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Bah, I just had to replay quite a bit of YU-NO because the Fuwanovel walkthrough for some reason has a save indicator after a choice you're supposed to save before. I guess I'll have to stay more ahead in the guide from now on (rather than read one line at a time, like I usually do) in order to avoid running into this issue again. I really wish this VN had more than one save slot.

@mods: I wasn't sure where to post this, so feel free to move the post to where it belongs to if you consider it placed wrongly here. The original Visual Novel already hinted about Mio's time in America, however it never properly explained what happened to her back then. This was supposed to be taken care of by a manga called "Children's Collapse" as well as an audio drama called "FAR TOO LATE - Slumbering Fools". Overthe course of the last six months I animated the majority of the audio drama (it's an hour in length so please bear with me) in a Visual-Novel-esque manner, so as to give you a way to read the transcript along with the voice-over. If you're interested, then you'll find the playlist to the entire animation below. Keep in mind the first part can't really use a lot of sprites, as the featured characters simply don't have any. This changes from the second part onwards though

So, the Etherial Enigma demo just dropped and it got me thinking on why some of my favourite vns are some of my favourite: Banter and bickering. Fureraba, ACE, Majikoi, they all have friends insulting each other friendly just like only friends would. Can you recommend me something that will make me go "Ohhhhh, you just got played son!"

This is actually woefully out of date, but has some things in it. Besides that, I'd add at least this one, perhaps more later. Edit: Also, you may have noticed I moved your thread to the recommendation forum.

Huh... I didn't even know the Seven Wonders one was animated. It's a very basic animation, sure, but hey! It's cool that it exists. About the "Prologue to the day of the beginning": Sorry, that one apparently isn't even animated. It was the last CD Senri (the *actual* Senri) translated, but noone animated it so far. Rigs, who is part of the Committee of Zero, only animated the rightsider-dram, which I was actually referring to. I mixed up the names... Unfortunately I don't know of any other animations or translations besides the ones mentioned in the sheet. There's a guy on the Steins;Gate Discord called "Croowe" (or bad_spot on reddit) who intended to animate "The narrow path of the beaten track", and uploaded a demo video somewhere on YouTube where he presented a few minutes of his animation. It was fairly close to the actual VN as well, also using the original game assets such as the textbox and the nameplates, and in fact that video was what really spurred me to create a similar animation for Fools. I didn't want my animation to be below his quality standards, and in the end it turned out to be what you've probably already seen. No, I really don't want to brag about "how great my animation is". My point is just that I would really like to show you Croowe's demo video, because (in case he didn't already drop his animation) his attempt might be fairly similar in quality to mine. Unfortunately I'm unable to still find it anywhere on YouTube, neither do I still find his channel (I'm not sure about how exactly it was called). Perhaps he already deleted the demo, even though I really don't hope so because it looked quite promising. If I'm gonna stumble across it sometime in the future I'll link to it in this thread though.

I just finished first route (Airi's) in Mashiro Iro Symphony. W O W It was great - if it will maintain similar level for remaining three routes, it's clearly aiming for 8+ score. For a moege it is indeed amazing. Nice humor, great romance, likeable characters, great art, music... I also loved SDCGs that appeared here and there. かわいい... I'm truly impressed. On to the next route (but tomorrow... )

You probably wanted to know how many *parts* were released, because the entirety of Fools is contained on just one disc. As for the parts: The Fools-CD consists of five tracks, even though those are virtually six because the last track was split into two parts. I'm only intending to animate the first few minutes of the 5th track and will close up the series afterwards. The remaining dialogue of track 5 and the entirety of track 2 is just SOL, serving as some kind of intro and outro. Not only would that very quickly spoken discussion between all club members be a lot of work/result in a lot of character sprites to animate, it's also not relevant for the main plotline in any way. If you still want to read those parts up you can do so by following the links below. "Onee-chan" translated all of those, I'm just the one animating You'll also find the other audio dramas there, partially transcribed, translated and also animated (by different persons in a different quality though. I think the Committee of Zero animated "Prologue to the day of the beginning" as well). Just check the first table "Start here" for them. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12M9VzbTDRwTUFCSp-F47bEg01KmoOMuK2LdisNXVBlI/htmlview#gid=364082912 Edit: I guess I was wrong. The last SOL scene *might* even be relevant for the plot. To show that Mio changed her inner attitude...

Yay, nostalgia thread! I always thought this was a bit of a quirky song when I heard it as a kid. Probably still holds the gold for the most misleading start to an anime OP.

https://twitter.com/MangaGamer/status/1141733949795950592 If you're curious about other Visual Novel related discords there's a list here: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/abgg62/list_of_notable_visual_novel_related_subreddits/

Little Busters has that group of best friends thing going for them. And the Battle Rankings minigame in the common route literally has the cast compete against each other with random household items! Clannad has the protag be a dick to his best friend (actually, the whole cast is bad towards said best friend). Also, any banter involving Kyou or Fuuko is bound to be funny. Grisia's entire female cast are VERY prone to bantering about tons of topics (almost all topics go in a sexual direction very quickly too). Not to mention, Grisia's protag has hilarious lines and inner monologues. 10/10 humor in that VN.... The whole point of Sakura Sakura is it's two comedic love triangles. It has as much comedic bantering and bickering as you'd expect. The banter between the two protags is great too! The Muv-Luv trilogy has quite a lot of banter (especially Extra's Common Route, which has a harem competing for the protag). Princess Evangile has two heroines (the childhood friend, and the main heroine), go at it sometimes. And almost every girl is prone to getting jealous at some point. It's hilarious! Nekopara series ...... has actual catfights (pipsqueak Azuki is in all of them). Island ..... has it's protag banter with pretty much everyone. Some of the best banter I've ever heard.

Why are they doing this to ussssssssssssss, aaaaaaaaa!!!! :sad_face: I hate when they do this, I hate it Noratoto 18+ probably never too.

Check out Phenomeno. It's the only one that I know of in english. Unfortunately it's very short.

Joined a few days ago! Didn't make an introductory post anymore since I kinda lurked for a while teehee

Finished KARAKARA and Analogue: A Hate Story. Nothing much to say for KARAKARA. It was what I expected it to be. Although the plot would have been more engaging had it been given more emphasis, the shortness of the game and its understandable focus on its moe aspect dampen its significance. Would probably take people at most 3 hours to finish? I did it in less than 2. Well, at least the art was cute. Special mention for its music tracks though. Was really catchy, especially the one that plays when Leon drives in his car. Analogue: A Hate Story was as fun as I heard it to be. Been a long time since I played a VN with its own kind of gameplay, so going through this one was refreshing. The way it told its story was also really nice to the point that I'd call it pretty appropriate for the kind of story it was telling. Go buy it if you ever have money to spare. Specific note for Analogue: I couldn't take the game seriously at times because I couldn't get it out of my mind how much *Hyun-ae reminds me of @Fiddle and Christmas hats.

Or another possible answer:

Fruitbat don't publish/license the game so I have only meant that even though they don't release 18+ games themselves, they should still bring to the Harukaze's attention (who are basically self-publishing the game) that there's a very eager audience for the original 18+ version and plenty of platforms to sell it on. Since, you know, it looks like Harukaze have no meaningful interaction with the western audience whatsoever. Nothing more, nothing less. I'd even say that I generally like Fruitbat, they have released plenty of cool non-ero VNs like Chuusotsu or Seabed, sustain a somewhat decent TL/tech quality and the only game of theirs that originally had ero got the 18+ release on behalf of JAST anyway so it's not like they robbed you of anything. I'm only salty that they didn't bring Eiyuu Senki to the vita back in the day. Boo.

I decided to list and recommend all my favourite romances. You can read about my particular tastes here: Be fairly warned. I do not know what constitutes as a spoiler to you, so if you find things like whether or not there is a confession scene or how far the couple goes to be a spoiler, please avoid reading my comments. NOTE: Written in the wee hours of the night. Grammatical mistakes and logical incongruences may follow. Itazura na Kiss - As far as anime goes, this is the epitome of long-lasting romance. This anime does not simply go until the confession, or until the first night together, or until the first big dramatic event is resolved. It goes through years and years of the characters' lives, up until they have children of their own. The male protagonist is a jerk, as they so often are in Shoujo and Josei, but the female lead made me, of all people, go around spamming "cute~~~~" on whichever social services (skype, TS, Fuwachat) I had on at the time. CLANNAD and After Story - Highly dramatic as it may be, it has its fair share of happy moments and many happenings. While excelling on its own, CLANNAD wouldn't quite be the best fit for what I'm looking for. However, CLANNAD: After Story more than does. Life does not simply end after a confession. Things go on, and the characters truly become a family. While not quite beating Itazura na Kiss's feeling of years going along, CLANNAD: After Story does not only a good job in that area, but literally everything else emotional. Nodame Cantabile and sequels - Yet another anime with a long feeling of "time moving". Of the top of my head I can remember remarkably little about their relationship, but it was there without a doubt for the later seasons, queer as it was. I can't say the absolute main focus was on the relationship, like in Itazura na Kiss or in CLANNAD: After Story, but it certainly did more than sufficient to cater to my needs, with various dramatic moments and very odd characters, resolving their problems in very odd ways. The male protagonist, jerk as he may be, does not hold a candle to Itazura na Kiss's stubbornness. Has a high focus on classical music, hence me recommending the anime over the original material. Say "I Love You" - Completely diverging from everything else, this anime series solely entails school life. It could hardly be a more typical Shoujo title, so why am I singing its praises? I rated it 10/10 at the time, because not only had it been one of the first series I watched where the couple actually got together at a reasonable time, as I am also a huge huge fan of the female protagonists' archetype. Often compared to Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, for good reason. The female protagonist is very similar in both, and the story could be said to progress similarly, except Tonari went places I didn't like at the time, god if I remember what those were, and Say I Love You did everything in a way I liked. The manga, although not completed, is also Smut-tish, earning extra points in my book. Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry - The most recent anime on this list, who deigned to differ from the norm. Having taken the usual highschool and fantasy-like setting, where other anime would become harems, this one did not. Right from the start it picked a main girl, and made sure it was clear beyond doubt with a confession. This is primarily an action anime, although the romance is there and is not entirely ignored. I would have been fine even if there had been a confession and they left it at that, but they developed it, making it for an harem action-romance anime with some comedy. Very varied, you'll get all sorts of things here, romance, action or comedy. Pick your poison. Zero no Tsukaima, All Four Seasons - I hate harem. I've grown to hate them with a bloody passion. Zero no Tsukaima is no exception, however, it did many other things right in order to reach this point. First, it's no short tale, if you can stick to your guns and watch through one or two seasons of this light and fun fantasy world, the characters will grow on you, even if you hate their archetypes. Second, I like Tsundere's. If you like Tsundere's, too, there's no good reason not to give this a try. Unprecedented in this harem world, the main, dense and insensitive protagonist actually picks one of the heroine's and sticks to her... mostly. While a rush-job of an ending, it is a conclusive tale... but I'd keep my eyes peeled for the rumoured continuation of the novel series, which was left hanging with the author's passing (God bless him, and while I'm at it, the very same happened to Itazura na Kiss's author, God bless him, too. Even if it allowed the masterpiece anime to go off the rails and become original toward the end). Kimi ni Todoke and Second Season- You know what else is infuriating, beyond harems? Pardon my French: Cockblocking. You know the 'oh-so-original' stereotype where the male and the female appear to be about to kiss, but are somehow interrupted? Now imagine having this happen constantly throughout the first season, only for there to still be no actual conclusion! Even so, that's not what this story is about. It's about so much more, like friendship, and friendship, and being an outcast. Furthermore, the second season does go somewhere and the manga continues onwards with hardly any noticeable deviation from the anime. Such a shame I'm still left hanging on the centenary chapter. Ore Monogatari - AKA, everything I could possibly want from a highschool romance: the anime. There's two people, they fall for each other, eventually get together, and then date. That's it. Ok, maybe not it, it, but it's a fairly adequate depiction of the romance. Beyond the romance, the anime touches many other themes like friendship and family. All of these are pluses to me. Do be warned, this anime has two very big flaws depending on your tastes: The art and characters may be too unusual for you, and nothing (interesting) ever happens. Romance tends to have drama in order to spice it up. This anime does not, and instead has slice-of-life and simple comedy. If you like calm, light-hearted and cute, you need go no further. Seikai no Monshu and Sekai no Senki I, II and III - Character interaction. If this intergalactic spaceship were to have something that stands out, it would be character interaction. I don't live in Japan, so I don't know how it is there, but I find it highly unusual for every male under 18 years of age to become agitated by being within one metre of a female, or for teenagers to ubiquitously get embarrassed 3 times per conversation with a female. The chemistry we find between the two main protagonists is incomparable to most other anime I see. It doesn't feel anime-like in the least, is how I'd describe the indescribable. Furthermore, the plot itself isn't bad either, so I recommend this both for the romance and the story. Akatsuki no Yona - You could say this is my number one public enemy: The harem with no confession by the end. It makes me wonder, then, why did I enjoy it so much? This story is about a spoiled princess who lived all her life in a castle as the daughter of an overprotective king. One day the king is murdered and she runs away with her bodyguard, becoming... I'm not quite sure what. She wanders the land searching for allies and trying to make the country better. There's a lot more to that later half, but I'll focus on what I enjoyed the most: Romance. There's no doubt in my mind who the one romantic candidate is. As a friend pointed out to me, the cast may be entirely composed of men, but the romance remains between two people alone. Do note I say "romance" when I mean conversation. It feels romantic, so there's that. What there isn't is any sort of ending. I liked it a lot. Especially the somehow paralysing fire in her eyes. Clearly this is meant to have further seasons, and from what I know, the original manga hasn't concluded either. We now play the waiting game. Kobato - So far I've been able to claim all the previous entries were romances but I'm not sure Kobato fits the category in and of itself. What I do know is that it sure is an enjoyable tale you wouldn't want to miss, and there is romance in there. In stereotypical magical girl shoujo fashion our protagonist has an objective to attain, and she progresses by making people happy. Every episode(s) we sort of see a mini-story on somebody she helps or a lesson she learns. The anime concludes on a confession, but it did by no means focus on it. Nice side quirk, our protagonist actually changes clothing to conform to the season. Very light-hearted, very nice. Usagi Drop - People have this horrible misconception that romance is about romantic love. Not necessarily, and this story will show you that. Usagi Drop is about a single man adopts a child and cares for it. We see her opening up. We see bonds being formed. We see them becoming a family. We see the scorn of the society and the nay-sayers. We see the people who support them. We see lots and lots of love, except this time, it's a familial bond. It also serves as a sort of guide for single parenting, presuming you're a hermit who just had a child dropped off on you. Very light-hearted. You'll be chanting "cute" for days. Honourable Mentions: Chobits - Gets a side mention for being made by the same people as Kobato. To surmise, a country bumpkin falls in love with a robot/android. That is all. It's lovely. It's slice-of-life. Working!! - Is not a romance anime... And you think I care? I'm looking for romance, it doesn't matter if it's a side story. If you find the comedy agreeable, there's no reason not to sit through the three seasons and enjoy the conclusion. Gosick - This is a mystery anime. Half of it. The other half follows some sort of plot as opposed to mismatched mystery solving segments. I've seen the story sections criticized in reviews, but I loved them. The romance I found in this mystery anime more than contented me, and gets my recommendation as a result. Durarara!! - You may have noticed being a romance is not necessary for it to have romance. Just to make sure I rub it in, here's another anime that isn't a romance, but has some. You can't really define it with a genre. Think large cast, lots of variation, everything is connected. Still, I chose this because I really liked the romances within, or maybe I just have an affinity for shows with two exclamation marks in the title. Honourably Dishonourable Mentions: Toradora - I'm incredibly tolerant. And I like all sorts of romance. If there were ever an anime I could say I have hated on unfairly, it would be Toradora. I loved Toradora's protagonists, male and female. Unfortunately, I disliked a lot of other stuff. I disliked pretty much any other character, I disliked the character interaction outside of Taiga and Ryuuji, and I hated the way feelings were handled in this anime. I felt, wrong as I may be, that Ryuuji was bullied into liking Taiga, that Ryuuji was bullied for not understanding his feelings (and magically understanding others', too), that everyone else was far too presumptuous of knowing how other people think and feel. Do note that this makes the anime get a grand total of 8/10. I liked how it ended, what else can I say? I only wish there were more, now that the dramatic, emotional balderdash parts were already over. And so I conclude my list. Do note, it is permanently IN-PROGRESS. New things will be added, maybe old will be removed, maybe I'll remember stuff I forgot to mention, and if you're lucky, I'll rewrite my 2am English.

This just made my day. I don't actually have any recommendations because I don't watch romance that often, I just wanted to say the above.