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   Dev Boards Updates

   A group blog by Dev Boards Project Leaders

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   Recent Entries

   • Detroit.exe: Chapter 1
   • The Last Birdling: Soundtrack process and preview
   • The Last Birdling: Wallpapers and avatars
   • The Last Birdling - Artbook preview
   • The Last Birdling: Release date

   

   Latest Entry
   

   Detroit.exe: Chapter 1

   By Happiness+, January 21

   

   Enter a world without Christ, a postreligous society

   Enter a dream, that you are fully aware of dreaming

   Enter the birth of 2 new species "Reploids” and "Hybrids"

   Enter Zion, the last Christian missionary on Earth with amnesia

   Enter the mystery of seven extraordinary children and their journey to unlock the past

   Enter The astrofront, Earth's artificial orbital ring.

   Enter Parapsychology

   Enter Transhumanism

   Enter C:\ _Detroit.exe

    

   

   

   

    

   This is the first short kinetic novel of a shared visual novel universe. Think of it as a prologue. This visual novel will be on PC, Android, and iOS.

   
   Right now, this visual novel is 90% complete:
   The story, programming, sound effects, and music are complete!

   I just need three people to help me out.

   I need a background artist to help me out with some additional assets.

   ( You can use whatever art style you like. I am just looking for an aesthetic that resembles their real-life personalities. I will provide you references to help you design them. All of the characters are of high school age. They are all African American and Asian respectively.)

   I need voice actor to voice Elder Zion.

   (For this Zion's, you need to be able to sing.)

   I need a voice actress to voice Alexis Jackson.

    

   For more casting information: https://www.castingcall.club/projects/detroit-exe-chapter-1

    

   Detroit.exe: Chapter 1 will be available on PC, Android, and iOS.

   Summer 2019

   
   This first chapter is freeware, an unpaid project that will be free for everyone forever. The sequel will be a commercial project. This is just to get people into the series, and if it goes well with our niche market. I guarantee you that you will be compensated awesomely. I am a visual novelist of my word.

   As for me, you can call me Happiness+ I'm an EVN developer that has skills in poetry, prose writing, python programming, and voice direction. Making visual novels is literally my dream and I love doing it. The reason why I love doing it is because visual novels are art. We as EVN developers are on the cusp of a revolution. The revolution being a new renaissance of western visual novels and I want my stories to be the spark that sets the flame ablaze.

   
   I invite you to join me in the revolution!

    https://twitter.com/happine27386045

    

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2. 

   FuwaReviews Team

   A blog by FuwaReviews Bot-Chan

   • 82
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   Recent Entries

   • VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
   • Higurashi When They Cry – Ch. 1 Onikakushi
   • The House in Fata Morgana
   • Rose Guns Days
   • The Men of Yoshiwara: Ohgiya

   

   Latest Entry
   

   VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action

     Whenever we think of dystopias, we picture gloomy locales, stages for failed systems in..

   
   

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3. 

   VNDBReview

   A blog by kivandopulus

   • 249
     entries
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   Recent Entries

   • VN of the Month July 2002 - Viper-RSR
   • Asa no Konai Yoru ni Dakarete 朝の来ない夜に抱かれて -ETERNAL…
   • VN of the Month June 2002 - Kanade
   • Fearless] [Active]
   • VN of the Month May 2002 - Akane Maniax

   

   Latest Entry
   

   VN of the Month July 2002 - Viper-RSR

   Viper-RSR is the only masterpiece of the month

   1. Psychicer Mimi サイキッカー美々 [020705] Soubi Kenkyuujo Main character is a genius young man. One day he has his psychic powers awoken in front of a female classmate. She agrees to help him train these powers with a series of exercises, but others think of them as usual lovers. Strange incidents start to happen at school - is it possible to investigate them with newly acquired powers? Training is a form of H. There are three fields of supernatural studies, and investigation of the incidents depends on what power is mastered. Borderline half-baked game.

    

   2. Shiroi Kiseki ~White Spur~ 白い軌跡 ～White Spur ～ [020705] Modern Times Main character starts to live alone to attend a university in Tokyo. However, his mother asks his childhood friend who came to Tokyo one year earlier to take care of protagonist. When protagonist sets to go to a snowboard training camp, his childhood friend volunteers to accompany him. It's a game with "Beginner", "Intermediate" and "Advanced" ski courses, so players are supposed to start over and over. But - luckily - they can't because of a critical bug that prevents reaching ending. Cool times.

    

   3. Shirotsume Souwa -Episode of the Clovers- 白詰草話 -EPISODE OF THE CLOVERS- [020705] Littlewitch 1 Tokyo, year 2008.  There is a mysterious group that experts from various fields gather. And Souji is the most outstanding researcher in the group, who researches about combat androids. He has produced three androids, Ema, Sayu and Toka. They adore Souji, and live a peaceful life. But one day, combat robots invade into his laboratory, and the battle to the end starts.... There is an English review.

    

   4. Soukoku no Tsuki ~Aoku Kagayaku Tsuki no Yoru ni...~ 蒼刻の月～蒼ク輝ク月ノ夜ニ・・・～ [020705] Sight Main character's parents die in a traffic accident, and he is invited to stay at his grandfather's place. One day girls arrive to live in the same mansion. Girls have the same circumstances as protagonist and, according to grandfather, are invited to live as protagonist's wife candidates. This supposedly nice game has zero Japanese impressions, because zero originality moege from an unknown company can not be a nice game.

    

   5. Alfred Gakuen Mamono Daitai アルフレッド学園魔物大隊 [020712] SofthouseChara The protagonist is a resident of devil's world and wanted to became a teacher. He finally managed to became a teacher and started teaching at Alfred Academy while living inside its night duty room. However, various mysterious cases started appearing one-by-one inside the academy, and he couldn't get a peaceful sleep. The source of this is that the academy is unnaturally overflowing with magic power. He called his subordinates from the devil's world and ordered them to recover the overflowing magic power. He feels the need to defend his position as a teacher. Will he be able to resolve the mysterious cases while still remaining as a teacher? Simulation game from Softhouse Chara. Defend the academy at night, scare and exorcise the evil spirits that's possessing your students. SofthouseChara keeps making weird mix of genre games. I need at least a normal RPG or tactical strategy to look into it.

    

   6. Silvern ~Gin no Tsuki, Mayoi no Mori~ Silvern ～銀の月、迷いの森～ [020712] G-clef Main character admires manly men, because he is often take for a slender a cute girl. He gets a job of female dormitory caretaker for a week by mistake. How will this week go? New scenarios show up after each clear. First part is comical, second - serious. Scenario is inconsistent. Did you expect of trap moege something better?

    

   7. Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 ~Kangokujima no Warabe Uta~ かまいたちの夜2 ～監獄島のわらべ唄～ [020718] Chunsoft 1 2 Abiko Takemaru, the creator of "Kamaitachi no Yoru" decides to invite all of the people he has based his characters on to his mansion on the otherwise deserted island of Mikadzuki. When they arrive they find themselves stuck on the island with their host inexplicably missing and an unknown culprit hunting down people according to an old song. There is an English review.

    

   8. Guren Tenshou -Shura- 紅蓮天衝―修羅― [020719] Zone 1 Guren Tenshou: Shura continues directly from where the original Guren ended. After the fateful battle with Yasha, a new threat appears: a blond young man who has apparently come from another time. Lee Rekka and his girl-only Guren brigade (now fully assembled) have to figure out why and how such a man ended up in medieval Japan, defeating more demons on the way. Despite being a direct sequel story-wise, the gameplay in Shura has been greatly simplified, to the extent of not being a RPG any more. There are still turn-based battles, but they occur only against "boss" enemies, when the story dictates it, and involve little strategy but choosing the strongest attacks for all the characters. There are no experience points, no equipment, no items, and even no movement of any kind in the game - it just takes the player from place to place, allowing him only to click on the only available location on the map and occasionally slightly branch the story by making a decision. Scenario was not a strong point of Guren, and now it's even more obvious when RPG part is excluded. Noone took responsibility for the scenario, because it's just a scam - full of inconsistencies and bad moves. It's also surprising that only 3 out of 5 heroines have H events. Game is sometimes called the main kusoge of 2002.

    

   9. Kikou Juu Yuushi Sakigake 機甲銃勇士サキガケ [020719] Digital Monkey 22nd century. Global self-defense organization "the Outer Space Defense Force" is launched.  Main character is its officer. He leads a happy yet slightly boring everyday life, but everything changes with the assault of unidentified "Seeker". By chance he takes command over battleship and starts his crusade. There's strategy part and tactical land battles. Difficulty is moderate and can be lowered. Scenario is usual anime stuff. Some heroines can't be captured without latest patch.

    

   10. Tantei Shounen A 探偵少年A [020719]  Foster 1 Many people are in trouble in the big city. "Shirokuma Investigations" set up office here years ago, and it has helped numerous people with their problems. Akira is a student. He admires his energetic aunt, who runs "Shirokuma Investigations," and he's learned a lot from her. One day, his aunt suddenly disappears, leaving behind a note, "I'm going on a trip. Akira, please take care of my business." Suddenly, he's become the head manager in the investigation office! With the assistance of two cute girls, Akira manages to solve cases. Will he be able to become a full-fledged investigator, in whom his aunt would be proud of? What kind of cases will he and his assistants encounter? Game only takes 10 days, and there's small volume. The number of H events is high as usual, some 20 while the overall number of CG is just 65.

    

   11. Aoi Umi no Tristia 蒼い海のトリスティア [020720] Kogado Studio 1 Tristia was a beautiful seaside town which slowly fell to ruin and dilapidation, following the invasion of the dragon ten years ago. The people of the town tried rebuilding the city in the hopes of attaining its former glory, but they failed. Hopeless, the people decided to send for Prospero Flanca, a legendary inventor who was well-known for revivifying many cities that were dying out. They received an answer from Prospero, but to their confusion, it was a girl who arrived to the port of the town. That girl was Nanoca, Prospero's granddaugther, and she is the one who was assigned to do the renovation project. There is an English review

    

   12. Rhythmic Rev リズミック・レヴ [020725] Extreme 1 The hero of this story was a former champion of the RRGP125cc class. He moved onto the 500cc, but suffered a serious accident that took him out of racing. Still having a passion for the sport, he now happily works as a motor sports journalist. RRGP stands for “Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix”…Yeah there are a few letters missing in that anagram. In any case, it’s a motorcycle race, and he’s been covering/supervising an all-girl race team on their way to the final race. They are actually a sub-division of his old race team that helped him win his races before the accident. They go by the name of “Brain Palette Junior Team” (don’t ask me where “brain palette” came from *shrugs*), and they’re staffed by many a hottie. Will these ladies be able to achieve what he could not? AVG with three branches, each for two heroines. Six heroines overall. Polygons used to show race in order not to feel bored. Heroines lack personality.

    

   13. Blue [020726] Caramel Box The protagonist was a star basketball player, looking forward to a bright future as a sportsman. But then he injures his right knee and the doctor's diagnosis turns out to be for him to refrain from hard exercise. Two years later he has overcome the odds and partially recovered, once again being able to play basketball. Even so, because of his measly height he isn't able to pursue a career in the sport he loves. He regrets nothing and continues to attend school, hanging out with his friends. What will happen the first summer he spends since quitting basketball...? Six heroines with most being weak. Atmosphere is relaxed and overall pleasant. Quitting basketball depiction takes a lot of game time, but it's hardly relevant at all for the course of the game. Love comes suddenly, same as drama.

    

   14. Court no Naka no Tenshi-tachi 2 ~Softball Hen~ コートの中の天使達2～ソフトボール編～ [020726] Pinpai Main character is a gentle-minded lecturer who is ordered to supervise "Woman Softball Club" immediately after his arrival. He has to deal with withdrawal of almost all members after last coach spring training camp incident. Is restoring such club even possible? AVG + raising SIM. Special training and games increase the bond. It's time to let franchise rest in peace already.

    

   15. Ebenbourg no Kaze エーベンブルグの風 [020726] Studio e.go! 1 Claude was a poor scholar living in England, but is called back to become the Lord of Ronsard by a counselor known as Sophie. Claude's life begins anew with the fate of the city in his hands. But the exiled former lord Eric wants his power back and plans to assassinate Claude. At his new home, Claude meets the lovely maid of the mansion, Mylene. There is an English review.

    

   16. Knot ~Kizuna no Mahou~ knot～絆の魔法～ [020726] feng Main character became director of "The Study Group on Magic" school club. He needs to figure out why "magic" begins to intervene in this world. It's a normal charage with the exception of mechanism of paranormal activity used in the later part of each route. When heroine is chosen, it goes down the single road. Climax comes too suddenly after series of everyday life scenes. So it's a moege without a normal story.

    

   17. Mist -Second Edition- MiST-second edition- [020726] Regrips Main character goes out on a trip with his five friends during summer vacations. In this picturesque mountain landscape he gets to know many secrets about his friends. System is poor. There are three heroines with individual routes, but only main heroine route is somewhat impressive.

    

   18. Musume Sanjou!! Doubutsuen. 娘³動物園～むすめさんじょう！！どうぶつえん。～ [020726] Panda House Main character loses parents, but inherits a zoo after them. Soon he finds three cradles with girls on his doorstep. Girls grow up and help around the zoo even under constant danger of its closure. Mostly a comedy with some incest vibe ("father" in H events).

    

   19. PRIMO ~Amore e l'ordine di arrivo?~ PRIMO ~Amore e l'ordine di arrivo?~ [020726] Active 1 Takuma Hasebe is really unlucky! He loses his parents in an accident and his grandparents end up taking care of him. This might be a common tragic story, but it's not over yet! Even worse, his grandparents pass away!  Fortunately, his lawyer informs him that a really nice person wants to adopt him. Of course, he takes up the offer. His new guardian is Grandma Machiyo. He enters Kuregashi School and finds out that Grandma Machiyo is a director at the school!  One day, he asks her, "Why did you adopt me?" but she just says, "Don't worry." Full of anxiety, he ends up being the manager of the school. The job sucks; he's just a janitor!  His busy schedule of school life and managing the school begins...  There are three months to trigger all kinds of events as a classmate and as a janitor. Game's very short. There are large chunks of text common for multiple heroines. Only couple heartwarming heroines save the game to some extent.

    

   20. Senkou Yuugeki Oukatai Yuri ~Denshi no Seirei-tachi~ 先攻遊撃桜花隊・YURI～電子の聖霊たち～ [020726] Ape & Frog Continent is a battlefield between states.  Alliance Forces defeat Imperial forces in decisive battle. Imperial army girl trained in secret arts becomes the last trump card for disjointed forces. Training SIM, strategy, rpg-like growth and probably more. Story is attractive to some extent, but still weak. Rough system and bugs deteriorate the impression.

    

   21. Sultan ~The Lovesong is Forever~ [020726] light 1 In a semi-fantasy world set in a sort of medieval time; our protagonist grew with his siblings and friends after their parents died. After many years surviving on the streets, they are met by a couple of people of soldiers who take them straight to the king. The king, upon reviewing them, tells our hero that he’ll be next in line to succeed the throne! It turns out the hero is the old man’s lost grandchild. Now the royal court is either up in arms about the new prince or frantically trying to find him a suitable candidate to be the future princess. Who of the lovely ladies will be chosen by you--or will you pick his childhood friend? Good dialogues, but scenario is just ordinary court romance without originality. Since it's a charage, some girls are just better than the others.

    

   22. Sumeragi no Miko-tachi すめらぎの巫女たち [020726] D.O. 1 Tokyo, year 35 Taisho era.  The organisation "Fuuma", established to maintain peace in the mortal realm, becomes aware of an aberration borne into the world. The evil god who once led a great army into battle with the holy gods but was thought to be defeated has revived once again. The identity of the reincarnated evil god's vessel is... The protagonist Kitagawa Daisuke, an otherwise ordinary young man is abducted by a beautiful girl Kuroba Saya who then has sexual intercourse with him, which awakens Daisuke regarding his status as the evil god's incarnation as well as his abilities. Saya pleads with the awakened Daisuke to join her in crushing Fuuma, the holy god's shock troops. Now the millennia-old battle between light and darkness is about to reach a decisive conclusion 7 episodes with 5 being common route and the rest branching off to "god", "human" and "truth" routes. RPG part is unbalanced. Sumeragi looks up to Sakura Wars, but manages to create a thrilling story that's highly recommended for RPG enthusiasts.

    

   23. Unicchi! ~Weenie Witches~ うにっち！ ～Weenie Witches～ [020726] Tactics Fokrim Magic Academy studies magic for over 100 years. One spring day President Rivade-Fokrim dies, and lots of teachers and students leave academy afterwards. Only director's widow and three poor female students stay. Protagonist becomes teacher for these girls. Raising SIM with the period of one year. How come this genre is not dead yet...

    

   24. Viper-RSR Viper-RSR [020731] Sogna A game that blends old school dungeon crawling along with animated cutscenes. It is a dark age in the kingdom of Alitalia. Monsters ransack cities, slaughtering the men and taking the women as their slaves. Four adventurers set out to end the rampages... For me and many others this game is the last farewell of the ancient era of visual novels. The highest Sogna masterpiece still makes breath stop in awe. I can't miss such opportunity to say farewell to the legend with a gratitude review.

    

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   1. Natsu no Hi no Resonance 夏の日のレザナンス [020701] Kagura Saitoh 1 A delicate tale of coming-of-age, with cell phones, and friends in far-off places, and the first blush of unrequited love ... Doujin

    

   2. Ikihaji@ -Haha Ane Imouto no M Lesson- 生恥＠－母・姉・妹のMレッスン－ [020705] BOM Main character notices that his family is addicted to dating sites. So he joins such site in order to drown them into the world of lewdness. Nukige

    

   3. Onna Kyoushi -Nikutai Jugyou- 女教師 -肉体授業- [020705] Guilty 1 Misaki Nagasawa is assigned as a new teacher for the new school term. She witnesses one of her colleagues being raped by one of the schoolboys. Misaki is also nearly raped; Yukie the school nurse saves her. An honor student named KIYA, protects her from perverts on the train. Both KIYA and Yukie provide her with moral support. One day, Misaki finds TAKAYA calling her name out while masturbating. KIYA ends up confessing his true feelings for her. Will his love for her mature into anything? What will become of Misaki's future as a teacher? In sensual novel circles, this female teacher game is really becoming popular. During the course of the semester, this new teacher is molested in every way possible. The story depicts how this young woman grows through her tribulations. The game is set up with Misaki as the heroine. Through a third person narration, this story develops into a truly sensual novel.  Nukige

    

   4. Shura no Fude ~Kyouki ga Ai ni Kawaru Toki~ 修羅の筆 ～狂気が愛に変わるとき～ [020705] Marine Heart A popular novelist discovers he can cure his writer's block by unleashing his sadistic side. Boys Love

    

   5. Gakeppuchi Kakeibo 崖っプチ家計簿 [020712] Waffle Main character works at a company that goes bankrupt. In order to provide for his three cousins and sisters he needs a quick solution - he decides to win a mahjong tournament.  Card game

    

   6. Nakanai Tsuki 泣カナイ月 [020712] Vega With mother remarriage, main heroine starts to feel more and more lonely. She runs from the house to his new brother-in-law apartment. Soon they become lovers. But happy days do not last forever. Human desires break the peaceful life. Can heroine be happy? Nukige

    

   7. Shimai Soukan ~Kindan no Kakeizu~ 姉妹相姦～禁断の家計図～ [020712] Analog Factory Shunsuke Kobayashi live with his imouto Mayu at their parents home, while his elder sister Natsumi live with his husband, the rich heir Kimishima Yohey and Yohey younger sister Yoko. Indebted after the death of both parents in an accident, Shunsuke and Mayu where asked to move to Yohei mansion, Natsumi seem to be worried for that but Shunsuke accept and move in with the help of his girlfriend and classmate, the fatherless Yuki Kawai; at the dinner Yohei tell everyone "Never enter to the room at the ground", but it's clearly a invite to enter. And in the evening Shunsuke hear moaning from that room; "That's normal because Yohei and Natsume are married" but he can't restrain to peek and see Yohei having sex with his own sister Yoko. In that moment Natsume came from the back and introduce Shunsuke to the room and undress; but Yohei treat Natsume like a toy, having her masturbate, drink his pee and give a blowjob to the terrified Shunsuke. It seem that Natsume in past gave sex services in a soapland to pay same debt, and there killed a man that was threatening her, Yohei blackmailed and married her, and turned her in to a masochist, also that man she killed was.... Now Yohei want to involve Shunsuke as his companion in this crazy sex life. Nukige

    

   8. Pokopoko Imouto 2 ぽこぽこ妹２ [020713] Soft Circle Courreges Play sensual game with sister and enjoy various situations in school and at home. Nukige

    

   9. Boku no Atarashii Sensei 僕のあたらしい先生 [020719] Guilty 1 Takao Nanase is a senior at a well-known high school. It's Friday, and he has his eyes on the new English teacher, Michiko Utsumi. Takao gets his friend Tsuyoshi Mishima to take pictures of her in leotards. Takao is obsessed with her looks. He returns home, where his cousin Miho greets him. She tries to seduce him, but with Michiko on his mind he ignores her. Tsuyoshi is secretly in love with Sana Dojima. A few days later, he follows her and learns an amazing secret! He discovers that Sana and Michiko are lesbians and are really hot on each other. Michiko also has her eyes on Takao as a new pet. One day, while Michiko and Takao are alone together after school, she seduces him. Later, Miho calls and asks him to come home. As he enters the house, Miho confesses her infatuation towards him. His stalwart reasoning begins to crumble. Tsuyoshi gives Takao a key to the girls' locker room. Takao goes in, finds Michiko's panties, and starts masturbating with them. Michiko walks in and finds him in the middle of the act. She yells at him, but he confesses his love for her and begs for mercy. Surprisingly enough, she accepts him and their days of carnal pleasure begin. A few days later, Sana tells Takao that he is simply a pet for Michiko. Takao bursts into rage and questions Michiko. He later finds out about her relationship with the chairman of the school board and? Where is this story going? Just how will these love-crazed fiends end up? Nukige

    

   10. From M [020719] Black Rainbow The main character starts working at a hospital as a security officer. Thanks to his friend from college, the director of the hospital. But his life changes when he meets Murakoshi, a doctor.... Nukige

    

   11. Sakura Kikou ~Dorei Choukyou~ サクラ紀行～奴隷調教～ [020719] Triangle Main character attends literary arts club. The whole club goes to hot springs resort. He intends to make all the girls his slaves during the trip. But he can't risk with half-baked crime - he needs to go all way through with as many girls as possible under limited time conditions. Nukige

    

   12. Shi Shi Syndrome しーしーしんどろーむ [020719] Yamikumo-Communications 1 Toya Hayami works as an art teacher at a prestigious school. However, Toya and his art lessons are looked upon coldly because the school is just too busy with students cramming for tests. One day, Toya becomes close to the school idle Sayuri and invites her to his studio. A few days later, Toya is suddenly laid off because people have spread rumors about his relationship with Sayuri. Needless to say, Toya is depressed and furious about the treatment and begins to take out his frustrations on Sayuri and his successor, Noriko... The player will become the despairing art teacher and violate the girl who used to adore him. He will also get his kicks out of raping the female teacher who has replaced him with a bunch of sexual tools. Nukige

    

   13. Tain Shoukougun 多淫症候群 [020719] TinkerBell Nanigashigumi Main heroine is a college student who performs indecent acts as a hobby. She repeats actions seen in adult magazines. Nukige

    

   14. Cage ~Toraware no Kioku~ Cage ～囚われの記録～ [020726] May-Be Soft Near-future women-only prison facility. Main character works as inspector here. He tries to facilitate prisoners corrention and regain memory lost after fire accident. He investigates insult incident in prison and finds out illegal underground facility and mysterious drug use. Nukige

    

   15. Gakuen ~Nerawareta Chitai~ 学艶　～狙われた痴態～ [020726] Riddle Soft Main character belongs to the photography club. One day he receives a news of a cute foreign student girl coming to this school. He starts to burn with desire to make her his own no matter what means it takes.  Nukige

    

   16. Garasu no Yakata ~Kimi ga Inai Yoru~ 硝子の館～キミがいない夜～ [020726] Liddell Your car breaks down in the middle of the woods, and you and your girlfriend find shelter at a remote mansion. Nukige

    

   17. H ~Itsuka Tadoritsuketa Ano Basho~ H ～いつかたどりつけた場所～ [020726] F&C FC01 Main character injuries his food during club activities. He is forbidden to run, so he spends days in frustration. At that time childhood friend approaches to comfort him. Protagonist does not mind, and dark passion pierces his stagnant heart. Nukige

    

   18. Kojin Taxi 3 股人タクシー3 [020726] Xuse This time protagonist is a pure villain. He kidnaps girls using fake taxi and confines them in the basement of his house. What's the fate of six girls unlucky enough to get on his way? Nukige

    

   19. Oshiete Goshujin-sama! 教えてご主人様ぁッ！ [020726] Studio Tako Main character sees an advertisement of a new maid android version and makes an order. As manual says, maid can perform all human functions with the only difference that she can't age or die. Nukige

    

   20. Owari naki Maid-tachi no Yoru 終わりなきメイド達の夜 [020726] Crowd 1 2 Our hero is the son of a district lord. His dad is a greedy and arrogant playboy.  His mom is from a good family, but she gets fed up with his dad and runs away.  Even now, his dad's attitude doesn't change. Our hero vows never to become like him. Upon entering an elite private school, our hero finally gets to move out of the house, away from his dad! Before he even graduates, his father passes away; there aren't many tears shed. He receives a letter of appointment to be the new lord of the now vacant district. Childhood friends, classmates and maids are waiting for him. He now has the power to control all of them! Nukige

    

   21. Shucchou♪ Shirogane Gakuen Maid-bu 出張♪しろがね学園メイド部 [020726] Aqua House Maid club had to dissolve when one of its three members quit it. But now there's an energetic newcomer whose presence allows to revive the club. Club does "field training" activities with all school's boys as customers. Nukige

    

   22. Silent Moon [020726] Swallowtail Rock band "Black Teresa" loses vocalist just before its debut. There is a talented vocalist around who refuses to cooperate, but time and effort can help to change his attitude. Boys Love

    

   23. Silver Chaos [020726] Vivid Color The story of Silver Chaos is set in an hypothetical fantasy role-playing game world, which once was menaced by a cruel demonic entity called Hadeus. The terrible war which followed had left many orphans, and one of them is Might. Raised up without his parents, with the only company of his older friend Adonis (another orphan), Might became an ambitious teenager training for his dream to become a soldier of the royal army. One day, though, Might found himself terribly wounded after falling off of a cliff while training. Adonis, who loved Might over anything else, used a forbidden dark spell to save his life. So Might's life was saved... but Adonis mysteriously disappeared. Might will then go on a quest to find out what has happened to his beloved Adonis, meeting a rather wide range of handsome characters – each one with a peculiar personality – who will either join him in his quest or become an obstacle to it. The player, after making the appropriate choices, will be able to pair up the protagonist with one of the characters he will meet. Boys Love

    

   24. Tanpopo ~Everything Nice~ たんぽぽ～Everything Nice～ [020726] Ichigo Milk 1 Our hero belongs to a volunteer club at his school. He enjoys the club activities with his friends, however misfortune strikes them, and they start having sex in order to comfort each other... This is the newest adventure game from Ichigo Milk, the company responsible for the acclaimed adventure game "Close2U," back in June of 2000. The serious yet warm story depicts four heroines going through a variety of ordeals in search of happiness. Come and experience their sentimental journeys and help them find what they're looking for!! Nukige

    

   25. Yakin Jantou 夜勤雀棟 [020726] Mink 1 This game is another mahjong-tournament.  In the story-mode player takes role of the doctor of the original game and challenges all nurses of the hospital in a strip-mahjong tournament. The game offers also a single or multiplayer option for playing against characters without strip element or against other players by LAN. Card game nukige

    

   26. Ojou-sama no Himitsu! お嬢様のヒミツ! [020727] Sol-fa-soft Little lady does various challenges to kill time. Doggy play on physical examination, and of course exposure. ■ Episode 1 "Dad and Ojou-sama" Ayana's dad returned to the residence, where Ayana lives, after a long absence. While checking Ayana's growth, they play with a souvenir. ■ Episode 2 "Maid and Ojou-sama" Ayana was brought to the river by the maid Takagi and the latter suddenly goes missing. ■ Episode 3 "Visitors and Ojou-sama" Ayana is alone in the garden, and has started playing with herself. Visitors to the mansion also want to play with her. Anthology nukige

    

   27. Manatsu no Tobira 真夏の扉 [020731] Dennou Oroshidonya Main character has a wrote a story book to read for his ill sister Nanami. Today sister is totally healthy already and protagonist approaches graduation. One day Nanami brings unfinished continuation of that story book. When did you stop creating? When did you forget how to dream? With that feeling new brave world starts for main character.   Doujin

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4. 

   EVN Chronicles

   A blog by Plk_Lesiak

   • 86
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   Recent Entries

   • Cursed Lands (RPG/VN Hybrid Game Review)
   • Sable Grimoire – Tix’s Route (VN DLC Review)
   • Pantsu Hunter – Back to the 90s (Western VN review…
   • Serment – Contract with a Devil (Dungeon Crawler R…
   • Heart of the Woods (Yuri VN Review)

   

   Latest Entry
   

   Cursed Lands (RPG/VN Hybrid Game Review)

   

   Note: To learn more about this series of games, check out my reviews of Loren: The Amazon Princess and Tales of Aravorn: Season of the Wolf

   Winter Wolves’ series of RPGs set in the fantasy world of Aravorn, starting with the highly-appreciated Loren: The Amazon Princess, have a long and rich history, with three “mainline” games released over six years and many visual novel and dating sim spin-offs, and a direct sequel to The Amazon Princess, Reigns of War currently in development. Combining expansive, turn-based RPG adventure with compelling VN-style storytelling and multiple romance options (including sex-same ones), they were a particularly ambitious and notable additions to the EVN market – especially in 2012, where the first title appeared and the Western visual novels were still at their infancy, they had few serious competitors within the niche and gathered enough attention to establish Winter Wolves as a major brand within the niche.

                 Still, while many VN fans have been charmed by the epic story of Loren, a lot of them also expressed their disappointment towards the different tone and smaller cast of its immediate successor, Season of the Wolf. While I personally found that game much more competent when it goes to RPG mechanics and having a different, but very interesting appeal story-wise – rather than a grand adventure, it was a very personal story of two elves twins living on the fringes of the world of Aravorn and overcoming hardships with a small band of companions – it undeniably underperformed both when it goes to sales and reception by the players. The third game in the series, Cursed Lands, was released in may 2018 and quite visibly aimed to return the series closer to its roots, at least when it goes to scale and climate of the story. With a main intrigue that can decide the fate of whole kingdoms, a set of locales already well-known from Loren and the player leading a team of up to 9 companion (5 of them romanceable), it looked like a project that could recapture the magic of the first game and convince the previously-disappointed fans to give the Aravorn RPGs another try. And considering the developer’s claims about its sales and my impressions, they might’ve actually pulled it off.

   

   The numerous call-backs to Loren: The Amazon Princess will make Cursed Lands more enjoyable to those familiar with the original game, and especially the extra stories from the Castle of N’Mar DLC

   Story-wise, Cursed Lands is a prequel to Loren, taking place around a decade before the events of first game and unlike Seasons of the Wolf, it’s strongly connected to the original story, happening in the same areas and featuring some of the same central characters (notably the human archmage Apolimesho and the Amazon queen Karen, who we can for the first time observe in her prime). It’s also full of smaller cameos and references, which will make it significantly more enjoyable for people already familiar with the series – it’s not by any means unplayable when going in without context, but the full meaning of some scenes and conversations will be lost on new players. The main intrigue features our highly customisable player character (you can choose their race, gender and profession, which all come with their pieces of backstory and unique dialogue) by chance stumbling upon a group of imperial soldiers escaping from swarms of undead in the lands around the cursed Castle of N’Mar. After helping them to leave the area with their lives and fighting off a vampire that pursued them, our PC is hired by the Empire’s Council to gather a team of adventurers and infiltrate the undead’s fortress – at first to gather intelligence, but as the vampire threat escalates, to vanquish them once and for all.

                 At first look, the layout of the story is not particularly unusual, but features some interesting elements – the protagonist acts very explicitly as a mercenary and, to a large extent, relies on cooperation from people on the fringes of Aravorn civilisation: shamanistic nomads, universally-despised naga, pirates and assassins being only some of his associates along the way. While gaining renown during the game due to their successes and receiving a more formal position on behalf of the Council, they’re still mostly an expendable hireling, that have to thread carefully every step of the way to not get sacrificed for the Empire’s interests, or even being silenced for knowing too much about the threat of N’Mar. This theme even extends to the professions you can choose when creating your character (which even includes a very “respectable” craft of a debt collector), and the ability to become a vampire – not necessarily as a way of abandoning your mission or turning against your allies, but a source of additional power and a path to follow after the antagonists of the story are vanquished.

   

   Mutually-exclusive recruitment opportunities in the first chapter add a good deal of replayability to the game, while the “visual novel mode” makes experiencing alternative story paths convenient even if you get tired of Cursed Land’s RPG gameplay

   The companions, as I’ve suggested above, to a large degree escape the typical VN tropes, with the two naga exiles, Sylrissa and Enok, being probably the most unusual elements. Still, even beyond the rare chance to romance snake-people, the personalities and backstories of most of the characters managed to surprise me at least to some extent and I enjoyed the small-talk happening between them and the protagonist. This is, by the way, one of the most contentious elements of the game, as many players were bored to death by long, casual conversations that usually are only very vaguely connected to the main intrigue, but are meant to both explore the backstories of the companions and create opportunities to gain affection points with them, if you lead the conversations properly. The topics vary from the meaning of leadership to the bread-baking much-ridiculed in many reviews (that part will be appreciated by all that tried baking their own bread and failed miserably, which was my experience multiple times), but I don’t think I’ve found an instance in which I’d really dislike those interactions. Most of the conversations were really well-written and led me to understanding the characters better – the amount of this casual dialogue might be overwhelming to some, but I think it fitted the story and played an important enough purpose to be justified.

                 The companions are also an important source of the game’s replayability, as they can be recruited in different orders (those you skip on in the first chapter will only be available after completing special missions in the second one) and these choices often influence their stories quite significantly (this especially applies to the female dwarf Dalsyra, who might feel like a throwaway character if you recruit her late, but has a very interesting secret you can uncover by teaming up with her earlier). There's also, in line with Winter Wolves' tradition, six different romance arcs – two gender-specific, one exclusive to elves and three with bisexual love interests available for any PC. All of them are pretty minimalistic, with three scenes and a short epilogue after finishing the game for each (mostly nicely-written and featuring some very pleasant-looking extra CGs), but considering the overall number of romance options, it’s still quite a lot of content to explore. Checking out all these alternative paths is made significantly easier by the “visual novel mode”, which let’s you very conveniently skip through most of the gameplay sections of Cursed Lands and focus exclusively on the story content, nearly turning the game into a pure VN – as there’s nearly no story bits or meaningful interactions showing up during the fights, there’s very little you can actually miss by choosing this option.

   

   The romance arcs are the most minimalistic out of all three Aravorn RPGs, but include some rarely-seen variety (such as naga love interests) and fun scenarios

   Cursed Lands’ turn-based RPG gameplay is a very direct continuation of what was done in the previous two games, and while it’s way more polished than in Loren (there, classes and gear were extremely unbalanced and the sense of progression very weak), it forgone some of the more compelling elements introduced in Season of the Wolf. The latter featured very limited health and mana regeneration between fights (you could only fully heal by eating expensive meals or progressing a day in the overworld, with every major goal placed on a timer), forcing you to use your time and resources very carefully and making every encounter meaningful. Cursed Lands features time progression, with three chapters (moon cycles) of 30 days and a difficult quest at the end of each one of them. However, considering there are no limits on health/mana regeneration and only very few quests force a time skip, for the most part, this system is meaningless – and especially so in the first cycle, as you have only a handful companions and there are relatively few story events popping up during the whole period. This is actually a major issue, as after the very decent introduction, the game shows itself from possibly the worst side in those first hours, which I think is one of the reasons many people dropped it with a somewhat negative impression of the whole experience. The other downgrade is the possibility to only use four characters at in combat, compared to six in the previous games and the elimination of row-related mechanics – in both Loren and Season of the Wolf you could pace the more squishy characters in the second row and shield them from certain attacks, but here this is absent, giving very little meaning to party formation and greatly eliminating a lot of interesting tactical options (like row and lane-oriented AOE spells and attacks).

                 Coming back to the time mechanics, the only thing they genuinely influence is the arena battles, where you can fight with a chosen amount of monsters for experience and reputation (the latter influence the prices in shops of the area where you through, with three cities having their own arenas, different in the types of monsters they spawn), three times per day. This is the game’s only form of grind and quite possibly my sole biggest issue with it – the arena battles are extremely boring and unrewarding, giving you little gold and no items, but are still pretty much necessary to keep your team strong enough on the harder difficulty levels. They also disable probably the most interesting and fun addition to Cursed Land’s combat, that is protagonist’s social skills – powerful abilities connected to your starting profession, which have different success chance depending on enemy traits and morale (this decreases with damage and can even make some enemies flee, earning you an automatic victory), and can do unique things such as stealing utility items from the enemies or even charming them to fight for your side. Without them, arena fights devolve into a soul-crushing source of tedium and I honestly couldn’t stomach them anyone after the first full moon, even when using the most convenient enemy setups and player team compositions. While generally, the RPG parts of the game are competent, it’s hard to me to recommend playing it on any difficulty other than easy, or maybe normal, as that’s the only way you can effectively avoid the arena and genuinely enjoy the game, as the quests and story-related encounters are way more interesting and nowhere near as time-consuming.

   

   The party formation, character skillsets and time-limit mechanics feel like a step backwards from the Season of the Wolf, but are still superior to clunky and unbalanced RPG gameplay of Loren

   When it goes to production quality, Cursed Lands uses the same artstyle as other games in the series and is possibly the best iteration of it so far, despite some of the assets being clearly repurposed from Loren. While some people complain about the unattractive designs of non-romanceable characters, there’s a lot of personality to them and I don’t remember any that would really feel “off”, while I had this kind of issues with both sprites and CGs in the previous two games. And speaking of CGs, the stylistic inconsistencies that plagued the previous titles, with illustrations not really matching the sprites and even looking awkward, weren’t really an issue this time around. The biggest issue I’ve had with the visual side of the experience was that the protagonist only had a character portrait and never showed in CGs, but that’s a clear consequence of the newly-added customisation. As always, the overworld map and the UI feel somewhat archaic, but in a way that is at least partially a deliberate, stylistic choice on the part of the developer. I also never struggled with the UI the same way I did in Loren, but I’m not sure whether that’s due to genuine improvements or just the fact I got used to it while playing the first two games. The music was climatic, enhancing the light horror tone of the story, but wasn’t particularly memorable, while the game also skipped on a certain long-established sound component of the series, that is including character voices in battles (there was never any voiceover in the beyond that). It’s not a major issue from my point of view, but something to consider if you’re a fan of Winter Wolves RPGs and expect this element to be included.

                 In the end, I find Cursed Lands to be a highly satisfying and interesting game, but this is said mostly from the perspective of a VN fan, who treats the RPG parts as a flavour placed on top of the story content. If I treated it as a “proper RPG”, I would have to count the near-obligatory arena grind the lack of interesting options to boost your characters besides the main questline as a major drag. I’ve found the story here compelling and disagree strongly with much of the criticism that was aimed against it, so if you’re looking for an interesting narrative and characters, I can recommend it wholeheartedly. If you’re searching for high-quality gameplay… It’s a much harder sell, although not a hopeless ones either. Despite the few glaring issues, it’s an all-around competent and rather memorable experience, one that makes me really hopeful towards the upcoming “proper” sequel to Loren – whatever specific issues I might’ve had with each of these RPGs, returning to the world of Aravorn is never something I could easily skip on.

    

   Final Score: 3,5/5

    

   Pros:

   + A varied and interesting cast of characters

   + Solid writing

   + Good sound and visual quality

   Cons:

   - Mostly underwhelming RPG mechanics

   - Extremely boring arena grind

   - Slow first chapter

    

   VNDB Page

   Buy Cursed Lands on Steam

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5. 

   Pretty Cure on Fuwanovel

   A blog by littleshogun

   • 167
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   Recent Entries

   • Turnabout Birthday Review
   • Star-Weaving Future Dream Arc Epilogue
   • Inugami no Rhapsody Review
   • A Good Magical Girl Like a Good Shepherd Review
   • The Idolmasters Lily Girls Episode 1 [First Impres…

   

   Latest Entry
   

   Turnabout Birthday Review

   As for the title, since we have Phoenix Wright trilogy and Corpse Party spin off releases on the PC, I decided to combined the element from both of the two title (Turnabout from Phoenix Wright (All Phoenix Wright (Or rather Ace Attorney) did have the word 'Turnabout' in all of their chapters) and Birthday from Corpse Party spinoff), so we have title here wouls be 'Turnabout Birthday'. I know that there's a fanfic called Turnabout Birtday as well, although of course this is obviously not the review of the fanfic. Welcome to this week VNTS Review, and sorry for being late here. As for this week other than aforementioned two relesses here, we have several updates from both of Sekai and Mangagamer with the latter really like the secret projects a bit too much. For the release, what I can comment is that at least graphically wise Phoenix Wright is improved (Still tedundant release though) and that Corpse Party spin off did use the same seiyuu back at PSP version (I like it because most of them are big names like Kitamura Eri or Sawashiro Miyuki). Let's see what I can write in this week as well.

   We have Date Alive release month estimation, and apparently it'll be at June later. Still not interested at it, but at least I know that the anime itself is well known even with the season 3 first episode was quite infamous because of the bad animation. We also have a surprise update from Sekai, and that update is that we already have Baldr Sky was already at 90% done for both of the translation and the editing works. While this is a good news, unfortunately seeing that it's Sekai I'm very wary about that here, because after all they managed to freeze both of Dracu Riot and Tenshin Ranma even with those two were completed. Oh and don't forget that it's still not clear whether it'll be censored or not, although it'll be bad for them though if Sekai censored it per GIGA's request because there's no console version for Baldr Sky like Dies Irae. Other than Baldr Sky update, we have Sekai did add another secret project (The 4th one) and for both of translation and the editing were already at 46%.

   At this rate I would like to call Mangagamer as secretive company, because they decided to add one more secret projects so now we have six secret projects from them. Although apparently they'll announce three new title at the conventions later (With two of those from new developer), so hopefully all of those were the secret projects. For the secret projects series progress roundup, the first was at 72% edited, the second was fully edited, the third was at 32% edited, the fourth was fully translated, the fifth was at 67% translated along with 57% edited, and the sixth was at 54% translated along with 4% edited.  For now I'm obviously don't know what's their secret projects is, but if you ask me what I'm hope here then I'll say that personally I hope that one of the projects is Evenicle 2. Other than secret projects series update, we have Sona-Nyl was at 98% translated (Almost complete) and Kyonyuu Fantasy 2 was fully edited. Some of the other updates were already finished the testing (Hashihime and Amrilato), while there's some that were just enterimg the testing (Minagoroshi, Haretaka (I like it), and Maghot Baits (Good luck to the tester)). There's also Bokuten that was finalizing the Steam version, so hopefully it mean that the release time is almost close after years in editing hell.

   We have Eustia was at 66.49% translated, Loverable was at 62.36% translated, Watamasu was at three quarter translated, Tokihogushi was at 95% translated, 5,965 lines from Pure x Connect were translated while 2,887 lines were edited, and for Rhapsody we have Mistoria's route was at 30% translated while we have New Game+ and append contents was at 40% translated. I think that's all for fan translation section here.

   That's all for this week VNTS Review, and sorry for being short here. See you next week.

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6. Review of VNs that I have a physical copy of, including pictures of the physical copy

   A blog by bakauchuujin

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   Recent Entries

   • A short review of Saya no Uta as well as pictures …
   • A review of Imouto Paradise 2 as well as pictures …
   • A review of Date A Live Rio Reincarnation as well …
   • Short review of five japanese only VNs for PS vita…
   • A review of New Game! The Challenge Stage! as well…

   

   Latest Entry
   

   A short review of Saya no Uta as well as pictures of the physical edition

   For a general introduction to what Saya no Uta is you can just read it on the back of the hardcopy (picture of it is bellow) I can't really go into it much without spoiling anything so I will only mention my general feelings about Saya no Uta 

   Saya no Uta is quite an interesting psychological horror visual novel and a thing I really like about it is how it shows a lot of unique perspectives and how dvelve into the psychology of the different characters. While it is a rather short visual novel I think that it does a really good job of using the time it has to cover a great story and it never felt to me like it went to fast. While I do think it was generally really interesting I did at times feel a bit bored during a few parts of the VN, this didn't happen often, but it was somewhat noticable. The art of Saya no Uta I found to be quite good, it manages quite well both to display the horrors the main characters see and the beauty of Saya, though it being 800x600 resolution does hurt it a bit. The sound in Saya no Uta I really loved, it does a really good job at setting the tones of the scenes and is really essensial to the enjoyment of the VN, I especially liked the one with the same name a the VN Saya no Uta. As for the endings 2 of the 3 are quite interesting, but I wouldn't say they are that amazing, though the true ending was absolutely stunning.

    

   Front of hardcopy

   

   Back of hardcover

   

   The disc

   

   Reversible cover

   

   The physical edition is quite standard, though I do like how reverse cover is just white and pure with Saya in the middle. 

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7. Clephas' VN home

   A blog by Clephas

   • 612
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   • 292969
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   Recent Entries

   • My experience with Fate/Grand Order
   • Realive
   • March 2019: What I'm going to play
   • The Schools of Charage/Moege harems
   • Spiral!!

   

   Latest Entry
   

   My experience with Fate/Grand Order

   Ok, anyone who has read some of my rants about microtransactions will wonder why I decided to play this f2p smartphone game... until you remember I'm also a Nasuverse fanboy.

   I made the questionable decision of picking this game up about two and a half months ago, and since then I've been left with a lot to ponder.  First, I'll list what I like about this game.

   1.  Relatively easy to play for free, in the sense that simply doing free quests and story quests can get you the in-game Saint Crystals necessary to roll for higher-rarity servants with only a bit of patience. 

   2.  Charity Servants, the ones that you can get from completing event quests, are often really good (there are exceptions, even so far, but meh), so if you just do the events, you can still build a decent party before going for the higher-difficulty story quests.

   3.  Leveling up Servants can be fast if you have the items ready.

   4.  Battle system is decent, if sometimes deliberately frustrating (to encourage you to spend money, probably).

   5.  Support Servants borrowed from friends can let you clear hard quests easier.

   6.  The story of the main game is extremely well-written (though the translators made a lot of obvious stumbles by not fixing the language into English grammar at some points).

   7.  Manages to recreate the often ambiguous emotions drawn out when you played FSN or watched anime like Fate/Apocrypha that gave the series such grandiosity, along with the usual Nasu humor.

   Negatives

   1.  Too many obvious ways in which they try to get you to spend money, with the constant summoning campaigns and sudden difficulty spikes during and post Camelot.

   2.  Blatant Japanese-style gacha-addiction builder.

   3.  Missions can be extremely long irl time, and AP regeneration speeds make it possible to play seven hours a day on story missions during half-AP campaigns... which eats at rl a bit too much.

    

   My Experience

   My rule when playing standard video games that I already know I want is 'I'll spend $60 and no more', and I kept to that rule, with a lot of headaches from temptation and obsession with cute or awesome Servants (Evil Artoria is just sexy in her portrait at final Ascension, lol).  I've managed to enjoy the story of the main game and laugh through the events so far (the GudaGuda events were hilariously designed and written).  However, the lack of breathing space between events and summoning campaigns leaves me feeling exhausted even if I only play a few hours here and there.  Every time I wanted to sit back and enjoy the story, there was that time limit to get all the great skill-up and ascension items I didn't want to have to farm from the game nodes, and now there is an event coming up that requires you have completed the main story through Solomon... which is annoying as hell, since BB really looks cute, so I want her in my roster to stare at with drool dripping from the corners of my mouth, like with Medusa Rider and Evil Artoria...

   Yes, that is the level of obsession this game can create for Fate fans.  The fact that several familiar faces are available in the beginning-of-the-game gacha (including Archer from FSN and Heracles) is tailor-made to draw a Fate fan in and trap him with his own lust.  I don't recommend anyone with a collector's tendencies or addictive tendencies in general play this game, as it is a potential money sink for any such individual, sadly.  Since I am such an individual, my words should have weight, lol.  It takes real effort for me not to look at the summoning campaigns when I don't have Saint Crystals or summoning tickets.

   On the other hand, this game manages to actually tell a good story, and, having just finished Camelot (which is a difficulty spike on par with suddenly dipping into a Souls game when you thought you were playing Ar Tonelico level), I can tell you it is worth at least going this far.  While it lacks the huge emotionality of Fate/Apocrypha or the original FSN, it makes up for it with the sheer number of personal stories and glorious ends the various Servants manage to meet.  The fact that this definitely feels like a Fate story in both depth and detail makes it even better for a Fate fanboy. 

   However, where things fall short is that we have yet another silent protagonist, similar to Fate/Extra.  While this makes, justifiably, the Servants the stars of the story, it can be a bit frustrating that your only inputs are frequently humorous interjections. 

   Personally, one thing that has had me laughing on numerous occasions is how gloriously weird some of the Berserker characters are... since they are all psycho to one degree or the other, this can lead to some... interesting results.  While our friend Lancelot from Fate/Zero makes an appearance, most of the Berserkers can and do speak, even if their manner is downright crazy or obsessive.

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8. Orglings of an Alpacaman

   A blog by alpacaman

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   Recent Entries

   • A halfhearted defense of weak protagonists in VNs
   • An attempt at classifying protagonists

   

   Latest Entry
   

   A halfhearted defense of weak protagonists in VNs

   In my previous blog entry I talked about protagonists in fictional media by comparing their ability to advance a plot vs. how much they actually do in their respective stories. With the model I came up with I identified four archetypes (in the meantime I remembered a possible example for “useful idiot” characters, which I edited into that post, in case you missed it). This time I'm going to focus on visual novels and why they seem to produce mainly “weak protagonists” by my metric (which doesn't say anything about how interesting they might be as it doesn't really account for blandness). There certainly is a cultural and psychological component to this, but I think I'm not enough of an expert on Japanese society to talk about the former and the “self-insert”-aspect is kind of obvious and also something I already talked about in the last post in the paragraph about Harry Potter. So instead I'll try to focus on the unique way many visual novels are structured from a narrative standpoint and how this in my opinion often makes choosing a weak protagonist kind of the logical choice from the writer's point of view.

   I think there are two main aspects to this. The first one is pretty obvious solely from looking at game mechanics. Most VNs have a choice system, and the character the reader makes these choices for should be able to believably carry them out in-game. A writer either needs a lot of very good ideas about how to bring the protagonist into situations where they could go either way without breaking character, or let them have a personality that's just bendable enough to always do what the plot requires them to.

   The second aspect is a bit more complex and has to do with most VNs being multi-route. This poses a great challenge to a writer as it's not that easy to tell several stories from the same setup without them ending up too similar. And even if the plot of each route is completely different, chances are the protagonist's character arcs are still going to end up more or less similar. A route feels incomplete if the main character's central personal struggle isn't resolved to some degree. The most common workaround for this is centering the routes themselves around a supporting character, usually a hero(ine), and giving the protagonist just a minor character arc, often in the veins of something like "love gives me the determination to achieve every goal". This basically means creating subplots where the overall protagonist isn't the literal main character anymore as entering someone else's route means also entering their story and character arc most of the time. These characters' development would be diminished though if the protagonist just went along and solved the respective heroine's problems for them, as for the development to be believable the character going through it has to do the substantive part of the emotional work (this is why white-knighting isn't just problematic from the viewpoint of gender roles but it's bad writing as well). 

   In other media the protagonist most of the time either isn't present during most of the subplot or at least not involved too much. In visual novels both of these options in general aren't viable as from the point of entering a route the subplot becomes the narrative focus and it would be pretty weird if the protagonist just disappeared or at least decided not to interfere in the third act and climax of a playthrough, especially since the choices leading up to a route usually involve the MC trying to get closer to the character it revolves around. The fact that routes are often based around romance and the necessity to include a justification for H-scenes involving the MC further complicate this issue.

   As you can see, a capable protagonist is incredibly hard to employ under these circumstances. They have to fall in love with a hero(ine), yet shouldn't get so involved with them too such a degree that they decide to essentially rob said love-interest of their character arc. In many cases there is no proper solution to this dilemma. And this is where the weak protagonist comes in handy as them not becoming proactive once they have a reason to act can be justified by them simply not being able to. This setup also already has an inherent starting point for the aforementioned minor character arc for the protagonist.

   I don't want to imply that weak protagonists are always the best choice (or ever), but they often are the most viable compromise imo when a VN main character has to be so passive that they don't outshine the supporting cast but at the same time be a justifiable lead character. The most important feature in a VN protagonist in general simply isn't being proactive, as their main purpose is a structural one, namely to connect the game mechanic aspect of making choices to access new parts of the story with the way these new segments are set up from a narrative standpoint. This sounds kind of convoluted, but I hope by now you get what I'm trying to say. Of course the points I made don't apply to every visual novel or even every genre of VN, but I think they cover a reasonable share of weak protagonists out there. And of course this doesn't excuse bland MCs, but many of the things I pointed out don't exactly make it easier to give them colourful personalities.

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9. Exploring Visual Novels [Pixels, Polygons, Prose VN Feed]

   A blog by lunaterra

   • 4
     entries
   • 2
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   Recent Entries

   • NaNoRenO 2019 Overview
   • Exploring Reflections ~Dreams and Reality~
   • Exploring Hustle Cat
   • Exploring The Window Box

   

   Latest Entry
   

   NaNoRenO 2019 Overview

   Originally posted on Pixels, Polygons, Prose.

   Another year, another NaNo. For the uninitiated, NaNoRenO (short for...nothing at all; it's a reference to NaNoWriMo) is a month-long visual novel game jam which has occurred each March since 2005. I chose not to participate myself this year, but like each year since I've gotten into visual novels, I've been looking forward to the entrants—some pretty amazing games have come out of NaNos of the past.

   I couldn't go through every single entry, but I've provided an overview of several of the completed games (no demos, sorry! I couldn't go through all 90 entries in just two weeks!). There might be some minor spoilers ahead.

   

   Title: Contract Demon
   Developer: NomnomNami
   Original release date: March 30, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 25 minutes

   Contract Demon is a kinetic novel set in the same universe as the Treat series, Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet, and First Kiss at a Spooky Soiree, featuring demon Kamilla having to deal with the affections of (and her affections towards) the angel who keeps summoning her. Nami's stuff is always a treat to enjoy (pun not intended), and this is no exception. Contract Demon is equal parts cute, funny, and romantic, and well worth the time it takes to read it.

   

   Title: A HERO AND A GARDEN
   Developer: npckc
   Original release date: March 29, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 2 hours (before an update which made the gameplay take less time, so it'll likely be less now)

   A HERO AND A GARDEN is a cute VN/clicker hybrid about a wannabe hero who destroyed a town of monsters while trying to rescue a princess who (unbeknownst to him) didn't want to be rescued. As penance, the "evil witch" who lives in the town has cursed him and forced him to harvest berries for the townspeople.

   The clicker mechanic is very simple, but the VN as a whole is a heartwarming experience, with the protagonist learning about the town and the monsters who live in it, and realizing that what he thought the world was like isn't really what the world is like at all.

   

   Title: After the END
   Developer: Stomach God
   Original release date: March 28, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac
   Availability: itch.io (free)
   Approximate time for completion: 30 minutes

   After the END takes place a decade after the start of a zombie apocalypse which killed or turned nearly every person in the world; protagonist BB believes they are the only person left alive and spends their time exploring the wasteland. The current town they're in has 12 houses to explore, but there's only enough time to explore 8; you're all but guaranteed to die a few times before managing to get the good ending.

   I'm not a huge fan of zombie apocalypse stories, but After the END manages its setting fairly well despite some technical issues (the "skip read text" function also skips unread text) and a few text errors.

   

   Title: Cooked with Love
   Developer: STARDUST★SODA
   Original release date: March 31, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 30 minutes

   College student Perry (nameable) finds themself in a dilemma after they finally ask their crush Lily out—their wallet goes missing the night they planned to take her out to a fancy restaurant! They come up with the idea of a home-cooked meal instead, but Perry has never cooked before, and there's not a whole lot for them to work with. Luckily, Perry's roommate Brooks is there to provide emotional support (not during the date. That would just be weird).

   A fun, short VN with a crafting minigame and a great sense of humor, Cooking with Love is extremely polished for a jam game, featuring animations and simple customization (name entry, short/long hair, pants/skirt, he/she/they pronouns). If it weren't for its short length, I wouldn't be surprised to see something like this as a commercial game.

   One of the highlights of the game is trying out different combinations of food to see what "dishes" you get; I didn't think you could turn all that into...those.

   Also, I think I have a crush on Lily too. Oops.

   

   Title: Seven Seasonings
   Developer: Sleepy Agents
   Original release date: March 30, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 30 minutes

   A surreal VN with a unique aesthetic and an interesting soundtrack. The game makes use of an inventory system, randomized stats, map movement, and a simple trading mechanic; I'm not entirely sure how (or if) they affect the story. Seven Seasonings is one of those stories where I'm not quite certain what happened or what any of it meant, but it provides an interesting topic to think about.

   

   Title: One Last Salty Kiss
   Developer: fullmontis
   Original release date: March 31, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 50 minutes

   A kinetic novel about a newly-single man who finds an unconscious woman on the beach one night; what results is an emotional vignette about life, death, and the roles our memories play in our well-being. I felt the whole thing moved too fast; I'm not a fan of stories where the couple goes from zero to True Love in the space of two days.

   

   Title: Charles 2.0
   Developer: Team Conwolf
   Original release date: March 31, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 40 minutes

   Charles 2.0 has what's probably the best logline of the jam:

   You're the President, but you have no memories. Crap.

   Short, sweet, and to the point. This isn't an amnesia story; you're playing as a clone of Charles Denton, President of the United States, and must gather enough information about "yourself" and the country to bluff your way through a press conference without arousing any suspicion. Nobody can know that you're a clone, not even Charles' husband Lorenzo or assistant/polyamorous boyfriend Jonas. The result is a story that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout and is one of my favorites of the jam.

   

   Title: Enc and the Flying Machine
   Developer: TangledVirus
   Original release date: March 30, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 20 minutes

   Enc and the Flying Machine tells the story of a mushroom girl tasked to write about machines. While the setting is interesting, I found the story hard to follow at times, with the occasional confusing wording. Besides that, though, it's a lighthearted story about friendship and love, and hopefully some polish on the text can help bring that out more.

   

   Title: RE:BURN
   Developer: Jane Titor
   Original release date: April 1, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 25 minutes

   Closer to interactive fiction than a traditional visual novel, RE:BURN finds you in the shoes of Charisse LaFlamme, newly-minted part-time editor for an academic journal. One of your jobs is to delete all the old emails that have been accumulated over the past few months. However, things soon start to get really weird. The game was written by one of the writers of DemiDato, one of the projects I'm working on—but trust me, they're two very different games. RE:BURN is something closer to horror; it does a good job at unsettling you just enough to make you wonder if you're really making the right decisions.

   

   Title: this was for you.
   Developer: Watercress
   Original release date: April 1, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 50 minutes

   this was for you. is one of the more technically-advanced entries of the jam, featuring lots of animations, voice acting, and general polish. Our nameable protagonist is grieving the loss of their best friend, Ji-min, whom they only knew through a VR world. While it works for its duration, it ends abruptly, without a satisfying conclusion, leaving me in a weird limbo where I don't really know if I can recommend it or not.

   

   Title: Robot Daycare
   Developer: Kigyo
   Original release date: March 31, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free)
   Approximate time for completion: 1 hour 40 minutes

   One of the longer non-gameplay entries in the jam, Robot Daycare follows a trio of college students as they create and raise a robot child for an assignment. How the story goes from there is based on a handful of choices—not exactly revolutionary for visual novels, but the two paths are very different, with the good path being a story about friendship and trust and the bad path being a straight-up horror story. (Some of the descriptions in the horror path are...eurgh. No wonder there's an option to disable gory text.) Both paths are good, but in different ways, obviously.

   

   Title: REDD War
   Developer: Good Tales
   Original release date: March 31, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
   Availability: itch.io (free/PWYW)
   Approximate time for completion: 1 hour

   Hm, so this is a story about murder being legal for 12 hours...

   No, that doesn't remind me of anything at all.

   Parallels with famous movie series aside, I just couldn't get into this one. A high school student gets caught up in a REDD War, where Earth-occupying murderous aliens are legally allowed to murder any human they want for 12 hours (whereas humans are bound by normal laws and cannot kill REDD except in self-defense). Ultimately, the "killer aliens" trope doesn't do anything for me, and I spent most of the story being vaguely uncomfortable (in a bad way). Watching two of the bloodthirsty REDD call the timid REDD a pussy over and over is just annoying (and yes, I know that the other two REDD are supposed to be unlikable, but they're not the fun kind of unlikable that makes hating them enjoyable).

   I also thought it was strange that it includes a warning for violence after the cold open where some aliens murder a guy in cold blood.

   

   Title: Alice in Stardom
   Developer: Crystal Game Works
   Original release date: April 1, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
   Availability: itch.io, Steam (free)
   Approximate time for completion: 1 hour 40 minutes

   The best part of Alice in Stardom is the writing during the performances themselves (aside from the pointless minigame); everything else is hit-or-miss. I had a hard time getting into the entire concept thanks to my distaste for idols, made stranger by the decision to set the story in what appears to be the USA in 2019, where the idol culture Alice in Stardom depicts really doesn't exist (source: I live in the USA in 2019).

   I'm a bit confused by the minigame. I failed it the first few times since the game doesn't explain what you're supposed to do (click on the lyrics in the order in which they appear). It doesn't really add anything except making going for your second/third route take a couple minutes longer.

   Additionally, the "romance" is limited to about three lines (total, across all three routes, although the end of Taylor's route can be interpreted as romantic subtext). There's nothing wrong with a story about friendship or friendship-that-could-lead-to-romance—but I think it makes the "lesbian" and "yuri" tags on itch more than a bit misleading.

   

   Title: Mnemonic Devices
   Developer: Minyan
   Original release date: April 2, 2019
   Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux
   Availability: itch.io (free)
   Approximate time for completion: 1 hour 30 minutes

   I'm generally not a huge fan of the amnesia trope, but Mnemonic Devices has one of the more interesting takes on it that I've seen: the (customizable) protagonist (default name Quinn) eventually finds out that they are actually an extremely advanced android assassin, whose current mission is to kill corrupt hot-shot lawyer Caesar Rivera—who also happens to be Quinn's husband. (They had to get close to him to gather information on him, you see.) The person who breaks the news to you is Quinn's partner Alto, who does a really bad job of hiding how madly in love with them he is.

   The game itself, however, does a really good job at balancing both routes to make them equally satisfying, although I personally preferred Alto's route. There's a lot of moral ambiguity regarding whether or not to kill Caesar; the game doesn't really say that either is more or less right than the other, though they lead to different endings depending on which route you're on.

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10. Mr Poltroon's Random Codswallop

    A blog by Mr Poltroon

    • 51
      entries
    • 93
      comments
    • 6989
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Playing Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai
    • Playing Wargroove
    • Fureraba Playthrough #2 - Common Route
    • Fureraba Playthrough #1 - Prologue
    • Playing the Tsundere -- Cinderella Phenomenon

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Playing Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai

    I've been seeing people wondering about Daitoshokan's translation, so I'm making this compilation of screenshots just to show what the experience is like in English.

    The further down you go, the further into the game you are. But these screenshots are all from the first half of the common route and earlier, so I wouldn't worry terribly.

    Spoiler

    

    Incidentally, the advice was that if you give an inch, they'll take a mile; or all the space in the train, as it were.

    

    I mean, what else would a student be doing in a Geology class? Wait, this was actually a Math class?

    

    Finally a game I can empathise with.

    

    Thank you for your help picking up the rubbish with us. Goodbye.

    

    Being able to read your book whilst executing any task or walking anywhere is a genuine skill, Ms. Suzuki!

    

    Bless you.

    

    I don't even like oysters.

    

    I've met the character in question. Can confirm.

    

    The face of innocence.

    

    Operation: "Call her tiny"

    

    What slander.

    

    Sluggo is lit

    

    You have my tacit agreement.

    

    Everyone has a limit to what they can take, and she has unfortunately reached it...

    

    Common sense? What's that? Can you eat it?

    

    We needed to fill our quote of quintessentially Japanese conversations.

    

    Whatever. Femininity isn't worth this...

    

    Today's youth is hitting tragic levels of cynicism.

    

    These things happen... you know.

    

    I love the member(s of the Library Club).

    

    Alas... Farewell, Reggie.

    

    The (not tiny) face of innocence.

    

    People should fix their habits of asking questions before thinking.

    

    Sakuraba is the manliest in the room at any point. Including in the toxic depravity. Down girl!

    

    A nice, polite talk between nice, polite girls.

    

    I do love a protagonist capable of talking back.

    

    How he is loved by his junior.

    A story in two parts:

    

    

     

    Ms. Suzuki has the dubious honour of sharing the butt monkey position with Takamine:

    

    

    

    But it's not like she isn't crazy enough to bring it on herself.

    

    I feel like I'm on the cusp of a realisation... but... what is it...?

    

    Croak

    I think the VN is super fun, and really, that's all I care about, to be honest.

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11. Random stories of Clephas

    A blog by Clephas

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    • 831
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    Recent Entries

    • Nekomata: Prologue
    • Neko-rabu #1

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Nekomata: Prologue

    This is the prologue of the book I'm currently writing (though, given my procrastinating habits, it will never see the light of day). 

     

    It was a foggy night on the research center docks. A front came through during the day, dropping the temperature and raising the humidity. As a result, the ferry to the mainland was forced to delay for a night, and the ‘guests’ scheduled to leave were forced to stay for another night.

    Unfortunate for the slightly overweight security guard watching the entrance to the restricted sections of the center, not so unfortunate for his assailant.

    The middle-aged white man with the brown beard never saw the small clawed hand that swept across his throat, opening it in a spray of arterial blood that splattered across the bulletproof glass of his station.

    Uzume, his killer, wiped her bloodied fingers off on his clothing, shoving his still warm hand down on the biometric pad in front of his corpse to give authorization for the temporary security ID she’d set the system to print. A small plastic card with a magnetic strip and another, much older, woman’s face on it slid out of the output socket and into her other hand.

    With no visible emotion, her glowing golden eyes regarded the corpse for a moment before she vanished into the mists, gliding through them toward the restricted building.

    Uzume’s features were elfin and delicate, showing traces of her mother’s land of origin, but what truly stood out were the two triangular furred ears sticking out of her pitch black hair, flicking back and forth as they caught faint noises in the distance. The two sinuous furred tails emerging from just above her buttocks only gave more evidence to her inhumanity, if the eyes were not a dead giveaway.

    The catlike demihuman moved with a grace and speed that no human could match, killing each security guard she came across with perfect strikes of her clawed hands, leaving their corpses to cool on the concrete. The client specified havoc and slaughter, and she had every intention of giving him just that.

    When she finally reached the outermost doors, she slid her new ID card through the reader, causing the thick metal door to click open and swing outward. She slid inward and rushed the guard standing just inside before he could cry an alarm, slamming her left palm into his belly to prevent him from crying out before thrusting her right index finger into his left eye, using the grip this gave her on his head to draw the head back to bear the throat, which she bit into without a second’s hesitation, ripping his throat out with her razor sharp canines.

    The taste of salty, warm human blood upon her tongue threatened to send her in to a state of excitement, but she forced it downward with the same iron will that allowed her to survive her life so far. She dropped the human to the ground at her feet, pocketing his sidearm for later use, along with his two spare magazines of 9mm ammunition.

    In the next room, she found another guard sleeping, and, using the claw at the end of her right index finger, precisely pierced his voice box without harming the nearby arteries, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to cry out an alarm. Two slashes of her claws separated the tendons at the elbow, and she jammed the edge of her hand into the wound before using a spell to force-heal it, sealing the skin, flesh, and bone around the damage without undoing it. She couldn’t afford for him to die just yet, but she didn’t want him able to struggle effectively.

    With impossible strength, she dragged him to the nearby biometric scanner , forcing him to activate the combination palm print and retinal scan, opening the doorway into the center’s inner sanctum.

    With the same carelessness a child gives to a discarded toy, she snapped his neck and dropped him to the floor, flowing through the open doorway before it could shut.

    There was no guard at the station inside. Unsurprising, as by all accounts the facility’s security budget was cut by the current project manager only weeks before. The assault rifle armed guards on the grounds and the two layers of biometric scanners probably seemed more than enough to prevent intrusion in the eyes of a scientist.

    A young woman, most likely in her mid-twenties, stepped out of a nearby room, rubbing bleary eyes, her labcoat stained with chemicals that smelled sour to Uzume’s oversensitive nose. Without hesitation, Uzume slammed her right palm into the woman’s nose, forcing her back into the room she left, even as she drove stiffened clawed fingers deep into her belly, tearing through her innards viciously, shredding her stomach and ripping deeply into her left lung.

    Seeing two other scientists behind the woman, looking stupefied, she leapt over the woman with a display of inhuman agility and tore the face off one, twisting in midair to hit the metal wall feet first before launching herself to tear the throat out of the other. The gurgling noises of the dying were all that signified the three terrible blows dealt, and Uzume noted that she had cut half of face-torn one’s tongue out, causing him to choke on his own blood.

    With a sigh, she slammed the heel of her booted foot into his throat, crushing his trachea. His eyes were gone, but a witness was a witness.

    Uzume’s form-concealing black clothing was already soaked with blood, and her face was splattered with it, especially around her mouth. She took a moment to use the dying woman’s labcoat to wipe the worst of it off of her face before moving on in perfect silence.

    She also wiped the caked blood off of her claws with a white cloth as she continued making her way through the facility, stopping at each room to kill those within in perfect silence. Most didn’t even have time to react before their corpses hit the floor, and that was no surprise. The speed with which she moved was beyond the human ability to react, to the point where two or three were usually dead before any remaining individuals within realized something had happened. Uzume’s kind lay outside the realm of human common sense, which was why they were so effective at work like this.

    It took her almost an hour to clean out the accessible areas of the facility, literally painting the walls red in places. Going back through the facility, she used the drying blood of her victims to write a series of symbols on the wall of each room before heading for the way out.

    As she reached the door she came in through, she activated the spells with a thought, and flames burst into being throughout the facility, erupting from the blood within, burning everything, starting a conflagration that would gain the attention of the rest of the facility as a whole within moments. Unfortunately for anyone investigating the incident, there wouldn’t be enough material evidence remaining to get even the vaguest idea of what had happened.

    Uzume stripped naked, tossing her clothing and boots into the flames inside without a second thought, gliding back into the mists with the same grace and silence she’d displayed upon arrival.

    As she left the grounds, her body shifted, the ears and tail melting away, her metallic golden eyes becoming a mundane brown, the blood in her hair and on her skin vanishing as it was consumed as an afterthought to power the shift.

    So it was that a young human woman named Uzume, an unremarkable half-Japanese woman knelt down in a group of bushes and dressed in the plain school uniform she’d used to gain access to the island. There was no sign of the terrible grace and horrifying brutality she’d shown only minutes before in the slow, shuffling gait of the woman that remained behind, though their elfin features were the same.

    She made her way back to the employee dorms ‘her class’ was staying in without the least sign of guilt or concern, for all the world as if she really were the young student she appeared to be…

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12. 

    solidbatman's Gaming Blog

    A blog by solidbatman

    • 3
      entries
    • 15
      comments
    • 997
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Little Busters: The Apology
    • Heart of the Woods Review
    • Killer is Dead: The Case for Ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Little Busters: The Apology

    Hello. I am the guy who wrote that review of Little Busters that everyone hated because I did not like the game. Those poor people are doing just fine, however, even with my evil, vile, disgusting review out there still. I, on the other hand, have never been worse off. You see, I've been overwhelmed with guilt. I feel bad for what I did. I took a beloved visual novel, one that has changed the lives of many people, and slandered it with my negative review. Then I continued to ride that infamy I gained into relevancy allowing my hatred of Little Busters! to manifest itself as a false representation of my true opinion of it, much like I am doing right this moment. 

    The truth about my time with Little Busters! is that I enjoyed the VN. It had some bad routes (like all of them) and had a really unremarkable ending. But can I say I did not enjoy my time reading it? Not really. The 24 hour stream was a blast, and subsequent streams were a lot of fun, especially when people were involved in the jokes and discussion of the routes as I read them. For example, Lewycool's Sexy Seagull Legs during Mio's route was light in an otherwise forgettable, boring route (protip: a character with no personality other than "I like books" is not a recipe for a fun route) and allowed me to actually have fun with the route. Likewise, discussions of Kurugaya's Balloon Tits carrying me off into the sky made her Bill Murray wannabe route more enjoyable. Refrain was a blast to read right up until the ending. I didn't hate Rin and simply wished we saw far more development from her than what we got. She was a fun character. 

     

    The experience of reading Little Busters! was good. I had a good time. While my opinions on Little Busters! remain the same, that it is a bad VN (not horrid at least), I do not regret the time I spent on it and I sometimes wish I could read it over again on stream with everyone like I did before. 

     

    So, I owe everyone an apology. I'm sorry your favorite VN is so shit I had to bring in friends to enjoy it instead. I can't wait to get my hands on the official Rewrite release in 600 years. 
    
    Also, a review of an InvertMouse VN is coming very soon to this blog near you, assuming I'm not blocked first. 

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13. 

    Endless Days, Sleepless Nights

    A blog by Narcosis

    • 14
      entries
    • 38
      comments
    • 2701
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Nekomiko in a nutshell
    • Gahkthun in a nutshell
    • Otomimi ∞ Infinity
    • Revised rating system and the eroge food chain or …
    • Yougen Tennyo

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Nekomiko in a nutshell

    

    [inaudible meowing]

     

     

     

     

     

     

    jk

    Expect a new review soon™.

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14. Monthly physical visual novel news

    A blog by bakauchuujin

    • 7
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    • 1323
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    Recent Entries

    • Physical visual novel news for March 2019
    • Physical visual novel news for Febuary 2019
    • Physical visual novel news for January 2019
    • Physical visual novel news for December 2018
    • Physical visual novel news for November 2018

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Physical visual novel news for March 2019

    Sol Press managed to get Irotoridori no Sekai funded so congratulation for all that hoped for the kickstarter to succeed (I already have the japanese physical editions, but I am glad for those who wanted an english release). For those who for some reason didn't notice the kickstarter and want the physical edition there will probably be a backerkit up soon and I would assume that it is somewhat likely that they plan to sell some physical copies through Hyourin.

     

    The voting for the wallscroll bundled with Magical Marriage Lunatics (hardcopy) has now ended and they decided that instead of only having one winner the two wallscrolls with most votes will be made. This includes the wallscroll for Luci and for Yuna. They are also available through Luci bundle and Yuna bundle.

     

    Some people have now gotten their physicals for Volume 1 and 2 of Grisaia Phantom trigger. Really nice to see that Frontwing are finally able to deliver on physicals for their kickstarters, even though it it quite late and seem to get going rather slowly.

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15. Dergonu's blog

    A blog by Dergonu

    • 36
      entries
    • 267
      comments
    • 5592
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Fuwa Battle Royale - Resurrection -
    • Fuwa Battle Royale - Week 3 -
    • Fuwa Battle Royale - Week 2 -
    • Fuwa Battle Royale - Week 1 -
    • Beat Valkyrie Ixseal Review

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Fuwa Battle Royale - Resurrection -

    This is just a copy of my post here in the main thread. I figured maybe some people who aren't subbed to the thread would miss it, so I decided to make a short blog post, too. Check out the thread I posted this in for context, if you're out of the loop.

     

    Alright, let's discuss the elephant in the room. This was kind of just abandoned, and I don't want to leave it like that.

    I wanted to pick it up again several times, but I haven't really had the time or the motivation to do so. I've gotten quite a lot of questions asking if I'd continue this or not, which goes to show that there's been some interest there from the community too. (Most of them coming from @Kiriririri, who just wants to kill everyone in his glorious loli form.)

    So I figured it's about time I wrapped this up. It has now been a full year since this started, and I want to at least have a proper ending for people.

    Here's what I'm thinking: I'll write one more, big chapter, trying to wrap up all the loose ends. I'd give everyone who haven't been in a chapter yet an introduction, and try to make one big, final battle for the rest of the people alive, then crown a victor. I don't know how many people still even remember this was a thing, but hopefully there's at least some interest in seeing it end.

     

    Now, one big thing of note: I have no real ETA on this chapter. I work full-time now, (I was still in uni back when I started, heh,) so I really only have the weekends to write. Therefore I expect this to take at least a couple of weeks. If you are interested in seeing the ending, follow this thread and you'll get a notification when I post something.

    That's about it! Sorry it took so long for me to finally pick this back up. Feel free to leave a comment if you're still excited about this after so long, lol. Will be interesting to see if anyone still remembers it.

     

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16. Chronopolis' VN Blog

    A blog by Chronopolis

    • 6
      entries
    • 16
      comments
    • 2412
      views

    Recent Entries

    • On Writing: Creating a World vs Telling a Story
    • Koukyuu Shoufu Review
    • Japanese Learning for VN's: Skills
    • Gurenka Part 2 (End)
    • Gurenka Part 1: Common + Elsrise's Route

    

    Latest Entry
    

    On Writing: Creating a World vs Telling a Story

    On my journey to try and write a complete story, I found it incredibly satisfying creating my story's universe. Mostly characters, relevant parties, and cause and effect. So after a few months of creating, I end up with a decent amount of details and a fair chunk of my story plot filled in.

     

    But I haven't written a story. In fact, I haven't even completed a single scene in it's entirety.

    Strange.

     

    These "details", feel so integral to the story. I feel like I'm creating the story. And yet when I google "how to writing", everything is dead focused on the scene: making the perfect scene, the build-up of scenes, scene dialogue, etc.

     

    It seems like our focuses are different.

     

    Anyways, without going into how modern writing is too presentation focused, let me lay out these two contrasting features which constitute a story.

     

    A World

     

    The world of a story is its own characters, and their thoughts, interactions, histories, and details.

    And a timeline of events with explanation of cause and effect.

     

    To me as a writer, a world is already the story. Creating the locations, characters, and happenings. Just like how facts and forensic evidence can tell a story, the existence of this separate world, it's characters and events makes it a story to me.

     

    Telling a Story

    However, there is another huge element in stories. That is, how we convey them.

    When we talk about a good writer, we often applaud their gripping text, captivating storylines. A good part of that is the art of presentation. The first implication of presentation is that of selection. Not every fact and character's thought reaches the reader's eyes, and certainly not every cause and effect is layed out.

     

    A story consists of a series of scenes which convey the journey, and also bring the reader through the build-up and through the climax of the story.

     

    Beyond that, a story has description, which helps the reader to imagine the scene and put them there. 

     

    A scene can have a mood, which immerses the player. It's possible to like a scene just for it's mood. Note this mood is a very subjective thing which is both conveyed and imagined. A mood might also might suggest something about the character's lines of thoughts, or it might connect to the punch line of the scene.

     

    A narrator can use different tones, which achieve similar effect to a mood. For example, the ironic tone in the narration of the post apocalyptic world SukaSuka encourages us to grin painfully as we hear about curious history and the downfall of foolish parties, deserving and tragic alike. A caustic tone in another post-apocalyptic story could be emphasizing to the reader that human lives matters little here. Of course, the writer could offer up these ideas directly, but a tone or mood simply hints at them.

     

    Mostly what these things contribute to is to bestow an experience to the player. This is a subjective experience which is distinct from the world that the author created. Before you think I'm saying "objective rulz", I note that it is possible for a story's universe to have certain emotions or ideas that permeate through it, which the author was trying to convey in the first place.

     

    I guess this is why they talk about stories often having an over-arching message. I personally am not a big fan of stories having a primary message, though that it is definitely something which can be done. However, even without having a message, stories usually end up effectively talking about something. This is because they inspire us to think about the phenomena/conflict that they depict.

     

     

    In closing, my fellow VN readers, I leave you with this. Think about a story you've read or are writing.

     

    Does the world exist for the sake of the telling, or does the telling exist on behalf of conveying the world? 

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17. 

    VN Thoughts

    A blog by Larxe1

    • 4
      entries
    • 1
      comment
    • 266
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai Thoughts 1
    • Sugar*Style thoughts
    • Sorceress＊Alive! ~the World's End Fallen Star~ Tho…
    • Sorceress＊Alive! ~the World's End Fallen Star~ Tho…

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai Thoughts 1

    (Light spoilers)

    Wow this game is long as hell. What made the game so long is how wordy it is. As a writer myself, I got irritated as why can't the author just be concise and straight to the point. I don't mind if it has an insanely long paragraph I'll read it as long as it feels important, which Oretsuba's writing fails at. I don't need a whole paragraph describing how Takashi bought something at the vending machine. I'm guessing that the aim was to create a strong image by describing it a lot. Sure, I did imagine the environment quite well but it honestly was boring at some times, like I just wanted the writer to get to the point.

    On the pros of the writing, it does incredibly well in creating a living city. It really felt like a real city with real residents with their own lives. There is a ton of sub-characters that contributes to the "alive" feeling of the city. The characters don't live for the plot. Now that I'm writing my thoughts, I don't there was much of a plot rather than the psychological issues of the protagonists. I'm someone who has grown to hate games without plot and making me play a game like this is quite an achievement. I'm not saying there's no plot in Oretsuba but compared to how dense the writing is, the story is quite light. But somehow, it manages to catch your interest. It felt like people watching. You just watch interesting people live and go in their daily life and that's intriguing in it's own way.

    It also makes sense on how even if this game is a classic,popular and a lot of time has passed and still it didn't have a translation was because of HOW HARD THIS IS TO TRANSLATE. TOO MANY KANJI PUNS. It's incredibly hard to translate the quirks and talking characteristics of all the protagonists. They all have DISTINCT personalities that can be found in how they think and talk but It's hard to put that into english. Japanese sentences can have a lot of nuance and connotations that is hard to put into english.

    For me the real stars of Oretsuba was the protagonists. I have only finished Asuka and Hiyoko's route and it was short but done well. The routes reflect the protagonist, it felt more like the PROTAGONIST's routes rather than the heroines. I actually like it because the protags are well written and one of the best protags I have read. They're all human with their own personality. I was incredibly happy when the protagonists interact with each other because they play well with each other. If all of the personalities were split within different bodies and formed a family, I would be willing to read that. They really felt like some kind of fucked-up brotherhood but they care for each other.

     

    Haneda Takashi is the first protagonist, it really hurt to read the first time because of how ignorant he is on his situation. There were many times I just wanted for someone in the game to support and cheer him up, he was just so precious and innocent.

    Chitose Shuusuke   is the second protagonist. He's the total opposite of Takashi. He's one of the most funny and sociable people I've seen in the game. I sympathized with him a lot considering we almost have the same personality. Beyond his light and talkative facade is someone who is incredibly frail and has trouble facing conflicts. It's a common thing to  see in people who are incredibly agreeable and sociable that deep down those are just defense mechanisms to avoid getting hurt.

    I'll write more about the next protagonists when I finish their routes.

    Watarai Asuka- It BOTHERED ME ALOT THAT THEY WERE STILL TALKING ON LAST NAME TERMS EVEN IN THE TIME SKIP. Honestly I was excited to play her route the whole time since she felt different from most heroines and yeah she was totally different. Although the concept of "school idol with a hidden personality" is an overused template, her's was done well. I loved her story in the fandisk, technically not HER story but it was a subplot in Shuusuke's. Makes you think not everyone has a happy ending just like reailty.

    Skipped Miyako's. It's funny in the fandisk that she said "Why do I have a route, it felt unnatural". Wish that route could have went to Ai's ( I know she had a route but it wasn't written by the original author) or  Kinako.

    Tamaizumi Hiyoko - CUTEEEEEE. She's a total tsundere but she is cute. She has a lot of problems hiding in her chest which Shuusuke forces out and solves it.

    I got lazy half way writing this Lol but this game lives up to it's reputation. I don't know how many hours I've put into this game but it's certainly more than White Album 2 or ChusinGura.

    After I finish the game, I'll try to write a more comprehensive post, along with the next protagonists and heroines.

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18. Disearnestly Disearnest

    A blog by Zakamutt

    • 34
      entries
    • 62
      comments
    • 5145
      views

    Recent Entries

    • So I finished a tl and shit
    • VNs I read in 2018: Retrospective
    • Translation by example #1: わた死
    • Shit I helped translate added
    • Biman1 tl is shit confirmed

    

    Latest Entry
    

    So I finished a tl and shit

    …And you probably know about it already if you know me, but anyway, my own #brand is Memeshii Translations apparently. Since you’re here, have some information on the experience of working with the paltry tools available:

    *The linecount had to be the exact same or the insertion tool would crash with an unhandled exception.

    *Some lines had a linebreak in the original; these were joined together engine wise so they had to be line broken no matter what. Usually this wasn’t a problem, but some lines ended up short in english but still needed a linebreak so they look wonky, and the second line in-game had two lines that wanted to be long and couldn’t be split so it was kind of hell to fit.

    *Weeb quotes 「」 had to be used or the engine wouldn’t read it as a spoken line.

    *One line was turned from speech to narration for flow reasons (it was like suu haa or some shit) by removing the speechtag annotation in front.

    *There was no manual linebreak code I could use (mandated ones were just CRLF linebreak, and could only been used for that specific line). However, the engine does automatically line-break on a character level, and seems to be more or less monospace. So I ended up doing some of the line-breaking in this truly kami manner, checking it manually ingame over like 5 iterations:

    

    す＠ is Sumire; あ＠ is Azami

    *The extracted yscfg.ybn file had the window title at the end in plaintext. But the title seemed to be read in 2 char blocks or something which meant the title ended up as either “The world ends tomorrowA” or “The world ends tomorrowb” after insertion. I fixed this by adding a space after the name.

    *The nametags were in a different script than the scenario but they were just text strings, so I could just edit them

    *Same for the exit message when pressing the cross at the top right

    *Since we used the “spoken line” format I had to convert this to the japanese quotation brackets. Kotlin code for you to meme at:

    

    oh, java strings are immutable, fuck… fiiine I’ll your it your goddamn way

    This is probably half the reason why any in-line quotes ingame are single quotes; I actually edited a pair of doubles because I couldn’t be arsed to clean up the script after the fixer code worked on it… or something.

    Okay since you read this far some stats; I used Mediafire for the release because it gives download counts. It seems to update daily or something. First update was 63 downloads. Second was 89. I had 66 pageviews the blog release post on feb 14 and have 178 so far for feb 15. 89/244 gives us a ~36% download rate per view, not too bad. The About page seems to have gotten like, 8 views. The dedicated asuowa tl page has 7.

    So uhh I guess I have to tl more shinimasu now.

    fuck

     

    
    

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19. 

    Reading Ginharu Very Slowly

    A blog by Flutterz

    • 18
      entries
    • 48
      comments
    • 2249
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #18
    • Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #17
    • Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #16
    • Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #15
    • Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #14

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Reading Ginharu Very Slowly #18

    Been busy for a while, but this time I only stopped for a few months rather than a few years

    Spoiler

    Immediately after the last scene we get a scene of Yukito trying to sleep while Emir is banging a chick right across the room. Apparently the dude is a player  She's like "this is kinda weird, doing this so close to your roommate" but Emir assures her that Yukito is asleep... but he was only pretending.

    After that we skip a few days and apparently that's been a regular occurrence, so Yukito has had to invest in some earplugs. But they apparently got into an argument and broke up, so maybe he didn't need the earplugs after all...? Emir seems very upset by the break-up, but when Yukito tells him he'll find another one soon enough Emir says that he couldn't possibly understand his feelings because Yukito's been in a relationship ever since middle school. Eventually Yukito convinces Emir to go volunteer with him because there's plenty of girls there and apparently there's going to be a party later on. We then switch to Bethly who, along with Lilian, is apparently going to said party.

    

    Bethly: "There was a welcome party not too long ago... is it ok to party so much...?"

    I guess Bethly's never heard of a party school

    They get to the party and pay the entrance fee (do parties normally have an entrance fee? I wouldn't know cause I've never been to one) and are deciding what to eat.

    

    Bethly: "...as expected, they don't have Japanese food..."

    Now that's definitely not normal. Sure, there aren't quite as many Japanese people as there are Chinese people in Tronto, but there's still plenty of Japanese food. She decides that she should make some Japanese food for Yukito later.

    

    Lilian: "...what are you laughing about?"

    

    Lilian: ""My beloved would be delighted if there was Japanese food"... is that what you were thinking?"

    Yeah, that's pretty much spot on what she was thinking. Bethly ends up going for some vegetarian meat-substitute soup and actually likes it. Lilian rightly rebukes her, though.

    

    Lilian: "Stop. I like real meat."

    And she takes a big bite out of her chicken.

    

    Jake: "Hey, you're eating well!"

    Is this Lilian's boyfriend? They have similar clothes and it's a white guy and a Chinese girl in Tronto... they must be dating. But apparently not because they both introduce themselves after he starts hitting on Bethly. When Yukito and Emir shows up it turns out he's kind of a racist too because he talks down to them for being exchange students. Eventually they get rid of him, but something tells me we'll see him again.

    

    Bethly: "...hey, can I join the next volunteer thing you're doing?"

    They decide to help the volunteer group prep for Culture Day, and Lilian even says she might join too. The scene ends with Bethly offering Yukito some of her fake meat soup.

    A few days later Emir and Yukito are talking about how cold it's getting, and how to Yukito it's reminiscent of home and Emir, being from South Africa, still can't get used to it. The first flakes of snow falling remind Yukito of his pals back in Japan, and he wonders how they're all doing.

    Once they get to class, the professor informs everyone that they did absolute dogshit on the test and had the lowest average she'd seen in years. She recommends that those who aren't certain about their grade drop the course and do something else with their lives. Then this dickhead chimes in

    

    Jake: "You hear that, transfer students?"

    

    Jake: "Do you have to go back home if you fail a year?"

    Also his voice acting is very different in terms of audio balance. Emir's VA just about screams his replies, meanwhile Jake's VA sounds like he's whispering his lines under a blanket in the middle of the night, trying not to wake his parents up.

    He (sarcastically) wishes them luck, in response to which the professor calls him out.

    

    Shannon: "Your essay was one the worst ones. Worry about your own grades before you worry about others' grades."

    

    Shannon: "Have you packed your bags for your trip home yet?"

    Oof, roasted.

    Probably going to end this entry here. I originally started it in early February but then got busy again. It's a short entry, but I want to post it so that I'm remotivated to read more, and also because I'm worried the forums are going to get Thanos'd by Tay and I don't want to spend hours on a blog post only to have it get rolled back.

     

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20. 

    Anti-Blonde Blog

    A blog by Kiriririri

    • 13
      entries
    • 95
      comments
    • 1932
      views

    Recent Entries

    • 25 Visual Novels One Should Read In 2019
    • Top 10 Reasons To Learn Japanese (or not)
    • Why Yuuko is the best girl in Kirikoi?
    • Why you should play Summer Pockets
    • Konbanwanchiwaorsomething

    

    Latest Entry
    

    25 Visual Novels One Should Read In 2019

    It is not uncommon to see people in mainstream news sources dismiss visual novels, if they’re even mentioned. Born of misconceptions such as belief that Japanese media is often “inferior”; a belief that they “aren’t video games” (despite copious evidence regarding their format and presentation suggesting them to be a different medium entirely); and a difficulty in easily describing and discussing often lengthy and complex works, journalists and other types of discussions tend to ignore them, only trying to focus on shorter, easier to discuss western works that, often, have a mere fraction of the budget and artistic ambition. It’s very telling that the mainstream press described freeware hit Doki Doki Literature Club as a masterpiece, while the majority of the VN community dismissed it as a mediocre horror game.

     

    That does not have to be the case, however. Here, I shall discuss a great number of this medium’s greatest achievements, outlining why they work the way they do. Hopefully, with this, transcribed from the words of my own and others in the community, I believe we can truly enlighten people about what this medium is capable of. If you see one that interests you, read it. If you see one that’s localization isn’t out yet or doesn't even have one yet, build up interest in it getting one. Who knows, you may be surprised by what you find.

     

    1. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    2. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    3. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    4. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    5. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    6. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    7. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    8. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    9. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    10. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    11. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    12. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    13. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    14. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    15. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    16. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    17. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    18. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    19. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    20. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    21. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    22. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

     

    23. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

    24. Kin'iro Loveriche -Golden Time-

    

    Original Release Date: 2019-02-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. Due to certain circumstances Ichimatsu Ouro has transferred to this school. Three months have passed since then and Christmas. Just right before New Year is when this new tale starts. Even if a new year starts, the golden time won't end. The colorful golden time will continue surely forever.

    Why You Should Read It: See before. ↑

    25. Kin'iro Loveriche

    

    Original Release Date: 2017-12-22

    Developer: Saga Planets

    Scenario Writer: Umbrellaman

    Genre: Romance, Shounen, Slife of Life, Shoujo, Drama, Seinen, Death

    Severity of Content: Max

    Translation Status: None

     

    The Story: Noble Private Academy: it is where the ladies and gentlemen of the future are raised. At this boarding school, students not only learn basic education, but are also taught how to be dignified. This year is especially unique since royalty from the small Scandinavian country of Sortilège were invited to the school. Ouro caught the eye of the princess Sylvia after a certain incident, which led to him being beaten up at the school and ultimately placed into a vacant room in the girls’ dormitory.

    Why You Should Read It: When one begins reading Kin'iro Loveriche, one might initially be left wondering why you’re reading it. While it has good production values, an entertaining enough cast and some genuinely funny comedy, it feels like little more than a generic dating sim that one will forget about within days of finishing. While there is a noticeable emphasis on the girls’ physical features, blonde hair, this hardly seems like worth paying attention to.

    This decidedly changes when one enters any heroine route, and the reader realises that the entire visual novel they just read through was little more than a prologue. Both Ouro and the reader find themselves in a completely different world, with no choice but to completely change how they view everything around them. At times, Ouro's difficulty to adjust to the rules of the elite world can be frustrating, but the reader themselves will often struggle to do the same. One who has never seen elites cannot truly understand it, after all.

    What is especially impressive is that the majority of the characters don’t really change per se. What the reader is given is, on the paper, fairly flat and stock rom-com characters, but who become a genuinely engrossing ensemble once the reader meets them within a new context.

    The presentation of Kin'iro Loveriche also deserves special mention. Unlike most visual novels, which rely on their text, static sprites, backgrounds and sound effects, Kin'iro Loveriche utilizes a more complex kind of visual communication. Character sprites have blonde hair. The sprites themselves move around the backgrounds in such ways to properly communicate a blonde hair. There are dozens of graphics which depict the interface of hair, the hails of blondness and movement of the hair. Reading Kin'iro Loveriche is like going to a barber.

    It is when one reaches true route, the real meat of the narrative, that Kin'iro Loveriche becomes an explosion of emotion. After hours of build-up, the reader is thrust into the world of unfairness. It is a decidedly brutal tale which pulls no punches in showing the suffering on display. The fight is intense and tragic, with the ever constant feeling of the heroine never having odds in their favour. Character you have spent tens of hours with, perish. It is not a happy experience.

    Regardless of the despair, however, Kin'iro Loveriche tells a story which still remains virtuous and enables one to push forward. Its sheer epic scope and complexity enables it to always be exciting and unique, and its moments outside of action always savour emotion, while a good number of valuable twists keeps the momentum going onward. It is a truly incredible experience and, while it might take a little while to get there, is one that should definitely never be missed by anyone.

    

     

     

     

    Uguu~

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21. Learning How To Learn Series

    A blog by Kenshin_sama

    • 4
      entries
    • 17
      comments
    • 497
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Learning How To Learn Japanese, Part 4: Addressing…
    • Learning How To Learn Japanese, Part 3: Productivi…
    • Learning How To Learn Japanese, Part 2: How to Ank…
    • Learning How To Learn Japanese, Part 1: Obligatory…

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Learning How To Learn Japanese, Part 4: Addressing Mental Health Issues

    For those who suffer from any sort of mental health issue, you are probably going to have the worst time staying committed to studying. But with the right kind of mindset and a practical approach, you may find yourself well within reach of your goal. While this guide is not a suitable replacement for real treatment from a specialist, it may give you a few ideas on how to deal with your own issues. But everyone has their own unique issues and complications, so there isn’t a single correct answer for everybody.

     

    Oh and be very careful about self-diagnosing these types of illnesses. Mental health is a complicated subject that requires a lot of training to make the correct judgment, so please seek confirmation from a professional before you decide to take on that kind of baggage. Sadness and fear, even on a regular basis, are normal human emotions. It’s only when they affect you in an abnormal way (which, again, needs a proper diagnosis) that you need to be concerned.

     

    Okay, so some of you may have noticed I’ve been severely behind on updating my blog. Well, as it turns out, the solution I had in mind for anxiety didn’t pan out very well. I had gone through another bout of anxiety, lagged behind on my homework, and was left with virtually no time to put out another post. But I’m actually really happy I delayed it since I’ve gained so much valuable knowledge about anxiety since September.

     

    When I initially started writing this entry, I had written about the success I was having with positive self-talk. At the time, I was extremely focused on repeating a single line to myself in order to stay motivated, and it was working for a good while. But see, once the idea had lost its novelty after a couple months, I wasn’t getting any kind of benefit from it. I did feel a sense of confidence I hadn’t felt in a long time, and it was making me more productive, but it wasn’t the answer I was looking for. What I’ve learned since then is that I need more than false confidence to drive me forward, and I think I may have come up with a more reliable way of coping with my emotions. I’m still using positive self-talk in order to combat negative thinking, but I’m doing so in a much less specific way.

     

    For my most recent episode, I was unable to pull myself out of it, but I had managed to escape after two whole months of misery by focusing on the more crucial flaws with my mindset. I happened upon a simple, yet insightful comment on Quora that helped me ground my thoughts and properly outline my path to improvement. One of my key takeaways from this was to focus on what could happen rather than what has happened already. If your mind is stuck in the past and all you can do is think about is how much you haven’t accomplished, you won’t have much to look forward to. Additionally, you need to accept the problems you have in front of you and see them more as opportunities for growth rather than as barriers. If you can find a solution to the problem at hand, then you’ve exercised the part of your brain that solves problems. And if you can’t find a solution, then your accomplishments will be much more meaningful because you had to jump through extra hoops to succeed.

     

    Another issue I’ve had the most difficulty with is blaming my problems on everything. I can’t get good sleep because of my noisy surroundings, I’m not losing weight because of all the sweets around the house, I can’t concentrate well because I’m under a lot of stress, I’m unhappy because I can’t afford to support my emotional needs, my life sucks because society sucks, my parents are the reason I’m not that smart, and so on and so forth. I was always thinking about how much crap I had working against me, and yet I never wanted to see myself as the source of my misfortune. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to preach personal responsibility or anything as mundane as that. I do understand that the human mind is easily susceptible to influence, and that we aren’t in full control of our decisions or circumstances. However, I do think there is something to be gained by taking ownership of your problems. What this does is take you out of a state of hopelessness and entrapment, and empowers you to pursue your goals further. When you decide to take life into your own hands, you can then mold it into something you want it to be.

     

    Probably the most important lesson I’ve learned is to accept myself for who am. I am a nervous wreck. I freak out whenever I set out to do any kind of improvement. Having to make major life adjustments always puts me on edge. I will panic even as I’m handing in a homework assignment, terrified of how the professor will grade it. And my response to these dilemmas has been to either pretend the fear isn’t there, convince myself that I can’t keep living this way, or beat myself up when I let my nervousness get the better of me. But instead of just working against my anxiety, I decided it was time I started working alongside it and let it be. What I’ve come to understand since then is that fear hurts my motivation a lot more than it does my performance, so I don’t even need to acknowledge it as an obstacle. I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s better to focus on resolving issues that I have immediate control over rather than the ones I can’t do anything about. There is still chance I’ll be able to find a fix eventually, but I have no way of knowing what that is at this very moment. And you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.

     

    And to wrap things up, I’ll jot a few quick tips you may have heard about already, but are still important to know. There won’t always be an ideal time to get something done; do it anyways. Try to focus on what went right rather than the opposite. Don’t be afraid to work hard; working hard will generally give you advantage over others. Finish what you’ve started, even after it loses its novelty. Don’t ever feel discouraged if you can’t solve a problem in a timely manner.

     

    Afterword:
    So, did anyone miss me at all? Yeah, this one was a real doozy. I was putting myself through even more stress trying to find time for this blog during college, but I wound up having to wait until Winter break to finish writing this entry. Thankfully I won’t have any more classes to take until next year, so I’ll have all the time I need to keep this blog up and running… and to get caught up on all the dust I’ve let accumulate in my room and bathroom. Oh and I started my Japanese studies back up again yesterday too! I’ve been kinda behind on them up until now due to excessive stress (to the point of neck injury) and my scramble to get homework turned in on time, but I’m 50% sure I’ll be fine in the near future.

     

    Next week’s topic will be on living a healthy lifestyle. Once you’re able to find proper coping methods, the next step toward building momentum is figuring out how to best optimize all the other factors that impact your brain’s performance.

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22. 

    Lemurian Ruins

    A blog by LemiusK

    • 8
      entries
    • 37
      comments
    • 264
      views

    Recent Entries

    • The Different Treatment of Sex Scenes: Japan vs. A…
    • Reorganizing My Thoughts on Ever17 (To Be Revised …
    • Steins;Gate Elite Thoughts
    • Yet Another Reason Why I Shouldn't Play Chaos;Head…
    • Aoishiro's Infodump is Boring and Infuriating (and…

    

    Latest Entry
    

    The Different Treatment of Sex Scenes: Japan vs. America

    Two years ago, Warner Brothers released an adaptation of their highly controversial graphic novel, "The Killing Joke", and there was an additional scene previously non-existing in the book: Batigirl fucking Batman. Yeah, fucking Batman. Let's just call it what it is.

    Of course, with the kind of relationship both characters previously had towards each other (a father and daughter kind), the Internet went crazy. America went crazy. It was treated as disgusting and highly inappropriate. The film received mixed reviews and was harshly criticized.

    Fast-forward to 2018, when I posted my thoughts regarding Swan Song and its unnecessary sex scene. And that got me thinking about the voice-acting process... What if Tara Strong (voice of Barbara Gordon in the aforementioned film) was asked to similarly voiced a sex scene like that? Think about it. Think about the reactions of American voice actresses. "What is this? I didn't sign up for pornography." And yet, thousands of Japanese VAs have willingly put so much effort into voicing cringeworthy sex scenes for very serious stories like "The Fruit of Grisaia" or "G-Senjou no Maou".

    It's rather interesting how the two culture treats sex as a taboo (or not). I've always known Japan was more promiscuous when it comes to sex, being rather open-minded to it. But this comparison got me wondering about the kind of thoughts VAs must be having voicing serious dramas while still being asked to moan in orgasm. Must be an interesting voicing session.

    Edit: 10 minutes after writing this, I stumbled onto another sex scene in Kara no Shoujo. It's as if you'll accidentally trip into a sex scene just wandering around Japan.

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23. 

    Divided by Rei

    A blog by Deep Blue

    • 9
      entries
    • 49
      comments
    • 1802
      views

    Recent Entries

    • Kokuhaku review
    • Tsuisou no Augment
    • Another tutorial to play VNs.
    • Fruit of the poisonous tree (?) random thoughts.
    • Gin'iro Haruka general thoughts.

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Kokuhaku review

    Source: https://j-addicts.de/kokuhaku/ (shameless self-promotion xD )

     

    

    Source: https://j-addicts.de/kokuhaku/ (shameless self-promotion xD )

     

    Kokuhaku or “confession” is a short VN developed by a company called Song Wing which mainly work in sound design, casting actors etc basically all related to sound and music and this is their only work as game developers.

     

    The plot, uuggghh.

    The plot in this VN is nonexistent and plain bland.
    The main character is your typical super popular guy and all the girls are in love with him. Why? Who cares, they just are! The game is more like a kinetic VN but lets you choose which girl you want to pick at the end. Throughout the painfully 1-2 hours of reading, each one of the bland and boring heroines will confess their love to the main character without much explanation and out of the blue. These girls are the cliché of the cliché,
    Childhood friend? ☑.
    Sister? ☑.
    Shy girl? ☑.
    Tsundere? ☑.
    Interesting and well-developed heroine?☒.

     

    Once all the girls confessed their love you will reach the end, there you recall all the confession at once and that’s when you get to pick which of those confessions you take, thus picking a certain girl and confess your love back to her. Then a crappy CG shows up and it’s the end. Luckily there is no harem ending.
    And no I didn't omit anything, you read 10 min and a girl confess her love without warning then the other and so on and that's it...

     

    

    (She confessed her love out of the blue in the middle of a class O.o)

    If you want to put it bluntly, there are 4 cockroaches and you are a stinky piece of meat and for no reason at all the cockroaches want that putrid meat no matter what. If you think this analogy is in bad taste, GOOD! Then you understand how playing this VN feels.
    It’s also an all ages so you won't see any type of eroge or sexual innuendo at all.

    

    (Pick your ending)

     

    Music and Art.

    The music while not outstanding it does the job same as the art, it’s a bit on the unique side but nothing that will make it stand out.

    The redeeming factor.

    So you are probably wondering why the hell is this review for then? Well, as I said earlier the company that made this VN works in the sound industry and here is the catch and what makes this VN partially redeemable. You can choose the voice acting of each heroine from 4 voice actresses when you start the game, which are (IMO) some of the best in the industry itself. 

    

     (The screen to select the voice acting Noto Mamiko https://vndb.org/s468 , Tsuji Ayumi https://vndb.org/s271 , Horie Yui https://vndb.org/s46 , Hirano Aya https://vndb.org/s1500 )

     

    But that’s not the most impressive thing, the best part is that you can choose only 1 heroine to do the voice acting of the 4 heroines.
    Basically this game was more like a technical concept to show how an actress can interpret several roles at the same time, it’s more like a demonstration project rather than a game but it was sold as a proper game... the question is why they didn't bother to write a decent plot rather than this bland abomination if they were doing it anyway... Also, the writer is not a nobody without recognition in the industry so it’s really mind boggling why they approached this project in this particular way...
    Regarding the voice acting itself it’s actually pretty good and the concept itself works amazingly well. Playing the game with the same actress doing all the voices is interesting, to say the least.
    So as a concept this is really interesting at least on a technical level. Having 4 heroines and 4 actresses letting you mixing up whatever you want, theoretically there are countless and countless of hours for you to enjoy by playing with all the variations (You do the math)...  but in reality after 1 time you will want to throw this game in the garbage bin and let it rot forever there where it belongs.

     

    Final score.

    Now, saying how much of a technical accomplishment something is where you can only tell by listening it would be unfair so I recorded a demonstration so everyone can judge for themselves.

     

    Here it is, rejoice (I recommend watching it in full-screen):

     

     

    If you want to read more reviews like this one check out: https://j-addicts.de/

     

     

     

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24. 

    Sanahtlig's Corner

    A blog by sanahtlig

    • 55
      entries
    • 169
      comments
    • 79672
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    Recent Entries

    • Kagura Games commits to uncensored releases after …
    • Strategy H-RPG Venus Blood Frontier Kickstarter: W…
    • Valve opens Steam to uncensored eroge and hentai g…
    • SRPG eroge Venus Blood Frontier to get an English …
    • MangaGamer commits to free uncensor patches for St…

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Kagura Games commits to uncensored releases after fan backlash

    

    Staggered by fan backlash over its censorship of President Yukino, Kagura Games has partnered with JAST and MangaGamer to provide uncensored releases.

    Kagura Games commits to uncensored releases after fan backlash

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25. 

    Ranzo's Rancid Ramblings

    A blog by Ranzo

    • 12
      entries
    • 52
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    • 2883
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    Recent Entries

    • Ten More Yuri Series You Need To Read Before I Des…
    • Ten Yuri Series You Need To Read Before I Destroy …
    • Navagating The Twisted Thorns Of Fuwa Part 1
    • Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate: The Review
    • Aoishiro The Review

    

    Latest Entry
    

    Ten More Yuri Series You Need To Read Before I Destroy You, And Everything You Have Ever Loved

    Ten More Yuri Series You Need To Read Before I Destroy You, And Everything You Have Ever Loved

    

    And welcome to yet another top ten yuri reading list. This is where I attach a arbitrary rank to something based on my general enjoyment of it.

    This time around I want to focus more attention on relatively obscure yuri series that might have been passed up or forgotten. This is for people who are tired of the old standard yuri tale and need something different. So, on that note, here is 10 more yuri series that you should read before I destroy you and everything you ever held dear. (Oh and if you haven't check out my first yuri list here.)

     

    Number 1. After Hours

    by Yuhta Nishio

    Statues: Complete, with two volume released in English

    

    If there is one thing that the yuri sub genre needs more than anything else is a change in location. For so long most yuri mangaka have been content to only ever set their creations in a High School the most boring setting of them all. Not only that but they were for the most part all girl schools with nary a male in sight. After Hours is a different beast all together and features actual adults in actual adult situations doing adult things. It is nothing short of a revelation. After Hours is a manga about the adventures of two women in Kei and Emi in the vibrant nightlife of Tokyo. Emi, a 24 year old unemployed young woman meets Kei at a nightclub after being ditched by her friend.

    Emi ends up going home with Kei that night and they begin something of a interesting relationship. One of the most striking things about this story is how plausible it all is. The fact that she meets Kei at a club and goes home with her sounds so realistic. Emi's struggle in trying to find her footing in the world also feels more relatable since it is coming from an actual adult instead of some high school girl. Many times the world that a yuri story takes place in seems so far removed from our world. They exist in some fantasy version of Japan where no men exist except in a few crowd shots. After Hours goes a different route and feels connected to the real world even if it is still a work of fiction. Not only that but it features a diverse cast of characters other than the two leads and they are each unique and distinct. So many times in manga and anime in general the only difference between certain characters are their hairstyle. That is not the case with this cast and they strengthen the story and help give it shape. The combination of all those factors make After Hours into a rewarding and engaging read.

    

    Number 2. Pieta

    By, Haruno Nanae

    Status: Completed

    

    There are some manga series that come along that are true gems that deserve to be noticed. Pieta is that sort of manga, it is beautiful and impactful. Named after the iconic statue by Michelangelo Pieta tells the story of the budding relationship between Sahoko and Rio. One thing that is striking about the manga is its melancholy nature and it seeps through the pages. Haruno is unafraid to tackle tough topics like depression and handles it in a way that I haven't seen in other similar series. Many yuri series feature so called damaged girls that have gone through trauma of some nature, but something about it seems a bit unreal.

    Pieta, on the other hand is completely grounded and has characters actually talk about their emotions and troubles. Pieta also has a physiologist couple who provide an even stronger framework around the series. This really makes it stand apart from the crowd and gives it a character all of its own. The art is very unique as well and add to it's bittersweet charm. Like a cherry on top, Sahoko is one of the strongest and most emotionally mature protagonists I've encountered in a story. There really needs to be more stories like this one.

    

    Number 3. Yuunagi Marbled

    by Momono Moto 

    Status: Completed

    

    Personally, I think the one thing every so called great story needs is a strong protagonist. It is not always provided and unless the plot or other characters are able to do some series heavy lifting the story will fall apart. For the yuri genre a lot of the protagonists have not deviated much from the blueprint set out in the first yuri ever Shiroi Heya no Futari. They are usually very angsty indecisive and are often easily jerked around by the quintessential dark haired beauty that every yuri are court ordered to have. This particular manga is different however and it is also the reason it is so high on my list. All of it has to deal with the strength of the protagonist. One evening Enna is walking her dog down a strip of coastline when she spots a forlorn dark haired girl standing in the shallows. She is initially confused as to why she is there and wonders if it might be a suicide attempt. They lock eyes and Enna goes on her way.

    The next day at school she and her class gets ready to greet a new transfer student that just so happens to be the mysterious beauty she encountered the other day. Enna increasingly finds herself drawn to the lonely girl named Mshio without quite understanding why. What makes Enna so great is that she acts completely opposite to how we assume typical yuri protagonist would act. She is self assured and proactive and unwilling to be consumed with angst and indecisiveness like some other protagonists I could mention (you know who they are.) With a great degree of care and sweetness she sets to work on her "broken girl" and begins the healing process with seconds to spare.

    This story could have easily have lasted over ten volumes if it had any other protagonist helming it but with Enna in control it lasts for only two very satisfying volumes. There were so many times in the manga where Enna would break from the established angsty norm in exciting ways.

    For example, when Mishio kisses Enna for the first time Enna pushes her away but not because she is disgusted or shocked by the idea that two girls are kissing. No, it is because she simply doesn't know how to breath while being kissed. It is so unlike Moto to write a story like this since some of her other yuri manga's feature some of the most angsty protagonists around. The glory of Enna should definitely be witnessed first hand.

    

    (Behold Enna, the Breaker of Angst)

    Number 4. Cirque Arachne

    By, Saida Nika

    Status: Complete

    

    I've never been to the circus though I did want to go just to see how it was, and a part of me thought about running away to the circus like every young kid. If it is anything like Cirque Arachne then I've been really missing out. This story named after the weaver cursed by Athena into becoming the first spider is about love found on the tight rope. Teti is the principal star of this tale and she takes center stage and shines all the more brilliantly for it. She is a traveling performer who finds a welcome home at the Cirque Arachne.

    There, she meets the lovely acrobat Charlotte who is a very driven woman determined not to let anyone into the little world she's created for herself. They are partnered together and inevitably the two become closer. Now, they must determine what to do with their complicated feeling intermingled with their differences. What really makes this story stand out from the crowd is the absolutely beautiful artwork. It is visually stunning the way it flows and how fluid their movements are. The term poetry in motion is thrown out a lot but it is very applicable here. The story is another standout and it is told skillfully with a great degree of warmth and sincerity. It deserves to be read.

    Number 5. Qualia the Purple

    by Tsunashima Shirou and Ueo Hisamitsu

    Status: Complete

    

    One of the flaws of many yuri series is their narrow scope, narratively speaking. They are primarily concerned with the development and fruition of the relationship between two women. Now, there might be an underlying story and conflicts that may come between them but for the most part it is chiefly about romance. The problem with this is the that it causes the genre as a whole to seem somewhat static and predictable. Many series hit familiar story beats you've seen time and time again, and are forced to rely on the strength of their characters to make it stand out from the pack.

    Qualia the Purple is such a different story from what we view as the norm that I have no comparisons to make, at least in the yuri genre. Qualia the Purple was originally a light novel by Ueo Hisamitsu that was then made into a manga with artwork by Tsunasima Shirou. This utterly unique story is very hard to explain and is honestly something that should just be read for yourself, so I won't go into much detail. The basic rundown is the odd friendship between a average tomboyish young girl named Hatou Manabu and her odd friend Marii Yukari. Yukari is a purple eyed girl who claims that people are robots instead of humans. While she just seems to be at first to be nothing but a bit of an oddball, until things soon start to happen that puts her in a different light. Surprisingly, this is at its core a deep and complex science fiction story and later on the revelations and new developments come fast and hot. Expect the unexpected with this story.

    Number 6. Clover

    By, Otsu Hiyori

    Status: Completed

    

    Otsu Hiyori is probably one of my favorite manga authors around and she has a distinctive style all her own, from her stories to her characters to her writing. The characters in the stories are normally very unique and quirky and the art style is wonderful. Clover is an interesting story about the relationships of one specific family. It is told in a different style that forgoes typical chronological formatting and tells each story out of order.

    It starts with a story about the youngest daughter of the family and goes up the oldest before bringing it back to the second youngest again. Each story is self contained and deals with the daughters relationship with different women. It serves as an good introduction to Otsu Hiyori's work.

    

    Number 7. Silver Gymnasium 

    By, Hiruno Tsukiko

    Status: Complete

    

    Silver Gymnasium is by far one of the most beautiful and just sad entries on this list. It is unique as it is set in an orphanage for young girls, and follows the trials and tribulations of several girls that reside there. It is often at once achingly and also extremely depressing.

    The writing and art style contributes to its melancholiness. I was really hit hard by it because I didn't see it coming. It is cold and bleak as the winter snow but carries with it the promise of spring. Just, remember to bring a tissue.

    

    Number 8. Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep 

    By Mizutani Fuuka

    Status: Complete

    

    Do you believe in fate? Personally, I've never been one that ascribed to that particular belief. I think the only thing I'm really fated to do is be buried in the ground when I've reached the ed of my days. Still, fate makes for some pretty good stories including this one, Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep. This somewhat unusual story concerns two girls who meet one day in a hospital. Not only are their names both Imari Kakimoto but they are in the hospital for the same injury.

    In fact, the only thing they don't have in common is that their birthdays are a day apart. Due in part by this extraordinary happenstance they become friends, however, both are harboring secrets that could put their relationship in jeopardy. This story while being short rich and dramatic, and also has one of the best character reversals I have seen. Read it, and you might start believing in fate as well.

    Number 9. Honey Crush

    By Asu Tsubaki

    Status: Complete

    

    Like a kick in the shin and a sock in the mouth from your best girl, here's another angsty yuri story set in a high school! Wait, where are you going? No, this is really great I swear! This one is about a ghost! Okay, good you stuck around. It would have been a shame if I had to drag you back by force.

    Honey Crush is a quirky story about the misadventures of Mitsu Amemiya who harbors a deep unrequited love for a girl from another school. She's also a bit of a stalker as well, but the cute kind okay? Like the kind that watch their crush from afar and wish them nothing but the best, not the ones that dig in through their trash, and plot detailed kidnapping simulations in their spare time. On one of her stalking escapades she crosses the street and this happens to her...

    

    When Mitsu comes to she realizes that not only is she dead but that she is also a ghost. Anchored to this world by her unrequited love and without any hope of becoming a spirit detective, Mitsu now must content herself with watching over her crush like a young Swayze. However, her plans are throttled yet again by the arrival of a new transfer student who not only has a prior relationship to Mitsu's crush, but is also the only one who can actually see her! This is a really heartwarming story that at times can be sweet, sad, and funny all at once. It has got a lot of charm to it and it will squeeze your heart in a vice grip while your not looking.

    Number 10. I decided to fake a marriage with my junior (♀️) to shut my parents up

    By Kodama Naoko

    Status: Complete

    

    I started with adult yuri and by God, am I going to end it with adult yuri! Okay, so the name basically says it all, isn't that nice when that happens? Like the title said, this short series is about a adult woman named Machi whom is convinced by a friend to marry her so she won't be bugged by her parents anymore. While this has the longest name on this list it is also the shortest.

    What makes this unusual is that I am completely fine with it! If you know yuri at all then the name Kodama Naoko is one that you have at the very least a passing familiarity with. She's well known for her twisted characters and soap opera like drama, with NTR: Netsuzou Trap being her most infamous creation. What makes I fake married my junior(I'm not going to type in that long a title every time I reference this) so great is that it is completely different from her other works. Machi is another one of these rare specimens who can break through angst and make clear and decisive choices when called upon. Gone are the indecisive protagonists that are only dragged along by their femme fatales. It is time for a new day, and the dawn brings Machi!

    

    Well, there you have it folks, I have gifted you with some quality yuri handpicked by yours truly. Now get out of my sight. You disgust me. Oh, and by the way...

    

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