12kami

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

Some veterans of reading untranslated VNs refer to the period between 2004 and 2010 as 'The Golden Age of Visual Novels'.  However, you shouldn't really take that statement at face value, as the meaning is a bit more complex than you'd think.
There are some significant differences between VNs today and VNs during that period that both made it the peak of the medium's sales in Japan and produced the greatest ratio of quality VNs to crap VNs. 
One of the primary differences was that, other than moege, there were no strict genre boundaries and genre conventions had yet to slide into place in the minds of fans and writers both.  Companies were mostly experimenters during that time, sometimes basing their projects on previous works (Tsukihime and the Key games got a lot of knock-offs during this time, of varying levels of quality) and sometimes forging out on their own.  
Since there were few genre boundaries, companies were more likely to give the creative staff free reign as to what kind of story they could write, and  - ironically - this actually helped define the various genres in the years to come, as people explored the boundaries of how they could stretch a concept or theme in a story.  Some of these attempts were abortive (ie- thematic moege where all the heroines are of the same type, such as tsundere or yandere, generally didn't catch on) but others were immensely successful (ie- the definition of the chuunige genre and its gradual escape from gakuen battle mania).  However, the point is that the writers, directors, and producers of the time were allowed to fiddle with the formula a lot  more than they are now.  Most major companies nowadays have a 'signature style', that was formed during that period, even if their greatest successes weren't during that period. 
This period also killed the 'pure moege' as a genre, ending the majority genre of the previous half-decade (moege having dominated during that period due to the Da Capo series and Key's games).  The rise of the charage, a demi-moege genre that was much wider in scope and more adaptable, occurred during this period, mostly unrecognized until after the fact.  At the same time, nakige, which had previously been enslaved to the moege genre through Key and others like them, came to define itself as a new, standalone genre that wasn't necessarily dependent on moe stylization.  Even Key itself moved beyond pure moe, though it didn't entirely abandon some elements of it (as the existence of Kud testifies).
However, this age was already ending in 2009, as clearly-delineated genre norms began to form, and charage became the driver for the industry, taking us back, in spirit, to the age before that.  By 2011, the ratio of truly creative works to derivative works was overwhelmingly in favor of the latter, in comparison to the previous decade. 
That isn't to say that the years since haven't produced some great works.  That is patently untrue in my experience... but the fact remains that fewer and fewer writers are able or willing to look outside the 'genre boxes' for answers as to what to write.  I sometimes refer to our current age as the Age of Stagnation, where there is an overwhelming industry pressure to stick to genre norms and those that break the mold are so exceptional they stand out more than they should.
It is possible to create a charage kamige... but it is much easier to make a kamige out of a game that breaks genre boundaries, lol.

... I'm going to be blunt about this... I can't  believe this was written by the same guy who wrote Nekopara, Sakura Bitmap, and Strawberry Nauts.  This VN has an overwhelming degree of impact compared to his other works, to the point where I'm even willing to consider it a kamige.  Music, music-usage, story, presentation, art, and art usage are all at their highest levels, combining to create a nakige whose impact is far out of proportion to its length (which is only about seven hours, for me). 
I honestly wasn't expecting the emotional impact of this VN.  In terms of this quality, it approaches Houkago no Futekikakusha, without being an utsuge... I literally cried throughout the entire game, to the point where my sinuses are swollen and my eyes bloodshot.  From the very beginning, this game makes no pretense at being anything other than what it is... a cathartic trip full of love, despair, sorrow, and loss with a drop of hope. 
I won't spoil you as to the central concept, even though it is tempting.  Based on the fact that no details of the setting other than the characters are revealed in any detail on either the official website or the Getchu page, in addition to my own experience, I can say straight out that this is a VN best enjoyed without someone giving you details to the setting or situation.  I will say that it is a fantasy setting, based in a world that has early nineteenth-century tech (no guns that I saw though), based on the presence of an ice box and ice sellers in the game.  This is also based on the fact that matches exist but electric lights apparently don't, since the characters are using candles and oil lamps. 
This game is pretty short, mostly due to its structure, where heroine 'paths' only come into existence after the main story is over, as epilogues for each of the four individual heroines (Haru, Yuki, Kotose, and Ren).  There is no 'true' heroine in this game, for those are wondering.  All the heroines are quite literally equal, though the protagonist is a bit more intimate with Ren and Haru, which is probably more of a reflection of the writer's preferences than anything else.
This game is 100% 'business', including the slice-of-life scenes.  Not one scene in this VN is wasted on something other than portraying the characters' suffering and joy or progressing the story.  To be blunt, if this game weren't so perfectly designed, I'd probably be calling it 'bare-bones' in that aspect.  That lack of wasted time is actually of immense help, as it prevents the phenomenon of 'contempt due to familiarity' that tends to occur when a VN has an excess of 'meaningless' slice-of-life scenes. 
This VN isn't humor-centric, so don't expect a lot of laughs out of it.  The heroines have serious issues, and even in everyday life, those issues peek out from beneath the surface on a regular basis.  As a result, humorous situations are relatively limited after the setting's central issue gets introduced to you and you come to understand the protagonist's objective.
Unfortunately, there is little more I can say about this VN without ruining it for you.  I can say it is a first-class nakige, and I can say it is a cry-fest designed to suck the tears out of you with a virtual vacuum cleaner.  However, that is just a repeat of what I said above.  I do advise that anyone who goes into this VN should do so without excessive prior knowledge, as it is a VN that is best enjoyed with a 'clean slate' the first time around.
VN of the month November 2016
Karenai Sekai to Owaru Hana

Howdy! The ones who follow us know that I haven't been updating things personally neither in the website nor in Fuwa even though the individual threads for each project in Fuwanovel have been updated weekly or so. This has been like this because college has started for me and some of my teammates, and that means that things have been busier than before, so we have less time to devote to the projects (although that doesn't mean that we're slacking off). Besides, let's be honest here, I felt a little bit lazy to do the update.
We have a new website now! Yes, this will be the last update I'll be posting on the old website of Luna Translations and from now on we'll operate on the vntls platform, if you have a tl team and want a website with all the perks that Wordpress Premium offers but for free be sure to contact them, they're really nice guys and I appreciate their effort for making it come true. I also want to thank @Asonn, the one who made my website, who will be rewarded with a physical copy of Majo Koi, thanks for everything! New websites' link: https://lunatl.vntls.com/.
DISCLAIMER: Some progress bars in the new website (such as Majo Koi's) are still outdated, so please be aware of that.
Regarding new titles, we've added one to our roster, but since the leader of it doesn't want the title nor the project mentioned yet I won't do it until I'm given permission to do so.
To the ones who follow Kanojo to Ore to Koibito to (or "tototo" in short), we have decided to put the project on HIATUS until the translators that are supposedly in the team working on it reappear. There has been no progess tl-wise regarding in project for several months now, so after a lot of thinking I decided to stall the project until I have more news about the people that are involved in it. Editing and proofreading of the prologue (which is completed) will continue and we will hopefully release at least the trial version of the game as a partial patch, though I don't have an ETA for that, you'll just have to wait.
Majo Koi is close to the 50% mark, progress has been steady and there have been no major changes whatsoever regarding this project. Everything seems to be going nicely and we're pretty much good on this front.
https://lunatranslationstestsite.wordpress.com/projects-2/projects/progress/ (Majo Koi progress bar)
Witch's Garden keeps going, but very slowly, since one of our TLC's is doing school-related stuff and another one is having a vacation in Japan for some weeks, so for now only one TLC is active. Things are progressing and retranslation for the common route is around the 70% mark. All the other fronts won't have any progress until we completely finish the TLC of the common route.
Tsui Yuri is at the 81% mark translation-wise. The editing keeps advancing at a steady pace and there have been no bumps or problems whatsoever regarding this project either, everything seems to be going fine.
https://lunatl.vntls.com/tsui-yuri/
Anyways, that wasn't a lot, but I wanted to make this at least to show that we're very alive and still kicking, we just have our plates full now and we barely make time to progress on things at the moment.
Have a nice day, everyone.
 
 
 

Hello everyone, Aizen-Sama here. I’ve been only around this community and forums for around 6 months by now, and even though I may not be the most knowledgeable when it comes to VN’s in general, I think that I possess enough knowledge about the translation scene. That’s right, today I’m not writing a post about Luna Translations, but one about my opinion on the translation scene, translation groups, and the community revolving them.

Let us establish how this community and market actually exist in the first place. Piracy and fan translating, they are both mutually exclusive to each other and they are the foundations of what we consider as the “western visual novel community”.
After some years where piracy slowly started to decrease and official releases started to be a thing I can safely assume that there are three types of people now, one who will support every single game localization and buy the Visual Novels instead of pirating them, one who will pirate everything and anything, or one that will mix between these two because either there is no other access to the game in Japanese to apply the English patch (in other words, you can’t buy the game legally because the Japanese market is already a very difficult place to access with Western VPN’s, mostly because Japanese publishers block them to not let people outside Japan buy these games online, which is usually the only way to get them in the first place) or the individual simply doesn’t support some releases or companies that release VN’s in particular (I’ll set people that want to buy legally a game with a fan-translated patch but can’t do it, so they have to pirate the VN even if they don’t want to as an example).
This last example leads to another concerning issue, the relationship between translation groups and the community itself. It’s partly human nature; when a group establishes itself and releases a patch (no matter whether it’s full or partial) we automatically create what is called a “power level” between these two types of people, the users that translate and work on translating games in one way or another (editing, QC’ing, etc…) and the users that simply play the releases made by the first ones.
This so called “power level” is what should be avoided at all costs, sometimes the community must remember that the people that belong to translation groups (whether they are official or not) are part of the community as well, and have their own stances and way of doing things.
Those “power levels” are automatically made, and they are the primary reason of this community’s fragmentation into several “sub-communities”, which is a problem mainly for the translation groups. What I’m trying to say here is that what is constantly happening right now is that what this “power division” has made is to categorize groups by number of patches released (the more they have released the more praised they are) and that has ultimately lead to two things; groups distancing themselves from the community, which is a very bad thing for both of the parties involved, and groups distancing from each other.
What I mean by this last statement is that there is no communication between teams, which leads to what is happening in the actual society that we live in: the individualization of people (Tl-teams in this case). But regarding that aspect, some groups have managed to find a solution to this matter. Let’s put @Arcadeotic's (Euphemic Translation) and @oystein's (Elevator TL) groups for example; both of them have found a way to make the community feel closer to their groups thanks to their “Public Discord Server Policy” (that’s how I call it) and both of them are in the TL Leaders Discord Server (basically a group to try to unite translation teams more, an initiative from Arcadeotic and I). That group has opened my eyes in many aspects regarding team stances towards piracy as well as opinions about the community and it's relation with the Tl teams. This group has also helped me in getting to know people that otherwise I would have never met even if we were active members of this forum and interacted with each other sometimes, like for example Dergonu, Oystein, Kardororororo, and many more.
What I’m ultimately trying to say is that banding together is a rare thing for groups now, and this is the first step to create a community feel again, something that, in my opinion, is being lost little by little and needs to be stopped.
I’ll mention another issue that many people find itchy, and that is the topic of “the sense of entitlement of a loud minority”.
I’d like to make myself very clear about this; I know that there is a silent positive majority, and that compared to the amount of people that complain about things about projects and English patches this majority vastly overcomes the “minority”, but the matter of fact is that this “loud minority” is what gives people that are new to the community a bad impression about it from the start.
I’ll set two examples to demonstrate the last point I mentioned: firstly, I’d like to address the Koiken Otome Project, one that took approximately three years to finish. It’s a topic full of controversy, firstly because people firstly speculated that Flying Pantsu was going to “definitely sell out to the localization companies” and they made a ruckus about it.

First of all, what if they really “sold out” to one of them? That is, in my opinion, a good thing (primarily because I belong to the “buy everything” type of guy instead of pirating unless it can’t be avoided and tend to support official releases), but mostly because, the fact of the matter is that they spent working on an English patch of a game that contains more than 40K lines three years, and the entire effort is theirs, that means that even if they decided to not release the patch for whatever reason, I would have been totally in favor. Why? Because it’s THEIR work and THEY did it, not the people that feel entitled to have the English patch.
Same goes with the problem that revolved around the time of release. Again, I’ll repeat, the matter of fact is that they could’ve released that patch whenever they wanted because since THEY did the patch, they decide when to release it, simple.

The second example I’ll highlight in this post talks about Shinku Translations and the controversy that revolved around the SakuSaku patch. If you don’t know what happened regarding this project I’ll quickly sum it up: Shinku Translations made a deal with Sekai Project to release the game officially, what ultimately made people who were waiting for a fan-patch very pissed. The comments on their website were mostly full of “sellouts” and “I already bought the game in Japanese, now I’ll have to buy it again, gg boys” and many more that blew my mind. That was the perfect demonstration of the entitlement that people slowly begin to have when a project is close to being finished.
 I’ll repeat myself once again, just like Koiken Otome and Flying Pantsu, it was THEIR work, so they had the right to make a deal with Sekai Project and do whatever they wanted to the patch. And, as Akerou explained in one of the comments, it could lead to more titles being localized, which, in my opinion, are good news!
 People have to start realizing that sooner or later, the entire scope if not most of the translation scope will shift towards official releases instead of fan-patches.
As a last argument regarding this matter, I’ll mention a couple of YouTube comments that I found in the official OP video of SakuSaku published by Sekai Project’s YouTube channel, they basically said this:
“That's a low punch SP. That's just low. The guy translating it is almost done. If you buy the translation from him and release it in the next 2 months I might forgive you. If you do it less than a month you are forgiven.”
“Well just pirate the release when it comes out. This is one of the cases when piracy is completely justified.”
These two comments are part of the “entitlement problem” that I’ve addressed before, and I hope they highlight what I’ve been trying to tackle (take into account that these comments are just the surface, just look at the ones in Shinku’s page and you’ll get a grasp of what this community broods sometimes).

Last but not least, I’d like to address Fuwanovel as a platform for translation projects and my opinion about it as a Leader of a translation group (in this case, Luna Translations).
Don’t get me wrong when I say that. I love Fuwanovel as a site. It’s one of the principal, if not the main responsible for the appearance of a community that revolves around Visual Novels in general. I love this site, and I appreciate the people that back this site paying monthly (I hope I can do it as well when I get the chance) and the mods for doing their jobs correctly and every other person that supports this site. But, I’d like to tackle the issue of trying to host translation projects in a forum-based website.
 I’d like to point out that the system created in Fuwa worked very VERY well at the beginning stages of the creation of this community. Basically, the “Fan Translator Skills” thread and the “Translation Projects” thread were probably very useful and effective back when the community was niche and not a lot of projects and teams crowded the scene (I’m not directing this towards the “Fan TL Discussion” thread, by the way).
But, as a leader of a translation team (and I’m sure that many people will agree with me on this) I just think that Fuwa’s way of hosting projects is not as effective as it was probably two or three years ago.
What I’m trying to say here is that, just like VNDB exists, a platform that focuses solely on helping teams and individuals to work on projects will certainly appear at some point, or at least needs to appear at some point. Summing up, Fuwanovel as a forum focused on the discussion of Visual Novels and the fan translation scene is a very good and positive website, and it’s totally needed for the community to keep growing, but! Fuwanovel (the forums) used as a platform to support projects and teams may have been very effective in the past but not anymore, since now the scope is very broad and more complex compared to when all of this started.
Finally, to close this rant, I’d like to say that if I had to sum up things probably the most important issue would be that the community is losing the sense of being together, and groups, as well as individuals, are distancing themselves from each other, which is something that has to be avoided at all costs. I’ll personally try to do whatever I can about this matter and little by little this problem will hopefully be solved in the future, because together we can do great things.
Let’s try to make the translation world great again, as Trump as it sounds.
 
 
 

Hello guys. This is our first bi-weekly update. I'll cover everything that needs to be mentioned and all of that. Progress speed has been the average, nothing extraordinary, but it's still progress whatsoever. Here we go:
Majo Koi Nikki
As you guys may or may not know, we have released our first partial patch (check the post out if you haven't) which covers around 4.200 lines approximately, basically the game's prologue. Apart from that, the progress has been steady this last couple of days and we managed to reach 30% of translated lines. The TLC has catched up with the translation progress and the editing keeps progressing with no bumps whatsoever.
Translation Progress
30% (12203/40208)
Witch's Garden

This game has probably the juiciest news out of the two, so brace yourselves. Eclair's route has been completely finished and the only two routes left are Ayari's. So yeah, those are very good news. Apart from that, TLC progress is steady and editing is still on hold, we want to keep making progress in the TLC field, because at this point we're basically retranslating full scripts sometimes and just a couple of lines in others, it's really strange and frustrating for the TLC's sometimes, so that's why we ask for your patience, because the TLC (or retranslation) will take some time to finish.
Anyways, here are the numbers for both:
Translation 66%
TLC 10%
We haven't included the accurate line numbers this time because we're experienceing some difficulties with the already linebreaked original lines, messing up the count. Sorry about it.
Other things worth mentioning:
We've created a Twitter account. There, we'll be pumping live and small updates about progress and what happens in the group in general, so be sure to follow us! One translator who previously worked in Majo Koi (Rauros Falls) has decided to step back from Majo Koi and start translating Musumaker again. Expect Musumaker updates as well as soon as he starts working on it. We are very glad to announce that we are going to be taking care of a new project in this group. The game is called Kanojo to Ore to Koibito to (VNDB). Soon, we'll add it to our current active projects and lay out the usual links and pages for it for people to be more informed about it. Expect progress about this project in our website from now on.
About Kanojo to Ore to Koibito to (or tototo or shorts), the people taking care of it were the recent team members that weren't listed in neither of our staff pages for the two current active projects in our website (Majo Koi and WG). The team is:
Mitch (Translator) Nohara (TLC/Translator) Takeshira (Editor) Archonoffail (Proofreader) Waterflame (Image Editor) Frc (Hacker) Aizen-Sama (Coordinator) Anyways, that's everything for now. I hope this wasn't a long read. Have a nice day everyone and until next time!

Another quick project plug: Luna Translations just released their v1.0 English patch for the Majo Koi Nikki (a.k.a. Witch's Love Diary) demo. And guess what? You should totally go get it. I've been helping out with their proofreading, and I can tell you they've done a bang-up job so far.
Best part? It's super easy to obtain. Qoobrand offers the trial, which covers the game's prologue, as a free download on their site. (You'll want to grab the first one, not Trial 2.) Just download it, patch it up, and Robert's your mother's brother. Just so you know, he gets a little grabby after two or three scotches.
It should also be said that Qoobrand jammed a bunch of H-scenes into the early hours of MajoKoi. Consider that fair warning... or the clang of a dinner bell, if you're hungry for that sort of thing. Unlike a lot of VNs, however, those sections are there for a reason.* MajoKoi is set up as an intricate puzzle, and the oddly early placement of the H is all part of the larger mystery.
So go on — pull up a chair, order yourself a Dragon Burger (medium rare), and settle in for a small taste of what Majo Koi Nikki has to offer.
Trial download: http://qoo.amuse-c.jp/01_mazyokoi/download.html
English patch download: https://lunatranslationstestsite.wordpress.com/downloads/
* Not a good reason. But a better reason than most, at least.

For better or worse, the VN localization industry in America and other Western nations is expanding rapidly, primarily due to the efforts of aggressive localization companies such as Mangagamer and Sekai Project, but also due to the increased interest on the part of at least some Japanese VN companies in making a few extra bucks through localization. 
I say 'for better or worse' because the increase in localizations has actually begun to outline what some of the biggest problems with VNs are, for those living in the West.  What I've put down below is basic guidance... not all of which I follow myself, but which is mostly common sense (which a surprising number of new Fuwans seem to be ignorant of).
 
Ethical/Legal problems
1. Piracy- To be blunt, prosecuting consumers of pirated games is a waste of time, and most companies are quite well aware of this.  So, most of the fallout for this kind of thing is going to keep hitting the websites and individuals who promote the distribution end of things.  A few examples will most likely be made of outspoken pirate consumers (the idiots, in other words), but the problem here is almost entirely ethical for most.  Tell me, do you think it is right not to pay for content if you happen to have the money needed to pay for it?
2. Lolicon content- Seriously guys?  When I saw that Maitetsu was getting a localization, even though it was an all-ages one, alarm bells went off in my head.  Someone is inevitably going to put up an h-patch for the game, and that is going to cause a huge amount of controversy later on that could be a huge blow to the industry, in the short run.  Loli content is one of the two nuclear bombs of Japanese eroge, and it is the one that honestly bothers me the most personally (not so much morally, as in a pragmatic sense).
3. Rapegames- I'm going to be blunt... considering the degree to which Western culture has come to consider rape a mortal sin, do you really think games focused around rape and extreme sexual situations (ie the entire Maggot Baits game) are safe for the industry to localize, if you consider their potential to backfire?  There is no conceivable way that these games could be considered anything other than obscene by any reasonable critic (not a community one, in other words), and in the long run, games like these have an enormous potential to castrate the localization industry.
4. School-based games- Sadly, the excuse that 'all the heroines are over eighteen' is only going to take you so far in some countries... to be blunt, a judge is unlikely to listen to that kind of protestation if, for whatever insane reason, you end up dragged into court.
Common sense issues
1. I don't think anyone has any business telling us we can't import Japanese games, including VNs.  However, as a matter of common sense, you should probably avoid importing anything with a lot of content linked to the numbers 2 and 3 in the section above.  I don't mean to piss on your bonfire, but if you are going to buy something with that kind of material, at least have the sense to use digital download purchases and/or don't display the packages for that type of eroge where casual visitors can see them.
2. Figurines and other side-junk- Within reason, there is no reason why a fan of a particular bit of otaku media shouldn't order figurines, statuettes, oppai mousepads, etc to decorate their room or gaming space.  However, keep it within reason... I've seen otaku friends of mine go insane and overpurchase, even going into debt, over buying swag.  If you aren't rich, have the sense to focus on the main material first, then expand at a reasonable pace into the swag.  To an extent, the same can be said of the games themselves, considering the costs of the actual purchases plus import costs.
3.  Anonymity is your best friend.  Don't pull stupid crap like linking your Facebook profile to your dlsite or getchu account... for that matter, don't link them to your Fuwanovel account, if you are a fan of 'deep' eroge content.  Leaving that kind of data around for casual skimmers to find is just plain stupid.
4.  If you are a fantranslator, number 3 applies emphatically unless you are about to go 'legit' by handing your translation to a localization company.
5.  During scandal times (like when the media is making a big deal over an eroge-related issue such as during the infamous Rapelay incident) have the sense to take cover and avoid conversing on rapegames and lolige publicly. 
6.  Know the difference between being open about your libido and being excessive *remembers Steve*
 
A final comment
Needless to say, almost all the issues above revolve around controversial sexual content.  Part of that is that many people, both inside and outside the VN fanbase, have trouble marking the difference between fiction and reality when it comes to otaku media (an insanity that I can understand but am long past).  As a legal argument, it (as in the argument that figments of an artist's or writer's imagination, as opposed to real women, cannot be considered underaged and cannot be considered victims in any way, form, or fashion) actually has a lot of merit... but that doesn't mean that they'll rule in your favor, in the end, lol.  The West is prudish, to the extreme.  There is no telling when religious interests will slip a noose around our necks, and general moralists are just as bad.  I'm not perfect about taking my own advice.  I'm a VN junkie, and I really don't have any morals when it comes to my search for good VN stories.  I might be disgusted by some content, but that won't prevent me from experiencing the story, lol.  However, a lot of the people around me seem to be utterly unaware of the risks of being an eroge reader... and I felt I had to put this out there, for the 'public' good, even though I'm certain I've already pissed off the anti-censorship and pro-piracy parts of the community, lol. 

I post Moe Repository #32 and a day later it gets deleted in a rollback. taypls
...wait, wrong blog.
MOE
 

Making moeblogs in IPB4 is suffering now, I used to be able to copy and paste an entire post and now I need to manually embed each image and make sure they don't get messed up while I'm at it.
There's a good way to fix those frustrations, looking at adorable MOE will make it all better, no matter what's troubling you!

I'll be perfectly honest... having finished Shizuma's path, the only thing I can say is that he was a total douche-bag intelligent self-hating moron to the end.   Being inside his mind was depressing, right from the beginning to the end. While I loved most of the other characters on his path, I hated him and his heroines, also from beginning to end.  Similar to Kai, he is actually more effective on foot than he is riding in Stigma.  Stigma is slightly more durable than Alfaria, and she definitely has a lot better support skills.  However, when it came down to it, all that meant was that I had to keep a piece of deadweight alive through the entire game.  Gameplay-wise, that is a nightmare in both Kai's and Shizuma's paths. 
I did like the characters in Shizuma's path more than the ones in Kai's, because they seemed more human (except the psychopath).  Unfortunately, there really was no reason why they should have stuck with Shizuma.  He resents them through most of the game, takes out his frustrations on them frequently, and generally makes an ass of himself.  Also, there was a huge load of 'what was the point of all that?' self-pity from Shizuma for about the last half of his path that made me feel like I wanted to smash his head in.
Shizuma's story is dark... but it isn't the kind of darkness you can sit back and take pleasure in.  It is the kind of darkness that gives you a headache because it is largely born out of Shizuma's idiocy after a certain point of the game.  Yes, I unreservedly hate Shizuma.  I don't mind characters that get twisted by the things they have to do, but self-hating, self-pitying idiots with 18 Intelligence and 0 Wisdom make me want to smash things.  He does not evolve or really learn from his mistakes, and his paranoia gets old, fast.
Story-wise... there are way too many inconsistencies between the two paths, even where they meet.  I had to honestly throw my hands up in frustration at trying to figure out how they meant the game to make sense.  Not only that, but throughout Shizuma's path you see bits of the backstage that should have really come to the forefront at some point but fizzle out, with the inability to access the third path making me want to do the 'crazy dance'.  There should be a third path, because none of the crap that happens in this game is conclusive in any way.  They hinted at a third path before release.  So why can't I access it after completing both paths once, I wonder?  If they mean to release it as a sequel, I'm just going to forget about this game entirely.
I am also at least partially sure that heroine choice actually effects things more than it really should in this type of game, due to the sheer amount of extra battles I had to fight in comparison to Kai's path.  Since Veridadear is a really easy to notice secondary heroine, I suppose going down her path probably creates a much different outcome from choosing Alfaria.  Choosing Stigma in Shizuma's path resulted in a nightmare rollercoaster of endless death that made me bored halfway through (I know that sounds impossible - me loving endless death -, but the way the story for Shizuma's path stumbled so completely after the turning point made me want to scream).
 
Update
Ok, the thing you have to do to access the third path is to complete Stigma's and Alfaria's path, as I suspected *sighs*.  The difference in length and difficulty between Alfaria's path and Veridadear's path is pretty extreme... and at the end, after playing through the equivalent of two full VN-rpgs?  You have to play yet another path... the best thing I can say about it is that you actually find out what was going on behind the scenes to some extent early on.  I'm really tired of this game... for obvious reasons.  Nonetheless, I'll keep playing this until it is over, lol.

*** astro has shared contact details with Joe. ***
Joe: Hi astro, I'm wondering can u pls translate Aiyoku no Eustia?
 
Me: sorry I really don't have time to take on more projects right now
 
Joe: But it's a rly good game
 
Me: I'm sure it is. look, I hope that you're not asking me to do it for free at the very least - I don't even know who the heck you are
 
Joe: Well how long will it take u to do it? I can pay u $2000 at most depending on how long it takes
 
Me: ...Do you have any idea how long the game is?
 
Joe: No idk japanese so I've never played it before
 

 
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Well, this isn't really Tay's fault, but my rule of thumb is to always blame Tay. taypls

Introduction:
 
When it comes to reading VN's in Japanese, required skills can be grouped into four areas: Vocab, grammar, basic parsing skill, and kanji skill. In this post, for each area I'm going to explain:
-what knowing skills in the area are good for
-how you might study them
-how much you'll need to start reading.
I'll also give some related tips.
 
The requirements mentioned below are a conservative estimate. I've known people who've jumped in to playing VN's with less or much less, but I'm giving a safe estimate. A level which at most people, without any special knack for learning languages through immersion, should be able to gain traction. If you learn this much before starting an easyish VN, the amount you are completely lost should be significantly less than the percentage you are able to pick up and improve from.
 
This is not a comprehensive how-to guide by any means. Just an informative post.
 
------------------
 
1. Vocab
 
Knowing enough vocab to study your grammar resource without being bogged down by vocab:
-About 30 verbs and 50 other words for Genki 1/ Tae kim Basic.
-By the time you get to Genki 2/Tae Kim Essential you'll want a good set of verbs (about 100), and maybe about 300 total vocabulary.
-~600 words about how much you'll want to be able to study N3 grammar without getting bogged down in vocab.
 
Having enough vocab to start your first VN:
-I recommend over 1000, but anywhere from 800-1300 is good. I remember trying Clannad with only 800, and I felt like ramming my head into a wall. It's also important to pick an easy title. It will still feel hard no matter what, but an easy title will be much more helpful and rewarding to play. You also must just translation aggregator and ITH. They are the reason why Visual Novels are the best medium for learning Japanese out of anime/books/movies/drama/etc.
 
Vocab Lists:
There's a dedicated verb list here: http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/
Verbs are helpful to learn, because they are often the most important part of the sentence AND you need to to have stuff to conjugate.
In general JLPT-based vocab list is here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/
 
Regarding English definitions:
Be mentally open and flexible. If the english definition doesn't quite add up, don't try and think about it too hard. Focus instead on associating the word with the situations where you see it.
For example, you might be confused by the word 都合 and it's unhelpful definition J-E definition, but if you seen 都合がいい used in a situation where you know it means "is convenient for me" from context then remember that occurence. There might be (there are, in fact), other usages of the word 都合, but that doesn't hurt you in anyway. The next time you see 都合 you can pair it against this meaning and see if that makes any sense.
 
2. Grammar Skills
 
With N5+N4 grammar you will be barely able to start making your way through a VN. Without N4, you will have quite limited gains in the long term from reading visual novels. (Equivalent to Genki 1+2.)
-Required to be able to play VN's
 
With N3 grammar, everything will feel a lot clearer, the amount of grammar you'll understand will exceed 60%. (Equiv. to Intermediate approach to Integrated Japanese). Highly recommended to study this before or soon after you start your first VN.
 
N2 grammar further cuts the amount of unknown grammar you face in three.
 
N1 is kind of like a bonus that gives you a lot of uncommon or formal expressions. It's NOT comprehensive at all, in terms of covered all Japanese phrases. From my experience, some of the phrases you learn in here show up often in novels (ばかり、んばかり), others quite less. Good to know, though
 
Expressions not covered in JLPT
There are a lot of patterns and phrases not covered in JLPT that you will see in typical native reading material. Examples (社長に議長, phrases like なんだと！？ Xってなんだ？　ですって！？　～てくれないかな。 オレって、なんてバカなんだ ) Not to worry, many of them can be picked up as you go. For the rest, once you get settled into reading, you can start noting down those phrases you don't get and google them or ask other people.
 
Imabi for grammar
You can also try studying from http://www.imabi.net/. It's a phenomenal reference, it's just goes into tons of depth, too much. I think there's 2 or 3 times as much information there is covered by JLPT up to JLPT 1. As such it's going to be overwhelming for a beginner and is much better suited as a reference for intermediate or advanced learners.
 
3. Basic Parsing Skill
 
Knowing the different types of words (Covered by doing a vocab list of about 100 verbs, and then the JLPT 5 list. You also have to have done or be doing Tae Kim's Basic Guide, since he explains what na-adj's, i-adj's, and other word types are, etc.).
-(nouns, suru-verbs/nouns, verbs, na-adj's, i-adj's, adverbs, temporal adverbs)
-Required to be able to play VN's.
 
Knowing the basic sentence structure and how words can modify each other and fit in a sentence.: (adjectives modifying nouns, verbs).
The knowledge is covered by Tae Kim Basic + a mix of Essential Grammar and Genki 1/2. I personally find Tae Kim's explanation good even though the learning curve is steep and his lessons aren't good for review like Genki books are. He tries to convey to you the big picture.
-Required to be able to play VN's.
 
Being able to breakdown sentences and spot the different types of words based on their position.
-you can practice this by reading bits of text in your genki textbook, but more likely, the first time you really gain this skill is going to be the first month in which you read a visual novel with TA. Heavily practiced during your first month or two of reading VN's.
 
4. Kanji Skill:
 
Learning to spots radicals in kanji (could be covered by doing the 214 radicals, about 1 month. You could also do this ongoing basis, learning how to spot the radicals that make up a kanji, for the words you learn.)
-not needed to read VN's with TL aggregator, but extremely helpful for learning new words which have new kanji.
 
Learning to remember kanji, ie. start recognizing when words share the same kanji. (it is a long ongoing gradual process. You can start doing this with the vocab you learn once you are comfortable learning vocab. You can also pick out words you see in vn's and check whether they use the same kanji by typing them out (example 朝（あさ）　and　朝食（ちょうしょく）　use the same kanji.). Oh course, to be able to easily produce the kanji you want to compare you need to remember how to spell a word that contains it (in this case 朝). So, as your vocab expands, you'll be able to compare more kanji. Note that to be able to do this comparing you must be able to spot radicals in kanji (previous level skill).
-moderately helpful for learning vocabs. The same way remembering radicals helps learning with kanji: if you know the kanji clearly, you can remember a word just by the two kanji it uses, which is very precise and doesn't take a lot of mental bandwidth. It also means that you will much more rarely confuse words which have similiar looking kanji.
 
The following two skills are for more advanced, they won't be particularly useful until much later. You might not notice the problems they solve until later as well. I include them mainly for completeness.
Learning on-yomi for many of the Jyouyou kanji (start when you are intermediate-advanced, a medium-long process)
-helpful for exactly what it is, reading kanji words and compounds correctly.
-don't need to worry about this. From learning vocab you might pick up some of the common ones, but there's no need to pursue this actively for a while.
 
Learning kanji meaning: (start when you are advanced, and can use a J-J dictionary)
-suffixes like 府、省、性、症, as well normal kanji whose different meanings apply to clusters of words.
-helpful for kanji compounds which won't directly show up in dictionaries
-helpful for developing a native level understanding of vocabulary (not everything can be learned by exposure). A lot of literary words are fairly influenced by their kanji meanings, though sometimes consulting the word differentiation explanations can be more helpful.
 
 
 
One last topic...
 
On learning enough grammar and jumping into works too difficult for you.
Reading a VN isn't the best way to learn basic sentence structure. However, it's a great way to reinforce grammar points you've learned. It's also a great way to get an understanding of conversational patterns you won't find in textbooks or JLPT. But you won't have the presence of mind to pay attention to that if you are bogged down by not knowing basic grammar.
There are benefits for venturing early into native material or difficult vn's, but you wouldn't give a grade two student Tolkien, or even Harry Potter to improve their English. All the fancy prose and unusual concept would distract you from the more immediately useful things like, say: basic sentence structure.
There are works which are the right level, and there are VN's which you really want to read. For the best experience, it's best to find some combination of the two.
 
------------------
 
Ok that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions: I didn't really go into the details of how to study, instead focusing on the, well, skills involved. But it's also hard to remember what it's like for someone just starting out. I remember parts of studying very clearly, but I forget the thousands of things I used to be puzzled through varying stages of understanding but now take for granted.
The process was all I could think about for the longest time. Now I don't give it much thought, it's just a regular part of my life, reading and a bit of studying. It's not bad idea, to just find a type of study that you know is helpful, stop thinking about all the right ways and wrong ways and magic tricks which don't exist, and just do it, for a while. Regularly. For a month or three.

Since I get asked questions constantly on this subject, I'll go ahead and list a few pieces of advice I felt apply to most beginners.
 
1) Use translation aggregator and a text hooker, even if you feel like you should be getting out your kanji dictionary, out of a sense of self-reliance. I'll be blunt, it is hard to enjoy something if you have to refer to a kanji dictionary for every other non-particle word. I am sometimes stunned at people bragging about spending 100 hours on an 8 hour moege because they chose not to use a text hooker. That is not an efficient way of using your time, even if you want to learn kanji. It is actually more efficient time-wise to do kanji exercises separately and read your VNs with a text hooker (you'll still be done with both in half the time it would have taken for you to read it using a kanji dictionary).
 
2) There are two methods you can choose to start your untranslated career... you can start off easy and work your way up, or you can smash your head into the walls of text of the harder VNs out there. I chose the latter, and most people choose the former. The walls of text method has the advantage of jump-starting your learning... but in exchange, you'll probably end up sleeping more to let you process all the new information you've gathered and you'll get frustrated more often. If you want to use the former method, I made a list here sometime ago ( http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/3493-for-love-of-vns-for-beginners/ ).
 
3) jparser in Translation aggregator isn't perfect, nor is Mecab. They are tools to give you a chance to parse the kanji faster, rather than a translation tool. However, there is a good side-benefit to the frequently weird choices of furigana they make... and that is that you'll naturally learn the path to understanding kanji puns without having to look them up later, and it will become ever more easy to dissect more difficult words even without the tools later on.
 
4) In the end, mastering reading untranslated VNs is an uphill battle for most people. Don't expect yourself or everything you use to be perfect from the beginning, as the very idea is absurd. You'll run into stumbling blocks constantly, and you'll worry endlessly about whether you really understood that last line for most of your first hundred VNs or so.
 
5) If you read slowly in your native language, you will also read slowly in Japanese. Reading is reading, and it is a skill honed by a simple process of practice, practice, practice that never ends. Yes, learning to read fast in your own language will help you learn to read fast in Japanese once you've gotten to a certain level. If you are barely competent in your own language, I'll be frank in saying that this isn't for you, not to be mean but because it is the same skill, regardless of the details.
 
6) Last of all, I'd suggest hitting a wide variety of genres early on, not just your favorite ones. Why? Because that sense of wonder and love for VNs is only going to last through your first twenty-five to forty VNs, and once you've gotten past that point, it is going to be harder and harder to grow beyond your limits on your own.

Hi hi Fuwa. My name is rains.
 
I'd like to start this blog for my personal casual anime and VN reviews. Of course I have preferences and specific biases for certain aspects of anime and VN. I'd like to explain myself so that you guys know from what perspective my reviews are coming from.
 
I have played I'd say quite a decent amount of Visual novels, mostly translated and some untranslated here and there.
My list is: https://vndb.org/u46648/list
Having been in the scene for at least 7 years now, barely anything is new to me anymore. Cliches and archetypes are easily visible to me and it takes a game or anime a great bit to entertain me nowadays.
 
I have great biases for Romance, Drama, and Mystery. Anything chuuni is a hit-or-miss for me. Some of my top ones are Muv-luv, Clannad, Ever17, Kanata Yori, and Shinsekai Yori. But at the same time I can enjoy moeges/kyara-ge like Flyable hearts, Yosuga no Sora, or Edelweiss. I'm tolerant for the most part when it comes to anything bizarre (like Saya no Uta).
 
My reviews will be very basic and I won't really delve too much into analysis or breakdowns. It will be mostly based on how entertained I was playing or watching.
 
Enjoy my future reviews~
 
Thanks for reading.

In this post I'll attempt to introduce JWPce (for those who don't know what it is)
(* = refer to JWPce User Manual)

JWPce

JWPce (Japanese Word Processor for Windows) by Glenn Rosenthal is a program designed for English speakers who are studying Japanese.



Now, JWPce has BUNCH of functions (13 others) but I'm only going to talk about the DICTIONARY FUNCTION.


Upon searching a word, the dictionary will give you the word in Kanji, the word in Hiragana and the meaning of the word.




The dictionary is not limited to Japanese to English.
Press Ctrl A to search from English to Japanese. (To return to Japanese to English, Ctrl K)






How to use the Dictionary for Learning Japanese through Visual Novels

Rains told me about this program. lol
This is what I'm using to read Raw VNs. (I'm not an expert yet)

After opening the program, press F6.



On the left side, you'll see buttons such as Search, Sort... Click Options.




A window will appear. Look on the left side and check Track Clipboard. Then OK.



Say you have a hooked Japanese sentence on the ITH.





Upon highlighting a word (in the ITH) that you do not know, the dictionary will automatically search that word.



This is the result of the procedure I described above.



If you look at the upper right side of the dictionary, you'll see four stuff you can check or uncheck.



These things are used to limit the search. A matter of one's preference.

Personally, I check them all so that only the needed meanings are shown and the search is fast (but there are disadvantages too).



Basically, you will be reading the text on the ITH which means that parsing (identifying words, particles, etc.) is done by you.

In case no matches are found, a warning is triggered and the default warning sound is annoying. Sound can be made tolerable by changing your Windows theme.

JWPce uses EDICT, ENAMDICT, and other dictionaries (you can add others) at the same time.*

It also has a USER DICTIONARY - a personalized dictionary you can make.*


Note:

☆ JWPce is free under the terms of GNU General Public License Link to download
☆ No romaji in this program. Go learn Kana first.
☆ Radical Look-up (F5) is useful for Kanjis you can't hook
☆ Again, to make the warning sound quite acceptable in the ears, I suggest changing your theme.
☆ There are times when the program crashes. This is because of certain words (it can't search). I suggest moving to the next line of the game and open the program again.

☆ To recognize the kanji more (make it bigger) or for more details about a certain kanji, point the mouse to the kanji (on the dictionary), right click then click Get info.




☆ I suggest reading the User Manual (atleast the section about dictionary)
☆ Some things I said are based only on my observations. Stuff may vary.
☆ credit to rainsismyfav for introducing me to JWPce / ITH method


I will answer questions I can / am willing to answer.
Also please correct me for false information I might have stated.

See you around.

Shiro

Kon


Most of you already know that one of my fetishes is mimikko... and kitsune in particular. So, it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that I liked this VN. That said, this VN is so straightforward (in a 'in a straight line' sense) that you probably shouldn't expect anything in the way of twists.

The two heroines are Shiro and Kon (see the pics above). Shiro is the little sister, a white-haired loli-kitsune who is totally innocent and carefree. She is straightforward both about what she likes and what she dislikes, and she has no problems going after it. Kon is more mature (definitely the older sister type), with a tendency to tease the protagonist in order to get a reaction out of him.

Overall, this VN has a single purpose... to ease you straight into a romance with one of the two heroines, resulting eventually in love and marriage. There is no room for spoilers because it really is just that straightforward. What drama there is is so mild as to be nonexistent... but considering how warm and cuddly the story feels, it probably won't matter to my fellow mimikko-worshipers.

The motion-animation system that is used for the sprites in this VN is a bit more complex than that used in most boobatron-type and blink-machine ones you see in the average VN, and that does add some life to the characters that otherwise wouldn't be there... especially with the ear movements. Anyway, this VN is definitely a moe-fest... a moe-fest that fits my fetishes, lol.

As promised, a repost of the MOE that got deleted in the rollback!

So the previous MOE Repository #27 got deleted in the rollback, and my only backup is 7500 km away... so naturally I just spammed more intro threads with MOE and now I have an all-new batch of MOE! Yay!
Also I'll repost the deleted MOE in about a week when I get back, in case you missed it!

Attention Fuwanovel! This is a very important announcement!
MOE MOE MOE MOE MOE MOE MOE MOE

You know what's interesting, is that I'm not actually TRYING to do 3 covers a week. I'm amazed that the number has been exactly the same for the past few weeks, despite schedule changes and all that. Oh well, it's not like it's a BAD thing.

Anyways, new releases for the week:

Ningyo Hime- this one came out pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2wo1seKwSo

My Soul, Your Beats!- I did this one because I've wanted to do it for years to celebrate the release of Hell's Kitchen and First Beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeUF660-niI

Lilium- I used to love this song. I love it a little bit less after singing it multiple times in a row. This was my attempt at doing something "different," and, well... hmm. It's not terrible, but my god, never again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTgbm1TGYSA

And then there's one more thing: a collaboration between Kitty-tama and I on "Find the Blue." If you only listen to one of my covers this week, please please PLEASE make it this one. We worked reeeally hard on it, and since I didn't mix it, it doesn't sound like the screams of a dying cat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiolEmFZSEQ

Another week, another post. Let's get to the point, since I don't feel too great right now and want to stop moving for the rest of the night.

First, Renai Circulation, which I got a request for a couple posts back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Yh3VCAP7M

Next up, Distorted Pain. Denkare is the shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi8h34JLn_o

Finally, Pandora no Rakuen from the euphoria OVA. My pick of the week, without a doubt. It was worth the months it took to find the instrumental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicyQ1ZrPG4


Now, hopefully I'll get my laptop back soon and be able to record. (My desktop doesn't have a microphone. Yaay.) If nothing else, I have an actual written blog post planned for the near future, so I won't be totally inactive.

Well, my first post like this was a success, so let's do it again, shall we? Great! Let's get down to the meat of this post.

This was apparently the week of full versions, as 2 out of my 3 were full versions of songs I had already done. For example, the full version of Clear's OP, Garasu no Loneliness:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlNCfCjg5-o

But sandwiched in between those two was a slightly more... ambitious project. This is probably my pick for the week in terms of quality and overall pride in my work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9RxxZPm1c

And finally, the full version of a song that's near and dear to my heart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeZg3t-EHGE

That's it for now, hopefully I'll be back with more next week! Thanks for listening!

Mr. Meogii's First Recognition Post.


Hello Guys ! Meogii here, bringing you your ever so loved members' highlight. Today we will be zoning in on Suikashoujo. She has been a member of our community for almost a year now and it pains me to see that the majority of us do not yet know what she's been up to. She enjoys singing, so much so that she has taken it upon herself to make song covers to go along with her music. I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd ever find enough courage to allow other people to listen to me sing. Be it in real life or over the Internet, such a feat requires confidence - something I'm sure Suikashoujo has in her great and pleasurable singing. Down below you'll find her latest video so if you like it, be sure to check out her channel for more awesomeness. From the community and myself, we wish you all the best regarding your future works.

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube....GMm-XabSB6VXgrA

Latest Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ9RxxZPm1c

Haruka
Haruka is the traditional 'older woman' heroine that used to be included in just about every VN, as a token to those who preferred that type. Of course, they don't come out and say how much older she is, but considering that she was in her teens when Tsumugi was a toddler...

Anyway, she is a spiritualist/youkai hunter who comes to the town with the intention of hunting down a man-eater that is supposedly hidden in the populace. She gets wrapped up in the events of the main story in the common route and ends up settling in the town (and incidentally falling in love with Yukiya).

She has some serious emotional scars, and overcoming those is a big part of her path. In this case, most of the obstacles that tend to be put in the path of her type of heroine and a younger protagonist don't exist, so don't expect much trouble from the outside about their romance. Rather, this path centers around her work, her personal traumas, and how she overcomes them with Yukiya's help. Like Minagi's path in the previous post, her path's ending is quite excellent and extends several years after the actual ending of the story, which left me feeling satisfied, needless to say.

Anna
Anna is the protagonist's younger cousin (who of course calls him oniichan, lol). She is a bright, energetic young girl with an eternal smile. Her path tends more toward the mundane, with a focus on rejuvenating the town through her and the protagonist's activities. The drama in her path is less tear-worthy than Minagi's or Haruka's, but in exchange you get a really hilarious scene in which the path's antagonist gets his just-desserts.

Perhaps the funniest part about this path is the clashes between her father and Yukiya, though, lol. Similar to the other paths, it touches on events well-along the line after the endings, when Yukiya and Anna have settled down and begun living their non-student lives. Not only that, but it ends on a really sweet (cute-sweet, not cool-sweet) note that I'm sure soft-VN lovers will like.

Midori

Midori is the mayor's daughter and the story's serious, straight-laced heroine (of the 'iinchou' type). She is the most negative toward the youkai of all the heroines, and her start with the protagonist is about what you could expect with a lucky-sukebe event and a straight-laced girl, lol. The actual path is focused on the need - and it is present - to balance the needs of the forest and the youkai that live there with those of the people of the town. This search for a middle path is the source of most of the drama in the story, and it leads to some tense moments. Similar to Anna's path, this one isn't really tear-worthy, but it has enough laughs and normal emotional ups and downs to satisfy most readers.

Her path goes the least distance from the end of the story and is thus the least fulfilling, from the perspective of those who love after-stories.

Tsumugi

Tsumugi is your typical 'wannabe' spiritualist. You know the type that you see in various anime/manga/VNs that love the occult and want to get involved with it but have absolutely no talent for it, right? Well, she's the typical one of that type.

Similar to Haruka's path, this has a focus on the spiritualist side of things, and there is plenty of foreshadowing for those who are used to the typical patterns of VNs in modern fantasy settings. That said, it is carried out well, and the characters, setting, and events are all used to paint a really good picture. You'll probably cry at several points near the middle of her path, and the ending is quite satisfying (and adorable, lol). Like all the paths but Midori's in this VN, the after-story is quite satisfying and emotionally fulfilling.

Overall

The word that comes to mind with this VN is 'complete'. It is fairly rare to come across a VN that a company obviously has no intention of fandiscing to death or even hinting at some sort of side-story addition. This VN is designed to be one complete set of heroine stories, and it does everything it sets out to do about as well as you ever see. Those who like fantasy mixed with romance but without the intense violence of a chuunige will like this VN, as will those who like nakige.

This is also my current prime candidate for VN of the Month (though Sumire would have been worthy if this hadn't been around). I know that most people will go 'eeeh, but I thought you disliked this kind of obvious moe-appeal VN?!' However, the fact is that any VN genre can be pleasurable if it is done as well as this one was.