To Heart is a Japanese romance eroge visual novel developed by Leaf and released on May 23, 1997, for Windows. It was later ported to the PlayStation and given voice acting. A second PC version, titled To Heart PSE was released containing the PlayStation version as well as bonus games. To Heart PSE and the PlayStation version had the more intimate scenes removed. To Heart is Leaf's fifth game, and the third title in the Leaf Visual Novel Series, following Shizuku and Kizuato and preceding Routes. The gameplay in To Heart follows a plot line which offers predetermined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the eight female main characters. A sequel of To Heart, To Heart 2, was released on December 28, 2004, for the PlayStation 2. A special bundle of To Heart 2 and a PS2 version of To Heart was released on the same day. The original PC release of the visual novel was titled To Heart, but the anime and the PSE versions later changed to ToHeart without any space between the words. The English release of the anime uses the former format. A remake, also titled ToHeart, was released on June 25, 2025, for Windows and the Nintendo Switch.
To Heart was adapted into a thirteen-episode anime television series by Oriental Light and Magic aired between April and July 1999, and a second anime, To Heart: Remember My Memories, aired between October and December 2004. The first anime was licensed by Right Stuf International for distribution in North America; the first DVD was released in March 2007. Two manga series were produced, both illustrated by Ukyō Takao and serialized in MediaWorks manga magazine Dengeki Daioh. The first manga, which ran between October 1997 and December 1999, was based on the original visual novel, and the second manga, which ran between November 2004 and July 2005, was based on the anime To Heart: Remember My Memories. A drama CD entitled Piece of Heart was released in October 1999.
Premise Set at a high school in the near future, the main character, Hiroyuki Fujita, is a student. He encounters ten pretty girls, including his childhood friend Akari and a maid robot Multi HMX-12, and must make the right decisions so as to win their hearts. In the anime adaptation, the story focuses on the relationship between Hiroyuki and Akari.
Hiroyuki is the main male character and has a dry attitude. He is surprisingly empathetic though, but usually shows it through his actions rather than what he says or how he acts towards people. Hiroyuki is also a childhood friend of Akari, and gradually throughout the storyline falls in love with her. He is sometimes dense when it comes to romance.
Akari is Hiroyuki's childhood friend. She will almost always go to wake Hiroyuki up in the morning to go to school. She is especially fond of teddy bears, with special emphasis on the one that Hiroyuki gave her during their childhood. Both Akari and Hiroyuki have known each other since kindergarten and they are extremely close. She is very much in love with Hiroyuki and spends a lot of time around him. Akari likes to call Hiroyuki "Hiroyuki-chan" even though he hates being called that. Akari is very adept at cooking and is a member of the school's cooking club. In the game, she is just one of several female characters, but in the anime she adopts a central role, acting as narrator, with her romantic aspirations forming the main recurring theme of the series. In one episode (#7) she actually supplants Hiroyuki as the main character when she befriends the psychic girl Kotone: in all other episodes it is Hiroyuki who befriends the "guest" character of the episode. In the manga Akari has a less pivotal role (though still a major one), and it is Hiroyuki who befriends Kotone. In To Heart: Remember My Memories, her normally optimistic and somewhat naive personality takes on a more depressed and emotional tone when Hiroyuki begins to pay less attention to her and more to the android Multi, and her relationship with Hiroyuki nearly fell apart.
Shiho first met Akari, Hiroyuki and Masashi during the first year of junior-high school. She is more of a tomboy than Akari, and often finds herself at odds with Hiroyuki, but towards the end of the 1st Anime series she starts to develop feelings for Hiroyuki, but later decides her friendship with Akari is more important. She is feisty and aggressive, yet close to Akari. She is a real gossip fanatic, often coming up with random ideas that she titles "Shiho's News Flash" or "Shiho's Advice". Most of what goes on in school and the students do not pass by her unnoticed, but according to Hiroyuki, "90% of what she says isn't true". Though this is a bit of a hyperbole, Shiho does sometimes get her facts wrong.
An experimental humanoid maid robot from the HM (Human Maiden) series robots made by Kurusugawa Electronics, she was sent to Fujita's school to learn how to behave like a human. Multi is a cheerful girl who loves to clean, but she isn't very good at it nor household chores, which contradicts her purpose. In the anime, Hiroyuki and Akari help Multi to improve her skills. In order to charge her batteries, she needs to be connected to a laptop with a cable stored in her hand. She becomes a central character in To Heart: Remember My Memories when she appears to have had her memories erased (particularly those of her times spent with Hiroyuki), resulting in a dilemma for Hiroyuki and inadvertently causing grief for Akari.
Tomoko is a native of Kobe and speaks the Kansai dialect. She has a serious, responsible nature, and serves as the class president. Her seriousness is conveyed by her tightly bound hair and coke-bottle glasses, though she is quite pretty when she removes these features (in fact, the change is so drastic that in To Heart: Remember My Memories Hiroyuki and company don't recognize her at all when they encounter her in Kobe, until she puts on her glasses and holds her hair in a ponytail). It is hinted that she might have liked Hiroyuki in To Heart: Remember My Memories as she said he was slow when he asked her why she told him about her family's past. She moved from Kobe as a result of problems between her parents. Her quiet and concentrated nature is one of her ways of hiding her problems and she will often keep to herself.
Serika is a member of the Kurusugawa family, which is extremely wealthy and operates a conglomerate of companies in their name, including the labs which produced Multi and Serio. She speaks quietly and it is difficult to hear what she says unless standing right beside her - as a result, Hiroyuki repeats what she just said. She is addressed as "ojō-sama" (a respectful title) by the family servants and is picked up by a limousine everyday. Serika is also much into the occult and is the sole member of the school's Occult Research Club. She is also often protected by her butler, Sebastian. In To Heart: Remember My Memories, she demonstrates the level of authority she has over the Kurusugawa group by overruling the security of a Kurusugawa-owned Amusement Park when Hiroyuki and company try to break into it at night.
Ayaka is Serika's younger sister. Despite looking similar, they have totally different character personalities. Ayaka is outgoing and confident, and enjoys martial arts. They get along very well, but go to different schools and have different paths in life.
Lemmy is half American, half Japanese - her full name is Lemmy Christopher Helen Miyauchi. She speaks Japanese with a stereotypical American accent, and often makes mistakes with the meanings of Japanese sayings. She also has a tendency to slip in English words during conversations when she has the chance. She also ends a lot of her sentences with "-ne" and overuses the word "fantastic". Near the end of To Heart: Remember My Memories she admits to Hiroyuki that she has always loved him and wants him to return to America with her so he can go to a good school with robotic engineering. She is exceptionally tall and is the only major character who is taller than Hiroyuki. Her height, bust, blue eyes, blonde hair, and unusual personality is how her foreign blood is represented which is typical of many Japanese series that contain foreigners. Lemmy is also a member of the kyūdō club (Japanese archery).
She is a practitioner of a particular style of martial arts known as "Extreme Rules" (i.e., mixed martial arts), but because she doesn't adhere to the more traditional martial arts such as Karate, she is spurned by the mainstream martial artists. She is still a very determined girl. She idolizes Ayaka Kurusugawa since the latter also happens to practice the same "Extreme Rules" form of martial arts. She possibly likes Hiroyuki as shown during her conversation with Yoshikata, as the latter described Kotone as "Aoi's rival for that guy", which she replies "I guess you could say it that way".
A girl with psychic powers, but is unable to fully control them. When she was introduced, it is revealed that she does not have control over her psychic powers, but instead bottling them up until she can no longer restrain them anymore, causing devastation. She likes udon. Her psychic power is psychokinesis in the game, and prediction in the anime series. This has changed back into psychokinesis in To Heart: Remember My Memories. She had a crush on Masashi in the first season, though in Remember My Memories, she admits to being in love with Hiroyuki, and her relationship with Masashi not mentioned.
She can be unlocked after completing Akari's scenario. She spends time on getting part-time jobs, and is a fan of romance manga and anime. She is very self-sufficient, and has several part-time jobs including selling cakes at Christmas and delivering the paper. She has feelings for Hiroyuki. She has the feature of "hair antennae" (a pair of long hairs that stick straight up), which is rampant in some anime but unique in this one.
Gameplay
To Heart is a romance visual novel. Its gameplay requires little player interaction as much of the game's duration is spent on reading the text that appears on the screen, which represents the story's narrative and dialogue. The text is accompanied by character sprites, which represent who Hiroyuki is talking to, over background art. Throughout the game, the player encounters CG artwork at certain points in the story, which take the place of the background art and character sprites. A gallery of the viewed CGs and played background music is available on the game's title screen. To Heart follows a branching plotline with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction.
The game divides each school day of the storyline into four segments. These segments illustrate the events that occur during Hiroyuki's commute to school, during school, after school, and after he returns home at the end of each day. Depending on the time of the day and the player's actions, they may be presented one of four types of events: dated events, which occur automatically during certain points in the game's plotline; affection events, which occur during certain periods of time only if specific conditions pertaining to a character's affection towards Hiroyuki are met; frequency events, which occur after meeting a character a predetermined number of times; and VS events, which occurs if two characters' affection towards Hiroyuki conflict with one another.