LAsuka

I'm surprised that many of this year's best and biggest releases didn't make this list. I understand personal bias is at play, but when you have a nukige as the best VN of the year, I have to cry foul. For example: Best moe-ge/chara-ge: Clover's Day Plus Best Chuuni-ge: Tokyo Necro Other possible contenders that were not mentioned: Future Radio and Artificial Pigeons/Chaos;Head NOAH/Tamayura Mirai I do agree with Kinkoi Golden Time and Kunado Chronicles, but I would be remiss not to mention the sheer number of VNs that arguably were better on every level and did not receive a mention.

Many thanks to the people that have been working tirelessly on this. Cheers to the August curse finally being broken!

This seems like Murphy's Law in action; all the supernatural forces conspiring to make buying a game and enjoying it as hard as possible when any self-respecting company wants to make the process of buying and receiving the product as painless as possible. Speaks volumes about the company and the dedication (or lack thereof) it has to fans.

Games are excessively long and padded out because writers are paid based on the number of lines they write. Even if you feel "every scene is necessary" or if you feel the VN is too short, that's because the writer did a very good job masking the fluff, and making the fluff seem "integral" to the story, when in actual fact, it adds absolutely no value, and is the writer just pulling ideas from (for lack of a better term) his ass. But hey, if you thought the fluff was good, more power to you. The work exists for the reader, after all.

Isn't that because some people are not allowed to attend 18+ panels if they're underage? Or maybe some people get offended/don't want to see 18+ panels. Even if they don't show any sexually explicit content, the content they talk about in this panels may be NSFW,

You really question the validity of such a list and the tastes of Japanese people when 5 nukiges are on the list, and Tsui no Stella is not. Also, is Hamadachi Creative Totsu such a kamige that it made it so high on the list, despite it being a fandisc - which is usually an excuse for H-scenes.

I never did understand what Narita's power was. Apparently, he has the power to implant thoughts into other people's mind, but that was an application of his true power, which is to slow down people's perception of time? I have no idea how the former ability is an application of the latter, since they are completely different from each other. Then his abilities got upgraded into KIng Lear V, which I assume is because he came into contact with the Owl? There has been no mention of HMIs ever changing or evolving in the entire visual novel, so I'm not sure if that works. Also, it doesn't mention anywhere what King Lear V does, despite King Lear HMIs supposedly being the strongest type of HMI. And then he uses his ability even though he has never used it before - and it has been established that even people like Saku, who has used her ability since birth, didn't know it true power - and it somehow Dues Ex Machina defeats the main antagonists? I would appreciate if someone could make some sense of this, because Superior Entelecheia was my favourite part of the visual novel, but the way it ret-cons a lot of the power system established in the original game really left a sour taste in my mouth. P.S. Also, he managed to return to the surface despite it being mentioned that he was too low to ever manage to return. Could that be a power of King Lear V?

I would like to point out a few others that were pretty good but were missing from the list 1. The final title in the Clockwork Ley Line series, Flowers in the Morning Mist - Concluded the story very well, engaging from start to finish and didn't overstay its welcome 2. Alpha Nighthawk - Excellent worldbuilding, solid characters and a well written short story by liarsoft, although the ending seems a bit unfinished 3. Summer Pockets REFLECTION BLUE - Maybe a bit of a cop-out since the original was already released, but I think reflection blue adds a lot to the lore and backstory surrounding the central mystery.

Minakami Yuki isn't exactly smart, but she's infinitely resourceful and has relatively good deductive skills. Haru is one of my favourite characters, and one of my favourite genres are wit battles, but there are fairly few visual novels with smart heroines (at least in English). Off the top of my head, there's Yoru (and Amane, but she's kinda airheaded too) from If My Heart had Wings. Honestly I can't think of any more, but I'll update this post when I do.

He pretty much makes puns of various VNs and anime contents to create interesting titles, and it happens once a week with a weird title, so you can generally guess it when it comes out. It helps that LittleShogun doesn't do too much other blog posts other than this.

Mein waifu is the Fuhrer is literally a thing

Thanks for the updates Mangagamer's acquisitions and catalogue continues to disappoint. At this point, their company seems to be on a slow decline. Fan Translations are still trucking along fine. They work on their passion, so the fact that they give us anything is nothing short of a miracle. Nekonyan continues to get pretty good acquisitions from a variety of producers. At this point, it is probably the most beloved VN localisation company at this moment. Oh yeah, JAST still exists... I guess. I guess its fine. It gives us some great VNs, occasionally.

Can't blame you. Its very hard to find people willing to volunteer nowadays. All the OG translators and editors have moved on or are working for actual localisation companies, and all the potential new ones are kinda spoiled by the volume of English releases that they don't see the point of learning Japanese. In the past, out of necessity, there would be people who would try to improve their Japanese by translating in the own time. I'm really grateful and thankful for all the work you and the team put in

Good luck! Ruitomo is one of those VNs which is very surprising hasn't had a fan translation for a long time, considering its acclaim and the story it tells. I would help, but sadly my Japanese isn't at the level where I can read VNs without a parser.

OOH, ENDLESS 13.... SCARY