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Showing content with the highest reputation on 03/07/19 in all areas

  1. adamstan

    Best funny anime?

    From the ones I watched, +1 for Konosuba. That's just pure fun
    3 points
  2. First, I'm going to state that all charage/moege are harem-ge (with the exception of kinetic novels with only a single heroine). In all these cases, you have a bevy of heroines that are, at the very least, friendly with or somehow attached to the protagonist. There are a three standard types of harem that I consider to be general umbrella types. These harems do not include nukige sex-only harems or the type of harems that pop up in gameplay hybrid VNs, as these often have distinctive story-exclusive reasons for harem formation. The Disconnected Harem This is the standard-issue harem for modern charage/moege. In this harem situation, the protagonist is independently connected to most of the heroines, with very little or no interaction between the members of his harem of latent deredere troopers. The reason this has become the dominant harem in the charage genre in the last seven years or so is because it is the one that is the most 'tasteful' to monogamists and traditionalists. In this case, the heroines either have no real connection with one another or only weak connections that become tenuous the second the heroine path begins. Games that have these harems tend to have extremely weak casts of characters in general, and there is usually very little or no real conflict between the characters (low incidence of love triangles, few jealousy attacks, etc). As a result, games with this type of harem tend to have weak or nonexistent plots, lackluster SOL outside of ichaicha dating, and 'convenient' drama that is resolved so quickly it might as well not even exist. These harems generally disband at the end of the common route, as the protagonist seems to completely forget any attraction he had to the other girls and they fade into the background. The Dominant-Sharing Harem The Dominant-sharing Harem is defined by the members of the harem being at least somewhat familiar with each other (often friends, family, or members of a group or club) and able to be cooperative to an extent while competing for the protagonist's love and attention. Girls in this kind of harem situation (Shuffle is a prime example of it) are ok with the idea of sharing the protagonist in the abstract, but in practice they want to be the 'first wife' or the 'wife' and relegate the other heroines to the mistress or concubine status (though it isn't always stated this bluntly). This is perhaps the most realistic harem situation, as, historically, real harems - other than royal ones - have usually been structured with a head or first wife and a number of secondary wives, often married with the permission of or by the choice of the first wife, lol. The Everybody's Equal Harem The Everybody's Equal Harem is, just as the name indicates, a harem where the protagonist essentially loves and treats all the heroines equally and the heroines accept this situation, albeit often with a tacit understanding between one another that they won't stop aiming for a Dominant-Sharing type situation. As such, this can often be considered a prelude to a Dominant-Sharing Harem result in practical terms. A classic example of this would be the end of the Grisaia series or the ending of Strawberry Feels, where the protagonist himself never forms a preference, even if the heroines do build a sort of pecking order based on dominance of personality or circumstance. Tiny Dungeon's Endless Dungeon ending can also be considered this kind of ending, whereas the individual routes represented by the first three games would be considered Dominant-Sharing harems. Why I bothered with this post Anyone who has been an otaku as long as I have been has to accept that harem-thinking is essential to SOL otaku-ism. As early as Love Hina and Tenchi Muyo, rom-coms have been creating wacky harems and weird situations that result. This is because romantic comedy is the easiest type of comedy for anyone to get into, and the easiest one to empathize with... and comedy used to be the dominant genre in otaku media (though romance always came a close second). The evolution from that type of loose harem (though in later incarnations, the Tenchi universe threw off all pretense of not being harem-ist) to the current situation took decades, but it was a natural evolution in visual novels in particular, due to the fact that most visual novels are multi-route, heroine-focused affairs. Charage in particular, with their focus on SOL, inevitably give off a sense that the protagonist is the center of a harem, even if it is only in the common route. Since this kind of situation appeals to the more primitive parts of the male psyche (males are genetically predisposed to seeking multiple mates, though socialization and emotional attachment overwhelm this in modern settings), eroge tend to abuse this flagrantly. Oh yeah, if you haven't figured it out, I like harem endings that aren't sex-heavy... but that isn't so much because I have a thing for 'collecting' bishoujos. Rather, I like the various situations that result in VNs, as they are often intellectually interesting, heart-warming, or hilarious (or all three). Nukige-style harem endings are boring and make me roll my eyes, mostly because I question whether anyone has that kind of stamina, and because ignoring the emotional and practical aspects entirely like that makes it hard to suspend disbelief. If a plotge can make me think a harem would work, I want to see it work, lol.
    3 points
  3. Hi everybody, my name is Sean and firstly I wanted to say how great I think it is that a community like this exists. I didn't take to visual novels at first, but having always been a writer at heart I kind of liked something that meets you halfway between a novel and interactive experience. At the moment I am the creator of a mod for Doki Doki Literature Club, but a mod with a few drastic differences. Firstly, writing in the 3rd person which usually isn't done in mods for this game. Introducing a vast variety of new original characters and writing a story in the style and format of a TV show. Therefore, I can't wait to immerse myself in the activity of this community as I would like to start discovering more Visual Novels myself.
    2 points
  4. They got a lot of pledge money the last few minutes though I would assume that was from desperate fans increasing their pledges to get it funded rather than anyone that noticed the MG tweet.
    2 points
  5. From what I remember at least at the start they may not even have had a translator on board. If you don't know what's even in the game because it's all moon runes to you, it's hard to market it.
    2 points
  6. Planet_Reverie

    Hello!

    I just wanted to say hi.
    1 point
  7. /slightly OT I said that I tend to avoid physical editions, but actually Cruise Sign is first physical VN that I bought (second one being To Heart PSE)
    1 point
  8. Oh, certainly. It would probably take some extra time. Which really just goes to show how lazy Moenovel is about this stuff once again. "We need to do some extra work? Pfft, just drop the whole route." Their Cross Channel release was also a strange splice of versions, if I remember correctly. (I believe they used the 18+ version as a base, then cut out the porn and altered text where needed, even though an all-ages port exists, much like with Flight Diary.) Some people thought maybe it could be a rights issue with Cruise Sign, but that does not seem to be the case, seeing as they do indeed have assets from that version. So, this either comes down to incompetence or laziness. Or both. Most likely both.
    1 point
  9. adamstan

    What are you playing?

    Yay, I completed first route in To Heart PSE やった! It was Akari's (childhood friend) route. Well, it was pretty decent, and because it requires to get along with some other characters, also serves as nice introduction. I wasn't too fond of conflict this route uses - but I have to admit, that while I was facepalming at MC sometimes, his behaviour was believable - pretty immature, but well, they're 16, what should I expect And additionally confused by their lifelong osananajimi relationship. To quote Hiroyuki's thoughts (my loose translation, quoting from memory): "Childhood friends - almost like siblings, but not related. Definitely closer than friends, but still not lovers. How long can we continue this strange relationship?" At least everything ends well - as it should with moege As for the other heroines that I met during this route, I really liked Lemmy, Multi (robot girl) and Aoi-chan. Shiho seems to be annoying brat I'm also interested in Tomoko, for two reasons. I like girls with glasses, and she's voiced by Aya Hisakawa With 10 heroines total it will certainly take me some time to finish it, but after that first route I'm definitely going to continue The game features also radio program called "Heart to Heart" that you can choose to listen to on Saturday evenings (totally optional, doesn't affect routes). Most of it went over my head, 'cause it's audio-only, and they're talking pretty fast, but it sounds nice. Also, chibi-sprites used on map-movement screens are absolutely cute.
    1 point
  10. Dergonu

    Hello!

    Hi!
    1 point
  11. If this is the case then good riddance.
    1 point
  12. I didn't know about Fruitbat Factory, so thanks for sharing that. In addition, JAST also shared it several days ago. I don't know why so many people are talking about how MangaGamer saved the day... probably literally every other English loc industry player helped this thing out more by advertising it earlier in the cycle. I'm honestly doubtful whether MG's 3-minutes-before-it-was-over tweet did anything at all, except apparently buy them a lot of adoration. Edit: And I should have read the whole thread. FWIW, I don't think there were any bad intentions on anyone's part, and I think all the industry players who helped support this did Sol Press a solid (heh). I just think MG probably deserves the least credit, given how last-minute and likely completely unhelpful their support was. But then again, I should really wait until I see flying pigs before I start expecting an English VN fan to say anything positive about Sekai Project, I guess...
    1 point
  13. Congratulation for the successful Kickstarter there, albeit very barely (Seriously if not for the sudden burst near the end it would ended very different). In any case, since this KS was successful I just hope that Sol Press will translate Irotoridori no matter what. As for the rest, since even FAVORITE classified it as FD I think it could wait until Irotoridori is released (I knew that some fans think of the rest (ie Hikari and Akai) as the sequels okay).
    1 point
  14. Welcome to our boards! You will surely discover lots of VNs here. My backlog increased dramatically since I joined here Can you perhaps explain a bit further about your mod? I still don't quite get what it's about. Is it only for DDLC or something that is applicable to other VNs as well?
    1 point
  15. I wonder if you guys cannot read between the lines but the MangaGamer tweet was probably not a direct encouragement to back. There was no big hijinx like "PLEASE BACK this thing!". It was more a neutral post that can be interpreted both ways. One of which is: "Good luck, you'll need it" and the second could even have kind of a mocking tone ". Since its probably Kaitsu who writes for the mangagamer PR and she backed the KS personally I suspect its the first. I am sure that she would have gotten in trouble if she posted a super hype tweet because it would provide a weird image. Why would MangaGamer openly support someone who doesn't offer their games for their platform? I do not think that MangaGamer wanted to show that they actively bank on that Kickstarter succeeding. It felt like more of a PR-Move to show support while not actually meaning it. Jast did the same, they only retweeted the KS when it looked bleak which can also be interpreted as creating awareness but not fully committing to support Sol Press. I do not think that MangaGamer is the benevolent messiah you make them out to be here.
    1 point
  16. Nanashi3

    Data extraction thread

    You may download the v0.4 here: https://web.archive.org/web/20171201163843/https://tlwiki.org/index.php?title=File:Yuno_arctools.zip
    1 point
  17. Just for the record, Sekai and Fruitbat Factory also mentioned this project in their recent Kickstarter updates.
    1 point
  18. I love Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid as well, just for some reason I felt like the other ones were more comedy focused and as such I just mentioned those. That does not mean I think it lacks in terms of comedy though.
    1 point
  19. Yes and no. I don't mind that much when people pay whatever they want for unique goodies and features (even though sometimes the premium on those is absurd), but whenever fans have to rally and put way more money than they actually wanted to, in order to "save" a commercial project, there's something fundamentally fucked up about it. It might just be me though.
    1 point
  20. Just correcting "and none of them are particularly important for the main story." Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei is composed of Batsukoishi, Hirukowashi and Saikoroshi. Batsukoishi and Hirukowashi are not important to history and are not canonical, however, Saikoroshi is canonical and occurs after the main series (ch.8) It is important to read Saikoroshi because of a connection that makes Umineko, besides being considered as an epilogue for the serie
    1 point
  21. I play them when I have free time irl, which is mostly at night.
    1 point
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