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After receiving a weird mail consisting of nothing more than an unknown address, Michael—who’s normally so indifferent and placid—finds himself mysteriously and almost unconsciously drawn to it. So much so that he decided to ditch afternoon classes in order to follow a lead that probably doesn’t even exist. But what was at first ‘probably not even worth the effort’ degenerated quite rapidly into something much more significant than that. Indeed, now here he stands, in the middle of a room somehow nostalgic yet so creepy no one would ever feel compelled to connect it with their own memories. This dark, eerie room… Full of birthday decorations even though the building has long since been deserted. His birthday party from seven years ago, recreated almost to the perfection. Its sole purpose? Making him remember that night... That night when he lost his entire self, and all of his memories. The night of his parents’ murders. And as though this situation wasn’t already enough, a Voice, mechanical and almost joyful, proclaims from the other side of the line to be the one behind it all. It continues on with nonsensical words, one after the other. Things Michael doesn’t even comprehend. But he does catch the Voice’s parting words. The Voice’s threat. Something about the importance of his friends, and to what length he needs to go in order to save them. This is the story of a young man who’s desperately trying to cut himself out of the world surrounding him, and the choice he’s ultimately forced to make in order to save the few friends he has. Download the demo now on itch.io! - 300,000+ words (25+ hours~ of gameplay) - 25+ CGs - 25+ custom backgrounds, and 20+ more 'generic' ones - 7+ endings - A true route - Original soundtrack Progress: Scenario: 88% Sprites: Main Characters: 6/6, Side Characters: 1/??? Background: ??? CG: 8% Programming: 4% Music: 15% GUI: 90% Writer: HSelf Programmer: HSelf Sprite: Gato Hayakawa Background: Vui Huynh / minikle CGs: Winnetou – AD / Prophosphere Miscellaneous: Velm Music: Emmanuel Turpin Follow us on twitter for more updates! Questions: - Does the story sounds interesting to you? - Do you like the art style? - About choices in visual novels in general. Do you prefer having lots of choices, but more meaningless ones (skipping insignificant events/changing some dialogues)? Or do you prefer having a restricted amount of choices, but more meaningful (which branches the story)? Or maybe a mix of them both, which might give the illusion of a more concrete experience? - Do you have any tips or advice to give regarding the summary/character descriptions? Or do you feel that the premise of the story is well conveyed? While I tend to be more minimalist on those kinds of things, some might prefer a more tangible approach. - Any suggestion/critic/commentary? Anything would be helpful.

Okay, I guess I'll go ahead and talk about it now.

I'd love to see more art books go in-depth about character costumes. I want head-to-toe shots, plus close-ups of important details, for every costume. Basically, give me the originally character design sheets.

I feel ashamed for being able to understand all of it. But then again, this isn't really difficult either.

I'm watching pretty much everything. Current best show of the season is Made in Abyss. Best thing of the season is Washio Sumi Movie 3. Worst show of the season is In Another World With A Smartphone. That show is godawful. Think of all the generic isekai tropes thrown into one show, except said show does literally nothing to make them interesting. That's what you get. This is a really strong season overall. I might drop a few shows, but I see myself sticking with most of them. If anybody wants a good comedy this season, I'd highly recommend Mahoujn Guru Guru. It's a brilliant parody of old school RPGs, and it's criminally underwatched. You don't realize how much it pisses me off that the Smartphone show is getting more viewership and has a better MAL rating than it. Man, I care way too much about MAL ratings. As a person who is familiar with the source, I'd say don't hold your breathe. It goes in the expected love triangle route, and it uses it pretty dramatically. But it's a love triangle worth caring about because Lilina and Nejima are a match made in heaven. I should watch that then. Tenshi no 3P is actually better than I thought it'd be.

Recently finished the Steam Version of the game. I came across this during the Steam Summer sale. What got me into it was the premise and some of the OST tracks I heard (which are brilliant). Falsita Fawcett's Story Liselsia Cesarini's Story Tortinita Fine Al Fine Grand Finale Thoughts Afterwards Overall SR made me care so much about the characters, even after I was done with the whole thing. I felt a huge void after completing it (probably why I felt motivated to write all this text even if nobody might read it), which I haven't felt in such a long time. Heck, I don't know any other story (books/tv shows/games/movies/etc) that made me felt this invested and emotional. I'm sad that not all of the seven side stories are translated. I read the three that were, and I enjoyed them. (Will the rest ever be translated?) I even tried to google translate the 5 small stories on the official website just to get some more story (like Chris meeting Phorni for the first time). The music is great, even if there's a lack of quantity. However, I love how the lyrics of vocal tracks tell the story of the character singing them. Makes the songs much more enjoyable and memorable. I'm glad I read this visual novel. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read something as emotional and great as this.

Well, if I may defend Chrono Clock translation the old people in Japan called green as blue because of cultural reason. But otherwise it was a mistake indeed because the translation was too literal, and I'd already watched two Japanese LPs to knew that the text was indeed said 'aoi' in the original language (Not 'midori'). Either way, I didn't remember too much about the mistranslation in the first place.

I also hated Honey and Clover, even though it seems like exactly the sort of thing I would love.

Yeah, I had a very similar impression that the VN and its battles in particular are suffering a lot from 'style over substance' syndrome. And I think you nailed one problem of them with your statement about the 'rules'. Although the recent Chusingura I played didn't have as flashy battle sequences as Dies, I enjoyed them overall much more since I could follow them much better. I simply knew what was going on and what tactic one character was using to counter the other due to the somewhat clearer sword fighting rules. The fights were more focused, faster and the characters more concentrated and did less trash talking. Dies uses an almost a contrary approach with lots of trash talking and unusual weapons like a guillotine arm where its harder to imagine how the battles are supposed to work. Not sure if I can criticise the VN for that since pretty much what makes it 'chuuni' I guess. Though I can definitely say that I like the former less chuuni and more 'substance over style' classical sword fights more. Still, I don't want to make my usual mistake and judge the VN too soon. I currently stalled it for a while until I get motivated again, but if I pick it up again I'll try to finish 1 - 2 routes first before making a final judgement. Anyway, meanwhile in Chrono Clock... Seems like green is the new blue this year.

Finished Kasumi's route in Dies Irae. I should probably first say that this is not the first VN by Masada I've read. I've read Senshinkan before, and that left me with pretty mixed feelings on the author. I consider myself a fan of chuuni, and the darker (even edgier) the story is the more I'm likely to enjoy it. As such, I was pretty excited when I read Senshinkan at first - Masada's works put on the airs of extremely edgy chuuni... but unfortunately, that is all they seem to do, as on the core they're nothing more but extremely cliched shounen. I was baffled by the stark contrast between the grimdark text and the "Friendship power!" kind of story in Senshinkan, but I just chalked it up to the main theme, given the main character's disposition towards virtues. I did like the story (there was some impressive layering going on), the (villain) characters, but I did have my doubts with the actual chuuni, getting bored to death with never-ending re-matches. As such, I was more scared of Dies Irae than excited, really. I did want to read it, but I was worried that it might be exactly what I disliked about Senshinkan - but in the end, curiosity won over, and the hyper-edgy Nazi aesthetic made me pick up the game. And, to put it shortly... I was right to be worried. The prologue didn't sell me on the VN, in fact, it almost made me drop it. It was full of Masada's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, with action scenes serving no other purpose but to show you how damn cool everything is... only I didn't buy it. When I read chuuni, I want infodumps. I want battles that get their rules laid down and thoroughly explained, and have crazy things happening according to these rules. While Masada does this sometimes (Senshinkan had some scenes like that, albeit not many), the prologue exemplified everything I dislike about his writing of fight scenes. It's like he is trying to convince you how amazing everything is with words alone, without actually giving you any reason to be impressed in the first place. It all comes across as pretty... flat. Luckily enough, the VN turned around immediately as the actual story started. Crazy pseudo-philosophy dialogues, edgy protagonist with clearly defined character that promised an interesting and entertaining point of view, some nice twists, it was great! And then... then the shounen tournament arc happened. The main character that was supposed to be unique, as the VN and the villains would want you to believe, quickly devolved into an insufferably cliched shounen protagonist. I won't go into any details to avoid spoilers, but the amount of shounen cliches in this route was driving me against the wall. What was even worse was Masada's attempt at being clever and self-aware - but making fun of things like friendship power and relying on it only seconds later doesn't make it any better, it makes it downright obnoxious. The actual chuuni was probably by far the biggest disappointment. The only fight scene that was actually exciting was the very first encounter, after that it just got boring. Masada just sticks to describing cool things for the most part, so there's not much to enjoy about the scenes other than mindlessly going with it - it's not like any of it really matters, because the main character just wins by some bullshit every single time in a true shounen fashion, and to make things even worse almost none of the wins even feel deserved. I get that this is the first route, but watching the main character fall for the same shit over and over and in the end be unable to do anything cool at all in a story about crazy battles isn't fun whatsoever - at least there are better characters than him that make the battle scenes at least somewhat exciting. Anyway, it's not like I hated the whole thing. I enjoyed the characters (maybe except Ren... and Kasumi, to some extent, even though I wanted to like her), I liked the story that got hinted at (as I mentioned above, the first half of the common route actually got me really hyped, hopefully there is more of that kind of stuff here), and I liked the route ending. At the very least the last battle was pretty cool, and so was the way it turned out. I can only hope that the VN gets better from now on, but so far, I'm not impressed. There are people who say this? The Umineko "fanbase" really is the worst. Never before have I seen a story where so many people would ignore almost half of it just to make themselves feel smart via pathetic theory-crafting that just picks the convenient parts and dismisses the rest. It's even sadder that this is happening to Umineko of all things, considering its subject matter. I'm glad you were able to get something out of these two episodes; after all, Umineko is trying to get across a message, and the last two episodes are crucial for that. Any "fans" looking on it strictly as a mystery story are not only doing the story huge disservice, but probably can't read at all in the first place.

@skrewball717 Bakuman was excellent. I loved it to bits. I found the heroes shouting ganbarimasu was a little too frequent but apart from that the pacing, characters and story were great. I loved the way it ended with tension on each episode like a sport anime and had that quality that made it hard to not keep watching. I loved the fact that I got 75 episodes of something so enjoyable to watch too in this world of short series. And I really loved Saori Hayami as the heroine even though she was not really a lead character compared to the others - she's one of my all time favourite VAs and her climactic scene was awesome.The ending was beautiful too. Definitely one I'll rewatch with my wife; I'm sure she'll love it too. 9/10