Hump Day Husbandos: Allan Melville (Cupid Parasite)

Even with both our review and walkthrough for Cupid Parasite done and dusted, I am still not over the experience. Cupid Parasite may very well be my favourite Switch exclusive otome at this point, and will easily be making my personal top games of this year.

So, since I will not be going quiet anytime soon about the title, today I will be honouring a major part of why I enjoyed it as much as I did — simply because my patience for holding back on exploring all the spoileriffic details of his route has reached breaking point.

It’s time to talk about Cupid Parasite’s best boy, Allan Melville.

Spoilers are prewarned in bold text.

Who is Allan Melville?

Allan is the Thieving Parasite of the Parasite 5. He’s a flirtatious luxury pillow seller found on 9th Avenue in the designer store, Pillow Luxuria. His intentions in joining Cupid Corporation seem immediately suspicious, since his lack of interest in marriage is made painfully obvious from his first appearance in the common route.

Allan would, it seems, rather be on his mobile securing nightly hook-ups, even as Lynette does her best to support him with her exceptional customer service and admirable patience. But Allan appears unable to break his bad bedding habits.

As an ongoing theme of Cupid Parasite, players should have learned by this point that looks are deceiving, even if his pillow talk and mate-poaching ways might make you think otherwise. There have been mentions around otome fan hotspots online of Allan being Japan’s favourite love interest of Cupid Parasite, and it’s no surprise, really; I suspect as the western audience gets to know the game, he will be met with a similarly warm reception.

So let’s finally talk about him in more depth and explore the reasons we’re all losing sleep because of him.

Why we love Allan Melville

Signalling the start of spoilers here! Skip to the next section for a vague, spoiler-free take and conclusion.

So, you’ve played his route already and want to rejoice in his character with me, or you may very well be too intrigued about his hidden depths before actually getting to the game yourself.

And while I wholeheartedly advise against spoiling yourself if you’re here for the latter purpose, I cannot blame you — since his route should absolutely be saved for last, despite how hard it is to keep him at bay with that lush voice and irresistibly charming character design of his.

Luckily, his troublesome trait of stealing females away from their partners could not be any less appealing, so it’s a good means of putting you off him — at least initially. His route does quick work to not only explain just why he does this, but how absolutely necessary it is for him to be so scandalously unacceptable; such behaviour, of course, conceals his actual, highly emotional and angsty secret that is revealed later within his route. The wait and turnaround is worthwhile with this one, I promise you that!

The surprisingly loud and brash announcement of Allan being the only non-human of the love interests in the common route is an unusual move in itself if you did not suspect some other revelation underneath it to be unmasked, but the clear status of him as an incubus presents the very first intoxicating trope of his route: his romantic relationship with Lynette/Cupid is taboo.

As an incubus, Allan is only able to eat dreams. He eats nothing else on Earth other than partaking in some bubble tea here and there (I mean, bubble tea is great – Ed.), but to fully satisfy his belly, “taken” women make for the most delicious meals due to how they have a heightened craving for intimacy — resulting in much more stimulating dreams.

Is that a sentence I thought I would ever write? No. Does it make it acceptable for a character to act like this? Of course it doesn’t, but the game achieves the unexpected and impressive feat of making you forget about that character fault of his within a few more sentences. This is because Allan hides a completely different side to him – his true self, never seen anywhere other than in his own route.

By the time you get to Allan’s route, you should be expecting Cupid Parasite to flip its love interests’ archetypes on their heads to present more complex and fleshed out individuals, but the surprise factor of Allan’s true colours make his route a real stand-out within the genre. It’s at complete odds with the confident and charismatic man we’ve seen up until this point — and the reason he puts on such a front ends up being extremely sympathetic and understandable. This, in turn, effortlessly reveals his insecurities and vulnerabilities quite unlike any other love interest in the game.

Allan is actually be overtly loyal and considerate when it comes to Lynette, as hinted at by his own love type being “Mania”. This is one of many instances of the game subtly suggesting the many twists it takes in its routes, but it’s especially well-paced and effectively presented in Allan’s case.

Allan purposely pushes Lynette away, encouraging her to instead connect with the other Parasites over him at every given opportunity. This is because he has a particular goal in mind across all the routes: getting Lynette to fall in love with a human.

Obviously, this plan is thrown out the window as the pair spend more time together — particularly as Lynette offers to allow him to feed off her dreams. As a scrumptious Goddess, he has, of course, never tasted a dream as delicious as hers before. He, however, denies such temptation by bedding and feeding off even more members of the Cupid Corporation. Knowing this, Lynette gets increasingly impatient with Allan’s misdeeds, and aims her Cupid’s bow at him — only to force herself to block it as he panics and informs her that it can cause harm to him.

As a result of this, Lynette ends up completely infatuated with Allan for 30 days — and this setup makes Allan’s route stand out from among all the others. Even the secret route, which might initially appear to start in a similar fashion, deviates from the way Allan’s route kicks off. Cupid Parasite keeps the surprises coming!

Lynette and Allan’s unusual dynamic makes this pairing all the more refreshing for the game and genre, as we see the development of romance blossoming through the lens of the pair already being “in love” as early as here — and through the use of Cupid’s bow to kickstart the route with.

Through the humorous consequences of Lynette’s emotional actions, the two agree that Allan should only feed off Lynette’s dreams while she is in this lovestruck state — for the sake of her company’s reputation. Over the course of this period, we see the two bond by creating complementary bracelets for one another, going out on a date and shopping — and we even witness a cliché kiss in the rain that seals the deal of their confirmed feelings for one another.

Every single scene depicted during this critical time of the pair living together is of great significance to their relationship and an overall sense of narrative foreshadowing. The bracelet Allan gifts Lynette, for example, is infused with demonic magic to keep her safe from other demons, which becomes relevant later on. Allan’s uncertainty about bedding Lynette after their kiss reinforces their incompatibility as demon and goddess. And the household gift they buy that Lynette is inexplicitly drawn to represents their hidden connection with one — which the viewer may not think too much about at this point in the story.

But prior to this, Cupid Parasite drops plenty of hints that the pair have met before, such as Allan expressing suspicions about this during the common route, and Lynette questioning why he seems so familiar at the start of his route. Such early signs do not prepare the player for the truth, though — and we are also met with the first real dose of angst in this route, as most of us will have come to suspect from Allan’s fear of becoming physically intimate with Lynette.

Their joy together is cut short by the fact that Lynette is losing her godly powers as a result of sleeping with an incubus. This speeds up the process of a lower God’s expiry date — more on that shortly — so to prevent her early demise, Allan kills Lynette with a demonic dagger to retain her soul and plant her into another vessel to be reborn, kickstarting the true beauty of the route with some good old time-jumping and guardian angel (or demon, in this case) tropes taking centre stage.

Allan watches over her for 19 human years as she grows up and attends college, her memories of being Cupid completely wiped. He watches her to prevent hungry demons killing her for the remnants of that delicious Cupid soul — and the bracelet he made her continues to protect her right up until it breaks during a college trip. Allan barely makes it in time to save her from being devoured by demons.

Their emotional reunion — where Allan fails miserably at masking his true feelings and adoration — brings back Lynette’s memories of being Cupid. At the same time, she is whisked back up to Celestia by Jupiter, where their true history is finally revealed.

After the tragedy of Allan having to kill Lynette with his own hands in order to bring her back to life as a stable human and keep watch over her for years, all for the sake of her own wellbeing, we learn that their love story that already spans a lifetime in two separate timelines is even longer than we had first assumed – over 500 years, in fact!

The truth of the God system is established here, with Lynette’s origins being revealed as having been a paired angel with Allan in Heaven. As joint angels, they were unable to speak to one another, but they could share their feelings and thoughts with one another. The pair were split by Mercury’s orders, and Lynette was made into the new Cupid, a role which is replaced every few years. Meanwhile, Allan, who refused to let go of Lynette’s hand, is punished by having one of his wings severed, and he is banished to the Underworld.

The fated lovers attempt to find one another once again after their separation — and they are reunited in a touching, gender-subverted rescue scene that shows Lynette saving Allan with a kiss that allows them both to be reborn, now that Lynette has taken on Juno’s powers.

Even after so many words — and all this barely covers the details of his route — it should be emphasised that you really need to play Allan’s route in order to truly appreciate everything it does right, and the expectations it subverts despite what initially appears to be the playing up of tropes and clichés.

Allan’s route is a romance story that spans the ages, with a pairing that is simply meant to be. Across all the routes, Allan is watching over Lynette, from the very beginning even before we take over the role as Cupid — and until the very end. He is quite literally Lynette’s other half, and everything he does is for Lynette.

End of spoilers because I’m going to start crying again.

Why you’ll love Allan Melville

Honestly, there is not much else I can mention here that would be acceptable to cover for non-spoiler purposes, other than reminding you once again to just play the game already!

Each love interest of Cupid Parasite has severe problems, and character-wise, Allan might seem the most abhorrent of all of them initially, with his seemingly uncaring perception of women being nothing more than hook-ups to him. But what the game excels at doing is turning these negative aspects into points of growth for the love interests — or, in Allan’s case, an impressive way to mask his inner depth you would never have seen coming otherwise!

Overall, Allan’s route somehow manages to encompass many typical tropes and clichés whilst delivering twist after twist in its narration and revelations. It ultimately delivers a highly emotional, original and unpredictable storyline that never runs out of steam and only ever gets more thrilling to witness unfold with each passing scene.

Considering the length of Cupid Parasite — each route takes up to 10 hours to complete in full — Allan’s route remains one of the only routes I cleared in one sitting in recent memory, and that should tell you plenty about its quality and distinctiveness.

My eyes were permanently stuck to the screen, and the onslaught of various emotions I felt was an astounding feat for a game marketing itself as a fantastical rom-com. His route is emotional, heartfelt, poignant, dramatic, and an absolute thrill ride that truly encapsulates the Hollywood movie vibe the game adopted for its image and inspiration. Every single narrative beat is glorious here, and it well and truly plays out like one of the most brilliant romance stories of our time.

Was this a good excuse to talk at length about Allan? Yes. Is this the end of me mentioning Cupid Parasite? Probably not.

Buy the game now for Nintendo Switch — I will not take no for an answer!

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