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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/06/19 in all areas

  1. Foreword: Absolutely unknown game in the West that has overwhelmingly positive evaluation in Japan. Which side would I take? Title: Rocket no Natsu Developer: TerraLunar Date: 2002-10-11 VNDB link:https://vndb.org/v4190 Youtube walkthrough:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_HLI2A5oFE&list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv_3lP089VAcjTRvabUf9dJf Synopsis: There used to be a season called "Rocket summer"... The Earth has become a member of the Galactic Federation and has accepted multiple emissaries from aliens. Silver rockets are launched from the Earth on daily basis, but one day all inter-galaxy contacts cease and space port doors get shut. Main character has dreamt of space travel since childhood. One day he decides to help girl Chise to participate in self-made rocket competition "50 Miles Over". Together with princess from the other star they form a rocket club. Will their dreams come true? Structure: Roughly a month from 05.07 till 06.11 Length: 7 hours for initial route, some 3 hours for each of remaining 4 routes. Plus 3 hours for omake. Game type: Space dream youth comedy with aliens Difficulty: Moderate Character Design rating: 8/10 Protagonist rating: 7/10 Story rating: 8/10 Game quality: 7/10 Overall rating: 7 or 8/10 Rating comments: It's 7 if you have sound stuttering like me and are't crazy about the genre like me. It's 8 for everyone else. Protagonist: Takashi is pretty cool. He's so knowledgeable of rockets and so patient and attentive that I'd happily have same intelligent protagonist everywhere. Characters: There are five heroines which are very different. Chika route is forced as first - and she's the only normal human among all the heroines. She has the only normal route about passion for rocket building and normal romance. But after that surprises begin. There are two routes for each of aliens - Selen-chan and her guard Berthia. Characters are pretty crazy and so are their routes, but it was really sad for me to see ignorant and vain Selen-chan to have teary face in the end. Tsundere should never cry! Haruhi-sensei is... android teacher. And Akira is our normal childhood friend with a huge secret about her - the most shocking route for sure. Story: Main route only covers characters getting together around Chika desire to build a rocket and being joined by aliens. Then each route has its turns. CG: No complaints at all. Sound: Everyone is voiced, including protagonist. That's absolutely superb. But sound stuttering that I got at Win10 really started to kill the fun around the third route I played. Freezes also got more and more frequent, so I did not record past 3rd route. Thoughts: It's the third rocket club theme visual novel that I play, and it's actually the best one of the three. The reason is the variety of routes and only interesting scenes. There's tension that leaves your interested from beginning to the end. Full voicing, bright atmosphere and colorful characters add up to the feeling. Omake about space adventures fits greatly to the picture as well. Overall comments: Game is a masterpiece, no doubt. It's not a breakthrough game to become a pillar of new visual novel world. No, it's just a cosy cool place to visit and have a rest. I guess it's the real reason why it went unnoticed in the West - we need a breakthrough. The Japanese can be jerks about plotge, but they can rarely be wrong about a good calming charage.
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  2. On the topic of harem titles: Harem, by their very definition, involve multiple people. Due to the traditional standards of romance, polygamy is not often in the cards outside of outright sex stuff (much to my dismay). This would mean that any title that pursues the avenue of multiple romantic interests will have to either choose one, changing genres and killing some of the audience, or never come to a resolution. These are the kind of titles that can only live off the premise, and they will end should it be resolved.* That is why I believe that titles that can somehow find a way to continue after breaking through this limitation (without introducing a new such hook and limitation) are best. That, or titles that are never inconvenienced by such limitations, like the slice-of-life genre. However, despite these obvious limitations, harem titles and their ilk are by far the most popular. Teasing with only minor pay-off (a kiss after three seasons that gets misunderstood and reverts back into the status quo) does wonders at keeping people addicted. It also often happens that harem titles are somewhat sexual in nature, skipping over the romance in the process. This is, of course, to offer some stimulation and pay-off even without needing to commit to any one person, and maintaining the hook and status quo for as long as there's money in the business. There is also something to be said about multiple girls being interested in the same person providing a great scenario for all sorts of drama and 'best girl' moments and competitions. Anime such as Nisekoi made they living by giving everyone a chance to be best girl and Re:Zero has the famous debate over Rem and Emilia. A lot of wonderful scenarios can be concocted by having multiple romantic interests, but it is usually not in the makers' best interests to let the hook end and reach a conclusion. Visual Novel's inherent advantage is that they CAN choose everyone, and they don't even need to make it a polygamous relationship. Multiple paths enable these possibilities that are mostly shut-off to the other mediums. The thing with VNs is, as a PC game in Japan, they usually need porn in order to sell, as it's the one thing they have over mobile and consoles, which are far more popular in Japan. So the reason VNs do well on the romantic front is two-fold: They can establish hooks like anime and manga, but since VNs are necessarily finite in length, they cannot let the hook carry them indefinitely and will need to commit. Thankfully, it is easy to pull that off with VNs, as they can offer multiple paths, dedicating to everyone a full path of sole romance. As a PC game, they tend to press their one advantage: sex. This usually brings along with it a plethora of other romantic shenanigans in order to provide context. *For example, the other day I saw a manga where the entire premise was that the romantic interest is a huge tsundere that is only true to herself... when she becomes a ghost, as she has the power to do so at any point. What she doesn't know is that the protagonist can see her. The whole story is around the protagonist pretending he can't see her whilst she goes super dere-dere all over him in ghost form. A reader will spend the entire time hoping that the two get together, but it is plain to see that there's nothing to the manga outside of this tease and premise. On the topic of manga: Shoujo can include sex as something that happens off-screen, assuming it happens at all. Where sex happens more often is in smut titles, and those would generally be considered josei more than shoujo. The reason why shoujo include sex more often is because when seinen and/or shounen do it, the titles are usually just hentai by that point. That is to say, seinen and shounen tend to be more extreme, leading to borderline-h titles that you're likely not interested in, whereas shoujo scarcely ever goes this far, instead becoming a form of smut and josei you're also not interested in by that point. So the question becomes: "Why is there a clearer separation between all-ages and 18+ for male stuff than there is for female stuff?" I would theorise that that would be because porn is more widely spread as a thing among the teenage male population than among the teenage female one, and that would mean that including light stuff in shounen and the like is not as much of a selling point as it would be to the teenage female audience. So, when you say that shoujo manga has more romance stuff, I reply with Girls are believed to have more interest in romantic matters where as boys are believed to prefer more raunchy stuff. It follows that stories aimed at girls more often include romantic things that boys'. This includes very romantic and non-explicit sex scenes, the exact opposite of what you find in seinen and some shounen stuff. More popular shounen usually have a harem than shoujo stuff, which impedes romance severely (shoujo have love triangles, which are their own kind of hell, but don't sabotage romantic interactions as much as a harem intentionally does). Shoujo plotlines traditionally follow a girl falling for a guy who's nice (or mean) to them once, and tend to involve more one-on-one and romantic interactions, whereas shounen doesn't usually even focus on romance to begin with, unless it's a harem. The reason why this is is because plotlines where a guy falls head-over-heels with a girl and is led around by the nose aren't as popular as the shoujo versions. In the end, then, why is it that the titles are usually at one extreme or the other: Full-on hentai VS endless harem/romance with scarcely a bit of progress in sight. The reasons are all spread out throughout what I've mentioned previously. Romantic titles tend to garner more interest by placing a hook or dramatic situation that, if resolved, would either end the story or cause a sharp decrease in interest. This is the reason why romance anime and some romance manga tend to be long and inconclusive. If progress is made, it'll usually be towards the end. They use these methods because they air/publish continuously, whereas VNs are single titles with a set beginning and end. It is not that there are no titles with proper romantic progression over the course of the story: consider these two lists I made (that are now rather outdated, as I've come across many more). It's just that the popular ones aren't usually these. They're the others. Because of their hooks and more continuous nature. The more romantic titles will always, due to the absence of strong hooks and drama, be less popular, despite offering more romantic progression. The reason why all-ages stuff doesn't tend to include sex or intimate nudity is that it is a very large jump to make. You'd be jumping from something that can be sold everywhere to something that's have more limited sections to be sold in, and that is simply not a worthwhile sacrifice to make unless you're going for full-on porn.
    1 point
  3. Because most rom-com anime are made with sequels (endless sequels) in mind, so they have to drag things out forever to milk it of as much money as possible.
    1 point
  4. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Da Capo III, it is a very well written sequel, the anime adaptation isn't that good, too much focus on fanservice (close up shots of the girls chest and lower half) and the common route. IMHO Da Capo III is the best out of the 3 visual novels.
    1 point
  5. Definitely. It’s very hard for them to learn, and they have much less motivation compared to some of us, who learn Japanese because we’re super into Japanese media. There are some "Western media otakus" in Japan too though, ofc, which is always fun to see. A friend of mine is like that, and hearing her go on about western stuff like it’s the most amazing shit ever is so funny. We’re not the only otakus out there, guys! Right. So, when it comes to polite forms in the Japanese language in general, there’s been a pretty big decline in the usage of "keigo" and such in general in the past few years. Our professor at the university I went to in Japan told us that we probably know keigo better than native speakers our age, as they simply don’t care as much anymore. To be safe, just stick with "teineigo", which is the general polite forms people use when speaking to strangers. You don’t need any higher level of polieteness than that, unless you’re going to be in some serious job related situations. (So, your standard desu/masu endings is plenty.) And tbh, I’d think just using teineigo would be enough for a foreigner, even at job interviews, as long as you make a generally good impression. For honorifics, you’re really only going to need -san. I’ve never had anyone look at me weird when using first name-san, as with young people nowadays, that level of "closeness" tends to be quite normal, with the internet and what not bringing people closer. If you want to be safe, though, you can use last name-san, especially for people who are older etc. Though, tbh, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about this stuff. Just sticking to teineigo and using -san for people you don’t know, will be more than enough. That’s what I personally do, at least.
    1 point
  6. This is the one to read inbetween two longer titles, as it takes only about 120 hours to finish.
    1 point
  7. JP stuff: Eden*, Narcissu series, Harmonia, Lonely Yuri EVNs: Soundless, Juniper's Knot, One Thousand Lies, Lynne, Sweetest Monster
    1 point
  8. Other people might disagree with me, but I'd like to bring up Kana Little Sister, or the updated version, Kana Okaeri. It's generally considered a good VN, but I rarely see anyone mention it, possibly because of the fact that the original version will celebrate its 20th anniversary in two months. Despite its age, I think it deserves more time in the spotlight, since it's one of the visual novels that has had the most impact on me emotionally.
    1 point
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