Fred the Barber

... I'm going to be blunt.  It has been a while (think 2014) since any company has produced a nakige that compares to this one.  The characters, their backgrounds, their personalities, and the setting all come together to form a story of deep affection, pain, and tears that had me crying more than a dozen times throughout the VN.
In terms of heroines, this VN's imoutos are the best.  Shinobu is the twisted, obsessive half-yandere, super-capable imouto who adores her niisan (with good reason).  Tsubasa is the honest, affectionate, straightforward imouto who is incapable of hiding anything.  While the other two heroines kind of pale compared to those two, their routes are another story entirely.
I'm going to be straight... there are no bad or under-developed paths in this VN.  The characters' emotional and real-life (to them) struggles are intense, engrossing, and emotional.  Neneko's and Yuuka's paths are cases of the 'paths surpassing the heroines', a phenomenon that has become sadly rare in recent years, as writing quality has fallen drastically in the charage 'genre'. 
Technically, Tsubasa's is the true route, but none of the routes were neglected in favor of hers, though I could have wished for an epilogue based a few years later for Shinobu's path (a matter of personal taste).  This is a mark of the skill of the writer and the person who designed the scenario, as the fact is that in most cases where there is a true or central heroine, the other heroines tend to be neglected, at least in my experience.
The protagonist in this story will probably get mixed reactions out of people, if only because he is a bit angsty, especially when issues of parents come up.  He has good reason, as he is a victim of child abuse (he doesn't hide this, and it is revealed within the first half-hour of reading).  At heart, he is a good person, but he is very exclusive in the people he cares about and insanely protective of those chosen few.  His obsession with his role as a big brother causes some big problems in Shinobu's route, but that is mostly because he is very hard-headed and straight-laced... the type of guy who makes a vow to himself and never breaks it, even in the particulars.
Story-wise... this is classic non-Key nakige fare.  The protagonist deals with his own issues (to varying degrees) while doing his best for the heroines, the troubles and drama along the way designed to drag the tears out of you, though it all ends happily eventually.  I was particularly touched by the healing that occurs in the protagonist in Tsubasa and Neneko's endings (through different methods), and I, for once, wasn't frustrated with the protagonist and heroine's struggles in Shinobu's path. 
None of the characters' struggles felt forced or unnatural, the way many charage make them seem, which was impressive in and of itself.
Overall, this is a first-class addition to anyone's nakige collection, and it is definitely going to be stiff competition for my VN of the Month for May.  I wept, I laughed, and I suffered along with the characters and out of sympathy for them.  I come out of this VN glad that I played it, a rare experience for a person who is as jaded as I am when it comes to VNs.

Did I say shoujo? I meant just about every sodding romance manga.
Back when I started reading manga, most of what I read were shoujo manga's. Very, very long shoujo manga where the couple only get together at the very end, if at all.
Whilst I nowadays stand against this practice, for reasons I will later disclose, I can understand how one would enjoy the "dramatic" situations, "romantic" moments, standard "comedy", and stories about friendship and high school experiences. What I just described composes 90% of all manga I've read. After all, these elements are to my taste.
Unless done badly, as they are many a time. Typical plot development goes something like this:
Female Protagonist is a loner or has bad friends. Love interest resolves these issues. Alternatively, skip step one and start with good friends already. Because of some random event or plot convenience, the Female Protagonist is either attracted to or forced to interact with Love Interest. Tales of Friendship and slightly romantic events ensue. Eventually, one (or both) of them realise how close they've become, and consequently act overly conscious. This leads to their partner misunderstanding the situation. Somehow, the issue is resolved, and the couple grows closer still. When things are looking particularly good for our couple, the love rival arrives, and somehow makes more progress in two chapters than the main couple in twenty. Misunderstandings ensue. They clarify the misunderstanding, still, some other event causes yet another. Rinse and Repeat. (Optional) The couple actually enters a relationship. Done well, I can live with it. After the initial misunderstandings, it's only natural for the couple to realise how much they actually care for each other and confess. But that's not how it goes in manga. Oh, no. The only ones they are fooling is themselves Scratch that, They aren't even fooling themselves. After a certain point, the main couple is very much in love, and very much care for each other. Yet, for some mind-boggling reason, the author must find a way to ensure they are not in any condition to confess, either due to unforeseeable or uncontrollable circumstances, or because of some incomprehensible misunderstanding that always pops up at that opportune moment for a confession.
This can still be done well, assuming I'm not reading a 200 chapter manga. But guess what? A great deal of manga prefer to be segmented into smaller chapters with a spread out story; and it shows. I can hardly imagine the amount of money the mangaka would lose if they condensed their "150 chapter" manga into a measly 40. What if instead of having a new misunderstanding crop up every couple of chapters, they actually acted on their feelings? Boring. It'd end in no time at all. Because, as should be obvious, it must end after the confession. Any more than that and you're into blasphemous territory.
I kid. If the manga has the guts to progress past the confession, I will almost certainly enjoy it. So those aren't the ones I'm fulminating against. If out of 100 chapters, 40 of them involve an after confession relationship, then you get my seal of approval. Go ask Kimi ni Todoke (which, for some reason, just refuses to end).
Back into our slow romances, I can't claim to be particularly satisfied when out of over 200 chapters, only about a couple of them involve an official relationship. Looking at you, Mr. Hana yori Dango. Then perhaps something more accessible, say, about 88 chapters, would be better? Shiawase Kissa 3-choume didn't bother to grace us with so much as a kiss, so I'm not sure about that (not that a kiss is necessary in a romance - CLANNAD knows what's up).
If you want a slow romance done well, follow Cross Game's example: Make it more of a side thing that's continuously going on, but don't ride the plot on it. Until an official relationship is established, romance doesn't make for all that strong a mount. Don't like sports? You prefer more "shoujo-like" topics, like friendship and goodness? Fruits Basket has you covered.
Though I guess those are kind of avoiding the issue. Can you make something almost purely romantic entertaining, even if there's no official relationship? Dengeki Daisy says yes. Even if it's about 100 chapters? "Why not?" answers Kaichou wa Maid-sama.
Clearly it can be done well. This all on the table, can someone explain to me how the highly rated Ao Haru Ride manages to be one of the most irritating romance manga I've read? It has a quarter of Hana yori Dango's size and triple the pointless drama! In one chapter, the couple (who still hasn't confessed to each other) go from kissing to having the biggest distance between them yet. And things just keep getting worse and worse. Despite how literally everyone, including themselves, know they love each other.
This whole manga is very painful to digest as is, so I had to go add copious amounts of . It should now be fine.

Oh shit, I’m cooking today and it’s like one hour til I have to start. I really should have remembered to take something out of the freezer to thaw… I really don’t want to thaw something in the microwave, so my options are basically gradually peeling off a block of ground meat in the pan (huge pain), krögarpytt (brand of frozen mix of potato, onion and various meats, plus lots of things I’d have to look at the ingredients list for), or… oh yes, my saviour – that lovely meaty cylindrical thing I first had back in Eastern Europe.
Regrettably, I am not speaking of dicks.
The frozen ćevapčići lidl sells in 1kg bags is both delicious and affordable, but we’ve had it a few too many times recently. I should probably cook something else… maybe I’ll change the condiments from rice to pasta or fries… fuck fries turning them is a huge pain… meh fuck pasta too… okay it’s rice again… wait, I could make a sauce! …but what exactly? It’s not like I have the time to make tomato sauce from scratch, and frankly it’s not like it’s that great anyway (I’ve done it according to a legit recipe once!).
Well, if you don’t like a recipe you can always change it! I quickly search the fridge and find a fairly small red onion, garlic (not an option, was rotting), and okay that was all I was looking for in the fridge to begin with. Next I reach for the box of strained tomatoes I know is in the larder next to the fridge. Surprisingly it has not been abducted by aliens (maybe the red on the packaging scared them off), allowing me to wrest it from the depths of the… just kidding, it was at chest height on the second shelf.
I get a bouillon cube, a knife, put some rapeseed oil in a saucepan, and set to business; the business is making the bouillon cube submit to my knife (not the easiest), and cutting the onions.
I managed to not cry.
The preparation of the ćevapčići and rice was easy (and irrelevant). Anyway, the sauce. I heat the oil at medium-high for a bit, pop in a piece of onion to see if it’s ready, and the bubbling around it assures me that this is the case. I put in the rest of the onion and stir it around a bit, lower the heat, and pour in some of the strained tomato and the semi-powdered bouillon cube (it did not submit fully, but I was able to impose strict limits on its military and generally destroy its infrastructure), let it boil, add salt (used a lot, which was a bad idea – try not to do that, the bouillon cube prolly has it already), white pepper, and finally the x-factor ingredient I just had to put in: chili flakes. A bit too many, I reflected after I had thrown in a bunch. After letting it boil slightly and stirring it around a bit, I decided it was done, used a spoon to try it, and was promptly greeted with something strong and edible, probably in that order.
It was actually not too bad, and if nothing else it proves that whipping something up on your own isn’t necessarily too bad. At least if you’re a Zaka. I may or may not make it ever again, but I’ll probably take it a bit easier with the chili flakes and use less salt.
Thus concludes this episode of Cooking With Zaka.
Ingredients:
1 bouillon cube 1 red onion strained tomatoes white pepper salt (maybe) chili flakes / seeds / whatever rapeseed oil (olive oil might be better) Serve with other stuff, if you actually think it’s worth trying. There are probably better recipes.


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Since I already did a full review of this back when it first came out, I'm going to restrict my words on this to comments about things I noticed or found interesting during the second playthrough (setting aside spoilers).
First... Zephyr.  As a protagonist, he is the kind of guy most people would love to hate.  In Japanese, he frequently refers to himself with blunt internal honesty (and outwardly to others as well) as '小者’　and ’凡人’ (words that basically mean he is the lowliest of 'normal' people).  His primary directives are living low profile, staying away from trouble, and avoiding things like victory and defeat at all costs.  However, the moment he's backed into the corner, he becomes a psychopathic murderer who will do anything to survive, including humiliating and killing others painfully.  He gains a dark pleasure from seeing people better than him fall into ruin, and he is the farthest thing from a hero that you can possibly imagine.  It is a mark of the skill of the writers in this VN that he is actually likeable anyway, lol.
Second, Millie.  To be honest, she is basically the Kasumi (Dies Irae reference) of this VN.  She is warm and loving by nature, a representative of the life that Zephyr wants to live as well as the one person he would willingly do anything to protect (including die, which says a lot considering his abnormal attachment to life).  Chuunige makers almost compulsively include at least one heroine of this type in their games, because the rest of the heroines are usually somewhat psychopathic, broken, or otherwise outside of the norm.  That she is also actually 'useful' in the VN is a plus point in her favor, as such heroines go.
Third, Chitose... Amatsu Oboro Chitose is my favorite type of chuunige heroine, the type that mixes love, hate, and obsession in varying amounts when it comes to the protagonist, but still retains her sense of self nonetheless.  She is the elite of the elite, a thoroughbred warrior-leader who lives for her work (which is killing people and administering judgement/justice).  Her attachment to the protagonist might seem weird to someone not used to the somewhat twisted relationships common to action-fantasy VNs, but this kind of heroine is an absolute treat for those of us who are experienced in the genre.  Also, a warrior-type that is not a straight-laced, unaware-of-her-own-feelings type heroine is nice indeed.
Fourth... Vendetta.  I'm going to be blunt.  Do-S eternaloli.  Rusheed's obsession with her (since he is a do-M lolicon) is perfectly understandable, and she also works out nicely as the game's true heroine, as she has that peculiar inherent sense of tragedy and loss that true heroines in good chuunige tend to have.  Unfortunately, talking about her any further would ruin it for those who haven't read the VN yet.
Fifth, Valzeride.  This guy is a primary antagonist and the hero of Adler, the country (and city) in which this VN is based.  I'm going to be blunt... in any other chuunige VN, this guy would be the protagonist.  I'm not kidding.  He is upright, outstanding, utterly capable, and honorable to a fault, within his own sense of personal morality.  He is Zephyr's antithesis and the contrast is actually a pretty significant issue in the VN.  Even if this guy weren't the protagonist in another chuunige, he would be the one who dies to save the world, leaving the protagonist and everyone else to weep in loss.  If this guy were ruling my country, I'd probably join the military too, lol.
I hope this gives those interested - or not yet interested - in this VN an idea of what the primary characters are like, lol.

Katawa Shoujo was a first for me in a few fields, which I might have discussed briefly in an earlier post. It was my first visual novel, and while I'm not exactly a font of knowledge of experience in the medium, it opened me up to a wonderful (if expensive and sometimes questionable) form of storytelling. It was the first exposure I had to a Japanese-style thing, and while not being actually Japanese itself, got me on that road too.
It was also the first internet forum I got properly involved with, back in February 2014. I managed to rack up over 1,000 posts of mostly (if I'm honest) trying to figure out whether Emi or Rin is bestgirl, mooning over artwork, and just general mindless shitposting. Really, I look back on the time and it's a strange mixture of trying to figure out why I spent so much time there, and being sincerely glad I did. Just distracting myself on there and discussing essentially irrelevant bumph helped me out vastly during a crappy stage of my life, and for that I'm forever grateful towards it.
However, being a forum based around a singular VN there's only so much somebody can contribute (at least, without being excellent at art or a damn good creative writer). The amount of times a lemon joke can be made, or a Rinfidel can be declared eventually dries up, and so after spending roughly a year on it, I basically stopped going on there. Every now and then I would pop my head back in to see if I was missing anything interesting, but then even those occasions started to disappear, and about 9-10 months went by.
I figured that, today, I might just see how this little community was doing. I was never what I would call a major part of the community, but as I've already alluded to I was fond of it - I just had nothing left to offer. Yet, I opened it up and what greeted me was a sad state of inactivity. It was, I admit, never the fastest moving forum in the world, but typically things would move at a fair-t'-middling pace most of the time - a good 10 or so topics a day with at least one comment, perhaps one or two with a decent conversation on. But this time, there were 8 topics explored in the 'Public Discussion' field since the start of April. I found one or two conversations - short, but conversations nevertheless - that had taken place, largely among people who were regulars when I used to frequent, but very few new faces.
To be fair, for what it is it's had a bloody good run (the forums themselves opened in 2007 in their current guise) and to call it dead would be unfair - it's not like nothing's happening - but it seems to be approaching a moribund, final state. Whether it happens next year, or the year after, who knows, but for myself it brings a very real feeling of sadness. I understand this is how forums work. People come and go, some stay for longer than others; this is just a fact of life in these places, and for more 'limited' forums one only expects a natural lifespan, obviously culminating in death. But to see a community start to fade, particularly one I held dear during my time there... Yeah, it does bring me down a little.
And that got me thinking. I regularly partake in two internet communities, and it made me appreciate how much I actually feel towards these people; people who I've never met and am never likely to meet. Most will likely phase out as time goes by - be it days, months, years - and I fully expect it will be the same for me. I'll likely only think about them once in a while, a thought like "Oh, I wonder how such-and-such is getting on nowadays". The two I am part of are both far more expansive in their scope than the KS forums - Fuwanovel for... well, obviously visual novels, and the other for music - and I suppose that they will probably last longer than I give them my attention as a consequence. But the fact that these communities leave such an indelible mark on my being, however small I may think they are, means that one day I am likely to feel this feeling of sadness once again, whether I come back to find it nearly gone, or whether I stick around long enough to see it fall.
 
Sorry for being a bit of a bummer, but this hit me a little harder than I suppose it might/should and wished to vent a little. Here's Renge singing
 

This is going to be a guide on how to buy digital VNs legally on Gyutto, using Tsui Yuri ~ as an example.
 
This can indeed be done from a foreign IP adress, so no proxy is needed. That being said, the entire website is in Japanese, so here is a guide with pictures and steps, walking you through it. (NOTE! You must be 18+ in order to make purchases here, obviously.)
 
 
NOTE: NSFW PICTURES ON THE SITE!
Link to the Tsui Yuri ~ purchase page
 
 
 
Go ahead and add the game to your cart, like this:
 
 
Now go ahead and click LOG IN AS GUEST. For those of you who cannot read moon runes, click the box with the big red circle. Note, should they ever change the layout of their site, just find the big box with these moon runes and click it. (NOTE AGAIN! Slightly NSFW content in one part of the picture.) Yes, I will be saying NOTE a lot in this guide. Deal with it  
 
 
Now select credit card and continue. (Yes foreign credit cards works.)
Now just hit confirm and move over to the purchase page. (Just ... just follow the big red circles.)
And here we are at the big screen of death. Actually, what goes where is uber simple to understand, but if all you see is gibberish, don't worry. Here is the list of what goes where. (Once again, should they ever change the layout of their site, remember which one of these corresponds with what information, and fill it out.)
 
 
 
List of the required info in order:
 
credit card number
 
expire date
 
security code
 
Full name
 
Email adress. (THIS MUST BE YOUR REAL EMAIL! IT IS IMPORTANT!)
 
Confirm your email adress (AGAIN, THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT.)
 
 
 
Now click the button on the bottom with red under it and continue.
 
 
 
Now it takes you to a screen saying an email has been sent, and it lists your order number etc. (You will see your email on the page, and if you managed to put in your real email, you did good. If not... Then just ... ugh..)
 
 
 
 
You will now have gotten an email with the download link and a unique password. THE PASSWORD IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! WIHTOUT IT, YOU CANNOT ACTIVATE YOUR GAME!
 
In the email there is a URL called "guest login." Click the link, and then move down and find your game. Hit download.
 
NOTE!
 
Seeing as you are a guest, you have 1 week to download your game. The game files themselves are movable obviously, so once you have them, you can put them on an external hardrive, but the download link will disappear after 1 week.
 
The password you got in your email WILL WORK EVEN AFTER 1 WEEK. It will be the password you use to activate the game. (EVERY COMPUTER MUST ACTIVATE THE GAME 1 TIME BEFORE USE.) So write this password down or save the email containing it.
 
If we look here, we can see that the text in the circle says the game download is expired, where as the one on the top, tsui yuri, is downloadable. Click the big download button of your new game.
 
 
 
Now, extract the game files with WinRaR or whatever.
( Copy your password to the clipboard or remember it. )
 
And here we are! You have your game downloaded, and only one step remains! Putting in your password and Email once. The first time you open the program, it should look like this: (Note that the .exe file will be called something different for each game, obviously.)
 
 
And now fill in the information. (THE TOP FIELD IS FOR YOUR EMAIL, THE BOTTOM FIELD IS FOR THE UNIQUE PASSWORD.)
 
 
If you did everything correctly, you will now have your game working and ready. The next time you open it up, you will not need a password to access it. (Every new IP adress will though. So, if you move the files to your work computer or whatever, you will need to activate it again using the password.)

You can find the original post here: http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/12218-gahkthun-of-the-golden-lightning-released/?do=findComment&comment=379071
In a timely reply to Eclipsed's pertinent question.
----
When I first started this VN, I'll admit, I had high hopes.
To start with, it had Koestl as a translator, and his translation of Grisaia no Kajitsu very much made for half the VN's greatness. In my eyes, he proved himself as entirely capable of "translating", a broad term that can mean anything from converting a bunch of words from a language into appropriate synonyms of another language; to picking up the meaning of a sentence or paragraph and rewriting it in another language whilst attempting to maintain the same style, word usage and meaning. I'm specifically referring to the latter here: For examples, check many of Grisaia's word puns, language usage and referential/cultural jokes which, in the hands of many other translators, would have lost their significance in a western language.
I was not disappointed on this front. I do not know the Japanese language. I could not possibly know (much like with Grisaia) whether the speech style, narration style, word usage, terminology or what have you has been faithfully translated. What I can vouch for is that it's certainly a cohesive, natural and, to many, I'm sure, beautiful work in its own right. I'm not here to debate whether "Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning" is Sakurai's story that has been respectfully converted into our language, or merely Koestl's modified copy. I'm here to state that, so far as I believe, "Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning" is a wonderfully written story. The English is phenomenal, in that it is anything beyond what I could ever write, has a vocabulary that is evidently larger than my own and, all throughout, the various stylistic choices make sense in context and work to make an entire cohesive, natural and beautiful work.
Take this with as many grains of salt as you will, for I am not a native, nor have I ever read anything beyond the standard fare of Visual Novels, which certainly don't even compare. Most of what I've read does not even try to be written this way.
That's a good point. What do I even mean by "written this way"? I find myself at a loss when asked to describe the writing style, so I'll instead broach my thoughts and opinions on the various aspects of the writing. From here on out, expect spoilers.
Narration. Three chapters into this VN and I'd put it on the back burner. The VN itself was not bad, but there were things that very much irked me. Not the last of which was the omniscient narrator. Mind you, by themselves, I actually prefer a narrator who is aware of everything, who can describe everything with a degree of accuracy. What I hate, what I despise, is this characteristic combined with various others: Contradiction of facts for emphasis, his omniscience conveniently fails where the situation is most dire, for emphasis, repetition of the same sentences with slight or hardly any alteration, and hyperboles and metaphors.
I'll try to exemplify these:
The many times Tesla dodged undodgeable attacks, or avoided unavoidable contraptions. A quote where there were "Ten, twenty, thirty... countless numbers of knives were launched toward him."  is the first to spring to mind.
You'll notice these hardly qualify as bad writing or anything even remotely close. These are nothing but my own personal preference and I hate every last one of these writing tropes. It's these, in tandem with my general disinterest toward descriptions of battle where most of it is so hyperbolic that it's not possible for me to picture... that made me skip most action/battle scenes. Not just in Gahkthun, either. In Muv-Luv Alternative, in Rewrite, in Fate/Stay: Night, Tsukihime may forever burn in hell for it, and I couldn't even read more than an hour of I/O: revision II - I still don't know what this one's about, only that the writing made me steer bloody clear of it. I want to make lucid I am not absolutely bonkers and contradicting what I've said just earlier: The writing is indeed exceptional. Everything else but these literary devices were parts I loved, and I'm pretty sure that, to just about anyone else, what I've pointed out aren't even flaws, but commendable use of the language.
After later on being urged to continue reading by multiple users of Fuwanovel itself, I ended up continuing the visual novel, and by no means did I regret it. Some of the literary devices I actually came to find quite charming: "Of the many rumours surrounding the Governing Council, this is one of the very few that happens to be true." x12 - Not that I really know much about writing or its devices. This "omniscient" narrator and blatant contradiction of previously stated facts can actually be used in a rather effective way, methinks. The way the narrator constantly switches with a characters inner monologue is effective. Very much so. It goes a long way to accurately represent the panic, confusion and emotional strife of a character, when we are given such a glaring contrast between narration styles... I can say it was highly effective with me. I could also tolerate the highly hyperbolic descriptions because of how... ridiculous the setting is as a whole. I would actually not be surprised if Nightingale had died a thousand times just by being looked at by... murderous red eyes in the sky.
Another peculiar thing about the structure of the story, and this goes on to connect with the story and plot more than the writing itself, are the exercises for the reader - or fairytales.
This Visual Novel is divided into twelve chapters. Each chapter starts with a small introduction, it either expands the setting, introduces new characters or starts smack dab in the middle of an already ongoing plot. When the VN first threw these "reading exercises" at my face I was pretty... intrigued. How weird. Such a strange way to tell a story. What's their purpose? What do they do? Initially, I was quite confused. They were minimalistic, and, more often than not, they seemed to have no real correlation to anything that was going on. How ignorant I was. How foolish of me. There were two aspects I was particularly fond of:
These exercises, as a whole, required input from the player, and I believe that, for the most part, all of them tried to teach something. To showcase various paths for radiance. And let it be known, radiance, despite the name and main theme behind Tesla, does not always imply good and just. I'll come back to this later.
The second part I really liked is how effective they turned out to be with me. I cried various times over the course of the VN, probably four or thereabout. The smashing majority were during these exercises. The music and the minimalistic images joined together, the narration and context derived from the main story itself, they come together and fill in all the holes forming a wonderful and emotional tale. The main story shows you the present, which you deem mostly incomprehensible a great deal the time, or fail to understand the context. Afterward, or sometimes in the very middle of what appears to be the climax, these calm, relaxing exercises suddenly appear and fill in all the holes. You learn the motivations. You relate the exercise characters to the real characters, you find out their past through this, and it is altogether more effective than flat out stating it all.
These brought their own problems. After learning of the nature of these exercises, you start to spot patterns and can immediately deduce who the story will focus on within the first few minutes: See Émile's chapter with Louis-Charles. On the other hand, this can still be used effectively to induce false conclusions. See Berta's chapter - the exercises lead us to believe she is the woman in question (and in turn, may render the "she's actually female" reveal, rather stale) when she is actually her daughter. Not much of a twist, but it does show the writer was probably well aware of the flaw, with how they toy with is like this.
Moving on from the reading exercises, I'll continue with the setting.
I found it rather interesting if a bit depressing with a tinge of hopefulness. A Steampunk setting doesn't really speak to me. I have no strong opinions either way. Since this is a Steampunk setting and I'm not interested either way, that's out in regards as to why I found it interesting. This leaves an alternate history setting, which I liked, and copious amounts of references to a living, breathing world out there all throughout the story. Situations like Holmes existing, various historical personages with their own roles in history and my very own dictionary with a good deal of backstory all within. Add to all this how the characters and omniscient narrator refer to previous events constantly, things we don't know about, things we might have known about, were we an actual character in the story, and this works wonders for immersion.
Of course, hating all things "bad" and "evil" like I do, I was very much saddened at the polluted and irreversible society they lived in. Also not a fan of how most of the "new" technology were things that have only recently been invented or things we can't even mimic with today's technology: See all the giant robots, androids and machines that make you learn on your own (I am guessing they were actually effective beyond being used for the chairman's schemes, here).
As for the plot, I can say I  actually didn't see it going anywhere far, which is why the last three or so chapters surprised me. For the first few chapters, I thought every chapter we'd get new characters and solve a mystery and help people. Of course, this sort of come and go episodic format doesn't do much for plot, unless they are all connected, and they certainly didn't seem all that connected, early on. I would actually have been fine if it kept up until the end. I liked the format and the various little stories. To me that was fine. But in those last three chapters they picked up the slack, kicked up the drama a notch, let the big bad go free, and made one of those "all those you've helped in the past band together and (in soviet russia) help you" sort of stories. Being a sucker for that sort of thing, I was rather satisfied. Of course, given how the VN had thus far focused the climaxes on the battles, It was rather anti-climatic when Tesla insta-kills the big bad after reuniting with Neon. Turns out the zenith of the chapter had been her trip to Tesla, not the fight itself.
To go into further details, I feel I should focus on the characters and their respective chapters.
Starting with Tesla. Because the narrator does not lie (even though he is omniscient: Umineko could stand to learn a few things about not lying to the reader in a mystery), we know right from the start that most of his claims are true, his true nature is one who does not lie, one who pursues justice, one who fights evil. We can also plainly see he is arrogant, brutally honest, curt and that he does not mince words. All of these are pluses to me, provided the arrogance has justification - which it does - in both skill and age. Speaking of age, given how he cannot lie, why is it that he was able to declare he was younger than he actually was? Whilst this made for a small comedic gag about not wanting to seem too old, I don't deem it as worth breaking character or principles for.
Tesla makes, therefore, for one of my favourite male characters to speak of, in ideals and personality both.
If I had to find a negative, him deciding he would need to atone for his existence with Neon, that he caused her love life such unnecessary strife because of his predetermined decision... would be my main flaw. Had he simply said, "My existence caused their deaths; by the time I found out, it was already to late.", had he simply explained the circumstances... the whole final chapter could have been avoided, really. Optimal scenario doesn't really make for much of a story, I suppose.
Surprisingly enough, Neon's friends did not get much in the way of development.
We know a bit about Annabeth's father and her methods as well of personality. Of Neon's friends, she was the one who appeared the most. Not that that helped me understand what her relation with JJ actually was, in the end.
We never did get to find out Izumi's secret with the "headband" and tail, though foreshadowing made it obvious enough.
Poor Albert was hardly present. At least JJ and Louis-Charles had chapters where they could be present more often, but no such mercy for Albert. Being kicked out of the beach chapter deeply hurt his overall presence in the VN.
These general characters mentioned, I believe I should get some order around here and backtrack all the way to the first chapter... To the very start of the Visual Novel.
It certainly knew how to make an impression. We start playing as this seemingly nice girl who goes to school and appears to be awfully shy... only to find out her real circumstances aren't anything so nice. We see her deluding herself, all in an attempt to stay at this academy for reasons yet unknown. All we know is that she had to, somehow. We slowly, or maybe rather quickly, see her breaking down, no matter what she herself claimed. We see the nature of the people she is dealing with. When, after a long, long, while, we see that she lost her highly unstable job, and that her boss was quite indeed on the verge of coming on top of her...
It ends.
I'm not sure if that's where the chapter ends, but I do know that the story perspective stops there, and we don't find out exactly what took place until... the bloody final chapter. I'll give you this: There's no reason we couldn't have found out about what happened earlier... but I guess it's fine.
From here we see Neon in a rather shameless position for a while and are introduced to our main character, where he does a wonderful job showcasing the traits I've referred to above. Also, Jelly Beans - we'll come back to those. Speaking of things we'll come back to, try not to forget about the various "Q:"s we were put through at the start.
Chapter 2 - or are we still in chapter 1? - does some things I very much enjoyed. After that dark and demoralising first impression, we are introduced to the hero who fixes everything, and he did fix everything, and this touched some of my favourite situations in media: A slave being given freedom or being treated like a human. It is actually rather strange how she found the audacity to complain at her new "Master" about all sorts of things...
That aside, this chapter (or is it the next one?) includes the very first battle in the VN, with Walther. I wasn't really a fan of it, at all. Sure, I like to see overpowered characters using highly exaggerated powers with silly names as much as the next guy, but this is assuming the next guy doesn't like them much. On the other hand, I came to like Walther himself. The character we see here, this terrible first impression he gives us as... plainly evil, really... it disappears. Or at least, over the course of the visual novel, in the incredibly brief appearances he made over the course of the rest of the visual novel, my animosity toward him just simply up and vanished, getting replaced with love, of all things! By the time I got to the end I loved the guy, and it really is mysterious how it all came to be. Perhaps there's something wrong with my head, besides the obvious?
It was in some random scene after this point that I temporarily halted the VN. When I got back to it, I found myself in Odile's chapter. This is the point where I thought I'd figured out the VN's structure with the various exercises for the reader and "mystery of the week" format. For the chapter itself, I don't have much in the way of impressions, beyond this being the first point in time Neon struck me as remotely interesting. More specifically, in the manner which she manages to read the emotions of a person somewhat accurately. Perhaps I like this trait because I'm a dimwit at it myself?
Next up was probably Anne's, the iron lady's, chapter. Each chapter shows us a different form of radiance, some more twisted than others, and Anne's? Anne's radiance seemed to be in the right place all the way through. She simply needed to be more aware she cannot be an iron lady toward everything, all the time, no matter how much she wishes it. This chapter focused on showing us the various other sides of the Marshal and revealing a bit of JJ's backstory. All in all, I liked it. She seemed to have something going on with JJ, but we never saw anything too informative, so I suppose it'll forever remain a mystery. Not even our "omniscient" narrator seemed to be fully aware of it.
Berta's chapter was set up to be the silliest thing yet. The story decided to break the rules of its own setting - or perhaps better put, take advantage of the Academia's constant bending of them - and include a beach episode. It can be said it most certainly came out of the left field. It was nevertheless appreciated: The reader mostly follows Tesla's point of view, and for good reason. The many lines he spouts during these scenes made some quite gold material. The whole love drama with Jo was entirely dispensable... but let's focus on what I really loved about this chapter: The reading exercises.
The story they told caused many a tear to jump out from my eyes. I can only assume this VN is so overpowered it gushed dust particles in my general direction during these scenes. Either that, or these scenes touched on the right subjects for me, those being family, bonds, and love. I may or may not a have bawled a bit. I didn't quite understand all that much about her whole plot for revenge... I'm just glad she came to her senses in the end. I felt satisfied after finishing this chapter. From here on I was actually rather captivated for every scene about the council, as more and more of the members came to change their views and thoughts.
Next up was Émile's chapter, which is also where I first understood how there were many sorts of radiance. Her thoughts and beliefs on how a ruler should behave, they all... seemed correct to me. And yet, simultaneously... no human being should have to be put through that. No friends, no emotions, no impartiality... that's what Tesla was trying to point out about her radiance. This is all the more amazing when you consider he's doing precisely the same thing, Tesla, by taking all burden up himself, so that others may live unhindered. Really makes you think about the many kinds of "radiance" out there. What is "just", what is "good", what is "tastiest? Chocolate or Jelly Beans?" This made the entire chapter interesting to me, this battle of ideals. I ended up really liking the resolution, with her "friend" trying to reach out to her, and said friend being helped by her own friends to do it. This is the point in the VN where I liked Neon the most, a girl who is perceptive with others' emotions, and believes in her friends through it all. Louis-Charles also got most of his development from Émile's chapter, not that I ever cared about him, much.
Chapter 9, or whatever that really short chapter with the gate to hell was, is what I considered filler with a capital F, at First. Upon thinking about it further, even though it had no connection with everything else that was going on in the background, it showed some really good sides of Neon. Her ability to trust Tesla with all her heart, enough to put herself in harm's way just to help a random student, I loved that. Her apparent "No big deal, but would you kindly get rid of the monster now? It's trying to molest me, here." attitude also made for a rather amusing scene.
Jo's chapter wasn't too interesting by my standards. I was unable to understand the conflict, and Neon's jealously irked me so. Still, I am a fan of mentally broken characters, especially when they come to heal, so I manage to salvage some enjoyment out of this chapter.
From here, we go on to the big final chapters, and this is where everything culminated. It is almost strange how they managed to address so many plot points then and there. Why the Chateu d'if (or whatever the name is) was one of the first things present on the island, why the students were so easily manipulated, Tesla's backstory, and many other things. If I were to speak of what I liked? Anything after Neon regained here memories. What I disliked? Anything involving Neon before that point. How all the governing council members were related, plus Neon and the society member, is probably the most difficult thing to believe. In my eyes, that was entirely unnecessary. It would have been fine if only Neon was related, but everyone? A wee bit too much, I thought.
A few more random impressions on the finale: Wilhelm's (...or was it Reich?) fall from glory happened far too fast, and we didn't get to see him until the end, where he still hadn't learnt his lesson. The big bad was about as absurd as expected. Florence never had a real chance to show off her powers, what with getting killed thousands of times over by the second. Tesla and Smilja's backstory really was the best here, it let me cry a bit more. Remember the Jelly Beans? Oh, so that's why. Remember the questions the game posed at the start? What do you think, now that you had time to think it over?
The very best part was, as I've said over and over, Neon recovering her memories... for no apparent reason, actually; and going on her trip to save Tesla. Meeting all the people you've seen over the course of this VN, if only for the briefest of moments, to the sound of epic music, was epic in and of itself.
...I believe that is all I wanted to say. My impressions of this VN were mostly positive, and the finale succeeded in captivating and satisfying me. There is nothing else I could ask of a story. Since I don't want to offend certain people, certain dice, I won't put a numerical value that can be easily spotted from far away, and instead I'll say that it's a nine out of ten, and hide away in an unimportant corner most people won't ever bother reading. The best place to hide a tree is a forest, after all.
 
This was the original conclusion to my post, for those interested:
This VN is a bad VN. I wanted it to end a certain way and it didn't. I wanted it to have routes and it didn't. I didn't like some of the purposeful choices in narration. Some sprites and CG's were disproportionate and the UI and menus did not feel smooth as butter. 4/10 VN.
 
Final note:
While writing this I had a desk lamp next to me, pointed at some work I was supposed to have been doing, and every time I got up I seemed to get hit by said lamp. So I decided to make a counter for it.
Hit my head on lamp count: 6
 
Post Scriptum Final Notum:

I've been a gamer for 22 long years.  I began my journey into the endless ocean of corruption that is video games with Super Mario Bros on the NES, and - while I've more or less fallen out of love with modern jrpgs - I have played a rather large number of Japanese role-playing games over the years.  Since this is a general otaku forum, I though I'd go ahead and include a list of famous pre-2008 jrpgs that can still be played today, without having to go out and hunt through bargain bins, resort to emulation, or use a non-internet-capable gaming system to play (in other words, that you only need current or the most recent previous generation of systems to play).
 
First, your most obvious source is going to be... Steam.  I'll make a quick list of JRPGs that have been ported to Steam that I think an otaku can still get some pleasure out of.  Unfortunately, while the library of games of this type being released for this platform is rapidly expanding, there is a lot of ground to cover.
Phantasy Star II- The first game from the series to be imported here, it has an interesting, if somewhat gaunt, story that is fairly enjoyable.  The difficulty level is high (like most games from the era), but if you can play modern jrpgs on hard mode, you probably won't have a problem with this.
Phantasy Star III - If you want to see where they first used the 'role-play across multiple generations' idea, this is the one.  Story-wise, it is pretty basic (like most rpgs from that era, where space was so limited) and the difficulty is pretty high, but it is also fairly enjoyable.  I honestly suggest you pull out Cheat Engine later on though.
Phantasy Star IV- The flower of the Phantasy Star series, unmatched to this day.  This game pushed the Sega Genesis to its limits and was one of the first games to utilize (a somewhat rudimentary) mission system.  Unlike the previous entries, the story is much deeper and more interesting, and the overall world-building is excellent.
Valkyria Chronicles- Ok, if you don't know about this, you are either new to jrpgs or have had your head buried into the sand...
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI (in my opinion, the best game in the series, even today)
Final Fantasy VII
Grandia II- one of two excellent games in this series (the others mostly sucking), it has both an excellent story and the single best turn-based battle system I have ever seen in a japanese role-playing game.
Shining Force- an oldie but a goodie.  It is a very basic Japanese-style srpg made during the Genesis era.
Shining Force II- Same as above, but more refined, with a better-written story and better music.
Shining in the Darkness- A first-person dungeon-crawling rpg by the makers of the Shining Force series
Tales of Symphonia (from back before the Tales series started to suck... planned later next year)
Disgaea- The original comic over-leveling jsrpg that started an entire sub-genre.  Planned for release in February of 2016.
Trails in the Sky- It was a classic, long before they actually managed to get it over here on the PSP (I'd already played it).
 
For those wondering about the virtual console on Nintendo systems, I have to apologize and say that it is just too hard to sort through what can be played on what... I will say that I can honestly recommend both Ogre Battle games (on Wii only so far) and anything with Mother or Earthbound on it.  I've heard rumors of several other old favorites, but so far neither hide nor hair of them has popped up (I'm thinking of you, Breath of Fire).
On the PSN...
Suikoden
Suikoden II (a kamige, play it.  It is still good even today)
Grandia (the original)
Growlanser Wayfarer of Time (you need a Vita or a PSP for this, but it is considered to be the best game of a first-rate series that got seriously gypped due to Working Designs' and Atlus's poor advertising)
P3P (Persona 3 on the PSP and Vita, lol)
Xenogears (still one of my favorite rpgs... it has aged better than some, though the fact of how they squeezed in three discs of story onto the last disc due to time constraints is still quite apparent)
Castlevania Symphony of the Night (barely fits in the 'rpg' layer, but meh)
Wild Arms (the first - and in some people's eyes - the best of the series)
Wild Arms 2
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy IX
Alundra (straight out Link to the Past style action jrpg)
Arc the Lad
Arc the Lad II (you have to play the original to make this comprehensible)
Arc the Lad III (ditto to above)
Front Mission III (Final Fantasy tactics with mechs in a future-setting)
Vagrant Story (mixed feelings about it, but it was essentially a good game)
Legend of Mana (a bit screwy structure and storytelling, but the various arcs are generally interesting, if you manage to do them in order)
Breath of Fire IV (the first sign of the eventual death of the series, it was still fairly good)
Chrono Trigger (duh)
Chrono Cross (best music)
Vanguard Bandits (extremely psychotic storytelling in an srpg combined with mechs in a fantasy world)
Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy VI
Persona 2: Eternal Punishment
Persona 2: Innocent Sin (play this before above)
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Tactics Ogre
Final Fantasy Tactics
 
PS2 Classics (most require a PS3 or a PS4)
Disgaea
Disgaea 2
Legaia 2 (dunno why they put this up and not the original, but it is pretty good)
Odin Sphere (not to my tastes, but I know lots of people who love it)
SMT: Digital Devil Saga I and II (basically one game in two... story-wise the best SMT game, period)
SMT: Persona 3 FES
Persona 4
SMT: Nocturne (main series, think demonic Pokemon with a central plot)
Suikoden III
Romancing SaGa
 
Recommendations for Emulation on old systems that shouldn't be missed
Straight-out, you should play Growlanser 2 and 3... and possibly consider playing the Japanese version of the original (PSP version or PS1 version) with the translation at hand.  The series is unbelievably good... especially 3.  3 has some of the best atmosphere I've seen in any Jrpg, as well as a  number of ways you can subtly alter the story and its progression.  I love the original Growlanser battle system, as it exists through IV (Wayfarer of Time) for its unique take on the semi-real-time srpg.
I also recommend emulating Dragon Force and Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn... because both games are excellent and are ridiculously expensive to obtain normally (unopened copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga have sold - from my hands - for five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars a piece).
PS: To this day, I still use Growlanser 2 and 3 to draw in newbies, because the games are easy to understand, have extremely high production values for the era in which they were made, and are still pretty today.

A few days after Christmas and the site has been infested with either selfies and star wars spoilers, or posts complaining about selfies and star wars spoilers, so it's refreshing to see something new for a change.
1-Crazy Post of the day
This one is a bit NSFW, so I'll just post the link. I can't really give you a description as I'm not sure what to say, but if you're bored out of your mind, this might slightly amuse you http://imgur.com/gallery/bUpNgCe
2-Animals
Oddly enough, this doesn't concern cats. I know, a post on the internet about animals that doesn't have cats?! I couldn't believe my eyes either! But hey, it's heartwarming sometimes to see animals do their unexpected things, so here ya go
3-What Happens When You Lose to a Mud Monster in Monster Girl Quest
My title is probably more appropriate than the original
4-Meme of za day
Took quite a while finding this one. We all know memes on the internet are serious business. I chose this one because well... It's kinda funny no?
5-What iz Racism?
A bit more serious, and it's also a repost, but the message here is as true as it is important. 
And that's that for today. Not much words and critique, but that's mainly because it's the end of the day and I can't really give each picture it's fair share of criticism and consideration. You can look forward to more of that in the future. Hope you had fun for now, any suggestions/complaints/praises are appreciated

I'm currently playing Koko kara Natsu no Innocence, the latest VN by Clochette, a charage company specializing in busty heroines that tends to produce first-class character development and heroine stories.  One aspect of Clochette that I've always thought was a bit funny was the obsession with 'shoushika', the current phenomenon in Japan where fewer and fewer young people are getting married and/or having kids.  This is touched upon to one degree or another in a lot of VNs, because it is an issue that becomes bigger every year for the Japanese.  Why?  Because they are dying off faster than their kids are being born, and it has been that way for more than two decades.  That in itself wouldn't be that big of a problem normally... falls in population are actually positive when you get to modern population levels.  However, the drastic population fall in Japan is such that it is constricting them economically to a degree that scares many of their social scientists, making it into as big a scientific deal there as climate change is here.
Clochette has a tendency to insert subtle anti-shoushika propaganda into it throughout its length, actively encouraging the reader to go out and have kids.  It is one of the funnier things about it, as most charage gloss over the kids aspect outside of the h-scenes (and then it is only get the perversion levels up).  However, themes of continuation across generations, preparing for the next generation, thinking about a future for the kids, etc. are common to all of Clochette's games, to one degree or another.  Ironically, it is this 'activist VN-writing' that is what makes their stories frequently so much fun to read, and the message itself is kind of amusing when you think about it (since we aren't Japanese).  However, I do find it interesting how VN makers will sometimes use the platform for subtle activism (brainwashing through eroge, lol). 
If you want another example of VN-activism, Semiramis no Tenbin is a bit more blatant about it, hitting on almost every major piece of 'dirty linen' in Japan's social closet.  VNs in general, like all entertainment media, can be used in such ways... and frequently, the best VNs will be activist on one level or another, because passion plus skill tends to bring out much better results than just one or the other.
Edit: Namima no Kuni no Faust is another example of somewhat blatant 'VN-activism', and in its case, it is a combined statement, criticism, and speculation on capitalism as a religion.  Yes, I say a religion, because to those who worship the mighty dollar, that is precisely what it is.  The entire VN is a story about a true free market economic society taken to its logical conclusion. It was a fascinating exercise, and it left a lot of food for thought, without necessarily being completely negative about capitalism in general or even some of its more obvious flaws.

Figurines are the one common item of anime/manga/VN paraphernalia that I just can't wrap my head around. I can definitely understand the appeal of the limited edition box set due to my love of limited-run music releases. The little added extras, the presentation of the box as you open it, containing the disk, album art and any other odds and sods they decide to throw in (I got a tiny jar of tealeaves in one with a note attached once...) just do it for me. Plus I admit the sense of exclusivity is pretty damn nice too, to make myself sound a complete dick. I can understand posters; a glorious visual representation of your favourite character, emblazened across your wall, simultaneously making the room a brighter place while adding a clear sense of personality to the surroundings. I even understand the dakimakura... cos let's face it, hugs are fucking great. But figurines... I just struggle to get excited about, or see the appeal.
Rika Furude's life was painfully repetitive enough, without being cast in PVC to stand still for eternity.

I'd like to qualify right now that this isn't a rant against figurines as such, and certainly not against the people that may collect them. Now I've qualified that, in the event I kinda lose track and it becomes a rant, it's not a rant, because I said so.
 
My biggest problem with the figurine is the justification of the price for what they are. In the interests of myself not getting shouted at I won't name any company names that sell them, but generally speaking the ones I have found start at roughly ￥4000 and go up from there. Once postage is taken into account, this is normally just shy of £30, and that's a cheaper one. For £30, I can feed myself for at least 2 weeks, buy an entire series of literature to read (or a translated visual novel) or change the strings on my guitar 3 to 4 times. If I was to buy a figurine, I would likely forget its existence after a month tops due to its lack of practical application (something I will touch upon in a bit), and this is only if they look nice enough to warrant even considering in the first place, which many just...don't. The ones that do actually look good enough that I would even consider buying them would set me back in excess of £60-70, and I can't justify that for a glorified ornament.
To my eyes anyway, the clean way most characters are drawn does not translate well to 3D, and this is reflected in the model's appearance 90% of the time. Furthermore, they're typically made out of PVC, which only serves to compound the clean-cut presentation of many figurines. Granted, this does in theory provide the purchase with greater durability, but the amount of times I have read about or spoken to someone talking about a broken figurine just puts me off on that front too. Thanks to its PVC makeup this can be corrected by superglue, but surely it's better to have something which can be assembled without having to perform corrective surgery on it?
The other thing I don't understand particularly is their purpose. I mentioned earlier that I can understand the interest in purchasing a poster, which to my mind performs the same purpose as a figurine but looks better, is cheaper and has a greater impact on the feel of a room. As with everything that has a purely aesthetic purpose, unless they're really, really into something then the most of a reaction it will elicit from people is an 'ah, nice' or a 'looks cool'... and then that's that. There's no real scope for discussion, not much to set the imagination going and not even really much in the way of a point in lending it to someone. In fact, the primary practical function I can make out that they have is a 'certain practice' which I've seen pictures of on /b/, and that's just grim.
I've never really been one for owning things with a lack of practical application, so I suspect my lack of understanding of the figurine's appeal is largely a reflection upon my slightly dull self. In my explanation I earnestly hope that I've not annoyed anyone, as if collecting them makes you happy then that's all I could really ask. That being said, if anyone does collect them and wants to let me know why, I'd be very curious to hear
Laters potaters!

You need to know something about me: I love cheese. Lovelovelove it.
Don’t know what to get me for my birthday? Cheese. Want to cheer me up at the end of a long day? Cheese. Watching the timer tick down on the bad guy’s bomb and you don’t know which wire to cut? Cheese. That doesn’t even make sense and I don’t care. You know why? Cheese.
And since you were kind enough to bring up the topic of cheese, I’ll go one step further and say the following: not much in life measures up to a good unpasteurized cheese. Something really rich and complex and made from raw milk. The good stuff. The real stuff. Something that makes you feel (and smell) like you’ve died and gone to cheese heaven. I’m talking cheese with a capital C.
But here’s the problem: I live in the United States, and here on this side of the pond, the FDA takes a dim view of unpasteurized dairy products such as these. In fact, it’s actually illegal to import or sell certain kinds of raw milk cheese here in the States — a traditional Camembert, for instance. There’s been some debate among foodies about the factual basis for that decision, but since I don’t know much about the science one way or the other, I’ll leave those debates to wiser minds than mine.
Anyway, in theory, the FDA ban shouldn’t really affect me much. The kinds of raw milk cheeses I prefer — funky, nuanced, mature — all pass these FDA requirements with flying colors. Yup, I should just be able to buy my curds and be on my whey. (Yeah, I did just write that. And no, I’m not taking it back.) But the reality of things isn’t nearly so kind. Most big chain supermarkets won’t carry unpasteurized cheeses at all, regardless of their provenance or if they’ve been approved for sale by the FDA. And why should they? Too much work for too little reward. Not only does unpasteurized cheese carry a certain stigma of food-borne illness, it requires extra care in shipping, handling, staff education, selling — and the demand just isn’t there yet to justify such efforts.
Sure, there are specialty cheese shops where one can go to buy the good stuff. (They’re called cheesemongers, which sounds pretty baller if you ask me.) And if you’re in the know, you might even have ways of getting some unadulterated cheese from the curd-loving community — unofficial food co-ops and that sort of thing. But for many people, unpasteurized cheese is simply something they don’t know much about or have easy access to. And so, they don’t buy it.

This obviously poses a problem for cheese importers. Their business model is simple: acquire product from cheesemakers overseas, ship it to the United States, then repackage and sell it for enough to cover the costs of importing — plus a small profit. If the potential market is too small, however, it’s often not worth the cost of bringing the cheese over at all; they’d never recoup their initial investment. In that scenario, the importers go out of business, and we’re all stuck eating great big orange hunks of Velveeta™ brand cheeze food product instead.
So what some importers have started doing, in partnership with the international cheesemakers themselves, is offering alternate pasteurized versions of these very same cheeses for import and resale in America. They’re a little different from the originals — the pasteurization process has stripped away some of the quirkiness and complexity that made the cheeses so interesting in the first place — but they’re products that the big supermarket chains are now willing to stock and sell. And for many people, a good pasteurized cheese that’s somewhat close to the original is better than no cheese at all. As a bonus, the sales volume generated by the pasteurized cheeses often (but not always) allows the importers to bring over the unpasteurized version to those specialty shops stateside.
Win-win, right? Depends who you ask.
For example, a foodie friend of mine is absolutely livid, saying this whole pasteurized cheese business has left a bad taste in his mouth. He’s so upset, in fact, that he’s vowed never to support these particular cheese importers again. “Don’t you get it, Darbury?” he demands of me. “This is cheese censorship!”
He’s a good guy, my friend, but he has a flair for the dramatic.
“They’re selling people bastardized versions of these cheeses. Shoppers see Camembert on the label, but they’re not actually getting the real unpasteurized Camembert that people in France are eating. It might have started out that way, but they sucked the soul out of it for the sake of more sales here in America. And unless people research their cheese ahead of time, they won’t even know they’re not getting the real thing. The cheese importers are lying to us for a quick buck!”
Like I said, dramatic.
While I can’t swear to it, I tell him, I doubt the import companies are trying to systematically deceive the cheese eaters of America. I mean, the Camembert says “pasteurized” right there on the label. How much more notice do they have to give consumers? A giant red sticker that says, “WARNING! THIS CAMEMBERT IS NOT THE SAME AS THE UNPASTEURIZED CAMEMBERT YOU CAN GET IN FRANCE! IF YOU HAVE ANY RESPECT FOR YOURSELF, DON’T BUY THIS”? Besides, I say, now people are getting exposed to all sorts of different cheeses they might not have had access to otherwise. And even if those cheeses aren’t the pure and unadulterated experiences of the originals, they’re pretty close. Plus, those pasteurized alternatives are broadening the market for cheese in general, which means more foreign cheesemakers will be interested in importing their products to the States in the future. And hey, once the public demand is large enough, more big supermarkets might consider carrying unpasteurized cheese.
“What, do you work for the cheese importers or something? Why are you sticking up for them? They’re just rolling around in big piles of money and Brie right now, laughing at us. People deserve the cheeses that their makers originally intended. Simple as that. Either give us the original cheese, or don’t bother. Anything else is disrespectful to the vision of the dairy farmer. Anyway, I’m not interested in expanding the general audience for dairy products. I just want to be able to buy the cheeses I like, the way that I like them.”
But wait, I say. Aren’t a lot of the cheese importers also bringing over the unpasteurized originals as part of the deal that lets them sell the pasteurized versions?
“Seriously, Darbury — how much are they paying you to say stuff like this? There’s no guarantee they’ll ever bring over that original cheese. They just dump the pasteurized version on store shelves with some vague promise that, if enough people buy it, they might bring over the unpasteurized one. Whatever. And even when they do follow through, they do a crap-ass job of it. You know about Casu Marzu, right? It’s this amazing cheese made in Sardinia, filled with thousands of live, wriggling maggots. Sounds totally intense, right? You cut it open and they all come pouring out. But when the importers bring that cheese to America, you know what? There are no maggots in it. None.”
Well yeah, I say. I think that’s against every single customs regulation on the books. You can’t bring live maggots into the country. It’s straight up illegal. And kind of disgusting.
“Duh. Of course it is. Unlike some people, Darbury, I try to actually know what I’m talking about before I open my big mouth. What I’m trying to tell you is that if the importers really cared about what the cheese-enthusiast community thought, they’d put maggots back into the cheese before reselling it here. But they don’t. Because they’re greedy and lazy. And that’s why they’ll never see another dollar of my money.”
Wait, I say. Hold up. You want them to put maggots back into the cheese?
“Yeah. The original cheese had maggots before it was imported, so it should have maggots when I buy it here. Anything else is a lie.”
But they’re not even the same maggots, I say. Replacement maggots are no more authentic than the absence of maggots would be.
“Stop arguing semantics with me, Darbury. Censorship is censorship. If there aren’t any maggots in it, then it’s not Casu Marzu. And I won’t support cheese censorship. This is how Nazi Germany started.”
I slowly back away.
“Don’t let them win, Darbury! If you really care about cheese, it’s time to buy a cow and a couple of goats and learn how to make your own raw milk cheese. That way, you don’t have to sit around waiting for whatever those lying cheese importers are willing to foist on you.”
Then my friend throws a smoke bomb at the ground directly in front of him and vanishes, bad-ass ninja style.
"Don't let them win, Darburrrryyyyyy..."
Like I said, dramatic.
I’m glad he disappeared when he did, because what I was going to say next would have driven him completely over the edge. Here’s the thing: while I love raw milk cheese, I also enjoy having the pasteurized option available to me. For various reasons, most of my cheese eating is done in public places like trains or planes, and I’d prefer not to have random people look over and catch me noshing on something that smells like an elk just shat out a gangrenous foot. Certain things should be enjoyed in the privacy of one’s home; it’s just common courtesy. I don’t want to be That Guy on the Train, and those pasteurized cheeses go a long way toward helping me not be Him.
There’s more I could say about cheese, but — crap! — I just remembered this was supposed to be a blog about visual novels. Sorry! I honestly don’t know what came over me. Never sit down to write a post when you’re feeling hungry, amirite?
Lesson learned. Next time, I promise I’ll write something about visual novels. Unlike this blog post, which was clearly about cheese.

Hey Fuwans! I've never done a blog before (or at least, not one that wasn't a work of fiction... is that still a blog?) and therefore I may lack the basic principles of layout, appropriate language, and possibly the most important factor of being slightly interesting. Still, I figured I'd give it a crack, partially to try to understand the events in my life leading up to where I am now and partially to offer my pearls of wisdom on various facets of all things Japanese and fun. I hope that in the very least it's a vaguely entertaining read, and that it might occasionally spark a blob of discussion!
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A few days ago I found myself wondering, while browsing the forums in a way that can only be described as a procrastinatory fashion, at what stage in my life I started to become interested in Japanese things. As a child, I never watched Pokémon, nor owned a Nintendo device, nor played Yu-Gi-Oh! round the back of the playground shed (cards were banned at my infant and primary schools for some reason). I used to like the shape of Japan on maps, but then again I liked the shape of many places on maps - including my first national love of Finland. I used to randomly drop Finnish words into conversation (still do on occasion...), spend ages reading instruction manuals with the Finnish language in, and would watch any film with Finnish subtitles because it seemed cool. In some ways, I was a Finland weeb, if that ever could be a thing.
Over time, this spread to an interest in language generally, leading to me collating words from anything I could find in a big diary, divided and split into their separate categories with unconnected words scrawled in. I guess I liked thinking how different these things were. However, even this eventually petered out, and for a while I had little more than a passing inquisitive interest in anything outside of my cosy little life in southeast England.
After school, I went to college, and it was here that I had my first definite experience with things of a Japanese nature. On my second or third day, I started talking to someone - or rather, he started talking to me - about an online roleplaying game which he was an active member of. He was describing to me his current character, telling me all about her personality and appearance, when he said that she was a 'tsundere'. I had no bloody idea what that was, so I naturally asked him (actually, I asked him what's a sundern', which I later found out is a town in Nord Rhine-Westphalia). Following his description, I became curious about why such a trait would exist, although I had no real reference point to go on. This friend went on to play a key role in getting me interested in anime, as at his suggestion I watched Kill La Kill, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai and Tokyo Ghoul. I sadly don't talk much with him anymore as I left college and we went our separate ways, but we still chat every now and then.
Also while at college, I was surfing that halcyon land of the internet formally known as 4chan, when I came across a Katawa Shoujo thread. I'd seen them previously, but never really paid much attention - but, through a mixture of people talking about 'feels' (I liked to think I was somewhat impervious to emotion... ), cute drawn girls and the only vaguely fun 'community' I could find on /b/, I gave it a bash.
Hanako showing a somewhat accurate portrayal of my experience playing Katawa Shoujo for the first time.
Yeah. That. My outlook on life was pretty shit at the time, so having something which made me feel so strongly felt like some kind of emotional release for me that I had never had before (Wiosna, its theme tune, still makes me feel rather emotional to this day). It was due to this experience that I started to look out for other visual novels - in the following months, I played True Remembrance, Marry Me Misato!, Homeward, Yandere-chan, and my homeboy at college sourced me a copy of Fate/Stay Night, which with my very basic awareness at the time I'd heard was 'alright'. I started to open up socially again - not only in my actual life, but in my virtual life too, as I joined my first internet community in the Katawa Shoujo forums. It was great to be able to talk to such a wide variety of people about something I couldn't adequately discuss with anyone in the 'real world'.
How I learned what a 'yandere' was. Hmm.
Over the course of the next 12 months or so (so I guess April 2014 - April 2015) my interest in things drawn and Japanese-based waned somewhat. After running out of things to say on the KS forums, leaving college and starting university, I just got doing other things - mostly involving playing guitar and habitually cursing my decision of taking mathematics. However, for some reason one day I decided to Google 'visual novels'  and I came across a list of 50 VNs on some site called forums.fuwanovel.net by a user called Kaguya. Now, I'm not gonna say I danced on the rooftops (metaphorically or physically) but needless to say I became very intrigued, researching and reading about and around the titles on this list, as well as starting to make a concerted effort at learning Japanese. At roughly the same time, a friend of mine recommended that I checked out a guy called 'Gackt', in particular his first two albums. I was blown away, and so started to check as many different facets of the Japanese music scene as I could (visual kei, J-Pop, shibuya-kei... and grindcore ). Not two months later, I signed up to this glorious forum and things have only really continued from there!
This past 5 or 6 months have been a bit like Alice wandering through Wonderland for me. Through my investigations into all things Japan, there have been things that have amused me greatly, things that have appalled me, and some that have just left me thinking what a truly interesting place it is. I still consider myself somewhat of a newbie to things, and that is in part what this blog is going to be about: feeling kinda like a tourist to a largely unfamiliar world, and trying to learn as much as possible along the way.
 
Please be patient with me.

There’s no getting around it. If you’re looking to edit visual novels, at some point you’re going to have roll up your sleeves, put on the rubber gloves, and get elbow-deep in some H. The good news is that if you come prepared, practice your technique, and set some clear boundaries, it can be a pleasurable experience for both you and the reader.

First, a disclaimer: I don’t like pineapple on my pizza, and I don’t like H-scenes in my VNs. It’s not a prudish thing; it’s a narrative thing. They’re rarely well crafted — you can feel all the hallmarks of the B-team being brought in to write them — and they almost never add plot/characterization that couldn’t have been handled better some other way. (I’ll pause here so you can mention Amane’s route from Grisaia, an exception that helps prove the rule.) Let’s be honest: they’re shoehorned in to help sell product. It’s built into the economics of the eroge genre. And honestly, that’s fine. I try to be sanguine about it and think of H-scenes as banner ads or TV commercials. They’re profit centers that help support the content I’m actually interested in. (I suspect more than a few developers feel the same way.)

Long story short, H-scenes ain’t going anywhere. So how do we deal with them? Go in with a game plan.

[Warning, there will be some NSFW language from this point forward. Sorry! It’s all part of seeing how the sausage is made.]

1. Do your research
In raw translation, sex scenes from a Japanese visual novel tend to be far from erotic. More often than not, they read like an obsessively detailed transcript of a gynecological exam. That’s not because the Japanese writing team suddenly forgot they were supposed to be penning a passionate sex scene. It’s just that what’s erotic in one culture isn’t always as erotic in another. It’s your job (along with the translator) to help bridge that cultural divide and come up with something that feels faithful to the original, yet still sexy in English.

Your first stop? Research. Read some English-language erotica so you can get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. Sites like literotica.com even have stories broken out into fairly specific categories, so if you know you’ll be editing BDSM, threesome, and footjob scripts, you’ll have no problem finding what you need. (If you have all three in a single scene, you still might be in luck.) There’s also a category called “First Time,” which is more broadly useful, given how fixated many VNs are on virgins.

Read, read, and read some more. Pay attention to the verbs, the nouns, the pacing. Try to quickly form a model of what makes a sex scene successful, then look to carry those techniques over to your VN script.

2. Pack a box lunch
If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this: bring a big bag of dicks; you’ll need them. Better pack a few pussies while you’re at it.

By the time you’ve edited your third or fourth H-script, you’ll find you’ve run dry of good synonyms for the male and female genitalia. In KoiRizo, the raw script mostly used the word "thing" for the protag’s package, which ended up sounding childish and/or ambiguous in English. (I only kept it in a few instances where such a reaction might be appropriate — for example, when the route partner catches her very first glimpse of Lil’ Protag: “Is that your ... thing?”). The remainder of the original script was a mix of the clinical ("my mucous membrane”) and the hilarious (“my soiled meat stick”). As for ladyparts, the original script relied heavy on metaphor and indirect reference — lots of openings, entrances, gates, doors, depths, special places, overflowing pots of nectar, etc.

So what’s missing from the above? The common English erotica standbys: “dick” and “cock” for men, “pussy” for women. There’s a reason for that. KoiRizo complicated things by using the Japanese equivalents of these very sparingly, reserving them mainly for shock effect in dialogue — “e.g., OMG, she just said ‘cock!’ Things must be getting real.” Moreover, when these words were finally hauled out, the devs bleeped the VO and censored the text string (e.g., “p*ssy”). That meant it was very obvious when those words were being used and when they weren’t.

All of which presented quite a challenge to the team: if we were to preserve those “shocking” character moments, we couldn’t use the most common English terms 99% of the time. And so, I fell back on a shortlist of alternate references: pole, rod, erection, hard-on, manhood, etc. By the time I was done editing, however, this list felt far too limited; those words were overused pencils worn down to their nubs.

This is one of those areas where, in hindsight, I feel like I could have done a better job with KoiRizo. The takeaway: If I ever tackle a VN this H-heavy again — doubtful — I’ll come packing a much longer list of euphemisms.



3. Bring a raincoat
Compared to its English counterpart, Japanese erotica seems downright obsessed with fluids: saliva, vaginal secretions, semen, urine — you name it. The look, the sound, the feel, the taste, the smell, the volume. You’ll be describing a lot of liquids in a lot of ways, so get ready to break out the thesaurus. And an umbrella.

4. Embrace the improbable
Let’s admit it: VN sex is over-the-top ridiculous. In a matter of seconds, sheepish virgins turn into seasoned pornstars, cramming 20 orgasms and 40 positions into a quickie broom closet hookup. (Oh so much cramming.) This is the nature of the genre, so don’t fight it; embrace it. Trying to force realism onto a typical H-scene would be like trying to force realism onto a Dragon Ball Z fight: everyone still looks constipated, but no one’s having any fun. If you’re that desperate to edit sadly mundane sex scenes, wait for the VN version of Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs to come out. Till then, work with what you have.

I remember a tiny dustup a while back when another TL team supposedly wrote lubricant into an H-scene because they felt the acts described would be difficult or painful without it. It’s a minor thing, but if the original writer left the lube out, I’m inclined to do so too. These portions of the script are wish fulfillment at their best/worst, so just leave them be.

Except ...

5. Reject the impossible
... Except when the improbable becomes the impossible. More often than not, this is either the result of a mistranslation or an error by the original writers. (As an example of the latter, KoiRizo was haunted by an entity we dubbed “phantom Riho.” A couple of times, the devs would forget they were writing another girl’s scene and use Riho’s name for a line or two instead. We fixed this in our version, but still ...)

Anyway, as editor, it’s your job to keep an eye out for the impossible. Is the protag’s penis simultaneously in someone’s vagina, anus, mouth, and ear? Did the heroine’s hymen suddenly regenerate? (Starfish Girl is mah waifu!) Did a corded vibrator suddenly become a battery-operated one? Ask to have the TL double-checked and, if that still doesn’t resolve the issue, use your best judgement to fix the error while causing minimal disruption to the surrounding lines.

6. Set your limits
This is important. Know what you’re comfortable with going into a project and make those boundaries abundantly clear. Some VNs can venture into very unpleasant territory — rape, abuse, gore, catgirls, etc. — and it’s best to ask yourself up front if you could, in good conscience, commit to editing that sort of content. Set your limits early on, then make sure your team’s fully aware of them.

7. Have a sense of humor
At the end of the day, VNs are entertainment. Unless you’re editing Saya no Uta 2: Vom Harder, it’s probably okay to approach your H-scripts with a subtle sense of play. A decent chunk of your audience will either be fast-forwarding through these scenes outright, or paying far more attention to the visuals than the script.

So think of these times as exhibition games in your script editing schedule. They’re opportunities to spread your wings a little bit, try a few stylistic experiments — maybe even slip in a sly joke or two. And even if everything doesn’t quite work, we’ll still respect you in the morning.

I just had an extra big breakfast, so I thought I'd pull up a chair and solve one of the most hotly debated issues facing the English-speaking VN community today. No, no need for thanks. Just name a stadium or sandwich after me at some point. Or both.

Ready? Here we go. Honorifics or no honorifics? Should translated visual novels maintain the traditional Japanese cavalcade of name suffixes — san, kun, chan, sama, and so forth? Or should they adopt a more familiar Western approach, dropping honorifics entirely and/or replacing them with English titles — Mr., Mrs., Sir, etc. — only where situationally appropriate?
San? Or sans san?

I've thought long and hard on the matter and I think I've finally figured it out. Here's the answer you've all been waiting for.

ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?

Haven't you been reading this blog? Did you really think a self-professed amateur VN editor would suddenly crack the code wide open and save the day? I’m quite literally an idiot. My wife will back me up on that one. And besides, this isn't some question with an obvious answer, like "Should I put ketchup on my steak?" (Answer: No. And if you do, you're an awful person who probably pushes elderly nuns in front of buses when you think no one's looking, then steals their mangled nun panties.)
In fact, that question doesn't even have an answer, per se; it has a decision tree. Imagine your friend asks you, "Should I get a tattoo?" There are a lot of considerations to run through before you can give an answer. What kind of job do they have? Bankers and bartenders each have different leeway when it comes to full-sleeve tats. What's the context of their question? Is your friend asking you this over coffee? Or looking up at you from a vomit-filled toilet bowl in a way off-Strip Vegas casino? And what's the tattoo of? If it's Tweety Bird, then it's off to prison with them, along with all the steak-on-ketchup panty sniffers.
Same for honorifics. There's no one-size-fits-all answer — only questions and considerations. And the first big branch of that decision tree: Who are your readers and why do they read VNs?
The Battle Lines Are Drawn
By and large, we can break VN readers down into two camps: story-seekers and culture-seekers. It’s an overgeneralization, of course — there’s some drift and overlap between these two groups — but it will give us a useful starting point for our discussion.
Story-seekers tend to read visual novels for the plot, for the romance, for the giant mechs, for the faps, and for THE FEELS, MAN, THE FEELS. The fact that these stories are Japanese in origin is kinda cool, but secondary to the overall experience. As a group, they value readability over verisimilitude. They don’t get their stolen nun panties in a bunch because Ixrec’s translation of Rewrite doesn’t capture every last nuance of the Japanese, or even gets a few lines wrong at times. They just sit back and enjoy the ride. And for them, honorifics are often just weeaboo speedbumps that interfere with said ride.
Culture-seekers, on the other hand, tend to read VNs not only for the story, but to indulge their passion for Japanese culture. They might speak Japanese, or they might be in the process of learning to do so. Visual novels are often a means to an end: they read VNs in part to practice their Japanese. (And they practice Japanese to read VNs. Loopity-loopity-loop.) Culture-seekers enjoy the inherent Japanese-ness of the medium — seeing the subtle social interplay of honorifics at work, for example — so for them, stripping away “san” to please some Naruto-watching noobs is like throwing away part of the story.
As a translator or editor, you will inevitably piss off one of these camps. Sorry, that’s just how it is. You’re dealing with two groups of people who have inherently different motivations for reading the same work. And you can only translate/edit one way. Sucks, right? To extend my steak metaphor, it’s like owning a restaurant that, for logistical reasons, can only cook its steaks to one temperature — rare or well-done. And it’s up to you to pick which. If you go with rare, all the well-done lovers will give your little bistro one-star reviews on Yelp. And if you choose well-done, the folks who like their steaks blue and bloody will come at you with knives drawn.


In a way, this becomes sort of liberating. No matter what you do, you will annoy a good chunk of your audience. This is fait accompli. So you’re now free to do what you actually think is right for the work, knowing it won’t really affect the outcome much.
Of course, you’re also probably in one of those two camps yourself. (I know I am.) As such, you probably have an clear bias toward a particular approach — san or sans san. And you know what? That’s fine. Recognize your bias. Embrace it. Make friends with the fact that you prefer to translate/edit one way or the other. Then remember the advice I gave a few blog entries back: You are not your audience. Your close friends are not your audience. The message boards you follow are not your audience.
Your audience is your audience; its needs may differ from yours. And the novel is the novel; its needs may also differ from yours.
So here’s what I propose: Rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach to every VN, just accept that, all things being equal, you will probably prefer one approach to editing/translation over the other. And then leave yourself open to the possibility of changing that approach based on the specific needs of the VN and the audience for that VN. Handle it the same way you would that friend asking about the tattoo. Is getting inked right for them right now? And is including honorifics right for the audience and right for the novel?
Let’s walk through some questions you might ask yourself while making that decision:
Who’s the primary audience for the VN?
Are your readers primarily story-seekers or culture-seekers? Is your VN some niche title that appeals only to otakus, or is it a game with broad crossover appeal? A stronger case could be made for honorifics in the former situation; less so in the latter
What's the setting of the visual novel?
If your characters are all alien catgirls on a spaceship 23,000,000 light years from Earth, it's harder to justify keeping in honorifics than if you’ve got a cast of high school students in modern-day Japan.
Are the honorifics plot-relevant?
Is there any good story-related reason for all the sans and kuns to be there? Is the central conflict of the VN about whether the protagonist and his best girl are ready to go first name-only? If so, you have a better case for keeping honorifics than if they're just there as subtle social shading.
Is the visual novel voiced?
This one's common sense. You’ll have an easier time not including honorifics if the reader isn’t hearing them in VO. And vice versa.
How annoying are the honorifics?
This one is totally subjective, but it needs to be asked. Some writers tend to favor narration over dialogue, so their scripts will have fewer honorifics to deal with. Other writers love the rhythms of slice-of-life dialogue, so their prose might be a minefield of sans and chans. Read the script aloud. How jarring is it to the ear?
Is this an OELVN?
Stop it. Just stop it already. You don’t need honorifics. You’re writing a novel in English for an English-speaking audience, for crissakes. Don’t make me come back there.
Run down the decision tree. Be honest with yourself. Is there enough evidence to make you reconsider your approach to this novel? Are you an anti-honorific type editing a VN set in feudal Japan, where one missing “sama” could mean the difference between life or death for the characters? Consider keeping them in. Are you a pro-honorific person translating a VN about competitive bread baking in Paris? Consider ditching them.
Full Disclosure
I’m a story-seeker. Given my druthers, I will choose to omit honorifics from a VN for the sake of more readable English prose. I’m fairly certain that if it’s possible to translate Murakami and Kurosawa into English without honorifics, it should be more than possible to do the same for some random high school moege.
I admit you might be losing a certain amount content by omitting those honorifics — clues about the social standing of various characters in relation to one another, not to mention their personalities — but as far as I'm concerned, it’s content that can either be (a) baked into the script via other contextual clues, or (b) written off as redundant — that is to say, most of what those honorifics are communicating will already be apparent through the rest of the dialogue and on-screen action.
I also admit that my sans-san approach won’t be the right one in every situation. Same goes for the opposite approach. Every work and every audience demands its own solution. Your job is to stop for a moment and ask yourself what that solution is.
And then be willing to listen to the answer.

This blog is all about owning my mistakes and putting them on public display, so let’s do this. And yeah, I knew this one was going to come back and bite me in the ass. This was my albatross. This was my giant ass-biting albatross.
The great “tricky” debacle of 2015
So there’s this word that shows up in the English translation of Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort. If you’ve read it, you might have noticed it once or twice.
“Tricky.”
Umi, the main heroine, falls back on this word a lot to describe the protagonist. She uses it when he’s being nice. And when he’s being a jerk. And when he’s chewing food. And any other opportunity she can think of. Basically, I think she gets paid 100 yen every time she manages to work that word into a sentence. And let me tell you: girl is pulling down bank.
Of course, this is a translation, so she’s not actually saying “tricky.” She’s saying something similar in Japanese. And therein lies a tale of woe and sorrow.
The backstory
But let’s rewind a bit first.
When I came aboard the KoiRizo team, it was to edit a single route: Nagisa’s. Makes sense — I was a first-time VN editor, and Nagisa’s route was the shortest in the game. Moreover, it was an unlockable, which meant that comparatively few people would end up reading it. Other editors were already hacking away at most of the remaining routes anyway, so that was all fine by me.
As I worked my way through Nagisa’s scripts, I saw the word “tricky” pop up once or twice in Umi’s dialogue as a personal insult and it just seemed ... odd to me. Tough math problems are tricky. Opening a stubborn jar of peanut butter is tricky. People? Less so. I’m an editor, though, not a translator, so I did what I was supposed to do: flagged it for TLC review, left a comment with my concerns, edited the line as best I could, then moved along. The translator on the project had made it clear he wouldn’t be reviewing any edits until all the routes were finished being edited, so that’s about all I could do at the time.
When I finished cleaning up Nagisa’s route, I was asked if I wouldn’t mind tackling Shiori’s scripts as well, which no other editor had gotten around to yet. “Sure,” I said, and set about tidying that up as well. The word “tricky” popped up a couple more times, so I did the same thing: flagged it, reiterated my concerns, then kept on editing.
I finished Shiori, and was asked if I’d pick up the common route and Umi’s route; the editing on both of these had apparently stalled. Okay, what had started out as a quickie project for me was slowly turning into something much more time-consuming. I could see that. But I was still having fun, so I agreed. I started with the common route, where Umi has more screen time, which meant I started seeing the word “tricky” a little more often.
And I started to worry.
I flagged it, left a comment along the lines of “See my earlier notes on tricky,” and kept editing. I was determined not to get hung up on one silly word. It was becoming clear that this was sort of a catchphrase word for Umi, and I didn’t want to change the translation in my scripts if all the other editors’ scripts were keeping it as is. It’d be like if a screenwriter on The Simpsons decided that “D’oh!” sounded dumb, so Homer should say “Ooops!” instead — but only on the episodes he/she worked on.
Anyway, I finished the common route and moved onto Umi’s. And lo, I gazed into a bottomless abyss of trickiness.

You sly dumbass, you.
Now let’s talk about the actual word. In Japanese, it’s “ずるい” — “zurui.” And, true to its definition, zurui’s a tricky word to pin down.
It’s often translated as “unfair.” (Or so I’ve been told. Again, I’m an editor, not a translator. I took a Japanese class or two a few years back, so I have a basic familiarity with the rudiments of grammar and vocabulary. I’m good for: “Hello, I only speak a little Japanese. Sorry! What time is it? Where is the train? I am a very cute peach.” And that’s about it.) But there’s a little more nuance to it than that. Getting cancer is unfair. Having your advisor take credit for your thesis is unfair. “Zurui” implies a level of deviousness, impishness, slyness, craftiness, and yes, even trickiness. Someone who’s being “zurui” knows they’re getting away with something — and they’re okay with that.
Moreover, it has a secondary meaning of being miserly, which is something that definitely applies to Soutarou, the protagonist of KoiRizo. I have to imagine that wordplay was not lost on the writers ... or the characters.
There’s no one good English word to capture all those layers of meaning. When Umi uses this word to describe the protagonist in KoiRizo, it’s clear from context that her emotional shading varies from line to line. Sometimes she’s straight-up pissed at him and is telling him off: “You jackass.” Other times, she’s more of a late-game tsundere and says it playfully, even affectionately: “You sly dog you.” But she uses the same Japanese word every single time. Sometimes she’ll even say it six or seven times in a row without taking a breath.
“Zurui. Zurui. Zurui. Zurui. Zurui. ZURUI!”
It was her catchphrase. And in pretty much every instance, it had been translated as “tricky.”
If the word only appeared once or twice in KoiRizo, I could have swapped in the contextually appropriate English replacements and been done with it. (I actually did this in a handful of places throughout the VN, usually when it was clear she was at one extreme of the word or the other.) But given how often it showed up, I felt somehow obligated to honor authorial intent. This was Umi’s pet phrase for this guy she’d fallen in love with. At one point, I think she even uses it as all the parts of speech in a single sentence. If I started changing “zurui” to different words every time, she’d lose a fairly important character quirk.
After looking at all the options, the translator’s choice of “tricky” started seeming like it wasn’t a half-bad compromise after all. It got across that Umi thought the protag was dealing from the bottom of the emotional deck, but it also had a playful, teasing quality. It was never the best word in any particular instance, but it seemed like it might be flexible enough to be just sorta kinda okay in all instances.
That argument makes sense, right? I thought so at the time, anyway. And so I left “tricky” as it was.
Boy, was I wrong.

Mea culpa
I overthought it, plain and simple. I forgot my personal rule of writing and editing: Make the journey as frictionless for the readers as possible. Don’t let them get snagged on odd phrasings or slightly off words. Keep them immersed in the story.
I’d forgotten how jarring that “tricky” word seemed those first few times I saw it in translation. As the months passed, some sort of editing Stockholm Syndrome set in and I actually started thinking it might be an acceptable option.
In short, I messed up.
When I read Umineko for the first time, Battler’s use (and abuse) of the word “useless” seemed so ill-fitting to me in English prose that I almost gave up reading the VN right then and there. But now, I sort of understand how the Witch Hunt team might have, over time, come to see this ungainly adjective as the best compromise for their main character’s catchphrase. It doesn’t make me like it much more, but I can see how they ended up there. (But don’t get me started on “turn the chessboard over” vs. “turn the chessboard around.” The latter works; the former leaves you with a bunch of chess pieces on the ground.)
So here's the deal: It doesn’t matter that I had to make literally hundreds of judgment calls like this over the course of editing KoiRizo — what to do with Yuuhi’s numerous nicknames for the protagonist, as just one example — and 99% of them turned out okay (I hope).
What matters is there’s a big lump of tricky sitting in the middle of the visual novel. And it doesn't work.
I signed off on it. And I take full responsibility for that.
So what to do? Not much, to be honest. It’s one of those things I’d love to revisit if given the chance, but a 2.0 KoiRizo patch seems unlikely at this time. MDZ keeps his own counsel, but he seems to have moved onto other pursuits.
And that, as they say, is that.
Postscript
As I mentioned, the original intent of this blog was to put a spotlight on my many missteps as a first-time VN editor. That hasn’t changed. I might also try to throw in some helpful life advice from time to time, but I’m mainly happy to let my blunders serve as good object lessons for other aspiring editors.
That means you should feel free to discuss any boneheaded decisions you think I might have made. Odds are I’ll own up to them. I've got a very thick skin, after all. I just ask two things:
1. This blog is about editing. If you have issues with someone’s translation choices, I kindly ask that you take it elsewhere. I hear Fuwa has really nice forums for that sort of thing, y'know? But if you have issues with how I edited someone's translation, then bring it on.
2. Please don’t be a giant pixelated dick about it. No one likes a pixel pick.

How do you eat an entire whale? One bite at a time. Preferably with Cholula.
How do you edit/translate/whatever a visual novel? One line at a time. Preferably with bourbon.
Whether you’re a fan of the final product or not, one of the things that impresses me most about MDZ’s fan translation of Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort is that it got released, period. As in, if you were so inclined, you could download the installer right now, patch the original Japanese game, and go play the thing on your new-fangled Windows Pee-Cee. No demos, no one-route partial patches. The whole damned VN in English, finished on schedule and out there in the world.
The project didn’t stall. It didn’t wind up in no-updates-in-six-months-but-we-think-they’re-still-working-on-it hell. It didn’t climb into that white panel van with Little Busters EX, never to be heard from again. The nice man was lying to you, Little Busters EX — there were no cute little puppies in the back. What were you thinking?!
The KoiRizo team did nothing particularly special to make this happen. We just ate the whale one bite at a time.
The rhythm method
By his own account, MDZ worked very methodically on the project, spending an average of 30 minutes every day translating scripts into English. Not when he felt like it. Not when inspiration struck. Not when enough people harassed him with all-caps emails asking why the HELL hadn’t there been any progress updates on the KoiRizo tracker lately. He made it an expected part of his routine, like brushing his teeth or eating dinner. He scheduled regular translation sessions between classes or before heading out in the morning.
He did a little bit. Every. Single. Day.
There’s a word for that: consistency. That’s what gets things done in the real world, not 48-hour marathons every random.randint(1,6) weekends fueled by Red Bull, Hot Pockets, and intense self-loathing. Consistency keeps you from getting burned out. Consistency lets you make reasonable schedules and estimates, then stick to them. Consistency is like goddamned black magic.
Over the course of the project, MDZ had consistency in spades. If he can maintain that approach to life, I have a feeling he’ll be successful at whatever he puts his mind to after college.
When I came on board as an editor, I kept a somewhat similar schedule. I resolved to set aside my commuting time each workday for editing. And so for 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes in the evening, Monday through Friday, I’d park my butt in a train seat, break out my laptop, and just edit.
Weekdays were reserved for my family. If you’re married with kids, you know there is no such thing as free time on weekends. If you’re not married and don’t have kids, please tell me what the outside world is like. I hear they came out with a PlayStation 2? That’s gotta be pretty awesome.
Anyway, that’s what I ended up doing. Edit every single workday. For six months. Until it was done.
(Six months? That long to edit a medium-length visual novel? Yeah, that long. KoiRizo weighs in at 36,000+ lines. Over six months, that works out to about 1,400 lines a week, or 210 lines per hour. That’s an edited line every 17 seconds or so, with most of the lines needing substantial polishing/rewriting. I have no idea what pace other VN editors work at, but I felt like this was one I could maintain over the long haul. Call it the distance runner’s lope.)

Special topics in calamity physics
So why all this rambling about whales and consistency? Because I just got back from vacation a few days ago and I’ve been surprised at how long it’s taken me to get my head back into the various projects I’ve been working on (or even writing this blog). And then I got to wondering how often something small like that snowballs into a stalled or even failed project. A missed day turns into a skipped week turns into a skipped month turns into a dead translation.
Which then got me thinking about the coefficient of friction.
It’s basic physics, which I excelled at (failing repeatedly). In layman’s terms, it’s a ratio (μ) that gives you a sense how much force two surfaces exert on each other and, therefore, how much force you need to exert to get something moving from a dead stop. Wooden block on ice? Low coefficient of friction. Wooden block on shag carpet? High coefficient of friction ... and a senseless crime against tasteful décor. Once you overcome that initial friction, it takes comparatively little force to keep an object in motion.
I can easily imagine there’s a coefficient of friction between us and our work, some quantifiable level of resistance that needs be overcome before we get our asses in gear and be productive. And unlike the one in Physics 101, which is constant for any two materials, this one is different every single day. It depends on a bunch of different factors: how interested we are in our projects, how appreciated we feel, what other projects we’ve got going on at the same time, how much sleep we’ve gotten, what else is going on in our lives, whether or not the Mets are currently in the World Series, etc.
Let’s call it the coefficient of slackitude.
Once we get started on a project and make it part of our everyday routine, we can largely ignore this number. We’ve overcome the initial slackitude and, with moderate effort, can keep things rolling along fairly smoothly. But each time we let things coast to a stop, even for a few days, we’ve got to overcome the slackitude all over again. And since that value is variable, it might be much harder the second time around. In fact, it probably will be.
Eventually, we’ll fail to do so. And our project will die.
The takeaway
So other than the fact that I had no business being anywhere near a physics classroom, what can we take away from my incoherent ramblings? A couple things:
The easiest way to make sure your project gets finished is to stick to a regular schedule. Eat the whale a little at a time — every day if you can. Minimize the gaps. Avoid having to face off against that nasty coefficient of slackitude more than once. The easiest way to make sure your project gets started at all is to pick a time when that coefficient of slackitude is low — when you’re excited by the prospect, when you’re well-rested, when you have relatively few competing interests. When you can focus. Use that time to build your momentum, so when your interest wanes or real life intrudes — it always does and it always will — the project is so embedded in your routine that you can just ride it out. We need more finished translations in the world. So pull up a chair and eat your whale. Do it for your team. Do it for yourself. Do it for poor Little Busters EX, drugged and ball-gagged in a basement somewhere, forever wondering when it’ll finally get to see the puppies.