Leaderboard

EDIT: Due to Fuwa anti-piracy rules this thread's usefulness was quite limited, since we couldn't ask for any files that we needed for further compatibility testing and the like. I'd say even posting direct links to our patch here was questionable to begin with, since it's not that different from the abovementioned files that we were asking for. So in the end we decided to remove all links from here and move our main release thread to Reddit: LINK That's where all further updates will be posted, so make sure to follow us there. I'll ask mods to lock this thread, since MeruP won't be checking it anyway, so all feedback should be posted on Reddit instead (we also have a dedicated thread for reporting bugs and other issues).

MAITETSU 18+ DEMOSAIC STEAM AND FAKKU PATCH Did you mistake the quote "100% DRM free and completely uncut with no scenes removed" as "TOTALLY UNCENSORED!"? Do you hate to see squares in beautiful art? Are you from the golden era (JAST USA, Peach Princess, G-Collections) and expected from an localized eroge to get an fully uncut, uncensored and without mosaics game? ... Then this patch is for you. You read it right, the patch does what it says. It removes the mosaic in hscenes from the beautiful artwork. Original MAITETSU 18+ Fakku edition -> you can buy it at the official page: https://www.fakku.net/games/maitetsu-english -> PLEASE SUPPORT english localization by buying the game ! OR BUY FROM STEAM Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch - FOR STEAM OR BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch - FOR FAKKU 1. [Q]: Is it legit? [A]: I can't believe it myself either. But YES! It is real and it does what it says. Try it before reporting or commenting. Thank you. 2. [Q]: Where are the hscenes? I can't find them in the game? [A]: There are no hscenes in the common route, except provoking pictures which the Maitetsu 18+ Release Restoration Patch restores and the actual hscenes won't trigger by default, but during a heroine route, a message will popup at bottom right side of the screen saying that you gain access to a hscene, then you have to manually open the hscene in the menu. It is a game design, not a bug or glitch, it is how LOSE company makes the games. Rarely you will gain access for hscenes during a route, most hscenes are unlocked AFTER finishing the game with that particular heroine. 3. [Q]: When does the DLC hscenes show up? [A]: After you complete the previous hscenes, the DLC hscenes will eventually show up. 4. [Q]: STEAM support? [A]: At the moment I don't own the STEAM version so I can't test it and I don't know if it works. If someone can help me I will make an steam support patch, but you would still need the FAKKU 18+ DLC patch. 5. [Q]: Can we see some screenshot/examples of patch? [A]: Because of the nature of the game as being an loli game I can't post pictures because of the policy of the forum. But if someone wants to see the results before buying the actual game I can send you 2 example pictures. Just send a PM and I will reply with those 2 example pictures. Examples of non-loli characters are in the gallery section. 6. [Q] : What was changed in the new Fakku edition? What's the difference between the OLD and NEW download? [A]: Jacob from fakku has a good description -> https://www.fakku.net/forums/games/maitetsu-fixes-and-updates .Everything written in the section "what has not changed" WAS already fixed already by heliosaurus by his patch and the same fix is present in the new "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch" 7. [Q] Why is there a difference in size between Heliosaurus Restoration patch and "BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch" Both patches work perfectly fine and shouldn't have any problems. You can use Heliosaurus on the OLD and NEW version but the BANDAID patch is only for new FAKKU download ONLY. But... the original restoration patch includes fixes which are already fixed in the new version of FAKKU's edition and the BANDAID removal patch just removes this fixes from the PATCH to be less in size. The reason why you could still use the original restoration patch on the old and new version of fakku is that technically the patch is in original form a "patch.xp3" which contains mostly PICTURES! Yes, pictures. And it just replaces those pictures from the original data files which are located in "data.xp3" / "emotedx.xp3", and so on. The KiriKiri engine works like that. When FIRST run, it loads first files from, data.xp3, and all the main xp3, and then LOADS patch.xp3, patch2.xp3, patch3.xp3... and so on. That's why we don't need external programs to patch the original data files, and we can put everything in PATCH.XP3, or PATCH2.XP3, and so on. You can literally replace the whole game with a single PATCH.xp3 file. The restoration patch was made by using resource files from the JAPANESE version and replaces the resource files from the ENGLISH version. So the original restoration patch just OVERWRITES fixes-pictures present in the MAIN game from the NEWEST fakku edition download.... 8.[Q]: That isn't the game we were promised / it is disappointing / don't want to buy the game .... [A]: Well, it isn't a question, I just want to express my opinion... I understand that the release a disappointment, and like everyone, even I would wanted a TOTALLY uncut and uncensored version. I hate the CUTS in western releases, but that was going on for decades not just in VN's look in the old days of SNES games with JRPGS. And in east they get the same results with some western games... Thanks to that, we have two types of ppl - one who are complaining and the the other one who are making uncut/undub/uncensored version of games, from snes to psp/psvita and so on. What I mean is that you shouldn't lose energy in complaining on fakku and denpasoft/sekai, yes even sekai. I understand that sekai don't take releases seriously but at least we got the translated version, whish is a huge WORK. And be thankful, we got "OMG!" Maitetsu! I can't expect newcomers and the ones on fakku to stop complaining ( and I am not saying that you have to start editing, and join the community of moders, but you are always welcome to join ), but at least you at fuwanovel you have no more reasons to complain. At the end you got the complete 1:1 japanese uncut release with english text, and even a little more, with the demosaic patch ( which in the japanese edition they don't have ). .... please ask questions and I will put most common questions and answers here ... STATUS : COMPLETE ! ALL SCENES MOSAIC-FREE ! Hachiroku's Route Hibiki's Route Paulette's Route Reina's Route Fukami's Route Nagi's Route Kisaki's Route Makura's Route FOR STEAM USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for STEAM FOR FAKKU USE: HELIOSAURUS PATCH for FAKKU or down below the BANDAID removal patch 1. Just extract the file patch2.xp3 from the ZIP file in the main maitetsu folder! !! the patch2.xp3, should be in the same folder as the Restoration patch (patch.xp3) and the Maitetsu.exe file. !!! 07/23 - Released the patch with the 5th scene included, and fixes the bug in Hscene 2 07/24 - Released the patch with the included 6th scene 07/25 - Released the patch with the included 7th scene 07/26 - Released the patch with the 8th scene included 07/27 - Hachiroku's Route COMPLETED!!!! 07/28 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 01 without mosaic! 07/29 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 02 without mosaic! 07/30 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 03 without mosaic! 07/31 - Released the patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 04 without mosaic! 08/02 - Released the addon patch with Hibiki's HSCENE 05 without mosaic, you still need the OLD "Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch 7-31-2018" patch. In your folder you should have patch.xp3 (bandaid fix), patch2.xp3 (old 7-31 patch) and patch3.xp3 (this new addon patch) 08/03 - HIBIKI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/04 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/05 - Paulette's new hscene released! (Hint: This is the new release which includes HSCENE 03. Skipped Hscene 02 because here isn't any mosaic! Hence the name v0.3 - which represent the hscene completed ) 08/06 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/07 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/08 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/09 - Paulette's new hscene released! 08/10 - PAULETTE's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/11 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/12 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/13 - Reina's new hscene released! 08/14 - REINA's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/15 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/16 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/17 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/18 - Fukami's new hscene released! 08/19 - FUKAMI's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/20 - Nagi's new hscene released! 08/21 - Nagi's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/22 - Kisaki's new hscene released! 08/23 - Kisaki's new hscene released! 08/24 - Kisaki's ROUTE COMPLETED !!! 08/25 - Makura's new hscene released! 08/26 - Makura's new hscene released! 08/27 - COMPLETE PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes! 08/30 - COMPLETE STEAM PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes in STEAM FINALLY!!!! Complete FAKKU Patch ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| COMPLETE PATCH Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z Installation guide: - if you have downloaded the partial update - patch3.xp3 just manually delete it ( you don't need it anymore because its already inside the complete patch! ) ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Complete STEAM Patch ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Steam Patch - v0.9a.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ThugShiro - mega big thanks to ThugShiro. He donated the Steam Version! BIG THANKS TO marcus-beta - with his tremendous help he found out the problem and fixed it, without him there wouldn't be a steam patch! Ulysses - big thanks to Ulysses, without his tools ( https://github.com/UlyssesWu/FreeMote/releases ) this wouldn't be possible. Tools used: PsbDecompile - for decompiling PSBs, PsBuild - for rebuilding back to PSBs FreeMoteViewer - to view rebuilded PSBs (after PsBuild) number201724 - of course, also big thanks to number201724 for the psbtools https://github.com/number201724/psbfile/releases Tools used: emote_conv - decode and encode psb file Heliosaurus - special thanks to the master of the Restoration patch and his helpful guiding SPECIAL extra patch: BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated into a single patch ( patch.xp3 ) For the newest FAKKU edition and STEAM! 08/1 - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch integrated Restorationa Patch ( as PATCH.xp3 ) 09/20 - Released the BANDAID removal PATCH + restoration patch for STEAM ( as PATCH.xp3 ) Optional download ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| FAKKU edition Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Patch.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| STEAM edition Maitetsu 18+ Restoration & Bandaid Removal Steam Patch.7z ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ANY COMMENTS, MEANINGFUL CRITICS, GRATITUDE, ADVICE, SUGGESTION RELATED TO THE PATCH ARE HELPFUL. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Want to support the project?

The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out. Do we love the same VNs? While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best. We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad. There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs... While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released. We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones. So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories: Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher. The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text. The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget. VN popularity It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West. Note that this chart is using a log scale. The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated. Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is. Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB. Differences in taste So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is. Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS. This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative. Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”). This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB. Differences in the marketplace We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one? A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists. Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags. The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content. EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties. Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters. Criticisms Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting? Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years. The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through. Acknowledgements A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis. I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my tumblr and twitter for more VN analysis posts. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter, or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~

Original Fakku forum release: Thanks to the help from a kind benefactor, I acquired the Steam release. Steam users can now y o r o k o b e. Figuring out how the Steam release worked was such a damn pain. Not much was updated, apart from a few thousand scene seek thumbnails. Mainly giving Steam users some love. MAITETSU 18+ RESTORATION PATCH v1.3 7-10-2018 MAITETSU 18+ STEAM RESTORATION PATCH v1.3 7-10-2018 Maitetsu WIP Decensor patch thread The main issues I was dealing with while making that patch that most certainly limited how much I can do are: 1. KrkrExtract just doesn't want to cooperate majority of the time when extracting XP3's. 2. When it does, it doesn't even extract the stuff I needed. 3. Repairing the sprites requires my being able to repack EMote .pbs files with edited .bmp images. Not hard at all to do, just repacking is the issue AFAIK 4. The data.xp3 is encrypted. About half of it KrkrExtract can get done, but the half that i'd need to fully repair the "filesystem" I guess you can say into something usable is. 5. God help me TJS2 bytecode is one of the most disgusting atrocities I have seen. Bless based nihongo tools If there is anyone out there who knows the KiriKiriZ engine or EMote engine, your input is always welcome. Suzu ga besto desu

I've been analysing the sexual content of VNs, what's become more common, what gets the best ratings, and what content tends to come together; and thought I'd present some of my results in a slightly different way: in a quiz! Using the extensive character database on vndb, I tracked which appearance and personality traits were more or less likely to engage in types of sexual activity, and put the results in a quiz format so you can enter the tropes and it'll tell you how the percentages diverge from the average. This is a slightly silly way to present the results, but I thought you guys might enjoy it. You can try the quiz here.

I’ve recently read a few thoughtful discussion threads on the state of the VN market here in the West. Some taking a negative stance, some with a more positive outlook. I thought I’d try to put some numbers on these statements and look at VN ownership on Steam, still the predominant market for PC games, and use that to analyse whether VNs are on their true route or have stumbled into a bad end. Data collection I checked just over a million steam profiles to try and get a random sample of gamers. With Steam’s new private-by-default profile settings, only 8% of those users had public game lists, but that still gave us 80k user profiles to work with. I could then compare my sample with the “leaked” owner data and scale up my numbers accordingly to represent Steam as a whole. Steam is rather haphazard with what gets tagged as a Visual Novel (RPGMaker games like A Bird Story are tagged as VNs), so I’ll only be including games that also have a VNDB entry. Steam VN releases So let’s start simple, with a simple plot of how many VNs are being released each month. At first glance things seem rosy for VN fans, there have never been more VNs being released in the West. But let’s break down those results a bit: Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. The EVN, JVN, and other VNs trends include only non-free VNs. Here we can start to see the reason for the differing perspectives on the state of the VN market depending upon whether you read more JVNs or EVNs. While the rate of EVNs releases has steadily increased, the number of new JVNs has remained fairly static since 2016, despite Steam’s lowered release requirements. Steady release rates aren’t definitely bad news, but in general profitable industries want to expand, so the lack of expansion tells you something about the industry. But as someone with a plan-to-read list that grows longer by the day, I’m not complaining if the rate doesn’t increase. One under-reported development in the VN market is the recent rapid growth of Chinese VNs (listed as other here), who have quietly been doing well in their home markets, but are rarely translated. So while more VNs might be good for us fans, how does the market look for developers? Let’s have a look at VN sales. Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. All sales are back-dated to the release date of the VN on Steam. Free VNs count sales as the number of users who have logged some playtime in it. Unfortunately Steam’s API doesn’t list when someone bought a game, so we’ve got to group sales by the release date of the VN. That means there will be a bias towards older releases which have been out longer and so had more time to build up sales. Here we can see some justification for the doom and gloom perspectives, with more recent VN releases selling significantly less than older ones. With new JVNs in 2017 selling only half what they did in 2016. The EVN downward trend is especially stark given that the number of new releases has been increasing, so that’s less revenue split among even more VNs. Not all VNs are equal, some are priced higher, so let’s look at total revenue rather than total sales. Note that this assumes every user pays full price, so this is more the maximum possible revenue than actual revenue. Here we can see the difference between EVN and JVN markets. While JVNs sell only half as many as EVNs, they earn almost as much revenue due to their higher price. We again see the same dip in more recent revenue though, 2017 was only 46% of 2016′s revenue, and 2018 looks even worse so far. Remember, this fall in revenue coincidences with an increase in the total number of releases, so to fully comprehend the drop on revenue, let’s look at the average sales per VN. First, we should note that this massively overestimates the average revenue generated as it assumes every user pays full price. I know devs who would sell their soul for 282k per VN. Oh wait, they already did when they signed up for Steam... (just kidding, I do like Steam, but it has issues). The important aspect here isn’t the y-axis total which is unreliable, but the consistent downwards trend. But it might not be as bleak as it seems, older VNs are more likely to have been in bundles and in Steam sales, so their revenue is likely overestimated compared with more recent releases. So I’d be hesitant to claim that revenue is necessarily dropping, but I think we can confidently claim that revenue isn’t increasing. VN Reviews Nostalgia for a past golden age is common everywhere, not least among VN fans. It’s not uncommon to hear that newly released VNs aren’t as good as older ones, but can we get any empirical data on this point? We can get close by looking at the Steam reviews of VNs over time. Each dot represents the average thumbs up/down ratio for any VNs released that month. Within the JVN market, we can see some truth to the nostalgia viewpoint. Older releases were more consistently rated higher. But that isn’t to say there aren’t new highly rated JVNs. They still maintain enviously high scores overall. As for EVNs, while they had consistently scored lower than JVNs, they’re catching up and are now pretty comparable in review ratings of JVNs. Just for fun, let’s see how the total review count compares between VNs. The two free-VN spikes are for Emily is Away and DDLC. As I’m sure anyone familiar with the VN community can tell you, JVN fans are vocal, and it shows in the total reviews VNs get. Despite there being only half as many JVNs as EVNs, they still attract more reviews than EVNs do. This is perhaps because JVNs are typically far longer than EVNs, so might be worth the time of writing a review. What free-VN fans lack in the wallet, they make up for in their word-count. Although this is massively skewed by two free VNs which compromise 70% of all free-VN reviews: Emily is Away and DDLC. They seem anomalies rather than trends. As shown by the graph when we exclude those two: *Excluding Emily is Away and DDLC. Despite the drop in position, free-VNs still out-perform what we’d expect given their lower count of total owners, but that may be because EVN and JVN totals include users who own the VN but have never read it. Whereas the free-VN total only includes those who have logged playtime in that VN, so there’s a larger pool of possible reviewers. Potential Issues There are a few sources of uncertainty in the dataset. The selection of users who have set their profiles to public might not be representative of the wider Steam userbase. It probably undercounts more casual fans who are less likely to configure their Steam profile. We also don’t know when someone purchased a VN, so it’s possible VN sales are increasing, but a lot of that money is going to older releases, especially if they’re in bundles and Steam sales. In inclusion of VNs in game bundles may be distorting the image of the VN fandom, as it’ll include those who have little interest in the medium and only own a VN by happenstance. We should also remember that “Steam” is not synonymous with the VN market. There are plenty of competitors in the VN scene, namely Mangagamer and itch.io, who tend to cater to different tastes than Steam does. So we’re only getting a partial picture of the Western VN scene. Conclusion There’s data here to support both the optimistic and pessimistic commentary. On the positive side, there have never been more VNs being released as there are now. EVNs are improving with higher average ratings and a few have reached mainstream attention. On the pessimistic side, it seems like there are ever more VNs competing for a fanbase that isn’t significantly growing. While I’d be wary of claiming profits are falling, it seems highly likely they aren’t increasing, and a stagnant market is not a healthy one. Personally, I think the future is bright. While VNs might not be destined to become blockbuster successes, there is enough of sustainable fanbase to support lots of indie developers, who are the most prone to innovate and write interesting new stories. As a VN fan, I’m excited to see what comes next~ --- I hope you found the article interesting. I had wanted to include a section analysing the Steam users, how many VNs do JVN fans purchase compared to EVN fans etc. But I want to spend a little longer going into more depth on it, so I’ll have a post up next week on that. If you’re interested in more until then, check out my other tumblr analysis posts, look out for updates on my twitter, or give me a yell on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Special thanks to /u/8cccc9 for collaborating on the analysis, and Part-time Storier for proof-reading. I just do these analyses for fun, but if you want to support my work with a tip, I accept small donations at ko-fi.

After ten years playing VNs, you would think I would have completely lost faith in them by now, especially considering just how many I've played (744 not counting most of the nukige, replays and incomplete/dropped ones). Most VNs that aren't nukige are SOL-fests that exist solely to promote nostalgic fantasies about life in high school and getting into bishoujos' pants... not that that is an entirely horrible goal, but it isn't something I want to see five hundred times over. The romance is usually puerile and has no relation to reality, the characters have all their hard edges filed away by the needs of the archetype, and drama is used solely to add 'spice' (like one sprinkle of pumpkin spice, not cracked red pepper) to an otherwise endlessly sweet and bland recipe. So how is it that someone who has experienced that much essentially boring and pointless repetition of the same scenarios able to continue to enjoy VNs, even if he can't stand meaningless SOL anymore? At one time, it was a sense of duty, a belief that I was doing the community good by digging gems out of the piles of crap that are the SOL genre. I also had a sense of pride that I made an effort of objectivity that I have literally seen no one else attempt. I played games no one else bothered with because they didn't have the time or patience, and I did it because I thought someone looking at the games would want to know what they were getting into. I paid a price in a growing sense of bitterness, of boredom, and of a sense that I was forgetting the reason why I began to read fiction in the first place. I paid a price in people continually being trolls and trying to draw me into fights over my opinions on these games. I had people start reddits and send me pms being sympathetic about the very conversations they'd started (yes that happens). I also had people who respected what I was doing, and I knew there were people in the community who benefited from the fact that I was doing it. I watched VNs I had pushed get localizations and fantls (usually to my surprise), and I saw others that I had labeled as mediocre get hyped to a ridiculous degree. I tried to get other people to help with what I was doing, only to find that, without a reading speed similar to mine, it was too much of a burden on their lives and ate up the time to read the VNs they wanted to read. The bad generally outweighed the good immensely while I was doing VN of the Month, and even after, I found that the after-effects of my years of playing games I wasn't interested in personally had left me with scars I was unable to feel while my sense of duty was keeping me going. However, I can say that I still haven't given up on VNs. Why? The reason is ridiculously simple and at the same time profound (at least to me). I love the medium. For someone who likes an experience that combines the reading, visual input, and music without the need for a lot of input from the one experiencing it, VNs provide a unique storytelling experience. Books are great for the imagination and can send our souls exploring across landscapes that exist only in our own minds, but VNs provide a more filled-out framework for those who don't necessarily have the imagination to fill in all the gaps on their own, without rotting the imagination to the degree manga and anime do. I've been able to get people who had trouble reading books into VNs, then led them straight back to books and opened the world of imagination to them. I've seen people who had begun to feel the otaku community offered nothing more to them come alive again after playing a chuunige or a charage. I've picked up a random moe-looking VN and found a deep and compelling story that remains within me dozens of times. In the end, it is moments, experiences like that that keep me coming back, believing in the possibilities of VNs even now. It is the desire to find more such experiences that keeps me looking at new releases each month, and it is the belief that those experiences will never entirely vanish that keeps me from condemning the industry as a whole for the way it sabotages itself at times.

It's that time of the year again. Time to reflect on everything you made of good and bad in the year. But who cares about getting chained down by your past forever huh? So let's skip that part and look forward to the future! To what we can (and can't do) to make Fuwanovel great... again? Did we ever were great? Debatable. So anyways, let's all collect suggestions of changes we want to see here in the coming year. If you're feeling a bit uninspired, I suggest to vote for one of the wonderful suggestions I make below. Because I thought long and hard (aka 3 minutes, rough estimation) in the well being of our beloved dysfunctional community. Create a pinned "Translation Salt" thread under Visual Novel Talk, because lately every single release gets this; Rename Walkthrough section to "SeniorBlitz's Secret Dungeon"; Rename Translation Projects to "Fan Translations Burial Ground" because lately they're mostly dropped anyway; Create a board "Introduce Yourself and Never Speak Again" under Introduce Yourself because yep; Rename Community Coordination and Feedback to "Tay and Co. Burial Ground" (I'm sorry Tay, we love you); Create a pinned "Looking for Hentai Animation or Visual Novel (Powered by Monta93TM)" thread under Anime/Manga Recommendation; Rename Leaderboard to...... anything tbh no one will notice kek kthxbye

Perhaps the most universal complaint of those who read Japanese VNs, regardless of their tastes, is the bland, non-people, average protagonists that make up better than 90% of all VN protagonists. This trend began with the first moege, as a technique to allow people to self-insert more easily, but the tradition has worked against VNs more than it has worked for them, with protagonists with unique quirks turning out to be almost as important to a VN's lasting popularity as heroine quality. Unfortunately for those new to VNs, it is impossible to tell at a glance whether a protagonist will be interesting or not based on the cover, since most protagonists don't have a tachie, voice-acting, or a character description on the official site, lol. So, as a service to my fellow Fuwans, I decided to go ahead and make this list. The greater majority of these games will be untranslated, but I will go ahead and list ones that are translated that I know of. Feel free to help me add to the list, though this one is for Japanese-origin games, not EVNs. The baseline for these protagonists will be that they are either unique, unusual, or capable (intelligent, talented, and/or skilled at something and have something approaching a personality) without deliberate nerfing of their qualities to make heroines stand out more. Harem protagonists who are merely kind to everyone will not count for the purpose of this list, and characters whose personality/capabilities/talents/skills get toned down in the heroine routes will also not qualify. Translated Tokyo Babel Ayakashibito Hello, Lady (soon) Hapymaher Noble Works (yes, he does make the baseline) Dracu-riot (assuming the official release comes out) Nanairo Reincarnation (soon) Tsukihime FSN Comyu (yes, I include this... because even if you hate Akihito's man-whore qualities, he is definitely not a cardboard cut-out character) Rance games (I hate the Rance games, personally, but you can't say he isn't unique) Majikoi Tsujidou-san no Jun'ai Road (Dai only seems sheeple on the surface... he has enough depth as a character to qualify) Eien no Aselia (while his personality is standard for a jrpg protagonist, it has enough twists and unique qualities to make the list) Seinarukana (similar to above) Fata Morgana no Yakata (I wavered because of the way the game is structured, but I chose to list it anyway) Grisaia series Kikokugai Demonbane 11eyes Rewrite (I hate this protagonist, but he stands out, even if he is a dumbass) Animamundi Baldr SkyDive (whenever it comes out) ChuSinGura (I honestly wavered on this one, both because the protagonist is a moron and because I don't consider this to have been truly translated) Cross Channel Daiteikoku Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai Dies Irae I/O Yumina Kyonyuu Fantasy (yes, I'm serious even as I'm laughing) Planetarian Rose Guns Days Sekien no Inganock Gakthun Sharin no Kuni Shikkoku no Sharnoth Shin Koihime Musou (apparently tl is at 100%, so I'm including it) Sorcery Jokers (Senri!!!) Tears to Tiara Tokeijikake no Leyline series Venus Blood Frontier (whenever it comes out) Wanko to Kurasou Eden* Untranslated Akeiro Kaikitan Ikusa Megami series Soukoku no Arterial Fuukan no Grasesta Madou Koukaku Silverio series Tiny Dungeon series Zero Infinity Electro-Arms Soranica Ele Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier Komorebi no Nostalgica Devils Devel Concept Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana Evolimit Bullet Butlers Tokyo Necro Soukou Akki Muramasa Ou no Mimi ni wa Todokanai Shugo no Tate series Amatsutsumi Floral Flowlove Aoi Tori Mirai Nostalgia Bradyon Veda Draculius Gensou no Avatar Abyss Homicide Club Hyper→Highspeed→Genius Inochi no Spare Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo Konata yori Kanata Made Kanojo wa Tenshi de Imouto de Jingai Makyou "Hello, World" Natsu no Owari no Nirvana Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas Rui wa Tomo o Yobu Ryuukishi Bloody Saga Vermilion Bind of Blood Satsukoi Sinclient Tenshi no Hane o Fumanaide Suisei Ginka Yurikago yori Tenshi Made Izuna Zanshinken Tasogare no Sinsemilla Valkyrie Runabout Sekai o Sukuu dake no Kantan na Oshigoto Haru to Yuki Semiramis no Tenbin Tsukiakari Lunch Tsuisou no Augment Kamikaze Explorer Prism Recollection Houkago no Futekikakusha Izayoi no Fortuna Natsuzora no Perseus Minamijuujisei Renka Ojou-sama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu Yami to Hikari no Sanctuary Sakura no Mori Dreamers AstralAir no Shiroki Towa Irotoridori no Sekai Senren Banka Reminiscence Akagoei series Soshite Hatsukoi ga Imouto ni Naru Harumade Kururu Haruru Minamo ni Kin'iro Loveriche Love Rec. Natsuiro Recipe Shuumatsu Shoujo Gensou Alicematic Sakura Nikagetsu Iroha ~Aki no Yuuhi ni Kagefumi o~ Campus's Uso series World Election (seriously push this one for fantasy charage lovers) Curio Dealer Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai Lamunation Sora no Tsukurikata Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa Sakura, Sakimashita Amairo Islenauts Blade x Bullet Gouen no Soleil Dekinai Watashi ga, Kurikaesu Doushite, Sonna ni Kurokami ga Suki na no?! (more charage with some plot) Boku ga Tenshi ni Natta Wake Butterfly Seeker Fake Azure Arcology Re:Birth Colony Gekkou no Carnevale Hatsuyuki Sakura Gurenka Hikari no Umi no Apeiria (this guy's personality is so out there you wouldn't even be able to tell if anything effected him, lol) Hotel. (this is also a joke from me that I can share only with those few who have read it, lol) Kamigakari Cross Heart Kimi to Boku to no Kishi no Hibi Witch's Garden Kono Sekai no Mukou de Kouyoku no Soleil Lovesick Puppies (more food for charagamers) Toppara Zashiki Warashi no Hanashi Naka no Hito Nado Inai Natsuiro no Nostalgia Ojou-sama wa Gokigen Naname Onigokko Otomimi Infinity Para-Sol Prima Stella Paradise Lost Kajiri Kamui Kagura Sanzen Sekai Yuugi (only Otomege I know of that fulfills the prime condition) Primal x Hearts Tayutama (original only) Shinigami no Testament Shogun-sama wa Otoshigoro Stellula Eques Codex Tasogare no Himekishi (seriously, the protagonist is subject to some interesting stuff, like akuochi and/or corruption of characters) Toki o Tsumugu Yakusoku Unjou no Fairy Tale Yuganda Uso no Koi to Letter Yoru Meguru, Bokura no Maigo Kyoushitsu Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou Request includes G-Senjou no Maou Aiyoku no Eustia Watashi no Real wa Juujitsu Shisugiteiru Shirogane no Soleil Root Double Edit: A lot of these characters stand out due to personality traits or quirks, as much as anything else. The key point is that the protagonist is a 'person' instead of a cipher or catalyst. For those who wonder why I didn't include Tsuki ni Yorisou, Otome no Sahou 2, the reason is pretty simple... in every path, the protagonist's individuality vanishes and he becomes enslaved to the heroine's character needs.

08/27 - COMPLETE PATCH released! Mosaic removed from all scenes! !! COMPLETE PATCH !! Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z Installation guide: - if you have downloaded the daily patch - patch3.xp3 just manually delete it ( you don't need it anymore because its already inside the Maitetsu 18+ Demosaic Patch - v0.9a.7z ) Q: "Why V0.9a? When it's complete" A: "The v1.0 slot is reserved for the install wizard with additional content/mods/etc, and the 'a' in '(v0.9) a' stands for alpha, because the patch stills needs polishing, like redrawing the first released scenes" Want to support the project?

N A N I ? ! Translations proudly presents: Tenkiame Game Name: Tenkiame | 天気雨 | Sun Shower Developer & Publisher: GumiSoft (one of InterHeart’s subsidiaries; parent company mostly makes short nukige games) Duration: Approximately 10 hours or so; around 12k lines Genre: heartwarming romance, folklore VNDB Link Official Website Game Synopsis In the middle of summer vacation, the protagonist receives news that his grandfather had fallen ill. Taking the place of his busy parents, he travelled a bit reluctantly to his grandparents’ home. Luckily, his grandfather’s situation wasn’t serious, and he spent time with his grandmother, who he hadn’t seen in a long time. She mentioned that the greenery in the area will soon disappear as it is razed for urban development. He lamented that it was a sign of the times. As he sat on the porch, feeling the cool breeze and listening to the soothing sound of the swaying wind chimes, he thought it was a very comfortable feeling. He noticed a small girl next to him, basked in the gentle sunlight. He was captivated by her beautiful hair, ears and smile. This is the beginning of a small love story with an innocent and curious white fox and a quiet and meddlesome fox. [From Hau~ Omochikaeri!] Trailer Screenshots (Early trial version build) Staff Project Leader & technical mumbo-jumbo: @Narcosis Translator: Allmighty Bee TLC: the person in question kindly asked us to not reveal his name Editor: Zanderboi QC's: Nanon, Arcadeotic, Major Popinfresh Alpha Testers: won't mention names for now but they'll be revealed at some point Honourable mentions go to @AtomCrafty, @binaryfail and everyone else, who we forgot about. Thanks for helping us, guys. INFORMATION (25/04/2018) The common route is translated and currently undergoes editing and TLC, translation on the remaining girls' routes began as well. We plan to release the trial version first around this summer, which contains the whole common route. Full patch will follow afterwards. This is also to ensure the final translation will be released as a quality product, since we want to gather feedback after the trial release. The current estimates are rough, as we plan to deliver a polished, self-extracting patch. Either way, it shouldn't take that long, at least not as long as Biman (hopefully) We want to thank @Arcadeotic and his team. Euphemic Translations will be providing us with additional help and several QC’s that we would’ve needed sooner or later. Big thanks to everyone who is now involved with the translation alongside us. PROGRESS CHART (last update: 19/04/2018) Common route: script delivered, TL: 100%, currently in editing Shiro's route: script delivered, TL: ~5% Kon's Route: script delivered, TL: 0% General FAQ Q: Is there any way to know the progress whenever I want? A: Ask here and we'll answer with the current progress. Alternatively, we will update the progress chart from time to time. Q: What is your team's translation speed? A: Bee does 100 lines per day on average except weekends, technically you can calculate the precise amount of days it'll take to complete this translation (we are too lazy to do it ourselves, lol.) Q: When are you releasing the patch? A: The translation will be done in a year, more or less, and the patch? No idea, but definitely faster than Biman. Q: No, but seriously - when will be the patch done? A: When it's done™ Q: Why aren't you looking for help in regards to more translators? A: We are trying to avoid that, as it will impact the translation's quality for a game of such length. Q: Do you even have a team name? A: Yes, it's "N A N I ? ! Translations." Q: Do you have a website? A: Yes, it's up, but it won't be presented until the trial version is out. Q: Is there any sort of place I can reach you beyond this forum? A: Yes - we have our own Discord channel, but it's currently not available to the public. We plan to open it after the trial release, though. Q: Can you show any actual proof that you're translating the game, aka images and stuff? A: Whenever we can, for now I'll just say that it's something in progress. Q: Can I donate to you? A: Better buy the game, when the translation's out. Q: Will you release a style guide (aka whether "we're taking out honorifics or not", let's get real)? A: Yes, but once the project is nearer to completion. Recruitment Currently we are fully staffed and not in need of any additional help. If any new positions open up, we will inform about that. Anyway, that's everything. We will update this topic as often, as possible. If you have any questions, suggestions, critique or simply want to thank us, feel free to leave a reply! Thanks for reading!

The problem While spurred by recent events, this essay touches on something that seems to have been a pattern in site moderation for some time now. Let me make a claim: if a rule, especially one that is vaguely worded, is not enforced, for a decent amount of people that rule does not exist. This nonexistence integrates into the mental model of the rules that forum members construct, no matter what the formal rules may say. For members using this mental model, beginning to enforce a rule that was previously unenforced is equivalent to creating a new rule. As such, the same procedures as those used to notify forum members of new rules should be applied, possibly with some adaptation on the lines of "we will now actually enforce this rule", as the rule effectively did not previously exist. The ur-example of this is the loligeddon of yore. The takeaway from the loligeddon when it comes to this essay is this: mods repeatedly stated that no rules had actually been changed. Yet nevertheless the appearance and subsequent removal of a particularly problematic post sparked sweeping policy changes, a cleanup operation, a tl;dr post by the administrator explaining the changes, et cetera. This should make it clear that changing policy is a big deal, even if no written rules actually change. Recent policy changes, however, have been very different from what happened during the loligeddon. Frequently the only indication that effective rules have changed has been moderator action, sometimes fairly strict. In essentially all cases this action has been explained either inadequately or, most commonly, not at all. When this occurs the target(s) of moderation will likely feel that they have been unfairly, erratically targeted by a capricious, uncommunicative bully. What do you do when you get bullied? Well, you could talk to HR, but the mod that bullied you is probably in HR anyway and you might not even know who did it. Another option is to fight back. You annoy me, I pay you back in kind - and if I can get some fun at your expense, sure, why not? You're a bully, you deserve it.[1] I do not mean to suggest that we need to have a tl;dr writeup every time a rule is changed, but a simple statement of intent would be appreciated. I estimate that writing this should take no more than 20 minutes. As an example, here's a hypothetical notice regarding the changing of rules on gifs that took me ~10 minutes to write. Note that the policy mentioned here could be reversed or altered to be more specific if it turns out that it was unclear or did more harm than good, which is arguably more difficult to do if the rule has been made official.[2] In the light of this, I would like to present some recommendations. Recommendations When moderating, consider if your action is effectively creating or modifying rules Remember: in the minds of some of your users, unenforced rules may as well not exist. If you decide to moderate something that was previously typically not being moderated, this will cause confusion and consternation. As such, whenever you make a decision, ask yourself: am I changing the rules? If so, you need to consider both whether your action is actually justified, and how you are going to inform the public of your policy change. You are not a cop, you are a judge in a precedent-setting court. This is especially true due to the (understandable) current policy of supporting other mods' decisions near unconditionally. Do not make controversial decisions when following up is difficult On some occasions moderators have moderated while on vacation, using their phone, with bad connections et cetera. I strongly recommend against making anything close to a controversial decision in these conditions. You will end up both ruining your vacation and doing a bad job. Talk first, shoot later If you are performing a moderator action which reasonably should include notifying the target of the action, write up the informative PM or otherwise establish communication before enforcement. You could also consider writing up the notification of intent to change / differently enforce / clarify rules before moderating. Most of the time nobody is harmed much by leaving something up until you can handle it properly. For things that require more urgent management such as a fast-evolving derailment, consider either using a PM template for 1-2 people or making a post stating that you have removed derailing posts in the thread you moderated. Make people feel heard One key theme of this essay is the importance of communication. This extends beyond just notifying people of changes to the rules. I am under no illusions that your actions will go uncontested or that people won't meme and fling shit at you even if you try your best to communicate as advised in this essay. In part this is due to the frustration some people, and certainly I myself, consider you responsible for creating due to your actions up to this point. However, when hostility meets well-practiced civility its fires often run out of fuel. If you constructively engage with those who would oppose you, you can both soothe their frustration and create better, more precise final rules. Obviously there has to be a limit and ultimately you set the rules to follow. But explaining, refining, and justifying your position elevates it from that of a dim-witted bully with little justification for their actions to someone who has a well-grounded but different opinion of what the rules should be. The first one deserves punishment, the second, grudging respect. As a personal observation: in general, you should assume that much less of your decisions are obviously justified than you currently think. One man's common sense is another man's borderline acceptability is another man's utterly idiotic rule enforcement. Moderation is a hard job If this all seems like a lot of hard work to you, congratulations! That's what I thought too when the mod applications came along, so I didn't apply. Any moderators that cannot actually moderate disputes should either confine themselves to routine, uncontroversial moderation tasks or step down from their position. Believe me, nobody will die either way, and you'll get to spend your free time doing something that suits you better. Notes [1] I personally don't consider the mods bullies when I do this kind of thing, but I do consider them deserving of public ridicule. The intention is both to correct behaviour and to extract some entertainment out of people that deserve to be made fun of. And yeah, I have no respect for authority. None. I will judge you by your actions alone. [2] This is an assumption based on my conception of normie considerations like pride, sticking with your decision, whatever. Obviously if a rule does more harm than good it should be removed whether or not it was enforced temporarily, but it is probably easier to do so politically if it was in fact considered temporary. Look, I'm trying desperately not to kill all normies every day here. Give me a break.

Fureraba ~Friend to Lover~ Summary Springtime. The season of the cherry blossoms, and a time of new beginnings, new encounters, and new people. For Aoba Kyousuke, this new season marks the start of his second year in high school, and after taking a moment to reflect, and looking at the friends around him... All he can find is a dumbass too horny for his own good, and a weirdo who can't get over his strange fetish for lizard-humanoid creatures. Sure enough he enjoys hanging out with them, and he wouldn't ever think of giving it up, but something feels missing. A precious, valuable part of everyone's adolescence, and something he might just miss out on at this rate... What is that something? Why, love. So upon realizing this, he shouts out to the world-- "I WANT A GIRLFRIEND!" He'll need to give it his all, of course, because he knows that love does not come to those who just wait. Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order There are four heroines. In order to get into the routes proper, you must select the heroine in the choice screen (when available) and then select to talk about topics that interest her. This walkthrough will, among other things, clarify which topics interest a heroine. By selecting the topics within the walkthrough you will always receive a decent amount of affection and you may choose any combination of topics that interests you. Walkthrough Talk topics will be in brackets [] with the relevant questions for any heroine underneath between quotes "". Sometimes these questions will lead to further questions, which will be indicated by -->. Some questions seem to provide more affection, so I'll mark those with (EXTRA). (Will be removed in the final version of the guide) Not all possible questions will be presented, but there are enough that you will be able to move to the next stage. NOTE: For some of the girls, when you have one at stage 4 and another at stage 3 a jealousy short scene will display. Hiiragi Yuzuyu Mochizuki Rina Minahara Himari ??? Bad Ends and Flags Attribution This walkthrough is based on info attained by me, playing the game. Synopsis from NekoNyanSoft's website. This Rina guide is based and tested by shadowice777, a Team Rina lover.

EDIT: Patch taken down for some important reasons. Check in later for details. Instructions: Simply insert the patch file, root.pfs.003, into your Boku to Nurse no Kenshuu Nisshi game folder (the folder with the other root.pfs files). VNDB FAQ: Staff: Merry Christmas!

Find your next VN with the Fuwanovel Recommendation Site! Thanks to your contribution suggesting titles and rating their newbie friendliness, we now have a site that is able to provide recommendations for you, picking from untranslated, translated and original English language visual novels! Out of our special selection, 88 titles are untranslated from Japanese, 61 are otome games, 69 are Western visual novels, and 73 are LGBT-friendly titles. We strive to provide a good selection for everyone. If you find any problem with the quiz or the site in general, contact us. You can also keep discussing, because this can be updated and worked on in the future to better follow new trends or launches. This wouldn't be possible without: @BunnyAdvocate, who devised and coded the whole thing. Special thanks to her for this great work! @Emi, who designed the website and worked on the VN headers, making everything this pretty. @MaggieROBOT and @Zakamutt, who worked on all stages of the project, having recommended VNs and worked on the details for the site to work and provide useful information. @Plk_Lesiak, @Clephas and @Zalor, who provided insight and recommendations to make this a good list and quiz for everyone. XianXian, lunaterra and nadia nova, who helped with all the immense amount of data that we had to manage. Fuwanovel at large, for being this amazing community that suggested VNs, voted and all around made it possible to there be a site like this in the VN community. So, that's you! Additional credits on the site! People not in Fuwa also helped this come to fruition and we can't thank them enough. Click on the picture below to go to the site!

Hi everybody, It's been a while. I'll make a personal update post at some point, but for the moment I'm posting to ask our users to take the first of what may be a series of surveys we put out this Summer. This first survey is essentially an open invitation to tell me exactly what problems are bothering you about the site, anonymously. My site work this Summer will be heavily influenced by this survey, so if you care about Fuwa and want to see site improvements, please participate. Survey Link: https://goo.gl/forms/DHWvWdmusKKXZBh43 I want to thank @Emi for a recent email, @Clephas for some recent posts in the forums I've read which gave me encouragement, all our moderators, @Decay for his patience with my crazy schedule and a soft VNTS pause, and all of our users for keeping Fuwanovel alive. Much love to all of you. Tay

Before I go visit my remaining grandparents this weekend (my grandmother on my father's side and grandfather on my mother's side are both in extremely frail condition right now, so we are taking time to show my sister's kid to them), I thought I would give my thoughts on modern VN trends. Charage aren't going anywhere Though I frequently bash the industry for over-saturating the market with moege/charage/SOL, the fact is that the demand for this type of VN is never going to go away as long as the Japanese eroge VN market exists. Why? Because it is the single easiest way to present the formation of relationships of young people into a sexual one. While the genre isn't that attractive for people in their late teens or early to mid-twenties (incidentally the reason this market is declining), the majority of any older generation is always going to prefer this. The lesser numbers of young people in Japan compared to my generation and the lower relative amounts of income are the main reasons for the current contraction of the genre. Good Writers don't go into VNs anymore This is a truth that few of the plotge addicts like me want to admit. Most of the best writers in the VN industry are getting into middle age or later now (or have already left it), and the new and upcoming writers are mostly up and coming LN writers who have a far looser grasp on how to write/narrate and (more importantly) complete a story. This doesn't mean they won't evolve their styles to match the new medium eventually, but whenever I've read a VN written by one of these newbies, the plot holes and poor handling of the endings of their games stand out painfully. Chuunige are in decline I absolutely hate to say this. However, it needs to be said. Trends in the last nine years in chuunige have tended to result in far too much side-story exploitation and sequelitis. There is also a distinct lack of innovation, and when innovation does come, it tends to come with a huge drop in quality in the final product (Sora no Baroque). Fans of the genre are getting older, and some companies (such as Light) have been putting their games in non-ero form on consoles to try to grasp the hearts of younger VN lovers (this has actually succeeded to an extent), but the fact is that it takes a much longer time for a chuunige company to make back its investment after a release. This is exacerbated by economic issues in Japan, and the fact that these companies mostly suck at advertising (like many niche genre companies, they only put it up in places where those already 'in the know' will find them). VN Trends are always years behind the rest of Otaku-dom VN communities in Japan are insular. Even moreso than they are in the US. When rom-com anime vanished for the most part at the end of the last decade, it was replaced with cheap action-fantasy (shallow, weaker stories for the most part, with more emphasis put on 'cool' elements) and moeblob. The glut of such anime is reaching its peak right now... and that influence is starting to overflow (interpreted through the lens of the hyper-conservative VN community, of course) into our side of things. That said, this is a trend that is unlikely to take hold, because it requires a modicum of writing skill that doesn't involve dialogue, and most VN writers just don't have that. Instead, VN companies that have been around for a while have been 'testing the waters' by making games that step out of their usual niches, hoping to diversify to deal with the changing trends. Light went with going down a much darker path than usual with its most recent game, and Navel actually put up a half-assed plotge last month. These, along with many other incidences in the last two years, make me wonder just what the market will look like five years from now.

I can just imagine a GOG curator reading DDLC with a checklist: Good ❌ Old ❌ Game ❌

Here is a list of VNs officially released in english, I have now added all the VNs I could think of so the list is pretty much done. If I have missed anything it would be nice to know. The reason I am doing this is that there are a lot of officially released VNs in the west and it is hard to have control over everything that is released. I will update the VNs that have released the current year every month and the ones released the last year every 2nd month. Because of this I have added (year) on titles released in english during either 2018 or 2019. The ones that released in english before the previous year will have their amount of votes and scores updated each year. Orange text means confirmed for an official english release while yellow text means that a part has been released but not the entire VN. I have also made a list with the ones with physical release, this list is sorted the same way as this but also has info on where the titles can be bought and if it is available List of physical english releases of VNs MangaGamer (Store) Sekai Project (Homepage)/Denpasoft (Store) JAST USA (Store) Front Wing (Homepage) NekoNyan (Store) Sol Press (Homepage) Visual Art's Fruitbat Factory (Store) MoeNovel (Burn in hell) Cherry Kiss Games (Homepage) Winged Cloud Degica Aksys Games (Store) XSEED Games (Store) NIS America (Store NA, Store EU) Others (Japanese) Others (not japanese) Himeya Soft (Bankrupt) Hirameki International (Quit the VN market) SakuraGame/Paradise Project (Machine translated, do not buy from them)

It has been almost six months since I ceased VN of the Month. I can say now that while I do, surprisingly, miss some aspects of that particular column, the freedom giving it up has granted me is far greater compensation. When I was doing VN of the Month, I was literally the only person commenting on most of the non-nukige VNs in a given month. I was driven by a sense of obligation to those who read my blog to continue regardless of what it was doing to me and my life, and I can say now that that wasn't a healthy situation for me. I am still a VN addict. I probably always will be, just as I am a heavy reader in general and a lover of role-playing games. However, I still think the role I put it on myself to play was a necessary one. How many people who play untranslated VNs give honest opinions devoid of spoilers? For that matter, how many of them are honest about their biases when they feel they can't give a particular VN a fair chance? I made myself abide by a pretty strict set of rules when I was doing VN of the Month. One was that I would primarily evaluate VNs based on story, character development, and setting, while only mentioning visual and audio elements when they were obviously exceptional. My reason for this is that I lack the background to properly evaluate the technical aspects of audio-visual materials, whereas I have extensive experience with all sorts of reading material in general and fiction in particular. Another was that I would, on a regular basis, restate my particular biases, reminding people of the limitations of my objectivity. This was because I was writing on all VNs I played for the first time, and it would have been unfair for me to fail to state my biases beforehand when playing something that was outside my tastes or something that hit them spot on. The third was a resolve to avoid excessive spoilers. My standard was the Getchu page. If information was released on the Getchu page or the official site, I didn't consider it to be a spoiler, but I was to avoid spoiling things beyond that, except when absolutely necessary. The fourth and final rule was to strive for objectivity inasmuch as possible and be honest with myself and my readers when it wasn't possible. These rules were my guide posts for the years I did VN of the Month, and they served me well, generally... but I reached my limit. To be blunt, VN of the Month was only made possible because of my high reading speed and my willingness to structure my life solely around playing VNs and making money to buy more. Naturally, this way of doing things was doomed to failure eventually, but I got so caught up in actually doing it that I didn't notice it really at the time. Now, I play only what I want to play, and that makes me a much happier person, despite a few wistful moments where I wonder if I couldn't have done it a little while longer.

I know it’s hard being a fan translator because for one you might get cease and desisted if the company finds out you’re translating their intellectual property, two it could be such an arduous task, third people will shit all over your translation for being “too literal”, “ bad prose” etc. I sincerely want to thank you all for helping the medium grow to this level. So, if you’re struggling right now with a translation: Please. Don’t. Give. Up. Because learning Japanese isn’t like picking up Spanish or French, it’s such a huge learning curve and nobody aside from the most dedicated of fans are willing to learn it just to read JVNs. I became a fan of this medium the moment I read Fate/Stay Night by the God and Goddesses of Mirror Moon. After that, I read Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. That wouldn’t have been possible without you guys. While there’re companies that will localize VNs, they have to localize only the ones they can make a profit off of or have permission to do so. Which is very limiting. There’s so many God-Tier JVNs like Mahoyo that remain untouched or the fan translation group gave up. You guys translate visual novels out of the kindness of your heart. I couldn’t be any more grateful. If I met any of you in person, in real-life, I would buy you a beer and give you hug. It’s the least I could do, because people forget how small this community really is. We’re extraordinarily niche. There’s many otaku who have no idea what a visual novel is and they might never even heard of it unless there’s an anime adaptation of said visual novel. But they wouldn’t be able to read it, unless it was translated. Such as the case with Fate/Stay Night and many other visual novels that were adapted into anime. If you’re working on translating a visual novel, please finish it, you may not know, but there could be someone out there who will read your translation and join this amazing community. I am proof of that, and everyone else here who cannot read Japanese is proof of that. I want you all to know that. I want you all to know how important each of you are. Especially, when elitists are quick to belittle all your efforts. Keep going. Keep pressing forward. Fan translators are the unsung heroes of the visual novel medium. You sacrifice time, effort, and many other things to put something out there without any pay. Translating has been such a thankless job, so I will extend my thanks and I hope many others will do the same. Especially since Fuwanovel is home to fan translations. There wouldn’t be a EVN renaissance without you. Hell. There wouldn’t be a fandom or a community here, since you guys literally make visual novels popular in the west.

Here's all your hatless avatars back. Personally, I'm going to change mine back when the liturgical Christmas season ends, because I'm not a heathen. @1P1A @Akshay @alpacaman @bakauchuujin @Canicheslayer @Dergonu @Dreamysyu @Emi @Funyarinpa @Happiness+ @LemiusK @MaggieROBOT @mitchhamilton @SeniorBlitz @Silvz @tahu157 @Thyndd @UnlimitedMoeWorks @wei123 @Zakamutt (Man, the @ function is buggy in every way imaginable. Fix that shizzle, Tay.)

...the Era of Obnoxious Shilling for EVNs! It's been exactly a year since I wrote my first post around here and God damn it, it's hard to believe it has only been that long. This site seriously rearranged the way I'm spending my free time and provided me with tons of fun and a satisfying outlet to channel my questionable writing. I won't be doing shoutouts this time, because there are just too many people to list and I would most likely miss someone that deserves being mentioned, so I just want to thank all of you for putting up with me, and simply being awesome in this awesome little community. :3 My only regret is that in all this time I didn't find a way to contribute to the main site and help with the permanent crisis there... But, hell, I'm not going anywhere, so there's a good chance opportunities will still show themselves eventually. One can dream, at least... And, however things go, I hope I'll be able to do a few more of these Fuwanniversaries in the future.

@Fred the Barber

Huuuuuuuuh... I see many things that are absolutely wrong with your statement. First, really there's no translation quality/choice drama in other otaku niches? I've seen people going apeshit over minor details in anime translations and inconsistencies between the fan and official versions. On the one hand, there'll always be purists that are demanding top quality every time and on the other, there will be botched or poor-quality translation on both the fan and official side of things. The more choice and comparison people have, the more likely they are to criticize underperforming projects - when fan translators were your only hope for playing pretty much any VNs, you were less likely to complain about their work than now, when they compete with a fairly rich selection of professional releases. I things it's even somewhat legit to argue that nowadays there's little sense in translating a VN unless you can do it well. The second, do you know about many EVNs being translated to Japanese? People actually caring about those? It's a non-topic, but I would be surprised if Japanese VN fans didn't have a problem with poor translations - they aren't used to awful localizations and don't treat them as "facts of life" like Western otakus were forced to by turd-quality products offered to them on a regular basis. Demanding quality seems like a pretty reasonable standard, especially for commercial products. And the VN fandom today is not reliant on fan translations anymore and people's attitudes towards those are not any kind of "crucial barrier" for its growth. Also, there are many other reasons why fan translations are pretty much dying out - people that once done them professionalizing or moving on with their lives is the main one and there's no going back from this. What's left is the official publishers, and if you suggest we shouldn't take those up to highest scrutiny as their clients, that's pretty much saying you want them to screw you over with subpar services. Well, you're allowed to act against your own self-interest of course, but that doesn't look like a healthy narrative.

Hello world, been a long while. So, I've been busy, real busy. But, it's finally going to pay off. We're almost at the goal, and I'd like to thank all of those over here at Fuwa who have stuck around with me until now, be it from the start, or when this project started to gain traction. Thank you so much. Now then, until next time, when we'll be releasing the full game, after 2,5 and almost three years. Also haven't sold out. https://arcadeotic.wixsite.com/euphemictl/single-post/2018/09/22/Final-Stretch

I've been considering this for some time, but it has suddenly become a reality. To be blunt, I've come to my limit when it comes to playing pure SOL games. Oh, I can still enjoy many of them, but if you asked me whether I can look at them without my resentment of 'normal' SOL content blinding me, the answer is no. If I have to read through one more template date scene or see another osananajimi climb through the window from next door, I'm going to start tearing out the last remaining hairs atop my head. *coughs* Ahem, now that I've got that out, it needs to be said that I've been doing this since September of 2012... a ridiculous amount of time to be playing roughly 80% of all non-nukige VNs that come out (I'm figuring those I dropped or just couldn't play because they were just that bad into the twenty percent). Just to be clear, I will still continue to play VNs and comment on/review them in this blog. However, I will no longer play as many outside my tastes, nor will I go out of my way to seek gems from companies I hate reading from. I realized while I was playing Koisaku (Ensemble's latest game), that a few years ago, I would have read this game without any real problems, and I wouldn't even have blinked at the crap that now drives me up the wall. Oh sure, Ensemble's base quality has fallen massively, but when I took a step back, this is actually one of the better amongst their more recent games, with plenty of indications of real stories for the heroines in the background. However, I found I just couldn't tolerate it. It hit me in the date scene that occurs in the common route... I have no tolerance for date scenes at all anymore. Scenes like that exist for every heroine in every SOL VN, and they all turn out in almost an identical fashion. Reading it, even though it was basically a 'friend date', was like dragging my brain through mud. I just couldn't do it. I promised myself that I wouldn't BS myself on this particular matter years ago... and I knew the limit was coming. I just didn't realize that it would be this soon. So, I have to announce that this is the end of my VN of the Month column. Now, all that remains is my Random VNs and whatever VNs I choose to play each month. I will continue to play what I'm interested in, and that will probably include slice-of-life at times. However, I will no longer play SOL out of a sense of duty to my readers. My original reasons for starting VN of the Month When I first started Clephas' VN of the Month, it was because vndb gives nothing to you for info on their games beyond poor tls of the game summary from Getchu, character profiles, and sometimes tags (that might or might not be accurate). I felt that that didn't do most games justice, and I hated the way I had to go into a game blind on so many occasions. As such, I started putting up commentaries on just what kind of VN I was playing, with few or no spoilers. This was a need that, at the time, was not being fulfilled (and as far as I know, still isn't, since most reviewers include major spoilers because they are inconsiderate). Over time, my routine each month started with figuring out which games weren't nukige and which I would play first... and picking out which one was the best after I played them (the latter of course being entirely a matter of my opinion, informed as it might be). However, it is time to set down my burden. I tried handing off my work to others, and that worked for a while (thanks to @Dergonu@fun2novel@BookwormOtaku@Kiriririri for their help over the last year - yes, even you, Kiriririri). In the end, though, I'm just one man... and one middle-aged man with increasingly bad health isn't going to be able to keep this up any longer. Heck, I'm amazed i kept going this long. I do hope someone else takes up the torch of at least informing people of what to expect in newer games (and not just the ones from popular companies), but that isn't my job anymore. Thanks for reading, Clephas

Update 1 (12:45 AM EST) Technical issues have caused a hiccup in tonight's upgrade process. Going to ping Nay and we'll try again later today. For now, the forums and front site will be put back online. Original Message: Forums Going Offline at 12:00 (Midnight) EST In approximately 1.5 hours (at the time this goes live), the forums will be going offline for an unknown amount of time so that I can perform an outrageous amount of updates and fixes. I will announce when the forums are back online on our Twitter account (link). Please panic, and may the VN gods have mercy on our souls. (Aside: after the forums are updated -- or irreparably broken -- I will also be working on the front site. Once that's done, if I have any energy and strength left in my body, I will try and make a post updating the community about recent events which have caused my absence, and briefly touch on ways we can move forward.) < 3 - Tay

I am here to announce that the most recent announcement of an announcement was announced in error. Unfortunately, we're still making the finishing touches on some of the promo materials. We may have a more accurate announcement of an announcement at a later date, but not until we know exactly what day we can make said announcement. I am also announcing that we will be much more careful about announcing announcements going forward. We are very sorry for the disappointment this brings. It was an honest mistake, and we'll do better in the future. We won't say "we'll never announce an announcement ever again!" because it's honestly very helpful to prepare people and get them paying attention, rather than surprise announcing stuff. We promise we'll be more responsible about this from now on, though.

well.. after long time im became silent reader finally i decided to make fuwanovel's profile and i think i should introduce myself tbh it's my first time making profile so i dont have vndb or mal account, or should i make it ? im a fan of moege and i hope you guys can recommend me some good stuff nice to meet you all and sorry for my bad english

Today we are going to celebrate Hachiroku's Route completion! Be prepared later today!

The biggest one: We need to stop treating VNs like they're Video Games Lite. I think we're all guilty of this (myself included), but by doing so, we're effectively limiting VNs' potential reader base to just gamers. An assumption I see often is that gameplay VNs like Ace Attorney or Danganronpa are inherently more newbie-friendly than normal VNs or especially kinetic novels. This only makes sense if you're assuming that you're trying to market VNs to gamers. I'm not saying that it's bad to try to get gamers into VNs, but why should we limit ourselves to that? Why are they the only audience that we're trying to get? Other groups who might be interested in visual novels: Regular novel readers. Yes, they still exist. This is such an obvious thing to me (after all, we're trying to promote visual novels) that it almost amazes me that almost nobody considers that people who like to read might be interested in...well, reading. Comics fans, especially fans of indie comics. We're seeing a tiny bit of overlap between indie comics and EVNs already. I read a short yuri VN named Serre by Adrienne Bazir not too long ago that does really nice things with CGs and sprite animations (especially considering she did everything except the music/sound effects). There's also an interactive graphic novel (which I haven't had the opportunity to buy yet) that came out recently named It Will Be Hard that I've seen get a good reception. I don't know if it'd be called a VN per se, but surely it'd be of interest to people who are interested in interactive storytelling? There's a lot of things that our mediums could learn from each other if we bothered to expand outside our normal horizons. People with disabilities who can't/don't want to play "normal" video games. After all, 99% of VNs have no interactivity beyond clicking to advance the text and possibly making choices. This makes them inherently more accessible than 99% of video games. There are some things to keep in consideration (for example, making sure you can access the menu easily; adding screen reader or text-to-speech support for visually-impaired readers; adding an option to use a dyslexic-friendly font like OpenDyslexic), but overall, making a VN accessible is much easier than making your average video game accessible. More things that would help VNs' reputation and encourage people to check out the medium: Stop pretending that porn is a necessary component to VNs. I'm not saying "drop the porn" (that'd be hypocritical of me, since I've wished for more 18+ otome in the past), but it's off-putting to a lot of people, and a lot of time it's shoehorned in anyway. Sex in VNs should be treated the same way as it is in books: some books have sex in them, in some books (erotica) sex is the whole point, but you don't need to have sex in a novel for it to be considered literature, nor does having a sex scene in it automatically disqualify a book from being literature. Longer is not always better. I personally like long stories, but a lot of people just don't have the time (or, yes, attention span) for a 50-hour epic. There's value in shorter VNs that tell a good story not just despite, but because of their length...similarly, by holding longer works up on a pedestal, we're encouraging creators to add pointless shit to pad the length of their stories, which just wastes everyone's time. We need to support diverse VNs by diverse creators. Diverse settings, diverse characters, diverse plots, diverse artwork. Basically have something for everyone. There's nothing wrong with high school stories, but it's boring when it seems like that's the only setting that people will read. Part of this is supporting EVNs and EVN creators, who may not have the budgets that the big Japanese eroge creators do, but who are still doing cool stuff. (There's this weird perception that EVNs try too hard to be like JVNs and are all set in Japanese high schools, which hasn't been the case for years? Katawa Shoujo and DDLC aren't representative of the EVN scene as a whole, for a lot of reasons. I will say that there's a disproportionately high number of anime-style EVNs, but even then there are plenty of exceptions. That's just the first few I found when going through my VNDB collection.) I think the reaction to this year's AX announcements really shows how much pushback there can be against stories that don't fit into the mold of "normal" eroge: JAST USA announced three BL VNs, and MangaGamer announced one BL and one yuri VN, and people are complaining about this year's AX being "overly gay," or about how MG has supposedly "abandoned" the "traditional eroge audience" (never mind that they also announced two Rance games and already have plenty of "normal" eroge in the pipeline) and is now a "fujoshi paradise." I understand the appeal of self-inserting, but some of my favorite stories have been about people very different from me--in fact, a fully-fleshed character who's very different from me can be easier to relate to than a blank-slate protagonist. Basically, if I can read through VNs with straight male protagonists and manage to enjoy them, a straight guy can read through an otome or BL game without...dying, or whatever you think will happen if you touch something not aimed at straight men. Don't promote lolicon/shotacon stuff. This creeps out the vast majority of people, myself included. Maitetsu was a mistake. Just because it's legal (in the US) doesn't mean we have to support it.

DISCLAIMER: I didn't ask for anyone's permission before deciding who's gonna be killed here, sorry actually not sorry about that. That's a dankier representation of these guys that may or may not reflect how they are in real life. I tried to use you guys' avatar or username as base for your appearances and everyone using a cute girl avatar must now be grateful. This entire story had zero proofreading and makes zero sense. Support the official Danganronpa release if you want a quality story, and the patch for the PSP is the best version for the first game, thanks for asking. Dreamysyu wakes up in his usual third seat of the roll beside the window, the setting sun coloring their majestic white hair orange. Just with this tiny introduction we can already see how they have all the needed traits to be the Ultimate Protagonist, and that's why we're following them now. They are already used to have a narrator describing every single thought that pop in their head. "No, and please stop doing that." was what they are thinking but honestly I don't give a damn. Anyway, seeing that the school was deserted, Dreamysyu's first thought was that they overslept and missed the entirety of philosophy class, that happened to be their favorite subject but not the author's so it was natural it was skipped here. If that was the case, it was almost time for horse riding club activities with their cute kouhai. Or just the kouhai riding because they're the protagonist. But as soon as they stepped outside they noticed something. The school was deserted. Not a single soul or background character was in sight. It's almost like... they were transported to an eroge school that's only populated by the main cast. Looking outside the window, Dreamysyu saw an unnatural amount of cherry trees in full bloom in the middle of July and the ocean not far in every single direction meaning they were in some non existing island near Japan. Way too eroge. Now the kouhai riding scene seems to be even closer to their grasp. Oh yeah, but most likely there's no kouhai anymore. Why even live as a protagonist like this? Right as Dreamysyu thought at least one girl must be around and everything would go back to normal by the end of the story so no need to panic... they heard voices. More than one. Coming from the auditorium... "My harem!" wasn't what they are thinking, but I can mess with them a little bit~ Dreamysyu opened the door and found 15 other bizarre students, almost all of them somewhat angry. "Tsk, another one?" someone said. "This must be the last one." another one that played Danganronpa before answered. Despite the hostile atmosphere, and Dreamysyu hostile appearance itself, a person approaches them. A cute girl with blue twintails, that managed to stay cheerful despite everything. Well, nothing happened yet, maybe that's why. "Hiiiiiii, and welcome to the Survivors' Club!" they already decided everybody else was killed, figures. "I'm Dergonu and I'll be glad to help you if you have any questions!" Dreamysyu was ready to raise an eyebrow but stopped. Dergonu. They remember that name. They are the Ultimate Mod, someone that did so good a job as a mod that they pretty much wiped out three forums into oblivion, such was the extension of the shitposting there. So mostly likely they know some behind the scenes stuff, it wouldn't hurt to stick around them... "No, I'm the one that truly knows everything." said a bespectacled dark haired woman with a hat that I'm guessing is a beret. Wait, did they just answered the narration? "Fiddle-samaaaaaaaaaaaa!! <3" yelled Dergonu before Fiddle could yet again answer the narration. And that name explained everything. Fiddle was known as the Ultimate Mastermind, said to have manipulated dozen other fanfics Fuwa users dared to write. Dreamysyu asked if this one would be any different, and Fiddle promptly shaked his head in a no, maybe spoiling the whole thing in the first chapter. "I can, and I will." "Wow, way to ruin the mystery. As expected of someone who liked Noble Works." said angrily a white haired guy with a gas mask. Although he's also white haired and faceless to boot, he wasn't the main character, maybe because there's way too much moe around for him to care about it. Because of that display, Dreamysyu recognized him in an instant: that was VirginSmasher, the Ultimate EOP. Said to have read all english non moege VNs in a spam of a single month, the experiment clearly corrupted his soul and it shows. In fact, he was already displeased to being forced to participate of such third-rate fanfic. "1/10 VN already, if we can even call this that." Virgin wasn't the only one that was displeased, that was indeed quite enough salt in the room. But the person that said the last line takes the cake. solidbatman, the Ultimate Salt. Even the Black Sea tried to steal the title from him, and lost. They can't drop out of the story because only I can decide that, but they already rate this a 1/10 in the middle of the prologue. Sasuga, jeez. And for all effects, solidbatman looks exactly like Batman because everything is better with Batman. "D-d-don't give it such a poor score so fast! After you read all scenes and read all text, I'm sure you'll give it at least a 8! And it does improve after the third choice of the second common route!" said a horned guy, going all technical. He had a huge encyclopedia in his arms, and he seemed to be looking at it right at this moment to know what exactly he was supposed to say next. Needless to say, that could only be SeniorBlitz, the Ultimate Guide, the guy said to be the only one that read the entire "book of answers for everything" that he now holds, and not just the tl;dr version that consisted of a tiny post-it with a 42 on it. "To be fair, you have to go multiple extra playthrough to fully understand Ste... I mean, this fic." said a cool with an almost zombie expression red haired girl with an out of place christmas hat. They were pretty well know, even more now that Steins;Gate 0 is airing. "Oh, it's Kurisu-chan, the Ultimate Tsundere!" said a poor soul, asking to be berated. "It's ULTIMATE STEINS;GATE FAN! I'm not even a Tsundere, how can I even be the Ultimate one! -Taku!" and then they proceed to talk about the last episode of S;G 0 unprompted just to prove their point of being the Ultimate S;G fan. Whoever was watching it too joined the conversation eventually. "This problem here does not change the fact that we have lots of Ultimates here." said an adorable blonde girl with a magical girl outfit. littleshogun, the Ultimate Magical Girl, seemed unfazed by everyone else, probably because of their experience with weird encounters with evil forces during all of their years working as a magical girl. "The purity of this magical girl... stirs the darkness. O Old Ones, lord of tentacled infernal beasts... I hope I can hold your thirst back with these hands of mine..." calmly stated a long haired blond, majestic and evil-looking man, even if that was in no way a calm matter. Even if he said that he hopes he can hold something or other, he probably can, single handed. That was the power of Clephas, the Ultimate Chuuni. He saw things, he did things... Even the Old Ones must be scared of him at this point. "Hey hey, enough with all this weebness. Moe kids already are a bit more than what I can handle, don't include tentacles too!" said another person from the pissed crowd. They were a beautiful brunette in a wedding dress that had all the right of being pissed if this story prevented them to marry his favorite boy. Oh well. The judge of anything weeb with strong sarcasm that I will not emulate all too well, probably, the new angry person is Zander, the Ultimate Outsider. "I might add that probably a weeb that gave me my Ultimate name, I'm not outside anything. Well, maybe outside a list of people going to jail, hell or both..." "You DO know that tentacle are a common japanese trope that's almost a history class on weebness if you actually look for the origin of the correlation between Magical Girls and tentacles, right?" said a glasses guy that looked all so smart. His face screams confidence, as expected of an Ultimate, but also passion for all the knowledge he acquired in the filthy pool of weeb hobbies. That was Pl_Lesiak, the man who looked at weebness in the eyes and came back victorious. Although he likes western weeb inspired things a bit too much, that's why his title quickly changed to Ultimate Westerner. Okay now, this title seems like he did some cowboy movies, and that's precisely why I decided to give him twin pistols in this story. The reason for that can be because a lot of people thought the same and then he went "why not?", I don't know. "'Twas indeed a bloody confusion." thought the red-claded young man besides Lesiak, after he told him his tale some time during my narration. He also had a dignified air and a posture as elegant and powerful as someone doing a gentle motion to raise their dead servants with necromancy. It couldn't be anyone else other than Mr Poltroon, the Ultimate Gentleman. And if someone have a better idea of how to write a gentleman without him sounding like an old brit, be my guest. "But now everything is A-Okay!" said a bubbly blue haired maid. Dreamysyu approached them because for a moment I almost forgot to use my protagonist for anything. But was it really necessary to ask who are they? Everyone there knew Kenshin_sama, the Ultimate Isekaier. Travelling to different worlds time and time again, the world within this tale is no different, so they were actually excited to explore one more world. They used their smartphone that they got in yet another world to take a lot of photos already and post everything in Jun Inoue's thread. Without them noticing, Kurisu-chan used the chance to complain about Re:Zero for a bit. "(ᗒᗨᗕ)" said another Ultimate, agreeing with Kenshin. Not that Zander allowed themselves to understand such a weebty so alien and far from proper english. Not that the cute pink haired girl cared, they just continued going （＾ω＾） around. If someone asked for the name of the tiny pink haired moe, they'll probably answer (⁎˃ᆺ˂) or something, so Dreamysyu did his protagonist part and told everyone they're Kiriririri, the Ultimate Moeblob. "I'm going to vomit if the happiness mood keeps going for too long. Can we kill each other yet?" said another short girl with some curtained bangs and pink eyes, spoiling yet another plot point if we can believe Fiddle's words that they already spoiled one. Stars appeared in their eyes as soon as they said the word "murder", what made them wave around happily, knocking Senior's encyclopedia on the floor on purpose just because. The book was so thick it could have opened a hole in the floor, but I'm not letting them escape this easily, so it just made a loud sound like whatever an elephant's fart sounds like. Even if they just look like a bully for now, in fact Ranzo is the Ultimate Bastard, hellbent on destruction and everyone else's disgrace. They couldn't simply leave all the fun to Clephas, or all the hatred to batman. They wanted a time to shine, even if killing everyone else was necessary for this. It actually was necessary, so of course they were enjoying this fic, and sadly maybe they're the only one. "I must agree that some people here are way too happy, even though everyone in school suddenly vanished and we're now trapped in a cheap imitation of the facility in some weird island and..." he actually said 34 more lines, but let's cut to the chase, shall we? tymmur, the Ultimate Orator, also had issues with how slow this story was going. Said to have recited the whole bible, Rewrite and France Shoujo before breathing in again, he looked like a wise old man in a glittered rainbow shirt that would totally be followed by some slave lolis if those still existed in the school. Well, there's Kiri, but I digress. "How horrible! How could a nice guy do something like this?" though the reader, but you need not worry. He's actually pretty nice with shotas, especially if they hook up with other shotas, he's just like this with 2D prostitute lolis that aren't protected by any 3D law. "For the sake of my sanity, I'll disagree." said Zander, what prompted tymmur to say another 67 lines, but since this chapter is almost over I'll skip it again. "Pardon my interruption of thy argument, sir, but I'm afraid we are not alone in this school..." said Poltroon, with a fierce expression of wanting to draw his sword if he had one. An annoying nihihi echoed through the room and it was coming... from the monitor on the wall that suddenly went on with a stream! "I see your all getting along! Yay! Welcome to the..." "*You're." Fiddle corrected before the naked girl could utter another mistake. Still feeling bad, eventually they introduced themselves as Mitchnomi, a 1/3 bear, a 1/3 rabbit, a 1/3 comic relif, all bad. They are doing the role of Monomi so naturaly they got shooed away not long after by the students. "KYAAAAAAAAAA!" screamed the rabbit girl, that apparently got shooed away in the other side of the monitor too. "...Can we just pretend this didn't happen and go back to... whatever was happening in the story?" batman asked and then everyone remembered what Poltroon said. It was really just about Mitchnomi? For once, everyone shut up and paid attention to the surrounding sounds. Something... was coming from the corridor. A stupid laugh soon echoed. "Upupupu... Pupupu... Upupupupupu!" "Da fuck is this?" is what Dreamysyu should have asked at the very beginning of the story. "Upupupu... Upupupwahahahahahahaha!" the laugh got even louder. Well, of course, the person laughing just entered the room, flames erupting behind them for whatever epic reason. Ranzo found it amazing and set fire to the curtain too. Clephas wanted to summon some things too, but decided against because it was still too early in the story for final boss moments. "Who... are you?" asked Dergonu, hoping for something not stupid. "Bitch please, who else could I be? The one and only, powerful and sexy, MAGGIEKUMA!" "I am not seeing a bear here." littleshogun pointed to the pretty boy that's now in front of the kids. They had white hair and black clothes so it totally fits the mono part of the name, even the 2B plushie they're carrying fits, but noooo I had to pick the kuma part. You can all agree with me that Monomaggie doesn't sound just as good. "Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares if I'm not a bear! Moe is the new thing, so hopefully pretty boys are here to stay." Maggiekuma explained why they decided to stick with the 9S in their avatar and not 2B. "They will, if you choose the second choice and then the fourth after [SPOILERS] dies! That way, you'll rule the world and make everyone likes whatever you want" Senior just gave me a dangerous but awesome idea. "∠(^ー^)" Kiri doesn't seem to mind. "Good thing I didn't have any expectation for this story." Virgin already gave up. "But you can end all of this... Killing everyone!" dramatic close up in Maggiekuma's face. "All according to the keikaku!" said Ranzo with a grim, even if they didn't really have a fucking plan. NEXT TIME: The rules of the deathgame and... Someone dies! But that's a twist!

Persona 5 was a game that I was expecting for a long time, given that I'm a fan of the series and Persona 4 was pretty good. Too bad it quickly earned the title of "biggest disappointment of the year" for me. The way people were praising it didn't help either because I was expecting a masterpiece and found something so-so at best. The epitome of style over substance, I played half the game to see that everything I liked in that game some older game in the franchise already did it, and did it better. But enough of those unrelated complaints, as this blog is about gay things. So here comes another one of my many nitpicks: I don't play Persona to self-insert myself in the MC, so I couldn't care less about not having a female MC (although that would be super cool, and at the same time disappointing, as ATLUS let it very clear that the last time they gave us the option her storyline was NOT canon), but please at least give me the option to pick any love interest I want! This is optional, you know, that thing that's you're not forced to pick to go on, so it shouldn't offend anyone, right? Wrong. Have your blank protagonist that have no info about him except that he's heterosexual. Have fun. I wouldn't really write a salty blog post about this if at least the girls were as interesting and cool as they were in Persona 4 (even if best bro Yosuke was still the best pairing, just saying). If. The girls from your party are all (okay, maybe not Haru, because I didn't met her) a stereotyped bore, their lines are either predictable or inconsequential things that could have being said by anyone. Okay, that's not only the girls, even your best bro is just a generic bro. And the one girl that aren't in my party that could be a good love interest stole 100000 yen from me when I was barely being able to buy all guns from the shop so of course I wouldn't give that witch a piece of my love. There was only two characters that managed to make me care about them: Yusuke, the eccentric ikemen, and Mishima, our loyal fanboy. But the game only let us be best friends forever, now I'll die for you, but kiss nah that's too much. Game, stop cockblocking my character!!! But I don't wanna be just friends... But it's not that there's no gay character in this game! We go to Shinjuku, and the Shinjuku Ni-chōme area is a thing after all. But eeerrr... the only gay characters I met in Shinjuku was a very stereotyped pair that appear just for a stereotyped joke scene. Twice even. It wasn't particularly funny in the first time, ATLUS, repeating it definetly won't make it funnier. It actually just rub salt in my wounds because you won't let me date Yusuke! But what happened with ATLUS these past years? They let me date my childhood friend Jun (that's pretty much Yusuke but more shy and more gay) back in Persona 2. Even when the game didn't have friend simulator mechanics. That game also had Hitler as one of the final bosses in a way that makes sense in the plot, so I guess they could never make a game as amazing as that. Best Persona. But anyway, I guess the problem is exactly the friend simulator thing, that also doubles as girlfriend simulator. You see, no matter what choice you pick, all girls always fall for you, no fail. So yeah, including male love interests means that they would have to make them by the end of the social links all blushy and shy and wanting to hold your hand and... ARGH, BUT THAT WOULD BE ADORABLE, DAMN ATLUS! But like I was saying, the social link as they are now are very poorly implemented. Hell, in Persona 3, you were actually forced to date all girls and four-timing made the game even harder because you could make one of them pissed if you were spending your weekend with another girl. Well, duh. But yeeeeeah, what can I do? The girls keep coming even if I only agree with whatever they are saying just so I can max the social link with her and finally unlock this beast to use in battle: Wait a minute, that Persona over there was from a guy's social link! But I can't remember any useful Persona that unlocks with a girl's social link............... Why did I even try again? Not that I tried too much in Persona 3... Hey, but it could be a lot lot worse! Remember No One But You? Okay, me neither, I spent a good time looking for the name of this VN. We have a best friend route there, but it's mostly a joke and pity and pornless route because the poor guy didn't get any girl. Oooooh who would even think of going for him from the start! Althought, looking at the CGs in VNDB, the porn seems to suck anyway. Well, the text always sucks, but in this case the CGs sucks too. And we also have Mass Effect Andromeda! We have option for both gender and orientation, but I hope you didn't want to see the boys/aliens going for more than kiss because the male MC and male love interest is the only combination where the super tame porn included in the game doesn't exists, it just fades to black. Then again, the facial expressions of the characters sucks more than No One But You sex scenes, so guess we didn't lose much here either. And for the final example, a date sim/nukige made by Illusion, of all things, that lets you choose your gender and orientation and clearly lets you make an all-boys harem. Oh right, I just forgot to mention that male on male scenes don't exist in the game, fade to black again, het and yuri are fine though. Yeeeeeep, you can play a nukige without any porn. Why even give me the gay option then?????? Fortunately, the game is for PC so kind people quickly modded the damn thing and now it's a 11/10 ge. And now I'll complain that those devs are slowly making their games more gay but it's still not enough gay because I need to title drop somewhere in this post. Let's get out of our confort zone, AAA devs! And yet, some sensitive people complain on how the gay pandering is ruining the industry with our incredible 0.5% of non-indie games that actually gives people a decent and totally optional choice, sure. And it's not like I'm trying to make every game gay, I'm not against that, but I can see it doesn't work well in every single place. Some canon het pairings in single heroine games wouldn't be as perfect if we included more options. It DOES works wonderfully with blank slates MCs like Persona ones, but we need some good guys too. In multiple-times-mentioned Persona 3 I would totally go for a girl anyway, because the girls from my party were mostly good while my best bro Junpei is so bro that he would probably stab me to take my place if I ever let my guard down around him. It would totally be a trap, but not that trap. And I can't risk dying outside the dungeons. I'll finish Persona 5 regardless, eventually. It's a solid 7/10 game for now (DISCLAIMER: in my ratings, 7 is usually okay, it was entertaining but either had hard-to-ignore flaws or it's a bit forgetable). But I have to confirm that the last two dungeons won't save it of being my least favorite Persona game. Shin Megami Tensei 5 when btw? Salt out!

What did you just say about lolis sold to a brothel, Kokoro? I'll have you know I graduated top of my English Literature class at the University of Miami, and have over 50 confirmed credits as a visual novel editor. I am trained in English and I am well known as one of the top editors on Fuwanovel. As we speak I am contacting my network of experts across the internet right now to assemble and work on Musumaker together so you better prepare for the patch, maggot. If only you knew what kind of lolige your "clever" little comment was about to bring onto the world, maybe you would haven't clicked on "Submit Reply". But you couldn't, you didn't, and now the entire VN community will pay the price.

It plucks the threads that make us dance, finger and toe... We surrender, in joy, to the lowest of the foul and rank. We submerge through darkness, rancid filth, hour by hour we move downward, ever closer to hell. In a slow, steady, gait. Now, let the world resonate: Sloth, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Lust, Wrath, and Pride. A bell of chaos that tolls human desires. After two thousand long years, the one sealed gate to the demonic world will open! DESTRUCTION! CARNAGE! and DESPAIR! Let your instincts drive you! Entrap this world in fear! As the very name MaggieROBOT strikes terror into the hearts of mankind! And I will become the order to rule this wasteland, engulf with pandemonium. The demonic power that was once imprisoned in the depths of Fuwa... will be MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA! __________________________ | | | Just Maggie. | | | | OK | | | ___________________________ Now, let the Maggie worshipping begin, aha~ DISCLAIMER: That was supposed to be a milestone thread, but the AMA thing is getting old. So here's a new edgy twist to the thing~ I don't know what you guys are supposed to do with that, so... Start a new religion maybe, Idk.

Still working on the playtesting part. I'm checking things on my end first, but I'm getting closer to finishing it. Then I can send to QC. Hopefully, we can still release the partial patch by the end of the year. Fingers crossed!

This is an opinion that has been a long time in forming, but I am coming around to an opinion that the more simplistic viewpoints I've possessed on the differences between American approaches to storytelling and Japanese ones are somewhat off the mark. Note: This is a rant, it should be treated as a rant, and if it doesn't make sense to you, that is because it is my brain leaking into text on this blog. First, my original opinion: To put it simply, it was my belief that the Japanese had a tendency to go for emotional surrealism (in other words, emotional bombardment) and visual excess (exaggeration) to tell their stories. In opposition, Americans tend to go for the 'gritty and realistic', with straight out bullet to the head realism. This was a generalization that, while based on my experiences with Japanese video games that told a story (both VNs and jrpgs) and Western games that more or less tried to do the same (Isometric RPGs, Bethesda-style games, etc), was never meant to be an absolute statement but just a general opinion of the tendencies I'd encountered. Second, my new opinion: First, I've come to the conclusion that American gaming companies don't know how to tell a story anymore (since Bioware has gone crappy, Obsidian is about to get absorbed/has been absorbed by a company that has no idea of what it is doing, and the Witcher was made by Polish people). Second, the Japanese seem to suffer from a similar malaise... and the source is, quite ironically, fairly similar in the cases of mainstream games. It is the disease I call the 'MMO virus'. Yes, you who actually read my blog know my opinion on online multiplayer games and what they have done to erode storytelling games in general, but my recent conclusion is that this erosion has actually reached a critical point in the last five years. Rebellions against the progression of this disease have occurred (Tales of Berseria, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and Nier: Automata come to mind for the Japanese, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire for America), but these have been relatively minor upthrusts against the toxins released by the cloud of mission-based 'stories' you see in games nowadays. Bethesda has also contributed to this plague (fetch quests and hunt the monster quests being a common plague for them as well), and it seems like every time I turn around, I see another game trying to tell its story through an obvious mission or quest system is sitting right there. Sure, the systems had their roots in D&D games, but the way they've developed is the result of the plague that infected the world using games like WoW as its vector. I first began to see signs of this disease back in the PS2 era, though it was mostly limited to 'high end' games at the time, like Final Fantasy (XII having essentially repurposed and altered XI's MMO battle system for a single-player model), I was honestly horrified to see how easy it was to let myself get led around by the nose from objective to objective in hopes that I'd find the story in there somewhere. The problem was, once the objectives became my reason for playing (as was inevitable, because that is the tactic they use to draw you in), I increasingly realized that I couldn't enjoy what story was being told, because I was impatient to get to the next objective, even though I didn't find any of that searching for objectives to be fun in the least. VNs suffer from a different set of problems. While jrpgs and western games suffer from the simple fact that the current generation of makers grew up obsessing over pathetic attempts to graft stories onto multiplayer games, VNs suffer from the fact that the best and brightest of their creators are... getting old. Hell, some of them even died in between projects. Worse, no one of equal capability has replaced them, leading to an unfortunate confluence of near-universal incompetence and corporate inability to grasp the reasons for failure and fix it. No, I'm not saying that all new VNs suck. Hell, if they all sucked, I wouldn't still be trying to go back and play them, like the burnt-out junkie I am. No, my issue is that there is a sudden dearth of developed talent within the world of VNs that has gotten horrible in the last five years. Most of the major names are retired, have moved on to 'greater' things, or are dead. Shumon Yuu is silent, Hino Wataru seems to have gone underground, Masada is probably off in his own little world, Fujisaki Ryuuta is circling in place, Kurashiki Tatsuya is off indulging his inner sadist with half-assed games, Kazuki Fumi can't seem to stick with one thing long enough to make it great since Akeiro Kaikitan, and Agobarrier is three years dead. That isn't even mentioning all the formerly major names that have just decided to retire without telling anyone or got hired away by mainstream video game companies. What is replacing them are primarily LN writers... who, unfortunately, tend to write like middle school street kids on crack (and not in a good way). They often have great ideas, but they are fuzzy about execution and lacking in technique. As a result, you get a bunch of third-rate one-off VNs that no one really likes. Artists aren't a problem. There will always be plenty of skilled otaku artists who can draw h-scenes. The issue is and always will be writers... because it is the writer that decides whether a VN will become remembered for years to come or be dropped back into the dung at the bottom of the latrine.

Hello everyone, I'm back with another progress update. The translation for chapter 8 is now under way. Currently, about 10-15% of the script has been translated. As for the translation check, Danywar is continuing with his work on chapter 1. We've been quite busy so there hasn't been much progress, but I'll try my best to work on it whenever I can get some free time. I think that's about it this time. Thank you for reading and see you next time ^^.

Translation Prologue - 100% (1791/1791) Main School - 100% (2691/2691) Tonoko Route - 100% (8709/8709) Branch School - 35% (2039/5846) Total - 22% (15229/68206) TLC Prologue - 100% (1791/1791) Main School - 6% (157/2691) Branch School - 3% (187/5846) Total - 3% (2135/68206) Edit Prologue - 100% (1791/1791) Main School - 6% (157/2691) Branch School - 25% (1441/5846) Total - 5% (3360/68206) Ittaku has fully translated Tonoko's route. He'll be moving onto Miyabi's soon enough, but he can relish in this great achievement right now. Branch School in terms of both TL and Editing is going strong as well. We are still looking for a permanent TLC to work on this project. Please PM me if you're interested in working as a TLC for this project. That's all for this week. See you in another couple of weeks.

Trample on Schatten!! Restoration Patch - Presented by The Order of Restoration - | VNDB | Buy the game from JAST here | Download the patch here | What does our patch do? Our patch restores all the cut content from JAST’s release of Trample on Schatten!! We put back in cut voice acting, CGs, text, BGM, cut-ins — the list goes on. JAST only removed one scene, but putting everything back into the game was a real pain in the arse, which is why it took us so long. How to install the patch Info on how to install the patch can be found in "Readme.txt" in the patch directory But, if you are lazy: Credit Translation: Arata Hacking/Technical Support: Src_ Editing & other important work: Anonymous soldiers from The Order of Restoration Demosaicing: Helvetica Standard (While the standard patch uses the original artist's decensored CGs, we had Helvetica decensor the mosiaced CGs for us at the start of the project, not knowing decensored files existed in the JAST version of the game. As such, we felt it would be wrong not to credit Helvetica in this post. We are working on a second patch which uses these decensored files, so his work is not in vain. We will update the post with a second patch using his CGs, and you can all decide which one you think looks the best.) (Check out Helvetica's patreon if you like his work.)

Hello everyone, I'm back with another progress update. About the translation, I've finished with the translation of chapter 7, just in time for it to still be within this month XD. I'll start working on chapter 8 soon. As for the translation check, Danywar has already gone through the prologue. He's currently working on chapter 1, with about 10-15% of it already done. After all the good news, there's the bad news. We still haven't been able to find an Editor or Image Editor yet. I'll try my best to assemble the whole team as soon as possible. For now, please wait a little longer. Of course, whether or not the team is fully assembled, we'll continue working on our own parts. Worst case scenario, we'll put some kind of edit in ourselves and release the patch XD. But well, let's hope it won't come to that. I think that's about it for this update. Thank you for reading and see you next time ^^.

So just to give an update: I finished translating Saint Irene/Lavria's chapter (Chapter 3) last Friday ^^. Just didn't get to post an update here until now. Next up would be Chapter 4 (Licia's chapter), and this is going to be the longest chapter to translate with about 12500 lines, so yeah, it's going to take me quite a while to finish translating this. As for partial patch-wise, I'm still doing final checks on Chapter 2 (Eris' chapter) before handing it to QC. QC on Prologue and Chapter 1 (Fione's chapter) is more or less done, so just Eris' chapter left and some final checks before we release the partial patch

07/27 - Hachiroku's Route COMPLETED!!!! DOWNLOAD

JAST announcements: Flowers Summer and Trample on Schatten BOTH releasing on July 16th, with early copies available at AX. Togainu no Chi, Lamento, and Dramatical Murder announced for JAST Blue, their BL brand. Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi. announced. This game is really popular. Sweet Pool is coming soon, and not just "jast time soon." Work on Flowers Autumn has started (though JAST already announced their intent to translate the entire series a few years ago)

Hello, Fuwa! We've always been a community with nice discussions, a great recommendations subforum and people who like very different VNs across all genres, languages and styles. So it's about time this shared knowledge and warm, vibrant community produces something everyone can use to browse through VNs. This is why we're now developing a Fuwa Recommendation Program! It's like a recommendation chart, except it isn't a chart but a quiz! We want to provide recommendations based on the user's tastes, general preferences and experience - from the newbie-friendly starter VNs to the super specific untranslated VN for the oldbie. So we need a big, diverse and interesting list from which the program can generate a shortlist for you. And you're very welcome to suggest new titles! Currently, we're at 301 titles, 50 of which are EVNs and 55 of which are untranslated: VNDB's most popular 200 titles, except sequels Recommendations from @BunnyAdvocate, @Plk_Lesiak, @MaggieROBOT, @Clephas, @Zalor and @Zakamutt Every VN that received a favorable FuwaReview (4* or 5*) Check the current list out here and post titles you want to see recommended to everyone that you're not seeing on the list! Thanks to everyone who is making this possible, especially BunnyAdvocate (once again bringing amazing algorithms and info to the table), without whom this wouldn't be possible at all. I hope we can bring all kinds of VN players and readers together for this. EDIT: The site is now ready! Access it here. You can keep recommending VNs, as we'll add more over time.

Thanks. Things just need to be redone and reworked. A botched TL project shouldn't stay a botched one. The quality is not up to snuff and the last thing I personally want is to be looked down upon because we aren't getting paid or are considered "n00bs". Both official and unofficial TL projects require weeks and weeks of work for very little in return, especially in real life. It's demoralizing and tedious at times both with the team and as individuals. We could quit, but those would just be excuses for our own selfish reasons. Nobody gets rich off of doing this and it's not exactly something I want on a resume for a job offline. It's more than "just a hobby" when people are counting on you to deliver a translation deserving of VNs as a whole. For how long we've been working on it, it's no longer an excuse to say that "we are just starting out". I want to get this right and I want people to be critical of our work. If our TL is shit, tell us why. The people that take the time to point out our mistakes (especially those that are brutally honest) are the ones that deserve the best TL possible because it shows they haven't given up on us. They're still taking the time to tell us that our work is pretty shitty and want better. I'm not perfect, but I want to strive for perfection. It's why our team is redoing things and not leaving things as is. Because you guys deserve better than that. Unfortunately, reworking lines aren't reflected on our progress chart and it might appear that the project is stalled or dead when it's not. I'm hoping that redoing things will pay off in the end for both the team and for the people who want to read Loverable in English. To those of you that are still around, thanks for not giving up on us. It's been almost a year and a half without anything to show for it. We're still here though, even if we aren't active on the forums as much. Hell, I rarely posted at all around here since I don't have much to say. I'm still working on it though behind the scenes and I'm okay with that. I'm probably not gaining anything from working on this and finishing it. I'm used to doing thankless and unrewarding jobs though, both in person and online. I'm sure there's others out there who feel the same. We said we were going to TL Loverable without botching it and it's what we're going to do so you can enjoy it as much as we do. Well, this reply is starting to turn into an essay and using time I could be using for Loverable before going to work, so I'll cut it short. TDLR: Thanks for whoever is sticking with us and looking forward to our release, whether it's one person or a handful of people. We're working on improving on our previously botched effort and will give you more updates when get past redoing our old work. Some won't like it or that admitting that we need to redo stuff is a noob thing to do, but after months of showing no progress except for graphs... I think it's the respectful and right thing for us as a TL group to do. Peace out.

Today we are proud to announce that in an effort to get fuwanovel's userbase accustomed to japanese text, we have decided to make it so that all topics are read and written sideways. We expect this change to have a great effect, and in about two weeks we plan on permanently changing the site to only allow for japanese posts Cheers The fuwanovel Staff Team.,

They don't have the right people to handle anything.