Finished my first run, and I'm shocked to find something this fluffy and wholesome from 4chan of all places. While I never watched the Sinnoh anime, Dawn's particular form of infectious confidence and the choice between focusing on the contest (which I did, because I grinded the shit out of contests in Ruby) or the date sim was a smart move, given the grievance about unrealistic love.
Though I am a bit sad that the epilogue doesn't show anything of Cynthia after all the build up for her, especially given how funny Hilda and Rosa were (both with each other and with Dawn), I understand wanting to make it feel condensed. The time skips do feel a little jarring, but not distractingly so. Just kinda comes off as a "proof of concept" for what might come next. Though with them palling around in Unova, it does make me wonder if there's gonna be an Easter egg for this in the Roxie VN. Though maybe that's me just having a poisoned brain and thinking back to the secret epilogues in Kingdom Hearts, lol.
MC does come off as a creepy weirdo to me, but in a "oh Arceus someone is talking to me what do I do" sense. It makes the juxtaposition with Scyther funny. I can see why someone as extroverted as Dawn would end up "adopting" him, so to speak. Not sure how to feel about his inner thoughts basically just being a tame version of /dg/, but I appreciate wanting the affection levels to be mutual.
My only major problem with the VN, aside from some gripes with the art that I feel like fixes are already in the works, is just a reoccurring thought I had while playing. If Dawn ranked second in a contest so prestigious that even our dopey MC was aware of, why does nobody recognize her?
Maybe this is brought up in another route. I've only done one route, and I will come back and add on to this after I've taken time to explore the game more.