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Foreword: This is a formal shameless review just to present a video and give score / personal impression. There is an abundance of reviews of this game in untranslated review sources (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8), and I did not even include reviews in the translated review sources. VNDB: https://vndb.org/v646 Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkfbKBF3PZE&list=PLs4Gp5VU4Fv8HOd7D19oHjX9NAj_dJRkF Synopsis: In face of human technological advancement during the Meiji Restoration, the youkai of Japan were forced to make a hard decision: 1) To remain as youkai and watch over the land 2) To return to the netherworld 3) To give up their power and status as youkai and live amongst humans. While there were some that chose otherwise, the majority of the youkai decided it was best to become human. It was tough, but as time passed these youkai were able to blend in with the human world and live peacefully amongst them. However, blood is thicker than water. The offspring of these youkai displayed the powerful abilities of their ancestors in times of great anxiety, often manifesting in horrible and dangerous ways, and were labeled by society as monsters. Officially their condition was named "Acquired Systemic Special Heredity variety Syndrome", or "ASSHS" for short and treated as a non-contagious illness, but the common people began to refer to them as Jinyous (half-youkai) nevertheless. Of these Jinyous, most were sent to Kamizawa City: an isolated urban area walled off from the rest of Japan to keep all the Jinyous together and away from the human population. However, the ones that were deemed especially dangerous were sent to a medical facility on an uncharted island near the shores of Japan where they would be under constant surveillance. Takabe Ryouichi was one of those who were sent to said island at the age of five. This is a story about him along with the girl called Suzu, his only friend on the island, escaping to Kamizawa city to live a normal life. What they didn’t expect was that Suzu carried a secret that attracted much unwanted attention… Game type: Action chunige with fantasy elements Character Design rating: 9/10 Protagonist rating: 8/10 Story rating: 6/10 Game quality: 10/10 Overall rating: 8/10 I won't be original here. Game is a firm masterpiece with great action, funny SOL scenes and just perfect quality overall. But different people find different parts faulty. Some people blame protagonist Soushichi, but I actually like him a lot. He is really funny and human-like in conversations. Heroines are the main flavor of the game. They all are really well developed, and pretty much every one of them has fighting capabilities. Each route has a distinctive individuality. Other people did not like story resolution, but - again - everything felt natural, don't see much of a problem here. My complaint is much more profound. I do not see an interesting story here at all. On a grand scale absolutely nothing happens. There is no intrigue. Basically we get to know from synopsis that Takabe Ryouichi escapes from a clinic for youkai and is searched by the organization controlling this clinic. So what happens during the course of the game? Organization goons finally find Takabe after a few years which is followed by confrontation. That's it. Where the hell is multiple route mystery featured among vndb tags? There is absolutely no need to play different routes to get the whole mystery picture, because there is no mystery. Yes, we have different girls as allies in different routes, and different sources of power are discovered to fight back. But that's not a mystery. There are even no big twists. Ayakashibito is a great game, but its strength is not in depth and mystery. It's in width and details. The story is developed by constantly adding new characters and presenting their backgrounds and sometimes even small stories in great detail. I absolutely like writing, pacing and all. It's an enjoyable reading, but whenever I try to rationalize - why I keep reading - I can't find the answer, and overall evaluation degrades because of that. Ayakashibito remains a game about girls and their magnificent routes. Personally, I hoped for more mystery and twists.

I just bought Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi ( すきま桜とうその都会 ) and, well, I'm not sure how to describe it. It's the weirdest VN release I've encountered so far. Technically it's physical, but... erhm... just look: It's special low-priced Amazon-exclusive edition, and it's just game disc in a cardboard sleeve. So it's like getting download edition, but on the disc However, the price was unbeatable - ¥3,850 vs ¥9,980 for regular physical edition. And it's totally DRM-free

If Branch here really require very different translation choice, well hopefully you'll be able to find the new translator here so good luck with that. While granted the Branch would likely in line with traditional moege (And I know on how you have weak affinity with that), it's still nice to see if Branch translated here seeing that some people may show interest in the heroines from there. In any case good luck with the rest of the work here, and for once I like that Pulltop's policy in regard of censored overseas here (Mostly because it mean that they'll need to cut a lot of sex scenes from Harugi here, and thus they wouldn't want to localized it therefore less risk on C&D (My assumption here)).

I can still remember the sound of the train going ka-chunk ka-chunk ka-chunk vividly. That feeling connected to that sound never really disappeared even years later. The reaction to living passively, making your live feel like a never ending boring train ride. I still get that feeling from time to time. I think when life feels to calm, easy and repetitive. It feels like I am on the train again. Back in high-school again. ka-chunk ka-chunk. Just different scenery. Mostly, for me the ka-chunk has been replaced with new kinds of existential anxiety as I got older. More manageable anyway, early life was more soul crushing imo. Tried playing the vn again a few months ago. But I couldn't get into it again. Partly because as you said I think. That kind of life is somewhat past us now. Also I'd note. I think that yume miru is a lot better than Catcher in the Rye. Which I read about same time. When I was about 19 years old as well. haha.

Good luck. You're gonna need it. Most worthwhile TLers/editors already work only officially, so finding fresh blood for any kind of fanTL project is incredibly difficult. But, if you manage to polish ittaku's work and release that as a patch, it's still gonna be a great success. This was a beast of a project to pick up, so managing to finish even a half of it is amazing.

The aesthetic in Minori games was superb, and I honestly found I liked at least one path in each game... However, that usually didn't make up for protagonist frustration and a tendency toward going surreal at the weirdest times. The 'no one exists but the heroines and protagonist' thing is a trope common in VNs... in particular in charage. In Minori's defense, this was used to build up the heroines into more complex and multi-faceted characters, in most cases, a legitimate reason to use this tactic. In opposition, most charage just do it because the writer can't handle more characters or doesn't want to compare the non-heroine characters with the heroines (sometimes the non-heroines end up being better than the heroines). Honestly? I'd love to see Minori's staff hired by other companies with a more pragmatic approach to game-making. As it is, Minori has been a prima-donna for so long that the arrogant assumption that people would buy even their worst works gladly became the norm, looking at them from the outside.

I can only really guess at what it isn't... it probably isn't the Trinoline FD or Sonokemo. My reasoning is that those two are the IPs most likely to have been caught up in issues with creditors when Minori went under... Incidentally, I'm glad Minori is gone... their protagonists were almost universally idiots who reminded me of Shinji from Evangelion (hetare+nibui+constantly saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time). Shinji-type protagonists go beyond irritating into actively making me want to smash something (Soreyori no Prologue was particularly bad about that, since the protag completely misses why he is breaking the heroine's heart in the beginning of the game). The only game I liked without reservation by the company was Eden, lol.