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About this blog

This is a blog primarily focusing on but not limited to VNs.  It is primarily designed to express my opinion on otaku media (jrpgs, anime, manga, LNs, VNs, etc), individual VNs, and otaku community issues.   Most of the posts are related to my VN of the Month and Random VN columns, originally started in threads in the forums. 

As of March of 2017, I'm also looking for people to help with VN of the Month.

Entries in this blog

What am I doing right now? Mid-November Editioin

For those who are wondering, I am currently replaying Unionism Quartet before moving on to A3 Days.  It has been long enough that I didn't recall most of the details, so I needed a refresher.  At the same time, I'm playing Dishonored 2, so I'm dividing my time in half between VNs and gaming right now.  I don't plan on doing a full post solely on Unionism Quartet, so I'm going to just relate a few impressions here before I finish Yulia's path (I already finished Silvia's, Jubei's, Yuno's and
Clephas

Clephas

5

Unionism Quartet A-3 Days

I'm going to be frank... for people who liked the original game and those who didn't, this is a waste of time.  Do I sound like a jerk?  I'm not trying to be... I don't think I've ever come across such a weak direct sequel (since it really is a full game).  I sampled one of the new heroines, one of the main heroines from the original game, one of the secondary heroines from the original game, one of the sub-heroines from the original game, and one of the 'extra' heroines from the original game (
Clephas

Clephas

5

Out for Jury Duty

Yay, I've been summoned for jury duty... *makes a face* That said, civil duty is civil duty, so I have to live with it interfering with my life.  The first day of my summons is tomorrow, and I've spent the last four days adjusting my sleep schedule so I don't have to do something drastic like pull an all-nighter just to get there on time.  Anyway, I got all but one of the VNs I planned to play for the month done, and that last one is being a pain in the rear, so I'd have to wait anyway
Clephas

Clephas

5

Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana and VN of the Month Announcement

... I'm going to be blunt about this... I can't  believe this was written by the same guy who wrote Nekopara, Sakura Bitmap, and Strawberry Nauts.  This VN has an overwhelming degree of impact compared to his other works, to the point where I'm even willing to consider it a kamige.  Music, music-usage, story, presentation, art, and art usage are all at their highest levels, combining to create a nakige whose impact is far out of proportion to its length (which is only about seven hours, for me).
Clephas

Clephas

5

Random VNs: Otomimi Infinity

Why did I pick this game to play?  Because, when I went into Shugaten, I was actually wanting a bit of charage goodness.  So, it seriously pissed me off when I got a mindless loli moege.  As a result, I decided to pull out one of my favorite fetish games, Otomimi Infinity.  Otomimi Infinity is based on island in a world where beast-people and humans live side by side (it isn't mentioned often enough to reinforce this, but the beast-people were originally artificial creations).  On the islan
Clephas

Clephas

5

JRPG: Tales of Berseria

It has been a while since I bought a new jrpg and played it all the way through in under six months...  To be blunt, most new jrpgs just aren't worth finishing these days.  I gave up on Atelier shortly after Mana Khemia, Square hasn't produced anything interesting in ten years (for a story-addict), and most of the best old series are dead or in semi-permanent hiatus stasis.  Before this, I played Zestiria, and if you read my comments on it, I mostly liked it, though there were some aspects
Clephas

Clephas

5

An explanation of the "Golden Age of VNs"

Some veterans of reading untranslated VNs refer to the period between 2004 and 2010 as 'The Golden Age of Visual Novels'.  However, you shouldn't really take that statement at face value, as the meaning is a bit more complex than you'd think. There are some significant differences between VNs today and VNs during that period that both made it the peak of the medium's sales in Japan and produced the greatest ratio of quality VNs to crap VNs.  One of the primary differences was that, oth
Clephas

Clephas

5

Experimental book post: The Black Jewels Trilogy

This is a test post, based on the results of the poll I posted a few weeks back.  The win was borderline, so if I don't get a reasonably large response, I won't continue to post about my conventional reading. The Black Jewels Trilogy, by Anne Bishop is one of my favorite book series of all time.  It is a dark, sensual fantasy based in a unique universe, where a race of magic aristocrats called the Blood rule three worlds, Tereille, Kaeleer, and Hell.  The main characters of the story are a
Clephas

Clephas

5

The Sad Fact about Replaying VNs

The sad fact about replaying VNs... is that VNs don't have replay value. That's not to say it isn't possible to replay a VN and enjoy it.  With many of the more complex VNs, it is impossible to take in the entire thing on your first playthrough, so it is usually worth a second one.  Others are so well-written or have such great characters that they are worth reading again and again.  Yet others are just so much fun or are so funny (games made by Rosebleu, Lamunation, etc) that they are wort
Clephas

Clephas

5

Riddle Jokers

I'm going to be blunt (as usual), Riddle Jokers is probably a sign that Yuzu Soft is starting to stagnate as a company.  I'm not trying to be mean or bashing Yuzu Soft for the sake of it... but, after finishing two paths of this game, I felt hugely exhausted, despite the fact that the paths are actually shorter than some of their other works.  The reason is fairly simple... the cast of characters this time around just isn't that interesting. Part of that is that the protagonist himself
Clephas

Clephas

5

Kari Gurashi Ren'ai

For those who are interested, here is the first real comedy VN of the year...  The protagonist, Takuma, having returned to his hometown to live alone in his family's old house, finds that it has collapsed in on itself, and, desperate for a place to stay, ends up staying at the homes of his four childhood friends (osananajimi).  This leads to various hilarious antics and situations, with most of the heroines being 'ponkotsu' types (meaning that they are the kind of girls no sane man would wa
Clephas

Clephas

5

April Release: Koneko Neko Neko

Yes, I did this game first.  This is one of those games that is a bit hard to define.  It is part moege, part nukige and part charage... and part surrealist story.  It is about cats being reborn as humans being reborn as cats being reborn as humans (it gets ridiculously complex, to the point where there is no point in keeping track).  There also isn't a whole lot to say about this game... it is mostly at-home SOL, h-scenes, and reminiscence of past lives.  As a VN, it is a bit hard to read
Clephas

Clephas

5

February 2019 Releases

Wow, there are a lot of VNs being released for February this year that aren't nukige... this happens occasionally, but usually it is four or five games.  A few major names got concentrated into this month, as well as a bunch of games by new companies or new subsidiaries.  To be honest, from my point of view, despite the fact that this is my birth month, there isn't much to look forward to.  There is a  new VN in the Shuffle universe here, but with Agobarrier, the universe's father, deceased, I c
Clephas

Clephas

5

Ryuusei World Actor

Ryuusei World Actor is the latest VN by the up-and-coming plotge and chuunige specialist company, Digination, under its subsidiary Heliodor.  This company's games so far have been somewhat unpredictable and unbalanced in my experience, with a great deal of ambition and not quite enough talent to pull things through completely.  I say this from the point of view of a long-time chuunige/plotge addict, and from the perspective of a person that has played two of their games to the end and sampled tw
Clephas

Clephas

5

Random VN: Baldr Sky Zero

Baldr Sky Zero is an entirely different animal from Baldr Sky Dive. I say this as a warning for those who are looking for a complete duplicate of the experience. Baldr Sky Dive was very much like a post-apocalypse apocalypse story in some ways, with a bunch of revenge thrown in. There is much to recommend to both duologies but they are fundamentally different in some ways. This review is of the first half of the Zero duology, which covers the Sakura, Kei, and Fran paths. I chose to review i
Clephas

Clephas

5
VNs

Waga Himegimi ni Eikan o

This is the newest game by Minato Soft, the makers of Majikoi.  As per usual, I'll be straight with yall and say that I thought this would end up essentially being a slice-of-life failure like a lot of Minato Soft's non-Majikoi VNs.  However, this game is actually much closer to a chuunige in nature than I anticipated.  In the end, I gave this one of the highest ratings I've given in a long while, but there are some issues, which I'll mention farther along. Wagahime's protagonist is a young
Clephas

Clephas in VNs

5
Japanese literature

Web Novel Review: Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou

Some people may have seen the relatively low-quality anime for Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou and are probably wondering why I am bothering to spout about this.  Lately I've been plowing through LNs and web novels because I ran out of interesting VNs, but this is the first one I feel a need to expound on at length.  Let's be clear, I am one of the freaks who enjoyed the anime, though I did so while wincing constantly at the animators' choices and the horrible monster CGs.  To me, Hajime's
Clephas

Clephas in Japanese literature

5
VNs

Poll: Which VN should I play?

For those who are still interested, I've been considering three VNs to play (I'm only going to play one for now), mostly because, for the first time in a while, there have actually been more than one notable release inside a four month period.   The LoS game looks to be a low-tension mystery fantasy that is probably going to turn out to be a nakige, based on the getchu page. Wakai Seyo looks like what it probably is, a moderately high-quality charage by a company known for its eccentri
Clephas

Clephas in VNs

5
Japanese literature

The Ups and Downs of Web Novels and Light Novels

I'll go ahead and begin with an intro to my current experience with Light Novels and Web Novels in Japanese.  For the last two years, I've been reading them at a rate of 60-100 chapters a day (faster in the case of below-average size chapters).  I primarily read fantasy with a side of science fiction (no, not just isekai, though I love isekai).  This isn't hard, because fantasy and science fiction make up over three-quarters of all the LNs and Web Novels out there.  This is a bit ironic to my ey

11gatsu no Arcadia Part 5: True Ending and final comments

Yeah, I know, this picture is actually nothing like the protagonist, lol. True Ending Ok, first this game stops well short of being a kamige, so don't expect me to give hands-down praise of it... but I will say this is the first VN I've played that uses the G-Senjou story structure and doesn't short the heroine routes. I can say that conclusively, having finished all the paths. Those who have encountered my virulent hatred of Aiyoku no Eustia will probably be surprised to hear this
Clephas

Clephas

4

VNs: A Veteran's Opinion

I'm not going to argue about what defines a VN here. To be blunt, the fights over that issue - which were fairly pointless - were bad enough in the forums. That said, I am going to explain why VN terms tend to be so fuzzy and hard/impossible to pin down. 1. We are basically defining a medium that is new to us (new being a relative term, lol). 2. Pseudo-Japanisms like charage, moege, nakige, etc. are generalized terms that represent a certain type of structure and purpose to individual VNs. F
Clephas

Clephas

4

Semiramis no Tenbin: Why I love it.

I get people asking me all the time why I like this VN so much, and indeed, there is a lot about this VN that makes it a somewhat eclectic choice. The only thing that is even remotely moe is the basic visuals, and the arcs of the story range from the shocking to the creepy. First, the biggest reason is quite simple... Kamio Ami. It is really rare for a heroine to so completely shatter pre-existing standards of what a VN/anime/manga heroine should be. Ami is the single most pragmatic, cold
Clephas

Clephas

4

Japanese Ghosts, spirits, oni, etc: A bit of a crash course

First, the simple basis for understanding the way Japanese think about the supernatural. Simply put, Shinto, which was the country's official religion and is the religion that originated there, is an animistic faith, with a strong tendency toward the personification of nature and objects. Second, Buddhism was the dominant faith in Japan for centuries, when the various shogunates tried to weaken the Emperor's power by strengthening the influence of Buddhism as a rival faith. Why is this rel
Clephas

Clephas

4

Upcoming: 2nd year anniversary of VN of the Month (new post)

On the twenty-fourth of September, 2015, it will officially have been two years since I started doing VN of the Month. In that time, I've read just under 200 VNs, just under one hundred of them for VN of the Month. Even if you take my abnormally fast reading speed into account, that is several thousand hours of VN playtime... so naturally, I am a lot more jaded than I was when I started this. I've become more forgiving in some areas and less in others. I've struggled to keep bias out of my mini-
Clephas

Clephas

4

Clephas' basic advice to untranslated beginners

Since I get asked questions constantly on this subject, I'll go ahead and list a few pieces of advice I felt apply to most beginners.   1) Use translation aggregator and a text hooker, even if you feel like you should be getting out your kanji dictionary, out of a sense of self-reliance. I'll be blunt, it is hard to enjoy something if you have to refer to a kanji dictionary for every other non-particle word. I am sometimes stunned at people bragging about spending 100 hours on an 8 hour moege
Clephas

Clephas

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