Since YanDev’s recent poll regarding whether the setting should be moved from a highschool (senior highschool in Japan would be 16-18) to that of an academy (YanDev plans it to be 18-20), there has been a relative amount of controversy and pitchforks thrown at this idea. Whilst I don’t think there should be any controversy in the first place, it is clear people haven’t really thought about the meaning behind this question properly. There have been quite a few ill-informed opinions and a lot of people feel vouching without really having the information of what the change entails. So, I would like to accomplish two things: Informing people of both the positives AND negatives of the decision and discussing people’s opinions against the change. With that said I’m very welcome for people to explain their reasoning and just post their opinions on the topic in general.

The Positives:

• Could fix the controversy with sites such as Twitch, YouTube and other online media services as there is clearly no depiction of violence towards minors.
• Fixes ‘moral’ inconveniences such as minor violence, taking panty shots of minors and Mida Rana being labelled as a ‘pedophile’ (as Senpai would be 20 years old, although of course teacher/student relationships are obviously still unethical).
• YanDev clearly WANTS the game to be playable on Twitch. So not only popular streamers, but also us fans can stream the game to our friends and the like. He has made it a point to not let Twitch/YouTube get in the way of gameplay purposes (such as taking panty-shots), however there are clearly no gameplay alterations necessary with this change.
• Whilst characters are ‘said’ to be 18 , the fact that they’re going to a highschool is contradictory in itself. This is a huge plothole as senior highschool goes from 16-18, so even though third year students are in the ‘acceptable’

The Problems:

• First and foremost, we can’t be entirely sure that this will fix the issue with Twitch. The source might have been earnest and even reliable; however there are other issues that could prevent Lovesick from being streamed on sites such as Twitch.
• Changing the game for the sake of outside mediums (Twitch, YouTube, etc). This is the issue people seem to have most, feeling that it derails the game from the games original intention and purposes.

With this said, I do think the change should be made. It really doesn’t make any gameplay differences and whilst people keep mentioning the ‘story’ wouldn’t make sense, I don’t see a single contradiction in relation to the current plot points we are aware of. Even if there are some, major or minor, it is quite easy to rewrite particular plot points to fit the new environment. Ryoba was said to go to a high school? Just change the text and voices to say ‘academy’ instead.