Leaderboard

Considering I've been seriously slacking off, I decided to talk a bit about my list of both japanese and western vns that remain on high priority for this season. Aside from a couple shorter, english-translated titles (Karakara 2, amongst others), Engima: I have yet to check and a bunch of doujin/amateur evns, this list consists of major games I'm mostly looking forward to this season. So, without further ado, in order of priority from highest to the lowest: Japanese titles: Yougen Tennyo - A demon prince embarks on a voyage through mortal planes to bring his bride from the heavenly realm. Incredibly artsy and very much underappreciated. Otomimi Infinity - Near future, beast people and all the relatable sociopolitical dilemma. Definitely one of the best mimikko games out on the market. Komorebi no Nostalgica - Distant future and androids. This is a cult classic game, residing within the top 10 sci-fi vns of all time. Akatsuki no Goei (whole trilogy + fandisk, wew) - A pragmatic bodyguard and a spoiled ojousama? What could possibly go wrong? English titles: Lucy - Androids and future, one more time. Highly emotional, western take on a sci-fi story akin to Planetarian. Quite successful. Considering my time is rather limited and I don't want to get stuck in an endless limbo of self-loathing, this is a somewhat reasonable schedule for the next two, three months of my life. I can't hide the fact I'm actually looking forward to Otomimi Infinity the most, considering the game's mostly about themes I currently find entertaining. There are a couple other titles on my backlog which are near the border, but not as near as to actually justify placing them within the list... or at least not until I finish those first. Not saying it might not suddenly change out of the blue, especially since I'm not sure whether Nostalgica is something I'll be able to cope with in terms of my japanese proficiency (I still want to try, regardless). Be sure to drop me a comment, if you want to hear more or feel like this list is completely wrong and I should be playing other titles at the moment Also, MFW still no Dies Irae.

Thoughts? With Steam's latest fiasco, which clearly undermines their credibility as a publishing platform for both large studios and indie devs, GOG might have found their potential chance to expand their market share. In all honesty, this is great news, considering how reluctant so far they have been in regards to vns. I doubt we'll see 18+ games released anytime soon if ever, but if that happens and GOG actually bothers to create a well managed market with decent control over what content gets published, it might as well turn into a new dawn for both western and japanese developers. Not to mention GOG falls under polish jurisdiction, which means a lot more lenient and reasonable laws regarding what can and cannot be published in terms of potential 18+ content.

No. They are precisely the continuation of the plot. They have a bit more side-content, such as afterstories, but are otherwise a sort of 'true route' for Grisaia.

Are Meikyuu and Rakuen what Fate Hollow Ataraxia is to FSN? Just an awesome fan disc with some original content and side stories but no real continuation of the plot? In other news I somehow ended up going down Michiru's route, which I personally feel should have ended when I really enjoyed Eden littleshogun, though the drama is a little forced it was something I just couldn't put down.

I'm sorry, but we haven't yet reached a golden age of VNs. Everything currently released is bad. No exceptions. Visual Novels are far too young a medium to have reached the maturity required to produce something of actual quality. What we have now can be likened to amateurish cave paintings: probably impressive in their time, but ultimately of little consequence. Wait a hundred years or so and you might see the first good Visual Novel made; until then, we're stuck with garbage. Entertaining garbage, but garbage nonetheless.

This is how anime becomes real.

Confession: I'm not sure how to interpret any of the smileys we have, but I still use them a lot.

if anything i am dumber now and starting to enjoy seeing the same 3 stories told over and over

Thanks for the kind words! The demo actually does have some exclusive content (the very first scene, as well as the chibi stuff, although the first scene might be included in the full game from the extras menu or something.) Regarding HRP, we're still working on it, but it's mostly a matter of real-life issues causing a lot of delays and stuff. When we ran the Kickstarter most of us were in college or in one case even high school, so our availability has changed a lot since then. Most of us who have been working on other projects too are ones who do VN stuff full-time as a career (for instance, my day job is working for everyone's favorite localizer, Sekai Project) while some other members are doing dumb, boring stuff like medical research to cure cancer. Also, we were bad at estimating and planning schedules back then, so we dramatically underestimated how much time it would take (for most of us, HRP was our first ever project). So basically, we're still working on it at the same time as our other games, it's just taking longer than initially expected.

You're living in the golden age English wise.

@cro-mag If you think that, it's not wrong because VNDB listed both of Meikyuu and Rakuen as sequel. Then again, some of fandisc is also known to elaborate some missing plot point or in this case have some continuation from canon, so it's only fair that if I call those two as fandiscs. Moreso if we considering that between Kajitsu and Meikyuu there is zero continuity (Kajitsu is charage with endings for each girl, while Meikyuu canon didn't continue from available routes), in which the anime fixed that continuity problem (It's quite infamous though). As for Rakuen's ending, well Frontwing can just apply the route selection like Galaxy Angel, but then again maybe they kind of rush the release so they didn't have time to apply that. In the end, I leave it to each of their own. For the title, right now I've been playing eden for a while and right now I'm near the end of that. I'll try to comment on eden later.

Foreword: Who does not know of Leaf company? Who does not know that its games Shizuku and Kizuato are considered the first modern type visual novels? But how many of us actually played those? There are some good English reviews of those (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) and I initially only relied on those as well. But the historical significance of Kizuato made me change priorities. Throughout the rest of 90-s and the first half of 2000-s I encountered quite many story-focused visual novels that are described by Japanese reviewers as "degraded version of Kizuato", so I really needed to see the original myself to get the proper idea. As for Shizuku... it came first and is a curious blend of old and new types of visual novels. Why did Leaf bother to make two remakes of it if it's a plain nukige about radio waves? Or maybe it's a dark-themed masterpiece akin to Moon by Tactics? I hope to answer those questions here. And I decided to make a comparative review to spice things up. Screenshots on the left belong to Shizuku, on the right - to Kizuato. Title: Shizuku | Kizuato Developer: Leaf | Leaf Date: 1996-01-26 | 1996-07-26 VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v235 | https://vndb.org/v184 Youtube walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ivg044iMI&list=PLENAECnNmAq-I8SGBuae4loVKdMDk6axP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ixMxD4DBko&list=PLENAECnNmAq-5p0JujfLT9jK9_CSDAulN Synopsis: When one of his classmates suddenly gets mad in the middle of the class, the protagonist's uncle, one of the teachers in the school, asks him to investigate this matter after school. He starts the investigation with the help of one of the girls from his class, an investigation that will lead them to many horrors... The protagonist is visiting his four cousins' home. He starts to have weird nightmares. Soon, he finds out that their family has non-human genes and the beasts in them want to hunt, and the ones who hunt are the males. Will he be able to help his cousins, will his love be enough or will he be devoured? Structure: Three routes + Omake with total number of endings being 12 | Six routes + Omake with total number of endings being 26. Length: 25 hours | 40 hours Game type: NVL AVG | NVL AVG Difficulty: Easy as there are few routes and branches, but to get all 12 endings best to follow walkthrough | Moderate as there are many routes and endings and it's easy to miss some of bad endings and some omake routes Character Design rating: 5/10 | 9/10 Protagonist rating: 6/10 | 6/10 Story rating: 5/10 | 8/10 Game quality: 7/10 | 9/10 Overall rating: 6/10 | 8/10 Rating comments: Nukige-like story really hurts Shizuku. All the main events happen during just one day and there's not even remotely enough time to get to know the girls. Girls also aren't too cute or interesting. Protagonist is a faceless embodiment of the player and we make all the decisions for him, so his presence is not felt at all. Still the game manages not to fall into nukige category and maintains its storyline which is worth praising. Kizuato characters are totally adorable - every one of them! Each route follows a different pattern. Story is a fascinating one and each roots adds new details to the overall story. Protagonist is a faceless one and without much presence, but a good game does not need the protagonist to be great. So the question hangs in the air - why not 9 or 10 score then? As for me the routes are rushed and follow the same pattern - general route up to the half of it, then getting to know one of the girls better, then something bad happens and we hurry to help. And even though some details are added in consequent routes, those don't add much to the story and after first exciting route - second, third and fourth routes look really plain. True route was also disappointing for me as it added finally something new to the story, but failed to present a satisfying finalizing mark just freezing the state of events as it was. Protagonist: Nagase Yuusuke is quite a failure as protagonist and being called Nagase-chan by the girls makes him even more humiliating. A totally generic high school student. Kashiwagi Kouichi is a young adult, so he is at least mature. He's also not really a generic protagonist since he has quite a background behind him. He comes from an ancient Kashiwagi clan and his father mysteriously died as well as the girls father. So he has some mystery behind him, but I don't remember his face being shown and he does not show special personality traits in the dialogue, so I'd call him generic protagonist. Characters: Saori is a red-hair cheerful volleyball team member. Her route comes first and it's a really good route. And not just because of novelty as we see the carcass of the story for the first time. First - Saori has a bright personality and laughs a lot. Second - there is only one H event in her route and it's a voluntary one. Third - her route has the most of life essence as Saori and Yuusuke openly oppose the enemy, put up hell of a fight and emerge victorious from it. If only the other routes were similar. There is also one strong and shocking moment in the route bad ending, but it's the only bad ending that has nothing to do with H events, so it's really nice. Mizuho is short brown-hair student council secretary. Being the filler mid-game route it is the most miserable route. Mizuho cries often, feels miserable about herself, admits lying all the time and is drawn as a totally self-insufficient personality. She has no friends but Oota and was dragged after her to the student council. Mizuho has no motive to help with the investigation but to help Oota. And on top of that the route is full of helplessness and rape with it ending only thanks to external factors, but not the heroes. Ruriko is a mysterious short blue-hair girl who turned from a school idol to a weird goofy girl a year ago. She's more like a robot than a girl, but she has a very strong sixth sense, a mysterious aura around her and she gradually gains human traits throughout her route which looks really satisfying. Her route is a true one answering many questions, but it's also a route that features a lot of bad endings with all of the three girls and in that regard is very tiresome to get through. I would also like to notice the absence of sub-characters in this game. There aren't friends, schoolmates or some external characters. All we have is Yuusuke's uncle and the three girls under influence of radio-waves - one of them being Oota and the others aren't even given names. Chizuru is the oldest of sisters and the route is the most exciting one as it's full of action and cool-looking CG. Many other people as well as myself call this route a favorite one. Azusa is a tsundere and has a misfortune to present one of the middle routes - and the result is truly grievous - route is full of H events and adds nothing to the story. Kaede is a cold-hearted calm sister who devotes her life to a shire. And for the whole route we try to reveal her human traits. Her route tells us the clan story and gets to understand the routes of the problem. Yumiko is a side-character who works as correspondent. Her route is a very short one (just one hour long!) and is basically a single long H event. Hatsuno is the true route to my deepest regret. She's the youngest loli sister with bright personality and affection for her onii-chan. I really hoped she would not have her own route, but I guess developers needed an imouto route as well - and Hatsuno makes a great imouto. Rikka route added only in the last remake of 2009. She's a totally new - maid - character that comes with a totally new after-story with a new villain. And it's a totally good route that adds lots of new cool everyday life scenes for old characters. But just remember that it was not meant to be in the original game and should thus be treated as a sequel with old characters, but since it's just one route it was not wise to release it stand-alone so it was released together with original. Story: Shizuku story is almost entirely retold in the synopsis. Oota gets mad one day and goes to the hospital. When uncle asks us to investigate strange gatherings of students at night school we can either investigate it or ignore it. If we choose to ignore, we're showed the graduation ceremony that becomes a huge orgy because of commands passed by radiowaves. So radiowaves use is not the mystery of the game - it's showed in the very first hour of the game. Only the mystery of personality of the villain persists, but it also becomes soon uncovered as we come with one of the girls to the night school to bear witness of the events happening there. Each girl has her own reasons to accompany the hero to the night school, but those don't change anything - a confrontation happens followed by game's end. So the game has no mystery, no story and no likable characters (maybe apart Saori) - what's the game for then? My guess is that the game is a thrilling eroge in unusual conditions, nothing more. It barely manages not to fall in the depths of nukige and presents mostly a historical interest. Kizuato story is not really special. First half of each route takes nice and warm slice of life with only distant sings of the beast living in Koichi. In the second half something happens - either a mysterious enemy shows up or someone gets kidnapped or like in true route we just get to find an ancient cave and explore it. So it's a simple enough composition. But through the dialogues we get to uncover many secrets of the past and get to know the girls well. The most intriguing question is what about the beast part? I'd say it does not have that much emphasis in the game, actually. We get to have strange visions and people torn apart, but there's no telling if those are of Koichi doing. And thankfully beast instincts aren't used as a pretext for rape scenes - that happened only once. There aren't bad endings when Koichi would wreak havoc and kill everyone. Mostly beast instincts only show up during confrontation scenes. And the main theme of the game is learning to control those instincts. So as I see it Kizuato is more of a charage with a fancy intriguing plot rather than a full-scale action driven story. Rikka route is so big that it can easily qualify for a different game. It has a new serious story with some new characters and and presents a very satisfying development with a lot of interaction with all the heroines. CG: I only played the remastered version, and there are only some 10 non-HCG there which is a dreadfully small number. But what I really liked in Shizuku is the use of camera focus and animated camera shifts. Those really help to put emphasis on dialogue situations and show better what's going of from hero's perspective. Overall there are few outdoor daytime scenes in Shizuku and omnipresent dark areas make up for the gloomy pressure atmosphere. There is a moderate number of non-HCG in Kizuato, but both CG and HCG look great and really refined there. Most of dialogues take part in well lit areas or on sunny days outdoors which contributes to good impression. Sound: BGMs are very few and I grew tired of listening to the same main tune each time something important happened. Voicing is good, but due to the game nature those moans really get stuck in the head. BGMs are sufficient and pleasant, but not special. I totally liked the voicing since the four sisters have very different personalities. Hatsuno voicing is just perfect and always enjoyable to listen to. Themes: Shizuku is not a too complicated game, so it's useless to search for concealed meanings there, but I liked that each character route had a different theme. Saori route has the power of reason and overcoming even hardest obstacles for the right thing. Mizuho route is based on friendship with Oota and has a nice resolution of friendship prevailing all the odds (even though it's the the most weird ending as everyone just forgets about the villain). Rikka route is centered around the inner connection of two siblings. The curse makes the make theme of Kizuato. The whole clan is cursed with transformation affinity, but the males of the clan also subject to madness at some point of their lives. Koichi is the last male descendant of the clan with the rest of males taking miserable deaths full of suffering. Noone was ever able to cure it or control it. This desperation makes the theme of the game, but on practice the beast problem does not stand as grave in the game. Humor: So Shizuku is not our usual galge, but it has an absolutely awesome part. That's omake. Main game suffers from lack of slice of life part and omake makes up for it. It's a total bakage that breaks the fourth wall constantly. It looks like seiyu and scenarist just wanted to fool around and had their full at it. Basically heroines discuss the game and what kind of character everyone is which leads to forcing Yuusuke to choose the girl he likes the most. And since he can't make a decision girls participate in sport and cooking competitions. There was some humor in 2009 Rikka route, but can't remember any of the original. But that awakening scene with two sisters getting embarrassed by the state of Koichi body was nice. Overall comments: So here are first Leaf visual novels. What makes Kizuato a contemporary visual novel? Different long route for each heroine Long enough main part with heroines introduction Heroines aren't isolated in their routes but act alongside other heroines in the main course of the story. Text-heavy narration for which NVL system was introduced Has erotic content (which distinguishes from sound novels). Rich sub-character cast. Branched routes and multiple endings including bad ones. And here's what's wrong with Shizuku: Almost no sub-characters No introduction to heroines (no slice of life part) Too short time period taken Abundance of H events Each girl route follows absolutely the same pattern Game has 12 endings (10 for main game and 2 for omake) and a lot of parts are shared between them, so it gets very repetitive and there's a constant deja vu feeling. Repetitiveness is aggravated by the use of same phrases for countless times with different intonation. There were at least 5 such spots in the game when the characters may repeat the very same phrase for over 10 minutes. It may look fresh for the first time, but later on it only irritates. Both games systems remind contemporary visual novels, but Shizuku as the first test bullet contains numerous flaws. My plank for masterpiece games is a bit low - 7/10 is enough to get there, so I consider Kizuato with 8/10 a masterpiece. It has great heroines cast, solid intriguing story and it surpasses nowadays charage a long way. As for Shizuku, it holds mostly a historical significance, but it still a worthy game if only read Saori route, then the very end of Ruriko route and the hilarious omake, of course.

Foreword - It appear that there's no VNTS for this week again perhaps because both of Decay and admin Tay were busy, so I decided to make another review here without VNTS itself. I hope that by the next week we'll have a VNTS at Fuwanovel main page. Since we have Fata Morgana fandisc release and the main story of the fandisc is an event from the past just like both of Meikyuu and Sharin, I decided to just use the subtitle for Grisaia no Meikyuu here for the review so we have 'Fata Morgana no Meikyuu' for this week title. Which somehow could be more fitting if we consider that Fata Morgana story was starting from somewhere in French, and as we know Frontwing always using French subtitle for Grisaia trilogy there. As for this week, while the fan translation side here is quite lacking in addition with one of the project was officially localized, in turn we have a lot of Mangagamer announcements from both of their ACEN and usual monthly announcements, so I think it's somehow balanced at this week. That said other than Fata Morgana fandisc, there's no other major release for this week. Let's see what I can write for this week as well. In regard of Tsundere Idol nukige, we go the exact date for the release in which it'll be at 28th later. While we should expect that they'll gonna release the 18+ patch for the Steam version, it's quite interesting though seeing that it's still managed to get the approval despite the controversy in regard of Steam attempt to take down some VNs at their store, and for the note all of the game that was about to be taken down is have some sex content. So when Tsundere Idol here manage to pass the test, I'm wonder if it'll have 18+ patch for Steam release as well considering that Steam apparently also banned 18+ patch as well. Of course we also gonna get 18+ version as well, so you don't need to worry whether the sex scenes would be cut or not. Other than Tsundere Idol exact release date announcement, we also have Newton VN both of fully translated and edited. With the translation process done, all what's left is that Sol Press need some Steam review before allowed to sell it at the Steam store. In wake of waiting for the Steam approval, unfortunately it's causing the release to be delayed to early June later. I just hope that the release would be going to be successful later. From fan translation we got Eustia was at 43.46% translated along with both of TLC and editing was at 32.35%, Shin Koihime Musou was at 94% translated, and Pure Pure was at 73.47% translated with Hinata's route was at 85.21% translated. Usual updates aside, we also have surprise in form of Amayui prologue patch. As for my comment about this, apparently the group behind this is the one who responsible for some interface patch of Eushully VNs, and most importantly the group is not Nekohen in which is quite infamous with them machine translated Eushully VNs. That said even though the result of dialogue patch might not be satisfying for some people, personally I would like to keep my eyes close on this project if possible, and hopefully we'll have fully translated dialogue patch from Amayui. We have Sekai's announcements at AX as well, and let's just said that only Sumire interest me a bit because of the graphic. For the info, the premise of Sumire is one MC who is always play galge online, only to have his relationship in real life with his online friend is a bit awkward before finally try to open up. While on paper the premise is sounding good, unfortunately from the reviews what I saw it's quite mixed to say the least so I kind of hesitate to play it later (The EGS score of Sumire is quite good though). For one more info, the creator of Sumire was also the one behind Narcissu and one of Sumire's character is also a character from Narcissu Sumire, so it's only inevtable that Sekai will localized this because it's from one group. There's also My GF is a Mermaid VN as well in which the title itself is obviously resembled Osadai localized title. What I knew is that this is a Korean VN that was only available for Switch, so I'm not quite interested with this. In regard of Bokukotsu, Sekai still waiting for Chinese script integration and Steam content, but at least Sekai tried to have it's released at this year, so let's just wait and see. Mangagamer As for Mangagamer, most of this week announcement is come from them. But first of all let me say congratulation to mod Dergonu in regard of Tsui Yuri (Localized as Sisterly Bliss) announcement, because it's one of their announcement back at ACEN. As for the premise, it's just the twin sister who try to maintain their lover relationship while keep it secret from their mother. Graphically speaking, it's looking good so at least so I think it should be interesting enough, so good luck with the release later. We also have Kyonyuu Fantasy 2 (Localized at Funbag Fantasy 2) announcement which is good if you look forward to more Kyonyuu Fantasy, although to me it's just another nukige announcement though. Overall even with Tsui Yuri announcement, the announcements is just on the average side because usually Mangagamer tend to have bigger announcement at AX later, but at least it's new announcements so it's quite not too bad I suppose. Even though the ACEN announcement itself is quite average, at least the bunch of Mangagamer updates look interesting enough to make it up, and looks like they'll indeed going monthly instead of two weeks each like in th past. Anyway as for Mangagamer monthly updates we get Tsui Yuri was both fully translated and edited (I would be surprised if the progress is still at 0% translated after one year of work to completed this), Kyonyuu Fantasy 2 was at 57% translated and 48% edited, Sona-Nyl was at 44% translated (Maybe I should expect that it'll be finished at July 2019 with this speed, and 2020 release for the soonest), Trinoline was at 95% translated and 64% edited, Rance quest was at 93% translated and 82% edited, Steam Prison was at 87% for both of translating and editing progress, and Amatarasu was at 84% translated and 19% edited. Other than the updates, we also have both of Sengoku Rance and Hashihime about to enter the testing along with Japanese version of Koropukkur, while Evenicle is already finished with the testing and about to be have some editing process again. While unfortunately we still didn't have exact release date for Evenicle here, I think it could be possible that it'll be out at this year. Especially if we look at Mangagamer project list in regard of the VNs that already finished the testing (Evenicle, Damekoi, Sweet Switch, Bitter Exclusion, and Hapymaher). If we follow Mangagamer pattern here, I think right now all of those VNs were in queue to be released, and one of those could be announced at May 31st later along with Kuroinu release (I might be wrong in regard of this though). By the way from what I saw here each time Mangagamer released their VN it'll be followed by the announcement of next release exact date, so they should be announced something along with Kuroinu release looking from the pattern. Once again the release for this week from Mangagamer was Fata Morgana fandisc, in which it'll depict some characters past along with the glimpse of the after story of main Fata Morgana. So if I may say here it's more or less just like Meikyuu, in which back at Meikyuu we also saw some characters past (Mainly our Grisaia MC Yuuji though). Although it's just the fandisc, it should be a nice treat for any Fata Morgana fan so you may get that if you interested with more Fata Morgana. Also just like the pattern that I explained before, Mangagamer announced the exact date for their other release in which it'll be at June 15th later, and the release in question is Tsumihoroboshi which is another part of Higurashi. With Tsumihoroboshi here,l now we already have three quarter of original Higurashi retranslated, and it also mean that we'll gonna have Tsumihoroboshi voiced with PS3 graphic later. That's all for this week, and see you next week.

Now that I have confirmation from Dergonu that the game he was playing is not VN of the Month quality (he has stalled on it), I will move on to finally announcing VN of the Month for March and April. March March was a decent month, since it had three potential candidates for VN of the Month. Those candidates are: Butterfly Seeker AI Love Unjou no Fairy Tale Now, despite my rating of it, I'm going to go ahead and disqualify AI Love. Why? Because it is essentially a borderline nukige. It made its way onto my Chicken Soup for the Soul list, but, as I've stated in the past, that isn't necessarily an indication of kamige status. Rather, it is an indication of how good the game is at soothing and relieving non-violent stress. So, this comes down to Unjou no Fairy Tale versus Butterfly Seeker. Based purely on my personal tastes, I'd probably go for Unjou no Fairy Tale, since I'm an admitted fantasy addict... but in the end, I had to (reluctantly) admit that Butterfly Seeker was the better VN. The depth of the story, the characters, and even just the details of the important events was such that I couldn't honestly give Unjou no Fairy Tale the victory for VN of the Month, March 2018. My reasons for excluding Etatoto from the final running are... that fun2novel's own review and private comments didn't leave me with the impression of VN of the Month quality. Worth reading for a certain portion of the community? Yes. Worthy of being recommended on a larger scale... no. April Having dropped Taiju for the moment (SofthouseChara's newest SLG), I was left with only one viable candidate for April... Yuusha to Maou, to Majo no Cafe. This is perhaps the weakest VN of the Month candidate I've put up in quite some time, but it still easily won over Kari Gurashi Ren'ai, which is the only other game that hit my baseline standard. Naming it as VN of the Month, April 2018 actually troubles me a bit... given a choice, I wish that Unjou or AI Love had been released in April so I'd have a better candidate. I almost decided not to name one for this month, but I reluctantly decided that it meets standards.

I agree but it depends on what you mean by 'a lot of time'. As I'm not into BnHA and didn't start SG0 yet I would place it on the level of Fall2015 but my fave remains spring 2013, while the next season (summer 2018) seems indecent on promising animes... Still this season benefit also from ongoing winter2018's shows like saiki no psi-nan, 7tsu no taizai, etc. Yup it's like we have a good anime episode every day, it's a bliss ! About Hinamatsuri it's so refreshing, it's as if seinen + comedy > school + comedy.

Hey, I work for Sekai Project. I just wanted to chime in and mention that aside from Sunrider and Fault, we'll be bringing more of our titles to the platform over time. While we probably won't be offering our full catalog on there, we're looking forward to working with them. We actually announced this partnership at AWA last September, so we're excited to finally start selling our games on this platform!

It's probaly also about the payment methods, especially PP. They'd loose a lot of customers if they were to change the store to CC-only. And making a separate site and using the wallet like a proxy payment method would probably too much effort (at least for now) they can't even make a good forum or a sale without multiple bugs.

Hey, great news! I use GOG for games, so it'll be cool to see powerpoints in there too! Regional price never bothered me as I always wait for sales anyway. And this was in the MG blog, maybe just to spice news up or a tease that 18+ games with patches will be there too in the future. Wow, found the answer a minute later on GOG's twitter:

Fuwanovel already went to dogs, no mod can ever change that

get this chinese powerpoint garbage off my video game platform

Exactly in a hundred years a group of Internet archeologists, who will analyze old websites to research history, are going to discover a snapshot of this this forum in the depths of archive.org, and they will be amazed at how wrong right this prediction will have turned out to be.

Toji no Miko just grew interesting for one-two episodes before and after the mid-season recap and then came back to being horribly boring and uninspired IMO. Tons of pointless dialogue, poorly-conceived characters and cliched plot developments. The most interesting thing to me is that someone decided to adapt an apparently equally-shitty manga and give it 24 episodes when really cool series rarely get that much. >.> I agree with the general ranking, objectively speaking, it's still nowhere near as bad as Hand Shakers were. Deathmarch doesn't have any romance though, I don't think it fits the theme of the thread. It's only atypical in the way that the protagonist knows the girls are into him but won't do anything about it because they're his slaves. There might be some romantic arc with the mage girl, but she might also die later on? People said something like that.

I'm, like, into visual novels and stuff. Enough so that I decided to learn the language! I will hang out like an awkward nerd and maybe help translate stuff if anyone needs a hand. Nice t' meet ya, or something. (I really have no idea what to put here. ;_;)

In earlier SOL VNs (those I just termed moege), there was a tendency for heroine/protagonist character development to be minimal. Most of the time, the (rather lazy) writers would use a gobi (an ending like uguu or nyaa) and/or a few obvious moe character traits to define the character from the beginning, and they never really swerved from that original character definition, even after the formation of a lovers' relationship. 'Nakige' began as a sub-genre of moege (primarily under the aegis of Key) where rather obvious situations were used to create cheap catharsis with the promise of a 'happy ending' (or the equivalent of) in the aftermath. As time went on, nakige gradually became distinct from the parent genre, as less moe-focused companies began to produce games that qualified. The key point of a nakige vs an utsuge, incidentally, is that in a nakige the point is to provide catharsis with a happy result, whereas utsuge provides catharsis but doesn't guarantee a happy result (utsuge started appearing about the same time as nakige but had almost no overlap with moege). Charage are an evolution of the original moege genre that retains the moe elements while also going more in-depth with character development (more involved and often showing traits that aren't necessarily designed to create a moe result). Since these turned out to be more popular than their predecessors, 'pure moege' eventually just... vanished (save for a few occasional reboots by companies producing low-budget games). Depending on the year, anywhere from 60% to 80% of the non-nukige VNs produced in a year will be charage since 2008. If you want examples of nakige... Kin'iro Loveriche and Komorebi no Nostalgica are both (relatively speaking) recent examples of this. For an example of a charage, Noble Works, Princess Evangile, or Wagamama High Spec are recent (localized) examples. Note that 'drama' in a charage path is generally mild, resolved quickly, and leaves little in the way of negative after-effects. For an example of 'pure' moege, To Heart 2 or the original translated version of Shuffle (before the extensive rewriting seen in Essence + version) would be decent examples. Edit: Understand, in a broader sense, most non-nukige VNs can be considered 'moege' in the original sense, because most otaku media uses the moe concept in its artwork and character designs. As such, 'moege' as it is currently used, is just an umbrella term for VNs with such elements. A 'pure' moege is one where there is little else but such content.

If I can share my preferences in terms of trash points : hand shakers > toji no miko > smartphone. Smartphone was at least cute while totally pointless, there were a new girl every episode. If it were 24eps long I would even have watched it until the end. I surrender at ep14 of toji no miko (if someone can explain why they didn't wrap if after the 1st cour), and at ep2 of hand shakers (I certify its unwatchableness). If you need other pointless harem anime like smartphone, death march kara hajimeru would be more enjoyable.

I think VN's have more detail and exposition, which does make you a little bit smarter. I agree with what soraa said. You'll see and experience new things, but you're not doing analysis probably so it's not a direct brain exercise. Maybe reading various types of prose will make your mind flexible unlike mind-numbing TV. But performance in other areas depends on skill and experience which aren't going to transfer at all from VN's.

Well we all know that the internet makes you stupid so whatever benefits can be gleamed from anime and vns are negligible at best.

Well, they are better than TV dogshit at the very least...

Not exactly on topic, but if I've learnt something about "golden ages", be in literature, cinematography, videogames, even life itself ffs... is that people tend to idealize the past and consider the current state to be on decline. Most often that not it's just a biased perception. Not to say that it's not possible to talk of some golden age in some way, but experience tells me to not pay much heed to those doomsayers that babble about how brilliant the past was and how bleak a future awaits us.

I still remember Amane's route very clearly despite reading it 4 years ago. Personally, i wouldn't call them fan discs. To me they feel like true sequels. Dunno, at the end of 1st and 2nd VNs you can say that story is incomplete. There are unanswered questions and such. And regarding Rakuen ending:

I know that it's supposed to be very dank here, but I can't resist to say that in real life I'm more or less just eat banana in very normal way (Just bite it okay). Well it's funny though that most of the cast here is pretty green minded in regard of eating banana XD.

Well I keep being conflicted on Hinamatsuri. It's a show with a stupid premise that starts with scifi and turns pure character comedy drama. Given the material I expect to give it up each week but each time I watch an episode I find myself honestly laughing out loud which almost never happens with comedy. Thus I have to admit, it's actually a good comedy.

https://myanimelist.net/anime/37021/Iya_na_Kao_sare_nagara_Opantsu_Misete_Moraitai [I Want You To Make a Disgusted Face and Show Me Your Underwear] While browsing mal I came across this, the description on the announcement says: "Drawn by 40-hara, the series depicts various situations where maids, high school girls, nurses, shrine maidens show their panties with a look of disdain." , that's it. From what i gather, its not a h-anime.

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.

I don't think one can get dumber than Kiri was before VNs Not that Kiri feels any smarter after VNs