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It's not data gathering scripts that are broken. We've never used scripts for that—all data gathering is done by hand. It's the blog software and plugins that we rely on for posting the updates that are broken.

they mean exactly the same (if you mean the genre), except yaoi have a derogatory origin and connotations, so let's stick with BL, shall we? I explain it better at shameless self promotion:

Hopefully they put to rest any ideas of hard copies. Will just be a loss.

I don't think you can conclude what people want from a poll with 59 responses.

The official English release of the BL VN sweet pool by JAST USA is in a few hours! It's gonna be my first BL, and I'm excited. Being an EOP, there seem to be a limited number of translated BL out there...

Just wait and see, I'll probably be in the history books for the fastest transformation into a fujoshi this forum has ever seen

Hyyyyyyyyyype!!! Definitely can't wait, the translation team for this is quite good, it'll probably be way better than the half-released fanpatch version ^^ plus, it's uncensored. Also, I'm really digging the way JAST Blue is handling the whole release. They released a demo, so you could see if it's worth your time, they'll release an all ages version for people that care about the plot but not for the porn and an uncensor patch (it's not free, but the all ages version is cheaper so I can't complain at all). Hope they handle Lamento in the same manner.

NekoNyan announcement this Friday, possibly also give us their decision on kickstarters etc and hopefully Fureraba fandisc

I may not agree with everything but it looks like they are aiming for a translation that is at the same time good and caters to the target audience of the medium. Unfortunately, nowadays VN-translators are mostly former fan-translators who are very inspired by the fact that they are now being paid for their work. As a result they are thoughtlessly and often unsuccessfully trying to imitate the "professional work for the most mainstream audience" as if they are translating a new Final Fantasy game but their skill is yet to reach the level where they could do it seamlessly and without stubborn and jarring decisions on the way. Don't maul me.

Well I play everything on linux so I'm used to "getting things to work" for VNs. I recently bought HdR and downloaded it because I felt guilty that I played it by sailing the high seas over a decade ago, and it's an absolute bargain. So the archive is sitting there waiting for me to see. I do recall an extremely long common route, but once you get that out of the way and save it you can go straight to each heroine's route. I think I'd only play Asumi's route through again: my first tsundere crush Izumi from Clover Day's is my all time favourite tsundere, but I need to do something in the future to bring that project back to life for people to play it in English.

Ah yeah, I liked Asumi too, but was a little afraid to mention it, as HdR seems to be even more divisive than Chisato's route from KoiChoco You're welcome Also, robot girl. Don't know why, but I have soft spot for them. Just remembering "Planetarian" or Ame's ending from "DalSegno" still makes my eyes moist

Can argue with "Mahiru's 3rd person speech", but I don't care enough. Either way is fine. If you found any bugs report it to vg/vn/ on 4chan. Don't forget to replace every instance of 仕方ない with "It can't be helped" And mess up grammar a little, to recreate that awkward vintage translation feel BTW I'm currently on Chiho's route. I have to agree, "dude" sounds weird, would've opted maybe for "bro" instead. That would shoot two birds with one stone - preserve her "male speech patterns" quirk, and at the same time keep "brother" reference. But I still think that in her case it should be translated. Also, IMO leaving "sensei" untranslated sounds very awkward most of the times, but it looks like that's what patch creators are aiming for... Shit, I promised to not discuss translation...

Asumi from Heart de Roommate. An oldie but a goodie. Others have already listed the two I would have recommended from To Heart 2

Seeing that it's almost Christmas, personally I would say that Da Capo 3 here is the good choice because we'll going to have Christmas theme at that VN. That said, I think all of those VNs were good recommendations though so you can read any VN that won the poll so have fun. My vote here is still goes to Da Capo 3 though, if only for my personal choice.

Hello, Lady, which is scheduled to get released next year has a very intelligent, very capable protagonist. Tokyo Babel Majikoi

The translation is pretty good. All those criticisms regarding localization are some galaxy brain thinking bullshit. I welcome the "dude" change because it makes the game memorable, and it's fun.

Aiess from Majikoi A2 is legendary. It's perfectly ok to skip the entire 75 hour series and go straight to her route.

Years ago, for a month straight I had tons of fruit flies in my place (it took us a while to find the source). I was killing like 5-10 fruit flies a day. After we got rid of the source and cleared out the fruit flies, I was still seeing phantom fruit flies out of the corner of my eye for months.

If you ask for the ones you havent played: - Mirai from KoiIroChu! - Saki from Yukizakura - Nanase from One ~Kagayaku no kisetsu e~ - Yuma and Ruri from ToHeart2 all heroines from Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai road are tsunderes to some degree, but mostly Renna.

Hi, ladies and gentlemen! Today, I bring you a bit of history and information about the origins of some BL related terms. Of course, I'm not the supreme autority in japanese BL culture, very far from that, in fact I did a lot of research for this post, so feel free to correct any mistakes, I would love to learn more about it! Let's start with the main one. What's Yaoi? In the west, is the most generic term to describe works that have romance and usually sex between two males. By now, you must have noticed that I never use this term, be it in this blog or around the forums. Why's that? Because it's a short for the expression "YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi" that roughly translates to "No climax, no ending, no meaning". Pretty much our classic "porn without plot". It was a term used by two manga artists in the '70s to dismiss poor quality doujinshis, and this was appropriated by early BL authors when the genre started to go beyond fanfiction of popular shounen series. Yeah, sure, the low quality and no plot parts are pretty much true for tons of male on male doujinshis I found around in the internet, but BL as a genre now is a lot more than just this! It's natural to distance itself of this old label now. Even if the fans accept it by learning how to laugh at themselves... I still prefer a serious label any day. Japanese sites that sells games and manga magazines all tag those works as BL now, so yaoi is way less used over there, except for refering to parody doujinshis and such. Here in the west, on the other hand, I see the term all the time used by either long time fans that didn't bother to switch out the term they got used to or by people outside the fanbase. Looking around here on Fuwanovel or VNDB, places where the bishoujoge fans far outnumbers the BL fans, like pretty much any other VN discussion place, I see the yaoi term being used quite a few times. Okay, in VNDB maybe it's because the tag is named like this and it could be too much unnecessary work to try to change it now, so they're forgiven for now. Now now. What if a work have romance between two guys but no sex? Yaoi was for porn without plot, but what should we call the works that don't have porn either? Are you guys familiar with the expression Shounen Ai? Here in the west, that's exactly how we call these kinds of work! Well, too bad it's not exactly right. You see, Shounen Ai was a term to describe manga that were inspired by tanbi literature. These stories (both Shounen Ai and tanbi) were about the pursuit of beauty in the form of romance between a older man and a pure and innocent younger one (read as: teens, late teens or young adults. Younger than this is shotacon), with flowery language and unusual kanji. Meaning, the term Shounen Ai in Japan actually refers to pederasty (and that means "love of boys" in greek). Sure, these manga didn't exactly have any porn in it either, but the association of "no porn" and this term was never a thing in Japan. And they don't even use this term anymore, since this is pretty much a dead type of manga style anyway, much like tanbi. They call everything BL and the rest of the tags that gives away if it have porn or not. But what about Bara? The even-more-niche gay romance works, usually created by gay men for a gay audience, full of very masculine guys? Are they also known by the name of BL in Japan, even if they are so different of their female oriented counterpart? No, they aren't called BL... and not Bara either. Bara probably comes from the name of a early popular gay magazine (that's not sold anymore) called Barazoku (translates to rose tribe). But that magazine didn't focus only in manga, it also contained news, short stories, interviews, pornographic pictures and even some space for personal advertisement to search for a romantic partner. It was the first gay magazine to be sold in popular bookshops of Japan, so that's maybe why the association was made. Hey, even BL was once called June, because that was the name of one of the earliest magazines for BL works! Well okay, that was some milestone, but guess japanese publishing industry don't use the association. So, what are more masculine guys romance games/manga called? Guess... ML, or Men's Love. Yep. Although, for manga, they also use Geikomi (as in gay comic). So yeah, if you ever want to look for this type of content in japanese sites, you know what you need to look for. Not BL, but still interesting to mention, maybe the origin of the Yuri term... was a column of Barazoku that tried to appeal for lesbian readers named Yurizoku no Heya (Lily tribe's room) back in the '70s. And yes, Shoujo Ai is used in a similar manner than Shounen Ai, to refer to works that deals with pedophilia (I never saw a yuri manga with a lolicon girl though... but I'm still a yuri noob, there's still much for me to see). Unlike all other BL terms though, Yuri is vastly used in Japan, but GL (or Girl's Love) sometimes pops up here and there. And now, to wrap things up, what's my opinion about all this terms mess? Frankly, I'm a bit torn... I really dislike the misuse of the terms, but how can little me do something to change such widespread terms in the west at this point? I'll also not even try to correct every single person that uses yaoi instead of BL, but now you know that it kinda annoys me a bit. The most important thing is that we can understand each other, even if we use different terms, but at least I tried to raise awareness so you don't embarrass yourself in your trip to Japan. Cheers!