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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wrote previously about a display bug in Dual Tail's strategy eroge Venus Blood -Hypno- that prevented interface text from displaying correctly in non-Japanese Windows. Fan hacker binaryfail generously donated a patch that fixes the issue. I sent this patch to Ninetail (parent company of Dual Tail) via Twitter, requesting that they include the fix on their official support page. Project manager and game designer Keimaru responded to me in broken English. His response, edited by me, is as follows. Original: I thanked him and went my way. A commentator on Reddit later informed me that Keimaru had posted a much longer comment in Japanese. This comment showed such sincere and thoughtful consideration of the issue, from a Japanese developer's standpoint, that I decided it needed to be relayed to the English audience. Japanese eroge developers are well known for their reluctance to get involved with the Western market. Packaging and splash screens prominently declare "For sale in Japan only". Westerners tend to dismiss this policy as apathy for foreign fans, even regarding the practice with contempt as just another manifestation of Japanese isolationism and xenophobia. When eroge companies block foreign IPs, they automatically assume that the company has closed its doors to Western release (despite abundant evidence to the contrary). "The companies are just being xenophobic," they say with bitter contempt. "Might as well just fan translate their titles, since they'll never officially release their games in English. They don't want dirty gaijin playing their games." It's about time that we get the other side of this story. And who better to deliver it than a prominent and well-loved Japanese developer--one puzzling over how to respond to a bug that prevents foreign fans from playing his games? I provide my translation of Keimaru's Twitter comments below. I regret that my translation skills could not fully convey the honest simplicity of the original message, but I did my best to at least get across the ideas and intent. We've been aware for some time that Venus Blood Hypno has a bug affecting users of non-Japanese Windows. This bug causes Japanese characters to display incorrectly, making certain interface elements unreadable. We had reports very early on from users of non-Japanese Windows about this, but we weren't able to resolve the issue. Today however, a DLL file that fixes the issue has been sent to us from what appears to be a user from overseas. On one hand, we're incredibly thankful! On the other hand, this presents a bit of a dilemma... In the past, certain distributors bought up Japanese eroge and sold them overseas without consulting Japanese developers. This led to an international scandal, causing considerable turmoil within Japan as well. Since then, we've been obligated to display warnings like "For sale in Japan only" during game start-up and on the packaging. This user's request raises a worrisome issue. While there's no issue if users want to play these games in Japan on a non-Japanese OS, if this is a request from overseas to support foreign OS's, then that's an entirely different matter. At that point, isn't it no longer just our company's problem? Should we respond to this request and support users that we were never supposed to be selling to in the first place, since selling to these users risks another incident? Is it even ok to support them? I'm not sure... Honestly, I'm torn. What to do...? If we officially support this patch, that would have to be our decision as a company [our stance on the matter]. To be honest, we could just leave things in a gray area, where we let good-intentioned users do as they please in the shadows while we stay silent on the matter... To be blunt, when we received very early reports of the bug from users we believed to be Chinese, our user support team felt they were really skirting the line with regards to the JP ONLY clause, thinking 'I hope these people are playing within the country.' They puzzled over how to handle the issue. If a user buys a game in Japan, returns to his home country, and plays it on his own PC purely for his own enjoyment--is that ok? Where's the line? As just one company of many in this industry, it's extremely hard to make such a decision. This nagging feeling... is there anyone who could resolve this issue? No, there probably isn't. A conclusion arrived at after some debate: after things have settled down let's quietly fix this. The issue seems like it would be resolved with the previous version of the KiriKiri engine. It--it's not like we're fixing it because the overseas user told us to! We're doing this voluntarily, because we feel like it (guh). However we're pretty busy so it might be a while before we get around to it. I don't know about you, but Ninetail just earned one new (very loud) fan. For an example of one of Ninetail's outstanding games, see my Venus Blood -Gaia- review! (NSFW version, SFW mirror) Special thanks to those of the Fuwanovel community who provided feedback on the translation, especially Majikoi fan translator dowolf.

Edit: This is the new cover design, version 2: A couple of things: Obviously, fonts and the color scheme are the biggest thing to consider here. I chose some I thought fit the cover itself, but if anyone has any other ideas, let me know. Remember that too many fonts will make the magazine cover look ridiculous, so keeping a consistent font might be more beneficial The cat girl image on the title is something I was hoping to replace with art from a member of the community. I would love to have an artist who draws a mascot chibi each month that can in some way be featured on the cover of the magazine. These images would not need to be extremely detailed, and anything quickly drawn up would be fine The background image can easily be replaced each month, and I think having new images would be an awesome idea Moving things around is also pretty simple. Anything seem out of place? Adjustments perhaps Thoughts? This is something I am genuinely serious about, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know what you think.

RE: "Ban everything!" Guys, the world is full of hypocrisy. I see murder or graphic violence all the time in hospitals. If you've witnessed it, you know how profoundly messed up it is. Yet for some reason, Western culture is fine with it in entertainment. The same goes for many other social constructs. Life is hypocrisy, and all change in life is ironic to some degree or another. The sexualization of children, for various reasons, is considered wrong by most governments. Child porn, pedophilia, and molestation -- whether real or simulated -- is illegal. Not only is it illegal, it's actively pursued and prosecuted. You may disagree with this move or hate that it had to take place, but the fact is that I have to make the hard decisions to protect the site so that it's here tomorrow, next week, and in five years. Why this issue and not another? Because it came up for the first time since the move and I realized that we're more vulnerable now than in the past. Period.

How about some pizza~

Mfw this won't even affect 95% of the people posting in here anyway

Jokes aside, If I am to be honest about this whole issue, it's not even about lolicon, nor rule changes. It's about the staff board failing to react appropriately in the most demanding moment. Back then, when the thread appeared, mods should simply change the thread's name and adjust the wording; instead they let it fly like that. This whole thing would never happen otherwise and it's precisely this thing that bugs me and does not even get mentioned anywhere. It's not the end of the world, either. As Tay stated, don't sexualize the lolis, don't bring up the topic of pedophilia, regardless whether it's a joke or not. You're free to talk about lolis/shotas as long as you keep it civil and go along with the common sense, which is, again: DON'T POST LOLI PICS WITH SEXUAL CONTENT. I'm against censorship of any kind and as this might come as a surprise, I'm actually quite into lolis as well. I just never felt a need to post in any of the threads, or share my thoughts; it does not mean I'm entirely fond of actual changes, but not in a single way they restrict people from doing whatever they did. And yes, I don't think this will actually affect the vast majority of Fuwanovel's userbase in any way ￣ー￣

Hi Everyone! Stopping in to give y'all an update on Krill ..He is doing pretty well this week he has his good days and bad. He has had therapy and they are helping so much.They gave him a list of about 50 words to work on at home with me and he can say almost all of them missing only maybe 5 to 10 depending on how his days been.He went to a therapy session by himself with medical transport.He also stayed home a few hours yesterday as i had a Dr appointment and our son was at his grandparents house.When i got home he had cleaned up our sons toys in the livingroom for me :-) He has been able to make his own bowl of cereal for breakfast without making a mess.He has been online and trying to type to friends.He can say "ok" which is better than it was.Tomorrow he is going with his father to sign paper work at the lawyers. Im not sure if i told you about the lawsuit against the first hospital i sent him to the day he had the strokes.They said the catscans showed nothing and his symptoms were a chronic issue from his schizophrenia and sent him home with a blood pressure super high 168/109 and him at that point unable to speak. I sent him to another hospital with a stroke unit later that day and they told me they could see the strokes on those exact same scans and they knew he was having the strokes immediately.So the first hospital missed the 2 hour window to give him a clot busting drug and prevent anymore strokes and cause all this damage he is now dealing with.So we are suing them for malpractice.Please if you have any questions or advise dont hesitate to reply with questions or comments.

First, I want to say thank you to those who patiently listened as I whined and complained about this VN as I played it. I should also explain what I was complaining about first, so that people don't get the impression that this is an awful VN, just because I have complaints about it. I'll place this in spoilers for people who don't care about my whining. Second, I should say that I have a firm belief that Ryukishi's VNs make better anime than they do VNs, because his scenario design is far better than his writing (not to mention his art). His love for torturing and killing his own characters is very similar to that of George Martin or Glen Cook, but he mixes it up with that peculiar disconnect from reality and surrealism that is unique to Japanese writers, especially when it comes to violence or sex, lol. The first part of this story looks like it comes out from a Japanese-colored version of our own film noir. To be honest, I found it pretty amusing and an overall fun ride. I cried and laughed with the characters, and I got to like the various people Rose and her crew met. The second part is somewhat less amusing, as it is mixed in with hope followed by a quick fall into despair, as things take a turn for the worse that never quite gets better. The third and last arc (there are four seasons but only three arcs, really) is devastatingly emotional and full of a despair far surpassing that of the first two. Friends die, others betray, and characters you have come to love suffer. In other words, it has all the ingredients you need for a good trilogy (which is what it feels like). The themes involved will probably confuse about fifty percent of those who read this who aren't from Asia. I'm not kidding. Simply put, it requires the ability to appreciate the character, weaknesses and strengths of the Chinese, Americans, and Japanese at the same time. As such, the learning curve for fully appreciating this VN is a bit steep. In fact, in some ways it is more steep than I/O because the matters it deals with aren't matters of science but of culture and people. I suggest anyone who wants to fully understand a lot of what they say - especially the exchanges between the Chinese mafia and Rose's people - read up on current events in the relations between Japan and China, because this story has been heavily influenced by the recent mess in diplomatic relations between the two. A lot of it is mixed up with the usual emotionalism that defines Japanese writing, but the core arguments are based in current events, rather than just ones of the distant past. Is this a good VN? That's an excellent question, me. To be honest, it is hard to say. There are a ridiculous number of flaws to the setting, and the writing, while much better than Ryuukishi07's past efforts, is still less than poetic (and his event descriptions are still as weak as ever). However, if you just look at the fun factor...? This is a fairly enjoyable experience. Oh, for those who hate to see characters they like suffer or die off or who can't deal with concepts like prostitution, organized crime, or corruption as a matter of daily life this would be a hard VN to read. In some ways, this is far darker than his past VNs, because the actual daily events include no sense of fantasy, save for the setting itself. As a result, people who could enjoy Higurashi, Umineko, and Higanbana with no problems might very well show signs of rejection with this one. At the same time, people who despised the others might very well like this one, because - while it does share all of Ryuukishi's usual habits - both bad and good - it is outside of his usual ballpark in the subject matter. Edit2: Whoops, the last edit was a bit too... sharp. To avoid controversy I have sealed it behind a spoiler tag. Read at your own risk.

You can donate for a higher like quota, Oh god it is pay to win!

Ok also guys remember that killing is also a bad thing and a very complicated topic so no talking about people killing each other in videogames and eroge, FSN is so evil! (Oh and those detective games and stuff like that, too evil to talk about. And what was it... corpse party? - that game has even evil name!). Actually can there be consensual murder? I guess if the person wants to be sacrificed to gods or something. You know since the lolis in the games I play actually like it which I don't think can be said about murdering someone. But then again you cant really ask the murdered person if they liked being killed... unless they turn into a zombie or a demon... that actually has a mind... I'm pretty sure there are some VNs like that as well... I don't even want to know about them! (Don't even remind me the games that involve consensual sex with a slime [yes, its a real tag on VNDB]). But hey, worse crap happens in the world, Apple took down games about American civil war because they have historically correct depiction of confederate flag. History used to be censored in my country too during the soviet era and stuff, its actually funny what my parents were taught at school and the actual history that happened. But yeah, censorship is never good, usually leads into revolutions and stuff so be careful. Or people just leave somewhere without it... that's the easier way I guess. Damn you stalkers, I need to hide my online status xD Yes, people usually link interesting topics to me expecting my opinion xD

Whelp. Confession: This is a stupid rant. Read it if you want to. <3 Ayyyy lmao too serious for me.

Go back to eating snails your French bastard

The fact that it took multiple pages of people saying "lolis aren't being banned" for some to finally understand, gives a fair indication that the attention span of some is not very high.

If lolis are to be banned I believe anything containing rape or murder should also be banned. If everyone is to be so easily offended, then every controversial topic should be banned. Just because us lolicons like 2D doesn't mean we like 3D. I personally HATE 3D kids. Everyone needs to remember THIS IS ART. It's not real. It's fake. Stop getting so offended.

Oh yeah, isn't even 17 illegal in most US states (i think in Washington 17 is fine if I'm not mistaken). So eroge from high school is also taboo.

> Steve viewing the topic Well, that escalated quickly.

出る杭を打つ is drawn from a Japanese saying that is basically the opposite of the American saying 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'. He is taking an even larger risk than Sanahtlig is hinting at by saying this. Japanese companies in general do not take kindly to their employees putting the company out there on a limb, and the industry already suffered badly as a whole from the infamous Rapelay incident and a number of follow-up incidents. I don't think those of us over here can really comprehend the pressures the average Japanese companies are under. For one thing, social pressure can turn into economic pressure with alarming swiftness over there. For another, Japan is reliant enough on other countries' trade for its survival that these kind of scandals overseas can cause hysterical reactions from their lawmakers. The eroge industry, being a niche industry by nature, is vulnerable to crackdowns in a way that the car and food production industries aren't. Since eroge are basically a guilty pleasure and a luxury, there are plenty of lawmakers that wouldn't see a problem with doing away with them if it meant they could improve their own chances of remaining in office. It isn't like they are universally accepted, even by otakus... so before you criticize eroge-makers for being 'xenophobic', you should at least try to see the bind they are in.

Worrying about still pictures? Get with the times, son.

Are Japanese the xenophobic ones or are we the ones that forced them to take action against something that used to be normal for them? I really don't like thinking that the Japanese are just xenophobic, we're a huge part of the problem, we're the ones that overreact and have power over them, that's why they don't want to consider us, because we give them a hard time for it. I really liked seeing this side of a developer, it really goes to show that it's not just because xenophobia, but because they want to avoid legal trouble we western folks give them.

The ideal future is whatever they used to make Nekopara. Just look at it, it's the most beautiful thing ever. Fans of static sprites would probably hate that, but I don't give a damn.

Nice to meet you all! Finally managed to sign up after experiencing some technical difficulties with the forum. I first started to get interested in VNs in 2009 when I was in high school. There weren't many translated, so I was using machine translation to read the stuff I randomly found on vndb. For many people the first VN they read is something well-known like Fate or Cross Channel. For me it was AsuKimi and I thourougly enjoyed it even not knowing japanese and having to deal with AGTH and ATLAS. Back then it was a pain in the neck. I played about 7 VNs and then was distracted by other hobbies. At the very beginning of 2015 I remembered about my old passion and decided to give Cross Channel a go. I was amazed at how much the western VN community has translated since 2009! Now it's a great time to be a part of the community and I feel great knowing that things are getting better and better. I'm Russian but pretty fluent in English if I do say so myself, hehe. Yoroshiku!

I'm hungry for some delicious food. Show me the sexiest food you can find

Lino's next date is going to be fucking intents.

As long as you endorse my love for Fuuko I literally give zero shits.

"I can't define porn, but I know it when I see it." - Justice Potter Stewart This is why we moved to the more open moderation system. You know what's really awesome? Common sense. If it looks like a loli, talks like a loli, acts like a loli -- chances are good it's a loli, and if it's sexualized per the above rules, a mod will take it down.

Okay, if I am reading this right, does that mean loli-featuring routes and loli based games are officially banned now? Lock me in a room with Steve if I'm wrong, but lolis are pretty much made to look underage and cute from what I have seen, which mean their discussion etc. are now prohibited. I advocate completely free speech (and let everyone ignore/rekt posts they find atrocious or oblivious, as long as it is not harassing anyone or a group), and thus I'd prefer if people were free to discuss whatever they wanted here, but I understand the reasons you gave and thus I can only appreciate your effort to make Fuwa a better community, Tay. Thanks for always working for the good of the community, the staff!

Can I still post lewd loli vampires? Clearly pedophilia laws don't apply to a century-old spawn of Satan.

then catgirls should be banned too, because it could incentivate zoophillia.

I have no excuses. I don't even care what happens to this thread now. I just wanted to get rid of those clips. Have a good night. And please, don't listen to this seriously, a good deal is random dribble and the rest is me reading a book where half the words you can't even understand. Edit: I should note that this should be the last of my "Random" recordings. While I understand the novelty of having one every once in a while, I feel I should do them differently. More organized, more thought out, more effort. As such, while I will not completely stop with recordings, this is the last unorganized mess for a good while.

You should keep in mind that it's the Rapelay incident that caused this whole "Japan only" thing to begin with, and it has nothing to do with Japanese and everything to do with the dumbasses from UK. It's not about them being xenophobic, but about west being openly hostile toward their product. Try looking for a "Japan's Sales Only" label in a game released before 2009 -- you won't find one. This wasn't a thing before the west outright attacked eroge industry. Also, from the way it's worded I'd say the "is that ok? Where's the line?" is a question that's partly directed at you, the west, as in: will you come with burning stakes at our door again if someone has brought home a game he bought in our country? What we need is to make west accept the concept of visual novel and eroge, and the "Japan Sales Only" label will swiftly go away. No one's so xenophobic here as to ignore profit, as long as it doesn't mean you're gonna end up lynched for it ( ). How would you fix this is beyond me though, eroge aren't particularly respected in Japan either. Aaah, just remembering that RapeLay debocle fills me with so much rage... It's as if some ppl exist solely for the purpose of ruining good things. Otherwise, yeah, what Clephas said.

Because it only takes one "scandal" for everything to be destroyed. And trust me the West is the best at coming up with scandals. There's demands by fans, but over here you also have all the people who turn games into a political thing and would likely attack many of Japan's games to fill their political agenda. The west is plagued by people that work for the sole sake of running their mouths over every little thing and turn it into a national issue. Because they have nothing else to do with their lives but to complain, otherwise they have no jobs. Eroge becoming popular here would be like building a huge bait for them. I'll say it again, all it takes is one game to get enough attention to make the whole company come crumbling down. We have nothing but our own culture to blame.

Not gravity green/10

....

How to cook like a weeaboo while living in America:

Oh boy oh boy, it's my time to shine. edit: I apologize. The image I posted was uncalled for. Instead, I present to you a perfect representation of America, land of the free:

True otaku/weeaboo/whatever lives in 2D world, so it's only natural to only enjoy 2D food

But discussion isn't banned. You can discuss HoshiMemo as much as you want, you just can't talk about how you want to bang x or y because discussions about pure porn should be better left in private chats with friends.

If that's all it is, then i'm fine with that. I may have read wrong but it seemed like this was a ban of any and all lolis. You don't need to post NSFW anything on here, but to ban not only pictures of loli's but conversation of them too? That's siding with the offended people waaay too much.

This all seems perfectly acceptable to me.

How can you say serious question and Sakura spirit?

Still doing the high school jamz thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP1IVNVS5bI

I don't think it's necessary and the costs of production for these types of vns are way more than your regular one so I don't even know if it is worth it. You can have an amazing vn even with just a few backgrounds (like narcissu) The most important thing in a vn imo is the story and the music, everything else is going to help but can't redeem a vn if it is bad just by having awesome graphics, nekopara sucks ass, yes it SUCK ASS it just pretty to the eyes, nothing more.

Glad to hear it. Thanks for always updating us about it!

Wishing Krill a speedy recovery.