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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, 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!

Hello everyone, I'm here with a progress update after 2 months XD. I've translated all the scripts of the Eushully room and the text for the terrains and obstacles. With this, I've translated almost all of the text (not counting images XD). There are only a few minor files for the voice actors and stuffs left. If I can find the time, I'll probably be able to finish them within this month. Also, @frontier14th, thank you very much for your support, but you don't have to check back everyday for an update XD. I usually post an update around the middle of each month, so you can just check back around then. Or you can follow this thread to get a notification whenever there's a new post. Well, that's about it this time, Thank you for reading, and see you next time ^^.

Hello everyone, I'm back with another progress update. First of all, about the translation... I've finished translating all of the scripts for the story! (Yay! XD) Now, this doesn't mean that the game is fully translated. There are still many things that need to be translated such as the Eushully Room, the character information, etc. I'd say around 85% of the whole game have been translated. Next, around 1/3 of the menu images have been edited. Chapter 2 is still in tlc and editing. The in-game terminologies list is also being translated. I think that's about it this time. While this is quite a big milestone for us, it'll still be a while before the game is fully translated. Please bear with us until then ^^. Thank you, and see you next time ^^!

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!

Man, I was just tryna be a good socialist and advocate for living wages for translators. Now we here

FuwaChanges A public log where you can see all changes that is made. Today inactive moderators will be removed. Sad to see such big part of them inactive. but not surprising. They are welcome back to the positions if they come back. Moderators removed : Nohman, Eclipsed, Helvetica standard, Flutterz and our oldtimer global mods Nosebleed and Down. Mr Poltroon was promoted to Global mod, Plk_Lesiak have been added to Board moderators. Some minor forum cleaning have started. Some of the sections have been abit clutterd with pinned threads, for example Helvetiva´s Renpy guide have now been moved to the mainsite. More things to come. This first post will be fairly short, There is alot more worked on behind the scenes and as things get done it will be added to this thread. i have slowly started adding VN´s and change things on the mainsite and the forums. But its a big list and im just 1 person. Find any errors or something else to report. use the Report & Request a change section

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 ^^.

Hello there, all you good people still following my content-starved blog! There will be no regular review post this week (I’ll be catching up next week with one about Reine Work’s Our Lovely Escape, and hopefully a week after that with one of the long-overdue games sent to me for review), but I’ve wanted to take this opportunity to share the reasons behind the recent slowdown on the site and talk a bit my plans for the future. A warning: this will contain a lot of personal musings that most of you are probably not very interested in. However, I kind of need this opportunity to vent and reset. I’ll add a tl;dr version at the end of this post. Outside of my, not-extremely-successful attempt to jumpstart a new wave of activity on Fuwanovel, there have been a few other things happening behind the scenes. The major one was my academic project on visual novel fan translations, which led me to submitting a paper for an international fan studies conference in Cracow. Preparing the speech in English (this was the first time I wasn’t speaking in Polish on such an event), running a survey with people involved in fan translation projects… It all took a lot out of me and gave me little time and energy to actually enjoy VNs as such. It also coincided with a minor health issue, which despite its non-threatening nature made it impossible for me to sit straight for nearly two weeks – a truly infuriating thing when you should be working on your computer and are basically running out of time. This was probably a major factor which destroyed my motivation for working on the project, which in turn made it be the most painful and depressing one to date. I, however, still made my short presentation in the presence of prof. Matt Hills, one of the most influential researchers in my obscure field of study, and learned quite a lot from other speakers. Here’s some photographic proof, courtesy of my girlfriend who once more agreed to help me inflate my ego by documenting my speech. 😉 As you can see, I was asking the Heavens to help me and my listeners to get through those 20+ minutes of my horrible English accent. Not sure to what degree my prayers were heard, but at least there were no fatalities. Oh, and in the lower-left corner, it’s Matt Hills. That was both awesome and terrifying. And here’s a rare moment where my conference ID wasn’t hanging backwards! You can see the fear in my eyes – one would think after nearly 10 similar presentations I’d be a little bit calmer, but it’s apparently in my nature to stress out over everything. And here’s me taking one of two questions that were still possible to ask after I’ve used all the discussion time for my way-too-long PowerPoint slideshow. And yup, I will insert Flowers whenever that's even remotely appropriate. Suou x Rikka forever. You can't stop me! While, in general, my project was fruitful and I’m satisfied with my performance, I also ended up so physically and emotionally drained that I’ve ditched the other two days of the conference, just enjoying my time in Cracow. Even after coming back, I had a day of what could be described as a full-on breakdown before I kind of got my shit together. All this, of course, has some very real consequences for the blog: for quite a while, I didn’t have the time and energy to really read VNs. And, obviously, without any new material to cover, I didn’t write anything either. It’s the first time since establishing the Blogger site that I have no “emergency” posts to use or quick ideas to supplement more involved write-ups with, even despite switching to the biweekly schedule. And honestly, I don’t expect to write much in-advance anymore. The “one post every two weeks” frequency is here to stay and I’m going to be flexible about it, switching content and dates when necessary. The other thing is that I still want to make the blog a little bit more of my personal space. I’ve kept up the regular stream of content both to become a better writer and to prove a few things to myself. I think I’m satisfied with what I’ve achieved, and while I’m definitely not discarding the general profile of the blog and the responsibilities I’ve taken upon myself (like covering the games sent to me), I’m going to have fun with it too. Write silly stuff connected to the weeb culture and my peculiar experience with it. I’ve already hinted at this at the beginning of the summer, but I’m even more determined to make it happen now. No hobby I’ve picked up over the years was this intellectually stimulating and satisfying as this one and I want to do all I can to keep it this way– I can't let things go too stale. And while I’m doing all this weird stuff and overthinking things, I hope you guys will stay and still read my crappy writing. Exploring the creativity and passion of EVN devs is not something I’ll ever get tired of, and I hope we can enjoy their stuff together for years to come. Thank you all for following my work, and until next week! tl;dr I’ve been to a fan studies conference which, together with minor health issues, ate a month and a half of my life. I’ll get back to “serious” posting next week, returning to the bi-weekly schedule. I might sneak in some weird posts about Japanese popculture between “proper” EVN ones. EVNs are love, EVNs are life (still). See you next week for actual content!

Hello everyone, I'm back with another progress update ^^. There are both good news and bad news this time, so let's get started with the bad news first. Our image editor, glupak, has withdrawn from the team. He's too busy irl right now to continue helping us. Glupak, thank you very much for everything you'd done/edited for us ^^. On to the good news, I've finished translating all of the texts for the game! Yay! I'll take another look at it though, in case I missed something. But other than that, I'll probably only be making the patch now, and maybe posting progress update here? Now then, I guess it's time I answered the question some of you have been asking for quite a while now: Will I translate another Eushully VN? And the answer is ... no, for now. I've spent a little too much time on this project, so I'll take a little break for now (I need some time to clean up my game backlog XD). After that, I'll probably find some other project to work on. I don't know when I'll start again, but if there is any VN you guys would like to have translated, Eushully or not, you can make a post in this thread. I'll take a look at them, and maybe work on them, that is, if I can get my hands on the VN and the tools to extract the text XD. Another thing is with glupak gone, we have no image editor. Technically, Nylios is switching over to image editing, but even with what glupak has done, there are still a lot of images left. That's why I'll start recruiting for more image editors to help Nylios with the task. If you or your friends are interested in helping us making this patch a reality, please post in this thread or send me a pm. Thank you ^^. Well, I think that's about it for now... I wonder if I can say that after posting a wall of text zzzzz But in any case, thank you for reading, and see you next time ^^.

Oh, I'll take a guess! MangaGamer will start developing games using minori's IPs, and minori will sell them! With the power of friendship, they'll do together what they failed to do alone!

Anyone who has read one of my reviews knows I'm something of a cynic and a pessimist. I try to think the best about every VN I go into, but my first impulse is to see what is wrong, rather than what is right. Whether it is optimism and rose-colored glasses or pessimism and cynicism, and excess of either is often a negative influence on the quality of a review. Generally speaking, I usually make an effort to find something I like about a VN's concept before going in, then I start the VN trying to enjoy it as an outgrowth of that. By the end, this usually results in me having experienced both the negative and positive aspects of the VN... the problem is, when reviewing, it is all too easy to forget what is good about the VN. As a result, when I'm writing up a review, the first thing I do is write up a list of the good points I found, ignoring the mitigating negative factors. I then build the review around these and include the negative points in with the rest... but you can probably tell that being positive just doesn't come naturally to me, since I tend to be pretty harsh. However, by using this system, I've found dozens of VN gems over the years that I probably would have discarded for perceived negative qualities if I didn't use this process. Indeed, early on in my reading of untranslated VNs, I dropped numerous ones simply because they had a negative aspect that I got obsessed with. I would later go back and replay them, only to find that the negative aspect wasn't as big a deal as I thought at the time, since I made the effort to go back with a differing perspective. A poor quality in a reviewer is the tendency to ignore the negatives about something you like. Another one is to rate things entirely based on aspects you only have a vague grasp or focus on (in my case, due to my eye problems, I'm not the best judge of artwork, and my musical sense is entirely based on how it enhances the atmosphere, rather than raw quality comprehension). I'm a story reviewer. I review almost exclusively based on the story, characters, and presentation. As such, art and sound rarely have a place in my reviews, since I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate them except in the most general of terms. I can tell when a VA did an exceptional job, because it stands out enough for me to notice. I will even mention this in the review, since it takes a lot for a performance to stand out to me. However, I never pretend to know the ins and outs of specific aspects of VA or musical quality. I simply don't have the right kind of ear for that kind of thing, not being musically inclined. One thing I've noticed in some reviewers who prefer niche genres (such as myself) is to display a tendency I refer to as PGRD (or Popular Game Reactionary Disorder). It is a fictional mental disease that many of us who have a distinct preference for a niche genre display that causes us to have a knee-jerk negative reaction to popular works, simply because they are mainstream. This is a problem that is particularly common in Western otakus of around my age, who became fanboys during a time when watching anime, playing Japanese video games, and reading manga had a rather strong stigma that left us feeling isolated and defensive. However, it is also present in people who prefer niche genres (I get the double whammy, being both). That sense of isolation leads to a tendency to over-praise our favorite materials and bash anything that we see as being too popular. In reverse, there are those who automatically dismiss anything that isn't mainstream. Both types are reactionary in nature and have little to do with the quality of the materials in question. Being a long-time sci-fi addict, I can't understand why anyone would enjoy Avatar (the movie). However, if I make the mistake of saying that in front of a fanboy of the movie, I will inevitably get a vociferous lecture on how misunderstood the movie is by science fiction fans... There are many such examples of such behavior I have experienced over the years, both in myself and in others. As such, a reviewer has to be willing to examine his own motives for liking or hating something. Are you being cynical for the sake of being cynical? Are you over-praising something to the point of overlooking the obvious problems with it? Are you making excuses while thinking you are making a reasoned argument? On the other side, are you ignoring the voice of reason to give you an excuse to dislike something? In the end, bias is unavoidable... but it is a reviewer's duty to do their best to cast aside as much of it as possible, because people use our reviews as reference points when they pick what they want to play/read/watch.

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

I'm not sure why we live in a world where translators think that just because they've received years of education, training, and practice and lived in parallel cultures for years, that they're qualified to... uh... translate.

This take always makes me facepalm. By this logic nothing should be translated at all, as the voiced lines will always differ from the translation. If you understand the voiced lines, what are you doing reading a translation instead of the original.

This is a new solo video series I'm starting to recap Major News each month related to Visual Novel Releases, Announcements, Major Project Updates, and the Community. For the first video, I wanted to include July since it was a pretty big month with all the Anime Expo announcements. Feel free to leave any feedback, positive or negative. Constructive preferred.

I can speak only for myself and my motivation to read VNs is a bit sketchy in the first place. At first, I simply kept them as an allowed exception while trying to limit my video game habits. It evolved to the current state of affairs, where I more or less stopped playing any other kind of games. The reason I find visual novel way less toxic for me is because they require some basic intellectual effort to follow the story and don't include endless gameplay loops I could burn countless hours on. They're stories to experience, and not autistic sandboxes that'll suck me in for a week and spit out with with bloodshot eyes and realisation of dozens of hours burned on something that didn't even left me an impression that would be worth sharing with anyone. But, if course, if there wasn't something in VN that I really enjoyed, I wouldn't get so much into them. For me its: 1. Incredible variety of conclusive romance stories. I honestly didn't know I liked romance stories this much before I came back to watching anime regularly and started reading VNs. But anime quite too often means harem comedies and I happen to hate "romance" in those. Because they never commit and when they do, it's usually not the girl I was rooting for. This is why having a route for every heroine is an enormous perk. I identified the best girl? I can get the MC to romance her. I like some secondary ones? Also covered. The rest of them? I probably got enough connection to the whole cast by this point to enjoy them too in the end. No linear media will give me that. 2. Variety of romance stories once more. Yuri, otome, galge, BL. Fluffy love stories and serious drama. Tiny games for half an evening and novel-sized epics. VNs got you all covered. It might get stale if you just read moege, but, partially because of my weird blogging endeavours, I end up reading incredibly varied stuff and so far I didn't get bored of any of it. 3. Anime art. I love anime art over any other style. Give me anime girls kissing and you can take all the rest of my visual media away, I won't complain much. But aside from my personal deviancy, VN art is just that good in many cases. 4. And well, for someone like me, with pretty limited visual imagination, in many cases VNs are simply more compelling than literature. I like having at least some visual representation of what I'm reading to give my mind some point of reference/guide on how to interpret it all. For example, I'm not sure if I'd have enjoyed reading Dune as much as I did if I didn't have some vision of its world from the classic games I played. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but from my experience, that's just how my brain is wired and I can't do much about it. VNs are a pretty good compromise between literary text and graphics, showing you a lot but still leaving a lot of gaps for your imagination to fill. Curious what other people's motivations are. :3

This is the one, this is the post that will finally get us our anime titty back into VNs

You folks are talking about a mass move by Japanese VN developers toward mobage like it's a hypothetical, but from what I understand, it's pretty much a fait accompli. A large number of VN developers have already tried (and/or are currently trying) their hand at mobage. You just haven't heard much about it here since they've all have failed miserably thus far, aside from Type-Moon. So it's a bit late to be worried about that coming to suck away the attention paid to VNs—we're already in that boat. To bring this somewhat back on topic... VN loc companies are similarly looking all around for ways to stay/become profitable. There are only two real strategies I've seen almost all of them employing, at this point: China, and console releases. For China: if you have a license for a worldwide release, why not sell to a market that actually has consistently shown they're willing to pay for VNs, enough to fund a localization effort? It's certainly profitable. For console: Switch ports seem to be profitable, maybe? Though I don't have as clear a picture on that, and there aren't a lot of data points yet. But you can look at lackluster games like Root Letter getting huge sales numbers on consoles and realize, oh yeah, there's probably something there if you play your cards right. Now, neither of those is going to do the vast majority of people on this board much good, since we're mostly 1) not Chinese readers and 2) looking for 18+ content. As long as English 18+ release sales remain low (for whatever reasons, including but not limited to high rates of piracy), the only hope most of us have is that the VN loc companies both expand in some way that lets them make money (China, console, and/or some other means) and continue to subsidize English versions with 18+ content from those profits out of pure passion for it. That is effectively what they're doing today. Denpasoft, JAST USA, and Nekonyan are all on the China boat (Nekonyan through the Hikari Field partnership), leaving only MangaGamer in the lurch. Denpasoft and MangaGamer, at least, are both doing the non-PC thing, though MangaGamer is taking a galaxy-brain approach where they vomited up a buggy android app and then promptly forgot about it. I'd say if MangaGamer doesn't get in on the Chinese market in some way within the next year or so, I'll eat my hat, except they're so slow-moving that maybe they'll just keep trickling away dollars forever... Anyway, subsidizing 18+ English releases like this is honestly both risky (all kinds of legal exposure they could easily avoid by just, not doing it) and bad business (because it's throwing away money with no hope of return), but all these companies are doing it anyway. And yet somehow a lot of the vocal members of the VN community treat all of them as some evil enemy, most of the time. Sigh.

The key difference you're missing is that Sol Press is an all=ages company which sells more than just all ages visual novels. They also sell other products (especially LNs and manga) from license holders which will not accept being associated with adult content (unlike most VN license holders, since even those releasing all ages content are typically comfortable with 18+ associations, by the nature of the VN industry). There could conceivably be both an all ages site for Sol Press and an 18+ site for the separate company which deals with 18+ releases of the associated adult content of some of the VNs for which Sol Press releases all-ages versions. However, said site does not currently exist. Maybe it will in the future; I do not know any more than you. The all-ages shop is a sound business decision, because they will benefit from selling their LNs and manga, and yes their all-ages VNs, themselves. Whether it makes sense for that separate company to make an 18+ site to sell their wares, and to then go through all the associated likely payment processor woes mentioned here, is a separate concern. I'll also add that, from my understanding, payment processors handling adult content typically charge a great deal more overhead due to the higher-risk nature of the product, especially when dealing with small companies. Long story short, it's a lot more complicated than you're claiming.

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 ^^. Here's some information regarding the text-only partial patch: How to use the partial patch(for both this patch and ZAP 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 translations 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. 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 partial patch: MEGA link: https://mega.nz/#F!MstRHI6S!bQVaRTSLnwQPNjYuCJKfpw Please keep in mind that this is not the final version of the translation. We'll continue to improve it, so there may be some differences between this patch and the final patch. Please think of this patch as a teaser of sort, a taste of what is to come . Though I've played through and checked this patch, I may still have missed something. If you notice any problem (typos, text display problem, crash, etc.), we'd appreciate it if you could take a screenshot and send it to us. We'll fix it for the next patch. Any feedback is very welcome. That's why if you use this patch, we'd love to hear your thoughts on what we should improve/change. 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!

For people who appeared in something like the /r/vns Visual novel no cheating! Ideally I'd want you to use your current IRL traits but if you have an ideal person you wanna be or base yourself more on how you act on the internet you can make that I guess Here's mine: Hair- Black, Short Eyes- Black Body- Young-Adult, Average Height, Dark Clothes- Baggy Pants, Shoes, T-Shirt Personality- Friendly, Serious, Strange, Docile, Pacifist, Kind, Otaku, Loyal, Food Lover Role- Living Alone, Gamer, Phillipine, Older Brother Engages In- Online Chatting, Teasing, Sarcasm, Reading Subject of- Teasing, Bullying, Massage Engages in (Sexual) - None Subject of (Sexual)- None

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

DOWNLOAD: https://djnostyle.itch.io/nothing-is-beautiful VNDB: https://vndb.org/v26715 This is the story of a girl who loves whales and a boy who eats too much candy. "What will happen to us in the summer?" A simple question from a simple girl -- but one that Yuu is unable to answer. Cursed with a severe case of psychosis at birth, Yuu sees and hears things that no one else can. These delusions, which come in waves brought on by the weight of God and past traumas, turn his daily life into an endless struggle toward normalcy. The game takes place over a two-week period at the end of high school. Please live a beautiful life. God is watching. Amen. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, everyone! Please check out Nothing is Beautiful. It's a psychological drama I'm writing and producing entirely on my own. Every asset in this game is royalty-free and, as such, the full game will be free as well upon release. Right now, the demo covers the first day of a two-week period. Please be advised, this game does have several dark themes and deals heavily with the impact of religion on the human psyche. If you have an issue with that, I completely understand and hold nothing against you. I do, however, hope that those of you who aren't put off by this enjoy the world I have created. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEROINES: (All designed by Liah) Saki Your childhood friend and source of free food and laundry. She is very kind and loves whales. Please be nice to her. She is very sad. Reina Your classmate. You used to be close, but you stopped hanging out with her for some reason. You don't know why. Her three sizes are 89/61/88 and she loves horror movies. Miu Your kouhai. She will act brave. She is lying. Do not love her until she learns to love herself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is no planned release date for the full project as of yet, but I'll continue working hard to deliver a very memorable experience. Thanks for reading!

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/

For a second, I thought "Wow, that's certainly a new and kinda strange expression", and then I realized I'd somehow managed to slightly bump my TV remote, making the cursor show up on screen in a pretty perfect position. (the quality's so-so, since I had to take a photo of the screen for the cursor to be visible)

Hello everyone, I'm very sorry but there will be no progress update for this month. Since I was moving, I've been quite busy, and I couldn't find the time to work on the translation. (And then there's the release of Three Houses zzz). I've pretty much settled in now, so I'll continue to work on the translation starting next week. Please look forward to the next progress update . Also, to everyone who helped SacredChaos with his problem, thank you very much. Tbh, I was at a lost since I've never encountered that problem before. In any case, that's it for now. Thank you for reading, and see you next time ^^.

https://fuwanovel.net/reviews/2019/08/10/the-language-of-love/ Feel free to discuss the review/the game, if anyone is actually interested in that, but I created this mostly to celebrate the fact that we have first content on the main site since exactly one year ago (not counting VNTS). And while publishing a single article on August 10th every year would be an interesting gimmick, I kind of hope to see more life there (and not just my EVN reviews too, that would be in really bad taste). If you find in yourself some energy for writing about a recent release, I'm sure no one will scoff at even one-time contributions, if they keep a decent-enough quality. We don't have a review team leader ATM, but if you contact me or @Emi, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to figure it out. And the blog staff recruitment post is also still up. :3

Think of it this way: who is the audience for English eroge? Young males (mainly in the US). What is the situation of young males with time on their hands these days? Usually buried in student loan debt trying to get through university. Do you honestly expect these people to buy eroge on credit? As for the population that doesn't go through university, their wages are generally lower and they have less time--also not a recipe for spending on high-priced time-consuming entertainment that you can only enjoy alone. Simply put, this is a demographics issue that doesn't have an easy solution. A pirated copy isn't a lost sale. Limiting piracy isn't going to increase their entertainment budgets. They'll just find their porn somewhere else. As for why Sol Press specifically might be having profitability issues: just look at their game lineup. They're selling a bunch of medium to long length games that are expensive and time-consuming to translate (and consume). They're all moege, appealing to more or less the same restricted audience. It's one thing to be a developer and stick to what you're good at (creatively). But sticking to one genre or game type doesn't do you much good as a publisher. Diversification spreads your risk and drives traffic from different audiences. That's good for business. It's also important to point out that Sol Press is relatively new and doesn't have much of a following or brand recognition. In addition, VN sales have a long tail in the West, and they don't have enough titles or sales history to benefit from that just yet. As for the article itself, it seems to stumble from one bit of nonsense to another. In what reality is releasing games sooner after the Japanese release going to decrease piracy?