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Hello everyone, I'm back with an update, and a late Christmas, early new year gift for everyone . Well, you've probably guessed what it is, since there's not really anything else I can give you at this time XD. But still, here it is at last, the partial patch with full translated text! Yay!! XD A little about the patch: - Just as its name suggests, only the texts have been fully translated. Hubb and Nylios are still hard at work on editing the images. We'll update the patch and make an announcement regarding that in the future ^^. - With that said, there are edited images included in the patch, such as the tutorial images, the town spots' names, ect. While there aren't that many, I hope that their inclusion will be useful during your playthrough. - While this patch included all translated text, it doesn't mean all of them have been tlc-ed/edited yet. Because of that, there will probably be many mistakes, typos, etc.. If you encounter them, please let us know, we'll fix them in our next patch. Thank you very much. - This patch does include the translations for both appends, so please make sure to install both appends before applying this patch. I haven't tested it yet, but there is a chance you won't be able to launch the game after applying the patch if you only have one append. If this happens, please let me know. I'll make a separate patch for people with 1 append, or no append at all. (Let's hope I can do it XD) How to apply the patch: - It's the same as the previous patch. All you have to do is extracting the patch into the root directory of the game. - If you're going to use ZAP's interface patch, please apply their patch first, then ours. Do keep in mind that our translation may differ. - In case you need it, the order to install the game and applying the patch is: Installing the game -> Append 1 -> Update 1.01 -> Append 2 -> ZAP's patch -> Our patch. And finally, the patch. Here's the link to the patch: https://mega.nz/#F!MstRHI6S!bQVaRTSLnwQPNjYuCJKfpw While this isn't the final version of the patch, we'd love to hear your feedback if you decide to use our patch. It'll also help us improve the translation for the final version as well ^^. Well, I guess that's about it for the last update of the year. Quite a wall of text, isn't it? XD Thank you very much for reading, and for following us all this time ^^. Though it's a little early, Happy New Year, everyone! And see you again next year .

Hello everyone, It's been a while, but I'm back with another update, and probably the last one for KnR. As this is the last update, you've probably guessed what this means... All the images have been edited and the full patch has been released! (Yay) Here's the link to the full patch: https://mega.nz/folder/MstRHI6S#bQVaRTSLnwQPNjYuCJKfpw This is the same link as the one in the op. You can use either one to get the patch. Since this is the full patch, all of the Japanese texts have been translated... or so I'd like to say. But unfortunately, there are still some minor texts that I couldn't find, so they're still untranslated. With that said, they're just some minor texts and won't impact your experience with the game. I hope that our patch will be useful for you as you enjoy this game ^^. Now, with the release of this patch, we won't be focusing on KnR anymore. The patch also won't get update unless there are some game-breaking bugs. Instead, we'll now focus on our other projects. As for those projects... The next game we've decided to work on is Fuukan no Grasesta. Alongside that, we've also decided to work on our own interface patch for Tenmei no Conquista. I'll go into details in the projects' threads (once I create them XD). That's it for now. Thank you very much for supporting and sticking with us in this journey. We really appreciate it. See you in our next project's thread ^^!

It is done. The translation is officially 100% done Progress will now move on to post-translation, where there's TLC and QC to be done. I'm hoping to finish everything else and release the patch by end 2020 (unlikely, but hey, you never know). If not, then at least get the TLC done by end 2020. So do refer to the TLC tab of the sheet for progress on the TLC. I will save my translation remarks for after the patch is fully released. For now though, rejoice that the translation is done! Yay!

Hello everyone, And sorry for not posting any update in a really long time. We've been a bit busy recently, and I couldn't access fuwa for some reason zzz. Other members can access normally, but my internet refused to cooperate with me... Now, as for the update, most of the images are edited, so I think we'll be able to release the full patch sometimes soon, hopefully during summer. With that said, the text edit may not be finished in time. I'm very sorry about this. We'll at least try to fix as much typos and mistakes as possible before the full patch. If we can find the time and make enough progress, we'll update the full patch with the edited text. Next is an announcement regarding us. Our group now has a name! (Finally lol) We've decided to name our group 'Rhapsody Translation' as a tribute to this game, the game that brought all of us together. We'll mostly be focusing on Eushully's games, though we may do VNs from other companies as well in the future. Another news is that we've decided on our next project. This is still KnR thread, so I won't go too deep into it for now. We'll make a proper announcement regarding that another time. Please look forward to it ^^. That's about it for now. Thank you very much for reading, and see you next time ^^!

So I'm sure most of you have realized by now that I've finished translating the main story . Never had I translated something faster than any other parts of the story, also because I knew that I was at the last stretch at least for the main story. So now, all that's left is translating the side stories/appendix stories. I will be translating the side stories while the rest of my team handle the editing and QC of the main story, so chances are, I might finish translating the side stories as well before they finished their editing and QC of the main story. My original plan was to release another partial patch covering just Saint Irene's chapter and fixes for Eris' chapter, but seeing that I'm done translating the main story, I might hold out until we're done with everything, including the side stories. But yeah, either way, milestone achieved! Yay!

Hi everybody. My name is Tay. I’m the site admin, and I’m writing this post to share a few thoughts and to apologize for what has been a very difficult period for the site (and many of us in the real world, myself included). Please note that I am actively working on the site today (01:26 update: currently waiting on Nayleen’s help on a mysql issue that I don’t know how to solve) and will be available in this thread and on Discord throughout the day. Why did you disappear? I was overwhelmed by real-world responsibilities and the real-world issues affecting the site. I feel deeply that it’s my responsibility to keep an appropriate baseline amount of support (server, forums fees, forums UI theme subscriptions, front site plugin subscriptions), and have mostly done so, but not being here in a full, active manner means that I was unaware of even large issues, such as Invision losing my auto-pay details. I feel really bad, guys. I'm sorry. Why didn’t you more proactively pass along the keys to other community members instead of just ghosting us? Dropping torrents caused hundreds of real-world issues that made a site hand-off – even partially – unconscionable until resolved. It makes me happy that they feel like an ancient memory to most of you, but they have been my lived reality for a long time. Only this summer did that chapter fully come to a close. Fuwa is in the clear, for what it’s worth, and for the first time I feel like I have options. What the &$% is going on with site/forums updates? I’m working to fix some issues in how I access the various databases on the server. Once that’s fixed everything will be updated and troubleshooted. It’s going to be another Fuwapocalypse. But it’s gotta be done. I give you my word that, so long as I can get @Nayleen’s help, this will be done by week’s end. As regards the forms, specifically, Invision, the software company who made our forums software, deleted the auto-pay credentials I’d given them and the software license lapsed for several months. It’s been renewed and everything will be updated as soon as I get Nay’s assistance and make a bunch of meticulous backups. What is your plan for Fuwanovel going forward? It may not be appropriate for that to be my call. I need to touch base with all the core users still active and sort out what’s best. I love Fuwanovel. It’s been a work of love spanning more than ten thousand hours (and much more than that in dollars). But my focus and passion -- help bring visual novels into the wider gaming community – has been realized. I’ve been fortunate enough to facilitate or be part of some major, tectonic shifts in the industry. It’s a different world and I am likely not the best equipped to pick a direction. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. What I’m confident about, however, is that the way I went about building Fuwa, while successful, is unsustainable. Palas put it incredibly well last month: “It’s like running a business, but without, well, the business.” Perfectly said. For better or worse, I’m wholly or largely responsible for the projects he highlights: enormous and technical VNTS posts which took two people 5 or so hours to do every Friday night, an ambitious reviews hub scouring VN reviews from across the net, a VN reviews team, forums projects, etc. A lot of what I did on Fuwa amounted to spending ungodly amounts of time watching trends in both the industry and site traffic and building ideas around what I thought would bring interest to the community and the VN player base. It worked well: we had huge traffic and played an important role in bringing VNs out of obscurity. But the lived reality was often me researching, designing and proposing these projects, and asking others to step up and either run or contribute to them without compensation. We’d have people putting in 20 hours a week, some weeks, on top of core admin staff working 30-40 hours weekly, and it STILL wasn’t enough. Most pitched in because we liked the cause, and liked hanging out with each other, and liked the dopamine rush of user engagement. Some did it because I asked them. And some did it because they felt like they had to. I’m still working on pulling apart my feelings on this issue. I don’t know how to fix this part of being a fan site. I do know that it is wrong to ask so much of members without paying them. Fuwa has never made money and I was never able to pay for help. This isn’t going to change anytime soon, so any new site reality is going to have to take into account the need for a lessened human cost. Anything else you want to say? Tons. But that’s good for now. I’m spamming Nayleen on all the usual channels and mostly just want to get the site fully updated. We can chew on the site’s existential questions in the meantime.

Hello everyone. Before going into the project, here's some information regarding the game: - Kami no Rhapsody (https://vndb.org/v16341) is a VN/SRPG hybrid by the company Eushully, the same company that made Kamidori Alchemy Meister. - Sypnosis (taken from VNDB, with some changes made to go with our translation patch): Translation team: Rhapsody Translation Team Members: - Translator: FlamePaladin - Translation Checker: Danywar, Dark_Gamer - Editor: Vuken, Yuuko Shionji - Image Editor: Nylios, hubb2001, Bilbael, pegg We have a full team atm, but if you want to join us, please send me a message or post in this thread. Thank you ^^. Special thanks: - Huang Yin Ling and maefdomn for their very useful threads. - binaryfail for helping me find the tools to work on this patch. - SaintLouisX, asmodean and Aroduc for their tools. - Special thanks to Kirashi for motivating me to work on this patch, and for the feedback. I really appreciate it. - Special thanks to Mr Poltroon for your work as an editor in this project. Though it was short, I really appreciate your help ^^. - Special thanks to Danywar. Thank you very much for joining the team as the Translation Checker. I'll be counting on you a lot from now on . - Special thanks to glupak. Thank you very much for everything you've done for the project. I really appreciate it ^^. - Special thanks to Vuken. Thank you very much for joining as our Editor. Tbh, I don't even know if you're in this forums lol. In any case, I'll be counting on you to make our patch readable XD. - Special thanks to nylios. Thank you very much for joining the team. I'll be counting on you for a lot of things, so prepare yourself . - Special thanks to hubb2001. Thank you very much for joining us as our image editor. I'll be counting on you for the images XD. - Special thanks to pegg and Bilbael. Thank you very much for joining us as our image editors. Let's do our best to make the complete patch a reality! XD - Special thanks to Yuuko Shionji and Dark_Gamer. Thank you for joining as our TLC-er and editor. Let's make this patch the best it can be XD. Finally, here's the link to the full patch: MEGA link: https://mega.nz/#F!MstRHI6S!bQVaRTSLnwQPNjYuCJKfpw The full patch has been released. However, there are still some minor texts that I couldn't find, so they're still untranslated. With that said, they're just some minor texts and won't impact your experience with the game. Do note that our patch does not include any of the game updates, so you'll have to update them separately. All of the game's updates and appends are translated in our patch though. Now, with the release of this patch, we won't be focusing on KnR anymore. The patch also won't get update unless there are some game-breaking bugs. Instead, we'll now focus on our other projects. With that said, please contact us if you encounter crash or any other problem. We'll try to fix it as soon as possible (and if it's related to our patch XD). This is everything from me for now. If you took your time to read that wall of text, thank you very much. Even if you didn't, thank you for showing enough interest to click on the thread. See you!

A shame Jack has to leave, but real life takes priority so it's understandable. Anyway, I'll be taking over as main editor and project leader of the restoration, and right away I'll be making some changes: We will do two patches: One with the original translation + H-scenes, and another doing a TLC pass for the whole game. After reading it for a bit, I realized right away that the base translation is atrocious and the inaccuracies are abundant, so we've decided to go the IMHHW route and do a TLC pass over the whole game. This game DESERVES a proper translation, and not the butchered version TokyoToon/Harukaze shat out. But we also decided to split said TLC effort from the H-scenes patch, so as to not make people wait for it (it would make me happy if you did, though). There will be some style changes too: We will use present tense for the narration. The great majority of visual novels are written in present tense because they're meant to be seen from the eyes of the protagonist, and while I do agree that past tense does look a bit better than present tense if done properly, in this case it was obviously NOT done properly, and I don't believe myself good enough to try. Regarding Noratoto 2: The hacker said he'll start working on it, but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. This project's been going slow but steady, so let's not rush it. The translation's been stalled for a bit because our TL has been sick, but we should start picking up speed again soon. So yeah, the H-scene patch is still months away, but we WILL see this restoration done.

Hey, what's up? Here's some updates for the project: Patricia's second H-scene, and another script after it which was removed, are done. Total lines done: 1287 out of 8586. Rounded up, that's 15% done so far! Editing is currently sitting at roughly 9%. Like Zeph said, much of our team was busy for the holidays, myself included, but we should be picking our pace soon. Here's hope next update we can bring it to 30%.

You are all fools!

I personally think that VNs right now are in a sense stuck in a cursed loop. VNs as a medium just really lack variety and as a result appeal to a small number of people. Even most all-ages titles follow the same story structure: even in non-adult titles a male protagonist always has to be surrounded by a lot of female love interests; it almost always has to take place in high-school; even in plot-focused stories there are a lot of slice-of-life scenes, which aren't even well written, and mostly just serve as a way to stall the story for some time rather than developing the characters; finally, the personalities of the protagonist, the heroines and even the side characters typically just follow certain well-known archetypes. So, if you just happen not to enjoy some of these titles and just want to find something more unique, you're much better off watching some anime or reading a manga. Otome games are a bit different, but, from my limited experience with them, they seem to have a bag of different, though slightly similar, problems. There are indeed some unique and experimental VNs that do things differently, but most of these are doujin titles and don't get that much exposure. Most of them aren't even that good, since good authors are likely to join some company at some point and start making a lot more standard VNs, or leave the medium altogether. Also, we, the current VN fans, enjoy these tropes to at lest to some extend, and a lot of us actually prefer them. As a result, in a short run it's not a very good strategy for companies to experiment with story structures, since they don't know if the fans would like these changes, and they just stick to the strategy that worked thus far. And VNs are also expensive to make, so they don't allow for much flexibility. Nowadays, manga and light novel authors don't even have to make any initial investment at all, since they just can start posting their stories online and see how people react to them, or even completely stick to episodic online distribution. In case of VNs, even a single financially unsuccessful product can make a whole company go bankrupt. I personally think that if VNs somehow let this loop, there's a good chance that they would start appeal to a bigger number of people. They probably wouldn't be the same people as the current VN fans. Will they ever do that? I doubt it, but I don't know. EVNs might actually lead to something interesting at some point, who knows?

I took my first steps onto the road of the otaku in 1992, when I watched the poorly dubbed (all dubs were godawful back then) Record of Lodoss War Volume 1 OVA VCR tape. Now, I was already a heavy fantasy addict, having been introduced to the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in 1990, and my obsession was at its peak at the time. When I watched Record of Lodoss War, I saw the typical 'elven maiden with human hero' romance in a new way (incidentally, this is a pretty typical romantic theme in those days, less so nowadays). I also saw oddities that stood out as odd to me precisely because of the oddly black and white point of view enforced on one by the various D&D universes. Of course, I was a chuunibyou brat by that time, already, so it should surprise no one that I got obsessed. It got ten times worse, however, when I encountered Chrono Trigger as it was played on my cousin's SNES. Chrono Trigger is still, to this day, one of the single best rpgs ever made. Looking back, considering all that has been done since then, it is almost TERRIFYING that someone was able to do what was done with Chrono Trigger with the limitations placed by using the SNES system. The story, the world, and the various layers of time were put together into such a subtly complex experience that, to this day, I've yet to see any other rpg manage it. Chrono Cross would manage to imitate some elements of this with its parallel world jumping, but Chrono Trigger's jumping around in time gave you impetus to explore how every aspect of the world could change based on how and when you did certain things. Rumors constantly abounded that there were secret endings (such as the infamous 'vampire Chrono' or 'Save Schala' fake rumors, which some believe led to the way the Chrono Cross storyline was handled), and people - such as me - would play the game repeatedly, using all the meager saves allowed by the cartridge limitations of the time, in hopes that they might trigger those endings or find a way to discover something new. In all honesty, Chrono Trigger being the game that got me into jrpgs probably ruined me for life. It set my standards to a ridiculously high level on a subconscious plane, resulting in me comparing every single jrpg experience since then to it. Aesthetically, musically, and structurally, it was a true jrpg kamige. It was also the game that turned jrpgs into my second otaku obsession. During the SNES-PS2 eras, I literally bought and played EVERY jrpg that came out. I still own them, in fact. I played most of the PS1 and SNES era games multiple times. However, it was also in the PS2 era (often called the 'dawn of the mainstream jrpg') that jrpg quality began to fall off drastically. The kind of genius and artistic flair using minimal resources you saw in previous eras was lost entirely within a few years of the release of FFX (FFX being a good game that also turned VO from a curiosity to a mainstream 'thing'). Musical direction, a role differing from composition, where someone was assigned to decide the timing of using a musical score and which ones fit which dungeons, which story scenes, disappeared in the middle of the PS2 era, as VO was used to fill the gaps of emotionality. However, this also meant that the subtlety of previous eras was lost with a swiftness that left me bewildered at the time. By the time the PS3 era came around, jrpgs were slowing down, due to what I now call 'flashy kusoge fatigue'. Oh, a few sub-genres, such as the Atelier series' alchemy obsessed SOL titles and the more action-based titles continued to be prolific, but what were called 'console-style rpgs' started to vanish. MMO elements were introduced into normal jrpgs, making progression and gameplay less interesting as a result (mostly because it seemed to have been done primarily to draw the WoW crowds into solo rpgs). Storytelling was dying a surprisingly swift death, as tedious gameplay elements (for loot and level-obsessed completionists) began to devour higher and higher proportions of each game's overall playtime. There is a very good reason why people go back and play so-called 'retro' jrpgs so much. There simply aren't that many more recent jrpgs that have that kind of flair and subtle genius. I know for a fact that one of the best ways to get people addicted to jrpgs is still just to let them play Chrono Trigger. Ironically, it was VNs that saved my soul. This was back in 2008, four years before I joined Fuwa. I was introduced to Tsukihime by a fellow anime fansubber, and, for the first time in over three years, I had something interesting enough (story-wise) that I was given a perspective on the nature of my growing irritation and fatigue with jrpgs in general. At the time, the JVN industry was still as vital and full of genius as the jrpg industry was in the PS1 era. Tsukihime and a few other major classics put out near the turn of the century had created the potential for a market of story-focused VNs that had allowed more and more creative people to get into the medium. Masada was releasing his latest version of Dies Irae, and there were literally hundreds of potentially interesting VNs for me to try. Needless to say, I lost my mind almost as badly as when I first played Chrono Trigger. I must have blown four grand of my meager savings on VNs within the first year, and I didn't regret a penny of it. Yes, roughly two-thirds of what I bought was pure crap. However, the gems I discovered gave me a taste of the potential of the medium in a way that was horribly addictive. Moreover, after a few years of being starved of any decent new stories, even the worst VNs had something that I could find I liked about them. In retrospect, I have an addictive personality. I get addicted to things easily, especially when they scratch my story bug. People have said to me, when it came to my jrpg obsession 'if you want a good story, why don't you read a book?', to which I usually gave them a blank stare and said 'I'm already reading good books. I just want stories in my games too.' Interestingly enough, there were a few bursts of true creativity in jrpgs in the years since, like Tales of Berseria and Nier: Automata, but they partially stand out due to the sheer bleakness of the genre landscape. People praise Octopath Traveler and Dragon Quest XI with intensity, and they practically worship Bravely Default. However, I have been shocked at how low-quality the presentation of these stories has been. It's like an entire generation has gotten used to ineptness in presentation to the point where they can be charmed by backhanded efforts at retro-nostalgia. Octopath has all the grind of the old SaGa Frontier games with none of the charm, the best part of each of the paths being at the beginning. Dragon Quest XI retains the horribly grindy nature of Dragon Quest games without improving on the formula in any real way. Moreover, locking so much content into the post-game annoys the hell out of me (I prefer new game +, obviously). JVNs have suffered their own decline, which is ironically due to the same demographics that inflated the medium in the first place (the dominance of the moe/charage lovers). VNs were always destined to be a niche medium, but the over-specialization of the industry has led to an inability to adapt to changing spending habits and demographics. Even if they wanted to regear for a new generation of consumers, most companies no longer have the access to the necessary talent to do so. I'm fairly sure that jrpgs suffer from a similar lack. Yes, there are some excellent composers and graphic designers in the jrpg industry, as well as access to the solid voice-acting industry of Japan and the growing one here in the US. However, there is a severe lack of writers capable of bringing a story to life, and there is no point in a top-tier OST that has no one to properly coordinate its use. The very fact that something like Undertale could bury so much of the commercial rpg industry, in the eyes of rpg fans, says everything about how far the industry has fallen. So what am I getting at? Not really anything, in truth. I just needed to blow off some steam. Thank you for reading.

Man, Madosoft is one big joke (haha same as the title of the thread). Honestly, I never realised I would be invested in one singular company that pumps out visual novels, and it bugs me that I still occasionally check their website for any updates on their projects. But let's start from the beginning. There's a lot to cover here, so be prepared for a wall of text. Madosoft (jap. まどそふと Madosofuto) is a Japanese company that specialises in developing adult games, mainly eroge/galge/visual novels. Not a lot is known about them in grave detail other than the info I provided. So far, they only developed 5 games (one being a fandisc), which are as follows: Namaiki Delation (2013), Yakimochi Stream (2014), the very well-known cult classic Wagamama High Spec (2016), Wagamama High Spec OC (2017, the fandisc I mentioned earlier) and Raspberry Cube (2018). Everything sounds pretty good so far, and as far as plots for each games go, they're mediocre at best, but some are pretty intriguing. I, for one, am the most familiar with WagaHigh, a game that'll forever be in my heart and inspired me to write more, and much better than these guys. Not saying they were necessarily bad writers, but from the English version which we got in 2017 by Sekai Project and Denpasoft, a lot of the dialogue is kinda, unironically, cringe. The real kicker will come soon. Though, keep in mind this colour palette: black, gold, red, white. You will need it to understand this a lot better. Let's talk about Namaiki Delation first. Its plot is as follows: Shinjuurou managed to avoid supplementary lessons by passing the make-up test. However, his joy was fleeting, as he was tricked by his teacher to be a member of the cultural festival committee. Since there was no one else there, he had to find other members to join as well… but why are all those joined so cheeky? Heroines in Namaiki Delation consist of (pictures for reference, left to right): - Nishimura Shiori (the childhood friend of the main character, clingy towards him, used to be shy but has gained confidence over the years and became a lot sweeter, and is trusted by the students and the staff; RED) - Natsushima Misaki (the little sister, cool, serious, scolds the protagonist often to hide her true feelings towards him (you know where this is going, right?); WHITE) - Shinkai Nagisa (I can't believe she shares a surname with the well-known Japanese director! MC's kouhai, she's the violent one and is treated as a delinquent but is actually sweet, also she's into karate; BLACK) - Meia Kreutzerung Hakuhou (a genius inventor, looks like an elementary schooler but is actually a high schooler due to skipping grades, childish but very smart, goes to school just to experience what high school is like; GOLD). Variety between the heroines is wide. Not as wide when compared to games made by another company, but wide enough that I can call "original." Now, what about the main character? Self-insert, donkan, no face, no voice. Standard shit that I've grown tired of. Lemme be a voice actor, damn it! Next game is Yakimochi Stream. Dominant theme is jealousy, naturally. The plot revolves around Takumi, the once-again self-insert main character, who leaves England because his little sister sent him a telegram telling him to come home immediately. Under the impression she was attacked, he comes back home to find that his little sister, Sana, became a shut-in and blames England for taking him away (she literally cusses at the country, what did it do to deserve this treatment?). Takumi decides to halt his studies abroad and transfer to a school in Japan, and ends up meeting his other female friends. Speaking of which, there are four of them and yes, all four are the heroines. Pay attention to this: - Ibuki Kohane (the protagonist's childhood friend, she promised to be beautiful by the time she comes back, and so it does happen, she's the tsundere one; jealousy index: 80%, chest class: Southern Alps; RED) - Yukikura Mutsuki (childhood friend No. 2??? because she knew Takumi even before he transferred to the school in Japan; jealousy index: 100%, chest class: Kilimanjaro; WHITE) - Kirishima Sana (little sister of the main character, a serious brocon that's, imo, beyond saving, and she's also quite an academic chick; jealousy index: idk% (technically 120%), chest class: Mount Fuji; BLACK) - Tania Helvellyn (that's right, transfer student, foreigner, she's an athlete, just like everyone else for some reason, follows the MC back home to be with him; jealousy index: 70%, chest class: Mont Blanc; GOLD). So you starting to see a pattern here? If not, I got you covered, keep on reading. The MC is the same, except a lot denser. All the girls also have giant boobies, which I don't really mind but it's overkill imo. As a wise Steam user once said, "I like my heroines how I like my fruit basket, assorted." And they're right - assorted heroines allow for an easier pick. Not everyone likes them big. Pinnacle of the company everyone! Wagamama High Spec is up, and this one may or may not need any explanation. You know it, I know it, bless Sekai and Denpa for bringing home the bacon! Ahem. WagaHigh is centered around a guy named Narumi Kouki who attends an academy which used to be for girls only. He goes by the name of Potato Salad for his manga series, Deredere Scramble, and works with Mr Deer. He joins the student council after an encounter with the student council president, Rokuonji Kaoruko (BEST GIRL ALERT), who also happens to be Mr Deer. After joining, he's placed in a trial since Sakuragi R. Ashe (the vice president) is skeptical of his skills. The heroines (pay attention once again): - Miyase Mihiro (the childhood friend of the main character, likes to tease him a lot, is actually sweet, best friends with Toa, owns a family restaurant; RED) - Narumi Toa (MC's little sister, lazy, but also a programmer, plays video games, skips school, cold towards the MC but likes him a lot, earns money because of apps that predict the lottery...; WHITE) - Rokuonji Kaoruko (The aforementioned best girl imo, fite me! Smart, beautiful, student council president that is also a secret artist named Mr Deer, has a bad sense of humour, lives in a strict family; BLACK) - Sakuragi Rooflet Ashe (Yet another foreigner, vice president, the classic tsundere character, pianist with a pinch of composer, has a large appetite, her character is too strong; GOLD). While I definitely appreciate the enthusiasm that this visual novel has, something still doesn't quite add up. The protag is a bit better I guess, but he's still the generic old, self-insert kind. At some point, I decided to rewrite the entirety of the visual novel by skimming over some unneeded plots, and it ended up being just as mediocre. I guess I'm not that good at writing fanfics. But Kaoruko was the focus, because she really needs more love... She's completely overshadowed by Toa due to her immense popularity, Ashe due to her route being highly praised, and Mihiro for just being the comedic relief and also having the largest rack. Ahem. My bad. Back to the topic. ... At this point, you should have started noticing that something was going off. I'm skipping over WagaHigh OC because it's technically the game above. Moving over swiftly, here's Raspberry Hexahedron- I mean Raspberry Cube. The plot... The MC, Satoru, regrets being a delinquent and decides to have a change of heart. He goes back to his hometown to help out a few people who he ends up befriending, three being the heroines: he saved Mikoto from thugs, helped Minato with her garden and helped Yuu with her military shop. However, Ruri, the student council president, seemed to have had some grudge against him because he found himself in a pathetic state after falling in a pit trying to chase her down. She also refused to help him out and took a picture of him instead... Damn, reality truly is harsh nowadays, and I'm getting real tired already. ... Well anyway, the heroines... Here we go again... Try and guess... - Kanou Minato (the only member of the gardening club, takes care of it every day while trying to gather new members, sweet, hard-working, lives in an agricultural family, has a lot of friends (translating this from the official website because there's literally no info about this game)) - Sakuraba Victoria Ruri (the student council president that has a grudge against the protagonist, IS the student council, claiming that she can do stuff by herself, actually a troublesome person, ice beauty) - Kaidou Mikoto (MC's far-away relative, does chores, lives in an apartment that isn't doing well financially, a gentle person, but very much worried about debt) - Yuzuki Yuu (not only a tsundere but also a gal, runs a military store, likes coffee, swears... I'm sorry, I have nothing to say, my Japanese is very rusty, check the website for yourself). Haah... haa... Damn, I think that's about it... 5/10, needs more raspberries. Please explain the significance of that title. Noticed it yet? Yes? No? Well, either way, this is it... Here comes the kicker. The characters. The fucking characters of each of these games. Madosoft is "notorious" (quotation marks because nobody cares tbh) for reusing colour palettes for the four heroines for all the games they ever made, and will make in the future. Taking that into perspective, this makes Namaiki Delation, their very first game, look like the, wait for it, Citizen Kane of visual novels. The more you notice it, the more grating it becomes! This is something even I didn't quite notice until a certain accident happened and I decided to do some research... Turns out, they really don't work with different colour palettes. This will (in a comedic way) explain how Madosoft's heroines have (d)evolved throughout the years. Heck, Hamidashi Creative, their newest installment, suffers from the same problems!! I would like this problem to be dubbed the "Madosoft Syndrome" (unless there's another company that has the same practice as them). This is the major problem with this company. Before the conclusion, I would like to let you know a few facts, and maybe some ways you could research along. Madosoft also organised two Madosoft Live events: one in 2017 and one in 2018. I think this was just to promote their products further which wasn't necessarily bad but I can't say much about it because there's no way to find any other info about it. The official websites for both of these are still open, so feel free to check it out: http://madosoft.net/madolive2017/ http://madosoft.net/madolive2018/ Merchandise is literally all over Japan. Body pillows, tiddy mouse pads, stickers, prints, tapestries, stationery... And even with all this, it's difficult to get a hold of any of these unless you're rich, lucky, or rich AND lucky. Well, there's Comicket, so if you happen to come by and see a Madosoft stand, you know what to do. Cafes are also often themed by Madosoft products. I think this is just being a sell-out. I understand you want your products to sell and I see nothing wrong with that, but this is just going completely overboard. You can disagree with me if you want, tbh I did see other companies do that, too. Raspberry Cube also has a Nintendo Switch port. What's in it? Ask God. Obviously the base game is there, but is there any bonus content? I doubt it. Plus it's like 8,000+ Yen. ... Wagamama High Spec will also be ported to the Switch. How do I know this? Well today... THEY FUCKING ANNOUNCED IT ON THEIR WEBSITE. WHY. JUST WHY. I would understand if you were to add content that I can't see in my PC version of the game, but otherwise... WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY- ... What's next, Yakimochi Stream? Is anybody gonna talk about Namaiki? That game is gone, nobody remembers it anymore. "I'm gonna cry. I'm seriously gonna cry. Waaaaaah!" ... ....... ............................... I just had a breakdown, didn't I? Well anyway, that about sums it up. In conclusion, Madosoft is one big joke. OK plots, OK characters even, just BAD practices. Case closed. Lemme know if I missed anything, or if you agree or disagree with my opinion on this company. Thanks you for reading this far, I appreciate it, really! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a joke for you: Q: What's the difference between Madosoft and a printer?

sure thing buddy sure thing 1. AMASSING CAPITAL - As with the vast majority of businesses, you're going to need some startup capital. Because the general profitability of English language visual novel translations is approximately 0, you will likely have a difficult time finding investors unless they have two or more health conditions that inhibit their brain function. You will most likely have to self-fund. Flip those cushions, ransack your old man's attic for some forgotten stock certificates, you know the deal. The bare minimum, I'd say, is somewhere around $50,000. NOTE that you can increase your (probably non-existent because VN) profit margins by performing a work role in the company, translating, editing, etc; instead of just being the translation sweatshop overseer. OK and PLEASE don't go into debt over such a pants-on-head business idea. Please don't. 2. ESTABLISH THE COMPANY - Search for how to establish a company in your jurisdiction, it should be the same for a localization business as most other businesses. Come up with some sick name and branding, get a fancy graphic artist to do some of it, maybe get an anime girl mascot since zoomers seem to love that shit these days. OK you have money to burn and company branding that hopefully doesn't look like a kindergarten art project, not bad let's get started down that slope that ends in 'we are, regrettably, going to be phasing out of visual novel publishing'. 3. ACQUIRE LICENSES - This is where my man Kokoro, my 4th favourite person on Fuwanovel, 's advice comes in. Haul ass over to Japan — you DO speak Japanese, right? Perhaps consider enlisting the services of a business consultant with experience in Japan so as to not make a fool of yourself and make use of their connections so you are not cold calling. Otherwise, cold call, flash your sick branding, and attempt to get a meeting with a representative one of the last vestiges of a dying industry. In a pinch, you could try virtual meetings, but in general it is better to have boots on the ground when performing international business. BONUS STEP - Wait for COVID-19 to settle down. BONUS BONUS STEP - Consider working with Chinese companies as well so you perhaps stand a chance at financial success. Practise drinking baijiu and sake before you leave in order to sharpen your abilities in shitfaced negotiation. 4. ACQUIRE STAFF - Assuming you made it this far by the grace of God, you will need staff members to work on the license you have acquired. A translator, an editor, and a QA (preferably a GOOD one they're important) is probably the bare minimum, along with the unfortunate bastard that will have to handle the technical side of things with the engine. Probably attempt to pay them around the sweet spot between 'this would be a decent wage in 1820' and 'this would be a decent wage in 2020'. You have to keep those expenses down but if the sweatshop workers take up arms then the game is all over, commissar. 5. WORK ON THE THING - Do the translating and the editing and the QA-ing. Try to stick to the deadlines you impose and share, that alone would probably set you apart. 6. ADVERTISE THE THING AND DO SOCIAL MEDIA THINGS - Again use that sick branding to form an online presence. Do it yourself if you are personable and responsible, otherwise find somebody else to do it. 7. SELL THE THING - Contact storefronts, the classics, Steam, JAST USA, all that great stuff we know and love, get it listed places where people can buy it, maybe start your own web store if your web design person lives in an economically depressed region. 8. GO BANKRUPT - Ok nah just kidding but probably. Then you just repeat from 3, possibly skipping 4 if you are a benevolent overlord. Best of luck to you!

LMFAOOOOOO holy shit HAHAHA TOTAL bruh MOMENT om g lol haha my sides bro im experiencing heart palpitations this joke man dude this is EVERYTHING im lol my brain is deteriorating HAHAHA LOL

Alright, boners, you know the drill. It's December, so select one of the Santa hats below and I'll add it to your avatar to the best of my ability. Or you can stop being lazy and do it yourself. If you don't select a number, you're subjecting your avatar to my artistic whims. Rules: Make sure your current avatar hasn't already been Santified last year or a year before that. You can make a special request or ask for a Santa hat you found somewhere on the Interwebs, but it might be difficult to implement on your avatar. (Translation: I might be too lazy to accommodate your request.) Some avatars won't look very good with a Santa hat, either because the Santa hat is cut off from view or for other reasons. I probably won't be able to do animated avatars. If you get a Santa hat from me, I'll save your original avatar somewhere and @ you after Christmas to remind you that it's time to de-Santify your avatar. For every day beyond liturgical Christmas in which your Santa hat is still on your avatar, I will be mildly enraged.

Another day, another big brain post by ange. It's not exactly a bad thing for a hobby to be more closed off than others. There are plenty of VN communities. How about writing a book/manga/LN??? Yeah, well, that's what fan translation means, dude. Hello??? I think they're partially at fault for this. They could announce games only when they're closer to completion, not run update blogs, and not create things like discord servers where they're more easily exposed to toxicity. I imagine it's the same for something like anime. Anyhow who studies Translation will have their teachers tell them that literary translation pays the least. It's just the way things are. Not sure about this either. There are plenty of decent EVNs which are recognized by the community. But there's also a ton of games that are simply amateurish and sometimes try too hard to be Japanese. This is BS. There is more stuff being released nowadays than ever before. I've talked with several Japanese learners who say that if VNs were translated at the same pace as they are now back when they started, they would never have started learning Japanese. Had to re-read this a couple times to actually understand what you were trying to get at. Honestly, tell me what matters most: the amount of people you can talk to, or the quality of the discussions? I am completely fine with sharing my opinions with a restrict group of friends, though now and then I feel the urge to write a review or two. Perhaps you're the one at fault since you seem to enjoy sharing every little opinion you have with the wide world.

Hello everyone, I'm back with a small update. The biggest (and only) news this time is we have found an image editor: hubb2001! XD We will continue to look for image editor though, since there are a lot of images. So if you want to lend us your help, please post in this thread or send me a message. Any help is appreciated ^^. The full patch will only be truly 'full' when all the images are edited, so that won't be released anytime soon. But I may release another partial patch in the near future. I'll try to include all the translated text into this patch ^^. Well, that's about it for now. Thank you for reading and see you next time ^^.

Latest Update (June 24) Common Route translation: 100% Common Route editing: 1/6 scenario files Maiya Route translation: 5/23 Maiya Route editing: pending Keika Route translation: 6/21 Keika Route editing: pending Rui Route translation: pending Rui Route editing: pending Current Staff: Me (Translating, Hacking) SpookySaint (Editing) Senpai Ken (Translating) Spirited Away (Editing) Currently seeking additional translators, and a more competent hacker for UI translation. Original Post ↓ Hello. I've decided to translate Saimin Yuugi, my favorite eroge. Well written hypnosis with Sayori's art? Holy shit, yes please. Really, nothing else compares. Now, I'm a solo, amateur translator, and I acknowledge we're an inherently unreliable lot. With that being said, I wouldn't be making this thread unless I was committed to finishing. Why make this thread? 1) On the off chance someone else is interested in translating, I'd love to have your help. No long-term commitment necessary. 2) If anyone is interested in editing my translated scripts (checking my grammar and watching for awkward descriptions or stilted dialogue), I'd love to have you. Also no long-term commitment necessary. 3) On the off off chance someone else was partway through translating this eight year old eroge, I may as well find out about it now before sinking too much more time into this. In short, I love this game and am asking for help to make the translation the best it can be. What have I already done? - Unpacking and repacking the game files is confirmed working with a partial patch tested both on my machine and others. - Maiya's route is 17% translated, which includes an introduction common to all routes. Not a lot, but it's only a week's worth of effort. I'm confident that this pace will let me finish without burning out. On that note however, my main goal for this project is the translation of Maiya's route. I think the completionist in me will make sure I see the project through to the end, but I expect significantly slower progress on the other routes. Especially Keika's. If you have questions feel free to ask.

VNs sometimes get criticized for their overuse of the ellipse (…). And I suppose I'll start my defense of the use of ellipses in VNs, by extending an olive branch. VNs do misuse the ellipse to an astounding degree, and I have an interesting little anecdote demonstrating this point. In college, me and some friends decided to spend a Friday night getting drunk and reading the worst VNs we could find. We stumbled upon Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme. There is a LOT wrong with this VN, but a glaringly consistent detail of bad writing we all noticed was the excessive use of ellipses. After we all collectively noticed and pointed out how often ellipses were being used, we decided to start counting every instance of an ellipse we spotted. Keep in mind, they had already been used plenty before we even started to count. Before we even reached a total playtime of 1 hour, we counted over 100 uses of ellipses, and gave up counting after that. I share this anecdote for two reasons. Firstly, as a petty example that Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme is horrible and I almost want to say it has no right to exist. And secondly that overall I am in agreement that ellipses do get misused often in VNs. So I am not entirely attacking this point of criticism, but I do think that many who do champion this specific criticism of VN writing miss one very important function that the ellipses achieves in VN writing, that it can't achieve in traditional print. The written word as it is presented in VNs is transient. With each click you typically receive one line at a time. And after a certain point all the lines disappear and you are greeted with fresh words from the top of the screen if NVL, or the top of the dialogue box if ADV. Furthermore often (though not always), sentences aren't displayed whole at once. But rather they get displayed in a sort of typewriter effect. This means that regardless of whether the narrative is in past tense or present tense, the occurrence of the text and the story to the reader will always be in the present. Character dialogue, internal monologues, narrative descriptions, it is all being presented to us in real time. A book on the other hand has everything written out and open to display. You can scan the whole page as well as the next page, and you have equal access to every page of the book at any given time. Want to skip to the ending? Well the medium can't stop you. This is not true of VNs. You can fast-forward, but you can't just skip to the end. The only way you can typically access specific parts of a VN is by creating a save point and therefore being able to load it up whenever you want. But you only have that option for everything you already read, you can't just pick and load sections you haven't experienced yet. Because for all intense and purposes, that's in the future. It hasn't happened yet. In other words, there is a sense of time in how the narrative of a VN gets expressed. Well in VNs, the ellipse can be used to demarcate time and expression. In this way, VNs can literally show the passage of time, without having to tell it. And I always thought the golden rule of writing was “show don't tell”, in this function the ellipse is being used optimally to show and not tell. Here is an example of how I would write a certain passage if I were writing it for a book/short-story, and then I will proceed to rewrite it for a VN. Novel/Short-story: “I don't know about that,” she briefly paused while biting her lip, “you sure it will be okay?” Visual Novel coded in Renpy: “I don't know about that...{w=1.5} you sure it will be okay?” The {w=1.5} is a wait command in Renpy that pauses the text for 1.5 seconds before resuming the rest of the line. Without having to tell the reader “she briefly paused”, we literally showed the pause by manipulating the speed in which the text gets displayed. The ellipse helps signal to the reader that the character is hesitating to express her thoughts, while the {w=1.5} command is running in the background. Now if the detail of “biting her lip” is also important to you. You would have to script things slightly differently, but you could make it that after the ellipse her sprite changes and bites her lip and you hold on that image for 1.5 seconds, before transitioning back to her previous expression and continue the text. So now you not only showed her hesitation and the gap in time it took for her to finish her thought, but you also showed her expression change. This is a way you can “show and not tell” with VNs that you could never achieve when writing for traditional print media.

Menu image editor here, this project was a lot of fun to work on, and thanks for flamepaladin for allowing me to help out! I hope you all enjoy the fruits of our labor, now if you excuse me, I have some Rhapsodys to kami...

I first started writing this in like 2018 and I finished half of it now but I didn't do it the way I was planning back then and it's a bit of a disjointed mess. I hope it's good enough anyway. - There have been some arguments as to what the definition of a visual novel should be, and that's well and good. But let's look at it from the other direction: what works should our definition of visual novels include? Let us begin our journey with a silly, myopic statement I will nevertheless repeat until @Palas finally calls a hit on me: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is not a visual novel. Okay, bullets fired, I feel better already. But why am I trying to define the boundaries of the visual novel category to exclude the pretty good adventure game series Ace Attorney, and what kinds of criteria am I using? Furthermore, why would anyone disagree with me when I am obviously right? ...Okay, let's back up a bit. Why do I care so much about categories at all? Categories Categories are useful because they allow us to make predictions about something assigned to that category. In the visual novel community, there are there are several important predictions to make: 1. I am likely to enjoy this work if it executes its aesthetic well 2. I would consider a person who reads/plays/likes this more a part of the community than one that does not 3. I would probably enjoy talking to someone who reads this work {about visual novels} We can see straight away that different parts of this would be important to different people. If you want to be part of a close-knit community, getting 2 and 3 right matters a lot. If you can find the visual novels you enjoy without community assistance, 1 matters little. The VN category helps us determine what things are acceptable to discuss, and what things are not our (main) concern. Similarly, the category helps us determine what people will be in our community, and what people will not. It's generally more entertaining to discuss things you care about, and it's better when the people you discuss with are more in tune with you. As such, there are real stakes, and real reasons to want to avoid being maximally inclusive. But what draws people to VNs, and what does that draw mean for their desired definition of the VN category? Let me attempt a list of categories: Archetypes of attraction to VNs Weebs The Weeb likes some part of Japanese culture. The Weeb is very skeptical and/or dismissive of visual novels not made in Japan, though the Weeb might make an exception for things made in Korea or China (Indonesia is probably too Western, however). If we asked the Weeb, the main problem with the visual novel category right now would be that too many people see fit to include a flood of shitty EVNs. The Weeb might grudgingly accept Katawa Shoujo depending on the Weeb's other preferences. Moefuck The Moefuck reads visual novels because they really like cute girls or boys. Often personal aesthetics play a big part here and specific preferences are hard to predict, for example certain Moefucks may reject an entire artist or company due to the artstyle in their works being unacceptable. The Moefuck cluster is often seen as an amorphous, rainbow-vomiting blob ruining visual novels by the more seriously afflicted storycucks, but in truth there is more variation in it than they may expect. Moefucks are not necessarily hostile to works with serious stories, they just prefer those stories to also have cute girls. Storycucks The Storycuck wants to experience good stories, and finds VNs to be a source of such stories. In terminal cases, the Storycuck may not be able to deal with the large amount of filler in many visual novels and bounce right out into the community periphery after initially being hooked by some particularly well-paced VN. The perfectly horrible case is the Storycuck that is too distracted to watch shows, unable to get into books due to lack of visual stimulus, yet also unable to deal with SoL content. Is there any being more cursed? Anyway, I digress. The Storycuck doesn't really care that much about medium conventions like moe or superficial presentation style or whatever: they want a compelling narrative. If we ask a Storycuck, one problem with the visual novel category right now is that it doesn't admit other related genres like walking simulators, or things like Actual Sunlight and To The Moon. Their perspective on more extreme extensions like Phoenix Wright or even JRPGs will depend on their evaluation of gameplay. Degenerate Fappers These gender-neutral guys just wanna have fun, in a way that generally requires at least one hand to be free for use. You're unlikely to actually see pure Fappers in the community as they don't really have stories to discuss. I'd try the f95zone or whatever if I were looking. In mixes with other types, this manifests as disinterest in anything that does not have porn. In their eyes, if it's got no ero, it has no place calling itself a VN — after all, if it can't be fapped to, there's no point in reading it! Ero-JRPG fanboys So now you're thinking to yourself - these guys (still gender-neutral) have got to have a lot of overlap with the Degenerate Fappers. I agree, but I think it's worth separating out the two. The Degenerate Fappers don't really have a need for the visual novel category because of their DF association — they'll be arguing mostly from another type's perspective, with a modifier of Horny — but the Ero-JRPG fanboys have a lot to lose if their objects of passion are cut out of the VN category. Why? Because the wider JRPG community often has a serious intolerance of porn in their games. There _are_ places that specify in just Ero-JRPGs [nekohen], but there aren't that many games in the category, and focus for some may be less on the story contents (often machine translated!) and more on the gameplay (ui only patches!) and porn. This leads to wishing to classify Ero-JRPGs like Toushin Toshi II, Evenicle, etc. as VNs despite them being basically equivalent to your average JRPG if one ignores the sex scenes. The pure Ero-JRPG fanboy doesn't really like to read for long stretches without interaction, and if it could remove something from the definition, it would probably pick first choice-free visual novels, then extensionally VNs with few enough choices to be bothersome. Autists The motivation of the Autist when it comes to the visual novel category is that it be clear and defined by a definition that is as Not Bullshit as possible. This is a meta-motivation that may cause people to go against the naive interests of their other types. For example, observe the Storycuck Zaka's high Autism interaction as he proclaims walking simulators should not be considered VNs, despite him having liked Gone Home quite a bit and being interested in more of the genre. The Autist's greatest gripe is when people goddamn try to shove things in the FUCKING category that obviously don't fit PLEASE STOP IT DAMN YOU. VN Evangelists The VN Evangelist wants to spread the word of visual novels by any means possible, and is not afraid to butt heads with some stuffy Autist if they have to. They can and will use imprecise language like "it's like playing an anime, man", wide definitions (expect Phoenix Wright to be on their list of 'VNs' to play for beginners), and such villainy to attempt to get more people into visual novels. A community member in favor of more exclusion may cringe at their methods and predict that they will overwhelmingly attract annoying orbitals who will finish DDLC or whatever and then fuck up discussion with their terrible, uninformed opinions. The Evangelist will tell said member to loosen the fuck up and not be so elitist, and who knows maybe DDLC-kun will be a productive member of the community one day NOT THAT THEY AREN'T ALREADY BUT ANYWAY. And so on. The VN Evangelist wishes more things were on vndb in general so it could have more arguments to get people to try other 'VNs' out. Artistes The Artiste is probably making a VN. Or two. It's got culture up to here. VNs are a medium, but it's so boring if you just take the conventions for granted, right? They want to break and remake in a Shivan storm of creation, never settling for the mediocrity of the established form. They resent criteria that restrict their medium-busting ambitions, and would like for you to abandon your silly notions of traditional presentation methods. The Artiste wants you to fucking chill out on insisting on any definition, but okay can we have like, The Walking Dead in the category please? (Zaka: No.) Oh and Actual Sunlight should definitely be in the category. (Zaka: Sure) Incredibly half-arsed conclusion Speaking as a person who is a Storycuck and Autist, but has low amounts of Weeb, Moefuck, and Horny, I think we should have a somewhat restrictive definition of visual novels, but we should welcome diverse artstyles and embrace EVNs. As I don't value gameplay highly, I consider the _choiceless visual novel_ the best way to ground the category, even though this is arguably ahistorical. Choices are fine, intrusive gameplay only good if it serves the narrative, and things that are OBVIOUSLY JRPGs FOR CHRIST'S SAKE should frankly just be taken out of VNDB right this minute. That said if something is very close to a VN and also story heavy and honestly it kind of reads like a VN? fuck it IS a VN fuck you include Actual Sunlight actually... then uhh yeah... Maybe we can compromise my ideals. —But your reasons for being into VNs may be very different. And this is why we must fight. I can only hope I will one day prevail, or at least see Actual Sunlight (kino) included on VNDB. Until then, I will attempt to appeal to the Autism in both of us to at least get a sensible — if fragile — boundary established.

Status update Overall progress: Translation: 14685/43896 Editing: 6637/43896

While the duology isn't new to people who have a PS4 and played the games, the cruising onto PC on Steam is a big thing for those of you who prefer to do everything with their computer (including me). A few days ago, these two games, which are very much a treat for those who liked the original game or anime, became available. For those who have only watched the Utawarerumono animes (both of them), Mask of Deception covers the same area of the story as the second anime, albeit in more detail with some changes. My personal opinion of it was that it was great... but I found myself wanting H-scenes about halfway through (too many mimikko and those mischievously erotic twins). The second game (Mask of Truth/Futari no Hakuoro) is considerably more serious than the first from the beginning until the end. As such, it provides quite a different experience. For those who were annoyed by the sudden way the second Utawarerumono anime ended, this is a good way to see the rest. For those who have already played both... well why not do so again? I know I will.

Because virgin writers don't know how women work.

As there are some games where heroines are literally kindergartners, it is safe to say that the Japanese heroines must be over 18 in high school, or even in middle school, because they graduate from kindergarten after they are 18.

I see the real suffering are the friends I made along the way

this is because vns are bad remove vns and everything goes well

Hi everyone, I'm yumi and I just want to announce that I'm working on a translation of the 2019 adult visual novel 真愛の百合は赤く染まる Manakashi no Yuri wa Akaku Somaru [True Love's Lily Dyes Red] Yes, the title is a pun on multiple levels, but this is the most fitting translation I've come up with so far. Introduction Team: pantsudev Members: @yumi [everything] VNDB: https://vndb.org/v26232 Background and Current State At the moment I'm going at somewhere around 1000 lines, but I haven't been at it for long yet, and I do work at a rather brisk pace. This is because, being a programmer, I first developed all-custom tools that now let me focus on the actual content without wasting time on manual labor. I'll divide this section into separate background and progress blocks later when it makes sense. Other Info While I'm content working alone and not strictly looking to recruit anyone, it is true that the effort could benefit from at a few additional hands; Namely, someone more adept than myself at crafting emotive prose in English, and a fluent- or native level Japanese speaker to check some of the harder source material. Given the sheer amount of material, I could also consider another regular translator, should someone fitting come up. My system/tools keep track of updates and translation state per each individual line, so it's easy to go back at any point to only fix up lines that haven't been finalized yet. I'm doing all of this for my own amusement and to train my skills in both Japanese and creative writing, so my perspective might differ somewhat from how other people view their projects. i.e. the journey matters more than the destination. Alright, cool! Anything else? Feel free to let me know what you think! And if you'd like to directly contact me for whatever reason, preferably DM yumi#0163 on Discord or send a PM here. Thanks for reading!

Hey there all! I will start with saying that I really treasure my time spent writing this blog and interacting with various people involved in the EVN community. You guys were awesome company in this journey and despite the obscurity of this project, I feel like it benefited me personally in many ways and maybe even helped people appreciate the value within the non-JP visual novel scene. I'm really thankful to all the people that read my blog, the devs that offered me their time and gave me their games for review – they all made these 2+ years into something special. When I started this project, there were two main things that motivated me. The first one was the frustration over dismissal of EVNs which is still common sense in the large parts of the VN fan community – belittling of the very games that made me fall in love with the visual novel formula. I wanted to create a space that is fully dedicated to discussion and promotion of EVNs as worthwhile and significant part of the genre. The second part was even more personal – my personal struggles with video game addiction and other issues, my ambition to shift my focus into a more challenging and creative activity. In many ways, I consider both my goals relative successes. While slowly, the perception of EVNs is changing and the scene evolving in interesting ways – while it shares pretty much all the suffering of other indie niches, with PC gaming in general being oversaturated and hard to navigate, I feel that it at least established itself as a significant formula that is attractive for story-oriented devs and appreciated by a significant audience. In other words, EVNs are here to stay and in time fewer and fewer people will be able to easily dismiss them as poor imitations of Japanese games. Whether my work had any impact in this regard? Apart from a bunch of people on Fuwanovel that I know I influenced in personal interactions, I honestly have no idea. I want to think there was some minor impact, but I had enough fun in the process and learned enough that I don't mind either way. I did my best and changed a few things about myself, which was the most important part for me. Of course, I'm in no way saying that I'm putting the blog on hiatus because my job here is done. The real reason is much more prosaic – I just can't keep up with it. The last month was particularly devastating in this regard, with very little time for me to either read or write. And while an obvious answer would be to just work at my own pace and publish stuff whenever I'm able to, it's not really something that would work out for me. Missing deadlines, thinking about future projects, it all became a source of stress rather than a source of fun, and I feel it would only get worse with time. While I really wanted to keep the project alive, I don't want to do so at any cost. I feel burned out. I barely read VNs for fun. I don't watch anime for a few months now. I need a change of pace and ability to rediscover my love for these hobbies. The blog, sadly, became a prime obstacle in this. So, what's going to happen now? The blog will cease to get updates, unless something special happens. I might still do game jam summaries, as those are something I massively enjoy. I might also publish something on Fuwanovel from time to time – I'm theoretically still an editor there. The one part of the project that's definitely here to stay is the Steam Curator account. The devs that sent me their games deserve to at least get a Steam review and, generally, an evaluation of their work. I will also use my Twitter to publish updates about new games listed on the Curator account. The Steam reviews themselves will likely be a bit more polished – not that much though, I don't want to jump straight into the same burnout-inducing rabbit whole. So, once more, thank you for sticking around and I hope my project gave you some amusement. And, of course, see you around – I'm not giving up on EVNs and the community around them any time soon.

We're happy to announce that the Kickstarter for VenusBlood HOLLOW International is now online! Give it a look if you enjoyed the previous title or Strategy RPG games! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ninetail/venusblood-hollow-english-localization-project

Easily the best Venus Blood game, story-wise and gameplay-wise. Not to mention the protagonist and main heroine have an insanely strong personal bond that makes you really root for them, though they are evil.

As I was one of the members that burned out a while back (too many VNs played for the sake of my blog on the site), I know something of where you are coming from. I was spending something like 50 hours a week playing VNs, many of them I didn't like or whose concept I found boring and pedestrian, to be able to be fair when doing my VN of the Month column. I was using a tiny scoop to try to get through the piles of hot steaming brown stuff to get to the stuff that shone regardless of genre, and my satisfaction levels kept falling until I just fell apart. I was even working on one screen while playing on another at times, while using meal times as a time to get caught up on a VN. To this day, I have to be careful not to play too much in the way of VNs, or my trauma comes back, despite the fact that I am loving what I'm reading. Heck, I'm currently recovering from another bout of that while doing something else to put myself back together. More recently, I was becoming increasingly depressed that the only community I still enjoyed being a part of was doomed. With the increased rl stress that hits every time I leave the house over the last four months, I was on the verge of collapse when I decided to get online and do my latest scan of the forums... and saw this. To be honest, just the fact that you are getting involved in the site again at all eased a lot of the pent-up stress that has been weighing on me every time I come online of late, so thanks for coming back.

Status update Overall progress: Translation: 14685/43896 Editing: 6227/43896

Hello everyone, this is one of the CG of my visual novel "one day to disappear" what do you say? The style is not manga, but the designer is very good. I'd like you to play my demo, find it here! thanks! https://onedaytodisappear.itch.io/one-day-to-disappear

Status update Overall progress: Translation: 14425/43896 Editing: 5825/43896 Moemi route is being translated.

Well, I see where you're coming from, but consider that in Japan most VNs are eroge for which the main selling point is the combination of compelling stories and sexual content... And they sell well enough through those two features. VNs with significant gameplay are kind of their own, much more mainstream market and that's fine. That is, if we're talking about adventure game-style gameplay. There's a shitton of VNs that implement RPG and Strategy game mechanics – fairly few get translated to English, but Rance games, Eiyuu Senki, Evenicle and Venus Blood -Frontier- are notable examples of gameplay eroge. You also have a decent number VNs with raising sim and dating sim elements, like Littlewitch Romanesque or Gaokao.Love.100Days. Obviously, there was in the past a huge market for heavily gameplay oriented dating/raising sims in Japan – I honestly have no idea how much alive it is nowadays. To be honest, though, I went into VNs exactly to escape from gameplay, which in narrative games can often just become pointless padding distracting from the parts I actually care about. Of course, that doesn't have to be the case if the gameplay is well implemented and I'm sure it can make stuff more appealing to an average gamer, but I'd hate for gameplay elements to be shoved everywhere just for that reason. And if that means VNs are cursed to stay obscure forever? I can live with that.

Ey, I just hit 4000 posts, or should I say, I'm only 10283 posts away from Nosebleed's disgusting post count. Wohoo. Totally going to beat that in like... 2 weeks. Totally. I'd like to take this moment to thank some special people here on Fuwanovel. @Fiddle For being the best user. @Fiddle For being the funniest user. @Fiddle For being the best at posting funny gifs, even in the most serious of discussions. @Fiddle For being the best AND the funniest user. ... ... ... Yeah, that seems to be everyone! Oh, right, AMA and all that. Ask me stuff!

Welcome to my blog. Where have we been? Where are we going? TIMELINE 1980s: - Early eroge largely consist of still art (what we call pixel art now), very short dialogue/narrative elements, and some primitive interactive elements, while spanning many genres. 1990s: - The point-and-click adventure game, which has its roots in 1980s video games, establishes itself as one of the most popular genres of eroge. Many games emerge which have interfaces that are visually similar to those of most point-and-click adventure games, but with gradually differing gameplay. These games are all collectively called "adventure games" or "ADV" in Japanese. The general style of having an interface which consists of a rectangular text box at the bottom of the screen, and a collage of visual elements meant to serve as a guide for what the main character sees, is also called "ADV". In other words, ADV becomes a genre that embodies a style of presentation. - The non-adult game company Chunsoft puts out Otogirisou, a kind of illustrated story in which pictures are placed in the background as visual aids while the full narrative is conveyed as overlaid text. This style of presentation is called a "novel game" or "NVL" in Japanese. The gameplay of Otogirisou purely consists of the player making choices on where to take the story, similar to "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, a simple yet powerful narrative tool which would prove influential to ADV as a whole. - Two major eroge brands that specialize in ADV, elf and Leaf, create popular games like Doukyuusei and To Heart. These games stand out from their competitors by the way they utilize talented artists and writers to focus on the personalities of charming heroines, rather than treating pixel porn as what matters and the characterization as an afterthought. This character-centric evolution is called a charage (character game) and encompasses both NVL (like Kizuato) and ADV. And with the release of YU-NO and Kamaitachi no Yoru, two ADV/NVL games that have well-written stories, the term scenarioge (scenario game) becomes more popular. 1999: - Kanon is released by Key. It's the first time a large number of players became very emotionally moved by the story of an eroge, or any ADV at that. Even someone like Baba from Visual Arts, who was just a businessman without much personal interest in ADV, became interested after Kanon. Aside from inventing the nakige (naki game, which means "crying game") genre, it awakened in players a desire for longer scenarios as necessary to deepen their attachment to the heroines. But its most significant role is being the first major moege (moe game) at a time when the term "moe" wasn't even very well known. 2000: - The doujin NVL Tsukihime comes out, and its quality lets it rank among the very top, if not at the very top, of both scenarioge and charage. See Popular Views on What Defines the Chuuni Genre for more info on the influence of Type-Moon's works. 2000-2006: - Now that Kanon and Tsukihime have come out, it seems like a dam bursts and a flood of popular and influential ADV/NVL are released. There are comparatively fewer in 2001, with the most notable ones in my mind being Kiminozo and Kazokei. But in 2002 you have Ever17, Higurashi, Kusarihime, Baldr Force, Hello world, Da Capo, and others. And every year after that just has more and more top quality ADV/NVL. The biggest year is 2004, which sees the release of both Clannad and Fate/stay night (successors to Kanon and Tsukihime, respectively). - Around the middle of the decade, the term "visual novel" is invented among English speaking fans of these games, and basically refers to any game which has an ADV/NVL-style interface and a strong and constant narrative. Since the rest of the world directly bypassed the early history of Japanese eroge and ADV/NVL, they didn't bother with the origins of these styles of games, and just chose a term which seemed to more naturally describe the most famous and representative ADV/NVL. Since then, the term "visual novel" has been recognized by the Japanese too, although the broader Japanese playerbase still commonly thinks that VN is synonymous with "adventure game". In any case, the term is excellent and I like it. - Over the course of this decade, the major tropes and popular genres of VNs, which were mostly foreshadowed in the late 1990s, are firmly established and standardized. They include TIPs, unlockable routes/end, true ends, bad ends, hidden heroines, time loops/leaps, moe, chuuni, nakige, utsuge, imouto games, and many more. The diverse and awkward gameplay of the 1980s and 1990s more or less disappears. - Meanwhile, many of the most successful eroge companies like Key, Type-Moon, and Leaf/Aqua-Plus successfully rebrand themselves and reduce their focus on adult content for the sake of marketing their works to the rest of the Japanese "otaku" industries. They adopt the label of "bishoujo game maker". Many of their most popular IPs (intellectual properties) receive anime adaptations or evolve into multimedia franchises, with "Fate" being the most famous example. On the other hand, as these industries embrace VNs, they also learn from them and try to emulate that same appeal within their own IPs; Fate/stay night is especially influential as a progenitor of the "chuuni" genre. 2006: - Statistically, eroge sales begin to decline. The industry itself doesn't immediately begin to decline, though, because investors take time to notice and react to such trends, companies are still in the midst of developing games, and they will try to shift strategies to fight the trend. The decline in sales won't slow down until 2012. WHY Causes of the trend? This was fiercely debated for years and still hasn't been completely settled. But it's more or less clear. VNs served as a creative outlet without rivals for several years. At first, in the early 1990s, nobody expect much from eroge. But as we entered the later part of the decade, that changed. Eroge was always a venue for weird and exciting scenarios that wouldn't be accepted elsewhere, and it was easier than ever to make quality audiovisual experiences, with multiple free or cheap VN engines available. Writers like Maeda Jun and Nasu took advantage of the medium's ease of entry, along with the freedom of expression it afforded. It was a fresh, mature alternative to the LN industry. However, that didn't last forever. Major publishers in other mediums distilled the parts of eroge that appealed most to players: the nakige components, the moe components, the fanservice and unapologetic harems, the handy sci-fi tropes, the balloon breasts. Everything except the deep emotional and mental investment that's only possible with literature. And of course, the mature themes and content. Above all, what VNs brought to the table was no longer as fresh to people. Without a sense of excitement, the fact that VNs require people to sit down and actually read continuously for hours became... problematic. The era of smartphones and social media also heralded the era of low attention spans. People came to think that "adventure games" = "boring". This was coupled with the fact that more and more people play bishoujo games on their smartphones, and who wants to play eroge in public? Waifu/husbando social games like Fate/Grand Order and Granblue Fantasy dealt especially heavy blows to players' interest in VNs. They let players pick between countless more waifus and husbandos than VNs, have more exciting plots to engage casual players (not some ordinary school life drama), have the slutty outfits and exaggerated figures of nukige heroines, continually put out new content for the most popular characters, let you put your waifu/husbando in your home screen so you can constantly look at her, and tap on the portrait of her/him to hear some flirty line voiced by a popular anime seiyuu. They even copied the feature of some VNs where you can give your favorite hero or heroine chocolates on Valentine's Day or White Day. The proof is in the recent anime Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy where the "guy who's only interested in 2D girls" stereotype no longer involves VNs on a PSP, but rather depicts a social game on a phone. To be frank, even the latest Fire Emblem game probably makes VNs less appealing by comparison. The main draw of VNs was always the cute and flirty heroines and romance, but these elements have been thoroughly exported. The exact same situation arose with Japanese web novels on the site Shousetsuka ni Narou. An initial wave of authors pioneered new genres with certain distinctive tropes, most of them related to isekai, and started a trend which has dominated the Japanese web novel scene. But the mainstream LN industry quickly learned and started to put out its own isekai LNs, as well as aggressively recruit these authors (who naturally didn't object to being paid for what they'd initially put out for free online). A few years later, Narou's talents have more or less moved out, and the stories at the top of the popularity charts haven't been supplanted by any new talents. In any case, the major difference between Narou and the VN industry is that Narou authors are overall much better off with editors, whereas the transition from VNs to LNs/anime is absolutely a creative downgrade. WHAT DO 1. Copy FGO. Social games are a natural evolution of the appeal of many VNs. Unfortunately, they're also largely vapid experiences with have less voice acting, silent protagonists, a massive cast of heroines who receive little character development, a disjointed narrative, a story that's mostly dialogue and constantly interrupted by battles, and many other flaws that prevent them from achieving literary excellence. These games have invariably underestimated how popular they'll become and worked with cheap art assets and flimsy storytelling, only to fix this by hiring better artists and writers for the more recent arcs of their ongoing main storylines. However, even those recent arcs are still shallow experiences compared to VNs. The best they can do is have good comedy--no one will ever feel as empathetic toward the characters as they do in VNs. But of course, despite the problems with social games' storytelling, they are still... inevitable. They will still successfully rake in cash from people with personalities prone to gambling addiction. So one VN company after another has tried to become the next FGO. Eushully, light, August, Key, Lilith, Frontwing, Nitroplus and many others have pursued social games, virtually all of which failed to really take off like FGO--in part because they weren't very well-made, and in part because the Fate franchise is more popular with more devoted fans. Frankly, this solution has been thoroughly pursued by all sorts of VN companies, and we know exactly what happens: it fails unless they're very lucky. 2. Give up. This is a wise and fine choice. The river of life flows ever onward. Sometimes it's best to accept defeat. 3. Make NOT a visual novel. Be Kodaka Kazutaka. Start from the idea that you want to make an adventure game. Then to appease your producer, call it a detective game instead, and add a 3D world with gameplay that takes place within it while occupying a lot of the player's time, so it in no way feels like a pure ADV. Make the narrative largely dialogue-driven. Write in a way that wastes less time on subtlety and imagery and takes more advantage of humor, twists, and action. Then call it Danganronpa and be successful, while feeling that you tricked the world by making an adventure game with the quality storytelling of an adventure game that doesn't feel like an adventure game. Too Kyo Games plans to water down a full-fledged ADV-quality scenario with meaningful realtime gameplay, by partnering with studios that actually know how to make fun games. It's a long-term experiment on tricking people into playing adventure games. 4. Make a visual novel, but be better. Find a slightly new angle. Gather the A-Team. Target non-traditional markets. Cultivate one's prestige. In short, reorganize and rebrand. But still make a visual novel, with ordinary 2D art and probably little to no gameplay. The only problem is that people don't like VNs anymore because smartphones shrunk their brains until they had flea-sized attention spans. So at best, such "better" VNs will simply exist in the top tier of modern VNs, able to survive and maybe make a little profit. These are VNs for the sake of creators who want to stay in the VN industry despite how comparatively little it pays. Aniplex.exe, a new VN brand started under Aniplex that Makura staff like Sca-ji are involved with, seems to fall under this category. They're identifying as makers of "novel games" probably because that sounds more respectable these days than bishoujo game. I'm frankly more interested in Sca-ji's other still unannounced projects (but that's just because I'm not personally a fan of Konno Asta or Umihara Nozomu). 5. Copy FGO, but EVOLVE. Before Light's "Pantheon" mobile game died mid-development, Masada planned for it to have a substantial scenario. That kind of story would fatally clash, like matter and dark matter, with social games as they exist today. Unless they rethought the entire premise from scratch, I assume they'd have to at the very least dilute such a lengthy narrative into segments with constant breaks, rewards, and mini-games. And they'd have to make a tough choice about whether they seriously want to market it for smartphones, or stick to PC like Granblue Fantasy. It's easier to not evolve or just give up. But moreover, I think industry veterans are just pissed off and unable to accept that something as amazing as VNs can't find its consumers anymore. So they will struggle. Visual Arts will struggle, for sure. Key pretended to be half-dead in their 20th anniversary message, but they were actually hard at work. They've let Maeda take on the scenario of a high budget smartphone game called "Heaven Burns Red". Will he be able to do for social games with "Heaven Burns Red" what he did for VNs with "Kanon"? I'm not too optimistic, since I haven't seen any indication that the overall story concept was Maeda's. 6. ??? To quote Sca-ji, a writer who's qualified to talk about the unique worth of eroge, from late October: "People across various otaku industries have said, 'I want the wonderful culture of eroge to stay alive.' They're going out of their way and doing many things to make that happen. If I'm pessimistic, this might be our last chance to revive this industry, so I'm cheering them on. Do your best. ... People around their late twenties to thirty years old have started to take positions of power in society, praising eroge and doing many things for us." ZZZ 「Kanon」や「CLANNAD」「Angel Beats!」など…「泣きゲー」からアニメ原作まで、美少女IPを仕掛け続けた28年！ ビジュアルアーツのユニークなブランド戦略と経営思想を馬場隆博社長に聞いてみた 『ダンガンロンパ』、『東京クロノス』、『グノーシア』の開発者が語る。「アドベンチャーゲームは滅ぶのか？」緊急座談会 「なぜエロゲ業界は衰退してるのか」 それをまとめた画像が話題にwwwww https://twitter.com/gannbattemasenn/status/1015644154271973376 https://enty.jp/avestan https://twitter.com/sca_di https://vndb.org/ EPILOGUE A new decade is upon is, and we're in the midst of a wave of 20th anniversaries that inevitably prompt retrospection. What I'm keeping an eye on, out of concern for the industry, as we enter it: - Too Kyo Games - Heaven Burns Red (unveiling on February 28) and Visual Arts as a whole - Sca-ji's Twitter account - Aniplex.exe as a whole - Any news from Masada about new publishers for Pantheon - Major non-adult scenarioge companies like Spike-Chunsoft and Mages (they may absorb some talent or try to carry on eroge culture) - Any actual new VNs from Nasu, like the Tsukihime remake ADDENDUM I: A Note on Death VS Decline (added 1/28)

Hello everyone ^^. I'm back with another update. Now, before we move onto the progress update, I have another members update XD. Yuuko Shionji and Dark_Gamer have joined us as the editor and TL checker respectively ^^. Our team has become quite big now, hasn't it? XD With their help, I'm sure the final patch will be in a much better shape than the partial patch, so please look forward to it ^^. Now, on to the progress: - For the TLC/edit: Zones, stages, gods medals and many others other files have been TLC-ed and edited. - For the images: Images for zones', stages' and characters' names, as well as many others, have been edited. The god medals are also half-way edited. We seriously blasted through the backlog with all the new members, didn't we? lol Before ending the update, I have a small warning for everyone using our partial patch. Thanks to @desdevilize, a crash has been found in Mistoria's normal ending. While I haven't received any other report, this crash may extend to other endings as well. If you encounter this crash, you can delete 'SC0450.bin' from the root directory of the game to progress through the crash. However, since that is the translation file for the epilogue, the epilogue will be in Japanese if you do so. I am very sorry for the trouble. I'm looking into this crash right now, and will update the patch the moment the problem is resolved. So please bear with me until then. Oh, and one more thing, for the people asking if we're doing another project... I'm very sorry, but we have nothing to announce at the moment. I mean, this project isn't even completed yet XD. I'll be sure to make an announcement regarding any potential future project, so please wait until then. Thank you ^^. Well, that's about it for this update. Thank you for reading and see you next time ^^. And for the people celebrating Lunar New Year, an early Happy Lunar New Year! XD

http://desertrain.sakura.ne.jp/kouryaku/2013/overdrive_bokuten/index.html Yuri Save 1 Do not return the shard Don't return it Give up Do not return the shard Do not return the shard Save 2 Return the shard (end 1) Load from save 2 Respect Yuri's wishes (end 2) Minamo Load from save 1 Return the shard Return the shard Return the shard Save 3 Don't return the shard Don't return the shard Save 4 Encourage Minamo Load from Save 4 Stop Minamo Naruko Load from save 3 Return the shard Save 5 Return the shard It was my imagination (choice only occurs when Aine route is unlocked) Save 6 Don't return her feelings Load from Save 6 Return her feelings Aine Load from Save 5 Return the shard This might be too much for us

Since ceasing VN of the Month, I've been slowly recovering from my years of over-reading VNs, the vast majority of them ones I normally wouldn't have taken an interest in. While I still play VNs regularly, I do so at a slower pace, reading more conventional literature and playing normal games as much as I do them. I recently began to regain some of my VN stamina (though I will never get back to where I was), and I've found that even the SOL VNs I choose to play are far less stressful than before. It is nice to reconfirm that I truly love VNs, after so many years playing far too many charage threatened to make me hate them. However, I've also noticed that I am far less tolerant of obvious blunders and poor choices on the part of writers, regardless of genre. When something touches on my pet peeves, I immediately drop the VN, and I lose all urge to play it, often for months after. This was the case with Sorceress Alive and it is also the case with Raillore to Ryakudatsusha (dameningen protagonists with no interesting or redeeming traits are one of my pet peeves). On the other hand, my stamina for 'sweetness' and 'ichaicha' in a VN has recovered somewhat, and I can play a route in a charage with no troubles... However, I no longer desire to play any routes other than that of my favorite heroine. I used to mechanically run through all the heroines in a VN without hesitation or slowing down, but now I only go for the one or two heroines that interest me, ignoring the others entirely. This change in my own behavior leaves me somewhat bemused, though I can see where it comes from rationally. I simply got tired of plowing through huge numbers of boring heroines that almost buried the good ones, lol.

Maggot Baits is something of a Holy Grail of dark eroge, highly anticipated guro fans within the Western VN community and often hyped as possibly the greatest achievement of the company that produced it, Clock Up. As one the most gruesome VNs ever produced, and quite likely the most brutal one ever brought to the West, it contains dozens upon dozens of violent sex scenes, all accompanied by intricate CGs, with small variations in them so numerable that they sum to nearly 2500 unique illustrations. All of that placed in a highly-unique, modern-fantasy setting populated by amazingly-crafted characters and tackling interesting philosophical and religious topics. While it’s pretty much the furthest possible thing from what I usually write about on this blog, few games intrigued me as much as this one, particularly after my inconsistent, but extremely interesting experience with Clock Up’s another famous title, euphoria. Everything I’ve heard about Maggot Baits suggested that it was both more extreme and overall better than studio’s other bestseller, and after reading it to completion, I felt the need to share my thoughts about it in detail. Both because it’s a pretty fascinating case of strengths and pitfalls of this breed of eroge, and to warn those interested in it as a piece of storytelling – while in many ways an incredible achievement, this game is extremely hard to recommend for a “normie” reader such as myself. Why is that exactly? Before I go into story details, it’s most important to deal with Maggot Baits’ greatest issue – its structure and general storytelling formula. This game is, at its core, a guro nukige and it’s incredibly dedicated to this template. It throws h-scenes at you at very consistent intervals, disregarding whatever might be going on in the story and sacrificing any sense of pacing or tension so it can constantly offer a new piece of violent hentai. Quite often, the scenes are not important for, or even directly connected to what’s happening in the plot, pretty much pausing the whole narrative to insert a new piece of fanservice. In this, it goes even further than euphoria, which did a much better job intertwining its scenes with the story and had a bit more restraint in the most dramatic and meaningful parts of the plot. Maggot Baits even goes to the length of adding a major side-branch in the first chapter of the story, which is nothing but 3-4 hours of futanari porn leading to a bad ending. All of it narratively empty and pretty much derailing your experience if you expect any kind of interesting reveals or a meaningful conclusion within it. I still don’t understand why it was a part of the main story, and especially inserted so early in the game, before you build any connection to the characters involved or can understand the full implications of what is happening in those scenes. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Thanks to everyone who has bought the game! The release is going really well so far!! Regarding the price, we set it so low for two reasons. 1) As adamstan said, we're hoping to appeal to the Chinese market, as well as to more casual fans/newbies to visual novels who are more likely to buy at a lower price point. 2) We ported the game to a new engine, which meant some of the QOL features had to be cut from the original version, so we thought it was fair to reduce the price accordingly. If anyone has any questions, drop them here and I'll do my best to answer

Yes

cleans off dust Ahem, okay folks, what's uuuuuuup?!?!?! MaggieP is in da building!!! It's been a whole while, and while I still didn't graduated from my position of elusive shiny pokémon in the early gens just yet and I am very much still quite busy to handle multiple communities together with gacha, I decided to drop here this fine day to at least give you guys a big hello then a big bye and go my way. And while I'm here why not we chat and catch up over average quality tea? Do tell me what happened around these parts aside from the big warning of doom from Tay in the front page. I'm seeing new faces, new medals, new mods, and the same old shit all around, so whatever more did I miss? Do give me your worst barely intelligible tl;dr k thx bye* *This still isn't the big bye I mentioned yet, rest assured.

The Harisenbois are delighted to present you with a full patch for Shinobi Harisenbo, a short otomege about a princess and her loyal shinobi (tl note: ninja) set in the Sengoku Era. Beset by an apparition that will kill her if she speaks untruth, can our princess at last tell her shinobi how she really feels? More info & download links here: https://memeshii.home.blog/2019/11/01/shinobi-harisenbo-complete-english-patch-release/