Coffee black. No sugar, no milk. Add a chocolate donut on the side. The bustling doors are always ringing their noise in the busy diner. It is lunchtime, and hungry patrons begin pouring in, hoping to get their usual meal and be out the door in a flash, returning to their busy jobs. Of course, there are always one or two customers staying to try and catch a glimpse of the cute part-time girl with her short skirt and genuine smile. Suddenly, she slips, and there’s a splatter. Cups and mugs fly everywhere. Luckily, her friends manage to catch everything in time before disaster strikes. She makes a smug smile with a wink to alleviate the situation.
The bubbling Hinomoto Aoi is a sweet gentle girl who loves nothing more than surprising her friends with gifts while having a special place in her heart for “onii-chan”. Working part time as a waitress, she loves her job even if she’s a bit of a klutz. Regardless of which, her newspaper club friends are always right behind her to support and keep her spirits up.
Aoi tries to stall out the game by tucking copies of her climax into the deck from waiting room when she swings with her combo. By sending a copy of her special gift back into the deck at the start of your climax phase with her combo, she hopes to increase chances of cancelling during your opponent’s turn. Furthermore, when she’s fronted, she allows you to surveil your deck to either leave the card on top or send it to waiting room.
As an added bonus, the Aoi cards above also combo with the same level three climax. The Aoi on the left is a Cigarettes combo that gains 1000 power for each of your backrow characters with either Newspaper (新聞) or Waitress (ウェイトレス) trait. The middle Aoi is a reverse combo that’s a Minami profile that also gives power cross turn.
As Aoi softly dreams of her future with our protagonist, she supports all our other characters as a backrow global assist. She is our other combo that works to heal ourselves in the midgame, letting us heal if we mill a climax with her combo ability.
Smiling Aoi here works very well with act abilities to grant herself power. She’s a pseudo combo that can pay life to draw advantage upon reversing her opponent, a potential secondary combo should we not be able to fetch either of our early combos.
Our backrow consists of the following two cards for the early game. The 1/0 Aoi gives hand encore to all characters in front. Her second ability is quite helpful being a hefty costed forced refresh, working very well with our multiple mill abilities. The Aoi on the right is our draw brainstorm that doubles as a married life for all Newspaper characters, which Aoi is conveniently carrying as a trait.
As for backups, the cheery Aoi on the left is a memory kick counter. The Aoi event on the right is an anti-damage counter, perfect for catching our opponents off-guard and offering even more protection in the late game for our life total.
Sparkling eyes Aoi hugging her onii-chan comes with an on-play scry. She has a demerit of sending a character from your waiting room to the bottom of your deck on attack; however, this can be used to your benefit to help fill your deck or to place a character in to use in conjunction with your drop search. 1/0 Aoi is a very nice card that has an on-play scry effect which helps greatly in trying to secure a brainstorm or to help with your 2/1 combo.
Clumsy maids are often paired with a charismatic personality that turns their messes into cute accidents (in anime). Use her bubbly attitude and genuine smile to win over your opponent!