REVIEW: The Reject Demon: Toko Prelude


Title	The Reject Demon: Toko
Developer	Lupiesoft
Publisher	Sekai Project
Release Date	May 9th, 2015
Genre	Visual Novel
Platform	PC
Age Rating	N/A – Presumed Mature
Official Website

The Reject Demon: Toko is the lastest VN from Lupiesoft. I came across this company when I checked out the demo for their upcoming 18+ release The Menagerie. I really loved the art style and music in the demo, so when I saw they were doing an all-ages VN, I was really excited to check it out.

Toko is a succubus whose job is to ferry souls to the afterlife. In this world, demons are the ones who guide souls to the afterlife to be reborn. In return for their services, the demons get to feed on the memories the souls contain. Since demons lack emotions, this satisfies them and makes them feel complete. Demons are taught to do this at young age as a rite of passage to being an adult, but Toko has failed at this many times, saying things like she doesn’t want to see anyone die. Thus she was cast out of Hell to live with the humans. The problem is the longer she stays in the human world, the more human she will become.

As soon as Toko enters the human world, she runs into a college student named Nadia. You will recognize her right off the bat as the little girl from the beginning of the story. After bumping into Toko, the two quickly become friends, and Nadia allows Toko to stay with her.

After the two are together for a while, Pellatrix, who is basically Hell’s caretaker, conspires with Toko’s sister Devon and devises a plan to draw out Toko’s demon instrument, a bass guitar known as Epiphany. They do say rock music was born in Hell, after all. With her newly acquired instrument, Toko can now compete in the demon rock competition in Hell. Pallatrix convinces her to do this so she can learn to play Empathy well. From here, their adventures begin to get even crazier, and there is plenty of yuri fanservice to boot.

While this is just the prelude, there is a lot of story and lore packed into this two-hour read. I don’t want to go into many more details in this review, but it was all very well written, and I am excited to see where the story takes it in the upcoming episodes. My only real complaint is that they introduce a lot of characters and lore all at the same time, and it made it a little confusing. On the plus side, with a lot of that out of the way, the next chapters will likely focus on story progression.

Graphically speaking, this has kind of a gothic feel. This is pretty common when talking about demons and the underworld, but it is very well done here. From Toko’s punk look to Devon’s more classic lolita dress, I really liked how they all looked. There are some very nice CG scenes thrown in the mix for good measure, as well. The backgrounds got less love than the characters, but they seemed OK to me since it made the characters stand out more.

Nothing makes a visual novel really engross you like good music. I am happy to say Toko delivers on this front, as well. There are some good, somber tunes for emotional moments and plenty of hard-rocking tunes for more action-packed moments. These tunes have plenty of range in styles, which is to be expected on some level since the demons are making a band and have instruments, and music playing during these scenes compliments that nicely.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with The Reject Demon: Toko. Though it does throw a lot of stuff at you all at once, I found myself really hooked on the characters and lore and can’t wait to see what happens next. Though this episode is kinetic, future episodes are promised to be filled with player choices. At the end of the day, for the $4.99 price tag, there is a lot to love here. Clocking in at around two hours, if you’re a visual novel buff looking for a quick fix, this just might be what you are looking for.