OZMAFIA!! Axel Review

As heavy as it makes my heart, it is time to enter the timeline where I am Axel’s love-love bb. Which won’t be so bad because A. I like the quiet guy archetype and B. I need something to scrub my mind of the WTF. Forgive me, Pashet, I’m sorry~

So the first scene I share with Axel has him sleeping on the couch and Fuka decides to leave him be, but tries to put his coat jacket over him like a blanket. He grabs her and knocks her out. When she comes to, he’s pretty upset she was trying to meddle with him while he slept.

Oh. I thought he was this quiet angelic sweets addict, but he does have a bite. This is the first time I’m seeing this side. He’s rather stoic in everyone else I’ve played.  I admit I’m rather curious why he’s stoic. If you look at Kyrie or Caramia, their desires expressed themselves in a rather extreme way.

Hmm, I am disappointed that the first conflict, Axel kidnapped by the wolf clan, didn’t change when you select him to play. I know it’s early in the game, but we’ve had two decisions for him already, so couldn’t they throw in a single line or two? Anyway, it’s not a big deal at all.

One of the scenes with him involve Caramia invoking a ban on sweets for Axel for some odd reason, and Kyrie, being Kyrie, brings practically every type of sweets you can get for them all to enjoy in front of Axel. Caramia is also excited because Kyrie rarely treats him. Are you guys serious!? That’s so rude! His ban ended in two hours anyway. How mean! I know best friends are kinda jerks to each other (because it’s love) but that’s super cruel to poor Axel lmao

 

omg he blushes all the time~!  such an adorable bashful bb

Another thing I don’t get is Caramia and Kyrie give Axel a gun, but he uses it as a bludgeon device because he’s a horrible shot… so why not give him a bludgeoning weapon and cut the crap? They even have a conversation about how horrible a shot he is and how he’s known for friendly fire… it’s just odd. Why even bother? haha

In a second playthrough, Kyrie says that the image of a mafioso with an ax is a distasteful image, but tbh Axel hides his gun under his jacket, so hiding an ax under a jacket would be the same. Oh well. I guess it’s for ~dramatic tension~ whenever he’s forced to fight.

 

Sadly, Axel is boring. I haven’t fallen asleep playing him, but I’ve been close. He’s really sweet but acts stoic during their relationship moments too. He only shows emotions when he snaps, and he only snaps in the love triangle stories. Most normal kuudere have something that makes them perk up a bit in regards to their relationship.
However, in he second playthrough there are more scenes that open him up. I hate that you have to wait for the second time to see these things, especially if you don’t want to end up rereading things over and over again. (lbr, a lot of scenes are only worth reading once) It’s hard enough to get immersed in OZMAFIA with the constant fade to black in the middle of scenes. Hiding key character moments behind multiple playthroughs don’t help things. It’s nice they’re trying to solve the problem of multiple playthroughs being boring in visual novels, but those things should be hidden behind choices, not play counts.
The love triangle mechanic serves to make me F–KING HATE the other party (Caramia or Kyrie).

I can’t stand that opportunistic douchenozzle Caramia anymore. Kyrie was always a jackass so nothing changed there. I expect that Kyrie thinks so highly of himself that he could steal away his friend’s girl without a second thought… and I also think that he would like the game of stealing away the girl more than the girl herself. So really, this sort of thing is in line with the sort of character Kyrie is. But Caramia is established as a person of noble personality like his namesake lion, especially in his mainline story, where one of my complaints was that the only reason Fuka loved him was because of how “nice” he was. All the normal story scenes have him acting as a good person.
In the Axel v Caramia story, Caramia knows that Axel loves Fuka and he knows that she loves Axel, and he still goes and whacks the beehive for selfish reasons. One of the scenes that stands out in my memories is when Fuka is cleaning and has a feather (why?) on her head. He takes off the feather and strokes her hair. When Fuka is a little weirded out by that, he reassures her it’s normal. No, it’s not. It’s obvious to the reader what the end game is.
When Axel leaves because he can’t handle his feelings after walking in on the image of Fuka cheating on him with Caramia (it’s a misunderstanding) and goes missing for days, Caramia takes the opportunity to confess. “I wouldn’t make you worry like Axel does. I love you.” He flat out confesses to her while she’s worried sick over Axel missing.
What the hell?
You slimy hundred year old dickcheese!
And even after they find him and see how broken up he is, Caramia is still —  still going on about how Axel isn’t right for her and how he’s so much better than him. FUCK YOU, CARAMIA. I hope Hamelin comes back and finishes off the job by the end of this. Kyrie is loving the drama between them, of course, because he’s a sadistic bastard. The Caramia/Axel love triangle story is so horrible it makes me want to hit the skip button without reading so I can get this horribly idiotic plotline over with and go to the cutesy love-love nonsense I crave.
The silver lining in this storyline is that Fuka is assertive. She can tell Axel how she feels and that it’s okay he’s clumsy with his feelings because she loves him no matter what. That is so lovely to read, the perfect antidote to Caramia’s diarrhea mouth.

And Axel, well, on one hand he’s pretty boring because he’s so quiet. On the other hand, he’s so adorably awkward that the little moments you do have with him are wonderful. He’s sweet and earnest nature make me feel bad that I think he’s boring 50% of the time. He has problems vocalizing his feelings. A lot of scenes end with him shooing Fuka away because he doesn’t know how to process what’s going on inside him. But doing that up until the ending doesn’t make for a good romance and doesn’t make for good character growth.
On Kyrie’s end, Caramia’s character assassinations become worse because Caramia tells Fuka he sees both men are in love with her, and advises her to “shut it down by choosing one” so to speak, before it grows into a bigger problem. Kyrie’s tendency to be well, his normal self and Axel’s preexisting beef with him naturally creates conflict that forces Axel to be assertive with Fuka, whereas with Caramia he shut down into depression.

Both true love endings are boring as sin. The only thing I liked about them is how slow they’re taking their relationship. It’s all very sweet and innocent. But despite the lack of strong romance, I ended up adoring Axel. Perhaps it’s his earnestness. You can see him struggle with his feelings and the consequences of his actions. He’s also a tad bit… girly? What I mean by that is he has a lot of character traits that are usually found in heroines. And I really liked that! It was nice seeing him be nervous over the same things girls are usually nervous over in romance stories. That was fun!
Even when Axel acts like a possessive jerk, he vocalizes that he knows feeling that way is wrong, and he’ll work on being less jealous. I think we all have character faults that we know are character faults, and can’t help but succumb to them from time to time. Working on his jealousy becomes a plot line as well. So I think that speaks for his character and how good of a person he is.
On the ending where Axel takes you away from Caramia, he’s much more affectionate and talkative than he is on the true love endings. Technically, Caramia breaks up with Fuka before Axel confesses his feelings, so for me it’s less of a bother. He was never as assertive as Kyrie or Caramia in terms of professing his feelings beforehand, so his stories where he steals Fuka away from Caramia and Kyrie aren’t as horrible in terms of character assassination.
I’m a little shocked (and disappointed) that Axel sleeps with her on basically their first night together in the stories where he’s the one stealing Fuka away. To be honest, it feels like they’re trying to make the love triangle endings “canon”. For all three men the triangle stories been more romantic, more exciting, and more traditional romance-like in execution.

As for my question at the start of why his heart doesn’t express itself in an extreme way like Caramia’s bravery and Kyrie’s brains, we discover his heart makes him more attune to how his words and actions affect people. He’s quiet and “robotic” because he’s afraid of hurting other people, not because he doesn’t care. That’s a really nice explanation for his character.
But… as much as I loved him and his stories… I still think he’s best with Pashet.  I want Pashet to be happy, too!

 

Favorite Moments

Well, you see, Mr. Axel, there’s this archetype called “Kichiku” and certain females -cough- me -cough- are into that sort of thing… I am such a horrible woman and shut up strawbarely I can hear you rolling your eyes from here kisses xoxo

 

This is just really cute? Hahaha. I don’t have much to comment on.

 

Every time I see this scene I want to eat some mutha-effin’ pancakes! THAT’S RIGHT, FUKA, PANCAKES SURE ARE DELICIOUS!

 

Axel, moreso than Caramia or Kyrie, is upfront about his faults and is bothered greatly by them. That level of introspection is nice to see in a character.

 

I am legally obligated to take a shot of every blushing scene. Actually, there’s a lot in his route so I didn’t do one of every one. But he has many expressions while blushing and that’s great~

 

Kyrie cuts to the quick. And is it so wrong I agree with him about half the time?

 

This is an example of what I meant when Axel says things that normally the female says in these games. I love it~

 

Seriously, why is he such a douche when he’s in love?

 

I don’t really get that Japanese cultural thing that a manly man doesn’t like sweets. My SO hates sweets though lmao

 

 

I try not to spoil CGs too much, but a lot of his best lines are said with a CG. Well, the three Oz boys have a lot of CGs devoted to them, so this is a drop in the bucket.

 

That — that proves how in love with her he is. Do you know how much this man loves sweets? HE EATS RAW SUGAR.

 

See? This is the Caramia I like.

 

Hard at what? Oh ho ho ho~
As always, thank you Annette for making these reviews possible in a timely manner.

OZMAFIA!! is available at MangaGamer directly or through Steam.

Other OZMAFIA!! Reviews:

Caramia
Kyrie
Axel
Pashet
Scarlet
Hamelin
Manboy, Dorian Gray, Alfani
Robin Hood
Caesar
Soh
Final Game Review