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Okay, I'm pretty sure that most of us here love Visual Novels, but with everything that you love there's always something you are bound to dislike. So, without further ado what are things/elements/ideas that you would like to see less of in Visual Novels. Here are mine. I would like to see... Less childhood friends. Less characters who think that a dumb promise that they made when they were kids counts as a sacred vow, which has since been codified into law. Less obnoxious class representatives. Less inane chatter that passes for dialogue. Less protagonists who's only character defining characteristic is a variation on average /guy/high school student/fucker. Less otomie protagonists who are weak and vulnerable and wholly dependent on the hero. Less high school students. Less high schools. Less virgins. Less high pitched screeching. Less characters that think that random acts of violence counts as a endearing character trait. Less characters that love spouting lines and lines of dialogue about pretentious, philosophical, psychobabble. Less characters that insist on referring to themselves only in the third person, even though no one talks like that, no one has ever talked like that. Less poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly plotted sex scenes. Anyway, that is my laundry list pretty much taken care of, what's yours?

Less 'average guy' protagonists, regardless of age or setting. Less meaningless (doesn't progress the story or develop the characters) slice of life. Less unreasonably violent tsundere. Less osananajimi heroines (side-characters are fine, though) Less making a great setting then not using it in any of the heroine paths. Less meaningless/random h-scenes. Less meaningless choices/false player agency. Stop having school as the main setting for 90% of all VNs. Less romance as the pinpoint focus of a VN (don't get rid of it, just stop making it 90% of the focus of most VNs) No more ladder-style story structure (ex: G-senjou no Maou, Hatou, Eustia, etc)

Less English

If he wanted that to be his main point, it would have been advisable to not use words that distracted from the main point w

^ @Kiriririri These days the view that you should not disrespect sex workers is fairly common in left-leaning contexts (I realize this is a forum for VNs, which tend to be pretty sexist, but you're still talking to young people online), though certainly not the only view. The word "whore" is used as an insult, and thus not preferred if you want to not insult a whole category of people. With that said it seems to align with Zalor's views on the profession, so I suppose it's not an inaccurate use exactly. Personally, if society doesn't like something I do that doesn't harm anyone, then society can go fuck itself. I try to extend this principle to everyone. If I had a sister who chose to go into sex work I would be worried about her, because it definitely carries risks. But I wouldn't try to stop her because of some disgust or shame reaction.

For the last few months, I’ve published reviews and top lists, presenting worthwhile or interesting OELVNs that usually have little presence on Fuwa and don’t get discussed as much as they deserve. From the very beginning, however, my goal was to focus not only on the games themselves, but also the people behind them – the independent creators and small studios that make the core of the Western VN market. Today, I present you with the first “Developer Spotlight” post, where I’ll be talking to Jackie M., the founder of Reine Works, authors of multiple yuri and otome VNs and the studio behind the recently-published otome title Seven Districts of Sin: The Tail The Makes the Fox, about the game’s somewhat-turbulent release and the realities of today’s OELVN market. Be sure to check out my review of the game first, where I also touch on its unusual appearance on Steam. ------------------------------------------------- Plk Lesiak: Hello and thank you for agreeing to this interview! Let’s start with your latest VN. It’s pretty rare for me to be the first person to rate a game on VNDB, especially four months after its release. What happened to The Tail Makes the Fox that it went so much below the radar of the VN community? Jackie M.: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are nearly as many users on VNDB who rate otome games, as compared to anything that could be construed as aimed at men. I took a quick look at some other developers' titles out of curiosity, and it seems that female-aimed titles in general tend to have very few votes. Funnily enough, I can confirm that we do get sales referrals from VNDB. We've had a few of them. PL: For a few months, your VN was only available on Itch.io, a platform usually associated with free games. Regardless of other plans, what was your experience of trying to sell your title there? JM: Itch.io isn't really a storefront where a developer can make a profit unless the game in question is very low budget, nor should they particularly expect to, what with the smaller userbase. From when pre-orders opened before release till today, itch.io sales have only amounted to roughly 1/4 of the game's development cost. That said, we do like it, because it isn't subject to a lot of the restrictions that similar shops are, and transferring earned funds out is also much quicker than anywhere else that I'm aware of. We just wouldn't recommend that anyone only ever sell their games there. Blossoms Bloom Brightest Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

They are more useful than you... at least for sex

I see a pattern in this and it's more general than what it seems at first glance. It's about the classic "you have to think like me". There are plenty of examples of this. It's very clear in politics where you can be called deplorable for just disagreeing on which politician to vote for. There are however lots of examples unrelated to politics. Few examples related to psychology. Introvert vs Extrovert While introverts have a high degree of "other people can do as they like", extroverts have a tendency to expect other people to act extroverted and they announce whenever they think somebody doesn't behave according to "extrovert guidelines". If a person have no interest in being the center of attention at a party or even showing up, that person is declared to be a loser. The same goes for a person with too few friends because apparently having 1000 friends on FB is a goal in itself. Introverts tend to care less for how cloth looks, but wearing something, which was the fashion 10 years ago is so not accepted by some other people. Asperger syndrome This diagnosis is likely to be removed in the next revision of official diagnoses due to being applied to people it was never intended for. However if we look at the core criteria for this diagnosis, it aims towards people (primarily children), which are different. On top of usually being introverts, they don't like crowded places like schools, mainly due to the noise level. They have a tendency to have a major interest, which they like to study, usually alone. This interest can be anything, but is often mechanical in nature (trains is a common interest). They don't mind studying insignificant details for hours and they build up a wast knowledge of the area and you can ask them anything and they usually remember. The problem with this description is that particularly the interest part of it fits most engineers, which has given it the nickname "the engineering disease". Most engineers tend to like studying "insignificant details", like engine parts, software algorithms, math problems etc. All those problems seems to be unimportant to psychologists, which by now has labeled them as deviation from perfection. One example would be Joseph Whitworth. He became obsessed with measuring small distances and in 1840 he achieved being able to measure a millionth of an inch. Just wanting to measure something too small to be seen provides a not insignificant score on the AS scale. He then proceeded to make a standard for screws, which made them interchangeable and it's this thing, which allows you to go to the hardware store and buy screws and bolts and know they fit whatever you need just by reading the numbers on the box. He also started making guns where barrel and bullet fits in size, making them long range and accurate enough to allow aiming in a way we understand as aiming. Somebody else quickly took his method of measuring and applied to it making cylinders and pistons for steam engines. This almost eliminated the problem of leaking steam around the pistons, which made them a lot more fuel efficient. This in turn changed railroads from something in coal field areas to a global thing because now they were beating horses in operation costs even in countries without coal. The importance of Joseph Whitworth is likely not possible to over estimate (but have you even heard of him? I didn't in school). The reason why I bring him up here is because if he had been born today, he would have been labeled as Asperger and put in counseling and possibly medication to make him normal. He would need protection against his own weird ideas. There is no room for being different anymore. Einstein has been labeled with Asperger, though luckily not until long after his death, meaning it didn't cause him any problems. Anime/VN/Japan I see little difference in this. There is some guy, who doesn't understand and doesn't try to understand what he is talking about and then he flames people for having interests, which are different from his interests. That he brings up childish as a psychologist (if he is that) is interesting because according to psychology, there are 3 categories: child, adult, parent and each person consist of something from each. Since only the child is able to have fun, people with little or no score in child aren't able to have fun at all. In order to be happy, it's important to have a non-insignificant score in child while at the same time it should not over shadow the others as that would make the person irresponsible. I wouldn't call it childish to follow orders. In fact it's actually a grown up thing to do. For instance there is a law stating that cars should drive on the right side of the road (or left depending on where you are). A child would go "me first, me not listen" and go everywhere while grown ups will understand that it's part of a greater plan to avoid traffic jams. You become one piece in a giant puzzle and you understand that it is in the interest of everybody including yourself that all pieces match perfectly. Another example would be to obey queues when going through a door. If you want to skip ahead in the queue, you risk ending up in a jam because too many people are in the door at once. The talk about Japan and WW2 makes no sense whatsoever. If true, then explain why what he claims to be a result of losing WW2 was present even more strongly in the 1930s than it is today. I wouldn't put too much into "somebody on the internet" flaming people out of ignorance and intolerance. The people he talks about do exist, but he puts it in way too general terms. Going back to the car example, it would be like saying people drive cars because they want to drive around a block repeatably honking the horn to annoy somebody. It has likely happened in rare cases, but it's not a general trait of car owners.

I am not too sure how to respond to this, because I can't 100% tell what you're meaning to say. You may want to be extra clear about what you're saying - it's coming across to me right now as a broad sweeping derogatory statement about women.

Stephen Hawking once talked about the creation of life where he said something I quote once in a while. The theory goes that there used to be some pools of mud, much like we see today in volcanic areas. In here amino acids were floating around, bumping into each other, joining and falling apart. At some point they by chance hit a combination, which formed something we view as life and it started replicating itself. Critics says it's too unlikely to happen by chance. Stephen Hawking said if the probability of something happening is greater than 0, it will eventually happen if you try enough times regardless of how unlikely it is. The chance of winning lotto is close to zero, yet somebody wins nearly every week. For life to begin, it only needs to hit the right combo once. Not much happened on Earth at the time, meaning there would not be a problem if we would have to wait 100-200 million years for that one time event. Of all the great stuff Stephen Hawking have said, this one is likely the one, which means the most to me because it applies to everything and it touches the core issues of probability. Stephen Hawking also came up with the "mad scientist paradox" (look it up if you like), which shoots down all theories of time travel. Or rather as he puts it, all travel back in time. Approaching the speed of light will make time pass slower, meaning in theory you can spend 10 years traveling in space, age 10 years and come back to Earth to see 20 years have passed. The problem with this approach is that you need to be near a super massive black hole and the closest one is at the center of the galaxy, meaning actually using this approach involves some logistics problems. Speaking of black holes, Stephen Hawking came up with the name in his attempt to explain astronomy to the general public. Stephen Hawking died on 14th (aka 3.14 or π day), which happens to be Einstein's birthday. It's somehow fitting to connect those two because both of them did the unlikely feat of being a scientist, who became known in pub culture. I'm not sure if it's completely appropriate to mention right now, but he did have a few misses in his last years, such as fearing alien invasion, requesting planning to evacuate the solar system before the sun burns out and becoming anti-Brexit with a public statement about it being bad for science, without really telling why. The problem I have with the latter is not about being pro- or anti-Brexit, but rather that it's politics and politics are about opinions. We do not want people thinking they can take their personal baseless opinions into science. It's a big enough problem as it is without providing fuel for people to do so. I have decided to remember him for his scientific achievements and not those missteps. Well, we will all also remembering him for the wheelchair. He was diagnosed at age 21 and told he would live just a few years more. He very strong willed decided to carry on regardless of how bad things would turn out and he lived until he was 76. That alone is an impressive feat, though I'm not sure how journalists came up with "3 times as long as expected". "a few years"*3 is to me like 10 years, not 55.

When you say meaningless choices, do you mean ones that end up railroading you into one choice (“but then, maybe i shouldn’t. let’s do x”) or ones that don’t have impact on the plot or route flags? I definitely understand hating the first kind, but I think the second kind is nice for fluff and involving you in the story a bit more. *looks at Rewrite* Thanks Key

This! Also: Less stupid characters in general, especially protags. Less cliches. Less stupid and not thought-out sci-fi (though I would like more sci-fi in general). Less overly convenient plot points. Lower female-to-male ratio of the characters, maybe just a bit. Less h-scenes that harm the pacing (I don't care about h-scenes in general).

Less highschool heroines. Less adult heroines

AMEN AMEN! This and I add less characters that their moe trait is supposedly being insufferable dumb, less faceless MCs and less retarded harem tropes.

Perhaps saying that "all women working in the porn industry are whores"? If by "whore" he meant "woman that makes money out of sex" then it's by definition obviously true, but I think he was trying to imply that these "whores" have questionable morals, and I don't see why that must be true. Now really?? A shame that a topic like that would be immediately closed by the moderadors, but I am genuinely curious about whether that's true.

“Not my screws~~~”

It's okay, I know the one you are talking about:

Get it? Because it's not boring? Right? Listen, it took me about 20 minutes to come up with that one. So anyway, in case you haven't figured it out, I will be talking about Horizon Zero Dawn. A new ip from the developers Guerilla Games, best known for the Killzone series. Horizon Zero Dawn isn't just another success story to place on top of the already pile of success stories out there. No, no, no, no, no, no, no it is not. Horizon Zero Dawn is a beacon of hope to any company thinking of taking a risk with a new ip. Before it was released, Horizon Zero Dawn already was garnering interest from its audience because of it's sort of mix between Brave, Turok:Dinosaur Hunter, and Terminator. Hey, I'd watch that. And now here we are one year later with the game selling over 7 million copies and a new DLC, The Frozen Wilds, proving that despite what EA loves to shove down our throats that singleplayer focused games aren't dying and don't sell well. Now games with multiplayer do sell better as well of games with a connection to a previous universe, such as Call of Duty games, Black Ops, Doom, Gears of War, etc, etc. Horizon is none of these. All it has going for it is its characters, settings, game play, and story. And it succeeds on all. You play a young, redhead girl named Aloy. No, that's not how you pronounce that name. Look at how it's spelt, imagine how it's pronounced based on that and then forget about it. That's how you pronounce her name. An outcast raised by her guardian to pass a trial she will face when she comes of age so she can finally be accepted as one of the tribe. Aloy being an outcast shapes her actions in the game. As an adult she doesn't go insane with talking with herself to be annoying but just enough to be informative. She also has some nice idle animation and even non idle ones, such as placing her hands just over tall grass so they can skim on her fingertips. Holding out her hands to feel the rain or snow. Little touches of this helps the gamers be immersed with the character and the world. Of course it does help that this is one of the best looking games in recent memory. I got Horizon and it's DLC while it was on sale, luckily and was very surprised on how immersed I found myself in the game. The mechanics work well in the game and are effective in your journey to avenge your tribe. Speaking of, I kind of feel they lost an opportunity here for some interesting conflict. You see, early on, Her tribe is attacked and a large portion of them are killed. Aloy was just freed from being an outcast literally less than 5 minutes ago, and being an outcast means that no one from the tribe can have contact with you, or accept you as their own. So she, aside from her guardian, Rost, had been living on their own with their wits to help them survive. Now, as they are attacked, Aloy then gets a personal reason to go after the attackers. I felt like this is a missed opportunity for Aloy to have a personal struggle with the whole thing. Like now that she's seen as someone who's useful to the tribe while before everyone treated her like she didn't even exist. She only took the trial so she could find answers about her mother. Just imagining her fighting the tribe that abandoned her and looking past her rooted feelings on the matter would've been interesting to experience. So, besides hunting with your bow and setting traps, Aloy has another tool in her arsenal, a kind of like bluetooth headset. This allows her to basically go into batman mode and get more information on the world around her. Except the drawback is she can't run while having it on and it also has a very limited range. This works well because one, it's mostly an open world stealth game and two, it allows you to not rely heavily on it. HOWEVER, there are times for sidequests where you must use it to track an item or person or a target. This is when the thing becomes way to simplified. It's basically turn on your bluetooth, point at the glowy bit and then press R1 to make a trail to follow. Sometimes reach the end of the trail and press R1 again. Felt like this tool should've been a tad more complex, like having filters for chemicals, heat, or unique properties that you need to manually cycle through until finding the right one. Something, ANYTHING other than "point at the thing and press a button." Speaking of press the button, I've gotten to a point with some kind of ancient underground facility and as I approach a control panel for a bridge, Aloy says aloud "How do I get that to activate." Yes, quiet the conundrum here, Aloy. What do we do? Perhaps we find a machine with some kind of pass for the internal workings of the facility? Maybe we play a quick hacking mini-game that's time based to get passed this? Nope! Just hold triangle next to the thing and that'll sort everything out. Again, I wish there was a bit more complexity to the mechanics to the game. I mean, FFS, I need several different bows to fire different elemental arrows, for some reason. Make the one thing that seems like it would be complex complex! AND LET ME PICK UP RESOURCES I'VE USED! Like wire traps or arrows that missed. You can place wire traps that are explosive or shock the enemies that you can't pick up when you want to move them. If you place them in a spot the enemy isn't nearby anymore, you have to adjust yourself so they charge through the trap. Or, if you realize you don't want to fight the enemy anymore, you cant just leave. Otherwise you waste a tripe wire or two since you can't pick them back up. But anyways, small gripes in an otherwise great game. Certainly pick it up when you get the chance. On sale or full price, you can go wrong with this unique experience. Oh, right. You fight robotic dinosaurs.

Oh man, this is going to cause such a long shitstorm, for what I apologize. Let's see, where to start... A few months ago I came across a youtube video of a self-proclaimed japanese culture expert and divulgator psychologist. In this video he made a bunch of claims about japanese society and people who like japanese media (he was especifically referring to anime and manga, but due to the very similar trends and topics I consider it also applies to VNs) tending to be more "immature" (whatever that means, which I'll discuss later) and idealizing childhood, a nostalgic period to which they desperately want to go back. I'm not going to provide an actual link to the video for various reasons: It's not even in English, so most of you wouldn't understand it anyway. I don't know if the community guidelines in fuwanovel would even allow the publicity, and what's more, I don't have a reason to advertise a content I consider poor on so many levels. He didn't provide any evidence for his claims in the form of any sociological study I mean, he's a psychologist... ehem so nothing there is worth more than your average middle-aged oji-san's opinion that you might find in the middle of the street. For all these and much more, I'll try to give you a quick overview in a nutshell on his "arguments". It goes like this (warning: the amount of bullshit you will find here reaches toxic levels. Reader discretion is advised): "Japanese society lives in a state of perpetual reverie and denial due to their defeat during WWII, which left them with a grave inferiority complex and the perception that they are at the mercy of EEUU. This caused a generalised depression that led to japanese people undergoing the loss of all sense of self-worth and autonomy, accepting being subjugated to EEUU like a kid is subjugated to their parent's commands." "This reflects in japanese media in the form of a tendency for very young characters to which they can relate and the image of the adult like that mature person (otona), a fount of infinite wisdom, who follows blindly the role society assigns them and thus is a model for our young main characters." "Westerners who like japanese media tend to share this Peter Pan syndrome with japanese people. They are essentially manchildren that negate their age and responsabilites and take shelter in the world of japanese fiction, so well suited for them." And that would be essentially it. To be honest, when I first watched his video I laughed it off and thought that this fucker just read too much Freud. It's the same kind of bullshit that you find in psycho-analysis, where you have a bunch of hypothesis with no evidence whatsoever that just sound somewhat appealing and you are told to believe because they came from the mind of a self-called intelligent person. I thought that most of us are way past that crap and quickly dismissed the topic. And to the present day, I still think that it is bullshit. So why am I losing my time writing this? Well, you know that feeling when you learn a word that you never heard before, and thereafter you seem to hear the freaking word all the time? It's an effect of being more attentive to it. Likewise, I became more sensitive to this topic after watching that video, and since then I've been noticing an extended idea among people that indeed japanese media enthusiast, or "otakus", call it as you want, have a childish mentality. And you must be thinking... "wow, this dude discovered f***** America". Yeah right, it doesn't particularly come off as a surprise that there are a lot of prejudices against this hobby. The main reason I want to write about this is a little more subtle. I've been noticing that the "manchild" epithet is given in a condescending way even among anime and manga fans (VN is such a niche genre that I think there is barely any room for it for the time being) to discredit other people's opinions and tastes on the subject. Wow, elitist being assholes, breaking news, I know. But you know, in spite of me being a really obstinate person, I also like to leave room for someone's arguments to change my mind or make me look at things from another angle. Plus, they say that there is no smoke without fire, so I would like to discuss how much reality there is to this what with it being a prejudice held not only by the unversed opinionated masses but even within the community itself. First, let's address what it means to be "immature", "childish", a "childman". Definitions are always arbitrary and oftentimes confusing, so I always like to begin a discussion getting the definitions out of the way in the most clear way possible first. When I hear "childish" referred to a person, the word evoke the meaning of "person who share the common personality traits of most children" for me. And what would that be? Well, children tend to be carefree and selfish in nature, as a result of not yet knowing the hardships of life and not being aware of the consequences of their actions, for which they are not willing to accept any responsability, thus being dumped on their parents instead. By this definition, someone cannot be called "childish" on the only basis of their pastimes or passions. The gist of the question is whether there is or is not a correlation (not causation) between childish people and japanese popular media fans. And if there is, then it would mean that there are some features in this media that turn out to be appealing for this kind of people. This brings us back to the words of our good freudian psychologist and "japanese culture expert", whose statements I'll try to refute (at least those unrelated with WWII and all the nonsense not worth the effort). He claims that immature people feel attracted to japanese media because of the prominence of young characters they can relate to. I'm not denying the fact that that prominence is very much real, though of course it also depends on the genre. What I think he's missing here are the actual reasons why and the themes these kind of works usually deal with. As for the reasons of this abundance of young characters, the obvious one is that most of these works are targeted at a young audience, while trying to make it enjoyable for all publics. It's important to keep in mind that anime and manga is, at least as a popular phenomenon, a relatively young one. Most of the fans are still young. But for me, the most relevant reason is embedded in the true nature of japanese society (and not all the crap he pulled out of his ass). If you pay attention, the most frequent period during which most anime and manga are set in is the last years of high-school. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense, since it makes for a really handy narrative device. No matter where you are from, those ages are where you become the person you will be during all your life. It's a period of change, and also a period of difficult choices, your ACTUAL first difficult choices as a new-born adult. What you usually see in these works is not a bratty teenager without a care in the world that get away with that attitude at the end (something more frequent, incidentally, in american teenage fiction, if I'm allowed to say it). Instead, what it all usually comes down to is to learning to be critical with oneself, facing your responsibilities and becoming an overall responsible and decent person who will be productive when integrated to society. And this last part, this "integration to society" is so fundamental in the japanese mindset, that I believe that is the reason why we get so many school life related works. Japanese mentality is extremely communal: the well-being of the community comes first as a priority than your own interests. Every new piece to be integrated into this machine needs to be polished and have the social awareness that is expected from it. You tell me, how is this not contradictory with the childish mentality that I described above? Like, they are total opposites. I seriously doubt that childish people would enjoy most of these works where the reality of the world, the fact that you must accept your coming to age and face your responsabilities are thrown so blatantly to your face. And that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. If you've made it this far, congratulations I'm aware that asking for an opinion here might be like asking your grandma to confirm that you are the most handsome person in the country, but anyway, let's try to be critical about it and get to the bottom of this. I would love to read your thoughts on the topic.

To me it does the opposite. If I want to feel like I'm in control of the protagonist's choices, I need to see an actual response to that choice. Just changing one piece of dialogue in that one scene doesn't make an overall change to how the characters look at the protagnist overall. It just changes that one line, then they go back to normal. So, in turn, nothing actually changed. For me to enjoy the effect of choices, they need to actually have lasting repercussions, or else they are just pointless. So, even if they don't lead to an ending, they should show some kind of change beyond just a singular line of dialogue.

Oh, I forgot my biggest gripes: Less invisible characters. Not drawing so much as a portrait for a character the MC talks with for ten minutes is plain lazy. Less background reuse. If a route ends with a huge gathering of people in the streets, showing me the same sparsely populated road that I already saw on day one is lazy and disappointing.

Less main characters without face when they are not "you" Less non-dubbed main characters Less meaningless text that add nothing to the story Less meaningless games as a whole Less "dark" plots that end up being bulshit Less complicate route systems - just gimme my ending What I want more is voice acting. It's sad when some great vns depend only on sound effects.

That was an interesting interview. The one thing I really enjoyed about it was JM's description of doing audio work (esp. editing) for voice acting. It is literally the bane of my existence, and the number one task in terms of time/resources needed. I've learned to love it, but it is far more effort than I expected it would be; especially if done well.

Done.

yu-no, you make a great point. the pun!

Hmm, I'm pretty sure the guidelines allow it, and in general it's always a good idea to give a link to something if you are discussing it, even if you don't agree with what they say. Even if it's in some language not all of us here speak. As for the topic of this discussion... The people I know in real life who enjoy anime from time to time don't look immature to me at all, but the set is way too small to say anything in general. My personal opinion about this would be that this is just bullshit. There may be a lot of anime fans that act immature online, or perhaps even in real life, but is this not true for young people in general? I mean, even if it turns out that there is some correlation, I don't think there's any excuse to make any claims about anime fans in general, assuming that the author of that video did. The part about WWII, on the other hand, is just stupid. People need to stop finding historical parallels in everything.

I think he just follows the nukige naming convention and considering the topic of the tread I find it highly appropriate.

One place, two visions... Which one do you prefer?

No one actually uses the rating so this sucks

Extra initially makes you take all the little things for granted and complain about all the cliches, Unlimited completely changes the atmosphere and Alternative just breaks you apart. You'll definitely be rewarded...with PTSD, that is. In a nutshell

Sometimes, I want to pick a game with a setting that I'm not used to read about. It's good to try something different once in a while, right? Medieval, fantasy, steampunk and robot-infested future settings quickly catch my attention, but I need an extra push to try something more mundane, more post-apocalyptic or something like this game. Mafia stories. I understand about mafias as much as know about cars (as in: nothing, seriously I tell them apart by color), but the art was so pleasant to look at, so why not? Of course, the BL part was the other push. Good thing what awaited me was a cool and very badass game. Why Ugajin (glasses guy) is there with the heroes with locked routes? He must feel so important... The story follows our protagonist JJ (center in the above pic), a famous hitman that always do his job right. One day, he's given an assassination mission by the mafia that pretty much controls the region, King Caesar. Said mafia will probably start a war with the opposing mafia, Dragon's Head, soon, making the choice to involve himself with them a bit dangerous, but the job pays too well to be ignored. Too bad the wrong people were killed, the target escaped, JJ was blamed for all of it even if he did nothing wrong and and now the guys from the biggest mafia around are pissed off. To make things even worse, the wrong people that were killed happened to be the parents of one of our heroes, Azusa, and after he saw JJ in the crime scene he started to follow him around to find a chance to kill him. Wow, lots of things already happened and this is like 15 minutes into the game. The rest of the game also jumps to one action scene to the other with not very long parts of slow building up in between (some exceptions in certain routes), to keep you always entertained. The scenes are packed with regular gun fights with no absurd tricks or superpowers involved and the author makes the scenes longer giving us a lot of gun trivia. Since I only know about guns through Resident Evil games, I was a bit lost when sometimes the attacks were identified by ammunition and not by character mid fight, but I got the hang of it with time. In fact, the guns are so important that you'll notice that each hero weapon of choice kinda matches their personality. On the other hand, like a lot of action movies, it's not uncommon for you to be asking yourself "but what about the plot?". Calling it a charage is a lot of stretch, but each route in Omerta have it's own plot and half of the time it doesn't revolve around what happened in the prologue that I described. The intro sequence serves more to introduce the characters and to show you where JJ stands in this whole mess. And before you can pick your choices, he's pretty much avoiding both mafias and living with Azusa in his shadow. Better not to pick another snarky choice... Not having an overaching plot can be a bit disappointing for some people, but that's not a bad thing in the least! Having a very good amount of heroes (seven in total) with different alignment, the game gives you the opportunity of explore their life in this harsh world and take a look at both sides of the conflict. Your allies in one route are your enemies in another. I felt their portrayal were a bit too much black and white (one mafia is clearly portrayed as the good guys and the other as the bad ones), but some shades of gray in their morality are in fact present. As for the routes themselves, the game splits into three routes and only then it splits into the heroes. If you decide to ally yourself with King Caesar, you have tsundere boy Kiryu and seductive boss Luca. If you decide to go to Dragon's Head instead, you have manipulative Ugajin and the boss everyone fear Liu. And at last, if you decide to stay neutral, you have the blabbermouth Tachibana, the guy that knows well how the city works Toudou and our bratty cat-ears-haired Azusa. At first, Luca, Liu and Azusa's route are locked, but they only need a single playthrough to unlock. Order is also not enforced, so you can really read in the order you prefer. The only recommendation I give is to read the subordinates of each mafia before the bosses. And if you think that the prologue's arc is the closest thing to call a true route, let Azusa's route for last. Either way, there's one epilogue that takes things from most routes that is the Grand Ending (as the game itself calls it) of Omerta. The game didn't gave me a threesome route with these guys, and I'm still pissed The characters themselves are interesting even when some of them aren't exactly likable. This game is tagged with "Villainous Hero" in VNDB, after all. But if there's one character that steals the show, it's the protagonist. JJ is one badass guy in the action scenes, and he stays true to his "killing with no hesitation" nature for the vast majority of the novel. Even so, he's also caring and even a bit naive in the "slice-of-life" parts. Seriously, who would thought that a hitman could be this cute? Well, it makes some sense seeing that he's a dork who lived on the run most of the time. Not many opportunities for normal human interaction. The romance is done in an very uneven way. Of the seven routes, two follows the "MC was swept away by the hero's affection" pattern, one have more of a "close friends that also have sex with each other" vibe (that I liked a lot), one is the villain route so there's more pity than love there (also nicely done), one have that true canon hero vibe since the very beginning of the route so we could see the love already there somewhat and in the last two the romantic development was so fast that I almost thought that I skipped something by mistake. It's good to have some variation, but in at least two of those I felt the romance very unconvincing. Not that I was expecting epic and fluffy romance in a mafia story anyway. Althought I must say that I was very sad to not have a route with a particular side character... The H-scenes are very good. Like VERY GOOD. The art in it was so good, the voice acting was also very well done, there's some nice variation of positions (the CGs never felt recycled, just changing one of the guys) and the MC is bottom in some routes and top on others. H-scenes alone, of all the BL games I played, this one takes the prize for me. Of course, since most of the heroes (and the MC himself) are no saints, there's rape and dubious consent in spades in there and I felt quite bad about liking some of those CGs aaaaah, some of them used for threat and domination and not for "love" at least. While this is understandable in the setting, 80% of the time this is done to Azusa, that is the weakest guy, so it felt more like picking on the weak. Not cool. If you're planning to skip them without seeing even a glimpse of the CG though, unfortunately they're very randomly located in the game. Not that is hard to see one coming... most of the time. There's a PSP port that got rid of all the H-scenes, but, while it was more than welcome with some rape scenes and some replacements were even more gay than the original, if that was even possible, I kinda missed some of the best H-scenes (I have both version: read the PC one and skimmed through the PSP one). Stop hurting my precious cat boy please... The soundtrack is nothing special. The tracks were cool, but nothing really memorable. Voice acting was quite good, at least for the main characters and the side characters that had more screen time. I could listen to Luca's voice all day, Kiryu's tsun voice is just adorable and Ugajin have the same voice actor as Emiya Shirou from F/SN (and they sound exactly the same) so the H-scene was... funny to listen to say the least. Almost everyone that don't have a sprite have a cheesy or generic voice, but well, they are generic anyway. Despite all the problems, Omerta was a fun read and very badass. It's hard to make the MC the most likable character, but here they did a good job. Of course, maybe their portrayal of the mafia world is completely wrong, I wouldn't know any better, but eh, just enjoy this piece of entertainment. Because entertainment you can definitely find here. I hope to come back to review the fandisc, but I have to read it first... I can't wait to meet these boys again!

This one is horror. Existential. Sort-of. https://vndb.org/v1484

I think it sounds legitimately interesting especially since the organized crime world has to a fault been extremely masculine, and, chauvinistic,and explicitly homophobic. Might have to check it out based on that alone. Plus, I like some good mafia shit. Was it ever translated? Oh and here

Definitely not. It's entirely standalone as @Kabu has said below. One thing about the routes in To Heart 2 is most of them have a different feel from each other. Routes and their endings tend to polarise people. What one person loves another hates with a vengeance. While I agree with @MarcomiX about Sasara's ending, I don't think she's the best girl (just look at my avatar ), and others really enjoy her route. Either way, you're bound to find something you like, and something you hate in To Heart 2. You'll also then have about a dozen anime OVAs to watch that are much funnier after you play the game. Project link:

I also feel like there's some bayesian problem with it, when it comes to the perception of people in general. Childish people perhaps tend to lean towards fiction, and since they usually stand out more than people with their feet on earth, it's easy to mix up "the probability of liking anime given that you have a childish personality" and "the probability of having a childish personality given that you like anime".

I mean, maybe she is doing porn BECAUSE she is beautiful. The prettier the more chances to win a casting. That would be my guess, at least.

Does there exist a large number of people who consume Japanese media that are immature either intellectually, or emotionally, or both? Oh hell yeah! Is it endemic of every single person that consumes Japanese media? No.

VN translation is a niche and it's technically an industry.

It makes you wonder why someone so beautiful was doing that kind of job? Interesting. In your opinion, one's physical attractiveness, which is largely determined from genetics, is what should determine one's career? God I hope you never rule anywhere I live, because I'd probably be a trash collector or something.

I assume it's in Spanish because of the EEUU? Link me up fam In any case, while you seem to believe this Japanese culture expert (JCE) is biased / prejudiced, I would also note that you continuously refer to their opinions as "bullshit" and to JCE as a "fucker". Do ensure that you present both sides of the argument fairly, even if their thoughts may seem completely outlandish. It's very hard to contribute on a topic like this because there are, to my knowledge, no concrete statistics or studies that examine the link between interest in Japanese media and personality traits. As a personal anecdote, however, I know multiple people that seem to fit perfectly into the theories JCE proposed. I don't believe that this is a one-size-fits-all everyone that likes anime is a manchild type deal, but in some cases it rings very true. I think JCE may be referring to people that are obsessed with Japanese media and whatnot, rather than anyone with an interest. There's "I enjoy anime and am learning Japanese in my spare time" and then there's Kendesu. That is an important distinction to make.

So, I’ve been working to bring different types of content to the blog for some time and today I have an immense pleasure to present you my first “Developer Spotlight” post, where I’m talking with Jackie M. from the yuri & otome studio Reine Works, about their recently-released game, The Seven Districts of Sin: The Tail Makes the Fox, and general realities of the OELVN market: I will appreciate any feedback on the interview – I don’t have much experience in this field so I’m very interested whether it was a good read and what kind of questions and people you would like to see in the spotlight in the future. Also, feel encouraged to check out my review of the game itself – it’s definitely not an instant classic, but takes quite an interesting and in some ways ambitious direction: With this game, the otome event on my blog is officially over. From the next week, we’re venturing back into the world of yuri and I think we’ll stay there for quite a while, as I discover new layers or OELVN yuri goodness and maybe even talk with some creators whose work I enjoy immensely. Thank you for following my compulsive literary output and have a great week everyone! PS Does anyone have the possibility to share the interview post on the visual novel subreddit? I’ve seen they don’t tolerate self-promotion and I don’t have the time to get involved there really. :<

Are you sure?

Tsugumi Komachi (Ever17) One because I think she is just such a fascinating character and she has a perfectly reasonable reason why she is initially cold to Takeshi. After that it's Rin, Lucia, Kyou, and Mizuha.

Symphonic Rain completed. Had a really, really slow build up, but I'm glad I kept at it. Had some interesting characters (compared to standard moege chars, Symphonic Rain's chars were more realistic, and had more depth). The music was good too. Wonder what I'll read next...

It feels like yesterday when I bought The Grand Design and fell in love with his explanations of the physics of our world. I read his stuff right around the time when I was a Kaku fan. Stephen explained in that book why String Theory did not make much practical sense. He also talks about why creationism doesn't work, and lays down the philosophy of science. Many people at like they know science. Some dismiss it as though it's some kind of religion. However, it's a methodology. A methodology built upon fallibilism and falsifiability. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and today one of those giants can now rest in peace.

From what I've seen and from what other says, after all the people that were on Fuwa because of the torrents left, the Forums at least offered pretty steady levels of activity. The frontpage got stagnant because of the admin team having no time and main contributors giving up, but the community as whole isn't dying out yet - it might in the future, but there's not so many VN communities after all, not many places to migrate to and I'm not sure if it's that probable that everyone around here will just lose interest. I'm not sure where I would go if Fuwa wasn't there anymore - other options are few and not that appealing. When it goes to purpose, as much as I understand, Tay's vision was to turn Fuwa into a major VN news/review hub. Obviously it would always be smaller than the visual novel subreddit, but that's not the point - Reddit is just aggregating news, not producing them. Fan sites like this are important pieces of every community's life and can contribute a lot to the community. Producing news and commentary is a very different thing than cataloguing media or sharing and ranking external articles. Add to this at least some token effort of promoting VNs among western gamers and we would have just as much of a mission as any site needs - the fact there's no leadership is the real problem. Well, that's pretty obvious at this point, but it's also the most demanding thing to do. Not sure if it's doable at all in current situation, even if we try to overcome the clear limitations (Tay and Nayleen not having the ability to work on it), for example making a crowdfunding campaign and hiring someone to rebuild the site, we would still need more involvement from Tay than he's able to give at the moment. I'm afraid we're not escaping that limbo anytime soon.

Nice to meet you! We are a recently formed Visual Novel startup with a passion to create wonderfully sweet stories as our major objective. As per now we’re about to reveal our debut nakige, One Last Crane. There will be more going on about the project so don’t hesitate to follow our social media accounts for future updates! Facebook Twitter Our Homepage of course, you can check them in our Signatures as well!

I personally prefer https://www.wix.com/ It has the best blog customization options available, so you can really make it your own.

An issue with the Fuwa blogs is that it seems that the only audience for it are fuwanovel users. Specifically the people who lurk and post on the forums. Which seems to be a smaller amount than it used to be. Also, if you have a blog on Fuwa, you are kind of dependent on Fuwa being stable. Meaning that when the next Fuwapocolpyse happens, your stuff will be vulnerable. Wordpress is nice because it gives you more control, but its also more difficult to grow an audience if your solely focused on VNs.

This very site has blogs. https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/ An other option would be WordPress, WordPress is made for blogs so you could create your own site for free and host your blogs. This however won't reach as many people as fuwo does. Most likely.