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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

Japanese literature

WN: Ankoku Kishi Monogatari

https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054885318680 This particular WN is one where the protagonist is summoned... by the demon lord to save him from the hero!  The protagonist, Kuroki, becomes a Knight of Darkness and faces off with his trauma - the hero in question - and begins a story of endless misunderstandings and plot twists. That is, in fact, the peculiar flavor of this story.  Over 90% of Ankoku Kishi Monogatari's characters are self-absorbed pricks on some level, with the gods bein
Japanese literature

WN: Anata no Tenshoku wa 'Daiyoukai' Desu

This particular WN is the first I've read that isn't another world fantasy or isekai.   The first thing I found myself comparing this to was Devils Devel Concept.  Why?  There are a lot of reasons, but a lot of it is that the protagonist is a monster in human skin and most of the characters remind me of the characters from that VN.   The setting is based six hundred years after the near-destruction of civilization earth due to a massive war (basically WWIII), and humans have the option
Japanese literature

WN: 29sai Dokushin wa Isekai de Jiyuu ni Ikita...katta

This series is a funny little one by the same author as Surviving in another world with Goshujinsama (not to my taste, as the protag is M and a bit of a hetare, but it is really popular in Japan).  The protagonist of this story is randomly transported to another world by a mischievous evil god (Pretty sure her/his real name starts with Nyarl, like most evil gods of this type in otaku stories) and left to his own devices.  Taking advantage of his high growth rate and ability to pick skills to gro
Clephas

Clephas in Japanese literature

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Wizards Complex

Hmm... I could say a lot about this VN... NOT. To be honest, this VN is a perfect example of how a VN can have a decent concept, a decent staff, good art, good music, and an interesting (if derivative, at this point) setting... and fall flat on the details. Wizard's Complex is a fantasy VN, based in a future where magic and magic technology have become an accepted part of life (this is a setting type first done effectively in Suzunone Seven by Clochette).  In this world, all magic user
Clephas

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VNs

Why you should play Kamishino

Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no, is on a shortlist of kamige that I tend to recommend to newbies to VNs or those who missed it during their first rapid obsessive blasting through the 'classics'.  For some reason, people are making excuses not to play the newly-fantranslated game.  I'm going to first pick apart the reasons that have been given for not playing it, even if it falls into the realm of their tastes. Number one reason, the one that is hardest to speak against, is that the game itself
Clephas

Clephas in VNs

3

Why the Nostalgia?

If some of you failed to notice, I've been going back over my list of ancient favorites amongst the moege/charage/slice-of-life genres.  Why am I doing this?  I actually have some good reasons, other than whims. First, I keep recommending these things to people, but when you start talking about a VN you last played five years ago, people tend to let it in one ear and out the other.  I mean, my long-term memory for games and books is pretty good, but my brain is fairly compartmentalized, so
Clephas

Clephas

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Why September (probably) isn't going to have a VN of the Month

I've played a number of releases from September's releases, and I'm currently playing Renai Phase (which I'd promised not to, as Giga is incapable of making anything truly great outside of Baldr). However, this month really doesn't have anything I'd really consider VN of the Month material... Seikishi had its fingertips on the vague possibility, and it is undeniably the best thing I played from September. Unfortunately, 'the best from September' is not good enough.   The reason I'm already p
Clephas

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Why I'm going to drop Kadenz Fermata

Yes, I'm serious about dropping this VN.  There are a number of reasons... but the main one is a pet peeve that has recently become my primary one when it comes to VNs... and that is flowcharts.  I HATE flowcharts.  Making it worse is that Kadenz Fermata's flowchart is combined with an unbelievably annoying 'gameplay' system that requires you to take a really half-assed 'active' part in the battles to bring them to the best possible conclusion... even though that conclusion is often identical to
Clephas

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Why I still haven't given up on VNs.

After ten years playing VNs, you would think I would have completely lost faith in them by now, especially considering just how many I've played (744 not counting most of the nukige, replays and incomplete/dropped ones).  Most VNs that aren't nukige are SOL-fests that exist solely to promote nostalgic fantasies about life in high school and getting into bishoujos' pants... not that that is an entirely horrible goal, but it isn't something I want to see five hundred times over. The romance i
Clephas

Clephas

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Why I haven't posted recently? (a new addiction)

Needless to say, when I hit my latest speed bump in the form of another partial burnout on VNs, I was left wondering what to do with all that free time.  For about forty hours of that time, it was Ghost of Tsushima, but when that was over, I accidentally picked up my first litrpg on Kindle Unlimited... and oh god, I almost wish I hadn't. The problem, when I analyze it in retrospect, is that my fondness for anime like SAO, Log Horizon, and Overlord had primed me perfectly, my addictive perso
Clephas

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Why I dropped Tenmei no Conquista

Normally, considering how far I got into this game, I would have just kept going (I got halfway through, literally).  However, it needs to be said that I only kept going in hopes the game would get more interesting as things went on. The answer was no. This game uses a system that draws partially from the early Fire Emblem games, partially from the Disgaea series by NIS, and partly is drawn from other Eushully games.  The Fire Emblem elements include the basic 'flow' of strategy rpg ba
Clephas

Clephas

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Why I always play games with nonhuman heroines first.

My name is Clephas, and I am a pervert. lol, just kidding... or not.  Considering how long I've been playing eroge, I'm definitely a pervert.  However, that isn't really what this post is about. When I look at the VNs for a month, the first thing I look for are chuunige, then fantasy/sci-fi, and then non-human heroines (though the last two are interchangeable depending on my mood).  The distant fourth is an interesting protagonist, the fifth is an interesting heroine (if I don't find a
Clephas

Clephas

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Why are so many Vampire protagonists self-hating?

This is a question I've asked myself on any number of occasions (and despite my own thoughts below, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this as well).  For some reason, most vampire literature with a vampire protagonist has that protagonist hating him/herself and his/her condition (switching to 'his' after this sentence, for the sake of brevity).  Let's be honest with ourselves... if we could gain immortality, immense strength, and the ability to control people's minds in exchange for having
Clephas

Clephas

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What makes a great VN battle scene?

I had someone ask me why I consider some VN battle scenes to be good and others to be low quality just the other day, and I thought I would address this here.   First, I should state that while visuals definitely have an effect on the quality of a battle scene, the quality of visuals is less than 15% of the reasons why I pick one VN's battle scenes over another's.  The considerations when it comes to visuals are raw quality (artist skill, detail, etc), number of combat-related CGs and sprit
Clephas

Clephas

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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

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Japanese literature

Web Novel: Isekai Buyuuden Kakutou Ou ga Isekai o Iku (and the sequel)

https://ncode.syosetu.com/n8490cj/ https://ncode.syosetu.com/n4499fl/ This series is the latest gem I came across.  It isn't the only one I came across, but I've decided to only present ones that have gone over 200 chapters without getting boring, which is a very small proportion of the web novel population, lol. In this series, Earth's greatest bare-handed fighter, a master of qi and warfare unmatched on our planet, walks through a tunnel to an alternate version of Earth where ma
Clephas

Clephas in Japanese literature

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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

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Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)

Generally speaking, if you are a weaboo and/or otaku and you reveal your hobby, you generally tend to end up on the receiving end of all sorts of unbelievably irritating questions.  This is my list of the most annoying questions I've heard as an otaku/weaboo. 1.  "Is that a cartoon?"  Almost every anime fan gets asked this at some point, though generally speaking, this is an event that was a lot more common when I first started watching anime.  To be blunt, American cartoons tend to be one
Clephas

Clephas

17

Weabooism: The experience, its causes (in Westerners), and tempering it with doses of reality

Hello, my name is Clephas, and I am/was a weaboo.  *snickers at the AA reference*  I'm mostly posting on this matter to give those otakus who aren't necessarily weaboos an idea of what it is like to be a weaboo (ignoring social problems, for the moment, haha) and just why we exist in the first place.  First, to correct a common misconception... not all weaboos are solely obsessed with Japanese culture/history/etc.  In fact, most Western ones are or eventually become interested in all Asian cultu
Clephas

Clephas

19

Wakaba-iro no Quartet

Wakaba-iro no Quartet is the latest mimikko VN from Lump of Sugar, a company that has a huge variance in quality from game to game (kamige one time, kusoge the next, lol).  Lump of Sugar has of late  mostly been doing mimikko games, with the Tayutama sequels/FDs and now two newer IPs having come out in the last four years.  Since I love mimikko (it was my first fetish) this is a happy thing for me. In the setting of this game, the mimikko come from an isolated mountain nation and are basica
Clephas

Clephas

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Waka-sama no Zasuru Sekai (and a few other things)

Hi people!  It's been a while since I posted anything (for me, anyway), and I wanted to go ahead and get the March releases explanation out of the way before I started on Waka-sama. Love Commu I played through one route of this game, but it was not really something I could keep going through to all the endings, primarily because the setting is pure nukige while the setup and execution is pure moege.  Don't know what I'm trying to get at?  Well, I'll go ahead and explain.  Essentially,
Clephas

Clephas

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Wagamama High Spec

First, despite the way moege fans fawn over the first two VNs by Madosoft, they are perfect examples of absolute mediocrity in charage.  That isn't to say they didn't have good points... the visual aspects of this company's VNs are on the higher end of things in the charage part of the VN industry.  However, they were basically slogs through WWI-style trenches full of mud made from ichaicha... and one of my  pet peeves is writers who pump in endless ichaicha.  I personally see them as kusoge, du
Clephas

Clephas

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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

VNs: Gears of Dragoon 2, settling in for the long haul, VN of The Month Announcement

OK, I started playing Gears of Dragoon 2 about four days ago (I've only managed twenty hours so far, due to work), and I have a few comments on the game. For better or worse, Gears of Dragoon 2 Reimei no Fragments is a dungeon crawler/rpg/VN hybrid, and like most VNs of this type, it is pretty big.  To be blunt, in 20 hours, I've only managed to get to level 24 and get halfway through Chapter 2.  Considering that with the same amount of time I was already halfway through (or farther) with e
Clephas

Clephas

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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

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