Forythos

I couldn't disagree more with this statement. In fact one of the few things that I have to criticize Katawa Shoujo for is that it sold out to this narrow minded belief too. Even the Japanese don't follow this. Symphonic Rain took place in a fictional Italian town, Quartett! took place in a fictional German town. The only reason westerner game developers came up with this idea is because they noticed that their target audience are western Otaku. They figured their games would be more marketable (to this incredible niche audience) if they try to give them what they are used to (a Japanese feel). In several other threads I saw this as a reason why people don't like OELVN's because this is phony. If you've never been to Japan, and you don't really know what Japan is like, then using it as a setting is kind of shallow (which marketing often is). I have maintained, and will continue to maintain that if OELVN want to flourish in the west, they must sever their ties with Japan (somewhat). The problem is that doing so would mean having to create a brand new market for VNs and abandoning the current one. The sad part is that OELVN developers who make their stuff for-profit would rather maintain their small market, then take risks and create potentially a far bigger market. Capitalism is all about risk and reward, and currently we have very few OELVN developers who are willing to actually take a risk. (Dischan being the only company that comes to mind).
 
Look at it this way. Film is a western creation, but culture's all over the world have created movies. Would the heavily acclaimed Japanese film maker Akira Kurusawa been nearly as successful if he chose to imitate western films as opposed to add his Japanese influence to his films? Hell no! The same is ultimately true with any art form. OELVNs that add their western influence (like Dischan's visual novels) ultimately contain far better writing then any VN that pretends to be Japanese.
 
I'm sorry if this comes across as rambling but I really should have went to bed two hours ago...  

Speaking of Saber, I bought the July 2014 release of the wedding dress Saber (no idea which type she is) - link. it's so beautiful .. it's bigger than the average FIGMA figure. Not sure if I want to take it out of the box to be honest. I may not do that. It just looks so gorgeous. I still have similar version of this from the PSP Limited Edition that was released more than a year ago. I have yet to pop that box open. It's big ass box and it is filled with goods ... let me see where I can find a link to that one. Here.
I just saw this one so I'm debating if I want to buy it. Obviously and absolutely not from eBay. I'll have to do my own research .. but wow how the hell did I manage not to catch this one?! D:

Saber!  Back when I had only watched the anime I used to favor Tohsaka, but now I can't get enough of Saber.  I already have two figures of her. (Well, technicaly it's Saber Lily and Saber Alter.)
 



 
I also think all the Grisaia ladies are pretty hot, can't really choose one though I might slightly favor Sacchin, or Yumiko simply because she looks like Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari.(both designs by Akio Watanabe I guess?)  Also special mentions to the other Fate/Stay Night girls and Kyou Fujibayashi from Clannad.

Fate/Stay Night was 4500 Yen, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia was 4000 Yen and Mahoyo 4000 Yen as well, all from Mandarake.co.jp.  I got Stay Night in 2013 and both Fate/Hollow and Mahoyo in May of this year.  Fate/Hollow came with a cool set of class cards, while Mahou Tsukai No Yoru came with an artbook.

I have a a dozen VNs and a handful of handheld games as well.
 
PSP
7th Dragon 2020
Shining Hearts
Ys VS Sora no Kiseki
Tales of Phatasia X Narikiri Dungeon
 
DS
7th Dragon
 
GBA
Mother 3
 
PSVITA
To Love-Ru Darkness : Battle Ecstasy
 
PC VNs
Little Busters : Perfect Edition
Clannad : Memorial Edition
Fate/Stay Night
Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, First Print Edition
Mahoutsukai no Yoru, First Print Edition
Grisaia no Kajitsu
Steins;Gate Limited Edition (JAST)
Kara no Shoujo Limited Edition (MangaGamer)
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni (DVD ver.)
Umineko no Naku Koro Ni Chiru (DVD ver.)
Rose Guns Days, Season 1.
 
Here's a picture of my VNs and VN related stuff I took for MFC. (already outdated since I got more artbooks)

I listen to a lot of video game music and covers, so here are a few of my favorite tracks that I don't think have been posted yet.
 
FFT has always had one of my favorite OSTs : (and I remember many of the gaming magazines I used to read chose it as "Best OST" the year it came out.)



 
Ys : Oath in Felghana : Valenstein Castle (Falcom has some great soundtracks!)



 
River City Ransom OST, can't seem to get tired of it :

"It's raining but I believe it's not raining" - G.E. Moore

Saying something is subjective doesn't mean something can't be a fact. If everything in the world was subjective we'd live in chaos because there'd be no consensus on anything.
In fact i'd say that mentioning the subjectivity of something is just a cheap way out of most arguments.

You know 2D characters are not real because of empirical evidence. Because you're conscious of yourself and your sorroundings if you have a fully functional brain and 5 senses. This is not subjective, this is fact.

As for tastes, tastes are also not subjective, tastes are created through a wide range of external factors as well as personal experience, that's what gives you taste, it's not your own mind that suddenly defines a taste, it's empirical evidence being interpreted by your nervous system.

You see subjectivity is only a quality humans have to interpret empirical evidence on an intellectual level.
I think some people don't quite grasp the concept of subjectivity. Subjectivity is the collection of your perception of reality. It makes you a subject exposed to reality, the way you percieve reality may change depending on the subject but reality itself is still reality and it can not be changed.

If everything was subjective, we couldn't know if anything is what it is, but we humans have 5 senses and a consciousness, that's why we can be sure of certain things. This is why saying something like everything is subjective is just a cheap way out of an argument.

It still makes you a pedophile and it'd be frowned upon and nobody would allow you next to their kid, lol.

That's a broad generalization and an incorrect one.  It's like saying people don't buy Danielle Steele novels for the smut.  Sure they do.  And as you say, the porn is there for a reason--because some people like it.  Westerners aren't a different species of human from the Japanese.  Why would it be so shocking that many Westerners would share the same tastes?
 
While it has only tangental bearing on this discussion, their choice to localize the all-ages version only is why I won't be buying Grisaia.  That's simply not the direction I want the VN industry going in.

I've held off on this debate til now, but I've been asked to weigh in so I'll do so.  I think my conclusions will be a bit different than what some were expecting.  I also address some misconceptions in this thread regarding the role of Steam and other content distribution platforms in increasing VN sales.
 
VNs are not freeware
 
Commercial VNs cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars to produce.  Developers do this for a living, and they're not paid very much to do it.  It's a labor of love.  They need support to continue making more games for us to enjoy.  This doesn't change whether a game is untranslated, fan translated, or localized.  People that play VNs without paying are essentially parasites freeloading off the paying fanbase.  In the end, if too many people freeload instead of supporting a company, the company goes out of business and no more VNs get made.  The parasitic ecosystem collapses.
 
To maintain a healthy ecosystem, people must support the games they love.  When you buy a game, you're basically investing in the company's future.  You're saying "Here's my money--make more games like this!"
 
The role of fan translation
 
More than 95% of Japanese VNs are untranslated.  Fan translators provide a service by allowing us to enjoy titles in English we otherwise wouldn't have access to.  Many fan translators choose high profile titles that are currently beyond the grasp of the nascent localization industry.  Others choose titles that would never be localized due to controversial themes (e.g., lolicon).  Fan translators provide their fan translating services free of charge--but they don't own the game license.  All they can lay claim to is their translation, their derivative work.
 
When you play a fan translated game, you're expected to own the original Japanese version.  Few people actually buy the original game.  This behavior is typically written off because in the end, no sales are lost as a result of the fan translation.  The people playing the game in English weren't the target audience for the game in the first place.  Also, the customer's dollars won't be achieving their intended effect.  "Make more games like this" really means "make more games like this that I can play".  If a fan translator has to act as a middleman, financial support does not have its intended effect.  You end up with more titles you want to play but can't, since 95% of titles won't be translated.
 
In the end, fan translation does not grow the paying fanbase. The true role of fan translation is to promote localization, allowing consumers to support games they love, to see more such titles in the future.  Fan translation promotes localization by calling attention to the medium as well as particular titles.  Many localization deals wouldn't have happened if fan translation efforts hadn't highlighted to Japanese developers/publishers that there was interest in these titles overseas.
 
The role of localization
 
Localization completes the support circuit by bringing Japanese VNs to us in a language we can understand--with the promise of more such titles in the future.  It also promotes the medium more effectively than fan translators ever could, since official localization brings marketing and media attention.
 
When fan translation undermines localization by providing an excuse for people to freeload, its usefulness ends.  This is why fan translations, in general, should not be distributed once official localizations are available.
 
On content distribution platforms (e.g., Steam)
 
These gather funding by attracting a different audience than the VN fandom that typically follows JAST and MG.  The DRM that Steam uses increases sales, but not by converting pirates to customers.  Rather, it was designed to prevent resale, ensuring that every customer is funding the developer/publisher rather than funding resellers such as Gamestop.  Basically, releasing a VN on Steam exposes it to the Steam ecosystem (an ecosystem highly enriched for people willing to support the games they like), attracting customers that otherwise would not have known about or been interested in the product.
 
My stance on Planetarian and Grisaia
 
With my general philosophy on the issue explained, I'd like to qualify it a bit in this particular context.  While there's no issue with Planetarian, the release of Grisaia will be a different version from that which was translated--the all-ages version rather than the original 18+ version.  There are no plans to release the 18+ version.  Putting aside my personal views on this decision, the fan translation has added value for some people, and therefore there is justification for retaining the fan translation on Fuwanovel.  I have strong views on this topic, but they are related to my personal interests in the VN scene and thus are outside the scope of this argument.

This is going to be long so take a seat.
And don't you dare skimming through it or not reading any of the linked articles.

1. Misinterpretation of Fuwanovel mission statement

I will start with this as it should be simple to explain.
The portion of the mission statement that is used in the forum logo (and forum logo only) is just part of the whole mission.
As you can notice on the main website, the main logo there actually describes the website differently.

"Fan translated visual novels repository"
And if you browse the website and visit the mission statement section, you can see the mission is actually different from what the forum logo says, it is:
"Visual Novels for the World"
As even included with the logo of the section:


Following up in the mission statement, three main objectives are mentioned there

There are three main objectives, they are:
1) Make visual novels popular in the West.
2) Promote fan translation
3) Create a community that celebrates fan translation and fan sharing.


When the forums logo was made, only the first part of the mission statement was put there, because otherwise it would be too long. And many people misinterpret "West" as "America", where as it just states the general mission statement Visual Novels for the World but with different words.
West in that case means outside of Japan (where Visual Novels already exist), so basically the rest of the world.

What I am getting at is that nowhere on the whole website it states anything about promoting Localized copies, ensuring sales of Localized copies or celebrating success of Localization companies and commercial market.
Instead it focuses on fan translation, fan efforts, fan sharing, fan creations and fan improvements to the original version.

The only reason Fuwanovel doesn't share licensed versions was out of Aaeru's "good will".
She decided not to include those releases as a gesture of friendliness to the companies.
How those companies responded to this good will and attempts to build a friendly relationship is a different matter entirely.



2. Piracy vs Sharing

The whole word "Piracy" is just wrongly used since the beginning of the internet.
If you imagine piracy in a pirate movie, they invade a ship and deprive people off their possessions.
But in the case of games, movies, music - that is never the case. "Piracy" on the internet just stands for "Sharing", but people for some reason needed a word that sounds evil.
Instead of taking away possessions of someone else, you are being offered a shared copy of what someone already has. You are being offered a flower seed out of unlimited supply to grow your own flower and ultimately build your love for flowers to the point you want to support the people who originally imported these flowers from different parts of the world.


Aaeru and Fuwanovel was always for "Sharing" and as so you could say also for "Piracy" since they are the same thing.

The stuff about flower seeds and building love for flowers is much better explained in the "Spreading culture does not decrease supporters. It increases it." part of fuwanovel About section.
Please read the whole article if you haven't already done so.

You can notice there the part of why true fans pay money.



"Your labour IS the scarcity not the copies, for it cannot be pirated."

And are you going to argue that it doesn't work? Even the mentioned Steins;Gate release says exactly the opposite, many of the fuwanovel staff bought the copy even though we still direct people to the shared copy.
It is not because they had to buy it, they wanted to buy it, partially thanks to the fact that the game is popularized thanks to Fuwanovel.

The article mentioned above wasn't directed at localization companies however, it was mainly directed at Japanese developers and why Aaeru decided to share the copies with the improvements of additional language version.

You can even see similar examples here of people buying a Japanese version if they liked the fuwanovel copy. I can even say it for myself - I am struggling to make a living and pay rent, but after finishing Iroseka (shared torrented version), I became true fan of FAVORITE, It is one of my dreams that once I solve my situation and get some more money, I will not buy some expensive food or a car or any other pleasure like that, I will buy the games with all the stupidly overpriced little perks in the box, because I want the companies to make more of it.
But in the meanwhile, all I can really do is spread the word of how good the games are, link people to the Fuwanovel Hoshimemo page, praise Iroseka and make more people try to play it in Japanese now, make more people interested in translating it for even wider audience - because I know that I can find people who will fall in love with those games just like I have and maybe they will have the funds to afford the support to the companies. I was able to talk to a Japanese FAVORITE fan yesterday in pso2JP, uniting together we can get more and more fame to the company that deserves it, even though the Japanese person can buy the game with earnings from an hour or 2 of his time, and all I can do is spread the word. But I am willing to spread the word for many hours, writing reviews and comparisons, because that is all I can spare, my time.

If I haven't "pirated" the games in the first place, I would never be able to do this, I would never be able to extend the fandom because I would never be able to play the game.



3. Localized releases vs Fan TL releases

So as mentioned above, we are still trying to carry Aaeru's good will of not sharing localized copies, a good will even after all the things the companies have done to her in response. The good will might weaken in times of controversy we can sometimes see, but since we believe that evil should not be repaid by evil, that eye for an eye is just the wrong approach, we still continue this good will and are not sharing English licensed releases of games.

But there was never such will for Japanese releases, as with those, following the points mentioned in point 2 of this post, the creator will have more success in building fandom and true fans.

And as such we are sharing Japanese copy of Planetarian, a game Aaeru added to the website, improved by a collective fan effort many years ago. It is the same version a lot of you (Including me) were able to enjoy for free, thanks to the original fan effort and Fuwanovel sharing service. And the same version, translated out of passion for the game, shared between fans of Key to make their games even more popular.
Without this fan copy and all the other fan translated Key games, most of us would not be able to enjoy them. Without the effort of fan subbing, lot of people would not be able to enjoy Key anime.
And without that the English Key fandom would not become what it is today, a fandom that is able to organize a giant project like Key 15th Anniversary Letter.
A project that will even be collaborating with Sekai project to deliver their letter, signifying their dedication.
A project full of TRUE fans who will buy the official Sekai release even though they have probably played Planetarian several times.

And you are asking us to simply remove all that from existence so only you and other people in the past were so privileged to enjoy it for free and become a fan. That new people cannot join the club anymore, become a fan of a free version to later potentially evolve into a true fan supporting Key by buying figs and games all over the place, just like many Fuwanovel members do.

And the same goes for Grisaia, we are sharing a Japanese version of the game improved by fan translation, a version that was able to build pretty big fandom of its own. A favorite game of many thanks to the free fan translation and the free availability on Fuwanovel (among other places).
A fandom built thanks to a collaborative effort of not only translators and other people on the project, but also seeders on the torrents, page creators, article writers, even people just saying "I loved this game" in a public place - all those efforts however important or hard they might be created what Grisaia true fandom today is and as such tons of them will be able to afford the steam release, while others can keep sharing the word and original fan project for free, to get even more people on the board to be able to spend their money, time or effort or combination of those to further support their beloved game.


And in the end by removing the original fan translation patch you are not only depriving newcomers of things you were able to have yourself, depriving them of the sun that used to shine on you.
But you are also undermining all the efforts of the people trying to share and make the game as popular as possible with the means available to them. Some people have money to import the game from Japan or later buy the game on Steam, some people only have words.
But power of the words might in the end turn out more powerful than power of money. By sharing a VN and making more people be interested in it and talk about it, you are essentially trading words for words - effort and words of the original creator for the good words and effort of review writers or simply people telling their friends to play it. And in the end this trade will result in a profit for the creator, as more and more people will be interested in the words the creator has to say in their games, more and more people will want more of those words and become a true fan, patron and supporter, trading their currency for more words.


4. Fuwanovel as a negative profit website

Since this was already said, I will keep it short.
But Fuwanovel, unlike many other sharing websites such as nyaa, generates ZERO profit of any of this. Quite the opposite, running website and fees connected to this actually costs money and we rely on charity of people, paying their money to host and run the website, offering their seedbox so we can spread the game torrents as quickly as possible.
And even the times when many of us together collected the money to buy the forum software, with whatever we could put aside at that moment.
And still there is not a single ad on the website, not a single cent was generated on Fuwanovel and that is how it is going to remain.
Efforts of all the people working on maintaining the website, work put into coding and additional features, forum moderation, creating new pages for newly released projects, maintaining good upload speed by seeding - all those efforts are done with 0 compensation and 0 profit.
And as such everyone can expect everything on Fuwanovel be equal to everyone, whether you came a year ago or now, you will have access to the same games for the same equal price, 0.
That's because 0 is the ONLY price equal to everyone in the world and even though $1 might seem equal to all Americans, it is not equal to everyone in the world, only 0 is.

And as the mission statement goes, Visual Novels for the World.

I just realized I mispelled Cromartie by the way, this might help your search.  (It's Cromartie not Cormartie)

Nichijou, Panty & Stocking with Gartebelt, Cromartie High School and Yondemasuyo Azazel-san! are all great comedies that come to my head at the moment.  Hopefully there's at least one of them you haven't seen yet.

So,  Panty and Stocking is getting pretty damn good now. Stocking is easily best character though and Panty is pretty damn annoying.

Thank you!
 
I'll probably take a peak sometime tomorrow (:

I don't have a website since I don't read scans really often, so I just google them.  Not sure which website is better, but this one didn't give me pop-ups so here goes : http://www.mangahere.co/manga/non_non_biyori/

In french, like most of the manga I buy.  There is no official english translation as far as I know.

Do what you want, no one forces you to translate or not, you can't satisfy everyone so just be happy with what you want to do and enjoy fact that there will be those satisfied of your work.

"Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering."

I don't think there is more needs to be said about this, although if you keep going to make this topic more popular and increase forums' traffic that is fine too...

Maybe this is because I'm just a casual lurker here on the boards, but I don't recall ever seeing huge bash threads about someone removing H-scenes from eroge.  The golden exception of course would be Konosora, although that is extremely justified considering the butchering Moenovel did to the source material (and an entire route especially) in order to make it 'work'.  Still waiting patiently on the fan translation to go through and fix that right up.
 
I'll use the same argument that I used during the whole Konosora debacle for my opinion on this: Incest
 
So we have a hypothetical France, whose populace is clamoring to get their hands on this awesome series called 'Game of Thrones' translated into their native language, so that they can enjoy it to their fullest.  The editors however feel that the relationship between Jamie and Cersei is just too graphic for their audiences.  So they decide to change it, write it so that it's something different.  Yaaaay sensible values preserved!  But at the cost of the Game of Thrones no longer being the Game of Thrones.  Their relationship and the consequences of it are what sets off the entire series, which means that the editors now have to write another reason for Bran to get booted off of the tower, why Joffery is such a shithole, etc. etc.  Imagine if that had happened, and one version of the book got butchered because some of the content in it was deemed 'offensive' and released to another population.  Especially with how popular it is, there would be huge outrage involving it.  Which is why there was a huge outrage with Konosora: one of the routes was thrown into a washing machine and turned around and around and around until the original context of the route was completely wiped out, and new, lesser version was created in its place.
 
But most importantly, and the key point to the argument here, is that you are not the author, you are the translator.  You do not decide if these two characters are going to have sex, it is the author of their story.  Your only job is to convey the meaning and message of the original author to the absolute best of your abilities.  Is the sex scene always romantic?  Nope.  Hell, I'm reading Ayakashibito and it's not all sunshine and butterflies in there, but there are some scenes that are very plot-relevant and give context to the characters, and no fan-translator with any respect for the work should ever change it and modify the author's work in order to suit their own personal taste.  If the author/company releases an all-ages version though, whole different ball game.  Take KiraKira for example.  There's H-scenes in there, anyone who translates it who respects the author and their writing would be disgraceful to edit it out.  But if the author, decides he or she wants to make an all-ages version, then happy days and good for them.  Why?  Because it is their story, not yours or mine.  Only they should have the right to change it in such a way.
 
If you don't like it, fine, all the power to you.  No one is forcing you to read about the deep descriptive connection between mollusks and intercourse in Tsukihime.  Pass it over because it's not your cup of tea.  If you don't like it and try to force that viewpoint onto others, taking the work and changing it in a way to suit yourself and your own views?  You have no respect for the authors or the stories they worked hard to create.

I'm not saying the translation is bad because it censors h-scenes. The translation quality can be excellent regardless.
However the fact you're not willing to extend a great translation to a whole work, that's what people called half assed and I dislike them as well because the translators, for some reason, decided to translate an eroge, fully aware it had h-scenes, and decided to remove them because they don't like them.
 
Certainly a translator is not forced to do what they don't like nor am I saying otherwise. In fact a translator should only translate what they enjoy. But if they don't like h-scenes why did they feel the need to translate  an eroge and then deliver an incomplete product?
Because they liked the story? How is the story being made justice when you're removing chunks of it? You can call h-scenes useless all you want, you can say they add 0 value to the plot, but regardless they were put there originally, they are events that happened in the story, they are an integral part of it and as such deserve a translation as well.
 
And that's why releasing a translation that removes those scenes because the translator didn't like h-scenes is seen as half assed. Because they set to do something and they didn't feel like completing it because they didn't like it yet at the same time they felt the need to release the rest despite being fully aware the fans probably wanted the eroge as a whole and not censored. That doesn't sit well with me when someone is trying to give me an unfinished product.
At least leave the h-scenes there untranslated if you don't want to translate them. Just don't censor the original work by removing scenes from it. That's all.

Someone just posted a comparison between the two most recent ones and I thought it might interest you :
 
http://myfigurecollection.net/blog/13480  From what I've read, Kotobukiya might be the one, though GSC's is pretty good as well.
 
My Saber Lily figure should be coming in soon, since I just received the Type Moon 10th Anniversary Phantasm artbook that was part of the same order.(That they split in two.)

I haven't had much time to post lately, but earlier this week I received the Momo I had ordered.  At a scale of 1/6 she is pretty big compared to the other figures I have, and she's by far the sexiest figure I got.
 



 
I also ordered Gift's amazingly detailed Saber Lily by Satoshi Toda, along with the Type Moon 10th Anniversary Phantasm artbook.
 

Please, read this.

I really like the Nichijou ones, almost all of them <3 

This one is really cool, and of course, funny xD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m-e-oIUBBI

I really love this one from Nichijou (Nano, Hakase and Sakamoto) :
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrkT0xQNKQY