Maitetsu Last Run!! (Or in Japanese: まいてつ Last Run!!) is a highly popular Japanese exclusive erotic visual novel telling a story about fictional Japan and its railroads operated by cute humanoid control modules. Developed by Lose, the game was released on DLsite on the 30th of October 2020.
This title should not be confused with ‘Maitetsu: Pure Station‘ which was originally released in Japan in 2016 and later on Steam in 2018, and can today even be found on PlayStation 4 and Switch in English. The two games share many similarities story-wise and that is because Maitetsu Last Run!! is a reconstruction of the original story, adding more to it in order to create a complete package.
Table of content:
Maitetsu Last Run!! Gameplay
Maitetsu is a pure visual novel offering no actual gameplay mechanics of any sort. There are no gameplay sections between storytelling nor player-driven choices, multiple different endings, or anything of this nature. Maitetsu solely focuses on delivering a story-rich experience filled with stunning visuals and great voice acting, not to mention exquisite hentai.
Despite not providing any gameplay or player interaction, one should not brush the game off as something boring. Maitetsu Last Run!! is regarded as one of the more luxurious visual novel experiences out there by many and has garnered enough popularity to earn its own animated TV show: Rail Romanesque, consisting of 12 short episodes.
Story
In a fictional Japan set in Hinomoto, mankind is in an era of embracing a new form of transportation by air while slowly running locomotives out of business. A young man named Soutetsu, the main protagonist of the story, suffers the loss of his parents in a railroad accident and finds himself adopted into the Migita household. When returning to his hometown to save it from water pollution in the wake of a new ‘aerocraft’ factory being built, Soutetsu discovers a humanoid control module named Hachiroku who has lost her 8620 model locomotive. With the help of his friends, the two begin a search far and wide.
Maitetsu Last Run!! provides 8 major chapters that are divided into smaller scenes that can last around 30-40 minutes each. In total, there are 136 story scenes, not including adult scenes which only add up more runtime on top of what is already a grand story to enjoy.
The story is told from the perspective of Soutetsu but each chapter tackles one of the main female characters and their personal troubles and challenges in which other main and side characters still remain present and active in dialogue. As a story about locomotives, there are a lot of technical words being used to please the audience of train fanatics but the game does an excellent job also teaching a casual audience what each complex word means. By the end of it all, you will be surprised just how much you know about trains.
TIPS screen (Learn about trains!)
It is only natural that a story about trains can get pretty technical and complex for an average viewer, but to help people get excited about the world of Maitetsu and really get invested in it, there is an in-game library of information holding everything you wish to know about the world of Maitetsu.
Maitetsu Last Run!! is not just a story waiting to be told, it is an experience willing to go the extra mile to teach you about locomotives. From the TIPS screen, a library of well over 200 topics holding valuable information and tips about Maitetsu’s technicalities is waiting for you to study and learn in a fun cute way. These TIPS are conversations held between one or more characters and they are all fully voice-acted!
Important words highlighted in yellow can be seen throughout the story. These highlighted texts are part of the TIPS section to point out which words you should learn to understand what characters are talking about. While one might brush the TIPS section off as mere fiction not worth their time, it is actually based on facts about trains that translate into the real world. You will be learning about how trains operate down to the last detail about their most intricate parts, as well as real train models once used in Japan during the era of steam locomotives.
The TIPS section can be a fun way to pass the time while enjoying more of Maitetsu but it is also training you to enjoy the story even more by allowing you to understand all of the technical words slipped in between the dialogue of different characters. By diving deep into the TIPS section and learning all the technicalities, your first or second playthrough of Maitetsu Last Run!! can be even more enjoyable! And naturally, you will also earn the bragging rights of knowing about trains. Who said hentai cannot be a great source of learning!
Maitetsu Last Run!! Settings
With many options to take advantage of, you can tailor the story experience exactly to your liking. By taking advantage of shortcut keys and adding or removing features from the screen, you can create the kind of environment that is most pleasant to follow the story in.
Bookmark
While enjoying the story, you may come across scenes that you wish to remember and return to at a later time or date. The Bookmark feature is a great way to save a scene, name it, and store it in your bookmark tab for later reminiscence without having to spend time trying to find your way back to it the old-fashioned way of starting all over or browsing a Scene gallery.
Since the game does not have a typical save system in place, the Bookmark feature is pretty much just a fancy name given for what essentially is the game’s save system, only it provides a little more flexibility navigation-wise than when compared to other visual novels out there.
From the Bookmark screen, you can choose different save files using filters that narrow down your search from latest to oldest, by scene occurring order in the story, or even by character-specific scenes.
System settings
When starting out Maitetsu Last Run!!, there are some things you most likely wish to change via the system settings. As a default, the game displays a scene progression bar and character voice bar, both of which can be hidden via the system settings.
Though there is a setting to change the speed of auto-read mode, this setting only goes up to 4 seconds, so anyone deeming themselves as a slow reader might find it hard to keep up with some of the text when using the auto-read feature.
If the font style used for the story is not to your liking, this can be changed via the system settings. There are a little over 25 different styles to choose from with a preview box to see instant results before confirming the selection.
From the perspective of the Western audience, Maitetsu Last Run!! can be seen as a Japanese-exclusive title, but it actually offers a Chinese language option as well that is accessible from the system settings.
(Right-click and save the image to your computer or use Ctrl + Mouse wheel to zoom closer in order to view the image larger sized for an easy read.)
Sound settings
The game will let you manipulate several sound options typical to many visual novels but in addition to this, you are free to change each character’s individual voice volume and even change how loud the background music plays during voice acting. Individual characters can also be completely muted if finding no need to hear them speak.
(Right-click and save the image to your computer or use Ctrl + Mouse wheel to zoom closer to view the image larger sized for an easy read.)
Shortcuts
Using a mouse to navigate your way to different places can slowly build up to be a tedious and slow process but to make your life easier, the game offers shortcuts to access all areas of the game with a single click of a button. You can create shortcuts or use default ones to do many things like quickly opening different menus, jumping to full screen or windowed mode, skipping text, moving to the next scene or returning to the previous one, replaying voice lines, returning to the title screen, and so on.
(Right-click and save the image to your computer or use Ctrl + Mouse wheel to zoom closer in order to view the image larger sized for an easy read.)
Scene selection
From the Scene selection menu, you can jump to scenes and even entire chapters to either find a specific scene of your desire or begin following the story from a scene you feel most comfortable, assuming you are already familiar with the story. Bookmarks from your previous playthroughs also get featured in the Scene selection, thus adding more flexibility to where you wish to start.
There is no limit to what story moment you can jump into from the Scene selection screen, even if you have never played the game before. Within a selected scene, you can even go as far as choosing a specific line of dialogue before jumping in but for this, you first must have played through the scene at least once. The best way to describe the Scene selection area is like having a physical book in your hand with the freedom to flip to any page you desire, it really is that easy and flexible!
Maitetsu Last Run!! Gallery
Enjoy a vast gallery of CGs and visual novel scenes, both erotic and non-erotic. From the scene gallery, you get to replay adult scenes once experienced through the story, as well as several anime openings. CG gallery provides you with 389 static images of which 120 are adult material. In addition to the typical CG and scene gallery, Maitetsu also provides a BGM gallery to appreciate many of the game’s beautiful melodies.
Main menu screen
When starting up Maitetsu, you are greeted with visually pleasing cover art of the game along with all the menu buttons. Before navigating your way to other parts of the game, there is a button at the upper right corner of the screen allowing you to change the main menu screen artwork and background music. By playing through the story you will unlock new artwork for the main menu screen.
Image manipulation
The CG gallery does not only let you display beautifully drawn static images collected throughout the story but they also can be manipulated! You can make characters move and breathe just like in the story scenes, change facial expressions, and more!
Don’t like how a character is posing in a specific image? All you need to do is move sliders around till you find what you are looking for. You can even take a screenshot using an in-game button to save the modified images to the desired folder on your computer to be enjoyed in the future as well.
The manipulation of CGs also stretches out to hentai CGs, in other words, you can create your own HCGs if what the game offers as a default is missing finer details or has too much of it. Perhaps you do not like how a character is keeping her eyes closed or looking embarrassed. Or maybe you would like a character to give a dirty look instead of a fearful one? Again, the sliders will allow you to change that!
Keep in mind that every CG is unique in what facial expressions and poses are possible. Some only provide slight changes while others will let you change more about them.
BGM gallery
Part of Maitetsu’s charm is its well-put-together soundtrack that mesmerizes the viewer with its vast collection of over 200 pieces of music that range from typical uplifting anime songs and background melodies to slow and sorrowful ones, and everything in between. While many of the songs come down to being mere variations of one song or melody, there is still plenty of unique music to enjoy inside and outside the story.
Maitetsu Last Run!! Hentai
Maitetsu might be about railroads and trains, but it is also an erotic visual novel offering over 50 unique vanilla hentai scenes featuring all the main female characters, both mature and young – 8 characters in total. If you choose to patch the game, you can currently earn four extra hentai scenes and possibly more as the developers are still working to provide new lewd content for the game, free of charge.
As a vanilla title, Maitetsu aims to deliver very soft and lighthearted hentai with characters often looking and acting innocent and frail, some even going as far as being clueless about what sex is or how to properly do it, thus making the protagonist and/or the older female characters take the role of a teacher.
Some adult scenes take a small step away from ordinary sex and spice things up by role-playing. The girls may dress in a french maid outfit, animal costume, and other types of arousing attire. The sex itself revolves around basic intercourse, blowjobs, titjobs, and things of this nature without ever breaking out from the vanilla content. Within these scenes, the male protagonist of the story is often present but the game also provides some girl-on-girl action and scenes where more than one girl takes part in pleasing the protagonist.
Since Maitetsu is crafted to have two versions, an adult version, and a non-adult version suitable for a younger audience and console release, it is only natural that the adult content found in the mature version is placed at the very end of each chapter, thus avoiding obstructing the main story. This decision however comes with the expense of frustrating those hungry for adult scenes who are forced to read through hours’ worth of story before reaching any adult content. Luckily however the story is quite captivating which may help make the waiting worthwhile.
When approaching Maitetsu Last Run!!, one should be aware of the very young-looking characters who make up half of the game’s adult content. Though Lose is no stranger to lolicons, Maitetsu cleverly hides the characters’ true age behind fiction by calling them not humans but Humanoid control modules, named “Raillord”, built to assist their train operator. In other words, they are more like living dolls than humans, at least for as long as the story is concerned. This does not mean however that there are no questionably young-looking characters falling outside of the so-called ‘Raillord’ girls.
Unlocking adult scenes happens in two ways, the first one is by playing through the story, and the second one is by progressing through the scene gallery one adult scene at a time to unlock more H-scenes for a specific character. Since the game has been programmed in an unusual way, one can cheat their way to unlock all the H-scenes in the gallery by entering the ‘scene selection’ menu and choosing the final chapter or H-scene in the game. Since the game believes you have gone through all the H-scenes that came before it, it will go ahead and unlock everything. If you wish to not spoil the fun of unlocking scenes on your own, avoid using the Scene selection menu to skip unplayed chapters.
The male protagonist who appears in many of the adult scenes is possible to remove from certain scenes via the CG gallery photo manipulation feature, but there is also an available patch from Lose that comes with the game which is said to do the same if you wish to download and install it.
Due to being a Japanese product, Lose is bound by law to censor their game. This means characters’ genitalia are blurred out with no available patch to remove the blur effects. Censoring also appears in some parts of the story where characters take a bath with white steam clouds hiding their private parts. The true adult content is always reserved for the very end of each chapter.
Extra H-scenes patch
Ever since Maitetsu Last Run!! was released, Lose has been providing players with extra hentai scenes that can be patched to the game quickly and easily without much of a hassle. Even to this date, the developer is still working on new H-scenes that are available free of charge to proud owners of the game. It appears that Lose is on a quest to provide H-scenes not only for the existing characters but ones still missing their own H-scenes.
Maitetsu’s extra H-scenes can be either downloaded via your DLsite account ‘My Items’ library or through using DLsite’s own desktop client (DLsite Nest) that works similarly to the browser version, only more convenient.
Whichever you decide to use to download the patch file, once downloaded, the steps to install the patch are very simple. All you need to do is click on the only .exe file inside the patch folder and the .exe file should automatically install the extra H-scene to the folder where you installed Maitetsu Last Run!! Now you can just open up the game and find the new H-scene in your scene gallery. If you are not sure what to look for exactly, just keep in mind that the new H-scenes usually are placed at the very bottom of the scene gallery.
Do keep in mind that depending on when you purchase Maitetsu Last Run!!, there is a possibility that the extra H-scenes might already be inside the game as it is updated to the latest version occasionally. You can check the current version of the game from the DLsite product description, or while playing, by pressing the F1 key.
Not often can one say that they have learned something from playing an adult game but Maitetsu Last Run!! has managed to find a way to teach its audience about trains while making it both intriguing and entertaining. Though the game can be quite heavy with its vocabulary of technical words, you do not have to be a train fanatic to enjoy the story. At the end of the day, Maitetsu is here to charm its audience with its stunning visuals and overly cute characters that have the power to turn a gloomy day into sunshine and rainbows. For the vanilla audience who are not looking for yet another story about a hero saving the world, Maitetsu is more than an easy recommendation to make, not just for its feel-good story, but for the overall high-quality experience!
If you wish to go all out on Maitetsu, there is a Maitetsu Last Run!! Evolving Complete Package which you can purchase from DLsite, thus granting you access to DLsite exclusive bonus content and more!
For more erotic vanilla visual novel experiences, check out KukkoroDays and NEKOPARA Vol.1.
Review score
| Gameplay | 8/10 |
| Story | 9/10 |
| Adult content | 9/10 |
| Price-to-gameplay value | 9/10 |
| Final score | 9/10 |
