f you dig Persona the way I do, 773's Cherry Tree High Comedy Club was a game that should have grabbed your attention last year.
It sported a social link-styled system that closely resembled Atlus' masterpiece game-changer, though its setting is obviously much less dark. I had always felt that a little something was lost in translation with Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, but it was fun nonetheless. With its moderate success, Nyu-Media saw fit to bring over the sequel to Cherry Tree High Comedy Club to Steam and other platforms as well, in the form of Cherry Tree High: I! My! Girls!.
Set after the events of Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, I! My! Girls! follows the newly formed Cherry Tree High Comedy Club headed up by its fearless leader Mairu (who, thankfully, is no longer named Miley, as per the de-westernization of the original game). Having successfully started the Comedy Club after facing insurmountable odds, it's time for the gang to start activities as an official Cherry Tree High organization. However, some 
students at Cherry Tree High might not share the Comedy Club's enthusiasm...
Meanwhile, a Pop Idol has made her way into town with full intention of getting into Cherry Tree High to see the Comedy Club for herself... the plot thickens!
Now, being as this entry to the series is classified as a “Linear Visual Novel”, I! My! Girls! takes an extremely different approach to its gameplay. Uh, if you could actually call it that. You see, where the previous instalment was a full-on RPG with many stats to build, environments to explore and people to befriend at various levels, I! My! Girls! is instead played out entirely automatically; there are exactly zero choices to be made outside of which chapter to start as they open up. So yeah. Not a game
However, it is still entertaining. I! My! Girls! has some nice, clean visuals, snappy, catchy music and really good scripting with plenty of moments that got me to laugh out loud. There's even a cheap laugh track in places, which is neat.
It's a shame, then, that the story ends as abruptly as it does. I'm sure this opens the door to future instalments of the series, which I would actually go out of my way to read through, but I guarantee that it will end before you're prepared for it to. There are extra episodes after the “main” story but it doesn't feel as if the new characters introduced in I! My! Girls! are as well-developed as they could have been. A few more chapters and maybe an actual end goal – even if it was an end in failure – would have been much more satisfying.
As a game, Cherry Tree High: I! My! Girls! falls super flat, but as a visual novel, it still works better than I thought, despite the quick cut-off. Your typical manga will cost you $12.00 or more per volume up here in Free Canadia, but I! My! Girls! Is available for only $4.00 and bundled with the original game for only $10.00. That works for me. Now here's hoping we see more of Ai, Mairu and the rest of the Cherry Tree High Comedy Club in the near future... and maybe with a little more closure.
