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I'm on a roll with VN's this year must be cuz of the pandemic and all the staying at home So I managed to finish the Utawarerumono - Prelude to the Fallen. It's the 2020 remake/remaster of the original 2002's Utawarerumono. Clocked in about 32hours, more VNs need to incorporate a play time with your save file smh. First off, I'll post my favorite BGM from it so I can be all nostalgic while I type this out: (OK, this BGM is a bit misleading because this track totally sounds waaay too tragic- this VN is actually pretty lighthearted throughout LOL- but the few times something sad/tragic happens and this music plays I always loved it). I read Chaos;Child before this, which was a modern high school SoL/pseudoscience adventure. Utawarerumono is a medieval light fantasy adventure featuring animal people and was originally written in 2002. Big contrast The protagonist is a nameless amnesiac guy (go figure) who wakes up in a rural village called Yamayura. He was apparently found gravely injured and slowly nursed back to health by a local villager cutie by the name of Eruru- the main heroine of the story. She's the typical nice girl next door supportive caring type with good mannerisms but can also throw the occasional jealous fit. And she also has fluffy ears. And a fluffy tail. Which the protagonist gropes after pondering if they were real or not (they're real by the way). Anyways before the protag can question this any more its revealed he also has an unconventional feature of his own: an unremovable mask which further adds to his mystery: Whoop dee doo, nameless amnesiac protagonist with a unremovable mask further obscuring his identity. And I still don't know what animal the folk from this VN are based off of. Squirrel? Fox? Lemur? Protag then is introduced to Eruru's younger sister, Aruru, and their grandmother Tuskur, the chief of the village who welcomes him with open arms and grants him the same name she gave her late son: Hakuowlo. Haku would spend the next few weeks recovering and mingling with the villagers. He's a capable protagonist: he teaches them how to properly cultivate their land to grow crops, and even how to forge iron to trade and bolster their economy. None of the villagers were knowledgeable in these aspects at all. Gives you some good brainstorm candy for just who Haku is or where he could be from for him to know these things (you'll probably be wrong lol). Eventually the peaceful slice of life days will come to an abrupt end and the VN will shift to a warring nations adventure narrative and throw in some SRPG gameplay. There's about 30-40 SRPG levels/battles that you'll play through in the entirety of the 20-30 hours it takes for you to read through this VN: There are many friends and enemies, love and betrayal, ups and downs, happy and sad moments to be had as you expand your empire. The story is linear but in between battles you are given a bit of freedom in which slice of life events you want to read (none are missable, thank god, because you'll eventually exhaust them anyway so feel free to pick whatever order you want). There's also a glossary to help with all the fantasy terminologies like the different races, locations, religions, etc... Definitely helpful. The total overall narrative is effectively 15% peaceful village slice of life, 75% warring nations conflict + the slice of life in between battles, and 10% Hakuowlo revelations. Story: 7/10 It's a solid medieval adventure light fantasy thing. Some of the conflicts between nations were meh and probably could've been cut imo but ultimately they do help expand the world and lore. Slice of life moments were pretty good. End game revelations about Haku are pretty cool, nothing meta or mind blowing. Characters: 7/10 They're all extremely one dimensional, I mean c'mon its 2002 whattaya expect heh, but they're all given their own little story arcs and were likeable nonetheless. Particularly fond of Eruru & Aruru, they're the poster girls ofc they'd win. Oboro was a total bro, they totally pulled off the 'starts off a complete prick and then becomes your right hand man' pretty well for him. Hakuowlo himself was entirely capable and leader material, no complaints. Art: 7/10 Pretty good looking despite 2002. Idk if they improved or just used the original assets. Music: 6/10 (original), 8/10 remake. The remake version I played offered two BGM settings: original: offering only the original Uwatarerumono tracks, and remake: offering the original + sequel tracks. Original is pretty lacking, I would change the settings back and forth just to see what the original played on certain scenes and yeah it's pretty limited. Remake would change tracks in the middle of scenes based on what was happening whereas original would use that one track for the entirety of the scene. Gameplay/SRPG: 6/10 I'm just not a fan of SRPGs, lel. But it was aight. Overall 7/10 enjoyable VN. I may watch the 24 episode Utawarerumono 2006 anime, I heard it's what many people would do before reading the next entry back then since it was the only translated version of the first entry at the time, but I'm ready for Mask of Deception! Pretty interested in seeing what they'll do with the narrative, there's literally 13 years between the release of the first and second VNs. So the writers were like, oh yeah, y'all remember that VN we made a decade ago? Let's make a SEQUEL! Misc Thoughts/Comments (SPOILERS)!!

For some reason (read: forum ded), nobody made this thread yet, so I decided to just do it myself, even if I don't watch anything this season. What about you?

The god of Highschool is a must I'm also enjoying Uzaki-chan and Rent-a-girlfriend a lot

The update for this week below. Common: 100.0% Bethly: 100.0% Mizuha: 0.0% Yuzuki: 21.46% Momiji: 100.0% Hinata: 100.0% Total: 65.84% No much to say other than they already finished with Yuzuki's Middle School arc, so that's all for this week update.

On May 27th Sol Press announced in a Blog post that they will not license any new VNs and but are intending to release the titles that they have licensed. Here is their quote: Link: https://solpress.co/blog/803/where-we-are-and-where-were-going Then today after silently removing it from their website and being asked about it on Discord, they announced that they won't translate The Future Radio and the Artificial Pigeons. You can find the second blog post here: https://solpress.co/blog/846/news-regarding-laplacians-the-future-radio-and-the-artificial-pigeons I just wanted to share that information here. Personally I am disappointed with both news. I know that Sol Press doesn't have the best reputation, but with them gone there will be fewer VN translated in the future. I personally was looking forward to The Future Radio and the Artificial Pigeons. and Nukitashi, so I am especially disappointed by the second news. And it is a really bad look that they have to already walk back on something that they said 10 days ago. Even if a staff member explained on Discord that they said they where only intending to finish all announced projects. I guess that is just the reality of the VN translation business.

Yeah, I'd probably make one but my life is hell at the moment and I have no energy to even look things up... Still, any recommendations of what to watch when I get my shit together, good poeple of Fuwa?