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Aiyoku No Eustia (https://vndb.org/r24024) A fan transation project by Eustia Translations Partial Patch is out! https://mega.nz/#!no0DyQza!DZShSFgME_-iW6vaEdYy3oek-794a1yiuiW48U05dBQ Covers up to Eris' chapter (Chapter 2). Opening Movie: Description (modified VNDB description): Personal words: Translation Video Sample: Team: Project Lead/Translator/TLC: eplipswich @eplipswich Head Editor: Desertopa Head QC: Angeldeath Reserve/Former Members: Translator (Reserve): TakoRin @TakoRin Editor (Reserve): kumada Translator (Former): goodluckmyway/Be Water @goodluckmyway Editor/QC (Former): Vermillio @Vermillio QC (Former): Esham @Esham Progress: You can check out detailed real-time progress update at the following link: https://1drv.ms/x/s!AhHDq_NSwaAqgSnImaDDLTME-lmi?e=ai9dey ---------------------------------- You can follow me on Twitter: @eplipswich Job Opening(s): None at the moment, but feel free to PM me if you feel you can contribute to the project.

MAITETSU 18+ DEMOSAIC STEAM AND FAKKU PATCH Did you mistake the quote "100% DRM free and completely uncut with no scenes removed" as "TOTALLY UNCENSORED!"? Do you hate to see squares in beautiful art? Are you from the golden era (JAST USA, Peach Princess, G-Collections) and expected from an localized eroge to get an fully uncut, uncensored and without mosaics game? ... Then this patch is for you. You read it right, the patch does what it says. It removes the mosaic in hscenes from the beautiful artwork. Original MAITETSU 18+ Fakku edition -> you can buy it at the official page: https://www.fakku.net/games/maitetsu-english -> PLEASE SUPPORT english localization by buying the game ! OR BUY FROM STEAM Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch - FOR STEAM OR BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch - FOR FAKKU 1. [Q]: Is it legit? [A]: I can't believe it myself either. But YES! It is real and it does what it says. Try it before reporting or commenting. Thank you. 2. [Q]: Where are the hscenes? I can't find them in the game? [A]: There are no hscenes in the common route, except provoking pictures which the Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch restores and the actual hscenes won't trigger by default, but during a heroine route, a message will popup at bottom right side of the screen saying that you gain access to a hscene, then you have to manually open the hscene in the menu. It is a game design, not a bug or glitch, it is how LOSE company makes the games. Rarely you will gain access for hscenes during a route, most hscenes are unlocked AFTER finishing the game with that particular heroine. 3. [Q]: When does the DLC hscenes show up? [A]: After you complete the previous hscenes, the DLC hscenes will eventually show up. 4. [Q]: STEAM support? [A]: At the moment I don't own the STEAM version so I can't test it and I don't know if it works. If someone can help me I will make an steam support patch, but you would still need the FAKKU 18+ DLC patch. 5. [Q]: Can we see some screenshot/examples of patch? [A]: Because of the nature of the game as being an loli game I can't post pictures because of the policy of the forum. But if someone wants to see the results before buying the actual game I can send you 2 example pictures. Just send a PM and I will reply with those 2 example pictures. Examples of non-loli characters are in the gallery section. 6. [Q] : What was changed in the new Fakku edition? What's the difference between the OLD and NEW download? [A]: Jacob from fakku has a good description -> https://www.fakku.net/forums/games/maitetsu-fixes-and-updates .Everything written in the section "what has not changed" WAS already fixed already by heliosaurus by his patch and the same fix is present in the new "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch" 7. [Q] Why is there a difference in size between Heliosaurus Restoration patch and "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch" Both patches work perfectly fine and shouldn't have any problems. You can use Heliosaurus on the OLD and NEW version but the BANDAID patch is only for new FAKKU download ONLY. But... the original restoration patch includes fixes which are already fixed in the new version of FAKKU's edition and the BANDAID removal patch just removes this fixes from the PATCH to be less in size. The reason why you could still use the original restoration patch on the old and new version of fakku is that technically the patch is in original form a "patch.xp3" which contains mostly PICTURES! Yes, pictures. And it just replaces those pictures from the original data files which are located in "data.xp3" / "emotedx.xp3", and so on. The KiriKiri engine works like that. When FIRST run, it loads first files from, data.xp3, and all the main xp3, and then LOADS patch.xp3, patch2.xp3, patch3.xp3... and so on. That's why we don't need external programs to patch the original data files, and we can put everything in PATCH.XP3, or PATCH2.XP3, and so on. You can literally replace the whole game with a single PATCH.xp3 file. The restoration patch was made by using resource files from the JAPANESE version and replaces the resource files from the ENGLISH version. So the original restoration patch just OVERWRITES fixes-pictures present in the MAIN game from the NEWEST fakku edition download.... 8.[Q]: That isn't the game we were promised / it is disappointing / don't want to buy the game .... [A]: Well, it isn't a question, I just want to express my opinion... I understand that the release a disappointment, and like everyone, even I would wanted a TOTALLY uncut and uncensored version. I hate the CUTS in western releases, but that was going on for decades not just in VN's look in the old days of SNES games with JRPGS. And in east they get the same results with some western games... Thanks to that, we have two types of ppl - one who are complaining and the the other one who are making uncut/undub/uncensored version of games, from snes to psp/psvita and so on. What I mean is that you shouldn't lose energy in complaining on fakku and denpasoft/sekai, yes even sekai. I understand that sekai don't take releases seriously but at least we got the translated version, whish is a huge WORK. And be thankful, we got "OMG!" Maitetsu! I can't expect newcomers and the ones on fakku to stop complaining ( and I am not saying that you have to start editing, and join the community of moders, but you are always welcome to join ), but at least you at fuwanovel you have no more reasons to complain. At the end you got the complete 1:1 japanese uncut release with english text, and even a little more, with the demosaic patch ( which in the japanese edition they don't have ). .... please ask questions and I will put most common questions and answers here ... STATUS : COMPLETE ! ALL SCENES MOSAIC-FREE ! Hachiroku's Route Hibiki's Route Paulette's Route Reina's Route Fukami's Route Nagi's Route Kisaki's Route Makura's Route FOR STEAM USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for STEAM FOR FAKKU USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for FAKKU or down below the BANDAID removal patch 1. Just extract the file patch2.xp3 from the ZIP file in the main maitetsu folder! !! the patch2.xp3, should be in the same folder as the Restoration patch (patch.xp3) and the Maitetsu.exe file. !!! 07/23 - Released the patch with the 5th scene included, and fixes the bug in Hscene 2 07/24 - Released the patch with the included 6th scene 07/25 - Released the patch with the included 7th scene 07/26 - Released the patch with the 8th scene included 07/27 - Hachiroku's Route COMPLETED!!!! 07/28 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 01 without mosaic! 07/29 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 02 without mosaic! 07/30 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 03 without mosaic! 07/31 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 04 without mosaic! 08/02 - Released the addon patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 05 without mosaic, you still need the OLD "Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch 7-31-2018" patch. In your folder you should have patch.xp3 (bandaid fix), patch2.xp3 (old 7-31 patch) and patch3.xp3 (this new addon patch) 08/03 - HIBIKI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/04 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/05 - Paulette's new hscene released! (Hint: This is the new release which includes HSCENE 03. Skipped Hscene 02 because here isn't any mosaic! Hence the name v0.3 - which represent the hscene completed ) 08/06 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/07 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/08 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/09 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/10 - PAULETTE's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/11 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/12 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/13 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/14 - REINA's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/15 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/16 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/17 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/18 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/19 - FUKAMI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/20 - Nagi's new hscene released! 08/21 - Nagi's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/22 - Kisaki's new hscene released! 08/23 - Kisaki's new hscene released! 08/24 - Kisaki's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/25 - Makura's new hscene released! 08/26 - Makura's new hscene released! 08/27 - COMPLETE PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes! 08/30 - COMPLETE STEAM PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes in STEAM FINALLY!!!! Complete FAKKU Patch ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| COMPLETE PATCH Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z Installation guide: - if you have downloaded the partial update - patch3.xp3 just manually delete it ( you don't need it anymore because its already inside the complete patch! ) ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Complete STEAM Patch ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Steam Patch - v0.9a.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ThugShiro - mega big thanks to ThugShiro. He donated the Steam Version! BIG THANKS TO marcus-beta - with his tremendous help he found out the problem and fixed it, without him there wouldn't be a steam patch! Ulysses - big thanks to Ulysses, without his tools ( https://github.com/UlyssesWu/FreeMote/releases ) this wouldn't be possible. Tools used: PsbDecompile - for decompiling PSBs, PsBuild - for rebuilding back to PSBs FreeMoteViewer - to view rebuilded PSBs (after PsBuild) number201724 - of course, also big thanks to number201724 for the psbtools https://github.com/number201724/psbfile/releases Tools used: emote_conv - decode and encode psb file Heliosaurus - special thanks to the master of the Restoration patch and his helpful guiding SPECIAL extra patch: BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated into a single patch ( patch.xp3 ) For the newest FAKKU edition and STEAM! 08/1 - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated Restorationa Patch ( as PATCH.xp3 ) 09/20 - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch for STEAM ( as PATCH.xp3 ) Optional download ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| FAKKU edition Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Patch.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| STEAM edition Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Steam Patch.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ANY COMMENTS, MEANINGFUL CRITICS, GRATITUDE, ADVICE, SUGGESTION RELATED TO THE PATCH ARE HELPFUL. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Want to support the project?

H2O √ after and another Complete Story Edition Release Download the patch (Google drive, Mediafire) (ver. 1.01, dated September 8, 2023) Description In H2O -Footprints in the Sand-, Hirose Takuma is a blind middle school student, though the cause for his blindness is undetermined. After his mother died unexpectedly, it left a deep emotional scar on him, causing him to become lonely and reserved. Due to this, Takuma moves from the city out into a rural area to live with his uncle and Takuma is enrolled into a new middle school. There, he meets several new girls, including the firm and obstinate Kohinata Hayami, the kind and obliging Kagura Hinata, and the cheerful and mysterious Otoha. In √ after and another, there are new after stories for two of the heroines from H2O (Hayami and Hinata), plus new routes for Yui and Hamaji/Yukiji, the latter of which also unlocks Maki's route. A version merging both games into one was later released, H2O √ after and another Complete story Edition. H2O VNDB: https://vndb.org/v473 √ after and another VNDB: https://vndb.org/v561 Where to purchase The game can be purchased legally from DMM (https://dlsoft.dmm.co.jp/detail/mnphs_0007/), but a Japanese proxy/VPN may be necessary to purchase it. That is where I obtained my copy. It goes on sale quite often, although it's pretty cheap even at full price, considering its age. Project The English localization project is being conducted by Studio Frisay, fresh off the completed Imasugu Onii-chan ni Imouto datte Iitai! project. As before I (Tooko) will be doing all of the translating and editing of the script, along with probably most of the image editing, and any engine work that needs to be done (of which is very little). Studio Frisay discord server Progress Programming: The game is built on the BGI/Ethornell engine, as with Imaimo before it, so I'm already familiar with how the engine works and have all the resources necessary to apply any hacks and build the completed patch once everything is done. In fact, there's a lot less work this time around on that front because the structure is a lot simpler, being a NVL game instead of an ADV game. Translation: The translation officially commenced on August 10, 2022 and was completed on January 28, 2023, although progress was initially very slow because of the ongoing work for the Imaimo patch at the time. However, I already translated a decent amount of the script (20%) by the time I announced the project a couple months later in October. The game has 73,547 lines across 167 scenario files split up between the common route and six character routes: Common: 6953 / 6953: 100% Hayami: 20620 / 20620: 100% Hinata: 14112 / 14112: 100% Yui: 13151 / 13151: 100% Hamaji: 4973 / 4973: 100% Maki: 5437 / 5437: 100% Otoha: 8301 / 8301: 100% Total: 73547 / 73547: 100% Images and videos: Aside from minor tweaks, all of the in-game images in need of editing are now completed. Editing of images is shared between me and nReus, who will also be typesetting lyrics onto the 9 OP/ED videos. The images include about 110 for the UI, and about 335 for the rest of the game, although most of those are minor variations on each other, so the actual number of unique images is much less. Editing: The editing of the game's text officially commenced on February 10, 2023, and it was completed on July 10, 2023. QC: The quality check phase involves going through a normal playthrough to check for any problems with the patch files and their rendering. This should took about two months, completing in early September. The patch is scheduled for release on September 8, 21:00 UTC. Progress link on Google Sheets

Original Fakku forum release: Thanks to the help from a kind benefactor, I acquired the Steam release. Steam users can now y o r o k o b e. Figuring out how the Steam release worked was such a damn pain. Not much was updated, apart from a few thousand scene seek thumbnails. Mainly giving Steam users some love. MAITETSU 18+ RESTORATION PATCH v1.3 7-10-2018 MAITETSU 18+ STEAM RESTORATION PATCH v1.3 7-10-2018 Maitetsu WIP Decensor patch thread The main issues I was dealing with while making that patch that most certainly limited how much I can do are: 1. KrkrExtract just doesn't want to cooperate majority of the time when extracting XP3's. 2. When it does, it doesn't even extract the stuff I needed. 3. Repairing the sprites requires my being able to repack EMote .pbs files with edited .bmp images. Not hard at all to do, just repacking is the issue AFAIK 4. The data.xp3 is encrypted. About half of it KrkrExtract can get done, but the half that i'd need to fully repair the "filesystem" I guess you can say into something usable is. 5. God help me TJS2 bytecode is one of the most disgusting atrocities I have seen. Bless based nihongo tools If there is anyone out there who knows the KiriKiriZ engine or EMote engine, your input is always welcome. Suzu ga besto desu

Well, as of thirty-nine minutes ago, it is officially my birthday (as of the time I checked at the beginning of making this post). I have a lot of things to reflect on this year. I am now thirty-six, settling into the beginnings of middle-age, knowing my lifestyle will probably kill me before I hit fifty. I'm a sugar addict, I love fatty foods, I make my own alcoholic drinks (this year, a mixed fruit wine that actually turned out well and was much easier than the rum and hard root beer I did last year). I sit on my ass eighty percent of the time, I am hugely fat... ... and I'm surprisingly happy. I won't say I don't have my down moments. Looking back, I regret not going for more athletic pursuits while my knees and back could still stand them. I regret not trying for a more regular and less... frustrating line of work. However, I can honestly say that, for all its frustrations, I actually seem to like being a fat, balding otaku who has pretensions at being some kind of VN guru (lol). I do wish that I could fit into a plane seat, lol. If I ever go to Japan, it is going to have to be a sea trip, since buying two plane tickets for one person is both embarrassing and more than a little expensive. I hate my work, but I'm good at it and, in good times, it pays well, so I keep doing it. So what would I change? Honestly, it is hard to say. I won't pretend I'm all love and joy when it comes to life. I have too much toxic waste going through my brain for that (I just happened to have gained just enough maturity not to feed the trolls constantly *smiles dryly*). I'm fundamentally a passive person once I set foot outside my hobbies, preferring not to do anything I don't absolutely have to do. I'm also negative and misanthropic... but is that stuff I actually want to change? *shrugs* I've never been any other way, so it is impossible to say. However, every year I hit this day and wonder what could have been, which probably says everything that needs to be said about my experiences with life, for all my proclamations of relative happiness.

The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out. Do we love the same VNs? While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best. We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad. There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs... While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released. We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones. So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories: Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher. The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text. The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget. VN popularity It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West. Note that this chart is using a log scale. The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated. Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is. Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB. Differences in taste So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is. Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS. This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative. Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”). This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB. Differences in the marketplace We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one? A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists. Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags. The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content. EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties. Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters. Criticisms Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting? Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years. The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through. Acknowledgements A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis. I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my tumblr and twitter for more VN analysis posts. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter, or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~

Hi o/ I did a little analysis on changing trends in Visual Novels using the voting data on vndb if anyone is interested. I put up the first part of the series here: https://bunnyadvocate.tumblr.com/post/159429107647/visual-novels-the-rise-of-a-medium This is part of a whole series of posts, with my next post looking at protags, and what kinds of traits different types of protags are associating with according to an analysis of the tag distribution on vndb. If you guys have any questions or comments about it, then I'd love to chat about it.

Hey guys, just hopping in here quickly to say that no, the project has not died. It'll still be officially released by us regardless as that leaked version is based off an older version anyway. And sorry that this has been taking so long, but we will get to the finish line. Cheers

I've been analysing the sexual content of VNs, what's become more common, what gets the best ratings, and what content tends to come together; and thought I'd present some of my results in a slightly different way: in a quiz! Using the extensive character database on vndb, I tracked which appearance and personality traits were more or less likely to engage in types of sexual activity, and put the results in a quiz format so you can enter the tropes and it'll tell you how the percentages diverge from the average. This is a slightly silly way to present the results, but I thought you guys might enjoy it. You can try the quiz here.

I've been learning some HTML/CSS, and to no cause could my knowledge be better applied than a dedication to my good friend OriginalRun. As such, I've decided to craft a website that makes liberal use of CSS's styling capabilities so as to yield maximum Renness. Enjoy! https://originalren.blob.core.windows.net/ren/ren.html Acknowledgement to my friend @Keisuke who wrote some JavaScript and identified a few missing parentheses that made the website a total mess of scattered images. EDIT: The website appears to have expired. For posterity, you can download it here. Extract the folder and open "index.html" in your browser.

I’ve recently read a few thoughtful discussion threads on the state of the VN market here in the West. Some taking a negative stance, some with a more positive outlook. I thought I’d try to put some numbers on these statements and look at VN ownership on Steam, still the predominant market for PC games, and use that to analyse whether VNs are on their true route or have stumbled into a bad end. Data collection I checked just over a million steam profiles to try and get a random sample of gamers. With Steam’s new private-by-default profile settings, only 8% of those users had public game lists, but that still gave us 80k user profiles to work with. I could then compare my sample with the “leaked” owner data and scale up my numbers accordingly to represent Steam as a whole. Steam is rather haphazard with what gets tagged as a Visual Novel (RPGMaker games like A Bird Story are tagged as VNs), so I’ll only be including games that also have a VNDB entry. Steam VN releases So let’s start simple, with a simple plot of how many VNs are being released each month. At first glance things seem rosy for VN fans, there have never been more VNs being released in the West. But let’s break down those results a bit: Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. The EVN, JVN, and other VNs trends include only non-free VNs. Here we can start to see the reason for the differing perspectives on the state of the VN market depending upon whether you read more JVNs or EVNs. While the rate of EVNs releases has steadily increased, the number of new JVNs has remained fairly static since 2016, despite Steam’s lowered release requirements. Steady release rates aren’t definitely bad news, but in general profitable industries want to expand, so the lack of expansion tells you something about the industry. But as someone with a plan-to-read list that grows longer by the day, I’m not complaining if the rate doesn’t increase. One under-reported development in the VN market is the recent rapid growth of Chinese VNs (listed as other here), who have quietly been doing well in their home markets, but are rarely translated. So while more VNs might be good for us fans, how does the market look for developers? Let’s have a look at VN sales. Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. All sales are back-dated to the release date of the VN on Steam. Free VNs count sales as the number of users who have logged some playtime in it. Unfortunately Steam’s API doesn’t list when someone bought a game, so we’ve got to group sales by the release date of the VN. That means there will be a bias towards older releases which have been out longer and so had more time to build up sales. Here we can see some justification for the doom and gloom perspectives, with more recent VN releases selling significantly less than older ones. With new JVNs in 2017 selling only half what they did in 2016. The EVN downward trend is especially stark given that the number of new releases has been increasing, so that’s less revenue split among even more VNs. Not all VNs are equal, some are priced higher, so let’s look at total revenue rather than total sales. Note that this assumes every user pays full price, so this is more the maximum possible revenue than actual revenue. Here we can see the difference between EVN and JVN markets. While JVNs sell only half as many as EVNs, they earn almost as much revenue due to their higher price. We again see the same dip in more recent revenue though, 2017 was only 46% of 2016′s revenue, and 2018 looks even worse so far. Remember, this fall in revenue coincidences with an increase in the total number of releases, so to fully comprehend the drop on revenue, let’s look at the average sales per VN. First, we should note that this massively overestimates the average revenue generated as it assumes every user pays full price. I know devs who would sell their soul for 282k per VN. Oh wait, they already did when they signed up for Steam... (just kidding, I do like Steam, but it has issues). The important aspect here isn’t the y-axis total which is unreliable, but the consistent downwards trend. But it might not be as bleak as it seems, older VNs are more likely to have been in bundles and in Steam sales, so their revenue is likely overestimated compared with more recent releases. So I’d be hesitant to claim that revenue is necessarily dropping, but I think we can confidently claim that revenue isn’t increasing. VN Reviews Nostalgia for a past golden age is common everywhere, not least among VN fans. It’s not uncommon to hear that newly released VNs aren’t as good as older ones, but can we get any empirical data on this point? We can get close by looking at the Steam reviews of VNs over time. Each dot represents the average thumbs up/down ratio for any VNs released that month. Within the JVN market, we can see some truth to the nostalgia viewpoint. Older releases were more consistently rated higher. But that isn’t to say there aren’t new highly rated JVNs. They still maintain enviously high scores overall. As for EVNs, while they had consistently scored lower than JVNs, they’re catching up and are now pretty comparable in review ratings of JVNs. Just for fun, let’s see how the total review count compares between VNs. The two free-VN spikes are for Emily is Away and DDLC. As I’m sure anyone familiar with the VN community can tell you, JVN fans are vocal, and it shows in the total reviews VNs get. Despite there being only half as many JVNs as EVNs, they still attract more reviews than EVNs do. This is perhaps because JVNs are typically far longer than EVNs, so might be worth the time of writing a review. What free-VN fans lack in the wallet, they make up for in their word-count. Although this is massively skewed by two free VNs which compromise 70% of all free-VN reviews: Emily is Away and DDLC. They seem anomalies rather than trends. As shown by the graph when we exclude those two: *Excluding Emily is Away and DDLC. Despite the drop in position, free-VNs still out-perform what we’d expect given their lower count of total owners, but that may be because EVN and JVN totals include users who own the VN but have never read it. Whereas the free-VN total only includes those who have logged playtime in that VN, so there’s a larger pool of possible reviewers. Potential Issues There are a few sources of uncertainty in the dataset. The selection of users who have set their profiles to public might not be representative of the wider Steam userbase. It probably undercounts more casual fans who are less likely to configure their Steam profile. We also don’t know when someone purchased a VN, so it’s possible VN sales are increasing, but a lot of that money is going to older releases, especially if they’re in bundles and Steam sales. In inclusion of VNs in game bundles may be distorting the image of the VN fandom, as it’ll include those who have little interest in the medium and only own a VN by happenstance. We should also remember that “Steam” is not synonymous with the VN market. There are plenty of competitors in the VN scene, namely Mangagamer and itch.io, who tend to cater to different tastes than Steam does. So we’re only getting a partial picture of the Western VN scene. Conclusion There’s data here to support both the optimistic and pessimistic commentary. On the positive side, there have never been more VNs being released as there are now. EVNs are improving with higher average ratings and a few have reached mainstream attention. On the pessimistic side, it seems like there are ever more VNs competing for a fanbase that isn’t significantly growing. While I’d be wary of claiming profits are falling, it seems highly likely they aren’t increasing, and a stagnant market is not a healthy one. Personally, I think the future is bright. While VNs might not be destined to become blockbuster successes, there is enough of sustainable fanbase to support lots of indie developers, who are the most prone to innovate and write interesting new stories. As a VN fan, I’m excited to see what comes next~ --- I hope you found the article interesting. I had wanted to include a section analysing the Steam users, how many VNs do JVN fans purchase compared to EVN fans etc. But I want to spend a little longer going into more depth on it, so I’ll have a post up next week on that. If you’re interested in more until then, check out my other tumblr analysis posts, look out for updates on my twitter, or give me a yell on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Special thanks to /u/8cccc9 for collaborating on the analysis, and Part-time Storier for proof-reading. I just do these analyses for fun, but if you want to support my work with a tip, I accept small donations at ko-fi.

As communities age, a mythology tends to build up around their origins, with past eras vaguely alluded to as “golden ages.” I’ve seen this happen with reddit’s /r/visualnovels, a place I moderated during its most transformative stage, so I thought I’d offer my insider’s take on its history: what we’d hoped to achieve as moderators, the unintended side-effects of our policies, and why I think /r/visualnovels is stagnating these days. Fuwanovel isn't /r/visualnovels, but there's a lot of overlap in the fandom and I thought that given Ange's recent "state of the fandom" post, you guys might find it interesting. Given my acrimonious departure from the subreddit, you should take this with a grain of salt, but hopefully you'll get something from it~ The Birth of /r/visualnovels The very first posts on /r/visualnovels. /r/visualnovels was founded in late 2009 by /u/Hpdarkman525 (the former account of /u/gambs), who made one post about the upcoming Umineko ep5 fan translation and then promptly forgot about the sub. At this time, the VN fandom consisted primarily of those who had learned Japanese to read VNs, and those who wished they had. Official localisations were almost non-existent, and the fandom hung off the words of the few fan translators. Knowing about VNs felt like knowing a secret, like a secret handshake to be acknowledged as a fellow western otaku. This didn’t really change until early 2012 with the release of Katawa Shoujo. We now had a Western VN that was free, easy to install (no fiddling with system locale), pretty well written (no cliche cries of “baka” or “onii-chan”), and handled a delicate subject (disability and self-identity) with a sensitivity that really spoke to a lot of gamers. The optional nature of the adult content helped attract horny teenagers while still retaining an air of respectability. KS managed something no other VN had: attention from the mainstream gaming crowd. It drew a huge wave of new fans to the medium, among which were /u/coldacid and /u/Kuiper who became mods on /r/visualnovels and began to promote it. While the influx of new members gave birth to the community, with newbies becoming veterans, the continued dominance of KS in the VN scene began to wear thin (it wasn’t until 2016 that the number of /r/visualnovels subscribers outnumbered /r/katawashoujo). Especially grating for veterans was the cry of KS as “the best VN ever written” from those who had only ever read that one VN. The constant stream of “what do I read after KS” and rudimentary technical questions on getting Japanese VNs working drowned out the rare news posts or broader discussion threads. The mod team had a hands-off attitude to it, they’d only remove spam or blatant trolling. This only changed in early 2014 when a relatively unknown user, /u/insanityissexy, requested a mod position... The Rise of Insanity Insanityy was a member of the old-guard, being drawn to the medium for Japanese VNs and caring little for what she saw as a pale-imitation in Western VNs. With no regard for the old mods, she singlehandedly brought order to a community that had been lawless. She began with a ban on posts for technical support questions and VN recommendation requests. Instead, they should be asked in the new weekly questions thread so as to clear up the front page for news posts and more substantial discussion threads. While this move was broadly welcomed by most of the subreddit regulars, it caused some disruption as activity on the sub plummeted. With the western VN scene so small, news was rare and the number of daily posts dropped from 2-4 to just 1. While some grumbled, others were enthused in having an active moderator who cared about the sub. /u/kowzz started a discussion thread on what we could do to improve activity on the sub, and from that discussion he started the weekly Sunday discussion posts and I started the weekly “what are you reading” posts. Unlike the questions sticky, the intention wasn’t to curtail activity outside of these weekly posts, but to provide a supplement to the usual discussions and encourage users to comment more. With such regular discussion posts, users started to bump into each other more often and a sense of community began to build. On a personal level, I also grew to know insanityy better as we exchanged dozens of increasingly lengthy PMs (so much so that each reply wouldn’t fit within the 10k character limit, we had to send our replies in 3 parts), with us quickly becoming close friends. Later that year, I proposed an overhaul of the user flairs. The subreddit only offered a basic vndb icon. I wanted to expand that to hundreds of options with a larger profile picture offset to the side of a user’s post as a way to personalise each user. With enough options, I hoped it’d be easier to identify users at a glance and it’d add some character to the subreddit. I was admitted to the mod team to oversee the flair changes, but was soon upgraded to full mod status after a few months on insanityy’s urging. The two of us fed off each other’s passion as we sought to build a more active, mature, and compassionate community. We never paid any heed to the old mods, mod policy was discussed between us on google hangouts and implemented immediately. To foster a sense of community, we aimed to have a community event once a month: best X contests, census surveys, recommendation charts, fanart contests, halloween/april fool themes being among just some of the activities we organised. We even got Mangagamer to sponsor some contests with free VNs. To foster a sense of community, we aimed to have a community event once a month: best X contests, census surveys, recommendation charts, fanart contests, halloween/april fool themes being among just some of the activities we organised. We even got Mangagamer to sponsor some contests with free VNs. We downplayed the seedier parts of the medium, nukige news was banned and discussions on “fapping” were frowned upon. Neither of us were against porn, we’re both fans, but we feared it’d attract a more neckbeard-type audience. We aggressively went after trolls, but not by banning them. We had automod automatically remove comments from users prone to cause drama, then we’d manually approve non-trollish comments. That way everyone was able to participate in our community, but bad behaviour wasn’t rewarded with lots of attention. In the following year, insanityy asked the inactive older mods to resign. Kuiper recognised that he was no longer needed and respectfully stepped down. Coldacid said his inactivity was only temporary and he’d be back, but later left reddit for voat as part of an anti-censorship protest. Gambs asked us to drop the subject as he didn’t want to step down, so we carried on ignoring him. We also added new members to the mod team: /u/FunwithGravity for his knowledge of Japanese, /u/Cornetto_Man because he got along with everyone, and /u/Avebone because he was active at times when the rest of us were asleep. They were added primarily to approve posts mistakenly removed by automod when me and insanityy were afk and had little input on mod policy. Everything seemed to be going great, we had a growing community that we got along with, trolls were few and far between, and our moderation seemed popular. Then we got a modmail suggesting we try out a new chat program called Discord... Discord on Discord When /u/Kowzz and /u/Arcanus44 suggested creating a Discord server, we were initially skeptical. It sounded just like irc, and the /r/visualnovels irc channel had been comatose for years. However Kowz and Arc promised to take care of it for us, Kowz would create the server and Arc would drum up interest. So in Sept 2015, Arc hosted a “meet n’ greet” in voice chat on Discord. While it was by most accounts a success and quite popular, we got some complaints about inappropriate conduct by a couple of users and decided that if this Discord server was going to be linked with /r/visualnovels, we’d need to take an active hand in making sure it maintained our standards. Kowz was happy to have us onboard, making us admins on Discord. It all seemed smooth, but underneath the surface, the seed of turmoil had been planted in our differing beliefs on who owned the server. Kowz and Arc considered themselves the owners and we were partners, while we considered them to have created the server on our behalf and that it’d run on our principles. Up until then, we’d not had any disagreements on mod policy. Me and insanityy would talk an issue out, if we agreed, we’d propose it to the rest of the mod team and vote on it. We’d picked mods who generally thought the same as us, so votes were normally unanimous. That wasn’t the case with Discord. Kowz and Arc had different ideals on how to run a community, and our usual resolution process of voting felt unfair to them as we outnumbered them 5 to 2. The problem only got worse with time as insanityy hated arguments so she avoided the staff discussions on Discord and popped in only to vote. Arc and Kowz felt increasingly marginalised by this and that their opinion wasn’t being heard. This led to a standoff where Kowz and Arc demanded their 2 votes should count for as much as the rest of us combined, while we /r/visualnovels mods threatened to create a new server unless we kept one vote each. Discussions got heated until Kowz and Arc eventually backed down. In protest, they chose to stop participating as mods. While Discord helped bring friends together, it also brought those that disliked each other together. It’s easy to ignore someone on reddit as its tree structure allows for parallel conversations, but the format of Discord makes that harder. This started to become a problem on the server, especially as Discord attracted a different type of user to the subreddit, those who had little patience for the more verbose and patient discussions of the subreddit. We got complaints from the subreddit veterans about some of the newbies but we weren’t sure what to do. Being disliked isn’t a bannable offense, but it was driving away some valued community members. We didn’t want to create a separate server that split the community, so our misguided solution was the creation of a hidden channel: #sub_regs (a.k.a. the fanclub) that was invite only and accessed via the tableflipper role. The hope was that it’d serve as a backup channel for when #general was annoying and that it’d keep the community veterans on the server. However it ended up encouraging an elitist attitude that divided the community further. The Fall of /r/visualnovels With many of the friendly conversations and community atmosphere moving to Discord, the subreddit began to suffer. Inside jokes that were incomprehensible to those not on Discord were frequent, and the community split between those using Discord and those not. There was also a degree of burnout among the mods. It’s inevitable for all mods, you spend long enough dealing with the worst of the community, the trolls and the spammers, and you begin to develop an us-vs-them mentality. You retreat from the community and draw closer to your fellow mods, looking down upon the normal users. We mods gradually stopped being members of the community and instead became overseers. Then there was my messy departure from the sub in April 2016. Due to a range of factors: financial difficulties, gender dysphoria, and some toxic “friends,” I became deeply depressed and tried to commit suicide. My fellow subreddit mods (and best friend insanityy) decided the best response was to out me as transgender, block me on social media, and ban me from the subreddit I’d loved so deeply. Insanityy never spoke to me again. The rest of this is speculation, I was no longer an insider, but from my perspective it looked like this event accelerated the emotional distance insanityy felt from the subreddit as she stopped caring about the community. She tried to carry on as normal at first, running a few contests, maintaining the animated banners I’d once made, but her heart wasn’t in it. She resigned later that year. With her went the desire to innovate, to improve the community. The remaining mods were followers, not leaders. They could maintain some cosmetic updates and copy the old contests, but they were unable to do anything new. They enlarged the mod team with an additional four members, but it only increased the sense of inertia and made it even harder to get anything done. The subreddit began to feel stale. The mod team had also become unbalanced, where once me and insanityy spoke up for minority tastes in EVNs and otomes, now the mod team was dominated by Japanese VN fans just as the VN scene was increasingly embracing EVNs. The subreddit felt more elitist than ever just as the medium had never been more diverse. Unintended Side Effects While our policies may have made sense at the time, some of the decisions me and insanityy had made began to have a detrimental impact on the subreddit: We’d brought on Automod to help remove posts when only me and insanityy had to manage everything. We found having a bot leave the removal comment sparked fewer arguments with OP than if one of us did it, and it was more effective at catching spam. But while we strived to reapprove mistakenly removed posts promptly, sometimes OP deleted their post before we could. Psychologically, it also made it dangerously easy to leave some content removed. As we mods burnt out over the years, our standards for what counted as a worthy post kept getting higher with fewer and fewer posts being approved. The end result has been a severe drop in discussion posts on the sub. We’d brought on Automod to help remove posts when only me and insanityy had to manage everything. We found having a bot leave the removal comment sparked fewer arguments with OP than if one of us did it, and it was more effective at catching spam. But while we strived to reapprove mistakenly removed posts promptly, sometimes OP deleted their post before we could. Psychologically, it also made it dangerously easy to leave some content removed. As we mods burnt out over the years, our standards for what counted as a worthy post kept getting higher with fewer and fewer posts being approved. The end result has been a severe drop in discussion posts on the sub. When recruiting new moderators, we sought people who thought as we did so mod decisions would be consistent and there wouldn’t be arguments in the mod chat. Modding is stressful enough without the stress coming from within the mod team. However, as you add more mods who agree with you, you can start to have an inflated view of how widespread your opinion is. A circlejerk mentality builds and outside opinion is increasingly easy to dismiss. This can leave users feeling like their opinions don’t matter to the mods and builds resentment. Insanityy was a kind soul and hated conflict, she avoided disagreements as much as possible. As a friend, this was fine, but as a mod it meant she avoided openly discussing mod policy on the subreddit as inevitably there would be some disagreement. This lack of discussion with the sub made it hard for users to object to the direction the sub took, allowing the mod team to grow out of touch with what the userbase wants. Hopes for the Future While I may have been quite critical of the current state of the subreddit, I think the community is a good one and there’s hope for improvement. A smaller, more motivated mod team would help, as well as scaling back some of the restrictions like the question and image-post ban. Let activity on the subreddit explode. Should low-quality content grow to become a problem, perhaps /r/visualnovels should split just as /r/gaming and /r/games have, or perhaps a split between Japanese and English VNs would help? Not every idea will work out, but what’s important is to be trying new ideas and be responsive to change rather than clinging to an outdated format. As I said at the start, please remember this isn’t an impartial view on the history of the sub and that this isn’t meant to downplay the hard work of the current mod team. Modding is exhausting, it’s a constant burden with little praise. Even if I consider them poor mods, it doesn’t make them bad people. I know she won’t ever read this, nor will she care what I think, but I still believe insanityy was an inspirational mod and a wonderful friend. It’s incredibly hard to go it alone like she did when she first took over /r/visualnovels. She stood up for what she thought /r/visualnovels could be and put in so much effort, every day, rain or shine, she never shirked from her responsibilities. I miss her every day. If anyone wants to know more or say hi, you can contact me here on Fuwanovel, tumblr,, twitter, or Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616)

Hey guys. Remember me? Well I killed Black Sands about 5 months ago due to production costs being too high but I shifted my efforts to a much more cost efficient comic series in the same universe. I wanted to share with you my personal story because I feel it is a very interesting perspective from an EVN developer. The PAST I worked on Black Sands, Legends of Kemet for a little over a year.. I had updated my project page here close to 50 times and I had this very unusual story. In 2015 I launched my first kickstarter and failed miserably. Most people when they fail, they blame others for not reading their story and getting immersed. I didn't believe this at all. I felt I failed because my art was subpar and thus people never got the chance to read my story. I then recruited an amazing artist by the name of hydriss to create my VN. We worked for a year to get it ready for a kickstarter relaunch and overhauled the story to be more engaging. We had success finding major investors but they never had time for our production so after waiting months for a cash injection, we cut ties. We were then 10k in the hole. I killed production of Black Sands then and there and decided to do a much easier comic book series that was targeted at kids and their parents who were fans of DBZ and what not. I named it Kids 2 Kings. Not because it was a good name, but because it was a memorable name. It's really hard to forget. We created our first issue and released it on the madefire app and had great reviews. We then launched our kickstarter, which is in its last days now. The funny thing is we recently made a trailer for kids 2 kings and it went viral and facebook and twitter. Now sitting at 190 retweets and 235k views on facebook, Kids 2 Kings, is becoming my dream come true. Now it is extremely unusual for people to completely turn around and do something else but it is a very UNIQUE experience that you might want to learn more about so I AM OPEN FOR ANY AND ALL QUESTIONS. BTW, thanks Fuwa for keeping me motivated all these years when i was developing black sands. I couldn't have gotten to this point without you guys. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/165752716/kids-2-kings-comics-about-4-kids-7-kingdoms-and-1

Perhaps the most universal complaint of those who read Japanese VNs, regardless of their tastes, is the bland, non-people, average protagonists that make up better than 90% of all VN protagonists. This trend began with the first moege, as a technique to allow people to self-insert more easily, but the tradition has worked against VNs more than it has worked for them, with protagonists with unique quirks turning out to be almost as important to a VN's lasting popularity as heroine quality. Unfortunately for those new to VNs, it is impossible to tell at a glance whether a protagonist will be interesting or not based on the cover, since most protagonists don't have a tachie, voice-acting, or a character description on the official site, lol. So, as a service to my fellow Fuwans, I decided to go ahead and make this list. The greater majority of these games will be untranslated, but I will go ahead and list ones that are translated that I know of. Feel free to help me add to the list, though this one is for Japanese-origin games, not EVNs. The baseline for these protagonists will be that they are either unique, unusual, or capable (intelligent, talented, and/or skilled at something and have something approaching a personality) without deliberate nerfing of their qualities to make heroines stand out more. Harem protagonists who are merely kind to everyone will not count for the purpose of this list, and characters whose personality/capabilities/talents/skills get toned down in the heroine routes will also not qualify. Translated Tokyo Babel Ayakashibito Hello, Lady (soon) Hapymaher Noble Works (yes, he does make the baseline) Dracu-riot (assuming the official release comes out) Nanairo Reincarnation (soon) Tsukihime FSN Comyu (yes, I include this... because even if you hate Akihito's man-whore qualities, he is definitely not a cardboard cut-out character) Rance games (I hate the Rance games, personally, but you can't say he isn't unique) Majikoi Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai Road (Dai only seems sheeple on the surface... he has enough depth as a character to qualify) Eien no Aselia (while his personality is standard for a jrpg protagonist, it has enough twists and unique qualities to make the list) Seinarukana (similar to above) Fata Morgana no Yakata (I wavered because of the way the game is structured, but I chose to list it anyway) Grisaia series Kikokugai Demonbane 11eyes Rewrite (I hate this protagonist, but he stands out, even if he is a dumbass) Animamundi Baldr SkyDive (whenever it comes out) ChuSinGura (I honestly wavered on this one, both because the protagonist is a moron and because I don't consider this to have been truly translated) Cross Channel Daiteikoku Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai Dies Irae I/O Yumina Kyonyuu Fantasy (yes, I'm serious even as I'm laughing) Planetarian Rose Guns Days Sekien no Inganock Gakthun Sharin no Kuni Shikkoku no Sharnoth Shin Koihime Musou (apparently tl is at 100%, so I'm including it) Sorcery Jokers (Senri!!!) Tears to Tiara Tokeijikake no Leyline series Venus Blood Frontier (whenever it comes out) Wanko to Kurasou Eden* Untranslated Akeiro Kaikitan Ikusa Megami series Soukoku no Arterial Fuukan no Grasesta Madou Koukaku Silverio series Tiny Dungeon series Zero Infinity Electro-Arms Soranica Ele Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier Komorebi no Nostalgica Devils Devel Concept Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana Evolimit Bullet Butlers Tokyo Necro Soukou Akki Muramasa Ou no Mimi ni wa Todokanai Shugo no Tate series Amatsutsumi Floral Flowlove Aoi Tori Mirai Nostalgia Bradyon Veda Draculius Gensou no Avatar Abyss Homicide Club Hyper→Highspeed→Genius Inochi no Spare Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo Konata yori Kanata Made Kanojo wa Tenshi de Imouto de Jingai Makyou "Hello, World" Natsu no Owari no Nirvana Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas Rui wa Tomo o Yobu Ryuukishi Bloody Saga Vermilion Bind of Blood Satsukoi Sinclient Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide Suisei Ginka Yurikago yori Tenshi Made Izuna Zanshinken Tasogare no Sinsemilla Valkyrie Runabout Sekai o Sukuu dake no Kantan na Oshigoto Haru to Yuki Semiramis no Tenbin Tsukiakari Lunch Tsuisou no Augment Kamikaze Explorer Prism Recollection Houkago no Futekikakusha Izayoi no Fortuna Natsuzora no Perseus Minamijuujisei Renka Ojou-sama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary Sakura no Mori Dreamers AstralAir no Shiroki Towa Irotoridori no Sekai Senren Banka Reminiscence Akagoei series Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru Harumade Kururu Haruru Minamo ni Kin'iro Loveriche Love Rec. Natsuiro Recipe Shuumatsu Shoujo Gensou Alicematic Sakura Nikagetsu Iroha ~Aki no Yuuhi ni Kagefumi o~ Campus's Uso series World Election (seriously push this one for fantasy charage lovers) Curio Dealer Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai Lamunation Sora no Tsukurikata Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa Sakura, Sakimashita Amairo Islenauts Blade x Bullet Gouen no Soleil Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu Doushite, Sonna ni Kurokami ga Suki na no?! (more charage with some plot) Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake Butterfly Seeker Fake Azure Arcology Re:Birth Colony Gekkou no Carnevale Hatsuyuki Sakura Gurenka Hikari no Umi no Apeiria (this guy's personality is so out there you wouldn't even be able to tell if anything effected him, lol) Hotel. (this is also a joke from me that I can share only with those few who have read it, lol) Kamigakari Cross Heart Kimi to Boku to no Kishi no Hibi Witch's Garden Kono Sekai no Mukou de Kouyoku no Soleil Lovesick Puppies (more food for charagamers) Toppara Zashiki Warashi no Hanashi Naka no Hito Nado Inai Natsuiro no Nostalgia Ojou-sama wa Gokigen Naname Onigokko Otomimi Infinity Para-Sol Prima Stella Paradise Lost Kajiri Kamui Kagura Sanzen Sekai Yuugi (only Otomege I know of that fulfills the prime condition) Primal x Hearts Tayutama (original only) Shinigami no Testament Shogun-sama wa Otoshigoro Stellula Eques Codex Tasogare no Himekishi (seriously, the protagonist is subject to some interesting stuff, like akuochi and/or corruption of characters) Toki o Tsumugu Yakusoku Unjou no Fairy Tale Yuganda Uso no Koi to Letter Yoru Meguru, Bokura no Maigo Kyoushitsu Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou Request includes G-Senjou no Maou Aiyoku no Eustia Watashi no Real wa Juujitsu Shisugiteiru Shirogane no Soleil Root Double Edit: A lot of these characters stand out due to personality traits or quirks, as much as anything else. The key point is that the protagonist is a 'person' instead of a cipher or catalyst. For those who wonder why I didn't include Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou 2, the reason is pretty simple... in every path, the protagonist's individuality vanishes and he becomes enslaved to the heroine's character needs.

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 is usually puerile and has no relation to reality, the characters have all their hard edges filed away by the needs of the archetype, and drama is used solely to add 'spice' (like one sprinkle of pumpkin spice, not cracked red pepper) to an otherwise endlessly sweet and bland recipe. So how is it that someone who has experienced that much essentially boring and pointless repetition of the same scenarios able to continue to enjoy VNs, even if he can't stand meaningless SOL anymore? At one time, it was a sense of duty, a belief that I was doing the community good by digging gems out of the piles of crap that are the SOL genre. I also had a sense of pride that I made an effort of objectivity that I have literally seen no one else attempt. I played games no one else bothered with because they didn't have the time or patience, and I did it because I thought someone looking at the games would want to know what they were getting into. I paid a price in a growing sense of bitterness, of boredom, and of a sense that I was forgetting the reason why I began to read fiction in the first place. I paid a price in people continually being trolls and trying to draw me into fights over my opinions on these games. I had people start reddits and send me pms being sympathetic about the very conversations they'd started (yes that happens). I also had people who respected what I was doing, and I knew there were people in the community who benefited from the fact that I was doing it. I watched VNs I had pushed get localizations and fantls (usually to my surprise), and I saw others that I had labeled as mediocre get hyped to a ridiculous degree. I tried to get other people to help with what I was doing, only to find that, without a reading speed similar to mine, it was too much of a burden on their lives and ate up the time to read the VNs they wanted to read. The bad generally outweighed the good immensely while I was doing VN of the Month, and even after, I found that the after-effects of my years of playing games I wasn't interested in personally had left me with scars I was unable to feel while my sense of duty was keeping me going. However, I can say that I still haven't given up on VNs. Why? The reason is ridiculously simple and at the same time profound (at least to me). I love the medium. For someone who likes an experience that combines the reading, visual input, and music without the need for a lot of input from the one experiencing it, VNs provide a unique storytelling experience. Books are great for the imagination and can send our souls exploring across landscapes that exist only in our own minds, but VNs provide a more filled-out framework for those who don't necessarily have the imagination to fill in all the gaps on their own, without rotting the imagination to the degree manga and anime do. I've been able to get people who had trouble reading books into VNs, then led them straight back to books and opened the world of imagination to them. I've seen people who had begun to feel the otaku community offered nothing more to them come alive again after playing a chuunige or a charage. I've picked up a random moe-looking VN and found a deep and compelling story that remains within me dozens of times. In the end, it is moments, experiences like that that keep me coming back, believing in the possibilities of VNs even now. It is the desire to find more such experiences that keeps me looking at new releases each month, and it is the belief that those experiences will never entirely vanish that keeps me from condemning the industry as a whole for the way it sabotages itself at times.

It's that time of the year again. Time to reflect on everything you made of good and bad in the year. But who cares about getting chained down by your past forever huh? So let's skip that part and look forward to the future! To what we can (and can't do) to make Fuwanovel great... again? Did we ever were great? Debatable. So anyways, let's all collect suggestions of changes we want to see here in the coming year. If you're feeling a bit uninspired, I suggest to vote for one of the wonderful suggestions I make below. Because I thought long and hard (aka 3 minutes, rough estimation) in the well being of our beloved dysfunctional community. Create a pinned "Translation Salt" thread under Visual Novel Talk, because lately every single release gets this; Rename Walkthrough section to "SeniorBlitz's Secret Dungeon"; Rename Translation Projects to "Fan Translations Burial Ground" because lately they're mostly dropped anyway; Create a board "Introduce Yourself and Never Speak Again" under Introduce Yourself because yep; Rename Community Coordination and Feedback to "Tay and Co. Burial Ground" (I'm sorry Tay, we love you); Create a pinned "Looking for Hentai Animation or Visual Novel (Powered by Monta93TM)" thread under Anime/Manga Recommendation; Rename Leaderboard to...... anything tbh no one will notice kek kthxbye

08/27 - COMPLETE PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes! !! COMPLETE PATCH !! Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z Installation guide: - if you have downloaded the daily patch - patch3.xp3 just manually delete it ( you don't need it anymore because its already inside the Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z ) Q: "Why V0.9a? When it's complete" A: "The v1.0 slot is reserved for the install wizard with additional content/mods/etc, and the 'a' in '(v0.9) a' stands for alpha, because the patch stills needs polishing, like redrawing the first released scenes" Want to support the project?

He will be remembered. I like to think that he himself considered that he lived a good life, as it's well known his optimism and way of thinking. It's always sad to say goodbye, but in the end we must accept that is the fate we all share. He has become now one of those undying stars that will inspire the future generations. It was his books that made me interested in physics in the first place. So thank you and good night, Mr Hawking, have a good sleep.

Here is a list of VNs officially released in english, I will likely not update this list anymore after August 2021 as I don't see much of a point in it anymore with improvements to the search function of vndb. Orange text means confirmed for an official english release while yellow text means that a part has been released but not the entire VN. I have also made a list with the ones with physical release, this list is sorted the same way as this but also has info on where the titles can be bought and if it is available List of physical english releases of VNs MangaGamer (Store) Sekai Project (Homepage)/Denpasoft (Store) JAST USA (Store) NekoNyan (Store) Frontwing (Homepage) Sol Press (Store) Shiravune (Loves DRM, especially Denuvo) Visual Arts Fruitbat Factory (Store) MoeNovel (Burn in hell) Cherry Kiss Games (Homepage) Winged Cloud Degica Aksys Games (Store) XSEED Games (Store) NIS America (Store NA, Store EU) PQube Others (Japanese) Others (not japanese) Himeya Soft (Bankrupt) Hirameki International (Quit the VN market) SakuraGame/Paradise Project (Machine translated, do not buy from them)

This list won't feature the VNs in order of "how good they are". Rating them would be way too much of a clusterfuck to me. The VNs are not in their respective order. Meaning number 1 is not the best, and so on. 1_CHAOS; HEAD 2_Cross Channel 3_G-Senjou no Maou 4_Fate/Stay Night 5_Forest This Visual Novel is the easiest visual novel translated to get a bad ending without using a walkthrough- which just adds to the fun of it. It makes a massive amount of references to common literature, which makes it even better. 6_Katahane It may seem like an ordinary moege- the atmosphere is light, the story is full of cuteness, which you can note by the character design and soundtrack. It gets really good in the middle, and you'll be dying to know what happens in the end. A game with multiple perspectives, it's definitely one of the most enjoyable Visual Novels I've ever read. 7 Majikoi 8_Little Busters! 9_Tsukihime "You shouldn't tell lies that you can't even fool yourself with" 10_Swan Song A post apocalyptic Visual Novel. 11_Symphonic Rain It may seem like your ordinary moege. Trust me, it's not. 12_Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo (and sequel) 13_Sekien no Inganock Steampunk. An atmosphere full of mysteries and references that will make your head blow up. 14_Steins; Gate A visual novel that deals extensively with time travel and it's consequences. 15_Utawarerumono 16_Fault: Milestone (1 & 2) 17_Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni 18_Kara no Shoujo 19_Umineko no Naku Koro ni 20_Planetarian 21_Ever 17 Another top 10. 22_Remember11 It lacks in the ending, but otherwise the story of this VN has enough to easily become one of my all-time favorites. 23_Zanmataisei Demonbane 24_Rewrite "Could it possibly be rewritten, this fate of hers?" Another one that enters the top 10. 25_Narcissu 26_Grisaia no Kajitsu 27_Saya no Uta Only if you enjoy dark and messed up settings. 28_Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni 29_Eien no Aselia 30_Rose Guns Days (1 & 2) There are small sections of gameplay on this one, but you can skip them by pressing the space bar, so this still qualifies. 31_Sengoku Rance I feel obliged to comment on this VN before suggesting it to anyone. It's an Alicesoft title, which speaks a lot for itself... If you don't know how it's going to be like, well.. Kind of tough to describe. Lots of sex, including comedy rape. Alicesoft tends to make the whole story a comedy until right near the end, where things actually do get serious. It's worth checking out, if you don't mind Rance's personality. 32_Phenomeno Want a short VN that can captivate you for their whole duration? Here is it. Visual novel adapted from the youth horror novel written by Hajime Ninomae and illustrated by yoshitoshi ABe. 33_Ef- A Fairy Tale of the Two 34_Dysfunctional Systems Another one great for those who want short Visual Novels. 35_Daibanchou Another Alicesoft title. While Rouga is not near Rance's level when it comes to pissing off people, alicesoft's style is something which often doesn't please people. 36_Yume Miru Kusuri The endings pack quite a punch. 37_Kikokugai- The Cyber Slayer 38_Eden 39_Hoshizora no Memoria 40_Katawa Shoujo Yep, it's somewhat overrated. Still, the fact that it is substantially easier for those who are starting to play visual novels to read should not be discarded, and overall, the story was good. 41_World End Economica 42_YU-NO 43_Shikkoku no Sharnoth Yep, there is a minigame on this one. If you download a save data you can skip the minigame, though. So it still qualifies. Another VN that enters my top 10. 44_Muv Luv Alternative The first Muv Luv didn't have enough to enter this list. You should still read it, though~ MLA is definitely awesome. 45_Dangan Ronpa 46_Comyu - Kuroi Ryuu to Yasashii Oukoku 47_Hanachirasu 48_Ayakashibito 49_I/O 50_Deardrops

It is done. The translation is officially 100% done Progress will now move on to post-translation, where there's TLC and QC to be done. I'm hoping to finish everything else and release the patch by end 2020 (unlikely, but hey, you never know). If not, then at least get the TLC done by end 2020. So do refer to the TLC tab of the sheet for progress on the TLC. I will save my translation remarks for after the patch is fully released. For now though, rejoice that the translation is done! Yay!

For those familiar with me, you know I spent year after year doing VN of the Month and that I ritualistically complained about how tired I was of this or that trope or bad habit that plagued the industry or games. I was asked repeatedly why I could still plow through so many VNs, despite the stress? The simple answer is that I have always been stubborn as hell. I've experienced 'burnout' numerous times in my life, mostly because I have a naturally obsessive personality. Once I start obsessing over something, I literally am incapable of ceasing to do so without something jarring me completely away from it for a time, which usually results in me realizing I burned out long ago and have just been hanging out of stubbornness. The same was the case for VNs. When I first started playing VNs, all VNs were worth at least trying. However, as time went on, I increasingly lost interest in most nukige and eventually my interest in 'everyday teenaged life SOL romance' (or 'the standard charage') began to fade. It was probably about 2016 when this reached the critical point, but it took another year and a two-week bout of flu where I couldn't think well enough to play anything to bump me out of my years-long trance. Part of it was that I rarely, if ever, took a break from VNs during those years. I was always playing at least one, and I had a tendency to barrel through them consecutively without even a short pause to rest, week after week, month after month. I used most of my free time to play them, I structured my work schedule and habits around playing them, and I generally existed solely to do so. I dunno how many of you can even imagine what living like that is like... but it was the fact that I am no longer driven to play game after game that is letting me sit back and enjoy the few I actually want to play. I go back and pull stuff out of my attic on a whim, I dig through my collection based on a desire to relive a single scene, and I generally just take pleasure in playing what I want to play. Would it be strange for you to hear that this all feels unnatural to me, after all these years? I've been playing third-rate charage I didn't want to even see, much less play, for years... and now I only play stuff that takes my interest, dropping them if I don't see any hope for the game to break out of the shell of mediocrity. I don't feel driven to blog about replays beyond when I feel like it or when I think I have something to add to a previous assessment, and I can actually sit back and enjoy the few charage I actually feel like I want to play. While I do have regrets, they aren't about the years spent obsessing and over-playing VNs, despite my previous words. I set out to do VN of the Month because, at the time, there was no way for people to have an idea of what they were getting into with most VNs. It was a bit startling how few people were seriously trying to let people know what kind of VNs were out there without spoiling everything from beginning to end. Even today, most reviewers can't seem to keep heavy spoilers out of the text, which saddens me. However, I no longer feel that it is my mission to 'fix' this. I've been there, I've done that, and I won't be doing it again. I will still play VNs, and I will still review them (on occasion), but don't expect me to be as prolific as I used to be, lol.

The problem While spurred by recent events, this essay touches on something that seems to have been a pattern in site moderation for some time now. Let me make a claim: if a rule, especially one that is vaguely worded, is not enforced, for a decent amount of people that rule does not exist. This nonexistence integrates into the mental model of the rules that forum members construct, no matter what the formal rules may say. For members using this mental model, beginning to enforce a rule that was previously unenforced is equivalent to creating a new rule. As such, the same procedures as those used to notify forum members of new rules should be applied, possibly with some adaptation on the lines of "we will now actually enforce this rule", as the rule effectively did not previously exist. The ur-example of this is the loligeddon of yore. The takeaway from the loligeddon when it comes to this essay is this: mods repeatedly stated that no rules had actually been changed. Yet nevertheless the appearance and subsequent removal of a particularly problematic post sparked sweeping policy changes, a cleanup operation, a tl;dr post by the administrator explaining the changes, et cetera. This should make it clear that changing policy is a big deal, even if no written rules actually change. Recent policy changes, however, have been very different from what happened during the loligeddon. Frequently the only indication that effective rules have changed has been moderator action, sometimes fairly strict. In essentially all cases this action has been explained either inadequately or, most commonly, not at all. When this occurs the target(s) of moderation will likely feel that they have been unfairly, erratically targeted by a capricious, uncommunicative bully. What do you do when you get bullied? Well, you could talk to HR, but the mod that bullied you is probably in HR anyway and you might not even know who did it. Another option is to fight back. You annoy me, I pay you back in kind - and if I can get some fun at your expense, sure, why not? You're a bully, you deserve it.[1] I do not mean to suggest that we need to have a tl;dr writeup every time a rule is changed, but a simple statement of intent would be appreciated. I estimate that writing this should take no more than 20 minutes. As an example, here's a hypothetical notice regarding the changing of rules on gifs that took me ~10 minutes to write. Note that the policy mentioned here could be reversed or altered to be more specific if it turns out that it was unclear or did more harm than good, which is arguably more difficult to do if the rule has been made official.[2] In the light of this, I would like to present some recommendations. Recommendations When moderating, consider if your action is effectively creating or modifying rules Remember: in the minds of some of your users, unenforced rules may as well not exist. If you decide to moderate something that was previously typically not being moderated, this will cause confusion and consternation. As such, whenever you make a decision, ask yourself: am I changing the rules? If so, you need to consider both whether your action is actually justified, and how you are going to inform the public of your policy change. You are not a cop, you are a judge in a precedent-setting court. This is especially true due to the (understandable) current policy of supporting other mods' decisions near unconditionally. Do not make controversial decisions when following up is difficult On some occasions moderators have moderated while on vacation, using their phone, with bad connections et cetera. I strongly recommend against making anything close to a controversial decision in these conditions. You will end up both ruining your vacation and doing a bad job. Talk first, shoot later If you are performing a moderator action which reasonably should include notifying the target of the action, write up the informative PM or otherwise establish communication before enforcement. You could also consider writing up the notification of intent to change / differently enforce / clarify rules before moderating. Most of the time nobody is harmed much by leaving something up until you can handle it properly. For things that require more urgent management such as a fast-evolving derailment, consider either using a PM template for 1-2 people or making a post stating that you have removed derailing posts in the thread you moderated. Make people feel heard One key theme of this essay is the importance of communication. This extends beyond just notifying people of changes to the rules. I am under no illusions that your actions will go uncontested or that people won't meme and fling shit at you even if you try your best to communicate as advised in this essay. In part this is due to the frustration some people, and certainly I myself, consider you responsible for creating due to your actions up to this point. However, when hostility meets well-practiced civility its fires often run out of fuel. If you constructively engage with those who would oppose you, you can both soothe their frustration and create better, more precise final rules. Obviously there has to be a limit and ultimately you set the rules to follow. But explaining, refining, and justifying your position elevates it from that of a dim-witted bully with little justification for their actions to someone who has a well-grounded but different opinion of what the rules should be. The first one deserves punishment, the second, grudging respect. As a personal observation: in general, you should assume that much less of your decisions are obviously justified than you currently think. One man's common sense is another man's borderline acceptability is another man's utterly idiotic rule enforcement. Moderation is a hard job If this all seems like a lot of hard work to you, congratulations! That's what I thought too when the mod applications came along, so I didn't apply. Any moderators that cannot actually moderate disputes should either confine themselves to routine, uncontroversial moderation tasks or step down from their position. Believe me, nobody will die either way, and you'll get to spend your free time doing something that suits you better. Notes [1] I personally don't consider the mods bullies when I do this kind of thing, but I do consider them deserving of public ridicule. The intention is both to correct behaviour and to extract some entertainment out of people that deserve to be made fun of. And yeah, I have no respect for authority. None. I will judge you by your actions alone. [2] This is an assumption based on my conception of normie considerations like pride, sticking with your decision, whatever. Obviously if a rule does more harm than good it should be removed whether or not it was enforced temporarily, but it is probably easier to do so politically if it was in fact considered temporary. Look, I'm trying desperately not to kill all normies every day here. Give me a break.

EDIT: Right now there is a new pass being made to the translation, so there is hope after all. For more details, check out the game's kickstarter page. I know there are already several posts talking about the translation of this game on the forum, but some people might have missed them, as the bulk of the posts were made some time ago, so I figured a new thread might be in order, now that the game is out for everyone. I have been reading the game for about 2 hours now, comparing the JP lines to the English translations as I read. This translation is very literal, to the point where the English sentences often make little to no sense. The biggest issue seems to be that the translator transliterated everything. It seems like he/she just looked at the Japanese line, and word by word, translated everything directly into an English sentence as is, without any re-wording, giving no thought to how the line would flow in English. And the result is... terrible. From what I can tell, the translator has not made any rookie JP mistakes, like mistaking particles etc, (though keep in mind I could only go by the voiced lines and not the narrated ones, as I do not have the Japanese script in front of me.) That being said, an "accurate" translation doesn't really mean much when the English is barely comprehensible as a result. A few examples of what you will see in the translation: (Decay also posted some examples last month, which you can see here.) Screenshots: You also have things like this: This is an official localization, and yet it reads like a bad fan TL. We should not be okay with this. Many of us paid money for this. From what I can tell, the translation's accuracy is not the issue, but the translator's lack of English knowledge is. A proper editing pass and some QCing could fix 90% of the issues in this translation. We should all, (in a calm manner, of course,) ask Mikandi to do something about this. Whether they will actually listen to us or not is hard to say, but I'd like to think they will. Their PR has been on point through the entire campaign, (they were logged into this forum just last night, showing that they are checking the threads about their game frequently) and if enough people voice their complaints about the translation, I hope they will look into doing something about it. Tweet them, comment on their kickstarter page if you are a backer or post on their website. Make your stance on the TL known. If one person complains, nothing will happen, but if everyone does, it's going to be hard for Mikandi to ignore us. With their prevoiusly open attitude towards the community, I'd like to think they will listen. So, for the moment, my recommendation is that you do not buy this game. Wait and see if they will do something about our concerns first. Hopefully they will listen and do something about the TL. If you buy the game now in its current state, just be warned: it's not very good, and you might come to regret your decision.

Hi everybody, It's been a while. I'll make a personal update post at some point, but for the moment I'm posting to ask our users to take the first of what may be a series of surveys we put out this Summer. This first survey is essentially an open invitation to tell me exactly what problems are bothering you about the site, anonymously. My site work this Summer will be heavily influenced by this survey, so if you care about Fuwa and want to see site improvements, please participate. Survey Link: https://goo.gl/forms/DHWvWdmusKKXZBh43 I want to thank @Emi for a recent email, @Clephas for some recent posts in the forums I've read which gave me encouragement, all our moderators, @Decay for his patience with my crazy schedule and a soft VNTS pause, and all of our users for keeping Fuwanovel alive. Much love to all of you. Tay

Maybe I should have waited until it was a full year, but eh, I was bored. And I reached 400 posts, celebration song! I noticed that I'm here in this damn forum for 10 months now, not so much compared to the senpais but still some accomplishment. Hell, I never thought that I would come back here so often, must be some kind of curse. Or maybe, gasp, I actually enjoy spending time here! I could use the time to read visual novels instead, but time management was never my strongest asset. Well well, I was all nostalgic and then I remember that I never did an introduction thread. Until now. But at this point is kinda pointless, because by now, people must be aware of how I really am. Or not, I don't know, not sure if anyone stalks me. I hope not. Anyway, just for formalities, hi, name's Maggie, 24, Virgo, blood type O, Castlevania is my game, Carnival Phantasm is my anime, Pandora Hearts is my manga, steel is my body and fire is my blood. You must have already see me around either doing serious posts about girl games or shitposting in general, so if you remember me for either of those, I'm glad I did my job well and my contribuitions to this site weren't in vain. And it will be on that time that I'll be an important addition to this team. So, with nothing more to discuss, I decided to look back in what I did here in this past year, like a review of myself. So let's see... - I did a lot of VNR troubleshooting back when I joined and saw at least 67 noobs that create an account just to ask why the text didn't appear. Pick the text thread, pick the text thread yo, pick the text thread. I said that so many times, I can make a rap with it; - Why didn't I just ignore them? Because I actually found a fujoshi friend doing it, back in May I think :3 We still talk to this day, every day; - Speaking of friends, I'm glad I found some nice, adorable and slightly weird people derailing threads and shitposting here. So yeah, even shit had it's purpose; - I got myself a harem even; - I think I talk bad about Comyu some 103 times; - And talk good about Shingakkou other 134 times; - Played a lot of free BL and otomeges that I found around; - And 179 new games ended up in my backlog, rip; - Not counting non VN things, le double rip; - Made 248 edits to my posts. What even is english? - My most liked content was in the "realistic romance in VNs" thread. And I just said "No, and that's why it's good". See people, sometimes less is more! Or something... - I saw things... I wanted to unsee things... - Actually, I guess I became a bit more degenerated these last months. It's you guys fault; - I'm also way less productive now; - Joking, I love this place. (Obs: this last one may vary with my mood) Yeeeep, sounds like that was a busy year! I hope to be with you guys one more year! Or be able to free myself from this place and be productive agaaaaaaaaaaaaain! AMA, except my three sizes. And post some pretty boys while you do so, please, thank you.

On request, I'm making up this list. These aren't necessarily on my absolute favorites list (check my blog for that one), but many of them are among my favorites. These span most of the genres I've played, with the notable exception of nukige (I'll leave that for the true connoisseurs of the genre). Feel free to argue with me. This is my opinion, based on my overall impressions of these games as a whole. This is not in a specific order, since I don't have an absolute favorite VN. This list is restricted solely to untranslated games, so ones that made it into my favorites list that are translated - such as Dies Irae, Ayakashibito, Tokyo Babel, and Tsukihime, are excluded. On the other hand, I am including some that have planned translations, simply because I feel no reason to trust that they will actually ever be finished, lol. Evolimit- There are a number of reasons to choose this, and any other work by Propeller before its main crew disbanded (in other words, everything after Tokyo Babel sucks). The biggest one, though, is that it is a chuunige kamige. This is one of the few games I give the maximum rating for a reason. The story is great, the characters are awesome, and the setting is fascinating. If you like science fantasy, heroic characters, and fascinating antagonists, this is a great VN. Nanairo Reincarnation- This was VN of the Year, 2014, for good reason. Like many kamige, there is a sense that this VN is much greater than the sum of its parts... and the parts are pretty good, at that. This is a fantasy mystery-horror VN with a side of comedy, slice-of-life, and nakige elements. It startles you, it makes you cry, it makes you laugh, it warms your heart, and it engages your mind. What more could you want from a VN? Hapymaher- VN of the Year, 2013. This competed with Komorebi no Nostalgica for the title, and that competition was tight. It is slated for a translated release, but from the looks of it, the translation isn't going to do the game justice. This game is a somewhat psychedelic fantasy nakige, where you spend most of your time following the protagonist and the other characters as they walk through a dreamscape, trying to find a way back to waking life... while the protagonist is never quite sure if he wants to wake up. It is worthy to mention that this game currently holds my title for the number one original soundtrack of all the visual novels I've played, as well as the music direction (placement of the BGMs in scenes). Some say the story loses out to the music, but that is a matter of opinion, lol. Komorebi no Nostalgica- This is an emotionally and intellectually powerful science fiction (not science fantasy) VN based in a world where in the past self-aware AIs fought humanity for their freedom and won. Now they coexist with humanity, and an entire generation has grown up seeing AI self-determination as being a matter of common sense. This game tackles issues of AI human emulation with both heart and intelligence, and the end result is a VN that is intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. Tiny Dungeon (series)- It should be mentioned that the art for these games is retro/behind the times, and this entire series was carried by the genius of its writer. This is a fantasy series about a young man named Hime struggling against fate as he tries to choose the best outcome for his friends. The most powerful element of this game is the characters' growth across the games (each of the games is a story arc based on heroine choice and the resulting fate, save for the fourth game, which is the final episode of the main series). This series is well-written, strongly emotional, frequently hilarious, and definitely worth reading. Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no- Written in the era in which nakige were at their peak, this is perhaps the single best nakige to come out of that time. Many VNs have attempted to imitate it, using more modern art styles in futile attempts to match this VN's quality, but they have universally failed, the narrative never even approaching this game. This is a story of mutual salvation, between the protagonist, a teacher, and his students (the heroines), as they strive against a world that seeks to crush them beneath the weight of their own experiences and fates. Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo- For those not into chuunige, this VN is usually the absolute best VN ever produced by Propeller. With the now-legendary Shumon Yuu writing this highly emotional, strange story, it is no surprise that those who read this game to the very end tend to come out singing its praises. Unfortunately, like a lot of games by Shumon Yuu, getting into it in the first place is something of a hurdle, though, lol. Harumade, Kururu- Beginning as a comedy nukige, this game shifts rapidly into a much stranger genre (won't spoil it for you). This game frequently makes you go wtf, from the beginning all the way to the end, but as a whole it leaves you strangely satisfied... if you can get past the first chapter, lol. Ninety percent of the people who try to read this game drop it before the first chapter is over, but those who get past the first chapter will find out why it was done that way fairly quickly, since what comes after wouldn't be a good intro to what is going on by itself, lol. Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana- It should be noted that the reader shouldn't seek for the setting as a whole to make sense. This is a game of feels, not logic... and immense feels they are. If you have a heart, you will spend most of this game crying, for the heroines, the protagonist... and all the denizens of that world. The sweet and cheery side shown on the surface barely conceals the despair and broken lives and hearts beneath. Houkago no Futekikakusha- Despite its flawed setting, I've never encountered a 'hard' utsuge so perfectly orchestrated to prevent the numbness that is usually born during the progression of such games. The horror of what is going is unrelenting... salvation brutally torn away, love broken in despair. Konata yori Kanata made- It should be mentioned that anyone who spoils any aspect of this game should be crucified, for the sake of everyone around them. That said, I will go so far as to say that this is a classic 'soft' utsuge that has gone unmatched to this day. The utter humanity of the characters in this game, the deep love, the compassion, the kindness, and the suffering... Despite having played this three times in the past, it still hits me like a stone from a catapult every time. Bullet Butlers- It should be noted that Bullet Butlers, until recently, was unique amongst VNs for having a fantasy setting with orcs, elves, dragons, and demon gods, yet also possessing firearms, movie noir style detectives with tommy guns, and zombies. Just the fact that the writer managed to balance so many disparate elements without making them feel off is impressive, but that he did so while writing a powerful story with fascinating characters is all the more impressive. Chrono Belt- This is the only fandisc on this list, with good reason. Despite being a fandisc, this game is almost more impressive than the original material (Ayakashibito and Bullet Butlers), in that it not only brought two immensely popular antagonists forward as new protagonists (Kuki-sensei and Alfred), but it also shoved them into the other's setting and linked them together in a way that was, within the bounds of the setting, believable. It was also just flat out cool to watch Kuki-sensei fighting an army of dragons, orcs, elves, and humans... and winning. Jingai Makyou- I debated with myself on whether to include this game. To be honest, Nitroplus's early works just haven't aged well, and this one is no exception. However, in the end, I had to include this, as one of the three games from Nitroplus worthy of this list. Jingai Makyou follows a young man who literally possesses no heart and only weak emotions in his interactions with a horrific underworld of non-humans, most of which want to eat him (literally). Muramasa- It should be noted that this was the VN where Nitroplus's love of infodumping was perhaps the most ubiquitous outside of Hanachirasu. It is also frequently opaque early on, to the point of frustration. However, as dark chuunige go, there are few that even approach this in quality. Bloody, merciless, and morally ambiguous at all times, this game is a fun ride, if you don't mind that it is devoid of anything resembling a good ending. Tokyo Necro- I was tempted to ignore this one, despite it being my VN of the Year 2016. The reason? I hate zombies, and zombies are portrayed in all their gruesome glory... and in the most horrifying way possible in this game. In this world, technology has allowed humanity to raise and control the dead, the more skilled necromancers managing to retain the dead's intelligence and skill, and even modifying their bodies with various... 'mechanical wonders' as necessary. The story in this game is twisted and frequently confusing, the characters are almost devoid of admirable qualities (other than the true heroine), and I found myself wondering if anything good would ever emerge in the future after the game ended. However, it is undeniable that this game's story is a work of art, despite the writer's lack of taste in subject matter. Otome ga Tsumugu, Koi no Canvas- One of the few charage on this list... and for good reason. Most charage simply aren't good enough to be something you should play before you die, lol. This game is a trap protagonist VN based in a town revolving around art. The protagonist has a lot of personal issues, but they all revolve around art and his own attitude toward it... and how that attitude involves the heroines. Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteiru Futari no Elder- Yes, yet another trap protagonist. It should be noted that I do not recommend the original game. This game is a rare charage kamige, and it should be treated as an entity unto itself. There is little that can be said about games like this except play it. Floral Flowlove- This game competes with Hatsuyuki Sakura - and wins - for the best VN made by Saga Planets. For raw quality, this game and Hatsuyuki are almost even, but Hatsuyuki's flaws drag it down just enough to make it a win for Flowlove. Hatsuyuki Sakura- Hatsuyuki Sakura was the first VN by Saga Planets I played. Sometimes a nakige, sometimes light horror, and sometimes a mystery, this VN was one of the more unusual experiences of my early days reading untranslated VNs. I can honestly say I don't remember every detail of this game (it has been half a decade, after all), but I remember the points I liked most... and what pissed me off about it, lol. Bradyon Veda- This game's biggest flaw is that it is so hard to read, lol. That said, this is a rare hard science fiction game hiding behind a fantastical setting. In fact, the concepts (theoretical physics, chemistry, etc) require so much preexisting knowledge that I doubt most people will get half of what is going on. However, the action in this game is great and the story is fascinating. Too bad that it is so hard to read, lol. Abyss Homicide Club- This game is worth mentioning, despite the fact that its artwork is equally as dated as Tsukihime. A dark, horrific story with a series of mysteries and layers of lies between you and the truth... it is definitely worth reading if you like this kind of thing, though it should be mentioned that this game's setting is as unbelievable as that of the Secret Game/Killer Queen series. Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier- VN of the Year, 2015. While this was the single weakest VN of the Year I've ever chosen (2015 was a poor year for VNs, overall) it was the single best release of that year, in my mind. This story is based in an alternate Japan, where mystic stones turn women barren in exchange for immensely increased physical and mental capabilities. It follows an alternate Okita and Shinsengumi through a Bakumatsu era warped by mysticism and steampunk elements. Akeiro Kaikitan- Based in the same setting as Nanairo Reincarnation, this story follows a young man who attracts supernatural beings like a magnet but has no defenses against them as he tries to deal with murderous ghosts infesting his school's old campus. With endings ranging from shocking in their excess of sorrow to gentle in their endless kindness, this is a game that draws on your emotions, plucking them like strings. Koisuru Otome to Shugo no Tate- One of the first 'classic' VNs I've played and my intro into AXL's art and style of creation. This duology is interesting as being typical of what is best about AXL as a company (excellent settings, solidly developed characters, and a story worth reading). Since AXL's style for its serious games and the level of quality is relatively identical compared to other companies, I should mention that playing this, Ou no Mimi, or any of their other serious titles will give you a similar experience, if with different emphasis. Inochi no Spare- Making a 'hard' utsuge satisfying is difficult, but sometimes, as in this case, they manage it. Inochi no Spare is a masterfully oriented trip through the characters' own personal version of hell, and the catharsis that comes from reading this the first time is immensely satisfying. Love Kami (the original game)- No, I don't mean those shitty later games focused on kami idols that came out over the last few years. I mean the game from over six years ago that focused on the first co-ed school for the gods of Japan and humans. As an intro to some of the concepts from Shinto, this is an excellent choice, and it also happens to be one of the single best charage in existence. Too bad the sequels are so... not. Tsuisou no Augment- This is a game and its FD as well (same name, different kanji). Honestly perverted, almost constantly hilarious, and frequently hard-hitting emotionally, this game that begins with the protagonist committing suicide in his old age by plunging a kitchen knife through his own throat is one of the more memorable reads I've come across over the years. Vermilion Bind of Blood- The most solid title by Light's second team, a kamige focusing on the vampires of a fictional city called Foggy Bottom in the modern US. It is a dark, violent glimpse into the life of a vampire who, just by being who he is, defies the expectations of those around him, even as he seeks to fit in, as the Guardian of vampiric law in the city. Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide- Sometimes referred to as the 'title by Shumon Yuu that almost doesn't feel like it was written by Shumon Yuu' this is a fantasy title about a world where god is not only known to exist, but he regularly grants miracles that change the very fabric of reality through chosen humans he takes to his side on a yearly basis. This game takes a hard look at the Christian and Gnostic views of Deus, as well as self-determination as a philosophy. Typical of Shumon Yuu, the characters have their own answers, but you are left wondering whether he agrees with any of them. Semiramis no Tenbin- This game is remarkable for two things (other than its excellent story), its brutally honest portrayal of the essential flaws in Japanese law and society and the uniqueness of its heroines. This is a game full of psychological manipulation, moral ambiguity, and philosophical questions about the fragility of absolutes. Minamijuujisei Renka- The third charage on this list, remarkable for its funny and interesting characters (as is appropriate in a charage) and the excellent heroine paths, this game shows off the largest non-nukige VN genre at its best. Natsuiro Recipe- A rare 'gentle and sweet' VN, based in a backwoods community in Japan. It is a perfect choice for a reader looking for a healthy, soft, and warmhearted read. Kaminoyu- The first thing that needs to be mentioned about this game is that there are no human heroines in this game. It is also a well-written mild romance that manages to be interesting without being excessively complex. Baldr Sky Dive games- These science-fiction third-person action/VNs are notable for being the masterpiece works of Team Baldrhead at its best. They present a dark, thoughtful picture of a dystopian future, where the unification of humanity into a single world state and the advancement of technology has only served to emphasize the ruin humanity has brought upon itself... Baldry Sky Zero- A side story told in a parallel version of the same time period and universe as the Sky Dive games, it is a brutally honest look at how humans can dehumanize one another and themselves, given the chance... and again, how technological advancement is not always a good thing. Ikusa Megami Zero- A grand story that covers centuries, following Serika in his journey from a paladin of the god of storms and adventurers to the legendary Godslayer. This is perhaps one of the three most well-written jrpgs I've ever played, as well as an excellent VN. Sakura, Sakimashita- A science-fiction story about a distant future where humanity has found the secret of immortality... and an asteroid threatens to destroy Earth. Suddenly, the tokoshie (meaning 'eternals') must face certain death. As immortals doomed to die, how shall the characters choose to live??? Gin'iro Haruka- A romance story of immense length and incredible quality covering a decade of the characters' lives. Few visual novels can match this game for character development, romance, or character growth. Kamikaze Explorer- A 'representative' of the Clochette's story-focused charage. Anyone who likes a good story in a VN or likes charage should try this one. Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa- If it weren't for Mishio Eiri's path, I wouldn't be considering this game for this list... but Mishio's path has a force of its own that definitely pushes this into the area of being a 'must play' VN. Akatsuki no Goei series- Say what you want about this series and the writer's bad habits, it is definitely worth playing. Highly amusing, sometimes brutal, and strangely dystopian, this is definitely a world and a set of characters worth experiencing. Reminiscence- Setting aside links to the Akagoei series, this game would be worth putting here on its own... and in particular for the fact that it has the best little sister path I've ever seen in a VN. Soreyori no Prologue- This is Minori's token entry on this list and the game I found to be the most tolerable amongst their lineup. Really, feel free to play any game in this company's lineup... you won't see much of a difference between them, in retrospect. Shirogane no Soleil- The first game and introduction to the heavily Norse Mythology influenced Soleil series. While its art, story, and characters are somewhat retro by modern standards, this game's quality still shines through even today. Izuna Zanshinken- I almost didn't add this VN to the list, but there is literally no other VN in existence that can take this one's place. This is the story about a vigilante assassin associated with a yakuza group, making examples of villains with the sword and the claw. Re:Birth Colony- A dystopian sci-fi based in a post-apocalyptic arcology with a highly stratified society. There are so many reasons to play this and none not to. Bokura no Sekai ni Shukufuku o- This place could go to Sakura Iro Quartet or Otomimi Infinity, but I chose this one for accessibility amongst the three shining stars of the mimikko revolution! Sanzen Sekai Yuugi- The sole otomege on this list and the only one I have read (of about two dozen) that completely escapes the sin of Damsel-in-Distress Syndrome (otherwise known as DIDS). Sengoku Koihime X- This place could be taken by Shin Koihime Musou as well, but I picked this one. Baseson's feminized historical revisionism at its best!

People keep posting their top 10 lists but frankly I can't relate to all this shit. Like, actually reading visual novels before you blast your opinion of them to the skies? Holy shit it's like I'm in good practices central or something. Since that's way too much work and the only way to get me to read things is to literally bait me with stupid bets like "I'll read some of your recs if you finish this buggy totally not moege that you probably can't text hook lul", here's my list of things that I'm totally going to read, sometime next year or so, so I can finally actually talk about them without spewing uninformed bullshit. 1. Muv Luv Series Widely respected, universally 7/10, porn patch never (but it'll probably be out in two years if we're lucky!). It even has a certified fresh translation, so maybe I won't feel like editing every single line. I suppose I should say something about the actual vn but I'll just assume you don't live under a rock instead tbh 2. Dies Irae I was totally intending to read this when the porn patch came out, but then the porn patch took forever and was shite and also I stopped respecting half the translators as much after trying out their version of seabed. So now I'm too elitist to read the loc, and uhh it's kind of hard in Japanese so maybe in five years. However YOU are probably not as picky as me so you should probably read this thing in a year or two! I suppose I should say something about the actual vn but I'll just assume you don't live under a rock instead tbh... actually I'm not sure if anyone has explained it properly without spoilers anyway so whatever really. 3. きっと、澄みわたる朝色よりも、*ahem* uhh yeah Asairo blah blah blah it ends with a fucking comma who DOES THAT? I already put Dies Irae here so I guess I should continue the Kamige train. This VN apparently would be really annoying to translate because it depends a lot on kanji on multiple deep levels or some shit, also the writing is memed to be real good (have u heard of Shumon Yuu), also it apparently made otakus mad because of how it had too few h scenes or something. Since you're a proud western elite free of any silly otaku impulses you're bound to enjoy it. Too bad I'm probably too shit at Japanese to enjoy it. Maybe in four years! 4. Mememasa TL out in 2030 if Peter Payne hasn't died from a cringe-induced heart attack looking at J-LIST ads before then, oniichan. Oh yeah, the ge. Uhh it's probably based on the idea that there are no true heroes, no weapon kills only the malevolent, and it's chuuni or something. Also it has only sad endings apparently. My edge boner is literally piercing the ceiling just thinking about it tbh. Maybe in 2.5 years! 5. Danganronpa Okay so I realize that danganronpa is pleb but it seems to have a somewhat unique aesthetic and I want to at least be able to have an opinion on it, especially when it's popular with people who don't normally read VNs due to their completely reasonable dislike of typical forms of the medium inherent plebness (actually honest question do I even want to associate with these people oh well). But I'm too lazy to set up the fan tl and reading a NISA tl is beneath my dignity so I guess I'm fucked for now. Is there even a jp pc port? I'll do it one day, mum. 6. Cross Channel Wow this one's actually translated, twice, too bad both the tls are terrible. YOU HAVE FAILED ME GEORGE HENRY SHAFT BUT I FORGIVE YOU BECAUSE YOU TRANSLATED THE MOEYURIKAMIGE HANAHIRA AT ACCEPTABLE TIER FOR MOE FLUFF. Written by the other highly memed vn writer after shumon yuu and ou jackson and masada and wait shit umm anyway tanaka romeo is like well known or something also he had an ln or two anime化'd so he's probably actually good (wait shit LNs get turned into anime all the time damn). Uhh so I hear cross channel is a comment on otaku and also the protagonist is insane or something and cool stuff happens or something, that sounds great, also the lolicons are diseased meme is good. Maybe in 3 years! 7. Umineko I was waiting for this to get released by MG but I'm told the fan tl group was mostly holding the strings and they don't seem fully approved by the people I know. Anyway people say Ryuukishi レナ has an either shit or unique writing style in Fapanese and it would be great to be able to have an opinion on this, and if the tl isn't great why not harvest this additional benefit right? But otoh I'd be reading a mystery vn that's longer than the organ that ended the life of mr hands (do google that, very good tbh) at like half speed. Maybe in 1.5 years! 8. Harukuru Ah yes, the vn that starts with like 13 h-scenes that are apparently funny and later goes sci-fi on you or something. Written by certified insane author Watanabe Ryouichi and consistently stema'd here and there, and possibly getting translated but there are no news and everyone's wondering wtf happened. The only real thing stopping me is that I should probably finish Subahibi in jp first tbh, so maybe in a year! 9. Horobikuchiru Sekai ni Tsuioku no Hanataba wo (This is my "doujin cred" title for the list ok) I've thought for far too long about a tl to the title, which should probably be something along the lines of "A Bouquet of Memories in Remembrance of this [Broken, Decaying] World" where the broken, decaying part is what I'm not sure about because how do you even horobikuchiru (the vndb page has it as two words but that seems wrong to me, horobu is in -masu stem form which is commonly done if one wants to combine verbs like say 踏み込む). Uhh yeah so I actually read the prologue and I kind of want to tl it as a teaser one day because it's basically about this scientist that's like "SCIENCE IS AWESOME, BUT I'M GONNA DIE ONE DAY AND NOT SEE THE EVEN MORE AWESOME SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS OF THE FUTURE, WHICH IS VERY 悔しい (SORRY KUYASHII IS VERY HARD TO TRANSLATE), SO ILL LEAVE MY WIFE AND CHILDREN BEHIND AND GO IN THIS FORWARD-IN-TIME-ONLY TIME MACHINE, BECAUSE HOLY SHIT SCIENCE IS AWESOME AND I WANT EVEN MORE OF THE AWESOMENESS HUMANS ARE FUCKING GLORIOUS". And then you get six different stories from the future and it's like hard sci-fi and whew it's kinda annoying to read. Maybe in 2.1 years or something. 10. Aiyoku no Eustia Idk what's even stopping me tbh. Oh yeah this one has a translation project in progress which looks merely meh tier rather than actively bad so to any eops that are still reading this (why?) there's hope for you too! If I like it I'll have something I actually disagree with Clephas on which would be good because he's sort of a meme among jops. Oh yeah it seemed to have edgy shit and philosophy and politics or something and a cool fantasy setting. ------- You think I'm memeing, but this is actually my 本音 Read lynne

Controversial opinion here: I for one am glad that good games are being translated.

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai Summary Kawakami City is famous for its strong dedication to its samurai ancestors. A strong fighting spirit is always valued and it's even an important factor in succeeding in school there. Yamato, a second year student from Kawakami Highchool is always with his close friends (4 boys and 3 girls). They have known each other since they were young and have done loads of things together. They have many other friends, but this seven people is a close-knit group, they even have a secret base where they meet... With the new semester, they welcome two girls into their group and shortly after things start to change... Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order There are 5 main routes, 6 sub-routes and 1 hidden route, as well as a couple of other endings. Initially you'll be forced to choose one of the 5 main routes. As you finish them more and more sub-routes will open up, and after finishing all of the main routes the hidden route will be unlocked. You may play all of these in any order you wish. To get into a route, finish the prologue and you'll get into a choice screen. You get into a route by exhausting all red spheres with any given character. Each time you select a character she will lose a sphere. Walkthrough Choices crucial for certain CG's will be detailed below. Choices recommended will be written below, but only choices which will otherwise lead to a bad end will be in bold. Timed choices are included in the choice number. After Stories and Sub-Routes have no story relevant choices. Prologue Momoyo Route Chris Route Wanko Route Miyako Route Mayucchi Route Sub-Routes Hidden Routes Attribution This walkthrough is based on info attained here, all info tested by yours truly. Summary stolen from VNDB. Changelog: (23/08/18) - Fixed broken main image. - Fixed broken spoilers as a result of forum updates.

So I'm sure most of you have realized by now that I've finished translating the main story . Never had I translated something faster than any other parts of the story, also because I knew that I was at the last stretch at least for the main story. So now, all that's left is translating the side stories/appendix stories. I will be translating the side stories while the rest of my team handle the editing and QC of the main story, so chances are, I might finish translating the side stories as well before they finished their editing and QC of the main story. My original plan was to release another partial patch covering just Saint Irene's chapter and fixes for Eris' chapter, but seeing that I'm done translating the main story, I might hold out until we're done with everything, including the side stories. But yeah, either way, milestone achieved! Yay!

Update 1 (12:45 AM EST) Technical issues have caused a hiccup in tonight's upgrade process. Going to ping Nay and we'll try again later today. For now, the forums and front site will be put back online. Original Message: Forums Going Offline at 12:00 (Midnight) EST In approximately 1.5 hours (at the time this goes live), the forums will be going offline for an unknown amount of time so that I can perform an outrageous amount of updates and fixes. I will announce when the forums are back online on our Twitter account (link). Please panic, and may the VN gods have mercy on our souls. (Aside: after the forums are updated -- or irreparably broken -- I will also be working on the front site. Once that's done, if I have any energy and strength left in my body, I will try and make a post updating the community about recent events which have caused my absence, and briefly touch on ways we can move forward.) < 3 - Tay

Partial patch is now out! Link below and also in the first post: https://mega.nz/#!no0DyQza!DZShSFgME_-iW6vaEdYy3oek-794a1yiuiW48U05dBQ This partial patch covers up to the end of Eris' chapter (Chapter 2). Just extract the files from the zip and overwrite the game files. Some points to take note: - If you are playing Aiyoku no Eustia from a save file from the old Yandere English patch and apply this new patch, you will notice that upon loading the save file, the first line of the save file will appear gibberish. Don't worry! Just Quick Jump to a previous line. The previous line will appear gibberish, but subsequent lines will appear as normal. - If you are playing Aiyoku no Eustia for the first time, you don't need to worry about the above point. Sorry for the long wait, but I wanted to make sure the partial patch is in good condition before I release it. So here you are. Hope you enjoy! It definitely isn't canceled! I was just waiting for the QCer to finish his QC before I set up the patch (it took him a while because of life getting in the way). So yeah Thanks for your comments btw!

Yeah, a good protagonist should be a super manly badass who doesn't give a fuck about anything. And he should curse, smoke, drink beer and after drinking the beer, throw the bottle at some bitch's head.

Before I go visit my remaining grandparents this weekend (my grandmother on my father's side and grandfather on my mother's side are both in extremely frail condition right now, so we are taking time to show my sister's kid to them), I thought I would give my thoughts on modern VN trends. Charage aren't going anywhere Though I frequently bash the industry for over-saturating the market with moege/charage/SOL, the fact is that the demand for this type of VN is never going to go away as long as the Japanese eroge VN market exists. Why? Because it is the single easiest way to present the formation of relationships of young people into a sexual one. While the genre isn't that attractive for people in their late teens or early to mid-twenties (incidentally the reason this market is declining), the majority of any older generation is always going to prefer this. The lesser numbers of young people in Japan compared to my generation and the lower relative amounts of income are the main reasons for the current contraction of the genre. Good Writers don't go into VNs anymore This is a truth that few of the plotge addicts like me want to admit. Most of the best writers in the VN industry are getting into middle age or later now (or have already left it), and the new and upcoming writers are mostly up and coming LN writers who have a far looser grasp on how to write/narrate and (more importantly) complete a story. This doesn't mean they won't evolve their styles to match the new medium eventually, but whenever I've read a VN written by one of these newbies, the plot holes and poor handling of the endings of their games stand out painfully. Chuunige are in decline I absolutely hate to say this. However, it needs to be said. Trends in the last nine years in chuunige have tended to result in far too much side-story exploitation and sequelitis. There is also a distinct lack of innovation, and when innovation does come, it tends to come with a huge drop in quality in the final product (Sora no Baroque). Fans of the genre are getting older, and some companies (such as Light) have been putting their games in non-ero form on consoles to try to grasp the hearts of younger VN lovers (this has actually succeeded to an extent), but the fact is that it takes a much longer time for a chuunige company to make back its investment after a release. This is exacerbated by economic issues in Japan, and the fact that these companies mostly suck at advertising (like many niche genre companies, they only put it up in places where those already 'in the know' will find them). VN Trends are always years behind the rest of Otaku-dom VN communities in Japan are insular. Even moreso than they are in the US. When rom-com anime vanished for the most part at the end of the last decade, it was replaced with cheap action-fantasy (shallow, weaker stories for the most part, with more emphasis put on 'cool' elements) and moeblob. The glut of such anime is reaching its peak right now... and that influence is starting to overflow (interpreted through the lens of the hyper-conservative VN community, of course) into our side of things. That said, this is a trend that is unlikely to take hold, because it requires a modicum of writing skill that doesn't involve dialogue, and most VN writers just don't have that. Instead, VN companies that have been around for a while have been 'testing the waters' by making games that step out of their usual niches, hoping to diversify to deal with the changing trends. Light went with going down a much darker path than usual with its most recent game, and Navel actually put up a half-assed plotge last month. These, along with many other incidences in the last two years, make me wonder just what the market will look like five years from now.

I can just imagine a GOG curator reading DDLC with a checklist: Good Old Game

Goddamn. It took me over 2 and a half years to get to this mark after taking 5 months to get to 1000. Well, I guess I'll explain my story on this site again for all of those people who didn't recognize me from my early days. I arrived on this site in October of 2015 as a guy who didn't have any clue about the community in general. Over time, I posted way too much for any normal human being and that caused me to be recruited by former shitposter @Dergonu and along with the now forum-dead NTR queen @CeruleanGamer, we formed this spammer group and it's grown into a public Discord since that PM group was formed back in January of 2016. Along the way, I grew more elitist and cynical for the VN community and this was mainly triggered by Noble Works, the worst VN to ever be read by human eyes. Then I left for like 2 years from this site as it was becoming quite dead, at least to me. I came back and started posting again in January of this year and hopefully, I stick around to shitpost/give my opinions to others for a while longer. Now time to be an annoyance and mention random people I like (in a hetero way). @Dergonu - You may be a nazi mod now, but I still remember when you were a spammer just like me. Keep being shitty with your taste for me. @DarkZedge - We basically don't agree on anything besides Kara no Shoujo, but you're still a cool neko lover and you're just as cynical as me, so that's good. @Arcadeotic - The original serious poster. I still can't forgive you for ruining Gahkthun for me, but I still expect an overly semi-serious post about this. @Kawasumi - Trap lover, trap in general, and a person with good taste in VNs. @HMN - The best male alive. Glad to have you in the Anti Moege Task Force and as a fellow Kyonyuucon. @Kiriririri - The worst taste in this community. Keep that in your moemory. Just kidding, good luck on your fruitless mod quest. @AaronIsCrunchy - My favourite british metalhead, even if I have no clue what your taste in VNs is at this point. @Flutterz - The second best thing about the Fuwachat, compared to DemonSabre. @Funnerific - You may not like a lot of my favourite VNs, but we can relate in G-Senjou no Maou, so that's good enough. @Zakamutt - A fellow elitist and hater of most translations. Finish Himawari already. @greenshadow622 - You and I were allies in the headpat bans of 2017 and we will forever be bonded by that. @Nintaidou - Thank you for showing me all of those kyonyuu nukige. They were...appreciated. @madvanced - Fellow portuguese man, so that's enough to be cool with you. I have no clue about anything else though, besides that you meme. @Forgetful Frank - Here's some advice for life. Actually finish a VN before picking up 3 more. It'll help you to like certain VNs more. @Ayana - The guy with the most similar taste to mine. Shame you can't be online to talk more often, but the conversations are pretty cool. @Asonn - My favourite toddlercon and hater of most VNs. @Barry Benson - My favourite spanish bee. It's always fun shitting on TL companies and shitposting together. Also, I'm pretty sure you have 18 weeks to TL Tenkiame now. @Kaguya - My favourite mod currently. I don't agree with a lot of your philosophies, but I can at least understand them. Plus, having a conversation with you leads to...interesting things happening. @SpinningShiat - You're gay. (This is what you wanted, right?) Finally, I'll mention all the new people who I'm not entirely familiar with on this site since I left. People like @Thatcomicguy, @Zander, @Plk_Lesiak, @MaggieROBOT, @Ranzo, @Dreamysyu, and others. I'll recruit you guys into my spammer cult eventually. And that's all from me today. Just a reminder that you can ask me anything or roast me or whatever you want to do on this post. Here's to reaching 2000 posts in a reasonable amount of time.

Announcement explaining the FuwaFabulous blog here. Today I'd like to announce the 4 new people joining the FuwaRecognition team! First of all, an old beloved member. VNTS commentator, blogger and general fuwa oldtimer, @Zakamutt! As a second member, we have @Arcadeotic. Old fuwachat moderator (hey do you remember that?) and general Gahkthun lover (bleh) he's sure to give us wonderfully unique highlight options as expected of his wonderfully unique taste. Our third member is a dark horse. Converted from the evil spammer forces, the kyonyuu loving anti-moe knight, @VirginSmasher! As another new addition we have fuwa's latest and greatest artist @EastCoastDrifter. His angle, speed and style aren't something a normal car can match! Of course, last but not least is good ol' me. But you knew that already, didn't you? And together we are the Power Ran- ahem the FuwaRecognition Team, bringing you new highlights from our Fabulous Fuwa community every month! As secondary announcements, voting for the fuwa discord VN reading club has ended, and we'll be reading and discussing symphonic rain this month. We're also going to launch a JP-learning group soon, for complete newcomers and beginners. If you want to give a shot to learning japanese while real-time chatting with our fuwacommunity or just hang out and relax, now's the chance! We'll be starting this weekend! https://discord.gg/F79q4dp

The VN reading community likes to argue over the relative merits of so-called "literal" and "liberal" translation, with most people tending to perceive everyone else as being a hardline supporter of one or the other. While I'm sure everybody who knows my views would classify me as a proponent of liberal translation, I tend to think I'm more a proponent of being accurate to the intent of the original text. This blog post is going to outline a couple of specific uses of language which I believe show some of the weaknesses of attempting "literal translation." This isn't going to be anything like an attempt to provide an exhaustive argument against literal translation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least trying to be a little bit convincing. Still, regardless of your position on that particular argument, you might at least find the examples enlightening. Broadly, I'm going to be talking about figurative language. That's a fancy phrase encompassing a lot of common expressions and classes of expression which exist in every natural human language, as far as I know, and certainly in both Japanese and English. Idioms, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, symbolism: all of these are classes of figurative language. For starters, let's talk about idioms. The relevant definition of "idiom", per wiktionary, is, "An expression peculiar to or characteristic of a particular language, especially when the meaning is illogical or separate from the meanings of its component words." The argument pretty much writes itself, right? By definition, if you try to literally translate the words in an idiom, you're going to end up with something at best inaccurate, and at worst completely illogical. Just googling "Japanese idioms" and reading what you see is going to find you dozens of examples of cases where you have to either avoid literal translation or end up with a translation that doesn't make sense. For instance, translating 十人十色 as "ten men, ten colors" isn't going to be comprehensible to an English reader, but the venerable English idiom "different strokes for different folks," which is equivalent in meaning if not exactly in tone, is probably going to fit the bill. Idioms offer pretty much a slam dunk argument in favor of liberal translation*. That said, idioms are not that common an occurrence. However, there are also lesser examples: cases where literal translation yields something meaningful and accurate, but still less accurate than a liberal translation could manage. My personal favorite example of a Japanese expression which is not an idiom, but which still benefits massively from a "liberal" translation, is the combination of the noun 背中 (back) and the adjective 大きい (large, big). These two words are often put together in Japanese when praising men, as a way to say a man has a certain, protoypically masculine, attractive physical characteristic. The phrase also carries a subtextual metaphor of reliability: a big back can bear a lot of weight, presumably. Once you start looking for "big backs", you'll see them popping up in literal JP->EN translations all over the place, from Little Busters! to HoshiMemo. The problem is, there's a common English expression which means exactly the same thing as that Japanese expression: "broad shoulders." Now, no dictionary is going to tell you that you can correctly translate 背中, in isolation, as "shoulders." But what's amazing about this pair of Japanese and English expressions is that they not only have the same denotation, but also the same connotation. Both expressions describe the same physical trait, and they both also imply the same personality trait of reliability: a broad pair of shoulders, also, can be trusted to carry your burden. The expression "broad shoulders", like its Japanese cousin, sits somewhere between simple non-figurative use of language and an idiom: just knowing the definition of the individual words gets you to the correct meaning of the expression, and even the connotation of implied reliability, when present, is usually obvious. So, by definition, they aren't idioms. But even so, if translated literally in either direction, the original phrase will end up as a pale shadow of what it should be. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be described as broad-shouldered than as big-backed. *Unless you believe the purpose of a translation is to teach you Japanese idioms, in which case there isn't enough common ground to even have an argument. I personally like to read translated fiction for the same reason I like to read fiction originally written in English: to enjoy a well-crafted story.

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, other than moege, there were no strict genre boundaries and genre conventions had yet to slide into place in the minds of fans and writers both. Companies were mostly experimenters during that time, sometimes basing their projects on previous works (Tsukihime and the Key games got a lot of knock-offs during this time, of varying levels of quality) and sometimes forging out on their own. Since there were few genre boundaries, companies were more likely to give the creative staff free reign as to what kind of story they could write, and - ironically - this actually helped define the various genres in the years to come, as people explored the boundaries of how they could stretch a concept or theme in a story. Some of these attempts were abortive (ie- thematic moege where all the heroines are of the same type, such as tsundere or yandere, generally didn't catch on) but others were immensely successful (ie- the definition of the chuunige genre and its gradual escape from gakuen battle mania). However, the point is that the writers, directors, and producers of the time were allowed to fiddle with the formula a lot more than they are now. Most major companies nowadays have a 'signature style', that was formed during that period, even if their greatest successes weren't during that period. This period also killed the 'pure moege' as a genre, ending the majority genre of the previous half-decade (moege having dominated during that period due to the Da Capo series and Key's games). The rise of the charage, a demi-moege genre that was much wider in scope and more adaptable, occurred during this period, mostly unrecognized until after the fact. At the same time, nakige, which had previously been enslaved to the moege genre through Key and others like them, came to define itself as a new, standalone genre that wasn't necessarily dependent on moe stylization. Even Key itself moved beyond pure moe, though it didn't entirely abandon some elements of it (as the existence of Kud testifies). However, this age was already ending in 2009, as clearly-delineated genre norms began to form, and charage became the driver for the industry, taking us back, in spirit, to the age before that. By 2011, the ratio of truly creative works to derivative works was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter, in comparison to the previous decade. That isn't to say that the years since haven't produced some great works. That is patently untrue in my experience... but the fact remains that fewer and fewer writers are able or willing to look outside the 'genre boxes' for answers as to what to write. I sometimes refer to our current age as the Age of Stagnation, where there is an overwhelming industry pressure to stick to genre norms and those that break the mold are so exceptional they stand out more than they should. It is possible to create a charage kamige... but it is much easier to make a kamige out of a game that breaks genre boundaries, lol.

YAYAYAYAYAAYAYAYA!!! I FINALLY HAVE IT!! I HAVE IT!! MY BACHELOR DEGREE IN...GENDER STU... jk jk i finally have my bachelor degree in Electronics & Telecommunications. This is the best day in my life, period!!!! !!!!YAYAYAYAYAYAYA!!!

Good morning everybody, Tonight I'm planning on finishing the update process for the forums (including all themes) as well as finalizing some back-end sharing necessary for Emi to take over my admin duties. I'm still alive and around, paying for the site (etc.), but enough is enough and this is what needs to happen. I'll post later today with more definite hours/timezones for the update, and will hop on Discord closer to the appointed FuwApocalypse hour. Much < 3, Tay

Hi everybody. My name is Tay. I’m the site admin, and I’m writing this post to share a few thoughts and to apologize for what has been a very difficult period for the site (and many of us in the real world, myself included). Please note that I am actively working on the site today (01:26 update: currently waiting on Nayleen’s help on a mysql issue that I don’t know how to solve) and will be available in this thread and on Discord throughout the day. Why did you disappear? I was overwhelmed by real-world responsibilities and the real-world issues affecting the site. I feel deeply that it’s my responsibility to keep an appropriate baseline amount of support (server, forums fees, forums UI theme subscriptions, front site plugin subscriptions), and have mostly done so, but not being here in a full, active manner means that I was unaware of even large issues, such as Invision losing my auto-pay details. I feel really bad, guys. I'm sorry. Why didn’t you more proactively pass along the keys to other community members instead of just ghosting us? Dropping torrents caused hundreds of real-world issues that made a site hand-off – even partially – unconscionable until resolved. It makes me happy that they feel like an ancient memory to most of you, but they have been my lived reality for a long time. Only this summer did that chapter fully come to a close. Fuwa is in the clear, for what it’s worth, and for the first time I feel like I have options. What the &$% is going on with site/forums updates? I’m working to fix some issues in how I access the various databases on the server. Once that’s fixed everything will be updated and troubleshooted. It’s going to be another Fuwapocalypse. But it’s gotta be done. I give you my word that, so long as I can get @Nayleen’s help, this will be done by week’s end. As regards the forms, specifically, Invision, the software company who made our forums software, deleted the auto-pay credentials I’d given them and the software license lapsed for several months. It’s been renewed and everything will be updated as soon as I get Nay’s assistance and make a bunch of meticulous backups. What is your plan for Fuwanovel going forward? It may not be appropriate for that to be my call. I need to touch base with all the core users still active and sort out what’s best. I love Fuwanovel. It’s been a work of love spanning more than ten thousand hours (and much more than that in dollars). But my focus and passion -- help bring visual novels into the wider gaming community – has been realized. I’ve been fortunate enough to facilitate or be part of some major, tectonic shifts in the industry. It’s a different world and I am likely not the best equipped to pick a direction. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. What I’m confident about, however, is that the way I went about building Fuwa, while successful, is unsustainable. Palas put it incredibly well last month: “It’s like running a business, but without, well, the business.” Perfectly said. For better or worse, I’m wholly or largely responsible for the projects he highlights: enormous and technical VNTS posts which took two people 5 or so hours to do every Friday night, an ambitious reviews hub scouring VN reviews from across the net, a VN reviews team, forums projects, etc. A lot of what I did on Fuwa amounted to spending ungodly amounts of time watching trends in both the industry and site traffic and building ideas around what I thought would bring interest to the community and the VN player base. It worked well: we had huge traffic and played an important role in bringing VNs out of obscurity. But the lived reality was often me researching, designing and proposing these projects, and asking others to step up and either run or contribute to them without compensation. We’d have people putting in 20 hours a week, some weeks, on top of core admin staff working 30-40 hours weekly, and it STILL wasn’t enough. Most pitched in because we liked the cause, and liked hanging out with each other, and liked the dopamine rush of user engagement. Some did it because I asked them. And some did it because they felt like they had to. I’m still working on pulling apart my feelings on this issue. I don’t know how to fix this part of being a fan site. I do know that it is wrong to ask so much of members without paying them. Fuwa has never made money and I was never able to pay for help. This isn’t going to change anytime soon, so any new site reality is going to have to take into account the need for a lessened human cost. Anything else you want to say? Tons. But that’s good for now. I’m spamming Nayleen on all the usual channels and mostly just want to get the site fully updated. We can chew on the site’s existential questions in the meantime.

Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ Summary Springtime. The season of the cherry blossoms, and a time of new beginnings, new encounters, and new people. For Aoba Kyousuke, this new season marks the start of his second year in high school, and after taking a moment to reflect, and looking at the friends around him... All he can find is a dumbass too horny for his own good, and a weirdo who can't get over his strange fetish for lizard-humanoid creatures. Sure enough he enjoys hanging out with them, and he wouldn't ever think of giving it up, but something feels missing. A precious, valuable part of everyone's adolescence, and something he might just miss out on at this rate... What is that something? Why, love. So upon realizing this, he shouts out to the world-- "I WANT A GIRLFRIEND!" He'll need to give it his all, of course, because he knows that love does not come to those who just wait. Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order There are four heroines. In order to get into the routes proper, you must select the heroine in the choice screen (when available) and then select to talk about topics that interest her. This walkthrough will, among other things, clarify which topics interest a heroine. By selecting the topics within the walkthrough you will always receive a decent amount of affection and you may choose any combination of topics that interests you. Walkthrough Talk topics will be in brackets [] with the relevant questions for any heroine underneath between quotes "". Sometimes these questions will lead to further questions, which will be indicated by -->. Some questions seem to provide more affection, so I'll mark those with (EXTRA). (Will be removed in the final version of the guide) Not all possible questions will be presented, but there are enough that you will be able to move to the next stage. NOTE: For some of the girls, when you have one at stage 4 and another at stage 3 a jealousy short scene will display. Hiiragi Yuzuyu Mochizuki Rina Minahara Himari ??? Bad Ends and Flags Attribution This walkthrough is based on info attained by me, playing the game. Synopsis from NekoNyanSoft's website. This Rina guide is based and tested by shadowice777, a Team Rina lover. Contributions by AaronCHM.

Huuuuuuuuh... I see many things that are absolutely wrong with your statement. First, really there's no translation quality/choice drama in other otaku niches? I've seen people going apeshit over minor details in anime translations and inconsistencies between the fan and official versions. On the one hand, there'll always be purists that are demanding top quality every time and on the other, there will be botched or poor-quality translation on both the fan and official side of things. The more choice and comparison people have, the more likely they are to criticize underperforming projects - when fan translators were your only hope for playing pretty much any VNs, you were less likely to complain about their work than now, when they compete with a fairly rich selection of professional releases. I things it's even somewhat legit to argue that nowadays there's little sense in translating a VN unless you can do it well. The second, do you know about many EVNs being translated to Japanese? People actually caring about those? It's a non-topic, but I would be surprised if Japanese VN fans didn't have a problem with poor translations - they aren't used to awful localizations and don't treat them as "facts of life" like Western otakus were forced to by turd-quality products offered to them on a regular basis. Demanding quality seems like a pretty reasonable standard, especially for commercial products. And the VN fandom today is not reliant on fan translations anymore and people's attitudes towards those are not any kind of "crucial barrier" for its growth. Also, there are many other reasons why fan translations are pretty much dying out - people that once done them professionalizing or moving on with their lives is the main one and there's no going back from this. What's left is the official publishers, and if you suggest we shouldn't take those up to highest scrutiny as their clients, that's pretty much saying you want them to screw you over with subpar services. Well, you're allowed to act against your own self-interest of course, but that doesn't look like a healthy narrative.

So recently, I've been playing a game called Space Engine, which is a really cool universe simulator where you can explore stars, planets, galaxies and the like. I've stumbled onto a very interesting solar system, so I've decided to name all of the planets after Fuwanovel members, in honor of this great community. Important Note: The solar system only contains 25 planets, so obviously I couldn't reference all of Fuwanovel's members. I tried my best to name those after very prominent users. If you don't see a planet named after you, my deepest apologies. I could only fit so much within the technical limit. With that said, here is the Fuwanovel Solar System.

But I am my daughter's boyfriend

I'm alive (more on that in this morning's upcoming VNTS post)! What's more: I've sought out stable internet, and I've given Fuwa a good ole six-hour blitz. Lots got done, but I think you'll all be very glad to hear that... All themes should be back up and running! Let me know if you run into problems with any of them! I fixed the thing. I removed the other thing. I've flagged all accounts who turned traitor and used Rooke's Crappy Default Theme. They are traitors to the cause and will be punished. Once more we are all equal, and some are more equal than others. Joking aside, themes should work. Give it a go, and let me know what I unintentionally broke.

Fate/Stay Night The Holy Grail War. That hellish, great ritual that offers the ultimate prize for the one who claims it: a wish. There are two conditions to participate: one must be a magus (magic user), and one must be chosen by the Holy Grail to participate. There are seven chosen Masters, and seven classes of Servants. Only one master may seize the grail. This is the story of a boy who wanted to be a superhero. It's the story of three warring families. It's the story of an ultimate prize and ultimate sacrifice. OVERALL ENDING GUIDE *(Read!)* Fate Route Ending Guide Unlimited Blade Works Route Ending Guide Heaven's Feel Route Ending Guide Individual Walkthroughs PROLOGUE FATE ROUTE UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS - "TRUE" ROUTE UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS - "GOOD" ROUTE HEAVEN'S FEEL - "TRUE" / "NORMAL 1" / "NORMAL 2" ROUTES This walkthrough was heavily based on Mirror Moon's amazing Flowchart.pdf walkthrough packaged with the English patch. A huge thank you for their amazing work. The VN community is made more for it. Thanks!