Love Is All Around

The Promise of Love: Love Is All Around and Vulnerable Masculinity in China

This paper examines Love Is All Around, a 2023 Chinese dating-simulation game by Intiny that remediates the conventions of bishōjo games by replacing anime-style graphics with live-action first-person video and drawing on micro-dramas and YY fiction.

• Love Is All Around (2023), a Chinese dating-simulation game by Intiny, adapts bishōjo game conventions by replacing anime graphics with live-action first-person video and drawing on micro-dramas and YY fiction.
• The paper argues the game's appeal extends beyond bishōjo and otaku fandom, offering young Chinese male players a mediated space to process precarious employment, intimate frustration, and gendered anxiety.
• The author's central concept, the "promise of love," describes how the game eases a sense of vulnerable masculinity shaped by competitive achievement culture and post-feminist social conditions, since players can readily win affection within its fantasy structure.