“Completion” date: July 15, 2026

Review: BUSTAFELLOWS Season 1

I put quotation marks around completion because I only did the best endings of the five characters & skipped the epilogue & bad endings – did read about the synopsis. The reason is mainly I was quite behind schedule & sins of Kaleido has released today. I did not particularly care about Full Circle plot & knowing that Adam doesn’t return in S2, I am okay with skipping the true route. You can find synopses on the internet easily. This review will focus on the sequels of the five love interests from the base game.

Play order does not matter IMO. Just save your favourite for last because they become your BF in the epilogue. Mine was: Mozu > Shu > Limbo > Scarecrow > Helvetica

Final Thoughts

**All my reviews contain spoilers.**

Prologue

The story takes place after the true ending of the first game where Adam returns to Russia for treatment of his brain tumour. Teuta’s old apartment which contains memories of her and Adam/Luka is still not rebuilt. It is the seventh anniversary of the Basoalto fire resulting in many casualties. Politicians such as state attorney Campbell (who is shot before the time-skip goes to “a few months ago”) makes flowery speeches in hope of running for governor. However, it is hinted that the fire was linked to and possibly a cover-up for trafficking of undocumented immigrants. Luka cracks open a case of undocumented immigrant trafficking and rescues some of them at the port, but is subtly warned later by Valerie that she’s attracting the attention of some people she cannot afford to piss off. Meanwhile, Teuta meets an eccentric white-haired person with multiple identities whom she calls “Watcher” who states he has the ability to hear dead people’s voices. She also meets a social media-famous stunt double by the name of Yuno & writes a column about him.

Limbo takes on a high profile case of Guero, a gangster who returns from Mexico to take over his estranged & deceased father’s mafia empire. Guero is accused of shooting a man (and in fact did) who has evaded the rule of law on many occasions, including raping young girls. Not everyone agrees with Limbo’s decision to defend a guilty man but in the end, they decide they are a family and when one goes, the rest follow. After a surprise house search, Teuta reuses her time travel ability, something she has hoped to never use again due to the toll on her body and implications to innocent bystanders, to allow Limbo to discredit the validity of the prosecution’s evidence due to a legal technicality and letting Guero walk away scot free.

You choose what name the house cat is named thus determining who your boyfriend is at the beginning of the game, which also means… you have to play the prologue 5 times. Fortunately, it is not too long.

Mozu (CV: Fukuyama Jun)

Story:

1. The main story revolves around Yara, a friend of Mozu’s from therapy, who has been secretly in love with Mozu and goes full yandere for him. Due to Mozu’s own line of work where he sees people die from suicide, he has always had a soft spot for Yara & muddled the boundaries between him and her hoping he can be her source of hope to continue living and recover from her previous abusive marriage. However, Yara grows jealous of Teuta after meeting her, copying her hairstyle/dress, playing petty games with her (such as cutting herself and framing Teuta for doing it to Mozu), and eventually attempts to kill Teuta by locking her in a freezer truck & locking Mozu in her basement confessing her love to him. Before Teuta passes out, she uses her ability and allows her friends to locate her truck and rescue her right before she dies.
2. The secondary story centres Mozu’s undergraduate professor who has been suffering from end-stage Alzheimer’s disease & hoping to pursue medical assistance in dying – a procedure that has yet to be legalized in his state. Mozu strongly opposes his act of suicide & later finds out his professor has hired Limbo so he can be the first case of medical euthanasia & crashes out. In the meantime, Dahi, Mozu’s ?resident trainee, gets upset at Mozu for how he bottles up his emotions & seems to lack empathy for the family of the deceased. Throughout the game, Mozu’s professor acts as an advisory figure to Mozu on his personality and life. In the end, Mozu comes to peace with his professor’s decision – which has been approved in court. His professor ends up passing away from a cardiac arrest instead of MAID for which Mozu signed the papers for and agreed with the doctor’s decision to not resuscitate based on medical futility.
3. Mozu has a side-job as a “black market veterinarian” for stray animals that Yara took care of at his professor’s house. After his professor passed away, heeding his professor’s words and inspired by Teuta, he speaks his mind at a court ruling to the judge which got him a short stay at jail for contempt of court.

Thoughts:

1. While a quick google search tells me that MAID is not legalized in all states (where the game is based on) whereas this is a legal procedure and a right in Canada, I found it hard to empathize with Mozu when he had such a strong reaction against his professor for seeking it. Granted, the final church scene reveals that Mozu was raised quite religiously so maybe this is also a factor. However, even for someone who is clinically removed as Mozu, I find it hard to accept that a physician wants to prolong someone’s suffering in an incurable progressive neurodegenerative condition like the one they were describing with his professor.
2. I did not enjoy this route at all because Mozu & Teuta almost didn’t feel like they were dating at all. The beginning of the route was so romantic with him repeating his confession about “waiting” for Teuta then it just went so downhill from there. For one, how does Mozu keep his side job as a vet & relationship with Yara from his girlfriend all this time? When Teuta was hurt by Mozu acting distant and favouring empathizing with Yara instead of caring about what his girlfriend thinks, she is too afraid to bring it up to him and voice her thoughts. The communication between the two was so … nonexistent. Like are you two actually together? What bothered me even more in subsequent routes is how smooth of a wingman Mozu suddenly becomes in other people’s routes, giving wise relationship advice or creating opportunities for them to communicate/spend time together. Bro can you do that in your own route??
3. I still can’t forgive him for what he made Teuta go through because of his lack of priorities. If I were Teuta I’d break up with him lmao. Mozu really got done dirty by the writer. He clearly has his charm which is his analytical and calm nature yet he completely loses that with regard to Yara and just looks like a bad boyfriend…? Yeah next.

Shu (CV: Hosoya Yoshimasa)

Story:

After Shu discovers his dead sensei was actually his mother, his story continues to revolve around family (and the conflicts of balancing safety of loved ones vs. his job) once again. He reunites with Fallon who is actually his dad; come on we all saw it from a mile away with them having the exact same hair and eyes.

Fallon explains he was framed for killing someone & later struck a deal with the government as a double-agent in some drug-dealing gang for release. They work with some FBI/CIA agent who turns out to be a double-agent herself and tried to play both the police and the gang. She pits Shu against Fallon saying Fallon is trying to sell them out to his gang. Shu and Teuta get shot by gang snipers outside the cabin as Shu confronts a confused Fallon. Using her last breath, Teuta travels back in time & avoids the fate of being killed. Fallon/Yang/Shu team up and defeat the corrupt FBI agent. Shu reconciles with his father but doesn’t actually get a happy ending because Fallon passes away from end-stage lung cancer.

Thoughts:

This route was so PEAK. I didn’t dig Shu’s route that much in the first game. This time, they execute it correctly so dad becomes DADDY xD I love the contrast of how thrilling his main story was vs. the peace that he finds with Teuta when they are together and how he cares so deeply for her.

I don’t even know where to start on how sweet their romance was because there were so many good moments. From Shu hugging Teuta and encouraging her to talk to Luka, to watching the outdoor movie together, to him quietly finding Teuta’s lost mascot keychain and leaving a cute post-it note with it at her bedside, to him lusting over Teuta’s waitress uniform (lmao), to that final CG in the cabin (BEST CG IN THE ENTIRE GAME BTW IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL I CRIED AND SHARED WITH SO MANY OF MY IRL FRIENDS AGAINST THEIR WILL)… Teuta really got to be daddy’s little girl in this route. He teases her, holds her, and makes sure everything is okay – yet Teuta does save his ass in the main story.

With the exception of Crow, all routes explore the LI’s relationship with their families to some degree. However, Shu’s is the most family-heavy. We get to see our favourite side character Yang again. We don’t really get more information on their gender identity as it was revealed in the main game that Yang is biologically a woman but clearly dislikes being addressed as such. Yang remains mysterious but cares for Shu & by extension Teuta in their own way behind the scenes. I loved every part of this route, including when Yang took Teuta to their frequented bar and introduced her to their/Shu’s circle and way of life. After Fallon passed away, the “funeral” the bar held in memory of him was so unique, and hearing the Yellow Rose of Texas once again… Sorry I know I am not making as much sense but this route was truly like a movie from beginning to end.

Limbo (CV: KENN)

I’m not even going to dedicate separate story/thoughts sections to Limbo’s route because his route was such a nothingburger wtf? He defends his clients in court, exposes his sister’s corrupt cheating-ass-loser-judge-ex-boyfriend, spoils Teuta with lavish gifts, then in the end goes like btw I am relocating my office and never told you about this big life decision?? Wtf? What did I even read? They got a lot of fluff kissing scenes but there was no substance to build upon? The story was so shallow compared to everyone else’s. Why does KENN always get the short end of the stick when it comes to scenario? (Remembering the disaster that was Shelby route in Cupid Parasite that made me drop the game twice out of sheer boredom). Limbo truly suffered from rich-boy syndrome/affluenza or whatever you call it. His life is too smooth and privileged that his character lacked depth compared to everyone else’s. I wish I could critique more but the route doesn’t even give me the material to do that??? I don’t even know what I spent these hours reading?

Scarecrow (CV: Shirai Yuusuke)

Story:

Kuro-chan & his father accept an offer from Luka to work in conjunction with the police with their IT expertise to crack down online bullying cases. Kuro’s route takes a deeper look into the modern day Stanford prison experiment on the internet, where kind, law-abiding people become complicit/enabling in acts of bullying or harm. This is coined “the fragment of evil within” by Kuro’s hacker friend online who Kuro acts as an older-brother figure to due to their similarities in past.

Through their cases, Kuro/Teuta come across an online moderation company who hires moderators to remove violent/sexual/hateful content from online platforms. However, their practice is shady & seem to value profit over the mental wellness over their employees who have to sit there and view extreme content for several hours a day. Eventually, the CEO of the company is kidnapped and in V for Vendetta style broadcasted on major video platforms online: when this reaches a million views I will kill her on stream.

The anonymous kidnapper makes the same reference to “fragment of evil”, allowing Kuro to deduce that this is his online friend, who previously worked as a moderator and had a colleague commit suicide because they were not provided with the needed mental health supports to process the extreme content they saw; meanwhile the CEO swept the whole incident under the rug and avoided facing responsibility.

Pretending to give his friend a hideout, Kuro lures his online friend to his “hideout” apartment. The reason for Teuta to use time travel was a bit BS – Kuro fumbles the confrontation and gets shot – anyways, Teuta travels back & notifies the police to go to his hideout and buys enough time for Kuro to subdue the perpetrator, who really didn’t want to kill the CEO but rather wanted to broadcast his suicide online as a way to raising awareness to this issue as he feels the public should not be “sheltered” from the evils of the world any longer.

Kuro convinces his friend to surrender himself to the police. Given no one was actually killed, he gets Limbo to become his defence lawyer for the shortest sentence possible. The CEO of the company agrees to hire adequate mental health resources for her employees.

In the aftermath, the couple was supposed to go on a vacation but Kuro fumbles the passport/hotel booking etc. so they return to New Sieg early. However, these whimsical two decided to roleplay a “world tour” within their house, enjoying themselves to the fullest with their one shared brain cell.

Thoughts:

Scarecrow’s route was also fantastically written from start to finish.

1. The two had no shortage of romcom moments, starting with Kuro’s dream in the very beginning where he finally actually protects Teuta and has her leaning on him, saying “Kuro-chan daisuki!” until he… wakes up lmfao. The epilogue was also so darn adorable. These two awaken the inner child in each other & have fun together in their whimsy while the rest of the world watches in disbelief; they don’t need the others to understand them, anyway!
2. The growth that Scarecrow goes through was incredible. He becomes a man from a boy, from being mentally unstable, suffering from PTSD, to becoming a stabilizing big-brother figure to his online friend, supporting others, and in a way figuratively becoming the handsome, cool guy that Teuta stood behind in his dream in the very beginning. It all comes full circle.
3. In fact, I enjoy how the writer references details hidden in the earlier plot. For example, when Teuta introduced herself (under an alias) to Kuro’s friend, she tried to act mysterious and cool and say “I am Kuro’s woman… and I can see the future”. However, with her ability, she does appear to “see the future” in the final timeline to Kuro’s friend, and I found it super かっこいい when she told him “see? I told you I could predict the future”.
4. Back to the growth. Kuro probably loves Teuta the most out of the five. His world revolves around her. He is super proud of everything she does & priority is always “how can I make Teuta happy, because when she is happy I am happy too!” I love how Teuta encouraged Kuro to find his own identity, something he’s struggled with in the base game, and to healthily separate his happiness from hers. The two can coexist! (Just look at Helvetica route, lol) This culminated in their argument around ordering “horohoro bird” at the fancy restaurant which was so cute, funny, and something that can only occur in Scarecrow’s own route.

Helvetica (CV: Yoshino Hiroyuki)

Story:

I don’t think any amount of warning of how angsty this route is was sufficient. Helvetica’s route starts with him attending a meeting confessing that he continues to compulsively buy drugs but throws them away before he relapses into using.

Two storylines happen side by side. Helvetica’s gets sued by his secretary for “workplace discrimination” when really she doesn’t want to give up her promotion/benefits but isn’t clocking in the required hours due to her new relationship and having a new stepson from marriage. Limbo defends his case successfully, but given how much aura Helvetica had himself with his own 異議あり he probably would have defended himself just fine lol.

The main plot once again revolves around drugs. Teuta befriends Juana, a young man who seems to suffer from a combination of autism and OCD. Juana comes from a rough upbringing & pretty much reveals that he is forced into trafficking drugs for some unnamed drug ring dealer. Initially, I thought the game was taking a very stereotypical and inaccurate approach to portraying people with these mental health conditions, until I realized the writer’s genius because… Juana was acting all this time.

With the cooperation of corrupt police officers within the substance department, Juana forces Teuta & Helvetica to transport (i.e. swallowing packets of) drugs at the airport. Helvetica, though deeply afraid, decides to do it himself instead of letting an amateur like Teuta do it and risk an overdose and death.

They transport the drugs. On their way home, they evade Juana’s surveillance and go to a motel where they change their appearances. Helvetica dyes his hair black & Teuta cuts her hair into a bob. Helvetica gets emotional that Teuta had to cut her hair and suffer with him. Teuta tells Helvetica to stay strong because the Helvetica she knows has evaded death & downfall over and over again due to his willpower to overcome any difficulty thrown his way and climb to the top; she trusts that this time is no different.

Eventually, Juana finds the two in their run-down hideout. Helvetica attempts to drive the car but the car flips over & Teuta gets injured. Fortunately, the real police arrive and rescue them. Teuta makes a recovery in the hospital and wakes up to Helvetica telling her that he wouldn’t know what to do if he loses her in this world 😭😭😭

Helvetica tricks Juana & his drug ring is arrested. In the epilogue, the girls have a wild night out and somehow Teuta wakes up with an engagement or wedding ring on her ring finger that doesn’t belong to Helvetica. Helvetica sulks, but with the help of all the guys Teuta plans a romantic dinner for him & the two confirm their loyalty to each other. Helvetica gifts Teuta a necklace that is rather low-set, saying the jewel is the closest thing to her heart but dude I think you just want to grope her and have the sexy time it’s okay man we get and are here for it

Thoughts:

1. I will start off with the bad/random. I didn’t get why Teuta’s mom pulled her daughter aside at the mall and told her that she doesn’t approve of her relationship with Helvetica and then gives a convoluted reason of “my daughter is so kind, I worry she’s going to lose herself trying to make Helvetica happy??” I mean Teuta convinces her in the end but what was even the point of this conversation?? Helvetica & Limbo are probably the two most conventionally accepted candidates for Teuta’s boyfriend in her parents’ eyes, no?? So how come they loved Limbo so much yet doubted Helvetica?
2. Professor Sauli: Teuta is a real MVP for attempting to reconnect them behind the scenes, just like how Helvetica encouraged Teuta for not only talking to Luka but not to give up her connection with her old apartment. Helvetica finds his past (Sauli) and future (Teuta) in one route, when he called Sauli お父さん in the end as the camera panned to the sky I got very emotional (this whole route is such a feels trip).

3. Helvetica is an outwardly charming, “perfect”-appearing person yet is deep inside very sensitive. Even though he banters with Teuta, teasing her, and is so particular with all those details of the finer things in life, he is insecure that he will never match up to Teuta’s friends such as Adam. He is very afraid of losing Teuta, and isn’t upfront about it until they were on the run later on. I loved their Bonnie/Clyde dynamic and how they only had each other to lean on. If one dies, the other would not live either. Honourable mention to the scene where Teuta discovers her lost bracelet entangled with one of his watches, as if they were holding hands and embracing. I found that symbolism very cute and befitting of the tone of this route.

4. Helvetica shows a lot of growth compared to the first game. The writer addresses a big point of contention which was his side B in the first game where he continued having “work wives”/had issues with boundaries with other women due to his womanizer nature. (I mean I can make some memes and roll my eyes a bit about promiscuous surgeons IRL that I know and see at work but for the sake of length let’s not go there). Early on in the route, he reaches for Teuta’s hand during a business discussion and holds it, later telling Teuta that based on his experience the lady they were negotiating with clearly had the hots for him and he would rather send a clear message instead of playing to the “possibility”. In the first game, Teuta appeared more afraid to lose Helvetica, who acknowledged she was an important figure in his realization of self but didn’t demonstrate that he loved her back as much? In this game, I would say they are equally afraid of losing each other and value each other above everyone and everything else.

4. Helvetica’s route’s theme would be “past and future”. I want to raise two interesting points.

• Helvetica was the only one who didn’t push for Teuta to move on from moping over her old apartment (that will never get repaired at this rate) because he himself knows how valuable memories are to a person’s core identity. He is the only one who tells Teuta that it’s okay to hold onto these things as these memories become part of herself and there’s no point running away from them.
• Helvetica route is also the only route where Teuta doesn’t use her ability at all i believe? (At this point writing I forgot if Limbo’s route did?) I interpret this as symbolism of the two accepting what’s happened is in the past and they will find a way to climb to the top, to evade death/failure without resorting to supernatural methods, in classic Helvetica fashion. He is so resilient.

5. Teuta bob appreciation point:

Final Thoughts

Despite two sleeper routes this game manages to tell five cinematic stories of how Teuta’s path crosses with the five troublemakers in the shared house. The team dynamics, not shying away from deeper/more mature themes, and further expansion on previous established plot points from the base game made season 2 even more enjoyable than season 1. If you liked season 1 I strongly recommend you not sit out on this one, even if you’re only a Mozu/Limbo fan (writer did them both dirty RIP).

My final ranking: Helvetica > Shu > Scarecrow > Limbo > Mozu