Hoshikawa Sara Clears Newly Released RPG, Ending on ‘It’s Just Your Imagination’

NIJISANJI — Hoshikawa Sara, a Nijisanji streamer, cleared the new RPG 気のせいすぎるRPG (Kinosei Sugiru RPG, a game built on the phrase “it’s just my imagination”) on Thursday, a day after its release. She said she asked her manager for approval as soon as the creator announced the title, and wanted to play before taking any spoilers. The game is the newest in a series she has played before, and she opened by saying she had been wanting to play many games at once.

The game starts as a joke. Every character hedges with “I feel like,” including a king who asks the hero to defeat a demon king he only “feels” has returned. Hoshikawa named the hero after herself, had to ask chat about the missing menu screen, and was told by a fortune teller that the world was about to end, along with a string of facts about a party member that the party member said were all wrong. A self-declared invincible swordsman named Lucius joined the party, charged a monster alone and disappeared, and the party forgot he had ever existed. Hoshikawa suggested the hero see a doctor.

“That was the best use of ‘it’s just my imagination’ there could be. Right at the very end.” — Hoshikawa Sara, on the ending

The tone turned dark when the demon king announced he had never been sealed, only shut in alone, and then told the hero he was no hero at all. The towns and people vanished one by one, and Hoshikawa said she no longer knew whom she was talking to. The screen then cut to a modern bedroom, where the hero turned out to be a high school student called Hiroshi, a gamer who skipped school. He fought a cat and a classmate that he took for monsters, picked up a kitchen knife and defeated a figure he took for the demon king. A slime then told him it would be easier to treat everything as imagination and stay in the room with a girl who wanted him there. Hoshikawa chose to wake up and fought the slime in the final boss battle, taking several tries at its knife patterns before a shield item that cut damage helped her through.

The ending revealed that Hiroshi had been hit by a car and lay unconscious. His childhood friend Maya, who had visited him in the game’s real world, told him that anyone would be sad if a person they liked died, then waved it off with “it’s just your imagination.” Hoshikawa and chat read that line as a confession. She called the game’s last use of the phrase the best one, and said she was glad she had spent the evening on it.

About 46 Super Chats came in, many of them playing on the title phrase. Before signing off, Hoshikawa said she would join a collab on another talent’s channel at 11 p.m. on Friday, and she asked viewers to look out for her second mini album, due Nov. 25.