Zakamutt

Probably best viewed on my wordpress blog given the gallery element used.
Academically this year has been a meme. I’ve managed to fail both courses I tried due to Not Doing Work, and also somehow bricked on getting an actual CV to apply for thesis projects. Twice.
More importantly though, in February this year Tadoku added any-time tracking. While there are many tracking platforms and systems, Tadoku is likely the only one I will ever use semi-seriously: the minimalism appeals to me, and there are basically no features I personally need that are missing. In any case, if you’re not aware of my journey I’m an enlightened man who decided to slack as much as reasonable in my Japanese learning, eschewing all SRS and hitting a magnificent 30 minutes per day of input on average1. One might call this unenlightened, but consider: the reckless desire for learning exhibited by many individuals is clearly the very mirror of samsara. The wise man knows that he has many years to live, and has no rush to achieve his goals. Well, if the wise man is as lazy as me anyway. And if he’s not trying to escape himself/his country/his Mafia pursuers by passing JLPT N1 and moving to Japan, of course (many such cases). What I’m trying to say is wisdom comes in many forms, but mine is clearly the best.
In any case, January started out with a month-long contest. Looking back… wait…. did I even read in this thing, I’m on page two and I’m still not… ayyyyyyyyyy I’m in place 120 with 9.1 points! My stellar performance here is due to reading part of this nicovideo article and all of 「意外に」と「意外と」に違いはあるのか――辞書の個性. That’s all I have logged. I think this shows that I have a certain comfort in reading things in Japanese for information when I actually want to, even if I’m not going hard. Also that I’m a fucking nerd that will read about minuscule language differences and the interpretation of legal terms2, but we knew that already.
Having successfully avoided reading during actual contest time, I picked things up in February. The bulk of my points this month are from watching Okayu stream Minecraft precisely once for 80 minutes, and this one LN. Sometime in the month, I picked up and eventually read 80% of 男子だと思っていた幼馴染との新婚生活がうまくいきすぎる件について, which apart from hitting approximately every emotional fetish I possess in its setting also had ok tier writing and even a decent mildly dramatic plot development toward the end. I finished (well, logged…) the last 20% at a totally not sus timing, just late enough to add it for the March contest. I’m often not super diligent about logging my progress, and for books read on my Kobo I will just log at 10% progress intervals based on the LN physical page count; maybe I only ‘legitimately’ read like 11% of the book that first day starting at 89% : >. In the end, I get like 300 points during February. Acceptable.
Anyway, March. It looks like I’m trying to actually score some points for this one, because on the 3rd I start up 戦国の黒百合～ふたなり姫と隷属の少女～ for 12303字. On the 4th I even log 383字 of a script I was reading in preparation to translate it! Honestly I have this perverse urge to log the weirdest things on Tadoku, which is why I’ll definitely log 10 minutes of bad little sister ASMR I didn’t even enjoy just to épater la normaloisie or whatever. Anyway, After this I start up book two of the osananajimi 云々 LN series with a valiant 10%, start legendary eroge Cross Channel and read like 6k/hour due to Romeo’s many references and occasionally otherwise dense prose, some story about how a mangaka was screwed by their publisher or something (I think I saw the manga in mudaebot or whatever and wanted to look it up and shit just happened, but god knows), part of an article about piercings not being accepted at a Japanese school, listened to vtuber and good voice haver polka read a literal story for children and immediately made connections to James Scott’s Seeing Like a State (don’t get me wrong, I only know of it from Scott Alexander’s review and have never bothered to read the original). Also I actually listened to more than the story I guess since she spoke a lot more as it was so short but I didn’t log that because uhh whatever you’re not the master of me!
I returned to the osananajimi story with 20% more for 59.2 points, then Shoui posted a rec and acquisition method for 子猫を拾う、子猫の癖に in The Moe Way’s discord and I ended up reading it pretty quickly. Is there anything better than edgy yuri? Okay, your mom is better specifically in bed, but that’s an unfair comparison. She is truly unbelievably experienced. Anyway, I also read some of あさにゃあ, a cute TS nukige, recorded a whole story arc porn image series for 45.6 points, this random chiebukuro question text because it amused me, 50 whole minutes of Okayun stream, read 20% of お姉ちゃんといっしょに異世界を支配して幸せな家庭を築きましょ？ before concluding the writing was trash and I didn’t want to continue (the Zaka rare drop with malice!), 10% of TRPG before concluding the writing was trash and painfully repetetive… look, it’s a coincidence okay? Anyway, dropped with extreme prejudice. Not feeling like the feelgood moment of osananajimi LN, I picked up 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命, also known as tenten. This one also has bad writing, but it’s mostly in the exposition rather than normal dialogue. Why the writer decided to create a setting where a lot of exposition is practically required despite sucking at it is beyond me, but the other parts of the setting weren’t too bad. The worst thing I subjected to wasn’t even in techno-exposition though, it was this inexplicably redundant pair of lines found on two successive pages:
I’m still mad
I only read 5% of tenten in March, on the 31st — probably to try and keep my position against someone, though in the main contest my 40th place ended up >100 points away from the next person. Maybe I just wanted to hit 1050 points? Maybe it was for a side contest? Could it be I was simply reading it because I wanted to??? Madokami knows.
March was the first contest that admitted listening content, and initially it might have been a little overtuned. While I was a bit annoyed until it got a minor adjustment downward, the truth is that for my own purposes anything that incentivizes listening is probably to my benefit: I very rarely do any of it, and I still only got like 400 minutes logged for this whole year. Sure, there was probably a little more unlogged, but not much. I still wish the site had a UI option to see only a reading leaderboard, but the Tadoku admin and dev io needs more motivation so we’ll see if he ever gets to it.
Anyway, at this point Tadoku has gotten off-contest tracking, and I don’t really slow down that much in April. After hitting 90% on tenten, I don’t quite feel like getting it done and am a little disappoint (but haven’t dropped it with malice!), so I manage to acquire and read 8000字 of the obscure doujinge with known writers 魂々, make a quick patch to fix their miserable scripting, then never read it again. Honestly when I make a patch for something to make it better to read, it’s a bad sign for my reading progress. That’s kind of scary. At least a guy I know actually ended up using it later… So after Kon Kon, I get to Voynich Hotel, which I have imported physicals of. Despite the many cultural references I autistically researched, I make it through volume 1 and 2 from April 13-15, then hit volume 3 and suffered my fear of actually finishing things, ending up even how having just 30 pages of volume 3 read. It wasn’t the easiest reading, but it’s pretty fun and definitely out there. You see why it’s a cult classic — I actually read quite a bit of it in English back in the day, but true to form I didn’t finish then either! Ah well.
I eventually (April 19) do finish off tenten 1, and the last 10% actually makes me feel a bit better about the book as a whole. I immediately start on tenten 2 and by April 23 I’m 60% into it. Unfortunately my feeling-bad-guard activates and since nice characters are in grave danger at this point I stall it and still haven’t read more yet. This volume actually ended up a lot better than vol 1 for the most part, as it focused on characters more than the whole thing about developing magical artifacts that’s half the premise. Since the writer is actually kind of decent at writing this, the quality instantly goes up. Maybe the narration also got a minor upgrade, but who knows. Anyway, I finish 9th in this totally legit user contest for April with 615.3 points.
May. Tadoku constest season again, but now it’s a quirky 14-day one. I start out strong with 120 minutes of Okayun for 48 points, read way too much (17k!) of a Japanese interview, and write a summary for another writer to use in a Fuwanovel article. Though I manage to meme it a bit because technically the damned vague Japanese never says they’re using 2d sprites for the new Ever17 release, just that they’re going to “refine” whatever they did with the crappy 3d sprites for the xbox 360 release. Also, I fucking hate Japanese interview-type stuff. Maybe I’m just not used to the domain, but these motherfuckers barely commit to anything if you really read what they say. Swear to god it drives me nuts.
I try Okayun again but it turns out she’s actually shit at the video game she’s picked this time and I cannot bear to watch longer than 30 minutes. Shoutout to me literally logging 369字 of some amazon description on the 7th; I also read 3 whole chapters of 日本人のための日本語, a Japanese-language Japanese grammar introduction using a modern grammar framework for Japanese that includes such exotic (for traditional Japanese grammar) terms such as na-adjectives and the topic-comment structure. That’s like 29k字. It’s kind of fun but it does do the “wow we Nihonjin so special” thing a bit which is kinda cringe. I’m sure you can find some other language that likes describing things as passively occurring rather than being actively done a lot, nerd! Oh well.
On the 9th I give Sengoku no Kuroyuri another shot for 25k字, mostly because I desire to ejaculate and it’s supposed to have quite a bit of sex. I kind of succeed in finding release eventually, but I also realize that the cold, unironic sadism of the protagonist just doesn’t appeal to me and semidrop it. Maybe I’ll read some more sometime though… On the 10th I pick up the above-average and emotional-fetish-fulfilling 不登校の幼馴染が学校に行く条件は、毎日俺とキスすることだった. I enjoy it but a shocking development later on makes me not quite want to see the end… but that’s later, I only hit 40% during the contest! Also I logged 2980 characters of a rather voluminous tweet thread by famed eroge writer Sca-ぢ. I just wanted to say that. 361 points that month, for 22nd. I only beat the 23rd guy by 1.8 points, which is kind of crazy because I didn’t log on the 14th and he did. I guess the 22nd isn’t really significantly different from 23rd in terms of placement, but he could have sniped me so easily…
I spend the rest of the month reading volume 1 of instant bullet (manga) on the 20th, then nothing but two little net pages.
The next entry is on June 25th, somehow. I’ve decided to start reading Oshirabu, and manage to read like 60k字 before July 1st brings with it the next Tadoku contest. Sometimes the perversity of specifically reading right before or after Tadoku just inspires me. Still, July has the next contest, and I start with getting the true end in Oshirabu on the 1st for a bit, then on the 7th realize Suou Patra is actually broadcasting content I vibe with and get 85 mins / 35 points of listening in. Next I read some chars of single-heroine eroge Aibeya 2, which I had read sporadically before and was in Real Coomer Hours after its less porny moege start. Anyway, I read enough story to get to the porn, coom, then finish (wait, aren’t those the same thing?). 24k字.
After that I pick up the edgy and weird horny adult yuri novel 焦点深度 on July 9th, read to 40% the next day, take a break to finish off different endings of Oshirabu as well as the porn addition (that turns out to have a lot of emotional development to it and seems basically mandatory to have a satisfying ending so it confuses the fuck out of it that this isn’t in the all ages version at all probably) on the 13th, then eventually hit 100% on 焦点深度 on the 18th. I doubt I read all of the remaining 60% the same day, I was just chilling on the log because it doesn’t really matter, does it? Anyway it’s a bit harder to recommend than 子猫を拾う, but it was kind of fun and definitely a little unique. Not very yuri genre, but who needs that? The first lesbian romance I saw was Fucking Åmål (on Swedish public television!), in which one of the girls fucked a guy and realized she didnt really care for it before getting together with the other girl. I was always hardcore, okay.
Anyway, it seems like I didn’t care to read more after finishing 焦点深度, leaving me with 404.6 points for 28th place.
August. No contest means no motivation, but also there’s probably some creeping academic deadline I’m not dealing with that’s killing me inside. On the 13th I pick up ロンリーガールに逆らえない (漫誤) and read 2 volumes, if only to feel something again. Another volume falls on the 16th, but then the next volume I don’t finish because an unpleasant (though interesting) development of the plot occurs and suddenly I can’t bear to see what will happen. Damn, is that three times this year now? I can’t believe I’m letting my own entertainment cuck myself like this. That’s all for August. Damn.
September. Normal length contest, but I’m clearly not trying hard as my first entry is on the 10th with this live2d loli nukige that exhentai gifs couldn’t do justice. However it has 3 h-scenes in a row which shows the writers don’t know how to pace their illustrated pornography, so I bail after like 22k字. At least the intro was entertaining for the most part…
Having gotten beaned by mismanaged coom material, I pick up the interesting old-school lowtech scifi キーリ series. I think these are technically published as LNs, but the anime-style tropeyness is low and while I only read 10%, I kind of liked it and would recommend anyone that finds that description interesting to try them. It’s available wherever TMWs are present. It wasn’t easy, mostly due to longer sentences I think, though not crazy hard either; maybe not for the beginner. It looks like I’m still on life support, as the next entry is me reading 10% of アオハルデビル on the 27th (picked up after seeing it come up in TMW sharing mostly because it had a short, effective title). My 200.7 points still got me to 21st place. Truly the Tadoku has fallen.
October 10th. I read the last of that vjedogonia script I was going to translate and it’s a whole 7k characters. I guess sometimes it pays to log random shit! I also read 16k of the fast-paced, entertaining start of eroge 空のつくりかた, get text hooking working for and quit reading 背徳シレネ after 7.7k on the 21st, then read 2 manga volumes on the 26th. It is very 惜しい that I can’t find more than volume 1 of 夢でフラれてはじまる百合 for free, but I survive by moving to volume one of 世界で一番おっぱいが好き！, which ends up being really meme and god knows how yuri it’ll even be. Probably eventually. Until then girl semiconsensually grope girl boob, I guess.
November. Another 2-week round. I read to 40% of アオハルデビル (it’s actually quite fun — it looks like it will basically be (I think this is kind of spoilers because if you actually hit it blind it’s kind of cool to go wtf, but I can’t really sell it otherwise) :
Anyway I watch Patra (who I have by now realized has become one of the few big vtubers playing actually interesting games rather than the corpo flavor of the month) for some time playing an interesting retro rpg. The same day, I read some of apparently not very pure yurige 早咲きのくろゆり (12k), and dip for the month. 143.3 points gets me 20th. Retvrn! What manner of competition is this! …Okay it was a 14 day one whatever.
December. No Tadoku. You know it’s time to actually read. Early on I pick up 飛び降りる直前の同級生に『×××しよう!』と提案してみた。 I kind of hope they’ll fuck real quick because I want to coom but this doesn’t happen as it turns out this wasnt a nukige book oops. I think I’d class this one as “good anime” in that the insane main character is part of what makes it entertaining, but then it goes pretty hard into darker territory (well, the girl is about to off herself, it’s warranted). Honestly not too bad, happy to have picked it up after some TMW guys reported enjoying it.
But I get to 30% and I realize that I should just read what I really want to read: motherfucking yuri. My roots. I don’t know what exactly brought 私の推しは悪役令嬢 to mind, but apart from having planned to read it for ages based on reputation, I think the anime was also running at the time. December 7th, I hit 10%. December 8th, I take a brief detour because my recently discovered kami 女性実況 Sayaka has a collab out that’s reasonably short for a horror ge. 72 precious listening minutes, 28.8 points. December 10th I hit 20% in wataoshi. and then…

At the end of the year I realized 4k total points this year was close, so I worked a little harder… and 4k I now have. A modest amount, but it does mean like 12 books of modest Japanese size read. To be honest as I realized going through the scores, like 50 of those points are doubled because I couldn’t edit entries and I wanted to enter them to a private contest or some shit like that. So I guess my cope is clearly my untracked input would be enough to hit 4k anyway, and fuck the haters.
I hope I do better in school next year. However have no plans to get more serious about Japanese, because I am an enlightened gigachad and simply don’t need to.
Thanks and thats all nerds.
year score during contests: 2169.1
year score full: 4014.6
[1] Estimated based on 1 tadoku point = 400 characters and a 10k/h reading speed. I actually think I read a bit slower than this most of the time, but it’s actually lower than 30 mins a day naively calculated, so heck it. Of course, this also doesn’t count casual reading of a few lines from someone’s VN screenshot, or whenever someone consults me on translation for a few lines, or when some dude starts playing some VN on stream to show me the “funny moments” with some two-dimensional bishoujo he is particularly fond of. Life is full of surprises, much like your rectum after excessive chili ingestion. Will It Burn? Truly a pertinent question for this age.
[2] Though this one’s very relevant for eroge: I was looking it up in connection with its use in agreements on how to use for example royalty free resources. From what I remember, the legal meaning is generally seen to narrowly protect citizens from entering contracts to do unreasonable or illegal things, but maybe there’s more, I’m not very sure. The more widespread folk meaning would be anything “obscene”, with all the vagueness that term would imply in American law. I’d look it up again, but I don’t think I found a very conclusive answer and besides I’m way too lazy.
meow
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You might be wondering why I chose this VN for the first one to review in quite some time, and you would be right to wonder.  I wonder why I felt drawn to this VN myself, given how the first impression from the cover is a nukige.  However, something about it drew me in and made me want to play it.  Thankfully, it isn't an experience I grew to regret, so I'll go ahead and give you my impressions.
This VN focuses on a club (six girls, one guy) who get stranded in an abandoned village in the mountains, surrounded by impassible mist.  The protagonist, Itsuki starts having ero dreams that disgust him, and the girls gradually start acting strangely.  A red-eyed, white-haired girl named Kagome occasionally appears and hints at the nature of his predicament and warns him the only way to leave the village is to offer up a sacrifice.
Up to now, there are no actual spoilers you can't find on the official website.
Atmosphere-wise, this game kind of resembles Higurashi, though the actual content is drastically different (basically exchange violence for h-scenes and Rika for Kagome, lol).  A great deal of the actual plot parts is the characters gathering food and researching the village as they try to find a way out, even as they find themselves going a little crazy (sometimes realizing it, sometimes not).  The story itself is structured so that most of the content is shared, with the final split-off occurring rather late in the game (about seven-eighths of the way through).  If it weren't for the impact of the last scenes in each ending, I would have complained about this, but it works out well because the point of the split-off is timed perfectly from the perspective of telling the story as a whole.
For people who want a straight-out happy ending, I recommend only playing Kagome's path, because it is really the only ending where things turn out in a way that doesn't leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth.  I very much enjoyed the way the writers portrayed the differing perspectives between the various characters, with the discussions between Kagome and the protagonist often providing the most food for thought.  
In conclusion, this is a VN for those who like a little mystery, a lot of H, and bittersweet experiences.  

I've spent some time in the guts of some KrKrZ games. I've learned many things the hard way, including some things I could've just looked up in a manual if I wasn't such a reverse engineer by heart that I never thought to even look for a manual.
Anyway, some time back in what must've been a semi-hallucinatory fever state, I wrote two little guides to share some very basic stuff I know, in a structured manner.
Both of these guides are available on the pantsudev organization's Github, publically:
https://github.com/pantsudev/krkrz_ecosystem_guide
https://github.com/pantsudev/krkrz_textrenderguide
If you're getting started on hacking on a kirikiri game translation, maybe you'll want to take a look at these. Maybe not.
And more importantly, I'd appreciate any pull requests with corrections or additional information. I'm sure I've made numerous mistakes in these writeups.
---
On the other hand, some people appear from time to time in my DMs, asking for help with kirikiri, or even other engines.
I'm very sorry, but I do not have the time to do such personal tech assistance, and in many ways I can only share generalities, anyway - because every tool used by pantsudev was custom created by me, serves exactly one purpose for our exactly one project, isn't public and would not work in other situations.
However, I'm all for sharing knowledge! Let's just do it for everyone, not on a person-to-person basis, right?

Since Hata has been rip for various personal and emotional reasons this week, he ended up not being able to post the VNTS. I, however, was not so encumbered, so I wrote my commentary Monday night. Rather than lose it to time entirely, I'll post it here. No, I'm not doing the formatting. You can have the vnts data if you must though. I'll throw in bolded tags for the new stuff but no headings for you! This is a low effort post.
 
「Hello everyone. I am again writing this on Monday so that Hata can delay it to Friday or so purely on his _own_. Though given how often I was late when I did this solo, it's very hard for me to blame him.
I'm doing weirdly okay today, maybe because I turned in an assignment on time yesterday that I half thought I was going to let myself miss the hard deadline on. It really is "let myself", to be honest. Thankfully I have the faculties required to just knock stuff out like a god when I need to. And I suppose I can't wax nostalgic about the period of my life when I had such high baseline anxiety from GERD and shit that I actually did all my assignments early, because, uh, I wanted them done in case I died or had to go to the hospital or some shit. Not particularly logical, anxiety thinking. Anyway, visual novels.
This week feels a bit slow. We do have one release in Maid for Loving You, but I have to admit I cannot muster any enthusiasm for it. Though I didn't exactly hate Azarashi Soft's work on Aibeya 2, even as I have it stalled after getting to the more porny part of the thing. That said, who gives a crap about maids? Give me the osananajimi variant of this setting! ...Or don't, Aibeya 2 is osananajimi too and I didn't finish that. Look I just like childhood friends okay. I may have [a bit of a complex][https://disearnestlydisearnest.wordpress.com/2019/04/30/幼馴染の居ないヴァルパージス炎/]. At least 10% of my brain is convinced our fateful reunion is just around the corner. The rest of my brain is engaged in forcefully suppressing the NTR感 of thinking of her with someone else. This is the only way I can understand NTR bois, actually. It scares me. Why did I start on this topic? Fuck. Anyway, I do like the single heroine game concept though. It's cozy.
It looks like this will be a December without angels yet again, if anyone remembers the 4chan ritualposter — but perhaps next December will not be so. Yup, someone's started up a project for Leaf's Tenshi no Inai 12-Gatsu. Which they're calling "[December when there is no angel][https://mercurialtapestry.net/2022/11/27/december-when-there-is-no-angel-translation-announcement/]" which sounds kinda garbo in English to me so I hope they think of something better. On the other hand the rest of the attitude on display in the post seems promising enough, so hey. I wish them luck. For some reason I thought this was just some generic moege, but it looks like it's actually a messy drama or something now that I actually look at the description on vndb. The EGS median is at 78, so it's not too badly rated by our Nipponese brethren.
Sona-Nyl is yet again showing minor signs of progress. One day it will actually be out. Probably. Imagine getting a translation by one of the finest writers on the scene and just slowrolling it to all hell. Ah well.
JAST Blue announced a new upcoming title: [Sorcerer's Choice: Angel or Demon][https://vndb.org/v21661] (_Mahoutsukai to Tenshi to Akuma_). I'd say something about it but even their [official promo page][https://jast.blue/detail/sorcerers-choice-angel-or-demon] has very little content, so I'll just say have fun BL squad. Where Lamento though?
Mahoyo is releasing 8 December. This is not a drill. It's going to be annoying to emulate it to play it, though. Maybe when I actually get to it I'll be be-jobbed, rich, and thus suitably be-consoled. I remember an old semi-shitpost podcast I did with the BOYS about [all the different mahoyo fan translations][https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/22460-mahoyo-translation-overview-podcast-w-zakas-mutts/] that are now probably going to be irrelevant. What a time.
While not listed on VNTS, Umikara is at 14/138 scripts done as per the translator's Discord. Hope KKHimawari has been having fun.
Oh, and Akagoei 1 is [getting a full re-edit][https://daybreaktl.wordpress.com/2022/11/23/november-update/] by one of the people on the team it seems. It's going to be released together with Akagoei 2, which might take some time, but is still worth thinking about if you were going to try it and have the needed patience. I wonder if the shape of any of my lines will be left in there by the end of it; I've helped Bee a few times when he was having a hard time getting things right. Which is actually a way of contributing I've settled on for a few projects (really just one right now): I'm a lazy fuck, but tackling a few difficult lines every once in a while isn't so bad. Not to mention giving general style advice, of course. It's probably made me a slightly less spicy person when it comes to translation criticism, to be honest. While I still will meme on people that are clearly not trying, or leaning on the ol' technological 'wonders' that DeepL and Google provide, it's different when you're on the team. Though I've only joined groups with at least some good feels to begin with, so who knows? I suppose it is better that I remain blissfully unaware, so that the implacable force of my scorn remains at a manageable level. Lives may be at stake.」

Hello dear readers to the second installment of this new, purposefully-random segment on my newly-undead blog! Since the resurrection of my interest in VNs, I've been coming to a rather horrifying, and equally exciting realization of the massive amount of high-quality, free content the EVN scene delivered in the last year and a half. While game jam entries and similar projects are usually an ocean of forgettable works with a few pearls hidden below the murky waters, the number of decently-sized, quality-looking games in this year's edition of NaNoRen0 alone is overwhelming. And if you look around Itch.io and Steam, it's just the tip of the iceberg...
While I have no hope or ambition to cover it all in any kind of systematic and comprehensive manner, it seems like the hobbyist scene is going to provide me with a near-infinite amount of projects to feature in this segment. And as these games are particularly prone to being overlooked and quickly forgotten, I'll do my best to continue spotlighting them in the foreseeable future – and I hope some of you will be willing to join me on this ride.
 
The Gray Wolf and The Little Lamb | Fantasy/Comedy | ~1h 30min

The Gray Wolf and The Little Lamb is your quintessential game jam VN – relatively short, stylish and making up for its short length with tons of personality and wit. It tells the story of the Wolf – an outcast hated and feared by everyone around her, and the Lamb, who offers Wolf hospitality in hope of reforming her. Lamb's charity, however, quickly turns into an exercise in mutual misery, with Wolf staying distrustful and destructive, and Lamb's ego preventing her from fully understanding Wolf's stubborn behaviour.
While normally this setup would be a nice starting point for yuri romance, the actual story nimbly avoids the most obvious cliches, leading to unexpected story developments and a rather out-of-the-box set of endings where romance is at best a mild subtext. The real focus here is on the struggle between Wolf's negative impulses, formed through her haphazard way of life up to this point, and Lamb's somewhat questionable ambition to "civilize" her. Your choices determine if, and in what way, the two will be able to overcome their differences and find some kind of mutual understanding. Of course, "overcoming" does not mean "negating" and one of the main strengths of this VN is acknowledging that there are limits to how much most people can change, especially in short time, and that finding common ground can often be just as grueling as it is rewarding...
Itch.io Page
A Field Of Flowers and Stars | Yuri/Sci-fi | ~1h 30min

A Field of Flower and Stars is a VN by Watercress Studios, the team behind a long list of quality, free EVNs. While it's not as high-concept or unconventional as some of their other projects, it's both decently-conceived as a piece of sci-fi storytelling and rather ambitious in its execution. Featuring three main characters and full voice acting, it tells a story of Reine, a freelance space explorer who crashes on an unfamiliar planet and bonds with one of its alien colonists while trying to repair her ship. While enjoying the hospitality of the locals and being seemingly in no immediate danger, there's one thing that keeps the protagonist's anxiety high – if she fails, she not only risks getting stranded, but also losing the way of life and freedom she values above all. At least until some events makes her doubt her no-attachment, egoistical attitude...
While the story structure itself isn't anything new, it's very solid, with the only thing limiting the game being its length. While we learn quite a lot about Reine, the alien love interest and her colony's history are presented without much context and depth. The game says how the characters talk about the colonists and their homeworld, but probably to avoid infodumps, little of it is actually relayed to the reader. And I really would want to see that infodump, to get a better grasp on the motivations of the aliens and significance of the colony itself, particularly because its safety becomes a crucial plot-point later on. Still, that one complaint aside, the VN looks, reads and sounds very solid and will very likely satisfy fans of yuri romance – just like it did for me.
Itch.io Page | Steam Page
Graveyard Girls | Psychological/Yuri | ~1h

A title like this was bound to belong to some questionable meme game, but in reality, Graveyard Girls is a very serious and surprisingly well-put-together VN. And if that wasn't strange enough, it mixes rather intense depictions of grief with yuri romantic subtext, with an effect much better and more interesting than it had any right to be. Starting with the protagonist, Elle, visiting her father's grave and talking about the struggles she faced after he was gone, for the most of it's length this is a very sombre game discussing the topics of grief and loss in all gruesome details. However, the appearance of the second character, Lucia, adds another layer to it – discussion of long term and short term grief, and of recovery, along with subtle romantic tension between the two. While never losing its focus, Graveyard Girls combine these elements to push the narrative in ultimately positive and hopeful direction – if you make the right choices, even concluding with a straight-up sweet image I won't spoil. The game also looks and sounds very good, with high-quality art, good use of perspective and simple, but very fitting soundtrack. It's definitely on the short side, but for once I won't be complaining about that – it's the kind of short story that achieves exactly what it set out to do and will most likely leave you fully satisfied. If you're in the mood to deal with its heavy subject matter, I highly recommend giving it a chance. 
Itch.io Page | Steam Page
The Life We've Chosen | Psychological/Romance | ~40 min

In some ways, The Life We've Chosen falls slightly below quality standards I aim for with these posts – it's rough around the edges and one of the crucial characters, protagonist's best friend, does not even have a sprite or character portrait. However, what it has going for it is the subversion of most obvious tropes and story structures you would expect from this kind of VN. The ominous "demon" which the protagonist interacts with in her most vulnerable moments might be instinctively identified as a metaphor for depression or some kind of malicious influence, but the story consistently avoids giving easy answers about its nature... And it doesn't even bother to identify the "right" path in any clear way. What could be described as the most optimistic ending is not where most people would expect it to be, while every conclusion leaves a lot of space for interpretation and the "good" or "bad" might be more up to the reader's opinion than anything else. Probably not everyone will find it to their taste, but the quality writing and unconventional choices at the very least make this VN into something memorable, that stands out among your typical game jam entries – and this is something I deeply appreciate.
Itch.io Page
 
And that's all for today! While I'll not necessarily be prioritized fresh releases for this series, as the randomness here is a feature that allows me to read what I feel like and not chasing the new content, the freshly-conlcuded Spooktober VN jam and the upcoming Yuri Game Jam will definitely leave their mark – and I already see there's a lot to look forward to in both events. In the meantime, my renewed activities convinced me to revive my Steam Cutator page and my Twitter – feel free to follow both for updates on stuff I'm putting out. Thank you for reading and until the next time!

Welcome back my dear readers and welcome to this new, irregularly-posted segment on EVN Chronicles! 
As some of you might know, beyond my general burnout which made me put the blog on indefinite hiatus, late last year I've developed some health problems that pretty much killed my will to read VNs and my ability to contribute meaningful content on Fuwa... For a while. As I come back to life, both physically and mentally, I've decided to resurrect this space and log my adventures through mostly short, free EVNs, sharing with you all the most notable finds among the game jam entries and random passion projects I read through. So, do you want to read some hidden gems, all available for the very reasonable price of $0.00? You're sure to find some on this little list, and the ones that come in the future!
Optimal Conditions for a Sacrifice | Yuri/Fantasy/Comedy | ~20 min

It's rare for extremely short VNs to charm me, but Optimal Conditions for a Sacrifice has just the perfect combination of humour, wit and well-delivered punchline to made this kind of tiny experience memorable. The game plays on mythological themes and a rich set if metaphors to construct an intriguing narrative about the nature of love – all while never taking itself seriously or trying too hard to be profound. And this last part is crucial – from the game's Ith.io page, through its net of riddles and on-the-nose social commentary and to the purposefully jumbled ending, you can feel the fun the author had writing all of it and molding it into a VN. And while this kind of experiment has always a high risk of missing the mark and becoming an unreadable mess, the genuine-feeling and relatable messaging it ends with makes it better than it had any right to be. And with a nice artstyle as a bonus... It's very much worth it to sacrifice 20 minutes of your time to check it out. 
Itch.io Page
My Dream Is To Be a Model, Not a Maid! | Yuri/Drama | ~1h 20 min

Team ANPIM are regular authors of cliched G/G romance, always present for the annual Yuri Game Jam with a new piece of heartwarming fluff. While their output in the past three years was a bit of a mixed bag, often lacking interesting twists to keep the formula fun, My Dream Is To Be a Model, Not a Maid! is what I'd call a return to form. Starting with a silly premise of an aspiring (and awfully unsuccessful model) getting coerced into becoming a lived-in housekeeper for a young daughter of a CEO, it provides a well-paced and fun piece of romance between two people of vastly different backgrounds and live experiences. While the short runtime limits how deep the story can get and the overall structure of the romance plot is utterly typical, the characterisation and humour make it all solid enough to be a very enjoyable, one-sitting read. And with a bunch of really nice-looking CGs added to the mix, it's exactly what you would want from this kind of bite-sized piece of yuri fluff.
Itch.io Page
My Crush My Bully | Yuri/Drama | ~30 min

Written by one of my favourite VN writers on the freeware/game jam side of the market, PunishedHag, My Crush My Bully is a short story about an awkward, nerdy girl who unexpectedly encounters her school tormentor on a trip to library. While trying to stealthily buy the newest book in her favourite fantasy series, she's caught by the titular bully, but there's something off with the interaction that follows... While the game is maybe a bit too short to reach its full potential, its strength lies not only in good characterisation of the main characters, but also in providing two vastly different viewpoints on the relationship it depicts. The perspective shift took me by surprise, providing a sombre, emotional backstory to the somewhat whacky-feeling romantic plot. Without it, the whole story would just be a decently-written piece of yuri fluff, but the additional depth and social commentary it adds makes the whole experience worthwhile despite the short length.
Itch.io Page
Wolfskin's Curse | Fantasy/Horror/Mystery | ~1h 30 min

Probably the most involved and well-produced VN on today's list, Wolfskin's Curse offers a mystery plot about a former priestess and a werewolf running away from tragedy and persecution, only to be caught up in a new chain of deaths and being framed as perpetrators. A very climatic piece of dark fantasy, this short story offers most elements you would expect from the formula: a gloomy setting, tragic romance and a cast of ambiguous and tortured characters trying to survive in a hostile world. It also includes high-quality art and full voice acting – that last part being something I usually avoid in freeware projects due to it rarely being good enough to be more enjoyable than just reading the dialogue yourself, but here it was done with decent quality and care, particularly for a game jam entry. And whether you mute the voices or not, the VN will be an interesting and emotional journey – at least if you don't mind reading something pretty depressing in tone.
Itch.io Page | Google Play
And that's all for now! As I'm trying to take things slow, this segment will show up at random intervals and likely with different amounts of content. However, I'm going to keep the mission of spotlighting notable EVNs alive as long as I'm able to – if you're interested in those, be sure to follow the blog and if you have recommendations for free EVNs worth checking out, make sure to leave them in the comments. Thank you for reading!

In 2001, a little studio by the name of Duke released a game that would go on to influence some of the modern eras' most beloved VNs, and help to form an important sub-genre of psychological horror stories. Jisatsu 101 is that game; a beautiful, flawed, mess of a story with much to love and much to question.
 
 

My writing professor in college started his course by saying that all stories are driven by desire. Desire motivates characters to go out and do something, and conflict happens when a character doesn’t get what they want. 
Then he asked us “What does everybody want?”
I think some people said money, some people said fame. He shook his head.
“Love,” he said, emphasizing the word. “Everybody wants love.”
It didn’t have to be romantic love, he explained. 'Love' could be a mother accepting her son for who he is, or someone helping their friend recover from addiction. Love isn’t about getting comfortable enough around someone to have sex with them—that’s just an extension of what love is: acceptance, affirmation, and connection.
Sure, everyone wants love. But that’s not the whole story.
There’s a dark side to love, just as there’s a dark side to everyone, and that’s what I wanted to explore in Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim.

THE STORY
In Black Heaven, you play as a former scholar of the Itzon Academy, where students studied the art of immortality. There, you met Ru, your shy but brilliant mentor, Izagi, a stoic and idealistic martial arts prodigy, and Lyse, a sharp-tongued and flirtatious debutante.
That school (and all your classmates) perished when you and your mentor accidentally unleashed a cancerous plague that wiped out most of the continent, leaving you one of the sole survivors. Most of the ‘dating’ part of the ‘dating sim’ takes place in memories, where you return to your happiest moments with Ru, Izagi, and Lyse.
Your lonely exile from Itzon is interrupted when you meet No-Eyes, a mysterious necromancer who offers you a deal: bring him the souls of your former classmates at Itzon, and he’ll rip your soul free from the flow of time and allow you to relive the happiest moments of your life on a loop, forever.
When you return to Itzon, however, you come face-to-face with the ghosts of your friends, who have become monstrous, shattered versions of the people you used to know, still obsessed with their past lives.
The ghosts are what I really want to talk about.

HUNGRY GHOSTS
One of the big ideas that informed the game’s narrative is a Buddhist concept called the “hungry ghost,” a spirit that’s driven by “intense emotional needs in an animalistic way.” I imagined a hungry ghost as being less of a person and more of a bundle of desires, kind of like an amalgamation of wants in the shape of a human being.
But if my writing professor was right, then that’s all human beings are. Everything we do, everything we are, is based on a want, a desire, a feeling of incompleteness that drives us to go out and fill the hole within ourselves.
I like to think I have a grasp on what kinds of characters and stories resonate with people, and what I’ve discovered so far is that people like complex characters, which are characters that are built on contradictions. 
Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote a while ago:
“At the heart of every interesting, complex character is a contradiction (or several of them). It’s the imbalance that creates desires, weaknesses, and conflict. It also creates something to unearth or discover over the course of a story.”
It’s a pretty radical idea if you think about it, because it implies that what resonates with most readers is having some deep-seated flaw that ensures that they’ll never be whole, happy, or satisfied until they reconcile with it. I think it says something about the human condition—that maybe each of us, consciously or not, has built our sense of self, our identity, on a foundation riddled with cracks.

SELFISH LOVE
So what do people do with this feeling of emptiness, of desire, of wanting more? How do they become whole and finally reconcile with all the parts of themselves that are flawed?
The answer, many times, is to seek out someone else’s love. As long as someone else loves that person, then they receive the ultimate affirmation that they’re worth something, that they’re good, and that they don’t have to face the difficult parts of living alone (see the infamous scene from Bojack Horseman for reference).
But it’s not enough.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most brutal, thorny, and complex explorations of love, and one of the reasons I like it so much is because its thesis, arguably, is that being loved by someone doesn’t redeem you. Instead, it shows that love, like anything else, can be warped and twisted into something destructive if you go into it with the wrong pretenses.
It's not a coincidence that Evangelion talks a lot about the self and about love, because love is portrayed as a selfish desire: Asuka wants someone to love her to confirm that she matters, Misato wants love so she can lose herself in someone else, and Shinji wants someone to love so he can feel like he’s worth something, anything.
You see the thread here? What’s called “love” is often all tied up with the self: our own thoughts, fears, insecurities, and perceptions of the world. If you want to see this in action in a well-known visual novel, take Katawa Shoujo, a story about high schoolers attending a school for students with medical disabilities.

A CASE STUDY IN TWISTED LOVE
There’s a scene in Katawa Shoujo where Hanako, a burn victim with extensive scars over half of her body, sheds her clothes, reveals her scars, and has sex with the protagonist, Hisao. It’s supposed to be the moment when the two truly connect, but despite the trappings of intimacy, neither of them truly understands the other: Hanako is using the intimacy to ensure that Hisao doesn’t leave her, and Hisao sees it as the end product of his conscious, long-term project to help Hanako overcome her insecurities.
Most importantly of all, the relationship is warped by both character’s internal issues: Hisao seems to view Hanako partly as a broken person he wants to “fix” (mirroring his inability to fix his own lingering fears about his heart), and Hanako is caught between fearing Hisao will leave her like others who “cared” for her and resenting how helpless and fragile he treats her. 
With this in mind, the intimate act of sex, which is supposed to be an act of love, isn’t about love at all—it’s a twisted manifestation of the internal issues of both characters, who are so blinded by their own fears and desires that they’re not even having the same experience.
In fact, some of the most extreme commentators on sex and desire claim that it’s always selfish: “The act of sex for humans is so much caught up in our fantasies (our idealized images of both ourselves and our sexual partners) that it is ultimately narcissistic.”

ROMANCE IN BLACK HEAVEN
In Black Heaven, one of the key ideas that went into writing the romance arcs was fleshing out each character’s “internal picture”—essentially a map of their personality traits, their flaws, and what their idea of ‘love’ looked like.
For the character Ru, relating to people is a messy, unpredictable chemical reaction, where there are too many variables to figure out and too many chances for misunderstanding and pain. Ru is analytical and logical because it helps her feel in control of her life, but the parts of her that are hard to quantify (like taking care of herself or her own emotions) get neglected.
Ru’s internal contradiction is that, despite her attempts to ignore or minimize the inconvenient parts of herself and her life, she still feels their effects: she’s lonely, she’s insecure about other’s perceptions of her, and she feels like she’s constantly running from the parts of her that are frightening or confusing.
Over the course of the story, the protagonist of Black Heaven can grow closer to Ru, which may turn into a romantic relationship. For Ru, the romance is a terrifying, uncertain, guilty affair (she’s supposed to be a teacher, after all), but the desire for someone else to assuage her fears about being too broken or pathetic to love is great enough to overcome those misgivings.
In stories like this, the villain isn’t a serial killer or a necromancer—it’s a person who wears ‘I love you’ like a mask. That kind of villain is well aware of their partner’s reasons for seeking out love, and uses them for their own ends. 
That kind of ‘love’ is part of what I wanted to explore in Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim. It’s a destructive kind of love, but more importantly, it sheds some light on the parts of us that are too painful and too vital to ignore.
 
You can play the extended demo of Black Heaven here! You can also check the Kickstarter page for updates here!
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It is not easy to be a blogger, especially not when you start working for multiple blogs at once, try to raise translation company with your best friends and do a lot of management stuff on your own. Thankfully, Zaka is a super helpful person who even shocked me today by throwing a script that was almost ready-to-publish right in my face. I remember that back in the day I loved checking out the fuwanovel VNTS post and it deeply saddened me when it suddenly ended somewhere around the time where Eiyu Senki GOLD released. Funkily enough, Eiyu Senki GOLD was my first project I have ever worked on for JAST and it was to this day one of the funniest and simplest games I played. I should eventually review it, but then.. so far there is not a single of the 6 games I QCed for JAST that I have played privately... maybe I should do Majikoi: Love me Seriously! again with full-voices... I don't really know. I think I missed a lot of entertainment factor that this game loses when you are only playing with the 7+1 voices that JAST could ship it with - bless the Majikoicord overlords.
And here we have it again, I went on a tangent. This is actually a statement that someone made about me today after reading my musings on the VNTS post. They're totally right, but my brain operates differently. It operates at double the speed and this is not necessarily good.  Well, let's get to the point of this post:

When writing for the VNTS I realized that fuwanovel does not use the Gutenberg-Editor, which I have gotten used to while writing more than 500 articles for VN.Info. This means that I had to look at the questionable deception of a WYSIWYG editor again today. Unfortunately, such an editor definitely lies to you, because when making THICC H2/H3 headings it looks bigger and less orderly than it ultimately looks in the published post. Also I got memed by the fuwa Wordpress backend being setup to follow U.S. timezones so my suspenseful hitting the publishing button with my big left toe did not work... 

REE, Wordpress, my beloved ...

 

Dear Diary,

It is not surprising that after the 5 years I'm already in this scene (it is probably more, because just 5 years ago the whole VN.Info thing took off and I oddly played some VNs earlier too) I met many people in this scene who came and went. After living for 3-4 years as a total meme, but totally unobstructed by whatever stood in my way to essentially shape VN.Info into what it is now, I had a big public fight with some people that left some psychological damage and required some introspective. I decided to completely switch my personality to someone who is just striving for harmony, does not get triggered at the occasional idiot anymore and is just focused on his goal to be  "Making VNs popular in the west" or by extension probably due to my illusions of grandeur "Making VNs popular in the world". 

In order to achieve this goal, I have had the pleasure to meet a lot of special people from the scene and the VN community who carry somewhat an influence in companies, fan projects or generally the western VN world. I believe that Fuwanovel (the community we are currently in and that is trying to drag its body out of its coffin after it laid idle for effectively 6 years or more) can achieve everything that we desire from the VN community. I wish to create a society where ppl are not gatekept for external reasons, where fanTL and official TL can thrive in parallel and where a healthy blog scene is nurturing. 

In order to do that I sacrifice my time and effort to connect people who have otherwise never met in the hope they can create something great when working in collaboration with others. Many fan translation projects have failed not necessarily because the staff was incompetent, but because they either lacked the social skills for HR/management or their ego stood in their way of achieving greatness. Fuwanovel houses about 10 years of history and back in the day so many things were posted here where the githubs are still alive and still offer opportunity for the new generation of VN fans to learn how to deal with VN engines and how to start their own translation projects. The FanTL still scene has so much potential. I can see and 95% when I decide to hop fresh into someone's DMs and they get surprised like "who the fuck are you?" it still ends up being a nice talk. Mainly, because we all share the same passions.
However, to get to the point of this post's title. Due to this "dancing on every party" that I perform day after day in my mission to lay bridges for people, I ran into an interesting roadblock that I was not aware existed.

Discord only allows you to have exactly 1000 friends, an arbitrary limit that obviously now tugs on my heartstrings because it forces me to delete some people from my friendlist. I'm convinced that these people will eventually prove useful in some particular project and then I have to wrack my brain to recall their usernames. I can already see it...

Someone from JAST once said that he knows what "type of person" I am. I'm a person that enjoys being the well connected one and would bask in being the go-to guy for the fandom I occupy. Indeed, I enjoy that very much. But as long as it contributes to great projects being realized, no one can say I'm doing this out of malice, can they?

For any fan translators unfamiliar with the jargon:
source language/text = language/text being translated from
target language/text = language/text being translated into
While writing sufficiently well in your target language is important to ensure both that the finished product is a smooth read and that no errors occur because of you being misinterpreted by your editor or audience, it’s all for nothing if you didn’t interpret your source correctly in the first place.
Reading a source text without making errors can be surprisingly difficult even with a decent grasp of both your source and target language. Certainly most fan translators, and more professional translators than I’d like, are lacking in at least one of those two areas: personally, I am objectively significantly worse at Japanese than the average native Japanese high schooler¹.
There are more ways than one to avoid mistranslations, and often you can compensate for lacking in skill by being more cautious while reading the source text. Personally, I like to focus on two basic principles: always trying to detect possible gaps in your knowledge, and always considering whether your translation actually makes sense.
Does It Make Sense?
Bar things that are written specifically to evoke surrealism, writers usually try to avoid things that obviously make no sense. This is a pretty general principle and editors and proofreaders can both use it even if the translator does not, so it’s always a bit strange when I see some weird-ass obviously illogical mistranslation pop up. Theoretically QA/proofreading is extra powerful in this regard for games, as they will usually play the game as they work, so they can spot backgrounds or character movements contradicting the text too. For a subtle example of this, have something from a translation I love to hate on, Seabed:
Now when I saw this ingame it made no sense at all. Why would it be darker after you turned on the light? Part of this is probably just questionable doujinge graphical accuracy (and maybe needing the emphasize the light / mimicking how it would actually look as your eyes adjusted), but I would still make a note on this line were I QAing this². Now the Steam release of Seabed happens to let you switch to Japanese…
壁のスイッチを押して、ナツメ球だけをつける。
I flipped the switch on the wall, turning on just the nightlight (ナツメ球）.
Well, that makes a lot more sense. The second background was probably going for an adjustment effect where everything but the light looked darker, but it wasn’t showing a bright light. Well, that or background 1 was a sort of generic movie-darkness-but-not-really kind of deal. The point is, we have a solution to the puzzle.
If your translation is contradicted by other parts of the game, whether it be the situation the characters are in, the lines before it or after (painfully common), or something else, you should look at those line extra damn hard. Writers do sometimes make mistakes, but it’s probably you. If you know someone with higher Japanese ability that can help check your translation of the line, ask them (make sure to give sufficient context if at all possible. I can’t believe how many people seem constitutionally unable to do this, though the worst offenders are learners rather than translators). Until the line makes sense or you’re confident it’s not supposed to, I recommend leaving the line/section blank or at least leaving a strongly worded note to come back to it later.
Always Be Suspicious
When I was still a high school kid, a freelance literary translator did a presentation at our school³. One thing she said really stuck with me: the principle of always keeping a careful eye out for anything that might not mean what you think it means.
The example she used was of a translator that had managed to get toy shaped like a dog from a lady walking her toy poodle, a small poodle breed, in English — leading to a rather surreal mental image⁴. I suspect this line wasn’t very important, but that’s not always going to be the case, and this kind of mistake is always an embarrassment.
One key skill to avoid that embarrassment is to grow an intuitive sense of what you don’t actually know — if you’ve hung out in some environments, you might actually already have gotten a slice of this with your English, or another language you know well. For example, did you know that strictly speaking bombastic is only to be used for things that are flashy but have little substance? I myself find myself googling words I only sort of know sometimes (…usually after unwisely pressing the enter key in some chat. At least I edit myself quick!). It doesn’t always go well. Ask me about the time I subtly misused reticent sometime… or don’t, actually. A soul can only take so much.
Either way, that same nagging feeling — that maybe you don’t actually know this — can be a valuable ally to maintain the proper level of suspicion when translating. You’re looking for when the structure isn’t quite like what you’ve seen before, or when you’re thinking you can figure out the meaning of something from its parts — look up とてもじゃないが for a real mindfuck of a phrase. And as above, you’re also looking for things that don’t make sense.
Always be suspicious of things that don’t make sense
Showing the interlinked nature of all your guards against mistranslation, the earlier example with the nightlight might also have been prevented by being suspicious. If it was a translation-side error, going deeper than a cursory google images search might have helped get it right — looking at the page, you’d think to yourself: do I really know this is just a normal lightbulb? Looking at ナツメ fruits they look kind of red, too. I’d better look further…
More examples
I was going to review Seabed for Fuwanovel, which is part of the reason why I took a lot of screens going through it. It fell through because I simply could not complete it: my examination had turned me hypercritical and practically every line bothered me — mostly for clumsy flow rather than translation oddities, though there were more of those too. But hey, I got some pictures for this post for all the trouble. Anyway, have another example:
Okay, so this doesn’t make sense. How are you seeing things in pitch black darkness? Let’s look at the Japanese:
すんなりと入国を済ませて空港を出ると見通しの悪い夜ではあったが、コンクリの壁の落書きや広めの道路、湿った空気で異国だと直ぐに分かる。
見通しの悪い isn’t pitch black, it’s just the dark of the night making it hard to see. Now it makes sense that you can see the graffiti again, nice. It’s possible this was some kind of botched adaptation due to the background being solid black, but I don’t buy it.
For my last example, lets use this line from 新説魔法少女 (Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujo), an SRPG/VN hybrid with an ensemble cast of Japanese students, mostly in middle school. Moka is a first-year high school student who used to be in the swimming club last year. Before she graduated she was in the same club as Nagato, who is being discussed here due to her habit of not showing up for things (she still gets good results academically, and is also very strong athletically).
悪化してたか…… 試験だとか総体だとか 大事な時にサボる癖は治したほうがいいよ。
Huh, I guess it’s gotten worse… She should really fix her habit of skipping important events like tests and… 総体?
I was actually just reading this right now, and at first it didn’t make sense, or at least sounded extremely strained, with any of the definitions of 総体 in edict⁵. So I checked kenkyuusha (shin waei daijiten) and a J-J dictionary and they still had nothing illuminating. Now I was starting to think it could be some of my more unlikely interpretations. I checked out そうたい without the kanji to see if it might be using the wrong kanji; 相対 seemed more plausible in the sentence, but I was still not feeling it; my Japanese ability was telling me it wouldn’t look like that grammatically and the interpretation felt strained. My intuition told me that 総体 would be an event somewhat similar to a 試験, maybe sports related given who the speaker was. So I googled 総体 and the second result is a Japanese Wikipedia disambiguation page.
全国高等学校総合体育大会の略称の一つ。高校総体、インターハイ、インハイも同義。
An abbreviation of the Interscholastic Athletic Meet. Synonymous with [various katakana words on the theme of “inter-high”]. Well, that confirms my suspicions. It’s some kind of sporting event. This definiton actually specifically mentions high school events, but there’s nothing saying you can’t have them in middle school.
This interpretation makes sense; a swimming club member would want gifted other club members to be at their competitions. Even if I didn’t use that principle, suspicion could also have saved me and made me actually google the word. But Japanese knowledge also helped me: Japanese often shortens longer terms into a word using some of the term’s kanji; for example 自動販売機 becomes the probably more familiar 自販機, and I knew to suspect this. In the end, the more Japanese you know, the less errors you’ll catch with these methods… but remember, kids: a totally radical book once said that pride comes before a fall. It had a point⁶.
To tie this up, I think my soul has recovered from the baring some time ago, so let me tell you of another English-related fuckup: for the longest time I used to think “craven” was related to “craving”, and none of the times I’d read it had disabused me of this notion. I then saw it used in the Tokyo Babel translation in a way that was clearly incompatible with craving anything, so I looked it up… and was enlightened. It was a sad moment, because at the back of my mind I knew I’d misread it like 10 times by now. With that said, I kinda blame the English language for this one. That, and not having dictionary lookup just by hovering over the word. Man, the browser addons we have these days are pretty dang good...
Footnotes
¹ The JLPT N1, well known for not being particularly indicative of ability but seen as a decent anchoring point nevertheless, is apparently supposed to be easily passable to any student that has finished Japanese high school. I originally wrote most of this essay in ~2017, when I didn’t think I would pass it — I now think I have a decent chance, with pass/fail mostly down to listening ability (not very relevant for text translation) and if a lot of media-obscure grammar points I don’t know happen to show up. I’m still much worse than a Japanese high schooler, though — you’ll have to believe me on this one.
² It’s hard to know where exactly this went wrong, and it’s possible only QA could have saved it from what could be both a reasonable editing decision or a translation oversight. Maybe the translator used google images and saw the bulbs looked more or less like normal bulbs and just went with that; ナツメ球 is in edict, but edict is unreliable and a professional translator might understandably avoid it (I wouldn’t – it has better coverage on a lot of random more contemporary/obscure stuff, though I if I were truly high effort I would probably get access to more updated online daijirin/shinwaei dictionaries).
³ Among other language pairs she was a JP->SE translator I believe, but I can’t remember if she did it firsthand or second. I also remember the title of one book she worked on, Shine, a localized title she didn’t pick or particularly like and which seems to be entirely impossible for me to find anywhere. I also don’t know if she was entirely a literary tl, it’s not like those get paid a lot, though I guess probably more than VN translators (let it be known that the muffled crying of our industry professionals can be heard in the background of this sentence).
⁴ It’s possible she was actually just holding it or something and I’m misremembering, but this way the example has more of the dimensions I want to discuss in this post.
⁵ At the time, Translation Aggregator with JParser and mecab was my first-line lookup choice. These days I have to look things up infrequently enough that a browser addon that has shinmeikai and shin eiwa daijiten 5th ed EPWING dictionary lookup in addition to JMdict (basically fancy non-boomer edict) serves my needs better. Those did not help me here, though.
⁶ In keeping with the principles of this post, I ended up checking out the origin of the proverb. The passage used to read “a totally radical guy once said…,” since I was assuming it had been directly said by Jesus (also, it was funnier that way). At least it really was from the Bible! Though the fall implied is supposed to be “calamitous”, apparently, so maybe we’re using it a bit lightly here. Then again, a bad enough mistranslation really could cause a disaster… though if you’re translating the nuke launch protocol, I really hope to whatever deity will still give me the time of day that you actually know what you’re doing. The rest of you, feel free to muddle along doing your best like us other mortals.
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For any fan translators unfamiliar with the jargon:
source language/text = language/text being translated from
target language/text = language/text being translated into
While writing sufficiently well in your target language is important to ensure both that the finished product is a smooth read and that no errors occur because of you being misinterpreted by your editor or audience, it’s all for nothing if you didn’t interpret your source correctly in the first place.
Reading a source text without making errors can be surprisingly difficult even with a decent grasp of both your source and target language. Certainly most fan translators, and more professional translators than I’d like, are lacking in at least one of those two areas: personally, I am objectively significantly worse at Japanese than the average native Japanese high schooler¹.
There are more ways than one to avoid mistranslations, and often you can compensate for lacking in skill by being more cautious while reading the source text. Personally, I like to focus on two basic principles: always trying to detect possible gaps in your knowledge, and always considering whether your translation actually makes sense.
Does It Make Sense?
Bar things that are written specifically to evoke surrealism, writers usually try to avoid things that obviously make no sense. This is a pretty general principle and editors and proofreaders can both use it even if the translator does not, so it’s always a bit strange when I see some weird-ass obviously illogical mistranslation pop up. Theoretically QA/proofreading is extra powerful in this regard for games, as they will usually play the game as they work, so they can spot backgrounds or character movements contradicting the text too. For a subtle example of this, have something from a translation I love to hate on, Seabed:
Now when I saw this ingame it made no sense at all. Why would it be darker after you turned on the light? Part of this is probably just questionable doujinge graphical accuracy (and maybe needing the emphasize the light / mimicking how it would actually look as your eyes adjusted), but I would still make a note on this line were I QAing this². Now the Steam release of Seabed happens to let you switch to Japanese…
壁のスイッチを押して、ナツメ球だけをつける。
I flipped the switch on the wall, turning on just the nightlight (ナツメ球）.
Well, that makes a lot more sense. The second background was probably going for an adjustment effect where everything but the light looked darker, but it wasn’t showing a bright light. Well, that or background 1 was a sort of generic movie-darkness-but-not-really kind of deal. The point is, we have a solution to the puzzle.
If your translation is contradicted by other parts of the game, whether it be the situation the characters are in, the lines before it or after (painfully common), or something else, you should look at those line extra damn hard. Writers do sometimes make mistakes, but it’s probably you. If you know someone with higher Japanese ability that can help check your translation of the line, ask them (make sure to give sufficient context if at all possible. I can’t believe how many people seem constitutionally unable to do this, though the worst offenders are learners rather than translators). Until the line makes sense or you’re confident it’s not supposed to, I recommend leaving the line/section blank or at least leaving a strongly worded note to come back to it later.
Always Be Suspicious
When I was still a high school kid, a freelance literary translator did a presentation at our school³. One thing she said really stuck with me: the principle of always keeping a careful eye out for anything that might not mean what you think it means.
The example she used was of a translator that had managed to get toy shaped like a dog from a lady walking her toy poodle, a small poodle breed, in English — leading to a rather surreal mental image⁴. I suspect this line wasn’t very important, but that’s not always going to be the case, and this kind of mistake is always an embarrassment.
One key skill to avoid that embarrassment is to grow an intuitive sense of what you don’t actually know — if you’ve hung out in some environments, you might actually already have gotten a slice of this with your English, or another language you know well. For example, did you know that strictly speaking bombastic is only to be used for things that are flashy but have little substance? I myself find myself googling words I only sort of know sometimes (…usually after unwisely pressing the enter key in some chat. At least I edit myself quick!). It doesn’t always go well. Ask me about the time I subtly misused reticent sometime… or don’t, actually. A soul can only take so much.
Either way, that same nagging feeling — that maybe you don’t actually know this — can be a valuable ally to maintain the proper level of suspicion when translating. You’re looking for when the structure isn’t quite like what you’ve seen before, or when you’re thinking you can figure out the meaning of something from its parts — look up とてもじゃないが for a real mindfuck of a phrase. And as above, you’re also looking for things that don’t make sense.
Always be suspicious of things that don’t make sense
Showing the interlinked nature of all your guards against mistranslation, the earlier example with the nightlight might also have been prevented by being suspicious. If it was a translation-side error, going deeper than a cursory google images search might have helped get it right — looking at the page, you’d think to yourself: do I really know this is just a normal lightbulb? Looking at ナツメ fruits they look kind of red, too. I’d better look further…
More examples
I was going to review Seabed for Fuwanovel, which is part of the reason why I took a lot of screens going through it. It fell through because I simply could not complete it: my examination had turned me hypercritical and practically every line bothered me — mostly for clumsy flow rather than translation oddities, though there were more of those too. But hey, I got some pictures for this post for all the trouble. Anyway, have another example:
Okay, so this doesn’t make sense. How are you seeing things in pitch black darkness? Let’s look at the Japanese:
すんなりと入国を済ませて空港を出ると見通しの悪い夜ではあったが、コンクリの壁の落書きや広めの道路、湿った空気で異国だと直ぐに分かる。
見通しの悪い isn’t pitch black, it’s just the dark of the night making it hard to see. Now it makes sense that you can see the graffiti again, nice. It’s possible this was some kind of botched adaptation due to the background being solid black, but I don’t buy it.
For my last example, lets use this line from 新説魔法少女 (Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujo), an SRPG/VN hybrid with an ensemble cast of Japanese students, mostly in middle school. Moka is a first-year high school student who used to be in the swimming club last year. Before she graduated she was in the same club as Nagato, who is being discussed here due to her habit of not showing up for things (she still gets good results academically, and is also very strong athletically).
悪化してたか…… 試験だとか総体だとか 大事な時にサボる癖は治したほうがいいよ。
Huh, I guess it’s gotten worse… She should really fix her habit of skipping important events like tests and… 総体?
I was actually just reading this right now, and at first it didn’t make sense, or at least sounded extremely strained, with any of the definitions of 総体 in edict⁵. So I checked kenkyuusha (shin waei daijiten) and a J-J dictionary and they still had nothing illuminating. Now I was starting to think it could be some of my more unlikely interpretations. I checked out そうたい without the kanji to see if it might be using the wrong kanji; 相対 seemed more plausible in the sentence, but I was still not feeling it; my Japanese ability was telling me it wouldn’t look like that grammatically and the interpretation felt strained. My intuition told me that 総体 would be an event somewhat similar to a 試験, maybe sports related given who the speaker was. So I googled 総体 and the second result is a Japanese Wikipedia disambiguation page.
全国高等学校総合体育大会の略称の一つ。高校総体、インターハイ、インハイも同義。
An abbreviation of the Interscholastic Athletic Meet. Synonymous with [various katakana words on the theme of “inter-high”]. Well, that confirms my suspicions. It’s some kind of sporting event. This definiton actually specifically mentions high school events, but there’s nothing saying you can’t have them in middle school.
This interpretation makes sense; a swimming club member would want gifted other club members to be at their competitions. Even if I didn’t use that principle, suspicion could also have saved me and made me actually google the word. But Japanese knowledge also helped me: Japanese often shortens longer terms into a word using some of the term’s kanji; for example 自動販売機 becomes the probably more familiar 自販機, and I knew to suspect this. In the end, the more Japanese you know, the less errors you’ll catch with these methods… but remember, kids: a totally radical book once said that pride comes before a fall. It had a point⁶.
To tie this up, I think my soul has recovered from the baring some time ago, so let me tell you of another English-related fuckup: for the longest time I used to think “craven” was related to “craving”, and none of the times I’d read it had disabused me of this notion. I then saw it used in the Tokyo Babel translation in a way that was clearly incompatible with craving anything, so I looked it up… and was enlightened. It was a sad moment, because at the back of my mind I knew I’d misread it like 10 times by now. With that said, I kinda blame the English language for this one. That, and not having dictionary lookup just by hovering over the word. Man, the browser addons we have these days are pretty dang good...
Footnotes
¹ The JLPT N1, well known for not being particularly indicative of ability but seen as a decent anchoring point nevertheless, is apparently supposed to be easily passable to any student that has finished Japanese high school. I originally wrote most of this essay in ~2017, when I didn’t think I would pass it — I now think I have a decent chance, with pass/fail mostly down to listening ability (not very relevant for text translation) and if a lot of media-obscure grammar points I don’t know happen to show up. I’m still much worse than a Japanese high schooler, though — you’ll have to believe me on this one.
² It’s hard to know where exactly this went wrong, and it’s possible only QA could have saved it from what could be both a reasonable editing decision or a translation oversight. Maybe the translator used google images and saw the bulbs looked more or less like normal bulbs and just went with that; ナツメ球 is in edict, but edict is unreliable and a professional translator might understandably avoid it (I wouldn’t – it has better coverage on a lot of random more contemporary/obscure stuff, though I if I were truly high effort I would probably get access to more updated online daijirin/shinwaei dictionaries).
³ Among other language pairs she was a JP->SE translator I believe, but I can’t remember if she did it firsthand or second. I also remember the title of one book she worked on, Shine, a localized title she didn’t pick or particularly like and which seems to be entirely impossible for me to find anywhere. I also don’t know if she was entirely a literary tl, it’s not like those get paid a lot, though I guess probably more than VN translators (let it be known that the muffled crying of our industry professionals can be heard in the background of this sentence).
⁴ It’s possible she was actually just holding it or something and I’m misremembering, but this way the example has more of the dimensions I want to discuss in this post.
⁵ At the time, Translation Aggregator with JParser and mecab was my first-line lookup choice. These days I have to look things up infrequently enough that a browser addon that has shinmeikai and shin eiwa daijiten 5th ed EPWING dictionary lookup in addition to JMdict (basically fancy non-boomer edict) serves my needs better. Those did not help me here, though.
⁶ In keeping with the principles of this post, I ended up checking out the origin of the proverb. The passage used to read “a totally radical guy once said…,” since I was assuming it had been directly said by Jesus (also, it was funnier that way). At least it really was from the Bible! Though the fall implied is supposed to be “calamitous”, apparently, so maybe we’re using it a bit lightly here. Then again, a bad enough mistranslation really could cause a disaster… though if you’re translating the nuke launch protocol, I really hope to whatever deity will still give me the time of day that you actually know what you’re doing. The rest of you, feel free to muddle along doing your best like us other mortals.
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To procrastinate doing anything productive, I have decided to write a summary of what I did last year.
GENERAL
During the early parts — months really — of the year I was kind of reeling from having had a very frightening GERD — acid reflux — flareup. It’s fairly hard to tell the symptoms from a heart attack, and paranoia about the whole deal caused anxiety issues. In the end it receded… when I started eating less and barely eating at all when I was not very hungry. Would’ve been nice to have tried that earlier. GERD and anxiety seem to feed into each other in weird and fucky ways and the literature associating them interests me because I have to wonder if GERD might actually be the egg and not the chicken (the egg came first[1]).
To this day I sort of have a trigger-adjacent thing for hearing ~120bpm music with a steady beat — disco speed — where my heart will like go along with it like what disco music does to you and that will trigger warning signals from somewhere and seriously what the fuck? It’s slowly getting better though, idk.
Relatedly, I’ve discovered that my issues with various chest skin pains and neck pains are all due to me having absolutely awful ergonomics for any position I can take while using my computer in bed, and I don’t like using it anywhere else, thus I’m fucked. No longer worried about the various pains, but very annoyed by them.
I’ve gotten a new wider bed, a data plan for my smartphone, and at the end of the year, a new smartphone that doesn’t suck massive dick (poco x3 pro). I also got my first taste of imported Japanese manga, which has been pretty pleasant compared to scans.
I’ve slightly re-intensified my guitar playing habit, and I don’t occasionally hate myself for not playing enough to ever play well any more. Maybe one day I’ll actually record that one tune I don’t have a good recording of yet. I’ve also started using a guitar with lower action since the one I was always using before has VERY high action and is hard as fuck to play.
I’ve also started enjoying minecraft speedrun streams (RSG 16.1, anything Elysaku does). This started out as me watching SmallAnt and him doing mc speedruns, after which I branched out to Couriway watching his 1k seeds challenge as well as various other lesser known but more cracked runners like crookst. Overall I’ve branched out a bit from mostly watching hearthstone streams.
MEDIA

In January I finished watching the FFVI translation comparison by Clyde Mandelin / tomato, which I had started watching the month before. I watched the entirety of every video and counted the Japanese lines read for Tadoku[3] purposes using the Microsoft calculator as a makeshift clicker. I guess I’ve sort of finished a playthrough of the game now Kappa. At this point I was really fucked and couldn’t make myself read a vn due to anxiety issues or neck muscle posture issues or both but I could watch a video, or something. This ended up being most of my tadoku contribution for the month, which was certainly weird. I do recommend the series if you can read Japanese, it’s interesting. Not sure how it’s like to watch as a pleb, maybe it’s still cool? Lots of plebs do like mato’s site. Also I’m sorry, the whole JOP bit I’m doing will unfortunately not improve much as I carry on writing. You have been warned, &c.
Pre-edit opening screen. Note “radiating humming” instead of “radiating hum” or whatever and the lack of commas and stuff.The first VN I completed in 2021, in February, was Digital Seclusion, a rather doujin EVN created by a member of a forum I still haunt, ghostlike: Fuwanovel. I liked it, but thought the prose could use about five or so editing passes, besides needing another proofreading pass. I ended up doing my usual bit where I comment that the writing is all cringe and needs an editor and I expect no response, but instead the writer, Zalor (whom I had some rapport with, admittedly) said that it would be helpful if I could proofread/edit — so I did, through the medium of screenshots and text in his discord DMs.
And that’s the first screen done.In the end while I think I helped improve the text a decent bit, it was also clearly a bit of an auteur work with a distinct (if perhaps not optimal) voice and I didn’t push too hard for changes, opting to just suggest stuff (and a lot of suggestions there were). Thus while I allowed myself to be named in the credits in the end, and it’s certainly nice to be in the credits of a cool VN, I always have mixed emotions about it — maybe someone will discover my name in there one day and think it’s representative of my writing abilities? I have the dumbest fears. Sometimes I try to imagine what gender dysphoria would be like and apparently “someone has the wrong opinion about you” is a vague match so then I imagine being in a room and knowing someone incorrectly thinks I’m a trash writer or translator and it’s actually extremely uncomfortable where the fuck am I going with this. I mean I think there’s even a disclaimer in the credits too. Really this will never be a real problem for me.
Kinda waifu nglI started reading 12riven in February (also read in March and April). I didn’t finish, as is my stalling wont, but I got some endings and got some distance into the true route. I found it very enjoyable, and the pacing nice and tight most of the time, but I do worry about whether it can tie it all together. Also the basic mechanism of the in-universe psionic powers is, I must admit, pretty dumb. It’s given to you in a scientific manner but it basically precludes a materialistic outlook. I mean R11 has this too I guess but it’s more blatantly cringe in this. Anyway if you can go along with the dumb the rest is pretty entertaining. EOPs are missing out! They’ll probably remain missing out even if it ever gets translated (rip lemnisca tl) because Uchikoshi is a fucking memelord and loves adding plot relevant puns all over the place. It’s going to be hard to get all of them to the level of the original, but who knows?
Definitely a shimaisou lineI also tried out Shimaisou 2 (1 is a cool dark yuri utsuge) for a few hundred lines and then stalled it because idk. I tried continuing my long stalled playthrough of zanane but the common route kept on being boring and unfunny and very ドM when I am ドS so I stalled it again after a few thousand lines. I might never come back.
Nothing strange going on here at allIn April I read a chapter and a bit of the slow-start fucked up yuri yandere mystery-ish game Hitofuta. I then stalled it, though it was definitely an interesting experience after the initial SoL of like 1000 lines was past. Ask me for a download if you want, there’s some fuckery where non-jp IPs can’t access the download page for it (but it’s free doe!).
I also started Sutekano which was kind of interesting, partly picking it up because so many people seemed to hate it for whatever reason, and stalled it after a bit.
yeah right JinI also tried Asanyaa, which made me realize I found TS content strangely enticing. Going to chalk it up to autogynephilia or whatever just being a normal thing in a subset of non-trans men tbh I think Ozy did a survey and it showed something similar ignore selection effects. Anyway I stalled it after the first h scene. Apparently it’s a moege not a nukige somehow? Idk man. Anyway, when’s the glorious transhumanist future with effortless bodyswaps?
The second VN I completed – also in April – was Tsukiyo ni Otome wa Tegami wo Nurasu, which is a horny-ish spooky mystery yuri game that actually sort of plays into a “predatory lesbians” meme, though not in a way that really bothered me. Not that things bother me in general. It’s weird but was fun enough to read. It would be an intresting translation challenge, as you’d want to write in like 7 different styles for the various letters at the start!
Apparently it was created by two het women who flatly deny any homosexuality whatsoever in the afterword-y extras. Also, those same women created a doujin otome game called Toki-Hako (toki-bako? who knows…) that has an insanely high rating on EGS and a rave review, but there are like 3 votes total so who knows.
May saw me playing Makoto Möbius (given the メ I reject the vndb romanization, but not with enough fervor to actually change it). It’s my first CHARON game, and I guess it does interest me in other games by the writer but not massively so. It’s a neat plot with the CHARON signature menhera girls and some other funky plot twists included. That said you can just up and miss endings that really matter to the plot with ease, even after having gotten the true ending, so it’s a good thing I checked a guide. Bad design imo. I played in Japanese but to my understanding there is a translation, on whose quality I cannot comment other than my usual prior[2] of translations being bad.
I’m pretty sure I took this screen purely because of its amusing content out of contextI also started on Aibeya 2 in May because I was testing it to see if it would hook or something because someone was having trouble with it, and caprice directed me to read it for a bit because the heroine was pretty heckin kwi. I read until it started to turn from moege to probable nukige in regards to h-scene density and decided I was done with it. For once, it’s more dropped than stalled… though you never know!
And for my last May ge, I read most of Sakyuseka after a friend recommended it as being not quite the nukige it looked like, and in fact a pretty good plotge with a romantic core (that just happened to have a lot of porn you could skip if you wanted, I guess.) I got until the best part of the game according to said friend and stalled it because LOOK I DO NOT NEED A REASON IT WILL HAPPEN. Anyway, recommend I checking it out, it’s cool and there’s some decent porn too if you’re into that. Very high production values for a doujinge.
In June all I did on the VN front was a read of a few hundred lines of Kira Kira, since it was being used to demo the japanese VN streaming site OOParts and could be tried for free. I concluded that I liked Setoguchi’s writing style and also that it wasn’t something incompatible with English or anything, just would take a decent writer with enough time to work on their wording enough, so basically any translation of his works is likely to be a failure in this industry. As shown by the Musicus TL getting disowned by most JOPs, but I digress. Really when he’s not doing a stream-of-consciousness thing (which I didnt see in kira kira but have seen in Carnival screenshots) he’s just doing moderately complex sentences with good imagery and effective prose. There’s no magic nipponese essence of whatever he’s just kind of good! It’s totally doable! Urobuchi is the same except maybe when he’s doing Chinese kanji autism shit! I totally know this 100% from having read like 200 lines. Anyway. Pity the actual Kira Kira tl out there is much worse still than even the Musicus tl, which is, I understand, merely not all that well written in comparison to the original.
In July I played the bit-more-spice-than-usual yuri VN Tsuyuchiru Letter. It has really nice sprite direction and it fairly easy to read, so do read it in Japanese if you wish as a beginner. The spicier elements do bring enough excitement and delicious suffering to the table to make it an enjoyable read, though perhaps the most interesting characters are the ones they’re clearly hoping to include in a sequel (the game folder is even called “tsuyuchuri1” but they haven’t announced number 2 yet ree). The novel ends somewhat conclusively, but has sequel hooks for other couples, so if you hate even the sequel hook thing you might want to avoid the title.
The translation by Meru should be mostly solid, I trust Meru to not suck (but apparently she wasn’t looking at the sprite direction when translating, not having been given the actual script, so it’s possible some of that is off in English given that a lot of it is midline expression changes etc). Also there’s a plot CG in it that’s edited with chinese text in the CN loc but doesn’t have an English version as far as I can tell (though you get the text read in the normal textbox too so you’re not really missing crucial information). Modestly recommended for yuri fans.
Secondly, I started on Hotel., a VN which exemplifies the infuriating Japanese habit of ending the names of works with periods. Other than my rage at its typographical inconvenice, Hotel manages to be very different from any other VN I’ve read, feeling more like a… sitcom? than anything else, though the plot does hint as something a bit darker than just comedy.
It follows — in sort of ambiguous third person-y view, sometimes first — the daily lives of the quirky employees of the titular hotel, from its clearly autistic manager to its whimsical owner to the couple that keeps having arguments about their upcoming marriage to the be-afroed black guy speaking simultaneously in kansai-ben and engrish that tried to make everything a manzai scene to the mysterious loli on a mission with an eyepatch and insane guitar chops to the nocturnal, bisexual and horny bartender woman who keeps trying to unsuccessfully woo the manager, along with also trying to get at the cute cook girl just in case. And I’ve only covered half of the colorful array of characters in this thing! Nor do I know much about the mystery it’s building up to yet, but the Hotel clearly isn’t normal in any way! Anyway, stalled as usual, but maybe I’ll read more of it.
Third, I read like half of chapter 1 of Mememasa. It’s ok I guess.
In month 8 (I refuse to fuck with month names above July. Fuck the roman emperors who fucked up all the names). I read Trash Waifu. It was a qt enough short vn that fulfilled personal emotional fetishes of mine, and surprisingly ok for a random EVN I picked up because it had a meme title. I still haven’t read the sequel. Read it if the concept more or less laid in the description appeals to you I guess.
Good osananajimi. Naturally, she probably likes you but ur donkan.I also started on My Merry May using a ps2 emulator and the combined orig+sequel release My Merry May with be. For the most part it’s a galge, but apart from the sci-fi elements which do end up mattering for the plot somewhat, what really struck me was the unusual and rounded feel of the characters.
Apart from all the sci-fi aspects of the setting, you also get forced into being the effective parent of a little robot girl that learns REALLY fast. Also she’s pretty hot and calls you oniichan but there is no porn in this game oh well.Unlike a lot of arrow gay THESE DAYS (I feel), each character is in service to themselves, not to their archetype, and won’t always act the way you expect – but the way they act will always make sense, in the end. I picked up the title because it was super high rated on EGS and the (a?) writer had also worked on Symphonic Rain, which has the same nuanced characters I like in this.
My queenShe can cook too, so we know she’s not born after 1993I actually read pretty far into the game, getting into the route of the one middle-schooler girl in the game (I just really vibed with her she’s a dandere and mature please understand). Just after I got to some realdeal plot in her route, I had to get my laptop fan repaired and it took a month. Maybe I’ll actually go back to this one, I may have found a waifu in Misao. Also there really doesn’t seem to be a single ingame hint that the 13-16 relationship is considered weird by anyone yet. Funky from a contemporary Western perspective. But I enjoy it.
I guess there is thisI also also started on Despiria, a Dreamcast (as you can see the theme of this month is I emulate shit) Atlus RPG. It’s a kind of sci-fi cum catholic cum biological horror setting where you’re a nun with psychic powers.
Narration text. Text presentation is cool and varied in general in thiswhat a cutieDive text is heavily animated, fragmented, the works. Good luck JOPs(?) You can “dive” into objects or perople to read minds or in the case of objects, leftover emotions, which helps you gather information on dangerous heretics pushing drugs and other unchristian nastiness.
Also the battle system – though it doesn’t get used that much in the excellent opening area – has you use two persona-ish things with a persona crafting system.
It’s text-heavy and unhookable, and worse, has time-limited text display that you also can’t repeat. But it’s pretty cool and I can see myself returning to it from its stalled state at the third area. It would be cool to see a translation of it… even if it would be shit as usual.
He doesn’t like the psychic nuns. He’s kind of just a dick in general, though.After this I get fucked by lack of laptop and when I finally get it in December I don’t really do much except read Hotel for a short session in The Moe Way’s discord server.
I could list LNs and manga I read as well but I’ve been writing for hours oh god oh fuck if you want it ask me. Read Urasekai Picnic and Yagakimi!
ACADEMICS
Background: you need 180 ECTS (hereafter points) to get a Computer Science BA in Sweden. This is my current goal, though since I am lazy as fuck I have been doing it at a modest pace of 5 credits per quarter – the usual pace is 15 per quarter. I had ~115p in partial credit and ~95p in completed credit at the start of the year. The partial credit thing will be explained later.
The year started off with a fat L as I managed to fail a 10-point (double length course, started in late 2020) in calculus. This was basically self-inflicted as I studied approximately fuck all for the latter half of the course. Essentially every failure I perform is self-inflicted. That’s how it goes.
I then went into the second quarter of the year and bullshitted my way into the statistics course that required me to have passed the calculus course, because my exam results weren’t in yet so I couldn’t know that they wouldn’t pass my obviously-failed exam out of clerical error (I never technically lied in any official communique). Anyway I passed the statistics course, so KEKW I was right about doing fine in the course anyway. 5 points to the Zaka team.
For third quarter I signed up to ONCE AND FOR ALL catch up on a course I half passed 10 or so years ago. The course has changed massively since then and the written exams I had failed were now replaced with coding assignments. This was actually quite fun, if a lot of work. First, I had to write a generic hash table in C, with various utility functions, auto-resizing, function pointers for element comparisons, lots of really annoying but also cool stuff. Also a lot of tests for it.
I then mailed the instructor about it and he didn’t respond because he was sick. I mailed him again and microshit office decided that THAT specific mail was the one damn mail it was going to put in the spam folder. It hasn’t put anything in the spam after that. At the same time, my laptop fan was dying and I killed it dead trying to fix it (HP laptop design is SHIIIIIIIIIIIITTT ree). Thus I was limited to a 5-year-old smartphone to check basically everything, and if I wanted to code I had to either use university workstations (that unfortunately are FUCKED half the time and near unusably slow) or an old laptop that was already crappy when my mom got it five years ago. I discovered many fascinating bugs and difficulties trying to navigate the world with 25gb of disk space and 4gb of ram on a win8.1 machine. For example, booting a vagrant VM for c coding was so slow I had to increase the timeout or it would fail. Good stuff. The laptop redeemed itself later when I didn’t have to use a VM, though.
Anyway so about the mail to the instructor about presenting my assignment completion – I send another mail saying wtf do you have a spam filter on links and he says “uhh I replied earlier” and im like “no I did not see that but ok when do we meet”. Eventually I notice it’s been in the spam for a week plus. FUCK. But yeah, I do the presentation and it goes well.
Unfortunately the lack of instructor response demotivated me, so I lost 2+ weeks of time mostly not working on the second assignment I needed to pass, a Java assignment to create a symbolic calculator (but not the parser). In the end, combined with the miserably slow university systems fucking me over, I don’t get the Java assignment done until way into the last period of the year.
The last period, I’m without a laptop and have to somehow manage an algorithms course with a coding assignment component. I sign up to be randomly assigned a partner after briefly considering partnering up with someone I actually know and not doing it because I am a fuck. Anyway my luck ends up pretty decent as I hit a competent enough partner that doesn’t mind being a bit chill (though we somehow end up getting 29/30 points for the assignments – which meant we were guaranteed a grade bump on the exam – which will never not amuse me, since this was described as “going all out” but I certainly did not feel I did. Maybe my mediocre LaTeX skills and good English writing ability is rarer than I thought…). We have some tough times with the assignments sometimes, but we get through it.
The lectures are not that great and I end up slacking off on attending them after a while (my sleep schedule is also fucked in said period making it harder), but unusually for me I did eventually catch up on them using online material. Having a lab partner to be accountable to certainly helped. The exam is on the 3rd of jan 2022 and the last lecture is on like the 14th, so I manage to sneak in a presentation of the last part of the programming course I was trying to finish in last period. It ends up being pretty last-minute, I think on the 22nd, but I pass without much issue. Now this is VERY SIGNIFICANT because the course I have at last completed is a 20-point course! My official points fully gained thus increase by 20, and I am now safely above 120 points, which lets me take advanced courses. This is important for my future planning. But back to the algorithms course.
I take the exam with a bit less prep than I should have but certainly some prep, and the professor has decided to make the kind of section I do worst at double the points it notmally is, use even more obnoxious notation for it than usual, and use a problem I barely remember anything but the greedy solution for but ask about a dynamic programming algorithm. Despite this convocation of fuckery, I give myself a 75% chance of having passed the exam — it was multiple choice, so there’s little subjectivity involved. The results still aren’t in despite having sat it on the 3rd of Jan and it being fully computerized. Whatever I guess.
[1] Let there be an assortment of DNA features resulting in what we would call a “chicken”. Then this assortment must have been produced by mating two non-chickens, or they in turn would have been produced by a chicken egg as described next. This assortment will first exist as gametes or whatever, then as a fused egg, then as a chicken. Since egg happens before chicken, the egg comes first. QED fuck any philosopher that goes against me I’m 110% right.
[2] “What I expect” in Bayesian statistical terms, because I have read too much LW-style rationalist writing. For questions of something happening or not, this is just the percentage of the time that you would expect something “like that” to happen or not – give me a coin to flip and I’ll give you 50% for any one side to show up. For evaluating a number like an expected score for a vn (like how vndb does it in its Bayesian rating) or my estimated “translation quality” rating, it’s the average you would expect given no other information – a good prior would be the average of everything you’ve seen before in the category. Since most translations are bad (fan translations a bit worse on average), I expect this one to be bad also, in a purely dispassionate way that doesn’t actually give you, the reader, any useful information and could well be wrong. Also my standards are really high. Anyway, this digression has gone on long enough and made me look enough of an autistic dickhead to satisfy me, plus the more I talk about bayesian whatever the more formal error I’m going to introduce since it’s not like I really know it much other than in intuitive terms.
[3] Friendly challenge to read as much foreign-language (mostly Japanese) text as possible in a month. Goes by the honor system.
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Over time, a bored translator tends to accumulate random pieces of translation they never went that far with, or did in 10 minutes for the shitpost for whatever reason, etc. Apart from that, I’ve personally done some scattered work for fan translations that may or may not ever see the light of day, some (very modestly) paid in ebooks. Anyway, here we go:
1. Random demonbane fight/action scene
I think this is from an expanded rerelease or something. There’s an absolutely meme error left in here where my brain read 拳 as 拳銃, even noticing my confusion in the comments but nevertheless failing to see the actual problem. I generally prefer translating directly in the script for VNs, so that’s what you’re getting. I did this one FOR FREE. I think this is about 3k-4k moji?
2. Phantom of Inferno h-scene except there’s a lot of plot too
This one’s funny because I was initially contacted about it because the guy thought I was a coomer translator doing mostly nukige. Ironically my actual skillset turned out to be very applicable to the script I chose to work on though, so whatever xD.
Unfortunately I wasn’t doing the whole commenting out lines thing (and I changed the structure in places), so you can only really read this in something like a multi-file viewer. I promise the rest is better, okay? Anyway, here’s a zip with both the unaltered script and the translated script. I got paid for this with an ebook of shimeyuri, which I actually read afterwards. There’s a possible mistl in the script where 失禁 most likely (based on my expansive experience with illustrated japanese pornography) actually means wetting yourself and not “loosing your bowels” as I put it. I just couldn’t find as good a line that was more yellow than brown at the time so I coped. But it legitimately could mean both, so I leave the final decision up to someone who actually looked at the scene ingame.
3. New tl for the subahibi soapbubble poem that’s actually from cyrano
So yeah, this was originally French. And then through some route, it became Japanese, and was used in Subahibi. The current official localization uses a french to english translation, which is fair enough. But, well, the english translation, and espcially the lines chosen from it that I saw used in screenshots (idk I didnt actually read the english tl tho), seem to me to not quite be as clear as the Japanese. Since poems and such often change shape with translation, and Subahibi definitely wants to say something with its poems, I had to wonder if doing a translation from the Japanese might not be a better solution than merely choosing a translation from the French. Well, I could also consult the english translation too… Oh, and then I decided to specifically make sure to use words that would resonate with wittgensteinian thinking or whatever (“name” specifically. In formal logic you put “names” to stuff. Uhh anyway…). I haven’t actually finished subahibi, I stalled it in insects because the first part was really boring. ANYWAY, the poem, entirely devoid of annoying stuff like actually rhyming:
Zaka adapted tl:
We yearn
Building castles of air from but a name
Pining for a lover made of fantasy
Take it, now
This fantasy I made
And make it into reality
My romantic laments I have scattered far and wide
Only you can give them a home at last
Take them, now
One day you will know
I was not sincere; I was eloquent alone
Original jp tl:
ボクたちは
ただ名ばかりでシャボン玉の様にふくらんでしまった……
そんな空想の恋人に恋いこがれている……。
さぁ、君、取りたまえ。
この空想を、
そして本物に変えるのは君だ。
ボクは恋の嘆きとか書き散らかしたけど……、
彷徨う鳥の留まるのを君は見る事が出来る人なんだ。
さあ、取りたまえ。
実はないだけ雄弁だと……
君にも分かる日が来るから……。
Fr->en (brian hooker, not the one used in the official tl):
I have amused myself
As we all do, we poets–writing vows
To Chloris, Phyllis–any pretty name–
You might have had a pocketful of them!
Take it, and turn to facts my fantasies–
I loosed these loves like doves into the air;
Give them a habitation and a home.
Here, take it– You will find me all the more
Eloquent, being insincere! Come!
—
Is this good? …Well my tl could probably use some polish, but I think the approach is interesting. Then again, apparently subahibbers goes and explains the poem later on, so you could probably insert your explanation then and be more pure (as pure as a fr->en tl is, though!) to the original, I guess. Overall it’s a wash but I’m happy I got to shitpost.
4. The two first pages of Hige wo Soru, Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou (LN)
I was originally going to translate 10 pages as a work sample to troll one of my friends who was looking for people to translate LNs at the time, but I got too lazy to continue after finishing 2 pages. C’est la vie, innit? Also, the title given is my personal stab at a sensible title. Unfortunately the events in the book do not match the straightforward “X, then Y” structure of そして as commonly used, as Y actually happens before X in-story! Thus I choose to interpret it as listing two things that happened in no specific order.
I actually translated this from scans, which is how I read higehiro 1. I have ebooks now to copy from though, so I’ll spare you the scan reader experience. Also maybe I should have used “beneath” instead of “under” the telophone pole? Whatever, man.
ひげを剃る、そして女子高生を拾う。
I took in a runaway girl and shaved my beard
Page 10:
　失しつ恋れんをした。
　二つ年上の、同じ会社に勤める女性だ。名前は後ご藤とうさんといった。
　後藤さんは面めん倒どう見みが良く、研修の時から俺に良くしてくれた。笑え顔がおが淑しとやかで、気配りができて、社畜と化していた俺の心の支えだった。
「男がいるなら最初から言えやァ……」
　もう何なん杯ばいビールを飲んだか分からない。向かいの席で他人ひと事ごとのように笑う同期の橋はし本もとの輪りん郭かくもぼやけて見える。
　そう、デートに行ったのだ。後藤さんと。勤続５年目にして、ようやく彼女をデートに誘さそった。快く誘いを受け入れられて、これは行けるのでは！　と期待を膨ふくらませながらデートに行き、動物園を一いつ緒しよに歩いた。正直、動物よりも後藤さんの横顔ばかり見ていた。ときどき、乳も横目で見た。
　とにかく、このチャンスを無む駄だにしてはならないと、俺は張り切りに張り切っていた。動物園を回り終え、オシャレなフレンチの店で夕食をとった。味はもう覚えていない。
プロローぐ
電柱の下の女
Prologue
The girl under the telephone pole
My love was unrequited.
Gotou was two years older than me, and my superior at work. She took good care of her coworkers; ever since I was in training, she’d always treated me well. Her smile was graceful, her attention to others’ needs palpable — she was always there to support me as my threw myself into the life of a wage slave.
“If she had a boyfriend she coulda told me from the start, man…” I whined.
I’d already lost count of how many beers I’d downed. My coworker Hashimoto was sitting across from me, his profile peeking out of the dim barlight. He chuckled briefly at my outburst, clearly amused.
We’d been on a date all right, me and Gotou. First we’d gone to the zoo. To be honest, I’d been looking less at the animals, more at her. Sometimes, I’d snuck in a sideways glance at her breasts.
Anyway, I wasn’t about to lose my shot, so I’d gone all out afterwards. I’d taken her to a fancy restaurant for dinner. I can’t remember what it tasted like at all.
Page 11:
「このまま、俺の家に来ませんか」
　お互たがい大人である。この言葉の意味くらいは、すぐに理解できるだろう。期待と不安の入り混じった目で後藤さんを見ると、後藤さんは困ったように笑っていた。
　そして、首を横に振ふったのだった。
「会社では秘密にしているんだけど、私、恋こい人びとがいるの」
　　　＊
「じゃあなんでデートに来たんだよッ!!!」
「ああもう吉よし田だ、それ今日六回目だから」
「一万回でも言ってやるよぉ……」
「一万回も同じ話聞きたくないんだけど」
　俺がビールを呷あおるのを、橋本は苦く笑しようしながら見ていた。
「そのへんにしときなよ」
「馬ば鹿か、こんなんで俺の怒いかりがおさまるかってんだァ」
「酒が回ってきた後の方がキレてるじゃん。埒らち明かねぇって」
　橋本は他人事だからそんなことを言えるのだ。今日は飲まないとやっていられない。
　後藤さんにフラれた直後、俺は茫ぼう然ぜん自じ失しつで小さな公園のベンチで項うな垂だれた。
　訊きくと、五年前から彼女には恋人がいたのだという。
　つまり、俺が彼女と知り合った時にはすでに男がいたということだ。
「馬鹿みてぇだ……」
　男のいる女に五年も思いを寄せてしまっていた。
I’d waited for the right time, and then I’d asked her: “Hey, would you like to see my place?” We weren’t kids — the implication was obvious. I had looked at her with uneasy anticipation as she gave me a troubled smile — and then, she had shook her head. “I’ve kept it a secret at work, but I’m afraid I’ve got a boyfriend.”
＊＊＊
“Then why the hell did you agree to the date?” I exclaimed.
“Jeez, this is the sixth time you’ve said that today,” Yoshida said.
“I’ll say it a thousand times over, damn it!”
“I really would rather you not.”
Yoshida watched me with a strained smile as I downed another swig of beer.
“You really shouldn’t have any more to drink,” he said.
“Dude, d’ya think I’m gonna forget how angry I am with just this much?”
“Aren’t you just going to get more pissed off if you keep drinking? There’s no point to it.”
—
5. Purposely bad “accurate” tl of song lyrics that I was going to show myself fixing in a blog post discussing kinda lame “accurate” lyric translation but I never did the work oops totally not coping no really I’m serious though
Hahaha funny how things turn out right? anyway uhh

カプチーノ　ともさかりえ
This is purposely sloppy and sort of meaning-only because I was going to write a post titled ‘how to make a typical youtube jp lyric tl’
which then was going to feature a refinement of the lyrics
or something to show the adaptations you actually
should be doing if you’re subbing fucking songs
I mean I’m not actually a god though so who knows
if it was even a good idea
but yeah that’s why this is garbage even if it is prolly ‘accurate’
あと少しあたしの成長を待って
あなたを夢中にさせたくて
藻掻あたしを可愛がってね
Wait for me to grow a bit more
I want to make you enchanted with me
So please spoil me while I struggle to do so
今度逢う時はコートも要らないと
そんなに普通に云えちゃうのが理解わからない
・・・ミルクの白に茶色が負けている
I don’t get how you can just say
You won’t even need a coat on when we next meet
–The white of the milk is stronger than the brown
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you, want touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
コーヒーの匂いを間あいだに挟んで
優位の笑みを隠し切れない様子で居る
・・・苦いだけじゃ未だバランスが取れない
The scent of coffee hangs between us
And I can’t hide my overbearing smile
–I’m all bitter, haven’t found the right balance
梅の散る午後にもちゃんと二人は
今日と同じ様に人混みを
擦り抜けられるかしら
それぞれがただ忙しくしてたら
引く手の加減も曖昧に
忘れちゃいそうで不安なのに
When we next meet early spring afternoon as the plum blossoms fall
Will we easily slip through the crowd
As we were able to today?
We just get busy with our own lives
And I don’t know how hard to pull you towards me
But I’m worried you’ll just forget me
あなたが此処に居る約束など
1つも交わして居ない
いつの間にか淡色が当たり前に香り
二人を支配しそう
We never promised to meet
Anywhere or anytime
And the sense that our feelings will fade
Is all around us
誰よりもあたしをちゃんと見透かして
口の悪さや強がりは”精一杯”の証拠だって
See through me more than anyone else
That I talk rough and act tough is proof of how serious I am
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
—-
Very sorry about that one, folks.
6. Literally just this one excerpt from the adashima LN (idk what volume anymore)
I picked this as an interesting translation “challenge” for a server I was semi-active in at the time because the excerpt referenced a distinctly Japanese cultural thing in the kuroneko delivery service and I wanted to see different approaches to it. The rest is just general writing skill I guess. Nobody else submitted anything because THEY ARE COWARDS ahem. Anyway this has an official tl but I’ve never looked at it (yet, growth mindset) to compare. The official tl is done by my friend and actually good translator Verde though so it’s probably cool.
鞄を机に置いてから、しまむらが布団の上に座り込む。先程までしまむら妹の使っていた黄色いクッションを「はい」とこっちに投げてきた。受け取って絵柄を見ると、宅急便のイメージキャラクターの黒猫と白猫が手を繋いでいた。その場に置いて、まずは座る。
Shimamura laid her bag on the desk, then sat down on the futon. “Here,” she said, throwing me the yellow cushion her little sister had been using just before. I caught it and glanced at the motif: the familiar white and black cat mascots of the Kuroneko Yamato delivery service, holding hands. I put the cushion on the floor and sat down myself.
7. Random line from I think dies irae or some other masada shit
I was challenged for a take on this by a friend so I did. Then I did another take which was better so I’m listing both here. The context I was given was “context is, guy is standing on the bow of a magic warship during a big chuu2 battle and this is a description of what he looks like”.
鋼鉄すら沸騰する灼熱地獄の只中で、吹き荒れる熱波に大外套を翻しながら口元を弦月の形に歪めている。 Take 2 (better):
He stood in the midst of a raging firestorm, giant cape battened by its roiling currents. Unmoved by heat that could boil steel, his lips twisted into a crescent grin.
Take 1 (does other stuff better maybe tho):
He stood in the midst of a firestorm of ferocity sufficient to melt the toughest steel; his cloak billowed, spurred by the raging inferno, as his mouth crested unto a twisted smile.
8. Mememasa poem with very little context because I shitpost hard okay
This is pretty bad not going to lie. Anyway it’s a quick tl of part of the poem that is shown in the muramasa prologue (and presumable afterward as well?). Also it has a tl error where I should have said it’s the saint cursing the god and not the other way around oops.
奇跡を行う聖人は衆生を赦い神を呪って嘔吐する
黄金の兜の覇王は万里を征し愛馬と供に川底へ沈む
湖の美姫は国を捨て愛を選び糞尿に溺れて刑死する
孤赤児は蚯蚓の血を母の乳とし三夜して腹より腐る
生命よこの賛歌を聞け笑い疲れた怨嗟を重ねて
生命よこの祈りを聞け怒りおののく喜びを枕に
百年の生は炎と剣の連環が幾重にも飾り立てよう
七日の生は闇と静寂に守られ無垢に光り輝くだろう
獣よ踊れ野を馳せよ唄い騒いで猛り駆けめぐれ
いまや如何なる鎖も檻も汝の前には朽ちた土塊
The saint performing miracles set to save mankind was cursed by God, to nausea
The gold-crowned conqueror who ruled vast plains met his end when he drowned with his beloved horse, in the river
The lady of the lake who forsook her country for love drowned in excrement, sentenced to death
The orphan babe who drank maggotsblood for mother’s milk took three days to die, rotting from the inside
Life, let my eulogy reach your tired ears and deepen your fury
Life, hear my prayer and sleep soundly in thrashing joyous rage
A hundred years’ worth of life was lost to fire and blade
Seven days’ worth of life let to shine in innocence, guarded by stygian silence
Frolic upon the fields, O beast, let loose your savage song
No chain nor jail can stop you; all before you shall fall to dust
—
ok so that’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure there’s more somewhere. I hope you enjoyed it if you actually read any of this kuso shit
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Over time, a bored translator tends to accumulate random pieces of translation they never went that far with, or did in 10 minutes for the shitpost for whatever reason, etc. Apart from that, I’ve personally done some scattered work for fan translations that may or may not ever see the light of day, some (very modestly) paid in ebooks. Anyway, here we go:
1. Random demonbane fight/action scene
I think this is from an expanded rerelease or something. There’s an absolutely meme error left in here where my brain read 拳 as 拳銃, even noticing my confusion in the comments but nevertheless failing to see the actual problem. I generally prefer translating directly in the script for VNs, so that’s what you’re getting. I did this one FOR FREE. I think this is about 3k-4k moji?
2. Phantom of Inferno h-scene except there’s a lot of plot too
This one’s funny because I was initially contacted about it because the guy thought I was a coomer translator doing mostly nukige. Ironically my actual skillset turned out to be very applicable to the script I chose to work on though, so whatever xD.
Unfortunately I wasn’t doing the whole commenting out lines thing (and I changed the structure in places), so you can only really read this in something like a multi-file viewer. I promise the rest is better, okay? Anyway, here’s a zip with both the unaltered script and the translated script. I got paid for this with an ebook of shimeyuri, which I actually read afterwards. There’s a possible mistl in the script where 失禁 most likely (based on my expansive experience with illustrated japanese pornography) actually means wetting yourself and not “loosing your bowels” as I put it. I just couldn’t find as good a line that was more yellow than brown at the time so I coped. But it legitimately could mean both, so I leave the final decision up to someone who actually looked at the scene ingame.
3. New tl for the subahibi soapbubble poem that’s actually from cyrano
So yeah, this was originally French. And then through some route, it became Japanese, and was used in Subahibi. The current official localization uses a french to english translation, which is fair enough. But, well, the english translation, and espcially the lines chosen from it that I saw used in screenshots (idk I didnt actually read the english tl tho), seem to me to not quite be as clear as the Japanese. Since poems and such often change shape with translation, and Subahibi definitely wants to say something with its poems, I had to wonder if doing a translation from the Japanese might not be a better solution than merely choosing a translation from the French. Well, I could also consult the english translation too… Oh, and then I decided to specifically make sure to use words that would resonate with wittgensteinian thinking or whatever (“name” specifically. In formal logic you put “names” to stuff. Uhh anyway…). I haven’t actually finished subahibi, I stalled it in insects because the first part was really boring. ANYWAY, the poem, entirely devoid of annoying stuff like actually rhyming:
Zaka adapted tl:
We yearn
Building castles of air from but a name
Pining for a lover made of fantasy
Take it, now
This fantasy I made
And make it into reality
My romantic laments I have scattered far and wide
Only you can give them a home at last
Take them, now
One day you will know
I was not sincere; I was eloquent alone
Original jp tl:
ボクたちは
ただ名ばかりでシャボン玉の様にふくらんでしまった……
そんな空想の恋人に恋いこがれている……。
さぁ、君、取りたまえ。
この空想を、
そして本物に変えるのは君だ。
ボクは恋の嘆きとか書き散らかしたけど……、
彷徨う鳥の留まるのを君は見る事が出来る人なんだ。
さあ、取りたまえ。
実はないだけ雄弁だと……
君にも分かる日が来るから……。
Fr->en (brian hooker, not the one used in the official tl):
I have amused myself
As we all do, we poets–writing vows
To Chloris, Phyllis–any pretty name–
You might have had a pocketful of them!
Take it, and turn to facts my fantasies–
I loosed these loves like doves into the air;
Give them a habitation and a home.
Here, take it– You will find me all the more
Eloquent, being insincere! Come!
—
Is this good? …Well my tl could probably use some polish, but I think the approach is interesting. Then again, apparently subahibbers goes and explains the poem later on, so you could probably insert your explanation then and be more pure (as pure as a fr->en tl is, though!) to the original, I guess. Overall it’s a wash but I’m happy I got to shitpost.
4. The two first pages of Hige wo Soru, Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou (LN)
I was originally going to translate 10 pages as a work sample to troll one of my friends who was looking for people to translate LNs at the time, but I got too lazy to continue after finishing 2 pages. C’est la vie, innit? Also, the title given is my personal stab at a sensible title. Unfortunately the events in the book do not match the straightforward “X, then Y” structure of そして as commonly used, as Y actually happens before X in-story! Thus I choose to interpret it as listing two things that happened in no specific order.
I actually translated this from scans, which is how I read higehiro 1. I have ebooks now to copy from though, so I’ll spare you the scan reader experience. Also maybe I should have used “beneath” instead of “under” the telophone pole? Whatever, man.
ひげを剃る、そして女子高生を拾う。
I took in a runaway girl and shaved my beard
Page 10:
　失しつ恋れんをした。
　二つ年上の、同じ会社に勤める女性だ。名前は後ご藤とうさんといった。
　後藤さんは面めん倒どう見みが良く、研修の時から俺に良くしてくれた。笑え顔がおが淑しとやかで、気配りができて、社畜と化していた俺の心の支えだった。
「男がいるなら最初から言えやァ……」
　もう何なん杯ばいビールを飲んだか分からない。向かいの席で他人ひと事ごとのように笑う同期の橋はし本もとの輪りん郭かくもぼやけて見える。
　そう、デートに行ったのだ。後藤さんと。勤続５年目にして、ようやく彼女をデートに誘さそった。快く誘いを受け入れられて、これは行けるのでは！　と期待を膨ふくらませながらデートに行き、動物園を一いつ緒しよに歩いた。正直、動物よりも後藤さんの横顔ばかり見ていた。ときどき、乳も横目で見た。
　とにかく、このチャンスを無む駄だにしてはならないと、俺は張り切りに張り切っていた。動物園を回り終え、オシャレなフレンチの店で夕食をとった。味はもう覚えていない。
プロローぐ
電柱の下の女
Prologue
The girl under the telephone pole
My love was unrequited.
Gotou was two years older than me, and my superior at work. She took good care of her coworkers; ever since I was in training, she’d always treated me well. Her smile was graceful, her attention to others’ needs palpable — she was always there to support me as my threw myself into the life of a wage slave.
“If she had a boyfriend she coulda told me from the start, man…” I whined.
I’d already lost count of how many beers I’d downed. My coworker Hashimoto was sitting across from me, his profile peeking out of the dim barlight. He chuckled briefly at my outburst, clearly amused.
We’d been on a date all right, me and Gotou. First we’d gone to the zoo. To be honest, I’d been looking less at the animals, more at her. Sometimes, I’d snuck in a sideways glance at her breasts.
Anyway, I wasn’t about to lose my shot, so I’d gone all out afterwards. I’d taken her to a fancy restaurant for dinner. I can’t remember what it tasted like at all.
Page 11:
「このまま、俺の家に来ませんか」
　お互たがい大人である。この言葉の意味くらいは、すぐに理解できるだろう。期待と不安の入り混じった目で後藤さんを見ると、後藤さんは困ったように笑っていた。
　そして、首を横に振ふったのだった。
「会社では秘密にしているんだけど、私、恋こい人びとがいるの」
　　　＊
「じゃあなんでデートに来たんだよッ!!!」
「ああもう吉よし田だ、それ今日六回目だから」
「一万回でも言ってやるよぉ……」
「一万回も同じ話聞きたくないんだけど」
　俺がビールを呷あおるのを、橋本は苦く笑しようしながら見ていた。
「そのへんにしときなよ」
「馬ば鹿か、こんなんで俺の怒いかりがおさまるかってんだァ」
「酒が回ってきた後の方がキレてるじゃん。埒らち明かねぇって」
　橋本は他人事だからそんなことを言えるのだ。今日は飲まないとやっていられない。
　後藤さんにフラれた直後、俺は茫ぼう然ぜん自じ失しつで小さな公園のベンチで項うな垂だれた。
　訊きくと、五年前から彼女には恋人がいたのだという。
　つまり、俺が彼女と知り合った時にはすでに男がいたということだ。
「馬鹿みてぇだ……」
　男のいる女に五年も思いを寄せてしまっていた。
I’d waited for the right time, and then I’d asked her: “Hey, would you like to see my place?” We weren’t kids — the implication was obvious. I had looked at her with uneasy anticipation as she gave me a troubled smile — and then, she had shook her head. “I’ve kept it a secret at work, but I’m afraid I’ve got a boyfriend.”
＊＊＊
“Then why the hell did you agree to the date?” I exclaimed.
“Jeez, this is the sixth time you’ve said that today,” Yoshida said.
“I’ll say it a thousand times over, damn it!”
“I really would rather you not.”
Yoshida watched me with a strained smile as I downed another swig of beer.
“You really shouldn’t have any more to drink,” he said.
“Dude, d’ya think I’m gonna forget how angry I am with just this much?”
“Aren’t you just going to get more pissed off if you keep drinking? There’s no point to it.”
—
5. Purposely bad “accurate” tl of song lyrics that I was going to show myself fixing in a blog post discussing kinda lame “accurate” lyric translation but I never did the work oops totally not coping no really I’m serious though
Hahaha funny how things turn out right? anyway uhh

カプチーノ　ともさかりえ
This is purposely sloppy and sort of meaning-only because I was going to write a post titled ‘how to make a typical youtube jp lyric tl’
which then was going to feature a refinement of the lyrics
or something to show the adaptations you actually
should be doing if you’re subbing fucking songs
I mean I’m not actually a god though so who knows
if it was even a good idea
but yeah that’s why this is garbage even if it is prolly ‘accurate’
あと少しあたしの成長を待って
あなたを夢中にさせたくて
藻掻あたしを可愛がってね
Wait for me to grow a bit more
I want to make you enchanted with me
So please spoil me while I struggle to do so
今度逢う時はコートも要らないと
そんなに普通に云えちゃうのが理解わからない
・・・ミルクの白に茶色が負けている
I don’t get how you can just say
You won’t even need a coat on when we next meet
–The white of the milk is stronger than the brown
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you, want touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
コーヒーの匂いを間あいだに挟んで
優位の笑みを隠し切れない様子で居る
・・・苦いだけじゃ未だバランスが取れない
The scent of coffee hangs between us
And I can’t hide my overbearing smile
–I’m all bitter, haven’t found the right balance
梅の散る午後にもちゃんと二人は
今日と同じ様に人混みを
擦り抜けられるかしら
それぞれがただ忙しくしてたら
引く手の加減も曖昧に
忘れちゃいそうで不安なのに
When we next meet early spring afternoon as the plum blossoms fall
Will we easily slip through the crowd
As we were able to today?
We just get busy with our own lives
And I don’t know how hard to pull you towards me
But I’m worried you’ll just forget me
あなたが此処に居る約束など
1つも交わして居ない
いつの間にか淡色が当たり前に香り
二人を支配しそう
We never promised to meet
Anywhere or anytime
And the sense that our feelings will fade
Is all around us
誰よりもあたしをちゃんと見透かして
口の悪さや強がりは”精一杯”の証拠だって
See through me more than anyone else
That I talk rough and act tough is proof of how serious I am
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
—-
Very sorry about that one, folks.
6. Literally just this one excerpt from the adashima LN (idk what volume anymore)
I picked this as an interesting translation “challenge” for a server I was semi-active in at the time because the excerpt referenced a distinctly Japanese cultural thing in the kuroneko delivery service and I wanted to see different approaches to it. The rest is just general writing skill I guess. Nobody else submitted anything because THEY ARE COWARDS ahem. Anyway this has an official tl but I’ve never looked at it (yet, growth mindset) to compare. The official tl is done by my friend and actually good translator Verde though so it’s probably cool.
鞄を机に置いてから、しまむらが布団の上に座り込む。先程までしまむら妹の使っていた黄色いクッションを「はい」とこっちに投げてきた。受け取って絵柄を見ると、宅急便のイメージキャラクターの黒猫と白猫が手を繋いでいた。その場に置いて、まずは座る。
Shimamura laid her bag on the desk, then sat down on the futon. “Here,” she said, throwing me the yellow cushion her little sister had been using just before. I caught it and glanced at the motif: the familiar white and black cat mascots of the Kuroneko Yamato delivery service, holding hands. I put the cushion on the floor and sat down myself.
7. Random line from I think dies irae or some other masada shit
I was challenged for a take on this by a friend so I did. Then I did another take which was better so I’m listing both here. The context I was given was “context is, guy is standing on the bow of a magic warship during a big chuu2 battle and this is a description of what he looks like”.
鋼鉄すら沸騰する灼熱地獄の只中で、吹き荒れる熱波に大外套を翻しながら口元を弦月の形に歪めている。 Take 2 (better):
He stood in the midst of a raging firestorm, giant cape battened by its roiling currents. Unmoved by heat that could boil steel, his lips twisted into a crescent grin.
Take 1 (does other stuff better maybe tho):
He stood in the midst of a firestorm of ferocity sufficient to melt the toughest steel; his cloak billowed, spurred by the raging inferno, as his mouth crested unto a twisted smile.
8. Mememasa poem with very little context because I shitpost hard okay
This is pretty bad not going to lie. Anyway it’s a quick tl of part of the poem that is shown in the muramasa prologue (and presumable afterward as well?). Also it has a tl error where I should have said it’s the saint cursing the god and not the other way around oops.
奇跡を行う聖人は衆生を赦い神を呪って嘔吐する
黄金の兜の覇王は万里を征し愛馬と供に川底へ沈む
湖の美姫は国を捨て愛を選び糞尿に溺れて刑死する
孤赤児は蚯蚓の血を母の乳とし三夜して腹より腐る
生命よこの賛歌を聞け笑い疲れた怨嗟を重ねて
生命よこの祈りを聞け怒りおののく喜びを枕に
百年の生は炎と剣の連環が幾重にも飾り立てよう
七日の生は闇と静寂に守られ無垢に光り輝くだろう
獣よ踊れ野を馳せよ唄い騒いで猛り駆けめぐれ
いまや如何なる鎖も檻も汝の前には朽ちた土塊
The saint performing miracles set to save mankind was cursed by God, to nausea
The gold-crowned conqueror who ruled vast plains met his end when he drowned with his beloved horse, in the river
The lady of the lake who forsook her country for love drowned in excrement, sentenced to death
The orphan babe who drank maggotsblood for mother’s milk took three days to die, rotting from the inside
Life, let my eulogy reach your tired ears and deepen your fury
Life, hear my prayer and sleep soundly in thrashing joyous rage
A hundred years’ worth of life was lost to fire and blade
Seven days’ worth of life let to shine in innocence, guarded by stygian silence
Frolic upon the fields, O beast, let loose your savage song
No chain nor jail can stop you; all before you shall fall to dust
—
ok so that’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure there’s more somewhere. I hope you enjoyed it if you actually read any of this kuso shit
View the full article

Over time, a bored translator tends to accumulate random pieces of translation they never went that far with, or did in 10 minutes for the shitpost for whatever reason, etc. Apart from that, I’ve personally done some scattered work for fan translations that may or may not ever see the light of day, some (very modestly) paid in ebooks. Anyway, here we go:
1. Random demonbane fight/action scene
I think this is from an expanded rerelease or something. There’s an absolutely meme error left in here where my brain read 拳 as 拳銃, even noticing my confusion in the comments but nevertheless failing to see the actual problem. I generally prefer translating directly in the script for VNs, so that’s what you’re getting. I did this one FOR FREE. I think this is about 3k-4k moji?
2. Phantom of Inferno h-scene except there’s a lot of plot too
This one’s funny because I was initially contacted about it because the guy thought I was a coomer translator doing mostly nukige. Ironically my actual skillset turned out to be very applicable to the script I chose to work on though, so whatever xD.
Unfortunately I wasn’t doing the whole commenting out lines thing (and I changed the structure in places), so you can only really read this in something like a multi-file viewer. I promise the rest is better, okay? Anyway, here’s a zip with both the unaltered script and the translated script. I got paid for this with an ebook of shimeyuri, which I actually read afterwards. There’s a possible mistl in the script where 失禁 most likely (based on my expansive experience with illustrated japanese pornography) actually means wetting yourself and not “loosing your bowels” as I put it. I just couldn’t find as good a line that was more yellow than brown at the time so I coped. But it legitimately could mean both, so I leave the final decision up to someone who actually looked at the scene ingame.
3. New tl for the subahibi soapbubble poem that’s actually from cyrano
So yeah, this was originally French. And then through some route, it became Japanese, and was used in Subahibi. The current official localization uses a french to english translation, which is fair enough. But, well, the english translation, and espcially the lines chosen from it that I saw used in screenshots (idk I didnt actually read the english tl tho), seem to me to not quite be as clear as the Japanese. Since poems and such often change shape with translation, and Subahibi definitely wants to say something with its poems, I had to wonder if doing a translation from the Japanese might not be a better solution than merely choosing a translation from the French. Well, I could also consult the english translation too… Oh, and then I decided to specifically make sure to use words that would resonate with wittgensteinian thinking or whatever (“name” specifically. In formal logic you put “names” to stuff. Uhh anyway…). I haven’t actually finished subahibi, I stalled it in insects because the first part was really boring. ANYWAY, the poem, entirely devoid of annoying stuff like actually rhyming:
Zaka adapted tl:
We yearn
Building castles of air from but a name
Pining for a lover made of fantasy
Take it, now
This fantasy I made
And make it into reality
My romantic laments I have scattered far and wide
Only you can give them a home at last
Take them, now
One day you will know
I was not sincere; I was eloquent alone
Original jp tl:
ボクたちは
ただ名ばかりでシャボン玉の様にふくらんでしまった……
そんな空想の恋人に恋いこがれている……。
さぁ、君、取りたまえ。
この空想を、
そして本物に変えるのは君だ。
ボクは恋の嘆きとか書き散らかしたけど……、
彷徨う鳥の留まるのを君は見る事が出来る人なんだ。
さあ、取りたまえ。
実はないだけ雄弁だと……
君にも分かる日が来るから……。
Fr->en (brian hooker, not the one used in the official tl):
I have amused myself
As we all do, we poets–writing vows
To Chloris, Phyllis–any pretty name–
You might have had a pocketful of them!
Take it, and turn to facts my fantasies–
I loosed these loves like doves into the air;
Give them a habitation and a home.
Here, take it– You will find me all the more
Eloquent, being insincere! Come!
—
Is this good? …Well my tl could probably use some polish, but I think the approach is interesting. Then again, apparently subahibbers goes and explains the poem later on, so you could probably insert your explanation then and be more pure (as pure as a fr->en tl is, though!) to the original, I guess. Overall it’s a wash but I’m happy I got to shitpost.
4. The two first pages of Hige wo Soru, Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou (LN)
I was originally going to translate 10 pages as a work sample to troll one of my friends who was looking for people to translate LNs at the time, but I got too lazy to continue after finishing 2 pages. C’est la vie, innit? Also, the title given is my personal stab at a sensible title. Unfortunately the events in the book do not match the straightforward “X, then Y” structure of そして as commonly used, as Y actually happens before X in-story! Thus I choose to interpret it as listing two things that happened in no specific order.
I actually translated this from scans, which is how I read higehiro 1. I have ebooks now to copy from though, so I’ll spare you the scan reader experience. Also maybe I should have used “beneath” instead of “under” the telophone pole? Whatever, man.
ひげを剃る、そして女子高生を拾う。
I took in a runaway girl and shaved my beard
Page 10:
　失しつ恋れんをした。
　二つ年上の、同じ会社に勤める女性だ。名前は後ご藤とうさんといった。
　後藤さんは面めん倒どう見みが良く、研修の時から俺に良くしてくれた。笑え顔がおが淑しとやかで、気配りができて、社畜と化していた俺の心の支えだった。
「男がいるなら最初から言えやァ……」
　もう何なん杯ばいビールを飲んだか分からない。向かいの席で他人ひと事ごとのように笑う同期の橋はし本もとの輪りん郭かくもぼやけて見える。
　そう、デートに行ったのだ。後藤さんと。勤続５年目にして、ようやく彼女をデートに誘さそった。快く誘いを受け入れられて、これは行けるのでは！　と期待を膨ふくらませながらデートに行き、動物園を一いつ緒しよに歩いた。正直、動物よりも後藤さんの横顔ばかり見ていた。ときどき、乳も横目で見た。
　とにかく、このチャンスを無む駄だにしてはならないと、俺は張り切りに張り切っていた。動物園を回り終え、オシャレなフレンチの店で夕食をとった。味はもう覚えていない。
プロローぐ
電柱の下の女
Prologue
The girl under the telephone pole
My love was unrequited.
Gotou was two years older than me, and my superior at work. She took good care of her coworkers; ever since I was in training, she’d always treated me well. Her smile was graceful, her attention to others’ needs palpable — she was always there to support me as my threw myself into the life of a wage slave.
“If she had a boyfriend she coulda told me from the start, man…” I whined.
I’d already lost count of how many beers I’d downed. My coworker Hashimoto was sitting across from me, his profile peeking out of the dim barlight. He chuckled briefly at my outburst, clearly amused.
We’d been on a date all right, me and Gotou. First we’d gone to the zoo. To be honest, I’d been looking less at the animals, more at her. Sometimes, I’d snuck in a sideways glance at her breasts.
Anyway, I wasn’t about to lose my shot, so I’d gone all out afterwards. I’d taken her to a fancy restaurant for dinner. I can’t remember what it tasted like at all.
Page 11:
「このまま、俺の家に来ませんか」
　お互たがい大人である。この言葉の意味くらいは、すぐに理解できるだろう。期待と不安の入り混じった目で後藤さんを見ると、後藤さんは困ったように笑っていた。
　そして、首を横に振ふったのだった。
「会社では秘密にしているんだけど、私、恋こい人びとがいるの」
　　　＊
「じゃあなんでデートに来たんだよッ!!!」
「ああもう吉よし田だ、それ今日六回目だから」
「一万回でも言ってやるよぉ……」
「一万回も同じ話聞きたくないんだけど」
　俺がビールを呷あおるのを、橋本は苦く笑しようしながら見ていた。
「そのへんにしときなよ」
「馬ば鹿か、こんなんで俺の怒いかりがおさまるかってんだァ」
「酒が回ってきた後の方がキレてるじゃん。埒らち明かねぇって」
　橋本は他人事だからそんなことを言えるのだ。今日は飲まないとやっていられない。
　後藤さんにフラれた直後、俺は茫ぼう然ぜん自じ失しつで小さな公園のベンチで項うな垂だれた。
　訊きくと、五年前から彼女には恋人がいたのだという。
　つまり、俺が彼女と知り合った時にはすでに男がいたということだ。
「馬鹿みてぇだ……」
　男のいる女に五年も思いを寄せてしまっていた。
I’d waited for the right time, and then I’d asked her: “Hey, would you like to see my place?” We weren’t kids — the implication was obvious. I had looked at her with uneasy anticipation as she gave me a troubled smile — and then, she had shook her head. “I’ve kept it a secret at work, but I’m afraid I’ve got a boyfriend.”
＊＊＊
“Then why the hell did you agree to the date?” I exclaimed.
“Jeez, this is the sixth time you’ve said that today,” Yoshida said.
“I’ll say it a thousand times over, damn it!”
“I really would rather you not.”
Yoshida watched me with a strained smile as I downed another swig of beer.
“You really shouldn’t have any more to drink,” he said.
“Dude, d’ya think I’m gonna forget how angry I am with just this much?”
“Aren’t you just going to get more pissed off if you keep drinking? There’s no point to it.”
—
5. Purposely bad “accurate” tl of song lyrics that I was going to show myself fixing in a blog post discussing kinda lame “accurate” lyric translation but I never did the work oops totally not coping no really I’m serious though
Hahaha funny how things turn out right? anyway uhh

カプチーノ　ともさかりえ
This is purposely sloppy and sort of meaning-only because I was going to write a post titled ‘how to make a typical youtube jp lyric tl’
which then was going to feature a refinement of the lyrics
or something to show the adaptations you actually
should be doing if you’re subbing fucking songs
I mean I’m not actually a god though so who knows
if it was even a good idea
but yeah that’s why this is garbage even if it is prolly ‘accurate’
あと少しあたしの成長を待って
あなたを夢中にさせたくて
藻掻あたしを可愛がってね
Wait for me to grow a bit more
I want to make you enchanted with me
So please spoil me while I struggle to do so
今度逢う時はコートも要らないと
そんなに普通に云えちゃうのが理解わからない
・・・ミルクの白に茶色が負けている
I don’t get how you can just say
You won’t even need a coat on when we next meet
–The white of the milk is stronger than the brown
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you, want touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
コーヒーの匂いを間あいだに挟んで
優位の笑みを隠し切れない様子で居る
・・・苦いだけじゃ未だバランスが取れない
The scent of coffee hangs between us
And I can’t hide my overbearing smile
–I’m all bitter, haven’t found the right balance
梅の散る午後にもちゃんと二人は
今日と同じ様に人混みを
擦り抜けられるかしら
それぞれがただ忙しくしてたら
引く手の加減も曖昧に
忘れちゃいそうで不安なのに
When we next meet early spring afternoon as the plum blossoms fall
Will we easily slip through the crowd
As we were able to today?
We just get busy with our own lives
And I don’t know how hard to pull you towards me
But I’m worried you’ll just forget me
あなたが此処に居る約束など
1つも交わして居ない
いつの間にか淡色が当たり前に香り
二人を支配しそう
We never promised to meet
Anywhere or anytime
And the sense that our feelings will fade
Is all around us
誰よりもあたしをちゃんと見透かして
口の悪さや強がりは”精一杯”の証拠だって
See through me more than anyone else
That I talk rough and act tough is proof of how serious I am
何よりもあなたに逢って触れたいの
全て味わって確かめて
イーヴンな関係に成りたい
変わりゆくあたしの温度を許して
もし我が儘わがままが過ぎて居てもても
黙って置いて行ったりしないでね
I want to meet you touch you most of all
To know every part of you
To have an equal relationship between us
Forgive me for running hot and cold
I know I might be too selfish sometimes
But don’t let that make you leave me on my own
—-
Very sorry about that one, folks.
6. Literally just this one excerpt from the adashima LN (idk what volume anymore)
I picked this as an interesting translation “challenge” for a server I was semi-active in at the time because the excerpt referenced a distinctly Japanese cultural thing in the kuroneko delivery service and I wanted to see different approaches to it. The rest is just general writing skill I guess. Nobody else submitted anything because THEY ARE COWARDS ahem. Anyway this has an official tl but I’ve never looked at it (yet, growth mindset) to compare. The official tl is done by my friend and actually good translator Verde though so it’s probably cool.
鞄を机に置いてから、しまむらが布団の上に座り込む。先程までしまむら妹の使っていた黄色いクッションを「はい」とこっちに投げてきた。受け取って絵柄を見ると、宅急便のイメージキャラクターの黒猫と白猫が手を繋いでいた。その場に置いて、まずは座る。
Shimamura laid her bag on the desk, then sat down on the futon. “Here,” she said, throwing me the yellow cushion her little sister had been using just before. I caught it and glanced at the motif: the familiar white and black cat mascots of the Kuroneko Yamato delivery service, holding hands. I put the cushion on the floor and sat down myself.
7. Random line from I think dies irae or some other masada shit
I was challenged for a take on this by a friend so I did. Then I did another take which was better so I’m listing both here. The context I was given was “context is, guy is standing on the bow of a magic warship during a big chuu2 battle and this is a description of what he looks like”.
鋼鉄すら沸騰する灼熱地獄の只中で、吹き荒れる熱波に大外套を翻しながら口元を弦月の形に歪めている。 Take 2 (better):
He stood in the midst of a raging firestorm, giant cape battened by its roiling currents. Unmoved by heat that could boil steel, his lips twisted into a crescent grin.
Take 1 (does other stuff better maybe tho):
He stood in the midst of a firestorm of ferocity sufficient to melt the toughest steel; his cloak billowed, spurred by the raging inferno, as his mouth crested unto a twisted smile.
8. Mememasa poem with very little context because I shitpost hard okay
This is pretty bad not going to lie. Anyway it’s a quick tl of part of the poem that is shown in the muramasa prologue (and presumable afterward as well?). Also it has a tl error where I should have said it’s the saint cursing the god and not the other way around oops.
奇跡を行う聖人は衆生を赦い神を呪って嘔吐する
黄金の兜の覇王は万里を征し愛馬と供に川底へ沈む
湖の美姫は国を捨て愛を選び糞尿に溺れて刑死する
孤赤児は蚯蚓の血を母の乳とし三夜して腹より腐る
生命よこの賛歌を聞け笑い疲れた怨嗟を重ねて
生命よこの祈りを聞け怒りおののく喜びを枕に
百年の生は炎と剣の連環が幾重にも飾り立てよう
七日の生は闇と静寂に守られ無垢に光り輝くだろう
獣よ踊れ野を馳せよ唄い騒いで猛り駆けめぐれ
いまや如何なる鎖も檻も汝の前には朽ちた土塊
The saint performing miracles set to save mankind was cursed by God, to nausea
The gold-crowned conqueror who ruled vast plains met his end when he drowned with his beloved horse, in the river
The lady of the lake who forsook her country for love drowned in excrement, sentenced to death
The orphan babe who drank maggotsblood for mother’s milk took three days to die, rotting from the inside
Life, let my eulogy reach your tired ears and deepen your fury
Life, hear my prayer and sleep soundly in thrashing joyous rage
A hundred years’ worth of life was lost to fire and blade
Seven days’ worth of life let to shine in innocence, guarded by stygian silence
Frolic upon the fields, O beast, let loose your savage song
No chain nor jail can stop you; all before you shall fall to dust
—
ok so that’s all I can think of right now. I’m sure there’s more somewhere. I hope you enjoyed it if you actually read any of this kuso shit
View the full article

I wrote earlier about how I thought when translating a few lines in Shinimasu. This series is going to be in that vein, with an eye to explaining translation decisions and highlighting unusual takes. I’m going to try to make it interesting for people not knowing Japanese, but to save effort I’m not going to be providing literal translation equivalents to lines.
Why am I doing this? Because my brain is a fuck and producing blog posts is an interesting motivation for doing a second pass on my translation.
Unfortunately for those expecting worthwhile content I feel like digressing a bit into history and methods for this first post, though. This is what my TL setup has looked like for most of the time I’ve worked on the project: 
I started out doing 64 lines in December 2017, this got Asonn involved, and he introduced me to Porygon, who set up a git repository* and provided the tool you see. My brain swears I tweeted this pastebin, and I know I at least got some comment, but twitter search can’t find it so who the fuck knows? Anyway, I probably did 129 lines just copying from the game or script (can’t remember), then I copied them to the tool and worked there. One of the joys of working with porygon is that he has highly motivating auto-updating progress pages for you to fap to after pushing your new lines. This probably helped me more than I’d really like to admit.
Either way, apart from being convenient for reinsertion later**, the tool has rudimentary edict-lookup of the (autoparsed) tl lines, which is convenient if you’re extremely fucking lazy. I’m not going to say I never used it (I am extremely fucking lazy), but going j-j definitely was needed more than once. Other than that I guess it’s ok, though it does have a still-unfixed bug where it’ll fuck up and display too few lines of text in a box due to some miscalculation.
It’s certainly missing some features my dream tool would have, though. Personally I’d love to be able to see the script commands surrounding a line through some UI element to expand, as this could partially substitute for actually having the VN open for visual/scenographic context. It doesn’t have EPWING lookup, but that’s high effort since the format is bullshit apparently. It also doesn’t let you play voiced lines associated with spoken lines, though Shinimasu is unvoiced so I guess it doesn’t really matter for this project.
Today I had to contact pory since it had stoped working properly; it turned out my build of the tool was old enough that a bug with java 9 (I had recently updated) was making it unusable. He quickly got a fix for the tool, but it took enough time that I lost the energy for revising my tl. Or that’s my excuse, anyway.
See you next time for actual tl discussion w
*What’s a git repository? Well the long answer is long and full of programmer-speak, but basically it lets you keep an online backup of your files, preserving older versions each time you decide to add a newer version to the server. You can do this while multiple people are working on the same file sometimes, though it can get hairy. I ended up not needing this much, but it’s been good insurance against data loss (and I have changed laptops at least once during translation, also had to reinstall windows once…). Really if you don’t have a backup for any translation of length, you’re probably doing it wrong (but also I am a CS student so it’s… not as hard for me w)
**By virtue of saving the line number in the original script where the Japanese line was and associating that with the eventual translated line. I used a simplified version of this myself based on google sheets columns when I did tech for the ichigo & kyuugo tl.

View the full article

I wrote earlier about how I thought when translating a few lines in Shinimasu. This series is going to be in that vein, with an eye to explaining translation decisions and highlighting unusual takes. I’m going to try to make it interesting for people not knowing Japanese, but to save effort I’m not going to be providing literal translation equivalents to lines.
Why am I doing this? Because my brain is a fuck and producing blog posts is an interesting motivation for doing a second pass on my translation.
Unfortunately for those expecting worthwhile content I feel like digressing a bit into history and methods for this first post, though. This is what my TL setup has looked like for most of the time I’ve worked on the project: 
I started out doing 64 lines in December 2017, this got Asonn involved, and he introduced me to Porygon, who set up a git repository* and provided the tool you see. My brain swears I tweeted this pastebin, and I know I at least got some comment, but twitter search can’t find it so who the fuck knows? Anyway, I probably did 129 lines just copying from the game or script (can’t remember), then I copied them to the tool and worked there. One of the joys of working with porygon is that he has highly motivating auto-updating progress pages for you to fap to after pushing your new lines. This probably helped me more than I’d really like to admit.
Either way, apart from being convenient for reinsertion later**, the tool has rudimentary edict-lookup of the (autoparsed) tl lines, which is convenient if you’re extremely fucking lazy. I’m not going to say I never used it (I am extremely fucking lazy), but going j-j definitely was needed more than once. Other than that I guess it’s ok, though it does have a still-unfixed bug where it’ll fuck up and display too few lines of text in a box due to some miscalculation.
It’s certainly missing some features my dream tool would have, though. Personally I’d love to be able to see the script commands surrounding a line through some UI element to expand, as this could partially substitute for actually having the VN open for visual/scenographic context. It doesn’t have EPWING lookup, but that’s high effort since the format is bullshit apparently. It also doesn’t let you play voiced lines associated with spoken lines, though Shinimasu is unvoiced so I guess it doesn’t really matter for this project.
Today I had to contact pory since it had stoped working properly; it turned out my build of the tool was old enough that a bug with java 9 (I had recently updated) was making it unusable. He quickly got a fix for the tool, but it took enough time that I lost the energy for revising my tl. Or that’s my excuse, anyway.
See you next time for actual tl discussion w
*What’s a git repository? Well the long answer is long and full of programmer-speak, but basically it lets you keep an online backup of your files, preserving older versions each time you decide to add a newer version to the server. You can do this while multiple people are working on the same file sometimes, though it can get hairy. I ended up not needing this much, but it’s been good insurance against data loss (and I have changed laptops at least once during translation, also had to reinstall windows once…). Really if you don’t have a backup for any translation of length, you’re probably doing it wrong (but also I am a CS student so it’s… not as hard for me w)
**By virtue of saving the line number in the original script where the Japanese line was and associating that with the eventual translated line. I used a simplified version of this myself based on google sheets columns when I did tech for the ichigo & kyuugo tl.

View the full article

I wrote earlier about how I thought when translating a few lines in Shinimasu. This series is going to be in that vein, with an eye to explaining translation decisions and highlighting unusual takes. I’m going to try to make it interesting for people not knowing Japanese, but to save effort I’m not going to be providing literal translation equivalents to lines.
Why am I doing this? Because my brain is a fuck and producing blog posts is an interesting motivation for doing a second pass on my translation.
Unfortunately for those expecting worthwhile content I feel like digressing a bit into history and methods for this first post, though. This is what my TL setup has looked like for most of the time I’ve worked on the project: 
I started out doing 64 lines in December 2017, this got Asonn involved, and he introduced me to Porygon, who set up a git repository* and provided the tool you see. My brain swears I tweeted this pastebin, and I know I at least got some comment, but twitter search can’t find it so who the fuck knows? Anyway, I probably did 129 lines just copying from the game or script (can’t remember), then I copied them to the tool and worked there. One of the joys of working with porygon is that he has highly motivating auto-updating progress pages for you to fap to after pushing your new lines. This probably helped me more than I’d really like to admit.
Either way, apart from being convenient for reinsertion later**, the tool has rudimentary edict-lookup of the (autoparsed) tl lines, which is convenient if you’re extremely fucking lazy. I’m not going to say I never used it (I am extremely fucking lazy), but going j-j definitely was needed more than once. Other than that I guess it’s ok, though it does have a still-unfixed bug where it’ll fuck up and display too few lines of text in a box due to some miscalculation.
It’s certainly missing some features my dream tool would have, though. Personally I’d love to be able to see the script commands surrounding a line through some UI element to expand, as this could partially substitute for actually having the VN open for visual/scenographic context. It doesn’t have EPWING lookup, but that’s high effort since the format is bullshit apparently. It also doesn’t let you play voiced lines associated with spoken lines, though Shinimasu is unvoiced so I guess it doesn’t really matter for this project.
Today I had to contact pory since it had stoped working properly; it turned out my build of the tool was old enough that a bug with java 9 (I had recently updated) was making it unusable. He quickly got a fix for the tool, but it took enough time that I lost the energy for revising my tl. Or that’s my excuse, anyway.
See you next time for actual tl discussion w
*What’s a git repository? Well the long answer is long and full of programmer-speak, but basically it lets you keep an online backup of your files, preserving older versions each time you decide to add a newer version to the server. You can do this while multiple people are working on the same file sometimes, though it can get hairy. I ended up not needing this much, but it’s been good insurance against data loss (and I have changed laptops at least once during translation, also had to reinstall windows once…). Really if you don’t have a backup for any translation of length, you’re probably doing it wrong (but also I am a CS student so it’s… not as hard for me w)
**By virtue of saving the line number in the original script where the Japanese line was and associating that with the eventual translated line. I used a simplified version of this myself based on google sheets columns when I did tech for the ichigo & kyuugo tl.

View the full article

I wrote earlier about how I thought when translating a few lines in Shinimasu. This series is going to be in that vein, with an eye to explaining translation decisions and highlighting unusual takes. I’m going to try to make it interesting for people not knowing Japanese, but to save effort I’m not going to be providing literal translation equivalents to lines.
Why am I doing this? Because my brain is a fuck and producing blog posts is an interesting motivation for doing a second pass on my translation.
Unfortunately for those expecting worthwhile content I feel like digressing a bit into history and methods for this first post, though. This is what my TL setup has looked like for most of the time I’ve worked on the project: 
I started out doing 64 lines in December 2017, this got Asonn involved, and he introduced me to Porygon, who set up a git repository* and provided the tool you see. My brain swears I tweeted this pastebin, and I know I at least got some comment, but twitter search can’t find it so who the fuck knows? Anyway, I probably did 129 lines just copying from the game or script (can’t remember), then I copied them to the tool and worked there. One of the joys of working with porygon is that he has highly motivating auto-updating progress pages for you to fap to after pushing your new lines. This probably helped me more than I’d really like to admit.
Either way, apart from being convenient for reinsertion later**, the tool has rudimentary edict-lookup of the (autoparsed) tl lines, which is convenient if you’re extremely fucking lazy. I’m not going to say I never used it (I am extremely fucking lazy), but going j-j definitely was needed more than once. Other than that I guess it’s ok, though it does have a still-unfixed bug where it’ll fuck up and display too few lines of text in a box due to some miscalculation.
It’s certainly missing some features my dream tool would have, though. Personally I’d love to be able to see the script commands surrounding a line through some UI element to expand, as this could partially substitute for actually having the VN open for visual/scenographic context. It doesn’t have EPWING lookup, but that’s high effort since the format is bullshit apparently. It also doesn’t let you play voiced lines associated with spoken lines, though Shinimasu is unvoiced so I guess it doesn’t really matter for this project.
Today I had to contact pory since it had stoped working properly; it turned out my build of the tool was old enough that a bug with java 9 (I had recently updated) was making it unusable. He quickly got a fix for the tool, but it took enough time that I lost the energy for revising my tl. Or that’s my excuse, anyway.
See you next time for actual tl discussion w
*What’s a git repository? Well the long answer is long and full of programmer-speak, but basically it lets you keep an online backup of your files, preserving older versions each time you decide to add a newer version to the server. You can do this while multiple people are working on the same file sometimes, though it can get hairy. I ended up not needing this much, but it’s been good insurance against data loss (and I have changed laptops at least once during translation, also had to reinstall windows once…). Really if you don’t have a backup for any translation of length, you’re probably doing it wrong (but also I am a CS student so it’s… not as hard for me w)
**By virtue of saving the line number in the original script where the Japanese line was and associating that with the eventual translated line. I used a simplified version of this myself based on google sheets columns when I did tech for the ichigo & kyuugo tl.

View the full article

I wrote earlier about how I thought when translating a few lines in Shinimasu. This series is going to be in that vein, with an eye to explaining translation decisions and highlighting unusual takes. I’m going to try to make it interesting for people not knowing Japanese, but to save effort I’m not going to be providing literal translation equivalents to lines.
Why am I doing this? Because my brain is a fuck and producing blog posts is an interesting motivation for doing a second pass on my translation.
Unfortunately for those expecting worthwhile content I feel like digressing a bit into history and methods for this first post, though. This is what my TL setup has looked like for most of the time I’ve worked on the project: 
I started out doing 64 lines in December 2017, this got Asonn involved, and he introduced me to Porygon, who set up a git repository* and provided the tool you see. My brain swears I tweeted this pastebin, and I know I at least got some comment, but twitter search can’t find it so who the fuck knows? Anyway, I probably did 129 lines just copying from the game or script (can’t remember), then I copied them to the tool and worked there. One of the joys of working with porygon is that he has highly motivating auto-updating progress pages for you to fap to after pushing your new lines. This probably helped me more than I’d really like to admit.
Either way, apart from being convenient for reinsertion later**, the tool has rudimentary edict-lookup of the (autoparsed) tl lines, which is convenient if you’re extremely fucking lazy. I’m not going to say I never used it (I am extremely fucking lazy), but going j-j definitely was needed more than once. Other than that I guess it’s ok, though it does have a still-unfixed bug where it’ll fuck up and display too few lines of text in a box due to some miscalculation.
It’s certainly missing some features my dream tool would have, though. Personally I’d love to be able to see the script commands surrounding a line through some UI element to expand, as this could partially substitute for actually having the VN open for visual/scenographic context. It doesn’t have EPWING lookup, but that’s high effort since the format is bullshit apparently. It also doesn’t let you play voiced lines associated with spoken lines, though Shinimasu is unvoiced so I guess it doesn’t really matter for this project.
Today I had to contact pory since it had stoped working properly; it turned out my build of the tool was old enough that a bug with java 9 (I had recently updated) was making it unusable. He quickly got a fix for the tool, but it took enough time that I lost the energy for revising my tl. Or that’s my excuse, anyway.
See you next time for actual tl discussion w
*What’s a git repository? Well the long answer is long and full of programmer-speak, but basically it lets you keep an online backup of your files, preserving older versions each time you decide to add a newer version to the server. You can do this while multiple people are working on the same file sometimes, though it can get hairy. I ended up not needing this much, but it’s been good insurance against data loss (and I have changed laptops at least once during translation, also had to reinstall windows once…). Really if you don’t have a backup for any translation of length, you’re probably doing it wrong (but also I am a CS student so it’s… not as hard for me w)
**By virtue of saving the line number in the original script where the Japanese line was and associating that with the eventual translated line. I used a simplified version of this myself based on google sheets columns when I did tech for the ichigo & kyuugo tl.

View the full article

The story of how I came to read this EVN is kind of like Countdown to silence itself. It started out with a bit of comic relief mingled with human drama (The dev came in and posted a link on the Fuwanovel discord and I grilled him for a bit because my ego is large and my opinions voluminous, but he managed to at least catch my interest). Then trouble struck (My Internet’s been down for hours now and it’s doing a number on me), but this led to some exciting events (I played the VN on a whim and it turned out to actually be good). The ending… well, my Internet’s still not back on, can someone tell the wankers over at Comhem to hurry up and get my router a bloody IP address? Thanks in advance.
13 hours later, I finally have the connection necessary to post this. Holy fuck.

Countdown to Silence takes place in a world where (entirely benevolent and harmless) experiments intended to give humans superpowers have succeeded, but in an unexpected fashion: only their kids got a splash with the supe brush. This ability is called IO for “Information Overlay”, and true to its name it presents itself as an overlay showing you certain information – with varying levels of usefulness depending on your specific ability. The protagonist and (voiced!) narrator, Josh, didn’t get particularly lucky with his: all it shows him is a countdown to when people will speak to him next. While there are _some_ uses for this, it mostly doesn’t give him much benefit. His best friend Kyle has a much better ability: seeing potential conversation choices when talking to people, potentially revealing their secrets but also making him a great guy to talk to. The setting and abilities are used surprisingly well in the story, but don’t expect anything about uncovering government conspiracies or rebelling against society or whatever, it’s just accepted as a Thing in universe. You could probably rewrite the thing without the abilities, but it wouldn’t have the same zing to it, so I can’t say I’m bothered.
No, but self-isolation does, so basically half of us are in the system now.
The VN walks a delicate line between drama and comedy, and will frequently take the edge off tense moments with a comedic segment before ramping up the tension again. Thankfully, it succeeds in the balancing act; neither the comedy nor the drama are cheapened too much by its counterpart. The humor does have indulgent parts; the main character is a weeb into magical girl shows for kids. This doesn’t get too grating in my opinion, and it’s only mentioned in like three scenes, but after reading this many EVNs I still feel it’s a bit cliché. Otherwise, I would describe it as… a bit camp, I guess? On the low end of the scale though. I swear to god if the creator of this isn’t British I need to get my tea-dar fixed.
Nisemonogatari >>> Bakemonogatari
So why do I like it so much? Well, first of all, the plotting is tight: it doesn’t waste time, keeps you interested, and things slide into place from foreshadowing in pleasing ways.
Second, the voiced narration actually adds a lot for me. There’s a constant echo-ish effect to it, it’s clearly not a super high quality recording, but I find it charming. Combined with the rest of the voices in this fully voiced VN (not badly acted, but certainly not recorded with the best equipment), the weird style convention of leaving off most ending periods in text boxes, and the uhh, funky backgrounds, it feels very doujin. Alone, any of these elements would be less than ideal, but together it forms a gestalt I find strangely palatable. Though I still must insist that you really should still end your text boxes with periods – I got used to the style because it was consistent and repetition legitimizes, but it’s not going to be a good fit for most stories and arguably made even this one worse. Anyway, the aesthetic fits the drama-comedy flow of the story pretty well. I’m left with the impression that it all shouldn’t fit together so well, and yet it just does.
So yeah, I really recommend this for a fun and engaging 30-60 minutes or so of content. Extremely positively surprised.
Download free at: https://plotline-progenitor.itch.io/countdown-to-silence

–
Okay, but as we all know I have autism, so let’s nitpick the craft a bit instead as I think the writer has potential and might read this. If you’re not into that, feel free to skip the rest of this.
Hotkeys:
Page up/down do nothing, despite the fact that they’re listed on the Help page! No hotkey to show message history, the SUPERIOR history function.
UI:
There’s no way to replay voice lines besides going back from a later line with rollback (and then they always play due to renpy rollback.) Rollback is the default backlog for mousewheel (my JVN soul cries for it to activate the backlog instead and then have scenario jump and voice replay buttons in that history). Uses default UI rather than anything custom as far as I can tell, though at least the modern Ren’Py default doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes out.
Sound:
Some voices are too hard to hear at the default music volume (full) while others are perfectly fine. I remember a scene where this made me have to go into the settings and lower the music volume to like half (which I left it at). I feel like this could have been avoided with more careful sound design.
Why put this on your download page when you can just change the default settings???
Music doesn’t fade out, it just cuts, which makes scene transitions feel unnecessarily and jarringly sudden. Especially the final line of the game suffers from this – it really needed a soft fadeout to mimic the emotion at that point. Overall, think about transitions more when scripting.
Voices sometimes do not fully match the written line, though the wording is often better than the actual text. One voiced line even adds a word that was accidentally omitted in the text!
Text:
Apart from the aforementioned thing where sentences just end without punctuation half the time, there’s a few typos that could’ve been caught by a careful eye. The phrasing style, and well, the style in general is unusual and feels like veering into the relaxed conventions of, I don’t know, fanfic writing? With everything else it kind of works, but it certainly won’t work for just any tone, and you’ll need to be careful with this in the future. The voiced narration does help sell some fairly long sentences without punctuation, so it’s good we have it.
…And that’s about it, I think.

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The story of how I came to read this EVN is kind of like Countdown to silence itself. It started out with a bit of comic relief mingled with human drama (The dev came in and posted a link on the Fuwanovel discord and I grilled him for a bit because my ego is large and my opinions voluminous, but he managed to at least catch my interest). Then trouble struck (My Internet’s been down for hours now and it’s doing a number on me), but this led to some exciting events (I played the VN on a whim and it turned out to actually be good). The ending… well, my Internet’s still not back on, can someone tell the wankers over at Comhem to hurry up and get my router a bloody IP address? Thanks in advance.
13 hours later, I finally have the connection necessary to post this. Holy fuck.

Countdown to Silence takes place in a world where (entirely benevolent and harmless) experiments intended to give humans superpowers have succeeded, but in an unexpected fashion: only their kids got a splash with the supe brush. This ability is called IO for “Information Overlay”, and true to its name it presents itself as an overlay showing you certain information – with varying levels of usefulness depending on your specific ability. The protagonist and (voiced!) narrator, Josh, didn’t get particularly lucky with his: all it shows him is a countdown to when people will speak to him next. While there are _some_ uses for this, it mostly doesn’t give him much benefit. His best friend Kyle has a much better ability: seeing potential conversation choices when talking to people, potentially revealing their secrets but also making him a great guy to talk to. The setting and abilities are used surprisingly well in the story, but don’t expect anything about uncovering government conspiracies or rebelling against society or whatever, it’s just accepted as a Thing in universe. You could probably rewrite the thing without the abilities, but it wouldn’t have the same zing to it, so I can’t say I’m bothered.
No, but self-isolation does, so basically half of us are in the system now.
The VN walks a delicate line between drama and comedy, and will frequently take the edge off tense moments with a comedic segment before ramping up the tension again. Thankfully, it succeeds in the balancing act; neither the comedy nor the drama are cheapened too much by its counterpart. The humor does have indulgent parts; the main character is a weeb into magical girl shows for kids. This doesn’t get too grating in my opinion, and it’s only mentioned in like three scenes, but after reading this many EVNs I still feel it’s a bit cliché. Otherwise, I would describe it as… a bit camp, I guess? On the low end of the scale though. I swear to god if the creator of this isn’t British I need to get my tea-dar fixed.
Nisemonogatari >>> Bakemonogatari
So why do I like it so much? Well, first of all, the plotting is tight: it doesn’t waste time, keeps you interested, and things slide into place from foreshadowing in pleasing ways.
Second, the voiced narration actually adds a lot for me. There’s a constant echo-ish effect to it, it’s clearly not a super high quality recording, but I find it charming. Combined with the rest of the voices in this fully voiced VN (not badly acted, but certainly not recorded with the best equipment), the weird style convention of leaving off most ending periods in text boxes, and the uhh, funky backgrounds, it feels very doujin. Alone, any of these elements would be less than ideal, but together it forms a gestalt I find strangely palatable. Though I still must insist that you really should still end your text boxes with periods – I got used to the style because it was consistent and repetition legitimizes, but it’s not going to be a good fit for most stories and arguably made even this one worse. Anyway, the aesthetic fits the drama-comedy flow of the story pretty well. I’m left with the impression that it all shouldn’t fit together so well, and yet it just does.
So yeah, I really recommend this for a fun and engaging 30-60 minutes or so of content. Extremely positively surprised.
Download free at: https://plotline-progenitor.itch.io/countdown-to-silence

–
Okay, but as we all know I have autism, so let’s nitpick the craft a bit instead as I think the writer has potential and might read this. If you’re not into that, feel free to skip the rest of this.
Hotkeys:
Page up/down do nothing, despite the fact that they’re listed on the Help page! No hotkey to show message history, the SUPERIOR history function.
UI:
There’s no way to replay voice lines besides going back from a later line with rollback (and then they always play due to renpy rollback.) Rollback is the default backlog for mousewheel (my JVN soul cries for it to activate the backlog instead and then have scenario jump and voice replay buttons in that history). Uses default UI rather than anything custom as far as I can tell, though at least the modern Ren’Py default doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes out.
Sound:
Some voices are too hard to hear at the default music volume (full) while others are perfectly fine. I remember a scene where this made me have to go into the settings and lower the music volume to like half (which I left it at). I feel like this could have been avoided with more careful sound design.
Why put this on your download page when you can just change the default settings???
Music doesn’t fade out, it just cuts, which makes scene transitions feel unnecessarily and jarringly sudden. Especially the final line of the game suffers from this – it really needed a soft fadeout to mimic the emotion at that point. Overall, think about transitions more when scripting.
Voices sometimes do not fully match the written line, though the wording is often better than the actual text. One voiced line even adds a word that was accidentally omitted in the text!
Text:
Apart from the aforementioned thing where sentences just end without punctuation half the time, there’s a few typos that could’ve been caught by a careful eye. The phrasing style, and well, the style in general is unusual and feels like veering into the relaxed conventions of, I don’t know, fanfic writing? With everything else it kind of works, but it certainly won’t work for just any tone, and you’ll need to be careful with this in the future. The voiced narration does help sell some fairly long sentences without punctuation, so it’s good we have it.
…And that’s about it, I think.

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Are you the kind of guy that loves stews but hates having to prep all the shit going into them? If so you’re uncomfortably close to being me holy shit stop. Anyway if you try to google up recipes for a pork stew using wine you inevitably get something that could be much simpler. Here’s my attempt at such a thing; I’ve cooked this twice and IMO it’s excellent.
INGREDIENTS (serves 2 if you’re me and my dad)
~500g pork meat cut into medium pieces 1 bouillon cube ~200ml red wine ~100ml water 1 onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, chopped chili flakes to taste LITERALLY THREE PLUS ONE FUCKING STEPS BECAUSE I PUT THE PREPARATION STEPS IN THE INGREDIENTS PART
1. Brown the meat in your fat of choice on high heat in a saute pan. Salt and pepper those shits for good measure, though honestly idk if it matters so I cba to put them in the list.
2. Turn down to low heat and add wine, water, onion, garlic, chili flakes, and crumble in the bouillon cube. I usually mix it all together but who knows if this is even needed? Not le watakushi.
3. Let stew w/ lid on for as long as it takes for the meat to be nice and tender.
4. Serve with magically appearing rice I didn’t tell you about.
QUESTIONS
How do I know how long the meat will take to cook?
Since this is a general recipe I can’t tell you, but pork chops took ~1h 15m and store-tenderized pork chop meat took like an hour. Tougher cuts made for stewing might take as much as 2 hours 45 minutes or more. I also recommend the “google it” and “ask your mum” options if available. On your first time using a new kind of meat, I recommend sampling the meat at likely points. This will fuck with your rice timing which sucks, but so does life so nothing new there really.
How do I make this efficiently timewise?
The main timewaster is the slow boiling process, so the goal should be to get that started as soon as possible.
Start by cutting the meat into pieces unless it is already. After that use any downtime, for example when the fat’s warming in the pan or when you’ve just put the meat in and are letting it rest for some surface, to chop the onion / garlic. It’s not particularly important to add the garlic or onion or really anything to the stew at the same time as you add the wine, just get them in once you finish processing them.
Ok but I have beef not pork
Then do the exact same things and it will probably still work lol.
Ok but I have chicken not pork
Then make this high effort recipe instead. Or just try anyway. Cooking time will be much shorter though.
Ok but I have <other kind of meat>
We live in a society, dear reader. I’m sure you can figure it out.
That’s still too many ingredients
Fair enough. I don’t think the garlic is essential and chopping it is annoying so take it out if you wish. The chili flakes are also a bit of a flourish and you might not even like them so omit them if you want.
I would not omit the onion but if you’re a hater it probably won’t kill the dish entirely to take that out too, I’m never actually going to try that myself though so good luck.
Ok but I don’t have a bouillon cube
I will assume you have liquid broth then, use that. Otherwise supply your goddamn kitchen. Since broth will increase the total amount of liquid you probably want to cut down on or use no water at all. I have not tried this at home but like it’s a stew it’ll work out.
Actually I think a few more ingredients would be ok
I would suggest looking up more traditional recipes at this point but here are some things I have not tried: mushrooms seem like they’d fit in well. Carrots are also often mentioned though idk if I like the idea as much. I can also see bell pepper but I have a bell pepper fetish. As for spices you could try grated fresh ginger (obviously ditch some or all of the chili then I’m not responsible if you kill yourself with this) or maybe szechuan pepper.
Where’s the obligatory shitty picture?


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You should read this over at https://j-addicts.de/vn-of-the-month-december-2003/ as not only does it have (some) juicier screenshots, but the formatting is much better.
 
First of all, I believe I should thank the j-addicts/Koutou Yuumin team for their knowledge and expertise. This article grew way beyond my expectations, and I would surely have lost my way without them. Also, to the several friends who gave me feedback and helped me out in various ways, thank you very much. Well then, shall we start?
This month has four masturpieces (get it?). They are Saishuu Chikan Densha 2, Kadowakashi, Christmas★Present, and Kizumono no Shoujo Gaiden. That being said, there are still several other quite decent games. The game that surprised me the most by the positive and my personal masturpiece is Jam 'n Limit, and the games that disappointed me much were Eisai Kyouiku and Yami no Koe III. If you're looking for this month's overall best game, the answer is probably something boring like Saya no Uta (the answer, not the game).
How are masturpieces decided, you ask? Introducing: the fap-o-meter!
In Erogamescape, it's possible to vote on how suitable the H-scenes were for fapping material, ranging from "Weren't useful at all" to "Were pretty useful." Thus, I will attribute a numerical score (from 0 to 5) for each of those and tally up the average. This will be known as the fap-o-meter.
This isn't a fallible and objective method, but it should give an idea of how much cummies the players were able to get out of these games.
The Games
To begin with, I decided which games to play based on EGS's database. This is because it's bound to have more games listed than vndb. Out of 107 releases, I checked out 31 games. There were 21 games I would've considered for review, except that I wasn't able to obtain them as nearly all of them are obscure doujin games, which were sold exclusively at Comiket. I blacklisted 55 games: 32 are moege/charage/plotge – basically, games that have too much plot or other crap in the way of my precious porn, 9 were re-releases, 7 were PS2 games or not VNs, 6 were all-ages and thus no porn, and 1 was listed incorrectly.
Please keep in mind that just because a game is ranked higher or lower, it's not an absolute indicator of its quality. Some games cater to one fetish exclusively, so they're not bound to please everyone.
The game titles have been localized by me, as I thought that's something that a predominantly English-speaking audience would appreciate. That is if they don't have one already. The same goes for the synopsis. Many of them are translated by me, and at times, I've had to replace what was very obviously nonsensical machine-translated garbage.
I am still in the process of learning Japanese, and translating is, well, challenging, but I can assure you that there are no lies, falsehoods, or made-up stuff on them. I will put any game descriptions that aren't mine between quotes and credit them appropriately.
The screenshots are at 75% of their original resolution, except for one of the games where I could only play the widescreen version, so it's at 50%.
If you're interested in a specific game, I'd advise for you to CTRL+F search for it. If you'd like to read my overall conclusions on this whole venture, search for My Thoughts and Conclusions.
One last thing: I did not rely on machine translation tools to play these games.
1. Midnight Sleazy Train 2
EGS-Score: 74 (442) Atelier Kaguya TEAM HEARTBEAT Fap-o-meter: 3.26 (91) Saishuu Chikan Densha 2 Main appeal: chikan, forceful sex, group sex 最終痴漢電車2
"Touch her/Lick her/Verbally abuse her"
Well, color me surprised! For some reason, this game has hundreds of votes, so I was curious about how that came to be. Perhaps a lot of people watched the H-OVA and became interested in the game that way? That's what I call a marketing success.
But that's not all. The game itself is a pretty good nukige. Beyond the beautiful art and hot H-scenes, the game bolsters a pretty robust map movement system. Unlike most games where you wander at random, hoping you'll run into the characters, the game tells if there's someone at the place you're about to visit. It sounds like something straightforward, but it doesn't matter how good the game's content is if the system doesn't facilitate the access to that very content.
Besides that, you also have verb-based interactivity during the H-scenes (filling up their lewdness level gauge), and this makes for perfect roleplaying. You're not just playing as a groping protagonist, you feel like the groper yourself. With all of these factors combined, it's no wonder that so many people enjoy this game and the series, yet to this very day.
Though, if you're not that big of a fan of uh...gangbangs, you might not enjoy it that much. Maybe watch the H-OVA first and see if it's something you'd like.
2. Kidnapping
EGS-Score: 65 (41) ZyX Fap-o-meter: 3.25 (4) Kadowakashi Main appeal: sexual slavery 拐 ～カドワカシ～  
 
Wow, uh, what a fast development. They really get straight to the action, huh. Within a couple of minutes, the protagonist rapes one of his students, Tomoko. I'm actually not a fan of justifying this as "lol deep dark desires," but I guess that's the setup they were going for.
The main meat of this game is to sexually train a trio of heroines. True to its name, with Tomoko's help, you kidnap two of your students and confine them in a locked room, starting off with Mizue.
What really makes this game stand out is the sheer variety in H content. The heroine has stats, most of them sexually-related, and you have to raise them to allow for even kinkier play. You have to be strategic with your options to train the ultimate sex slaves. Though, if you suck, you can play on Easy difficulty.
When I say variety, I mean that ALL of these options are available at the start (well, as long as the heroine "consents" to it). This means all kinds of play. You can choose to be kind or to be sadistic. You can make her service you or teach her pleasure through shamefulness. Ultimate freedom and variety.
That doesn't mean you can just do anything. If you're too harsh on her, she'll collapse. Have this happen enough times, and you'll get a game over. So please, be responsible, and take good care of your sex slaves!
When it comes to the staff members, the spotlight is on the game's artist, Mutou Keiji. He is responsible for the character design and art of many games I have played in the past, from Studio Triumph. It's extremely similar to JAST published Do You Like Horny Bunnies?. Perhaps they had the same teacher? It might seem odd at first, but I grew really fond of this style over time. The sex scenes are also animated, and for once, they actually look good. Nice!
3. Christmas★Present
EGS-Score: 70 (62) Ail [Team Riva] Fap-o-meter: 3.09 (11) Christmas★Present Main appeal: BDSM, forceful sex, comedy クリスマス★プレゼント
This was actually the game I was looking forward to playing the most. Considering this is the month of December, I really wanted to play at least one game that would really get me into the holiday spirit. It took me hours to figure out how to get it working, but man, was it worth it!
While the description is a bit grim and dark, the game is actually the complete opposite. It's always fun and filled with comedic moments. The best way to describe this game would perhaps be "bakage" (silly game) due to its sheer absurdity and ridiculousness.
Of note, the game has a sort of "affinity" system. Your actions will increase your "evil" points by a certain amount. So, you can abuse the powers of the Saint's Crest, which can make any wish come true, or you can be a good boy and play along as Santa's Little Helper, spreading happiness all over town.
The art is beautiful, the sex is hot, the banter between characters is great. This game would make for the perfect Christmas present.
4. Defiled Girls - Campus of Used Goods Side Story
EGS-Score: 70 (83) Rasen Fap-o-meter: 2.82 (17) Kizumono no Shoujo -Kizumono no Gakuen Gaiden- Main appeal: blackmail, forceful sex, group sex 傷モノの少女－傷モノの学園・外伝－
This an insult game. This game has insult scenes, the protagonist and his buddy insult the girls...wait, what? Duh, I mean, rape. Yes, that's the word. This game is basically a side story of the original Kizumono no Gakuen. You don't really need to have played the previous game as it's not a direct sequel.
Takeshi and Narumi's involvement in the previous incident is briefly explained - Takeshi was forced to film the girls being raped, under threat of being killed, and Narumi was one of the victims. Upon finding one of his old videos, he can no longer contain his excitement.
I prefer this game to the first one because I like seeing the gap between peaceful school life and the moments of higher tension. That's not to say that the battle royale setting isn't thrilling though. It also feels like more of a personal experience, since you have one protagonist instead of multiple ones/multiple POVs.
While you might initially think it to be a rape fest...it's just so much more than that. It capitalizes on human emotions: sorrow, anguish, sadness, loneliness...and instead of an abrupt chaotic state, it's gratifying to witness that transition. You can also expect exciting developments such as betrayals when you least see them coming.
The H-scenes are well, pretty good. There's nothing that bonds friends together any more than doing the same girl at the same time...the story is about the defilement of the girls, as much as it is about the corruption of the protagonist's psyche. Though it helps to have a friend who is crazier than you. At least in this game, the "villains" actually feel like villains as they delve into their intricate plots, instead of your casual rapists.
Of particular note, this game has a quite nice atmosphere, boosted by a quality soundtrack. Good faps are to be had with this game.
5. I'm a Booth Attendant - Heisaku and Kenta's Wild Tales
EGS-Score: 65 (35) Interheart Fap-o-meter: 2.75 (4) Oira wa Bandai ~Heisaku & Kenta no Yume Monogatari~ Main appeal: voyeurism オイラは番台～平作＆健太の夢物語～
One day, a police detective suddenly barged in a certain popular public bathhouse that the protagonist was in charge of.
"Dan Koutarou! You're under arrest, under suspicion of sexual assault!"
With a clack, he was handcuffed.
Several months passed, and after a hellish series of interrogations, his guilt was established.

"Why, why am I the only one serving a prison sentence?
Why are Heisaku and Kenta getting away scott free?
But, it seems that is my fate...
Even if they were to be caught, it does not mean that my punishment would go away, but...
Is the public bathhouse that I inherited from my pops done for?
I've really done something awful to him..."
 
Man, I can't believe we came out innocent. I feel kinda bad about pushing the blame solely on Koutarou, but this too is part of fate, huh. Kou-chan, just sit quietly in your cell! So, we were cleared of suspicion, but what should we do from now on? You're right...for now, how about we go back to Koutarou's shop, and peek in the bath once again?! There's also videos of those women we filmed that we haven't used yet! To begin with, let's change bathhouse's name! Enter Heisaku and Kenta's Wild Tales! This is a side story, continuing off the ending of the first game. I really recommend that you play that game first so that you'll get the most enjoyment out of the story.
Basically, this is a real-time, public bathhouse management game. You take in customers, and you can peek at them while they change clothes, are in the toilet or just chilling in the bath. You'll have to follow the schedule carefully and know the exact times when the heroines visit the bathhouse. The game's system is pretty helpful in this regard, but something like a tutorial would've been much appreciated. It takes some time to get used to the gameplay, as you also have to use and buy items that will help you in your peeping quest, but I find the experience to be worth the trouble.
If anything, the banter between characters is pretty well-done. Most of the characters are actually adults, which is a nice change of pace. I also like that the previous game's protagonist went to jail since that's what happens when you do bad things. The game is pretty similar to the first one, so once again, that's probably where you want to start.
Interheart themselves published a walkthrough for this game, and I wish I had noticed it before playing...oh well.
6. Please Teach Nanami and Konomi the ABC
EGS-Score: 68 (101) Studio Ring Fap-o-meter: 2.61 (18) Nanami to Konomi no Oshiete ABC Main appeal: lolicon ななみとこのみのおしえてA・B・C
Alright, so uh...yeah. Despite the pretty art and cutesy voice acting, I found this game to be not much more than wish fulfillment for lolicon.
To begin with, I'm not a fan of deredere, lovestruck heroines, but if you're into this type of content, you're probably going to enjoy it.
7. Lewd Little Sister BABY
EGS-Score: 65 (65) Image Craft Fap-o-meter: 2.58 (13) Inmai Baby Main appeal: lolicon 淫妹BABY
Right, so, uh...yeah. There are two main points of interest in this game. First, it's the art or overall art direction. Not only are the H-scenes fully animated, but the sprites are also constantly changing very fluidly. The artstyle might seem simple, but it's nice and colorful. Honestly, this game very much feels like an anime, to the point I'd almost unironically call it an "anime game".
The second point is the sheer amount and variety of endings. You have the freedom to craft the story as you please, but remember that everything you do has a consequence.
Strictly speaking, I'd only recommend this to fans of the genre.
8. Children Milk Parfait
EGS-Score: 66 (28) Shiritsu Sakuranbo Shouggakou Fap-o-meter: 2.57 (7) Kodomo Milk Parfait Main appeal: lolicon こどもみるくぱふぇ
I swear, I'm not doing it on purpose! Anyway, for this game, I actually had to make a decision, since if I included the votes of the 2007 DVD release, it would score much higher. To make things fair, I decided not to.
In my opinion, I found this game to be boring. The children don't act like children (more like naughty adults trapped in a child's body), and most scenes are teasing.
I also thought that the OP was really catchy, it even forced me to get up from my chair and bust my moves for a few minutes. The UI is also extremely cutesy, which fits the mood of the game.

9. Matty, the youngest child
EGS-Score: 61 (22) Complet's Fap-o-meter: 2.5 (6) Matty Main appeal: straight shotacon まってぃ
I actually completed two routes of this game...but it's difficult to call them routes to begin with. Okay, first of all, this is what will usually happen. At school, you get two alternating choices that decide what type of event will occur. When you're back home, you get four choices which are meaningless by themselves (e.g., kill time, go back to your room, watch TV, etc.), and if you're lucky you'll trigger some kind of event with the heroines.
When it's time to go to bed, you can choose between going to sleep right away, going to the restroom, or reading a porn magazine (there are like four to collect, can you get them all?!). The first two of those choices CAN trigger events, but 90% of the time nothing happens.
And this repeats every single day until the game ends. You have no idea which choices trigger what, you have to constantly savescum if you want to see events with a certain heroine (and of course, you'll have to try all the choices first, every time), and even then, more than half of the scenes are teasing. So all you're really doing is collecting events.
I hope I was able to convey the frustration I felt playing this game. Why couldn't they have employed a map movement system, where you could just visit everyone in their respective rooms? Why this lazy, inane system? And even worse, the heroine I was aiming for doesn't even have an H-scene or a proper ending. The game just ends abruptly. What a piece of crap.
Either way, the art by Mame is definitely the game's high point. I recommend that you read the prologue, download a complete save file, and check out the H-scenes. Or play a better game, by the same company.
10. Surrender - Ravished Body, Broken Heart
EGS-Score: 60 (3) X[iks] Fap-o-meter: 2.5 (2) Shikkan ~Hazukashimerareta Karada, Oreta Kokoro~ Main appeal: BDSM, forceful sex, mystery しっかん ～辱められた躰、折れた心～
This is a mystery game where the objective is to uncover the spy and the island's other mysteries. Who is the spy, and what are they after? What secrets does this hospital hold?
The navigation is done through a map movement system. I usually dislike these, but you can at least trust the characters to hang out in a specific place. There's the doctor who hangs out at her own office, the patient that stays inside her room, the two nurses in the nurse station and the nurse in the psychosomatic ward. If you check out the other areas, you can find out more about the game's world, side characters, and... special tools.
When you talk to the characters, there's also this interactive system, kinda like the old verb-based games. Except that it's with nouns, people's names, locations and so on.In conclusion, the game's system is kinda annoying, and honestly, I don't feel like doing bad things to the characters when they're so lovely... The dialogue and voice acting are built in such a way that they actually feel like real humans. Speaking of voice acting, it's pretty good! You might recognize some industry veterans...
I'd say that despite some annoyances, the journey does feel worth it. It's definitely a game I'd like to spend more time with.
11. Good Girl's Worries Counselling Room - Fantasy World's Immoral Guidance
EGS-Score: 65 (15) Collection Fap-o-meter: 2.33 (3) Yoi Ko no Nayami Soudanshitsu ~Mousou Sekai no Haitokuteki Shidou~ Main appeal: group sex, forceful sex よい娘の悩み相談室～妄想世界の背徳的指導～
Essentially, when his brother collapses from overwork, by sheer coincidence the protagonist manages to find out that he was in charge of a counseling website. The gameplay is simple: you check your inbox on the website, pick the e-mail you want to read, read it, and then the protagonist imagines the H-events described on the e-mail. After that, it is your job to give the girls advice through a series of choices.
I was initially disappointed, thinking it was kinda lame to not engage with the heroines directly, but I find this to be a really novel idea. They take what would be generic H-scenes and give them a backstory, aftermath, and the female character's perspective. The most fun I had with this game was reading those very e-mails and challenging myself to give good advice.
For example, there's a high school student who talks about how several boys confessed to her at once, and she ends indulging their wish of wanting to create "pleasant memories" with her. I told her that she needs to value her body more and that she should be responsible and pick only one of the guys to be her boyfriend. It really feels like a very personal experience, where I am crafting my own story, almost as if I was actually talking to a real high school student.
I did not get that far, but it seems, later on, you'll actually be able to meet the girls, so there's something to look forward to. After all, most of the game's H-scenes only occur inside the protagonist's fantasy world, not in reality...or do they?
Another point I'd make is that while the art might seem kinda amateurish, I actually think it's pretty hot. I like it!
12. Bright Future - Wet 'N Messy 2nd Time
EGS-Score: 70 (93) FlyingShine Black Fap-o-meter: 2.17 (12) Akarui Mirai ~Wet And Messy 2nd time~ Main appeal: forceful sex, group sex, wet and messy アカルイミライ Wet And Messy 2nd time
This is a mystery/drama game that also doubles as a nukige. You, as the leader of the newspaper club, are initially given the task to investigate the so-called "Honey Ghost." The rest is according to the description: you start talking to a girl from the past and then realize that she died. Your objective is to find out what happened and change her terrible fate to a bright future.
But that's not all. There are also several peculiarities happening in the present. There's the mysterious psychic treatment (psychosomatic) school club, which is in fact just a front for a group of rapists. While you are busy with your investigation, be careful not to let the heroines fall into their grasp...
True to its name, you can expect things to get really wet and messy, by a variety of fluids...be it water, essential oils (aromatherapy), milk, SEMEN...But while the art is beautiful and the story seems promising, the game actually suffers from the excessive H-scenes. Before you really have time to care about a heroine, you end up peeking on them having or being forced into sex by a group of guys. If the scenes were more spaced out, the game would actually feel like it has some tension. Overall, I Just feel like it's trying to do too many things at once.
While you get plenty of choices, only very few of them branch out the story. Most of them just give you an alternate or slightly different scene. They don't really have an impact on the story. The series was rebooted as the Kurai Mirai (Dark Future) or Crime Rhyme series. By the name alone, you can see the new direction that they took with the games, which I'm not of a fan of. Because no matter which manners of cruelties they must endure, at least the title name "Bright Future" gives you the hope that there is a way for the heroines to avoid their awful fate...even if not entirely.
I'm not a fan of these quasi-NTR gangrape games, where you're just walking around, peeking on others having sex, and not really doing much about it. That's not to say that some of the scenes aren't hot, especially if you like it...wet and messy. I like this scene where your previous choice changes whether the heroine calls you senpai or onii-chan. It's, uh, a nice touch since you're pretty much defining the relationship you have with her.
13. Mansion, the Prison of Lust
EGS-Score: 60 (12) Girl's Software Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Ingoku no Yakata Main appeal: BDSM, sexual slavery, maids 淫獄の館
First, I suppose I should start with what I liked about this game. The art is gorgeous when it comes to the character design and HCGs, drawn by one of my favorite eroge artists. The sexual slavery scenes are quite varied, but there's also a good number of vanilla scenes. You basically get the choice to give in to your "deep dark desires," or to defy your captor.
To be honest, despite this being a nukige, what I enjoyed the most were the slice-of-life scenes and banter between characters. The music is a great mood-setter, but what made these scenes that much more enjoyable was the stellar voice acting performance. I'm sure that if you look at their names, you'll recognize several industry veterans. I'd point out Isshiki Hikaru, who voices the protagonist's sister in Cartagra as especially memorable. However, all of them were really good, and I also liked their performance in...other parts of the game. That's the thing, though. After spending all that time growing fond of the characters, I don't really want to do awful things to them.
For this game's negative points, I'd say that getting a good ending is really difficult without using a walkthrough, and otherwise, it just gets frustrating. I also disliked the spontaneous H-scenes during the first part of the game. This is because they are all "dream sequences," more like showing a possible future for the protagonist.
It feels as if those scenes were just thrown in there because the slice-of-life and comedy sections were too long, and they thought people would get bored if they didn't get some fap material, but eh. They feel entirely out of place because there's no context and no build-up for those scenes.Another point is that when I train my sex slaves, I don't like sharing them with others...especially dirty old men.
14. Stray Sheep - Disgraceful Confession Room
EGS-Score: 55 (4) Panda House Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Stray Sheep ~Chijoku no Zangeshitsu~ Main appeal: BDSM, mystery STRAY SHEEP ～恥辱の懺悔室～
Stray Sheep doubles as mystery and hardcore BDSM game. The protagonist makes use of his privileged position as the school's new Father to search for the truth, little by time, at times employing more forceful means.
I did not find myself able to empathize with the protagonist and his revenge-filled heart. It's not that I'm not fond of revenge stories, but if you're going to do awful things to someone, then at least do it to people who deserve it.
If one thing though, both the CGs and character sprites sure are pretty. Reminds me a bit of Mink's artstyle of that time.
15. Masquerade
EGS-Score: 64 (14) Soft Circle Courreges Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) Masquerade Main appeal: maid, pure love story MASQUERADE
While the setting seems to be grimdark, it's actually kinda wrong to call it a nukige. In fact, you could complete the game while avoiding most of the sexual content.
I actually completed this game as it's relatively short, about one to two others long. I found the main story to be sweet and very much worth the time I spent with it. Some might find it generic, but I guess I'm fond of these pure love type of stories.
You can choose to either engage in sexual acts with your maid or to have conversations with her about a variety of topics, getting to know her better. By sexual acts, I mean that you don't force yourself upon her and that everything is done consensually, even if the protagonist is in a position of authority. On that front, it's kinda weak as a BDSM/sexual slavery game, but I appreciate the variety of content and the hot HCGs.
The negative side is that both these conversations and H-scenes repeat themselves. For example, if you want to unlock further conversations, you'll have to approach specific topics an X number of times. The problem is that the conversations are the exact same the second or third time, so you're gonna be skipping them. It's just annoying. Did they run out of content even though the game is so short? Why force you to repeat conversations? Anyway, you'll probably want to follow a walkthrough.
The similar happens with the H-scenes, where you can unlock extra scenes or variations of the same scene. Anyway, this is a pretty decent doujin game if you like maids, sweet but kinda corny love stories, are willing to press the skip button half the time, and use a walkthrough.
16. A Naughty Doctor
EGS-Score: 58 (7) Sol-fa-soft Fap-o-meter: 2 (1) H na Oisha-san Main appeal: lolicon Hなお医者さん
So I booted up this game, which is unvoiced and has the same looping soundtrack all the time. And on the very first few choices, I hit a little girl, was sent to jail and got a premature Happy Ending. Great game.

"HAPPY ENDING...hell if it is!"
But it's actually an enjoyable game. You touch the characters in places where you're not really supposed to, but get away with it with some convincing persuasion, and eventually get to do a more direct inspection.
I actually like this type of games where you play as a doctor and interact with a patient, deceiving them, and abusing their trust. For example, Studio Triumph's games. But well, this one doesn't even compare since the game is too damn short, as the whole thing is about 20-30 minutes long.
Apparently, there's a voiced version, but I couldn't get my hands on it. The game is decent for what it is, but it's nothing special. I think there should've been more bad endings.
17. Jam 'N Limit - LOCKED/ROOM/CON/FINE/MENT
EGS-Score: 53 (18) Studio Jikkenshitsu Fap-o-meter: 2 (2) Jam n' Limit ~Mis/shitsu/Kan/kin Main appeal: roleplay, forceful sex ジャムアンリミット～密/室/監/禁
The only reason I went ahead and made the description this long is that this is the type of philosophical musings that are constantly present in the game. You can only imagine my surprise, playing this game after I almost considered skipping it - from the cover it seems like a generic nukige, and the score reinforces that assumption. I'm very glad I did not.
Honestly, I can only do this game justice with a full review, which I'd like to do in the near future (maybe), so this will be a bit of a sample of what's to come. It comes with a fair warning though: this game isn't for everyone. It's probably only for sexual deviants like me.
I've played this up until I was done with the first heroine's section of the story. Instead of having character routes, you "conquer" one heroine after the other, so you follow the protagonist's journey through madness. That is to say, this is more the protagonist's story than anything else, but you only truly understand the depth of his madness when you have a "normal" person as a reference. But that isn't all, as they too will find their own "madness."
Your choices in-game have to do with the course of actions you take as much as the preparations you have to make. For example, for your plan to succeed, what kind of precautions should you take, what should you be most concerned about, how will you create the perfect locked room while avoiding suspicion, how will you psychologically corner your prey, how will prevent their escape, and what will you do in the event something unexpected happens.
Accompanied by an in-built flow-chart, you'll be making these decisions as you try to avoid the game's multiple bad endings.
I don't want to spoil the content of the H-scenes, but they've mostly based around..."personalized roleplay."For me, this is the best game I played this month and my personal master and masturpiece, or at least the one which surprised me the most, making this whole venture worth it. Please don't overlook it just because it has the "nukige" label.
It could also be that the game simply left a lasting first impression, which lead me to overhype it slightly. Either way, I look forward to finishing it and publishing a more detailed review, whether it lives up to my expectations or not. Maybe.
18. Gifted Education Frenzy
EGS-Score: 65 (89) Kuzuryuu Fap-o-meter: 1.93 (14) Eisai Kyouiku Main appeal: BDSM, sexual slavery 英才狂育
You might know this from the H-OVA "Study a Broad." With beautiful art from Innocent Grey's CEO Sugina Miki, renown artist responsible for Cartagra, Kara no Shoujo series and Flowers series, coupled with BDSM and sexual slavery themes, what could possibly go wrong with this game?
Put simply, this game sucks. Sugina Miki's art and the seiyuu's talents were put to waste with this game thanks to an awful gameplay system.
So, you have three phases during the day: morning, lunchtime, and after school. During those periods, you can visit different locations during the game, taking up one, two, and five time slots respectively. Oh, and I fail to mention that there are ten locations in the game? So, you have to visit the heroines at the RIGHT TIME in the RIGHT PLACE to trigger the events. What a load of crap.
This game is the ultimate proof that no matter how good your game's content is (in this case, H-scenes), it doesn't matter if it's locked behind a nonsensical and overly complicated system. Sure, you have an idea of where the characters are likely to hang out, but who would've thought that the flower arrangement club member likes to hang out on the rooftop?
So, definitely use a walkthrough. And don't try to pursue more than one heroine at a time, as the timeslots often clash. That's not everything, though. If you fuck up too much in the beginning, you can get a bad ending. And even if you follow a walkthrough, you probably won't get to see every event.
This game is as sadistic to its players as it is to the heroines. I actually completed one of the routes - the twins. And there I witnessed some of the most stupid teen drama I ever had the displeasure of going through in recent times. At the very least, the H-scenes are hot, but I don't think it's worth seeing them without the context behind them. How frustrating!
19. Erosion
EGS-Score: 74 (21) Black Package Try Fap-o-meter: 1.8 (5) Shinshoku Main appeal: sexual slavery 浸蝕
I actually edited the first part of this synopsis from vndb because it was filled with lies, so I claim it as my own. Ahem.
This game unceremoniously starts with four H-scenes in a row. It sure doesn't waste any time, huh? On the very first scene, the setting is established. Toshiya, despite being of high school age, is somehow a hardcore sex slave trainer, all because his mother was a whore when he was a child. The orphanage's director is already his sex slave, as are other girls in school, and then he "infiltrates" this loving family intending to make them his sex slaves just for the lulz.
You witness the mother, who knows the protag for nothing but a few days (or like, 10 minutes in-game), masturbate while calling his name. I mean, what the fuck. Already? She hardly even knows him! This protagonist is literally the equivalent of an isekai anime protag who one-shots everything in sight on the first episode.
I did not find the art or the voice acting appealing either, but there's plenty of variety when it comes to the training scenes, I guess.
If I had to mention any positives, it would be that the game is quite technically advanced. There's an in-built flowchart, a read text marker, the ability to jump to the next and previous choices, and voice lines on the backlog.
All in all, this game is nothing more than rape fantasy and is completely disrespectful and demeaning towards women.
20. Last Order
EGS-Score: 70 (50) 13cm Fap-o-meter: 1.75 (8) Last Order Main appeal: sexual slavery, group sex ラストオーダー
This is a game which seemed to be nothing more than a generic nukige, but ended surprising me. If there were such a thing as a theme for this game, it'd be moratorium, the postponement of social responsibilities. The protagonist and other characters deal with this issue on different degrees: feeling like they're growing up too fast, being afraid to become a full-fledged adult, or being too attached to things of the past. As someone finding themselves within this very period of transition, I felt I was able to connect to the game on a personal level, if even slightly.
The sexual content mostly revolves around the use of devices for sexual training and bondage. With two new waitresses bolstering floréal's ranks, so are there two new prey for the protagonist to lay his hands on.
I have mentioned this several times before, I believe, but I'm not fond of sharing my sex slaves. After the slaves' training is cumplete, you have them serve the customers, often multiple at once, and this happens when you had just thought they became yours. I'd say that might be why the fap-o-meter is so low, even though this is actually a quite decent game.
21. Intense Pregnant Belly - Senpai, Please Acknowledge My Child!
EGS-Score: 41 (18) Acme X Fap-o-meter: 1.67 (3) Hageshiku Botebara! Senpai, Watashi no Ko, Mitomete Kudasai!! Main appeal: forceful sex, group sex, yuri 激しくボテ腹! ～センパイ、私のコ、認めてくださいっ!～
First of all, I gotta ask. Who the hell came up with such a dumb title?
This game is just a tasteless and senseless complete rapefest. It is disgustingly evil and cruel. I'm sorry, but I don't have much else to say. I dropped it because I'm not a masochist and there's hardly a redeeming factor to this piece of crap. I guess some people might be into it, but I'm not. Moving along.
22. Say Yah! Happy New Year 2003!
EGS-Score: 55 (9) Authoring Heaven Fap-o-meter: 1.6 (5) Say Yah! 2003 Main appeal: comedy, straight shotacon Say Yah! 2003
This game is not only a sequel to first Say Yah!, but it also features characters from other Authoring Heaven and Complet's games, as they're both imprints of the same stock company. You can expect similar kind of content and humor from the same games.
Basically, you have a map, and you choose which house to deliver presents to... in the form of sex. It's not really my cup of tea, but the game is kinda funny, if you're into that type of humor...
23. Married Woman Slave Coffee Shop 2
EGS-Score: 60 (20) Black Lilith Fap-o-meter: 1.6 (5) Hitozuma Dorei Kissa 2 Main appeal: sexual slavery, group sex, forceful sex 人妻奴隷喫茶2
"To think that you'd really take pictures like these...you're scum, human scum!"
I played the first game too just so I could understand this game better. Thus this will serve as a review for both games. They're about 20 mins each, so that wasn't an issue. But well, there isn't that much to say, except that the games suck.
On the first game, these three high school students with nothing better to do than wander around town manage to spot a lady shoplifting. And somehow, they make use of that knowledge to blackmail her into becoming her sex slave. After the first H-scene, it's scene after scene until the game ends.
On the second game, this chick finds The Three Stooges talking about how much they love sex, and apprehends their sex toys. After calling them human scum, she ends up fapping with those toys inside the classroom, and she follows them to the coffee shop because she's secretly a colossal pervert, I guess. The rest plays out the same as the first game.
The games have slight ero animations which kinda look good, but since it's a zoomed up close-up, they end up covering most of the CG. These games are cheap, they're too short, and they suck.
24. The Voice in the Night III - Summoning Circle Pentagram of the Three Desires
EGS-Score: 60 (45) Black Cyc Fap-o-meter: 1.5 (14) Yami no Koe III ~Gobou San'yoku Mahoujin~ Main appeal: corruption of characters 闇の声III ～五芒三欲魔方陣～
Wait, what is a Black Cyc game doing at the very bottom? To truly understand this, you'd have to play the first two games, as this one is part of the original Yami no Koe trilogy. Thankfully, I am perfectly suited for this review as I played all of the three games. However, this is a game that I would like to review at a greater length, so I'll try to keep this short.
Basically, this game sucks. No, it would be more correct to say that this would just be an average nukige, if not for its preceding legacy. Because it bears the Yami no Koe name, anyone who plays this game expects high-quality nukige, the same as the first two. But it's the complete opposite.
Here's how the gameplay goes: you have a box with several magical items, starting with five, and each one of them is supposed to awaken a dormant fetish within the heroines. Once you reach the second stage, you get up to ten items to use on the heroines.
Sounds awesome, right? Well, not really. The heroines are only receptive to one or two of the items in each stage. Most of your time is actually spent trying out different items, getting a generic "this item wasn't very effective" message, reloading, trying out a new item, getting the same crap all over again until you get it right. That's not all. While a heroine might've been receptive to an item at first, it might happen that they will not be interested in it in the future. So, it's save, reload, save, reload, save, reload. How about I just quit, uninstall this piece of crap, and never play it again?
Even worse, the protagonist doesn't interact with the heroines directly. Thanks to K's powers, he makes the item magically appear in front of the heroine, and they'll make up a suitable excuse on their own for why the item is there. What a load of bullshit. The only time you have sex with them is at the very end (if you managed to corrupt them all fully), on what feels like the developers' way of mocking and trolling the player.
You know when you play a sequel to one of your favorite games, and it's complete shit? Except that here, you can't blame EA, like with its sudden takeover of Bioware franchises such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age. No, it's literally the same writers, the same director, the very same team. They knew what they were doing with this game, and it's nothing more than a quick cash grab.
I hope I was able to convey my feelings on this matter accurately, and looking at the scoring, it's no surprise. Everyone felt let down by what is the weakest game of the Yami no Koe series.
The only good point to this game is the amazing art, by one of the best eroge/nukige artists. Even Conjueror agrees! However, he gave the second and third games the same score, so I wonder if he actually played them at all.
25. Rape Secretarial Office 2 -Midou Shirou's Chapter
EGS-Score: 65 (12) Maika Fap-o-meter: 1.5 (2) Ryoujoku Hishoshitsu 2 ~Midou Shirou Hen~ Main appeal: sexual slavery, mind control, forceful sex 凌辱秘書室2 ～御童志狼篇～
This game is about rape. It has rape in the title, and even the game's executable file is called "RAPE2.exe".
Basically, you have Midou Shirou, who can use some sort of mysterious power, which translated literally would be something incomprehensible such as "Obscene Vortex Core Fist." Probably some kind of wordplay.
When he says specific keywords, it triggers something within the heroines - there are no tools that need to be used, so it's just a special ability of his. And by special ability, I mean that it's a complete cheat.
After you meet all the heroines, you can choose one of them to be your trained sex slave, as in, it's something that already happened. I found that to be interesting at first, but it's actually kinda lame. Let's say you were interested in a character, would you want to conquer her or would you want the game to gift you her as your already trained slave?
Your objective is to obtain sensitive financial information and have lots of sex while you're at it. Your chosen sex slave will assist you in this task, so you already have six slightly different ways of playing the game. This all sounds awesome, but it's simply too easy. It's too easy to make the heroines fall thanks to Shirou's ability, having them call you "Master" by one H-scene's time.
To begin with, the protagonist is already a cool stud, does he really need this power? He doesn't have any interesting motivations or something you can empathize with. This game is just a trashy rapefest, which puts its beautiful art to waste.
26. I'll Grant Your Wish - A Gift Received in Winter
EGS-Score: 58 (17) High Soft Fap-o-meter: 1 (1) Kanaete Ageru ~Fuyu ga Kureta Okurimono~ Main appeal: group sex かなえてあげる～冬がくれた贈り物～
The premise is rather simple. The protagonist wants to have sex with his girlfriend, but it's totally not happening any time soon, and he faps to his sexual fantasies all day. Wow, he and I are not so different after all!
So, these girls suddenly appear in his room and make the proposal as mentioned earlier. The story is well, as you could imagine, nothing special. It's nothing but senseless H-scene after H-scene, without any thread linking the events together. Put simply, it's just boring to read/play.
You literally play as Santa's little helper, as you go from house to house, and research which present to give to the residents. Depending on the presents you pick, your relationship will improve with one of the heroines. This is a quite cumbersome system, and not very easy without a walkthrough. I wasn't able to find one...
Since the protagonist is the only one who can see the girls, it could also be that he's simply had one fap too many, and none of this is real. Yep, that's probably it.
27. Let me fuck 'ya, teach!
EGS-Score: 50 (11) Tryset Fap-o-meter: 1 (3) Yarasete! Teacher Main appeal: straight shotacon やらせてっ！てぃーちゃー
For a while, I thought I was playing a Complet's game, as this one has similar art, humor, and sexual content. You play as an overly perverted brat and constantly tease the new assistant teacher. Instead of proper routes, just like Matty (ugh), you collect events. The difference is that you trigger those events by moving around the school, as you pick the location you want to visit. I find this blind guessing system to be annoying, so I'd recommend a walkthrough once again.
I actually liked the H-scenes, and I'm pretty surprised this game is sitting here at the bottom, especially when you consider that it spawned a whole series. Maybe Tryset were off to a bad start with this one, or the players just found the system to be too cumbersome.
28. Day-care worker <3
EGS-Score: 45 (9) Triangle-delta Fap-o-meter: 1 (1) Hobo-san Chu! Main appeal: roleplay 保母さんちゅ！
Thought I'd start by giving a warning that, despite the protagonist's profession and the game's setting, all participants in sexual activities are consenting adults.
That already makes for strange setting though. Who thought about mixing up daycare work with...roleplay? The worst part is that they do a pretty poor job at explaining the need for such a thing in the first place. I mean, I don't think it helps her understand the kids' feelings any better by changing adult diapers or making her piss on the ground.
Overall, the setting just feels at odds with the game's sexual content, but it does make for an interesting premise, I guess. I do commend them for trying out something different, and I do find the H-scenes to be not that bad...
The main highlights are the beautiful OP (no need to listen past 2:10) and yet another casting by Isshiki Hikaru.

29. Petite Idols - Disgraceful Fan Appreciation Day
EGS-Score: 52 (14) Black Lilith Fap-o-meter: 1 (3) Puchi Idol ~ Chijoku no Fan Kansha Day Main appeal: lolicon, cosplay, forceful sex, group sex ぷちアイドル～ちじょくのファン感謝デー
This is just bad. I feel like I really hit the bottom of the barrel with this one. It comes with a really stupid reasoning for revenge: the two idols are cheeky and foul-mouthed and treat their greasy, sweaty, disgusting otaku fans with the disrespect they deserve. But then came fan appreciation day...
30. Nestle Close III - Manager Hibiki
EGS-Score: 70 (3) Haikara Kissa Fap-o-meter: 0.5 (2) Nestle Close III Main appeal: onee-san, big breasts, glasses Nestle Close III
I physically cannot play this game, as short-haired heroines with glasses are the worst. Next.
31. Soft and Tender Lesson
EGS-Score: 50 (11) Trabulance Fap-o-meter: 0 (1) Pururn Jugyou Main appeal: breasts, big breasts, big tiddies, tits, oppai ぷるるん授業
As advertised, the heroines have enormous breasts to the point that it's sure to cause back problems. If you're into this type of thing, you might get some enjoyment out of it. However, I found the game to be a completely average nukige.
Of particular note, there is a toggle correct choice indicator. Interact with the same heroine enough times, and you'll have sex with them. Wow, now that I put that in words, it seems that'd describe most games. Either way, despite being thrown to the very bottom, it's certainly not THAT bad. Then again, there's only one vote which is... mine.
My Thoughts and Conclusions
First of all, thanks to everyone who stuck with me until the very end. Or perhaps you're one of the people who scrolled down to the very bottom? It's alright, I don't blame you.
The truth is, this format sucks. Usually, you'd first find a game you like, play it, and then maybe review it, not the other way around. This would've worked much better if I had a team of perverts working with me. Each one of us could pick a game that we might like, play it, and then review it. This was way too much work for one person, as this was all my own, original commentary, but I did my very best for the quality not to suffer.
The very idea of reviewing eroge and excluding nukige would be ridiculous, as despite bearing the "stigma" that comes with the nukige tag, there are some pretty good games amongst those that I reviewed. Making people aware of that was my initial objective, and I hope to have realized it.
Not surprisingly, there's a good number of games focused in particular fetishes. I think it's interesting that there wasn't a single Netorare game amongst these, perhaps the genre hadn't taken off yet. There's a big divide between games with consensual sex and games with forceful sex. The first usually focuses on lighter fetishes, while the second group often goes all the way with hardcore sexual slavery.
I play my games on fullscreen, so I wasn't bothered by the resolution. And there are plenty of games with beautiful art, mood-setting soundtrack, and stellar voice acting performances nonetheless.
The most significant conclusion I'd take is that most of these games, well, suffer from too much gameplay at times. Like I've said on my very first review, it doesn't matter how good your content is if the system is cumbersome in a way that players have too much of a hard time accessing it. You can have a map movement system like Eisai Kyouiku's, which forces you to check a walkthrough every 10 seconds, or you can have one like Saishuu Chikan Densha 2's, where you can worry less about optimization and focus more on having fun. The second is one where the creator really thought about the player experience, how would people actually feel playing the game.
I also found it interesting that most protagonists are actually adults. There are several university students, but you have them do all kinds of jobs: ordinary salarymen, teachers, daycare worker, clerk, doctors, idol manager, grocer, businessman, restaurant floor manager, tutor, even a priest... You also have many different kinds of settings, as if everyone was trying hard to carve their own niche. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking about how everyone, even the little guys, was working hard, giving up precious time during the holiday season to provide us with great fapping material. God bless you.
Oh, you’re probably wondering why I didn’t talk about Saya no Uta. Well, it’s the title that needs no introductions, so I decided to go ahead and not talk about it at all to make my job easier. The point of this article was to have short reviews and summaries for lesser known games of the month, so I can’t just feature the most popular ones and not or just dismissively ignorant talk about the rest. The fap-o-meter is astonishingly low, which is complete blasphemy. This is one of the hottest english published eroge out there, with also one of the best translations available. There’s a story about how Makoto wouldn’t sell his translation until his writer parents approved it, so you can be certain of its quality.
As a closing statement, please, by all means, do try some of these games and enjoy yourself to your heart's content. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me, please go ahead and message me or leave a comment below. As always, thank you for reading, and I appreciate any and all feedback.