Introduction
Welcome, fellow Fuwamembers, to the FuwaRecognition thread. Starting this March, we’ll be highlighting some of the best contributions made by our members each month. From snazzy blog articles to delicious forum threads, and perhaps even a few things more on the shitpost part of the spectrum, we'll keep an eye out for the cream of the crop. And then we'll gather them here. Just for you.
*holds up giant APPLAUSE sign*
A-hem, so this is the f
Recently I started a post of random silliness, dubbing myself your onii-chan (yep, if you're reading this or that, I'm now your onii-chan). As part of it, one particular poster (jokingly) asked to borrow $40 to buy a visual novel. I responded as to being open with the idea because I kind of am. And I actually did send $40 to a person on Twitter that I don't even know, as he needed it to pay the vet for his cat's operation. It seemed legitimate, and while I can't afford to waste money, in the big
Mmm... first, I should probably mention my first encounter with the company that made this VN, Hulotte, Imouto no Okage de Motesugite Yabai! Moteyaba was a pretty straightforward take on the 'popular protagonist that forms a harem he eventually chooses a girlfriend from' trope, and as a result, while it was decent, I didn't find anything to be particularly interesting about it. In a way the same can be said about Yomeyaba, in that it uses the same (common to about ninety percent of charage) tr
Sumireko Usami is a human from the outside world dealing in all sorts of psychic powers. She's a highschooler. She's the first president of the Secret Sealing Club, which mainly investigates the existence of other worlds, including Gensokyo and the Moon. It's also the club where two of my most beloved touhou characters (Maribel and Renko) belong to, albeit in a different timeline. She's the perpetrator behind the Urban Legend in Limbo incident- Temporarily using her powers to enter Gensokyo as a
Arika's path is... one of the ecchi-est paths I've seen in a non-nukige in a while. That is to say, Arika plays the role of the 'honor student' of the future, the ideal of the people from Yoshikazu's era. There are minor spoilers in the box below, but they were significant enough I had to box them up. Besides this, it addresses seriously a number of issues when it comes to modern child-rearing and the reasons why it has become so hard (in an oblique manner) for kids to be raised in an era wh
For those who care, I posted my thoughts on Clochette and VN activism in general in this post ( http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/975-clochette-activist-vn-makers-or-just-endless-oppai/ ). Now, a few issues with this VN. Kokonatsu (Koko kara Natsu no Innocence) very much follows in the tradition of combining science fiction, fantasy, and/or science-fantasy elements in a charage with solid scenario design and writing to create an interesting whole. In this case, it would probably be best
I'm currently playing Koko kara Natsu no Innocence, the latest VN by Clochette, a charage company specializing in busty heroines that tends to produce first-class character development and heroine stories. One aspect of Clochette that I've always thought was a bit funny was the obsession with 'shoushika', the current phenomenon in Japan where fewer and fewer young people are getting married and/or having kids. This is touched upon to one degree or another in a lot of VNs, because it is an issu
Yes, I'm going to say it right here and now... this is a kusoge. Oh, there are some good points...but unfortunately, the really half-assed way things are done between and after the most vital points kind of make this VN the crap it is. First, this VN as a whole suffers from the 'didn't go far enough' and 'not enough detail' syndromes. Even the romantic elements in this VN feel truncated, and that is usually the only story element in which charage excel. Why do I say 'didn't go far enough'? I
Magical Dears is the newest VN by one of Navel's subordinate companies, Navel Honeybell... and to be honest, I was interested to see what they would do with it. The VN itself is your standard slice-of-life charage based in an alternate Earth where magicians have been working behind the scenes to save the world since the dawn of civilization. In this world, the magicians revealed themselves when they realized that intervening behind the scenes to prevent disasters had already reached its limit
Mmm... there isn't too much extra to comment on with the Katsumi's and Michiru's paths. They are of about the same length as the previous two (which means about one and a half times as long as the average charage route) with a lot of buildup before the relationships actually form. That was my complaint with the other two, and that hasn't changed here. Similarly to the other routes, I felt that the drama actually inside the route was a bit lacking compared to the common route. Katsumi's route
Well, that was a bit of a surprise... after people's iffy ratings of the trial, I'd honestly expected this VN to be disappointing, in general, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the VN as a whole exceeded the expectations I'd had for it previously. What were those expectations? I thought it would be a mere variation on the usual 'human goes to another world, gains ultimate power, defeats the evil, and gets a harem' theme that defines most VNs that have a protagonist go to another world
From left to right- Hatate Himekaidou, Aya Shameimaru, Momiji Inubashiri & Nitori Kawashiro. This was originally meant to be a post about Aya- I'm particularly fond of Hatate so I decided to do both of them, though. That, however, proved to be a problem. If I was doing Aya and Hatate, I would never talk about Momiji. Momiji isn't terribly important to the touhouverse, but she's a beloved 4th stage midboss with a lot of fanwork on her, so I decided that I'd cover all 3 of them, since they sha
Tenshi is the only known Tennin (Celestial, in the english fanbase) of the touhou universe... Celestials can be divided in two categories; The ones who achieved enlightening and entered Nirvana and the ones who gained immortality and ascended to heaven. Incidentally, Celestials aren't truly immortal, they just constantly beat the shinigami who comes for their souls, continually extending their lifespan. Celestials are extremely rare and are generally good people- normally being Hermits (who I'
If you wonder why I'm covering her now, it's because I realized that before writing about Sanae, Youmu, Sakuya and Reisen I'll have to cover their superiors... And while doing the Scarlet sisters first would make the most sense, Yuyuko is too interesting for me not to write about her first. Yuyuko is the 1000-years old ghostly master of the Hakugyokurou- the shrine that overlooks the netherworld. As its mistress, she's has absolute authority over the world of the dead, and is amongst the most
I went ahead and did Yuzuriha's path, since it and Sera's branch off from one another. Despite this fact, Yuzuriha's path is quite distinct from Sera's, so you don't need to worry about all of the text repeating or anything like that. Yuzuriha's path does have one thing in common with Sera's though... and that is that the relation formation stage is pretty long. In both cases, there is a lot of back and forth, chasing and being chased, and if you have trouble with that, this path might be a b
Marisa Kirisame, the other main protagonist and youkai hunter of the touhou series, together with Reimu. Marisa is a human witch- unlike the other powerful humans in the series, she's the one that didn't have any special talent like Reimu's spiritual powers and Sakuya's time-manupilation abilities. She's a hard worker- the only one- and the countless hours she spent learning and perfecting her magic allowed her to become an expert in the "blowing the hell out of everything with lasers" school o
Image by Kieta Reimu. The main character of the touhou series and the current miko of the Hakurei shrine, carrying the burdens of managing the Hakurei Border and exterminating dangerous youkai. The personality of touhou characters is generally decided by the fandom, while the characters themselves only have the minimum amount of phrases needed for people to have a line on what they're thinking. This leads to, of course, several differents interpretations of how they are. In the most dark and se
So, touhou. It's a bullet hell game series that happens in a feudal-japan-like land named 幻想郷 (Gensokyo- Roughly "Land of illusion"). Gensokyo's is a sealed-off, haunted area of Japan that went missing several millenia ago. It is estimated that the region is sealed off because the youkai that lived there had a reign of terror over japan, and brave human expeditions constantly tried to exorcise and anihilate them. The vicious battles could have lasted from months to decades, but what is known is
First, I should explain why I felt a need to make a title like that... though it is really quite simple. Out of Lump of Sugar's last five VNs, three were complete kusoge. Only one of them was something worth remembering (Sekai to Sekai no Mannaka de) and the others were just downright rotten, due to their use of really stupid gimmicky progression systems (flowcharts with tons of scene-locks and going back and forth, Magical Charming's half-assed 'gameplay' etc etc) that ruined the games even
This is the newest VN by Ensemble, a subsidiary of Will which has previously specialized in 'ojousama-ge' (VNs where most or all the heroines - and sometimes the protagonist as well - are from a wealthy background). This VN takes a slightly different tack than the company's previous games... probably because of the effects of the mediocrity that was Golden Marriage and the kusoge that was Koi no Aria (incidentally, they also split off another subsidiary that specializes in ojousama-nukige, lol)
Playing: Koisuru Kimochi no Kasanekata by Ensemble. This VN is by the same company that did Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas (kamige) and Ojousama ha Gokigen Naname. The company specializes in ojousama-ge (games with mostly wealthy heroines) and generally the protagonists in their VNs are either wealthy themselves or have some special talent that makes it logical for them to be around the wealthy. There last few games have been mediocre, unfortunately... Golden Marriage wasn't bad per se... bu
