cage and the stuffed toys + drugs really wrecked it all up. At least half of his route was sweet, unlike Ikki’s that only got a few sweet moments and didn’t redeem him at all~
/thumbs up
(☆^O^☆)
I knew you’d like the gifs lol
I had a lot of fun picking them out!
It shows! I loved them woohoo o((*^▽^*))o
I’m so glad I read this! I’ve been thinking of playing this game but now I know for sure to avoid this route! I seriously think I would have lit it on fire if I tried to play through this one!! Thanks for taking one for the team 😀
My pleasure! Lol Toma was one of those characters you know about going into the game…but yet he still manages to surprise you in the worst way…unfortunately if you want to play Ukyo’s route you have to get all of the good endings for shin, Ikki, Kent, and Toma…
Nooooooooooo!!!!!
lol! Yeah it was kind of one of those necessary evils…
I am incredibly late to the game. It’s on sale for $2.99 on steam the other day and that is the only reason I brought it. I agree with everything you said in the post. I was disgusted the whole time playing his route. I heard he is actually the most liked character in Japan, I was like WTF? Reading your post after just finished playing Toma’s route and still have a bad taste in my mouth makes me feel better.
The only other game features more disturbing characters and the storyline that I have played is “diabolik Lovers”. I bought the game and was not able to finish it because I got all angry after 2 minutes of playing. But as Toma, that series is also extremely popular in Japan. Now I am kind of scared to paly other Japanese otome games that have not be localized into English because my taste is obviously very different from theirs :p.
*shows up super late to leave a review that no one will probably see*
Oh my gosh, this review is so refreshing. Thank you for viewing Toma’s craz- I mean…. unique… route with a self-aware and level head. I’ve read some unnerving opinion pieces where otome gamers call Toma a ‘hopeless romantic’ and praise him and romantize his insane restrictive personality. There’s a huge difference between liking a more ‘asshole-y’ or ‘darker’ character and enjoying the hell out of their route while also understanding that it’s fiction and you would never want to recreate this situation in real life (hello, it’s me, a sucker for the asshole-turned-sweetie-pie trope)…. and those few who romantize the psychotic/abusive/asshole persobslity traits and search for that kind of relationship on the real world.
On that note, I freakin’ LOVED Toma’s route, and he’s my second favorite after, of course, our benevolent and compassionate lord and savior Kent’s Route.
Like how you briefly mentioned in your review, I really did view Toma’s route as a joke. I played through Cages-R-Us #1 Customer’s route on vacation with my cousin who hadn’t bought the game yet (the cheapass), and we were constantly sending each other wide-eyed looks and laughing in a ‘oh shit can you believe this is happening’ manner when things started escalating. To us, it was hilarious to see how far Toma’s craziness would go, and even today we’ll insert an inside joke about Toma into a conversation and end up giggling like mad. Our time playing through Toma’s route will forever remain a precious memory of mine.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the good ending for Toma’s route, and I think it’s super cool to see how you perceived it differently. While you saw it as ridiculous for the MC to still be madly in love with Toma after all stuff he put her through (please don’t drug your crushes, you can —and should— go to prison for that), I saw the ending as ‘poetically just’ because it solidified the idea that the MC was also insane. To write obsessively about Toma everyday in an almost stalkerish fashion in your journal and to never call the frIcKin PoLiCe on the man drugging you and caging you …. like damn son she’s off her rockers for him also. I actually found it really fun to re-play the route, just to see how Verified Insane MC thought and acted with Toma in contrast to the other guys. I mean, how often do you get to play as a crazy MC and NOT get a bad ending???
In this route, MC (in my eyes) turned out batshit crazy like Toma, and batshit crazy people deserve each other. At least they can be mentally off together.
So, to wrap things up, I a d o r e d Toma’s route, simply because of the fond memories with my cousin it brings me, and because of how I viewed the ending (it also helped that I didn’t take the route seriously, I’m personally not really into yandere routes either). Which means I, my biased self, do HIGHLY RECCOMEND Toma’s route. But remember, kids, you have every right to enjoy yandere/darker routes such as Toma’s as long as you realize the difference between fiction and non-fiction and don’t seek out such relationships ‘in the real world’. Sometimes, we all just want to read a story about a guy whose, quite literally, madly in love with us.
((Also can I talk about how I will now further refer to Shin as Captain-Save-A-Hoe??))
Prior to tha drug and cage move I was sure he would be my favorite. I was like: YASS HUSBANDO<3333
I wish I had a 6th sense like you hahah.
Hii. Even if this post is 4 yo i had to post my thought on this because i just finished the toma’s route; i have to get it out of my chest lol
Actually, and unfortunately, his route was my first route and litteraly 5 minutes after playing, i spotted how twisted he was just because he never lets the mc speaks or anything. Like, he arrives like a storm and decides everything by himself.
What i don’t like about that game is that u choose a world; and then you’re stuck with it. At the very beginning, i already wanted to choose Shin instead of Toma because damn he was suspicious. He already had a vibe of the blonde psycho guy in 7’scarlet.
I kind of hate the mc on that shot because god she’s useless, and the only time when u can choose to run….well, welcome to the bad ends boyz ’cause u r kind of forced to go through and in this case you’re punished if you choose logic instead tRuSt (if i knew, hell i wouldn’t have choosed that route)
For me, i think that Orion was the one and only smartest guy in the room. Like dude, the mc is nothing without him (’cause she doesn’t seem very smart and active and shit) and he’s the only one who’s like “uh, that’s not normal where’s human rights in this”
>>> But, even if Toma is a big nope for me, i still admire the fact that he’s concious of how, because he locks the mc, he should’nt be allowed to have a future; to express his feelings and else. He’s aware that what he’s doing is absolutely wrong, but his fears are bigger than his logic and moral sense. He feels guilty, but his feelings are too strong; and still, he knows that what he is doing is absolutely wrong without completely realising the gravity of it (until the moment he read the mc’s journal, where i would’ve loved to see her tells him “u’ve done smth horribly wrong, bye” y’know….but nope…..sHe lOvEs hiM)
Even after 4 years, I am always down for a good Toma bashing, that’s how strong of an impression he left on me. I don’t like yandere at the best of times, but Toma really took the cake! I am convinced that there are no GOOD endings in Toma’s route because he’s a manipulative loony toon…
The funny thing is that his route makes you want Shin, but Shin is hardly in his own route…
The Amnesia Heroine is my least favorite otome heroine, and her amnesia is no excuse. I think I liked her the best in Ukyo’s route since she had more of a “personality” though that doesn’t say all that much…
“The funny thing is that his route makes you want Shin, but Shin is hardly in his own route… ”
Truer words have never been typed, lol. I played Shin’s route first (blind) and managed to accidentally avoid most of the romantic scenes. When replaying with a walkthrough for the good ending, I was like: Ohhhhhh. Riiight. So he IS in it actually. *sigh*
So I’m here in 2021 playing this game for the first time and decided to try Toma’s route first because he looked friendly and positive. And OH BOY I did not expect THAT.
I went hunting for a review because I needed some validation that what Toma does is messed up and shouldn’t be rewarded by the story, and some confirmation that the other routes are not like this. Needless to say, reading your review was super reassuring, so thank you!
I was actually telling my mom about the route part way through (yikes how am I going to explain what happens with “diamond boy”?) and saying how he was very kind but I disliked how controlling he was.
As I discovered he was cutting me off from my laptop, other people in my life, and generally going outside I was getting more freaked out by him. And I wished I could confront him on those things more often but the route doesn’t let you.
The moment when the MC first passed out for the entire day I knew in my gut (hah) that she had been drugged. That was the moment where I lost any goodwill I had for Toma.
As he was like “wow do you normally take such long naps? you must be really tired! :)”
I exclaimed out loud “Oh my GOD stop gaslighting me!!” I was pissed.
After that I was hoping Shin would get the MC out of there.. and I even tried to be compassionate to Toma, hoping he’d see the error of his ways (like the end of the Phantom of the Opera, if you get the reference)… But I didn’t max out my affection and trust for Toma the first time around because screw him, so I got the two bad endings first RIP.
And honestly, drowning in a well is slightly better than being a memory-less shell of your former self who’s chained up and felt up by Toma.
This was decent as like… a horror story done otome style? It scared me several times lol. But I feel the story doesn’t punish Toma enough for his actions, because even with the normal ending the MC is thinking about Toma in a wistful way. Like I wanted this man in jail, or at least under a court order to stay away from the MC.
Anyways, thank you for validating my feelings and providing a space for me to rant. That route was nuts.
I’m glad you enjoyed the review! Toma’s route was definitely nuts, the whole time I just wanted to be done with the whole sordid affair. Since then I haven’t looked back LOL