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Darklord Rooke

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  1. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, How Adorable Heroines are now just Generic   
    How many of you started reading VNs, manga, or watching anime solely because the girls were so adorable?  I wasn't one of those (I began with Record of Lodoss War, lol), but Ai Yori Aoshi and Love Hina introduced me to the concept of the 'moe-heroine'.  Whether it was their way of speaking, their looks, or their attitude, moe heroines became an integral part of the otaku experience at some point (well, the male-oriented one anyway), and I actually don't have any problems with that.  I have lots of fond memories of moe-heroines (since almost all VN heroines and anime heroines nowadays are done like this, to one degree or another).
    However, as I've dug deeper and deeper into the VN universe (I realized this with anime long ago) I came to realize... all the heroines were beginning to melt together into one big moe blob inside my back-brain.  This is because very few heroines stand out enough to remain distinct in my mind from all the other, similar heroines inside my brain. 
    Understand, I never really experienced the 'blob of moe heroines' phenomenon until the last five years or so... first with anime, then (two years ago) with VNs.  As a result, it is harder and harder to find 'standard' heroines interesting in and of themselves... their situation and setting have to be interesting enough to keep me from abandoning them emotionally. 
    Do you want to know how many heroines remain distinct in my brain from the last three years of playing VNs?  Just thirty-three... and that is from well over seven hundred heroines whose routes I've completed in that time.  Frankly, even if I find an archetypical heroine interesting for a single playthrough, it is a rare heroine who makes an impression strong enough to retain her individuality in the collective VN memory of my under-psyche. 
    I once mentioned this to a newbie VN-player (naturally a moe-gamer) and he essentially blasted me about how I was a blasphemer against the pure love of 2D... 
    My response was, quite naturally, explosive laughter which I didn't bother to put into text. 
    How many people do you actually remember in real life as a distinct human being without meeting them every day (or at least with some frequency)?  Even if you see 2D as a real world, do you seriously think someone who has gone so far down the road of the VN otaku as I and some others in the community have to remember every single heroine they've encountered? 
    I'm fortunate.  I have a natural gift for storing episode memory, so if I start replaying a VN, I generally remember the heroines and their paths almost immediately.  However, expecting me to remember yet another tsundere osananajimi amongst hundreds of others off the top of my head after a year is fundamentally ridiculous, in my opinion (real example... also one of the two most common archetypes, along with the deredere osananajimi). 
    This doesn't necessarily mean the VN in question is bad... it just means the heroine is one I've seen dozens of times before, placed in different situations with a different appearance.  Some of the heroines I forget until I'm reminded about are from truly wonderful VNs... but that has absolutely no effect on whether I can remember them without some serious effort, lol.
    For my fellow vets... are you any different?
  2. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Signs of a saturated market: Charage/moege   
    Now... I know you've heard me bash charage/moege before.  That isn't the purpose here, though.  I've played plenty of VNs of the type over the years, and a decent number of them have actually managed to make it pretty high on my list of recommendations, despite the genres' flaws.  I've also mentioned before that VN quality has fallen drastically in the past two years... and I still think that, despite a few seriously stand-out works this year in general and this month in particular.
    The reason why I'm focusing on charage/moege right now is because I just played one great one, one average-quality one, and now I'm playing a mediocre (but pretty-looking) one.  Having seen, just in the last few weeks, the variance in the genre in detail... I've had it thrust in my face that my conclusions, which were previously just instinctive (thus I thought it was at least in part because I was tired of the genre/s in general) and thus had the possibility of not being entirely justified, were not entirely off the mark. 
    To be specific, I'm somewhat bemused at the degree to which people have been pushing/hyping the one I'm playing right now, considering how pathetic this writer is at using the tools available to him. 
    It isn't the first time where I've encountered a mediocre VN with great visuals that gets pushed by the Western community (mostly by people who haven't played it but voted on it anyway... or ones who just extracted the CGs or used a save file to read the h-scenes) like crazy.  However, it is the most egregious example of this particular social pattern I've seen recently. 
    Now, leaving aside my outrage at completely unjustified hype and recommendations...  I have to ask, why is this VN, which probably never would have made it to production three years ago, is still somewhat better than the baseline of what I've experienced in the last two years?
    Thinking about it, the answer came to me startlingly quickly... it is because it satisfies people's nether-regions and their desire for idealized slice-of-life with a few quirks without actually having a personality.  The very reason I hate it is the reason it has caught the interest of some in our community, and I find myself smiling wryly as I realize that most of the people who play it are only interested in fapping to archetypical moe-heroines. 
    Understand, I actually don't have any objections to non-extreme fap material or moe fap material.  I don't have problems with others' sexuality in general (as long as they don't inflict it on me or create victims along the way).  However, I do have to wonder why these same people don't hit up one of the dozens of moe-nukige that get released every year instead, lol. 
    Obliterating all twists and scent of personality from a VN story is reemerging as a habit in VN makers, after a very very brief hiatus, and it is coming back even worse than before.  On the bright side, it makes the gems stand out more... but it also means that I have to listen to people fawning over mindless drivel that isn't even good by genre standards.
    I actually should have seen the signs long ago... considering Sougeki no Jaeger (Propeller's last VN) and the sudden reappearance of the previously endangered beast known as the 'pure moege' in the last two years (though only a few of them, thank god).  The problem now, as it was thirteen years ago, is that the market is saturated with VNs in general and charage/moege in particular.  Because of this - the Japanese being the most conservative businessmen on the planet - the various VN companies have started to 'go back to basics', trying again the sort of tactics that succeeded before.  The fact that the average otaku ero-gamer in Japan is perfectly willing to shell out $120 for a crappy game that happens to have a cute (and preferably half-nude) dakimakura attached actually makes this trend worse, as it is creating an artificial (and very temporary) inflation of a stagnant market (and not for the first, second, or even third time).  It is almost like the real estate market here in 2007... everybody knew the bottom was going to fall out eventually, but people kept putting their bets on making a few more bucks before it did.
    Worse, even if the market does collapse, it is unlikely to result in better VNs, lol.
  3. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, A Working Definition of the Visual Novel (v1)   
    A couple blog posts back, I argued that the story exploration game Gone Home can be considered a visual novel. After some great discussion there, it seemed only logical to tackle the much bigger question: “What is a visual novel?
    Which is why I’m not going to. That’s a spike-filled, snake-infested pit of a question if I ever saw one — and I already had spikes and snakes for breakfast. Instead, we’re going to attempt to answer a more nuanced question: “What are the minimum requirements something must meet in order to be usefully discussed as a visual novel?”
    That’s a slightly different but way more useful angle. Just about anything can be used as a chair, but not everything is a “chair.” As a society, we’ve agreed on a certain set of characteristics that chairs share in common. This lets us discuss chairs with one another and be pretty sure we won't be given a pineapple to sit on.
    We’ll do the same here. But for the sake of brevity, we’ll shorthand that question back down to “What’s a visual novel?” It’ll be our little secret.
    The VNDB standard
    The most obvious place to start looking for answers would be The Visual Novel Database (VNDB), home to info on more than 18,000 VNs. Here’s their answer, found in the VNDB FAQ:
    As a working definition, this leaves a lot to be desired. There are an awful lot of cans, mays, typicals, and usuallys. Worse yet, you could easily dream up a VN that meets almost none of the assumptions laid out here — perhaps an extremely short text-based story in which the words run around the outside of a woodcut illustration. There’s absolutely no background music and the player answers no questions, which results in the same plot every time she plays.
    A somewhat more satisfying answer can be found in VNDB’s list of requirements that titles must meet before being added to their database. For something to qualify as a visual novel:
    Better, but still somewhat problematic. For one thing, it conflates the commonly accepted with the essential. What if someone wants to present a story in a manner other than ADV (text in box below image) or NVL (text overlaying image)? What if they thought of a more innovative configuration of text + art? Tough luck, Billy; go suck eggs in the corner. (They don't seem to strictly enforce this, by the way. Digital: A Love Story is on VNDB, even though it eschews both ADV and NVL for a diegetic presentation.) Moreover, these guidelines can’t seem to decide if no gameplay is allowed at all, as the first two sentences suggest, or if up to 1% simple gameplay is okay.
    A title can also be added to the database if it’s a “visual novel/game” hybrid that meets the following requirements:
    Again, problematic. The ADV/NVL issue is still there, of course, but now a new wrinkle’s been added: the privileging of narrative over dialogue. The assumption here is that a novel can’t consist entirely (or almost entirely) of dialogue, so a title that doesn’t “consistently” rely upon a formal narrator doesn’t qualify. In truth, there are any number of novels that take this form — The Awkward Age by Henry James, for one. Besides, if Key suddenly dropped a 50-hour all-dialogue school drama that looked and played exactly like Clannad, do you doubt for a second that we'd all consider it a VN? Or that FuwaReviews would give it one star?
    But I don’t blame VNDB. They’re not looking to define the visual novel. They’re just trying to set up some semi-reasonable guidelines to help streamline their submission process. Without this, every staffer there would probably be eating gun-barrel sandwiches for lunch.

    Fine. Let’s build something better.
    I’ve sketched out the beginnings of a more general-purpose test for discussing something as a visual novel. I don’t consider this to be at all authoritative, and in fact, I invite you to critique it and build upon it in the comments below. It’s a starting point, nothing more.
    A 7-point test for visual novels
    1. It must be “read” on a digital device that outputs to a screen.
    Fairly self-explanatory. Computers, consoles, handhelds, phones, e-readers — hell, even a smart watch would qualify. A printed VN would be considered a graphic novel (or a choose-your-own-adventure book). An audio file of a VN would be an audiobook.
    2. It must convey a recognizable narrative.
    Again, fairly self-explanatory. A VN must be a spoken or written account of connected events. In other words, it needs to tell a story, fictional or otherwise. The entirety of the Detroit phone book displayed in Ren’py is not a VN, even if it’s accompanied by a whole chorus line of catgirls.
    3. It must use on-screen text as the primary avenue for conveying that narrative.
    At the heart of any VN is the act of reading — eyes looking at words and turning them into meaning. If any significant portion of the story is delivered as voice-over or action without on-screen text, it isn’t a visual novel. Watching Game of Thrones on your laptop with subtitles doesn’t suddenly turn it into a VN.
    4. It must have visuals paired with that narrative.
    A visual novel must have visuals. Crazy talk, right? It doesn’t matter if those visuals are 8-bit pixel art, hand illustration, 3D renders, photography, or video. Ideally, these images would be germane to the narrative, but even that’s not technically necessary. Having unrelated images wouldn’t keep something from being a VN; it would just make it a *bad* VN.
    5. It must be authored.
    In other words, the story must be an act of creative intention by its author(s). A VN cannot rely upon sandboxes, emergent gameplay, or similar mechanisms to generate its narrative arc (though they may be used to flavor it). Such experiences, while highly interesting, result in something other than a novel.
    6. Reading must comprise the majority of one’s experience with the title.
    This one gets tricky, because it cuts deep to the heart of another unresolved question: “Is a visual novel a game?” For the purposes of this discussion, I’d suggest there’s a continuum that looks roughly like:
    not a VN >> game w/ some VN qualities >> game/VN hybrid >> VN w/ some game qualities >> VN
    Roughly past the halfway mark, we can usefully consider something to be a visual novel for terms of discussion. Below that, we can consider it a game but usefully discuss its VN-like elements (or lack thereof).
    7. It must offer a deliberately framed reading experience.
    This one’s a little tricky. Here’s the problem: a plain old Word doc containing a short story + embedded images could technically satisfy requirements #1 through #6, but we’d be hard-pressed to call that a visual novel. I’m still tweaking the language for #7, but the general idea is that just as a film director frames a shot, controlling what the audience can see and hear at any given moment, so too does the creator of a visual novel. This is unlike our hypothetical Word doc, in which you could widen the window to see more text than intended, skip around the story out of order, scroll the window so that you can read a passage without seeing its associated art, etc.
    I briefly considered adding an eighth bullet point, but chose to leave it on the cutting room floor.
    Why did this get dropped? Well, I imagined a traditional novel that was rigged to turn its pages at pre-defined intervals. You can’t speed it up, you can’t slow it down; all you have is an on/off switch. Would that lack of agency suddenly keep this particular book from being a novel? I couldn’t think of a good reason why it would, so I removed the requirement. But I'm open to good arguments for bringing it back.
    Closing thoughts, for now
    You might note that I’ve avoided any mention of things like: story genre, branching narratives, art style, country of origin, sexual content, sound/music, etc. That’s by design. These things help inform what type of VN a title is, not whether it can be discussed as one.
    You might also note that my 7-point test would disqualify Gone Home from being considered a visual novel, invalidating my earlier argument. That’s also by design. Kill your darlings, amirite?
  4. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Killing the ellipsis (“...”) in VN translations   
    Let’s not mince words here. The ellipsis is a blight upon English translations of visual novels. It must be uprooted and killed with fire.
    Before the slaughter begins, however, let’s review some basics. As the name suggests, the ellipsis represents an elision — that is to say, omitted content. It functions as the “yadda yadda” of the English language. It is the “Step 2: ???” before the all-important “Step 3: Profit!” A writer deploys those three little dots to indicate either the intentional removal of something that once was there, or the pointed absence of something that should have been there.
    That’s it. That’s what the ellipsis is supposed to do. You wouldn’t know this, however, by reading nearly any English translation of a Japanese visual novel. Ellipses are scattered across the text like so many rhinestones on the sweatshirt of a Midwestern mom. They’re at the beginning of sentences, the ends, stuck randomly in the middle — sometimes even chained end to end like a writhing Human Centipede of punctuation, each little dot in the chain crying, “Kill me now!” into the anus of the next.
    It’s an absolute abattoir in there.
    This particular road to hell is paved with good intentions, however. You see, all those ellipses are also present in the original Japanese and, in an attempt at faithful translation, the TL teams have left them all sitting there for you to enjoy. The original writer had a reason for putting them in, the reasoning goes, and it’s our job to offer the purest translation of his/her vision possible.
    This, of course, is bollocks. Punctuation operates differently in different languages. Japanese ellipses are used much more liberally than their Western forbearers, particularly in popular culture (e.g., manga. light novels, etc.) Want to indicate a pause? Ellipsis. Silence? Ellipsis. Passage of time? Ellipsis. Need to fill some empty space? Ellipsis. Is it Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday? Ellipsis, ellipsis, ellipsis. When ported over to English, most of these usages look less like carefully crafted sentences and more like a transcript of a particularly drunken Snapchat session.
    Put simply, what works in one language doesn’t always work in another. When I’m translating a Line of Text from German, for Example, I don’t capitalize all the Nouns because that’s how it was in the Original. I normalize it for English. The same needs to be done in any VN translation.
    My current rule of thumb while editing — I’ll bold it for you in red here — is as follows: Remove/replace all ellipses in a line of Japanese text unless doing so irreparably breaks the sentence or significantly changes its meaning.
    Luckily for us, English has a toolbox full of punctuation to get the job done. Commas, semicolons, periods, dashes — they’re all your friends. So let’s discuss some common situations in VNs and how we might handle them.

    The trailing ellipsis
    You’ll see lots of these littering the ends of sentences and lines, mostly to little effect. More often than not, they indicate a thought closing on anything other than a 100% full and decisive stop. Since they don’t hold the place of omitted text, we can almost always replace these ellipses with periods.
    There are a handful of situations, however, where keeping a trailing ellipsis makes sense. These include:
    The Pregnant Pause: 
    When something’s strongly implied at the end of a sentence/line, but left unsaid for dramatic effect.
    The ellipsis fills the place of the implied content, so it gets to stay. (Fun bonus fact: pauses are the only things that can get pregnant in VNs.)
    The “And So On”:
    When a statement is implied to continue for an unspecified length beyond the end of the sentence/line.
    The ellipsis here indicates there may have been a few more beers after Michelob, but the writer has decided to spare us and jump straight to Bob’s objection. Had this been more interruptive in nature, with Bob cutting Joe off immediately after “Michelob,” the ellipses would have replaced with an em-dash (—).
    The Trail-Off: 
    Similar to the “And So On,” but with the character choosing to let a statement taper off into nothingness, rather than the author.
    The opening ellipsis
    You’ll see these slightly less often, but they’re by no means infrequent. Typically, they indicate some slight hesitation at the beginning of a line of dialogue. But again, the nuance ends up being so slight and the impact so watered down through overuse that you’re almost always better off removing these ungainly beasts. An exception can be made for:
    The Reverse Pregnant Pause: 
    Just like the original Pregnant Pause, but it appears at the beginning of a sentence. Often holds the place of something a character doesn’t want to say.
    Rather than just pausing in passing, Joe is actively not admitting he thinks Joe is a jackass. That makes this line a strong candidate for an ellipsis.
    The mid-sentence ellipsis
    So, so many of these. You’ll close your eyes at night and they’ll haunt you. They’re almost always meant to indicate a slight pause in speech or thought, but trying to the read the resulting text is an exercise in frustration. There are... just so... many unnecessary... gaps. (Full disclosure: When writing scripts for TV, I’ll use ellipses like this a lot. But that’s for a very specific purpose: helping to communicate the particular rhythm of a line to the actor(s). I always avoid this in audience-facing text.)
    In almost all cases, unless there’s a marked pivot in thought, a comma will suffice.
    If the ellipsis is holding together two complete yet interwoven thoughts, a semicolon will do nicely.
    If the ellipsis is holding together two complete and independent thoughts, a period should be used.
    If ellipses are used to indicate an interruptive thought, one that breaks the main flow of the sentence, em-dashes can be used.
    Again, there are a couple situations where these mid-sentence ellipses can remain:
    The Ta-Da:
    When a pause is used for obvious dramatic effect, the ellipsis should be kept.
    The Shatner:
    When halting or stilted speech is intended for dramatic/comedic effect, ellipses may be retained.

    The empty line ellipsis
    You’ll see a lot of these. Holdovers from manga and light novels, they are explicit indicators of silence, being at a loss for words, holding one’s tongue, etc.
    In English prose, these silences would normally be held with narration — e.g., “Baconator just sat there, dripping ketchup.” You’d never see a sentence such as: ‘Harry Potter said, “...” and continued looking out the window.’ That’s because, unlike most VNs, traditional novels don’t have the crutch of character sprites and name cards appearing alongside dialogue. Due to such VN conventions, along with the technical limitations of translation — it’s frequently impossible to replace character dialogue with unvoiced narration — you should almost always leave these ellipses in place. Based on your best judgement, you can also choose to leave such variants as the questioning silence ("...?") and the excited/alarmed silence ("...!").
    It should be noted that such empty line ellipses can also be used outside of dialogue. Often, these will just indicate time passing. There’s also a long tradition in Japanese art of the “pillow” — a held moment of contemplative emptiness. It’s the bit of formal textual throat-clearing at the start of a poem. It’s the 10-second cutaway to a babbling brook that connects two scenes in a movie. In a VN, this pillow can evidence itself as a single line of narration, empty save for an ellipsis. There’s no good English alternative for this, so it should be kept wherever you encounter it.
    Extra credit: The multi-line ellipsis
    I saved this one for last, because it’s a bit of a special case. Against all my better instincts, it involves adding ellipses in places where the original text has none. It’s painful but it’s for a good cause.
    Sometimes, when editing or translating a VN, you’ll run across sentences that spill over onto two or more lines.
    Unlike in poetry, which uses line breaks to very deliberate effect, these multi-line monsters are almost always the result of the VN writer just running out of highway and choosing to keep on driving. Whenever possible, you should attempt to restructure such sentences so they don’t break across lines. Often, splitting an overly long sentence into two smaller ones will do the trick. If it resists your best efforts, however, maintain the break and indicate it with ellipses — one at the end of the first line, the other at the beginning of the second.
    How many dots? ALL THE DOTS!
    Another peculiarity of ellipses in Japanese VNs is that they don’t always have three dots. Depending on context and the arbitrary whims of the writer, you’ll typically see anywhere from two to six dots at a time. I’ve even seen 27 in a row once. I think it was a sex scene. Or a fight scene. Maybe both.
    Don’t let this worry you. If you’ve been following my advice, you’ve already purged most of the ellipses from the text. Of those that remain, almost all can be reduced down to familiar three-dot English ellipses. But as always, there’s at least one exception.
    Content-bearing pauses: In most cases, it’s of little concern to us whether an ellipsis consists of three, four, five, or even six dots. They’re all slight variations on the standard pause, but since English punctuation doesn’t make any such distinction, neither will we. An exception comes when the length of a pause not only adds flavor, but provides content. Consider the case of an ever-lengthening silence:
    The lengthening of the line suggests the passing of increasing amounts of time; the scene isn’t the same without it. Or consider an explosive outburst after a deafening silence:
    If you opt to stretch out an ellipsis like this, only do so in increments of three. If you’re musically inclined, think of three dots as a quarter note, six dots as a half note, etc., each one holding the silence just a bit longer than the last. Following the rule of threes keeps the text visually streamlined and helps if you ever need to convert a bunch of soft ellipses ( “...”) to hard ellipses (“…”) late in the translation process.
    A quick note about spacing
    I opt to keep things simple. If an ellipsis is at the start of a sentence or line, put one space between it and the first word. If it’s anywhere else, use no space before the ellipsis and one space after. If it’s a string of ellipses, it should be an uninterrupted series of dots with no spaces in between.
    There are also differing schools of thought as to whether an ellipsis at the end of a sentence should also be followed by a period, resulting in four dots total. Again, I opt for simplicity here and advise three dots in all cases.
    The mark of the beast
    It’s easy to tell professional translations from fan projects, it’s said; just count the number of dots. While not always true – plenty of slapdash commercial releases exist in the wild — there’s definitely something to this. More often than not, fewer ellipses are a sign that someone has taken the time to not just translate a text word for word, but thoughtfully localize it.
    Seriously, just dump the dots, folks. Your readers will thank you for it.
  5. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to sanahtlig for a blog entry, [In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon   
    Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
    [In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon
  6. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, The spirit of an older gamer: Why I play games and why other people play games   
    I've been playing video games more or less constantly for over twenty-five years. 
    That's a very simple statement that holds a surprising amount of meaning, considering how much video games have changed since I first began playing them.
    It began with the NES, for me... with Mario, Luigi, and the ducks.  I shot ducks out of the air, I jumped Mario across gaps and on top of turtles, without ever really understanding what was going on.  As a kid, this was fun, seriously.  Understand, this is the biggest point I am going to try to get across here... the difference between addiction and fun with video games.
    I played rpgs, primarily jrpgs, throughout most of my first ten years as a gamer, starting with Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest), eventually reaching levels of true love with Final Fantasy II and III (IV and VI), Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, and Ogre Battle.  When the era of cd-gaming came, I played D&D dungeon-crawlers on a shitty dos computer setup, and I played every jrpg I could get my hands on, with a lot of shooters, strategy games, and sports games mixed in. 
    Throughout all of that, I was still having fun.  Fun was my reason for continuing (I've always been a story-centric player, so I tended to stick with jrpgs, but I did play a lot of other stuff) and my reason for playing in the first place.
    It was in the PS2 era that I first came to recognize the difference between taking pleasure in playing something and merely being addicted to it.  I picked up FFXI and started playing it on the PS2 (yes, it was possible to play it on the PS2), and for the first time, I knew addiction... for the first time, I poured hour after hour, day after day, into a game that I wasn't having any fun at.
    I was constantly irritated, constantly driven to continue, whether for social reasons (friends I'd made in-game) or simply because I felt like I was 'almost there'. 
    Then, one day, I suddenly looked up and realized... I was immensely depressed and not enjoying anything about the game.  The sense of having wasted my time... sent me into a funk that lasted the better part of a year.  I still played games, but the color seemed to leech out of the screen even as I played them.  I realized that I was seeing bits of FFXI in other games, and that was enough of a reason for me to actively hate them.
    No game hit me this way more than FFXII... because FFXII's battle system is essentially that of FFXI with some tweaks.  Visually, it was a nightmare, and the weak story and characters only made it worse for me.
    Ironically, it was the realization that I honestly didn't trust Squeenix to provide pleasurable games anymore that led me to start playing a lot of the weirder stuff out there... such as Eternal Darkness for the gamecube and the SMT series.  Ultimately, because I'd become very much aware of the difference between pleasure and addiction, I lost interest in games that I would once have jumped onto simply because they were jrpgs or done in a style I found interesting.  I started abusing Gamestop's used game 'seven-day return policy' to demo games, and I slowly but surely came to realize that I honestly and truly hate multiplayer games that aren't played in the same room. 
    I am now an unabashed solo gamer, even outside of VNs.  I won't play most multiplayer games at all, and I hate games where the social element is as or more important than the actual gameplay or story.  Of course, if a game has an interesting concept, I'll try it... but if I feel that sensation I used to get from FFXI, I drop it immediately, cancelling all subscriptions and discarding all related materials without a second thought, even if I paid a good deal of money for them. 
    To be blunt, life is too short to waste on playing something that is merely addictive (this coming from a VN junkie, I know).  That sensation of false social interaction you get from online gaming and the high you get from winning in competitive games is highly addictive... but are you having fun, really? I wonder, how many younger gamers actually know what it is like to enjoy a video game, rather than simply being addicted to one?  This is a question that seriously bothers me, as I saw my young cousin playing Call of Duty (whatever the latest one is) online, unsmiling, for two days straight while we were staying at their place a few months back.  He really, really wasn't enjoying himself.  He was angry, depressed, and frustrated, but I never saw even a hint of a smile when he won, only this vague expression of relief he probably thought was a smile.  Was that relief that his team-mates weren't treating him like a worthless noob or an incompetent, or was it simply because the match was over and he could relax?  I don't know, because I didn't ask.  I know from experience that the difference between addiction and fun is fine enough that most people don't even recognize it is there until they are forced to.
    What are your experiences, gamers of Fuwa?
     
  7. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Mr Poltroon for a blog entry, To 'Love', and to be 'In Love'   
    DISCLAIMER: All that I mention represent my views mixed with basic scientific theories floating around.
    To 'Love', and to be 'In Love'
    I believe these two to be different. One does not necessarily love those they are in love with, and one is not necessarily in love with those they love. Sound confusing? Allow me to elaborate.
    To make this as clear as possible, let's take "romantic feelings" out of the equation.
    Would you say you love your parents? Or that you are in love with them? Maybe both expressions work for you?
    The way I see it, one (generally) loves their family, yet is not in love of them.
    To be in love with someone is the sort of feeling you have towards a crush, that almost irrational slight obsession and redirection of your thoughts in their general direction. Perhaps your heart will beat faster, perhaps you will become slightly euphoric, perhaps you'll get embarrassed; all just by being near the person in question.
    What I've just described most certainly does not apply towards your parents (unless you're into some really weird nukige). But you still love them, right? You act kind towards them, you are affectionate with them, you take their presence for granted and would sacrifice immensely for their sake.
    Mayhap, this even applies to your friends? Friendship love. You see it all the time in manga, girls loving each other, but not being in love with each other. You care for your friends much like they care for you.
    Finally, for all you older folk out there, if you're a parent: would you say you love your children, or that you are in love with them? Because if it's the latter, that would make you the worst kind of scum in the eyes of society.
    Only when it comes to romance do these two things get interwoven together. Love is a complicated mess, which I will now attempt to arbitrarily classify in a way that makes sense to me.
    All the previously mentioned situations represent love, yet they are different from falling "in love".
    As you know, or should know, humans are animals, they are living beings whose purpose is to live. All animals, all plants and all living beings have that very same objective, and they evolve and adapt in order to make sure their species continues to live. One important thing about being a living being is our instinctual desire to reproduce. If we didn't reproduce, the species would go extinct - Giant Pandas are the resident experts on the topic.
    In order to compel the race to reproduce, our body releases various hormones impelling us to do various things. Falling "in love" is one of these.
    You'll find that often, the person you develop romantic feelings for, is not one that is particularly close to you. This is what I believe being "in love" is. When you develop feelings for a person, which serves as the selfish catalyst that leads to romance.
    Having fallen in love, we humans do a bunch of silly things involving spending time with our pleasurable partner, which makes us happy (due to the hormones), and containing our sexual desires, which are also stimulated by the hormones. Probably not the most romantic way of looking at it, but "falling in love" is a mere boost towards romantic love, but I do not think it is romantic love itself. On the contrary, trying to resist this "in love" feeling is, quite literally, against our instincts. Thankfully, human beings are, for the most part, able to resist their instincts given that their conditions are favourable. If everyone ended up marrying their first love, society would be rather different than what it is right now.
    Now then, I keep mentioning "romantic love", as if it weren't influenced by hormones. Really, you can say that just about anything is influenced by hormones and this is no exception. The usual situation will be for one to develop a romantic relationship with the one they fell in love with. In turn, this "in love" boost will eventually die down leaving you only with a person that you are intimate with, that you share your flaws with, that you care for... and your sexual partner. Sex is yet another source of rather pleasurable hormones, and one important for long-lasting relationships. After all, a proper relationship requires sacrifices, and most of us selfish humans wouldn't be all that interested in maintaining a relationship for little reward.
    This is, of course, another of our instinct's plans. If a couple doesn't stay together and does not reproduce, then the whole "falling in love" business will end up having been useless.
    All this said, let us surmise:
    Because of our innate need to reproduce, we fall in love. Falling in love gives us a boost and creates an easy path that will lead to loving someone. Eventually, this boost dies down - at this point, a good couple would love each other as is (or else, divorce. Good lord, today's society...), with the help of sex. The pleasure sex provides creates hormones that increase our affection for our partner and that generally makes us interested in sex, connecting directly to our species' main goal: Children.
    The way we look at it today, everybody wants to be with those they're in love with, and lose interest when the magic of "falling in love" dies down. I, however, firmly believe that people are able to love even those they are not in love with... provided the circumstances aren't dead set against you. The main example I wanted to tie this uncultured rant to is this relationship I saw in Ao Haru Ride...
     
    I'll elucidate you right off the bat: I didn't like Ao Haru Ride as a story. This does not, however, mean that it was bad. In fact, it gave me enough food for thought to write this whole pointless blog post because of it.
    In Ao Haru Ride, because both our protagonists fail to act on their feelings in a timely manner because "emotions", they, despite loving each other, end up entering a relationship with someone else. Spoilers ahead.
    Futaba is our main protagonist, and she clearly falls in love with Kou in the first few chapters. This Kou fellow is the main love interest, who is also in love with Futaba, but who, due to circumstances and "emotions", rejects her advances. Seeing this, another boy, called Touma, felt bad for Futaba, and this kickstarted his feelings, leading him to fall in love with her. Eventually, Futaba, seeing Touma's dedication and depictions of love, enters a relationship with him and tries to love him back.
    Given this scene, Kou, jealous, surpasses his "circumstances" and "emotions" and tries to win Futaba back. Futaba, on the other hand, doesn't want this. She is not aware of Kou's feelings and really wants to love Touma back - something I consider a most earnest and great wish. However, because that's just the way things are, Futaba is unable to love Touma whilst in love with someone else, and she wouldn't stop being in love so long as Kou didn't stop - and he had no intention of stopping.
    Therefore, Futaba breaks up with Touma and gets together with Kou. Happy end.
    This entire turn of events depresses me. I dislike when a main character enters a relationship which just wont last. Totally not the kind of stuff I read manga for. I really hate how she spent most of the manga dating someone who is not the main love interest and the one she'll end up with.
    Yet, it does bring something to the table I really admired, and those were Futaba's attempts at loving Touma back, even when she wasn't in love with him. People these days always seem to think that they should marry someone they're in love with and whatnot - when I'm a fervent believer that anyone is able to romantically love even those they aren't in love with. Still, even still, we're wired in such a way that we're rather likely to fall in love with those we attempt to love, anyway, so it's almost a moot point.
    I believe that what Futaba tried to achieve is one of the most idealistic, selfless and admirable forms of love - though that's precisely why it doesn't happen often. It is, after all, much more convenient to just love those you are in love with
    This is why historical romances interest me so. They're about loving the husband or wife that was arranged for you by your family and not by your hormones (who choose based on what amounts to a whim).
     
    But then again... what the hell do I know about love?
  8. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to sanahtlig for a blog entry, Perspective: Nutaku and the difficulties of marketing adult games   
    Nutaku comments on the difficulties of marketing and distributing adult games. But is their upcoming adult gaming store the silver bullet they say it is?
    Perspective: Nutaku and the difficulties of marketing adult games
  9. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Some explanations about my current state   
    Some people here already know that I hurt my knee falling down the stairs a while ago... what most of you don't know is that the stuff they have me on (non-narcotic pain drugs, sleep pills, and antibiotics) in combination make me a zombie for most of the day... I sleep around twelve hours a day, am fuzzy for two to three hours more, have to do rehab exercises for another two hours, and I spend around four hours of what is remaining working. 
    Needless to say, this doesn't leave much time for anything else... which is why VN of the Month is so far behind.  Normally, by this point I would have played through at least four or five of the month's VNs, and I would probably be considering which one - if any - was worth the VN of the month rating... as it is, it has taken me a little over seventeen days to finish just two VNs from April's releases. 
    I'm basically venting my frustration right now... since I lose money with every day I can't work at full capacity and I go a little more stir crazy with every day I can't go out and get some fresh air without using crutches.  For the first time in almost nine years, I actually had to use up my entire pay for a month for bills and food  (the medical bills being the highest, obviously). 
    Needless to say, I'm in a sour mood.
    If I seem harsh toward the remaining VNs this month, please forgive me.  It is really, really hard to concentrate outside of work right now... and I'm actually having to reconsider a lot of my plans for the rest of the year based on the costs I project for the rest of the next few months.  Nothing pisses me off more than being unable to rectify everyday money problems (which is why I work so much normally)....
    Anyway, that's enough moaning from me for now.  The two key points are that the above are the reasons VN of the Month is so far behind and I so rarely post, despite the fact that I'm technically 'online' (I rarely if ever shut down the fuwanovel tab, lol) all the time.  If I'm slow to respond, it is because I'm not myself, not because I'm not interested in doing so.
  10. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, The Feminized Historical Fantasy   
    I'm sure you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about with the title of this post, but the concept is pretty simple...  You take a period of history or a series of famous/infamous events, turn all or most of the male personages into females, and then plop your main character into their midst, evolving a story from there. 
    A few examples of this...
    The Koihime Musou, Sengoku Koihime series by Baseson
    Chuushingura
    Sengoku and Sangoku Hime series by Gesen
    Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier
    Koihime Musou is the one most of you will probably be familiar with, and it is the basic model for most of the type.  It is based in the era of the fall of the later Han dynasty in China, portrayed in the ancient story Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  This is one of the two eras most favored by those making games, VNs, anime, and manga in this particular little niche, and it is also one of the easiest ones to use, as the story has made at least some headway in most of the countries of the world (it was translated into English first over a century ago) to one degree or another.  In a way, Koihime Musou (the original) is a classic example of the genre, as the events portrayed generally only vaguely resemble the ones that existed in the original story, even when you set aside the issues of all the characters being female except the protagonist.  Shin Koihime Musou, which follows each of the three factions in separate story arcs (rather than a single arc with Liu Bei's side unifying China like in the original) is generally better written and actually uses historical events in most of the paths, up to a point (where it inevitably diverges radically). 
    The Sangoku Hime series is a strategy-VN series based in the same era as Koihime Musou, with the big difference that the protagonist is both fairly irrelevant to the story and the events are fairly close to the original material, up to a point (in fact, this is the biggest draw of the series, other than the surprisingly well-done story sequences in some of the cases).  This series suffers from definite 'strategy fatigue', though... as fighting your way across China tends to rapidly become monotonous, with actual plot tending to only come up at the beginning and end of each prefecture's invasion, meaning you can go five or six hours without seeing anything in the way of story except sex scenes (of which there are generally a ridiculous number...). 
    Chuushingura follows the story of the 47 Ronin, a famous story of Edo-era samurai that was the inspiration for most foreigners' impressions of the samurai caste.  In this case, while the events in each 'arc' generally follow the basic outline of the original story, there are divergences in perspective based on where the protagonist chooses to go, and the final story diverges immensely from the original.  This VN doesn't have any gameplay, and it was originally a doujin VN series that went commercial a few years ago in the form of a rewritten, partially redesigned omnibus VN. 
    The Sengoku Hime series by Gesen is based in the Sengoku Jidai (Japan's Warring States period).  In this one, you generally take on the role of a strategist (whose actual level of influence varies from path to path) who serves with one of the major clans of Japan as they set out to conquer the country.  Generally speaking, the balance of story to gameplay in this series is better than in the Sangoku series by the same company, but the pacing is still fairly shitty due to the intervention of the gameplay.  Depending on which faction you choose (generally if you choose the Tokugawa or Toyotomi) you can get a fairly accurate replay of past events, with a lot of differing details.  However, if you pick certain factions (the Oda, the Date, the Ashikaga or the Shimazu) you tend to get stories that radically diverge from history even if you ignore the issues with female clan lords and the like.  This is inevitable, considering the sheer chaos of that era (the concept of the 'honorable' samurai as foreigners like to see it portrayed is a product of the Edo era that followed after Tokugawa's unification of Japan), with the betrayals, massacres, religious rebellions, and the like...
    Koihime Sengoku (the new version of which I am playing right now) is also based in the same era, but, similar to the original Koihime Musou, diverges radically from history relatively early on.  In particular, it should be noted that while certain famous events and relationships were deliberately reproduced for the pleasure of historical romantics (the Takedo-Uesugi rivalry, Oda Nobunaga's relationship with Mino's deceased leader, the Viper, etc), a lot more of it is different.  This VN is significantly different from Koihime Musou in that it has a far darker, more violent atmosphere (lots of killing, and some of the heroines are... not good people, lol), and the protagonist is far more active as part of the story (in fact, he is the nephew of the protagonist from Shin Koihime Musou). 
    Kikan Bakumatsu is based in the highly-romanticized period of the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate after Perry's 'black ships' opened Japan.  It covers a lot of the political and ideological conflicts wracking Japan at the time fairly accurately, while focusing on the infamous Shinsengumi (who are often thought of as the last samurai).  This period is also covered in the otomege series, Hakuoki, though the only common element between them beside that is the existence of a fantasy element.  Depending on the path you choose in this one, you can radically alter history and the life and death of certain characters, but if you choose one of the Shinsengumi heroines, the basic path in life of the protagonist, Okita Soujirou, goes pretty much as history portrays (it is pretty sad). 
    Generally speaking, due to the depth that can be added to the setting for these stories, they tend to be good more often than most... and that is generally why I tend to look forward to them, lol.  However, if you aren't a history buff, some of it will just go over your head, and the language in a VN based in these eras will frequently be incomprehensible for the inexperienced.  To be blunt, anyone who reads one of these should have a degree of pre-existing knowledge if they want to really enjoy them... otherwise, it isn't nearly as fun to see how the writers choose to twist things out of shape, hahaha.
  11. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Thoughts on the Cipher protagonist in VNs   
    First, let me state what I mean by a 'cipher' protagonist.  A protagonist of this type is basically a painted-on personality who serves solely to interpret the events for you, serving as your 'eyes' and 'ears'.  A protagonist like this is most likely passive and/or reactive in relation to heroines outside of sex/romance and tends to 'go with the flow' most of the time.
    This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  If the protagonist isn't really part of the story, making them into a cipher isn't a bad idea (Hotel. by Akatsuki Works Black's protagonist is of this type).  However, a protagonist who is a central character really can't afford to be a cipher.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that a cipher protagonist can ruin any VN story where he/she is a central character simply by being a passive/reactive 'passenger' rather than an active player in the events of the story. 
    In my experience, the more passive the protagonist is, the more likely the VN in question is going to be boring.  No matter how good the heroines in such a story are, it becomes impossible to engross yourself emotionally or intellectually because of the sense that the protagonist is out of place.  This is the big problem with old-style moege and many charage... cuteness will only take you so far.
    Now, in some games I've played - non-VNs - a passive or 'silent' protagonist has worked... the Suikoden series and Growlanser 3 are examples of this type.  In both cases, you were given a great deal of freedom to shape the protagonist's interactions with the world, whether they were simple dialog choices or the order in which you recruited characters.  Unfortunately, visual novels, as a medium, are ultimately a reader's medium, and the reader is ultimately a passive participant.  You might make choices to put you on a path, but that doesn't change that you can't really alter the flow of events in most cases.
    So, would you find being a passive participant behind a passive participant's eyes enjoyable?
  12. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, My experience with Gameplay VNs   
    These are just a few thoughts that I've had after experiencing various gameplay VNs over the years. 
    First, understand that I see VNs as reading material (in the same vein as manga but with the addition of voice, some animation, and detailed narration) first and games second.  Second, the type of gameplay most likely to be fused to a VN (strategy or turn-based rpg) are ones I played for well over a decade before I first encountered VNs, so I have at least some qualifications to evaluate them.
    First, for the gameplay...  no matter how you express it, the average VN gameplay is several levels below the average console strategy game, srpg, or jrpg in terms of quality and design.  Some of the best of the type - such as the Ikusa Megami series - just barely reach the same level as stuff released before the turn of the century as far as those two aspects go. 
    Second, balance... in a VN hybrid, having a good balance between the story and gameplay is vital.  In other words, the grinding needs to be minimalized and difficulty should be adjustable.  VN hybrids without adjustable difficulty levels (with an easy version that really is easy) tend to result in a VN where the story is told in snippets between long stretches of grindy gameplay (Softhouse Chara's games tend to have this flaw in excess).
    Third is feature creep... a lot of hybrids have weird gameplay features that make the game confusing without really adding anything enjoyable to the game.  An example of this is the recruitment system from the 'breeder' Venus Blood games.  To be blunt, this game mechanic, while fitting in with the atmosphere in the story, made the games unnecessarily complicated, and not in a good way.
    Fourth... story pacing.  A lot of hybrids have horrible pacing.  In particular, many of them start out really well, grasping the reader/player with a dramatic prologue or first few chapters... then suddenly become a complete slog or grind in the mid-game.  To be honest, the most egregious offender in this case are strategy-conquest VNs, where the story won't progress significantly until you've achieved an artificial goal, like conquest of a certain region.  Generally speaking, most strategy-conquest VNs (such as Sengoku Rance or Madou Koukaku) start out really well, with an interesting beginning to the story... and suddenly become devoid of story for about thirty hours if you don't act in exactly the right way.  The Sengoku Hime and Sangoku Hime series are classic examples of this.  Both series tend to have first-rate beginnings, but the story gets put to the wayside pretty early in the game.  As a result, you essentially get stuck playing a sub-par strategy game for ten to fifteen hours before you manage to restart the plot.  This is tiring and boring, to say the least.
    My conclusion?  Generally speaking, VN hybrids can be good, but that is only if the VN aspects don't become an adjunct for the third-rate gameplay that tends to be tacked onto them.
  13. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to AaronIsCrunchy for a blog entry, The winding down of community   
    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
     
  14. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Ariurotl for a blog entry, 10 Times I Despaired in Grisaia [SPOILERS]   
    1. Those multiple times Yuuji considered ignorance to be a perfectly valid excuse for gross generalization in his godawful internal monologues.
    "All "big" women are shopping in a certain way. But I'm not an expert in this sort of thing." "Students at this age have got nothing but homework and masturbation to fill up their free time. But I'm not an expert in this sort of thing." Well, if you're such a non-expert-at-this-sort-of-thing, then kindly shut the fuck up. I mean... um... stop this train of thought the fuck up. Whatever.
    2. That one time Yuuji (and the writer) couldn't figure out whether his superiors value him.
    At different points in the story, he describes himself as an extremely valuable asset and a worthless disposable dog. Alright then!
    3. That one sequence with EEEEEVUL cannibal orgies and the notion that tasting human flesh (even unwittingly) somehow makes one beyond help and/or salvation.
    They're all GHOUUUULS now, Amane. So, you know, don't feel bad about abandoning all of them. And try not to think too much about all the stashed food Kazuki hogged.
    4. That one time Yuuji couldn't make up his mind about conventional medical treatment.
    When it comes to Sachi, medical science is obviously worthless... but sure, let's send Michiru off to a hospital, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't hurt.
    5. The whole thing with Yumiko's dad, wherein barely legal teens play the stock market (or something).
    Gawd, that part was so awful, I've done a pretty good job at erasing it from my memory. That entire sequence after Yumiko's dad arrives at the school? That's what I am referring to.
    6. That one time they blew up the fucking school.
    Really? REALLY?
    7. Michiru's "GOOD" ending.
    Ugh.
    8. Sachi's final decision point and its completely random consequences.
    Huh. I guess thought really is material. Who knew?
    9. Those several times I nearly dropped the whole thing even before the first decision point.
    The common route eventually turned into the most excruciating piece of slice-of-life I've ever read. I couldn't wait for the repetitive and pointless torture that stopped providing any new insight into characters' personalities and motivations after the first hour or so to be over.
    10. Those seven and a half million times Yuuji was being a reprehensible douche.
    Worst protag ever? Worst protag ever.
  15. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Tokyo Babel   
    Tokyo Babel is scheduled to be released pretty soon, so I decided to replay it.  As Propeller is one of my favorite companies and Tokyo Babel has a more or less permanent place in my top fifty (when the number of VNs you've played passes five hundred, fifty is a good place to be, lol), so this doesn't bother me.  Tokyo Babel is one of the few purely all-ages titles from Japan on the PC, and it is a chuunige of rare quality that was obviously written with one of a dozen or so pairs of eyes on Masada and the rest on an internal vision that more prudish Christians would probably call blasphemous.
    Tokyo Babel is not only the name of the game, it is also the name of the setting, a remade version of Purgatory floating in mid-air, where angels, humans, and demons are working together desperately in hopes that they can convince God to stop squishing the universes.  This is not a VN for the excessively religious to play... to be honest, there were moments when even I felt uncomfortable and I've never seriously adhered to any organized religion, though I was raised Christian. 
    Some of the major characters include Astaroth, Belial, Carmael, Uriel, and many other famous or infamous demons and angels.  The three heroines are Raziel, Kugutsu Sorami, and Lilith.  Raziel is the angel who recorded all of creation in her book, the Sefer Raziel (this is partially taken from various apocryphal mythology).  Kugutsu Sorami is the first character you meet in the VN, whose ignorant untainted perspective gives you your first clear insight into the world from a human perspective.  Lilith is the first wife of Adam, who left him and who lay down with demons and produced all the monsters of the world (book of Enoch). 
    Understand, like a lot of stories using Christian mythology, it uses bits and pieces from Milton's Paradise Lost, medieval literature, Gnostic ideas, and many other elements and branching-off literature that went off in all directions since the genesis of that particular faith.  One thing to keep in mind if you are a Christian and were raised to believe that Lilith never existed is that the Bible is not and has never been what we would call 'complete', as each version had bits and pieces grafted on or removed based on what the powerful and influential of an era or region felt was convenient, necessary, correct, and/or all of the above.  The Book of Enoch is one of dozens of 'books' not included in the accepted versions of the Bible, that were considered paradoxical in the eyes of the church of the time.  So... just keep an open mind when reading up on this kind of thing, because Wikipedia isn't exactly reliable when looking up religion-related facts.
    Now, setting philosophical, historical, and other issues aside... this is a pretty enjoyable VN on a lot of levels.  Propeller developed its own (fairly hilarious in my opinion) style of humor that is incorporated into the story, and its effect in Tokyo Babel is one of humanizing the characters.  I don't think a lot of people who read chuuni really understand how vital a few moments of humor can be in giving life to a character, even in this type of VN.  While Masada and his type choose another path, Propeller's writers generally choose to use humor as one of the elements of their characterization.  On another level, this VN is chuuni crack.  The protagonist is a self-hating guy with a dark past and a deathwish seven billion kilometers wide, but he also has an even stronger sense of responsibility toward those he comes to care about, which is seen in the heroine routes.  The situation is one fit to drive even the most optimistic mind to despair, and there are bad guys behind the curtains, waiting to push everyone in the abyss.
    In other words, this is one of those VNs that has almost an infinite capacity for fun in a chuuni sense of the word.
    The art style of this VN is... unique.  In some ways, it feels like an elaboration on Propeller's previously-preferred style, but it was actually done by a completely  different artist from their previous works and it does show in a lot of places.  In particular, the vivid designs you see on the more monstrous demons and monsters in the VN shows this off very well.  Leviathan (the giant serpent) and the Seven Beasts from Setsuna's sword are two of the more distinctive examples of this art-style, and ones that honestly impress me even today. 
    Sound-wise... I'll be straight.  There is no such thing as a bad Propeller sound track... well, until Sougeki no Jaeger anyway.  Tokyo Babel's isn't as good as Evolimit's, but that's kind of like saying that Sasaki Kojirou wasn't as good a swordsman as Musashi (token weabooism, lol).  Generally speaking, the songs in this VN vary to a surprising degree, ranging from techno tunes, to rock, and even a few hymn-like ones.  The one thing that unifies them is that none are poorly used, lol.
    Now... down to the story.  I've already described the basic concept above, but now I'll get into structure.  This VN is split into three major routes after a pretty short common route (the trial ends about the same time you are supposed to head into the heroine routes, from what I've heard).  Raziel's route is the one that keeps you furthest from the 'deepest truths' of the VN, and having played her route is pretty good preparation for Sorami's route, as Sorami's route reveals some things that might make it hard for some people to read Raziel's route and take it for what it is.  Raziel's route has a bad end that is seriously... bad.  However, it is also a highly-detailed and reasonably long diversion from the 'good' (this is debatable) ending.  Sorami's path has a good ending (bittersweet but technically a good ending), a normal ending (really sad...), and a bad ending (like Raziel's, it is fairly long).  Sorami's path has a different focus on the events in Tokyo Babel than Raziel's, and I've heard some people describe Raziel's, Sorami's, and Lilith's paths as the Angel, Human, and Demon paths in that order... However, that is a pretty generalized statement and one that doesn't really feel correct, lol.  Lilith's path... is the true path.  I'm going to be blunt.  If you are silly enough to try to do Lilith's path first, you'll deserve your inability to figure out a third of the references in the path, because it is constructed so that the information from the previous two paths feeds directly into the events in that one.  In other words, if you haven't played the other two paths, Lilith's path has a lot of potential for being confusing.  Lilith's path has three distinctive bad ends, one true end, and one 'Setsuna' end, which is a branch-off from the true one.  Lilith's path has some of the best battles in the VN, and there are no secrets left in shadow by the end, which makes it a great way to end things.
    A few thoughts about Propeller as a company... Propeller doesn't really produce that many overwhelmingly attractive heroines.  I'm pretty sure that this is deliberate, as there is a definite tendency toward the story being more important than the heroines in these VNs.  For people accustomed to the extreme character focus that defines a lot of VNs, this has a potential to be problematic...  Take Ayakashibito, for instance... how many of you really, seriously were obsessed with the romantic aspects of the VN (if you read it)?  There are even heroines in Propeller games that are actually deliberately made to seem bland (the elf in Bullet Butlers, for instance) or somehow unattractive for situational/emotional reasons (Kaori in Ayakashibito).  This is a part of their style, which calls for heroines to not take up the whole of the limelight in the VN, and it is one of the reasons I honestly find their VNs so enjoyable, other than the sheer chuunige nougat that makes my mouth water.
    Overall, while Tokyo Babel is no Dies Irae, it does have a high level of quality, as well as being one of the few chuunige to dare to avoid the 'perfect happy ending' that has become standard even in many VNs of the type in recent years (for some reason, bittersweet endings are less popular these days...).   It can definitely play on your emotions at times (especially the endings), and there is just enough humor to keep the VN as a whole from being unbearably heavy.  Of course, if you dislike gloomy protagonists who don't really understand other people very well, there might be some abrasive moments in this VN for you... but Setsuna comes by that particular set of flaws honestly, so I never held it against him, lol. 
  16. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, A bit of Hapymaher, as a motivator and because I'm evil   
    Before anyone asks, no I'm not translating this VN as a whole.  For one thing, it is long and I'm lazy.  For another, it actually has a small chance of coming over here, so I'm not going to do something that will spoil the whole game for them (I want this officially localized).  This is a fully narrated version (narrated by the poster of the video) of the first few scenes of Hapymaher, which was my VN of the Year 2013.  This VN has ridiculously good music... and a frequently heartbreaking story. 
    2:38-14:42  The youtube guy voices the narration and the protagonist, in a way that is pretty good... and this is a translation.
    There is no need for you to do anything. Just leave everything to me. 
     
    Also, when it comes to your 'true desires', they are something you just think you understand.
     
    Misfortune, happiness, difficulties, weeping, pain, pleasure, and fun… I will provide them all.
     
    I know for certain what to do to make it so, after all.
     
    But even so, you will still force yourself to go on.
     
    You like to give up as well, don’t you?
     
    That’s why I’ll capture you.
     
    You like that as well, don’t you?
     
    You always need to be looked after, after all.
     
    That place was an extravagant room.
     
    In the center was a wide, heavily-built table.
     
    Upon the table, a pot with steam wafting from it and colorful candies and treats were lined up.
     
    The fluffy couch and the handwoven rug upon the floor were all intended for the guests that came here.
     
    Here, the preparations for a tea party are always complete.
     
    That room, which seemed like it had lept out of a dream or a story, looked like a bad joke to me.
     
    That was because of the coloring… black, white, red, purple, pink, blue… all the colors I could see were vivid ones.  It was as if the room were decorated like a butterfly.
     
    Though it was a room that seemed as if it was from an aristocrat’s mansion, the color made it seem as if it had tossed aside all forms of dignity.
     
    It wasn’t just the inside of the room that was strange.
     
    Outside the window, vegetation grew so thickly that it was if it were a botanical garden.
     
    The only light was the flickering light of the stars and the moon.  However, even that was blocked by the thick growth of the forest.
     
    Thin trees, thick trees, flowers blooming despite the fact that it was night, and the overgrowth of grass, vines, and leaves.
     
    The excess of plant growth around the room seemed to indicate that no human hand had intervened there in centuries.
     
    However, the room itself was new, in all ways.
     
    That strange place was filled with the silence of the forest and the presence of living things.
     
    Suddenly, a single shadow appeared in the room.
     
    Roses, which were not amongst the flowers blooming outside, began to bloom as if in order to conceal the shadow. 
     
    The white roses, which seemed to grow in fast forward, began to give off the sweet smell of burning honey as they bloomed, as if someone had set fire to them.
     
    The roses spread slowly like spilled water, giving off the scents of tea, honey, sweets, and the deep forest. 
     
    And then the shadow took on the form of a young girl and stood there as if she had been there from the beginning.
     
    The girl who stood amongst the white roses laughed quietly.
     
    “Since I’ve been called, I must treat you to my hospitality.”
     
    With a mien of mixed enjoyment and sorrow she whispered.
    Opening
     
    Second Scene
    And so, I dream once again today.
     
    When I came to, I was lying in the forest at night.
     
    “Why am I dreaming this dream again…?”
     
    There is no point in complaining.  I rise and begin to walk through the forest in my dreams.  I walk, I walk.
     
    In that deep forest, the light of the stars and moon filtered through the trees is all the ilumination.
     
    Even though the forest holds the sense of no presence other than “ours”, even though it is perfectly silent…
     
    Even so, I can’t seem to believe there is no one else there.
     
    A beast, a bird, a person, or perhaps even something like a ghost.
     
    I’m not sure, but I sought to leave that forest, holding her hand amidst the intense sensation that something is there.
     
    I almost trip over thick roots and stumble over buried stones.
     
    Even so, I continue to walk holding the hand of the silent presence following me.
     
    I know that this is a dream.
     
    In the end, a dream is a dream.
     
    I know.  This is the past.
     
    Even if this actually occurred in the past, what I am seeing is merely a dream.
     
    So, what I am seeing here is utterly meaningless.
     
    This is a dream.
     
    I know that better than anyone.  I know!
     
    However, even so.  No matter how well I know it is meaningless, I can’t bring myself to let go of this hand I'm holding.
     
    “It will be all right ______.  Let’s return home.”
     
    There is no answer, nor is there a sense of a nod.
     
    However, I don’t release that hand.
     
    I know what will happen after this.  It is a dream I’ve seen countless times.
     
    I can leave this forest.  It is a dark forest where I can’t figure out where I am, but I can return.
     
    However…
     
    “Ah… will we be able to go home?”
     
    The direction of the light changes changes.
     
    The forest goes from deep forest of the inside to the shallow forest of that which is close to the outside.
     
    The trees are thin, the young ones begin to stand out, and the light filtering through the trees increases.
     
    “We will return for sure this time… together this time for sure…!”
     
    My legs shiver from walking through the forest, and I’m not sure my voice is coming out.
     
    Even so, the sensation of the hand gripping mine was there.
     
    -I know what happens after this.
     
    ---Please stop.
     
    I can also here my own voice screaming those words.
     
    However, I also think ‘this time for sure’.
     
    .It’s just a dream!  Why give up if it is only a dream?!  Even if it is just in a dream…!
     
    We walk, step by step, toward the outside.
     
    If we get through this forest, we can return home.
     
    The light from the outside gets stronger.  The area becomes brighter.
     
    And when I exited the forest…
     
    … the hand I was supposed to be holding was no longer there.
     
    “Why?!  Why…?!”
     
    I knew it.  I knew it would be this way.
     
    Only I can leave the forest.
     
    We will never be able to return together.
     
    “Why...?!”
     
    You gave up didn’t you?  You know, don’t you?
     
    I should already know… know that only I returned.
     
    It took me a long time to understand and I caused a lot of trouble in the process, but shouldn’t I have figured this out by now?
     
    “That’s… even so…!”
     
    And… Even if you returned together in the dream --- it isn’t like she’ll come back, will she?
     
    After all, this is just a dream.
     
    It changes nothing.  It is just self-satisfaction.  Even if I know it is a dream, it can’t have any effect on reality.
     
    Yes, I know.  In the end, a dream is a dream.
     
    I can’t return with her…
     
    “Then, if you could return with her?”
  17. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Mr Poltroon for a blog entry, Patriotic Text Written by Poltroon   
    As it happens, my younger sister had to write a text for a Portuguese test, and I like it. Therefore, I translated it (probably not too well) and decided to read it aloud. In both languages:
    There exist various characteristics that can be considered crucial for surpassing the most difficult difficulties and reaching the most faraway goals.
    For an argument as simple as "Attempt, be daring, be courageous and persevere", many will ignore it outright. After all, just because we try to do something, just because we are stubborn, we do not obtain instant results. Various situations are, clearly, impossible. To this, there's nothing I can do but point toward the history of this country.
    How many times has Portugal not achieved the impossible? A mere county, led by a teenager, becomes a country among countries triple, quadruple its size, fighting against Moors and Castilian Kings. One of Europe's smallest countries was given half the world by the Pope. A country in plain dictatorship, achieves a revolution without a single casualty.
    I understand that some may not believe that tenacity and audacity enable the impossible, but something I can guarantee: Without attempt, there will be no success.
    ----
      Existem várias características que podem ser consideradas cruciais para ultrapassar as mais diffíceis dificuldades e alcançar os mais longínquos objetivos.
       Para um argumento tão simples como "Tenta, sê ousado, sê corajoso e persevera", muitos ignorá-lo-ão de imediato. Afinal, só por tentarmos fazer algo, só por sermos teimosos, não obtemos resultados de imediato. Várias situações são, claramente, impossíveis. A isto, nada posso responder senão apontar para a história deste país.
       Quantas vezes não realizou Portugal o impossível? Um mero condado, liderado por um adolescente, torna-se num país entre países com o triplo, o quádruplo do seu tamanho, lutando contra mouros e reis castelhanos. Um dos países mais pequenos da Europa recebeu metade do mundo do Papa. Um país em plena ditadura, realiza uma revolução sem um único ferido.
       Compreendo que alguns não acreditem que tenacidade e ousadia permitam o impossível, mas algo posso garantir: Sem tentativa, não haverá successo de forma alguma.
    -M.F.V. (Poltroon)
     
     
  18. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, VN of the Year 2015: A statement in Compromises   
    First, let me state that 2015 is the flat-out worst year for VNs I've seen out of the last six.  There was a lot of upward and downward flow hovering around the line known as 'mediocre' or 'average', but there were - saying it straight out - no kamige and few titles that really stood out from the crowd.  It is definitely the worst year since I started VN of the Month, just two years and five months (or so) ago. 
    Unlike in 2013 or 2014, there are not a lot of titles I really even seriously considered to be in the running for this spot, even in a vague sort of way.  While there were a few titles that jumped out at me toward the end of the year, I wouldn't have even seriously considered them in either of the two previous years.  Heck, my top three titles this year wouldn't have even made it into the top twelve last year or the year before.  That is how bad it was.
    In 2013, the winner was Hapymaher by Purple Soft, its unbelievably high-quality soundtrack, art, presentation, and storytelling barely edging past Komorebi no Nostalgica for the win.  While both games could pull both my emotions and intellect into play, Hapymaher's musical presentation gave it an overwhelming edge on that front, making it the winner.
    2014 was also a hard choice... but in the end, it came down to Nanairo Reincarnation, the only VN that year that I honestly had no reservations about.  Semiramis no Tenbin, Hello Lady, and a few others were runners-up that year (in fact, 2014 was an amazingly good year), but in terms of complete overall quality and appeal, they couldn't match Nanairo.
    Unfortunately, 2015 just doesn't have any candidates that match those.  Silverio Vendetta was immensely fun for me, but it has flaws in its structure that disqualify it, in addition to having way too niche  an appeal.  While I did praise it, Kyuuketsu Hime no Libra (which - as most of us know - has been Kickstarted for translation) just doesn't make it to the level I demand from VN of the Year Candidates.  Sakura no Uta, for all that it does have its moments, has a deeply flawed overall flow and a lot of technical issues with the story presentation.  Soreyori no Prologue was an interesting experience, despite being typically Minori (meaning sincerely annoying at several major points), but it wasn't a game I could seriously consider for VN of the Year.  Natsuiro Recipe is probably the best 'iyashikei' product made in the last three years, but it isn't something I could honestly consider for raw quality.  Koko Kara Natsu no Innocence had the typically high levels of overall quality I associate with Clochette (despite the boob fetish), but again, it wasn't quite there.  Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori was an immensely fun ride, but - like Silverio Vendetta - was both deeply flawed and too niche in appeal to seriously be considered.
    So what was I left to consider, really?
    Basically it came down to Kikan Bakumatsu Ibun Last Cavalier, a surprise entry in the last part of the year that tries to replicate, at least in part, the magic of Chuushingura (the VN, not the movie or the various books), except with a lot more bloodshed and in a steampunk version of the political and military conflict surrounding what led up to the Meiji Restoration.  Now, at first I was tempted to think that I was jumping to conclusions, because it was so fresh in my mind... so I let almost two months pass before I made my decision, while I went about the task of reviving my memories of various VNs I played during the year.
    It really was odd what came back to me during that time... Sakura Nikagetsu was one of the more memorable ones (definitely not VN of the Year material, but it was immensely amusing), as was Rakuen no Shugosha (a cheap kinetic utsuge in a total anti/non-anime style), and Sorcery Jokers (the most technically sound of the straight-out chuunige that came out during the year).  I honestly had to reject the former two outright, simply because their visuals make them a no-go for ninety percent of the people I know, no matter how much fun or how high quality a psychological experience they might be.  Sorcery Jokers was actually a lot harder to dismiss, when it came down to it.  In terms of scale, I was really tempted to say it could compete with Kikan Bakumatsu... but if asked which left a better impression, I would have instantly said Kikan Bakumatsu.
    To be honest, either title would have been a compromise.  Neither is as good as any of the best VNs from the last four or five years.  They are definitely good, as in being worthy of being listed as VNs to remember.  However, I definitely wouldn't have put them up as candidates in another year.
    For the idiots who kept asking me if I'd say yes to Bansenjin *spits on the floor*  even Masada pisses on his own feet sometimes (too much of an attempt to recreate the success of the Shinza series).
     
  19. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, My attitude toward moege/charage   
    Since most of the people who read my blog at all are probably already aware of this, I'm not going to hide the fact that moege/charage aren't my favorite sector of the VN industry.  I see VNs in general as a storytelling medium first and a visual art third or fourth, so the overfocus on visual elements that defines 'true moege' and the inevitable inconsistencies and storytelling incompetence in charage can be pretty irritating for me. 
    That said, I have and do enjoy some charage/moege.  Ones like Nekopara, that are cute and over relatively quickly, can actually be an enjoyable bit of relaxation, and the best charage - such as Lovesick Puppies or the various Alcot comedy-focused VNs - can be truly amusing to read.  However, there are some things I can't stand about some charage...
    One of the most annoying aspects of charage is the tendency to go to a lot of trouble to build an interesting setting for the heroines or protagonist... and then either fail to utilize it as part of the characters' story, underuse it, or 'change their minds' because it is inconvenient for a particular heroine path.  This is a complaint those of you who read my blog or have read my blog have probably heard before.  To be blunt 'if you build it, at least use it well' is my attitude toward efforts at building a setting.  Give the protagonist a tragic past and psychological scars?  Then you should make his healing a part of the story of the heroine paths.  Give the heroine a major issue/problem that is a fundamental part of her life and she can't resolve on her own?  Please don't insult my intelligence by resolving it in ten seconds with no real drama whatsoever.  This is a pet peeve of mine that drives me up the wall, and when I come across charage that actually manage to break past this kind of failure, I am generally happy to praise them up one side and down the other.
    An excess of random (and I do really mean random) h-scenes used in place of character development in a heroine path.  Now, let me tell you that it is quite possible to utilize an h-scene as a part of character development.  Alcot in particular favors this technique and it is the primary reason why I read all their h-scenes (actually, this habit annoys me, as I normally skip h-scenes).  There is absolutely nothing wrong with using an h-scene to develop a character... in fact, VNs like Vermilion, Jingai Makyou, Uruwashi no, and Dies Irae actually have h-scenes that are used to further develop the characters.  However, h-scenes that take the place of telling the characters' story are an occasional bad habit that pops up in about one third of all charage.  Yes, eroge characters tend to be like randy monkeys when they cross the line into loverhood... but that isn't an excuse for ignoring further character development entirely. 
    Ichaicha.  Now, the concept of 'ichaicha' is so fundamental to Japanese romance in VNs that it is unavoidable even in many more serious games.  I honestly don't have a problem with it... in reasonable amounts.  However, there is a phase in about two-thirds of all moege/charage where there is literally nothing but this!!!  If it were spaced out a bit with more story progression and/or character development (in the case of moege/charage dealing with the heroines' and/or the protagonist's personal issues) it really would never be a problem.  Unfortunately, the 'endless dating phase' can often be interminably long... does anyone really want to suffer through eight dates (frequently to the same places and with no real change in the events involved) for each heroine?
    That said, charage do have a lot to offer.  There are some seriously well-designed and written ones out there that actually tackle all the issues introduced as part of the story.  Lovesick Puppies was one of those, and there are yet others who take the setting and run with it such as Suzukaze and Maikaze (a game and fandisc) by Whirlpool.  I honestly have to applaud when a VN focused almost entirely on the characters manages to fully utilize a reasonably well-designed setting.  Consistency isn't always necessary in a charage (in fact, it is frequently ignored), but a charage that actually manages to keep the individual routes consistent with the base setting is more attractive than one that doesn't, generally speaking.  For all that charage are composed almost entirely of tropes and archetypes in most cases, I can forgive that if they manage to do so in a way that is pleasing and makes sense without being excessively trite. 
    What does all of this come down to?  A good game is a good game even if it is a charage or a moege, and a kusoge is a kusoge even if it is one of my beloved chuunige.  I could go on to name a half-dozen chuunige that are so terrible I don't even want to recall them as a demonstration, but I'm sleepy, so I'm going to leave it at this.
  20. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Tokyo Necro   
    OK, first I am going to avoid spoilers throughout this review, so I would like those who want to comment to avoid the same, even in spoiler boxes.  This is one of those games that is going to be harder to enjoy if you spoil it for those who come after, so I will personally eat anyone who spoils it.  This VN is by the same writer who did Sumaga (blech), Gekkou no Carnevale (yay), and Totono (a VN a lot of people here liked).  However, the style of story is much closer to that of Gekkou no Carnevale than to Sumaga, thankfully.  So, those of you who have heard me bitching about Sumaga need not worry that this is going to turn into a long rant on how horrible anything by this writer is.  First, I am going to give you an idea of the basic setting.
    It is 2199 and the world has plunged into a new ice age (this is actually one of the hypothetical results of global warming irl, if the Greenland glacier slides into the ocean early enough).  Up until a decade before the story, humanity was fighting over the warmest areas of the world, putting all their power into a war that was becoming increasingly meaningless.  In that war, there were many scientific advances... but the two that are most relevant to the story are Necromancy and the zombie-killing techniques developed by the protagonists' fathers.  Necromancy is undertaken by injecting a special type of nanomachines into the human brain after death, turning the individual in question into one of the Living Dead and the person who did the injecting into a Necromancer, capable of moving the undead results at will.  The zombie-killing techniques central to the story are the use of one vs many weapon techniques (the basic one is two pistols with muzzle spikes, which the male protagonist uses, though the female protagonist's basic fighting style is based off of the same) in combination with the EX-Brain, an analytical computer that fits onto a person's head and allows them to notice things their subconscious recognizes but their conscious mind doesn't (details the conscious mind filters out), thus allowing the person in question to fight more effectively.  Tokyo of the future is a dystopian hell, where refugees from all over the world have gathered, necromancers roam the streets with their armies of the living dead, and bounty hunters (like the protagonists) hunt them for their daily bread.  The city itself is kept alive by geothermal heat spread throughout the city by water-filled 'hot pipes' passed through the hot spot underground and circulated throughout the city. 
    Main Characters (protagonists, heroines, and main antagonist)

    Nagaoka Souun
    Souun is the son of a hero of the American-Chinese War, who was killed some years ago.  On the surface he doesn't show much in the way of emotion, and his fighting style is one where he uses the dual-pistols in combination with his EX-Brain to fight in the most efficient way possible, obeying the suggestions of his own subconscious like a machine.  Indeed, he himself isn't really sure he has emotion, and that is one of his major internal conflicts throughout the story as he deals with his personal issues.  He is a badass, to put it bluntly... the kind of guy who can re-kill thirty zombies in under a minute without taking a single scratch.  His body has been trained using both conventional methods and tailor-made nano-drugs to turn it into a weapon capable of perfectly obeying the EX-Brain's suggestions.

    Kibanohara Echika
    Echika is in just about every way Souun's opposite.   She is a rebel, preferring to use a chainsaw and shotgun and frequently ignoring her EX-Brain's suggestions in favor of her own impulses.  She believes emotions should be immediately be shown on the surface and indulged, and she is more than a little hedonistic by nature.  She is also a straight-out lesbian who has no hesitation going after pretty girls.  Her outright hatred for her father is the most obvious cause for her rebellious nature and her unwillingness to use her EX-Brain (the horns, as opposed to the full helmet Souun version Souun uses). 

    Hougyou Iria
    Iria is the main heroine of the story and the focus for most of the events in it.  She has extreme synesthesia (look it up), though she is quite functional despite that.  Her initial setting, amnesia, is one of the most obvious tropes out there, but it isn't the focus of most of the story.  In a world where people are rapidly losing their emotions, both positive and negative, she is a bright, cheerful young woman whose very presence makes people feel hopeful and light-hearted.  She is also an otaku. 

    Kijou Mitsumi
    Kijou Mitsumi is Souun's 'other' potential heroine.  She is, like him, a hunter of the undead.  However, she uses a katana and muscle-enhancing suit, along with her talent for mapping out the actions of enemies on the battlefield, rather than the style used by Souun and partially rejected by Echika.  To be honest, this is one girl who has a singular talent for getting herself into trouble... and a lot of it is caused by her somewhat single-minded personality.  She is very devoted to any cause or person she latches onto, but that also means she tends to become dependent on those she attaches herself to, which is the cause of her personal conflict.

    Aso Kiriri
    Echika's  adoptive older sister.   She is the most 'normal' person amongst the main characters, ironically, despite the fact that she is a high-ranking member of the Military Police under Echika's father.  She is kind-hearted and constantly worries about the broken relationship between Echika and her father, as she loves them both.  She also is very idealistic, believing that her duty as an officer of the law is the protection of Tokyo's people above all other things (an idealism almost unheard of in the somewhat tyrannical Military Police organization). 

    Kon Su
    Kon Su... is probably the straight-out weirdest character in the VN.  She is a hard M (with bold and italics for emphasis), and she has casual sexual relations with both protagonists.  She is a professional hacker, information broker, undead analyzer (dissects and analyzes undead bodies and brains to discover the individual styles of necromancers... sort of like forensics), and she is also one of Souun's and Echika's supporters.  Unfortunately, explaining her weirdness is not really possible without spoiling the VN, so I'm just going to drop it.  Incidentally, her path isn't really a straight-out heroine path, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who completes one of the paths.

    Milgram
    Milgram is the charismatic leader of the Researchers, an organization of Necromancers that believe the only hope for humanity is to escape from emotion through death (extinction).  He isn't your standard nihilist, but the philosophy he espouses is.  This guy... is the single most powerful Necromancer in existence, which means he is also an extremely emotional person (emotion and artistic sensitivity being requirements for creating the best undead).  This guy is flat-out scary, eerie, and freaky.  However, in many ways he is a representative of one of the major aspects of the world the characters are living in.
    The Story
    For better or worse, this story has a ton of guro and is basically an action-horror story.  If you can't deal with heroine deaths, torture, zombification, and occasional rape, this definitely will be hard on you.  A lot of effort goes into portraying the most gruesome parts of the story in a way that will be as horrifying as possible, and the heroines don't always escape this particular treatment, so it is best to prepare yourself before jumping in.  The lighter points - mostly centered around Iria - actually only serve to enhance the sheer horror and bleakness of the setting, which is basically an extension and enhancement of what this writer did in Gekkou no Carnevale. 
    By nature, any story as full of zombies like this one is going to be dark, and this one really does go to the extremes of the dark end at times.  It is really hard to talk about this story without spoiling some of the primary elements (and because I figured out those elements too early due to certain hints, my own reactions were more ones of 'expected horror/sadness', so I'd prefer not to do that to you all).  To be honest, emotionally connecting with this story was hard at some points, but as I got deeper into the characters - usually near the ends of the paths - it became a lot easier.  In terms of action, this VN is full of it, but it is most emotional toward the end of the paths and in the true route.
    Kon Su's route serves a purpose different from the other routes, revealing elements of her past that are important to the story as a whole while showing the steel that lies beneath the stuttering, drooling do-M surface of that character.  Whereas the other routes have some element of romance, Kon Su's lacks that, and I honestly thought that was for the best (I honestly couldn't imagine any ending where she was romantically involved with either of the protagonists, as opposed to just sexually involved).  Ironically, if I were to say which of the routes (other than the true one) touched me in the most positive manner, it would be this one.
    I really suggest anyone avoid playing Iria's route until you've played all the other heroine routes.  It feels a lot more natural if you go into the true route straight after finishing her route, as the true route is in many ways wrapped up the most intimately with hers.  The other routes can probably be played in any order without a problem, but I do advise you take my suggestion above seriously.
    Visuals
    Normally, I don't talk about a VN's visuals that much, but because of the styles used here, it needs to be mentioned.  First, I should mention the action-scene styles.  The action-scenes are defined by a type of cell-shaded animation that is very similar to SMT: Digital Devil Saga on the PS2.  Literally, the action scenes are animated and combined with highly-detailed battle descriptions to give a degree of depth that is pretty rare even in action VNs.  I was doubtful at first, but this VN definitely benefited from using this particular technology (though it probably detonated a nuclear bomb under the budget).
    The regular visuals, as seen above, are more 'classic-style' Nitroplus, so if you've played a Nitroplus game made since Muramasa, you probably noticed that it is in the same general style.  As a result, there is no real need for me to discuss them... except that the way the designers used them was pretty amazing.  The dystopian feel of the pipe-wrapped city of Tokyo in 2199 is pretty eerie-feeling and definitely adds to the general atmosphere of the story.  The tendency to dress most of the characters in dark or harsh colors (except Iria) was probably intentional, to further add to this atmosphere.  This is one of the few times in the last year when I've actually felt that a company went above and beyond when designing every visual aspect of a VN.
    Audio
    Musically, this game isn't really unique.  The BGMs all feel 'familiar', though they are used effectively to enhance the mood, so I give this VN high ratings for its BGM use, if not for the songs themselves.  Nitroplus's use of music shows a tendency to prefer unobtrusiveness and 'enhancement' as opposed to the use of music to 'define' the mood seen in a lot of other VNs (Hapymaher being one of the most extreme examples of the latter). 
    What really struck me is the wide variety of sound-effects, such as gunfire, cutting sounds, etc, and the use of those sound effects.  To be honest, the sound of zombies being blown apart by bullets in this VN is going to linger in my ears for quite a while, as is the sound of Echika's 'Rabbit Punch' chainsaw. 
    Overall
    Overall, this VN is pretty impressive.  I can honestly recommend this... though not to just anyone.  To be honest, the 'average' VN-reader who prefers moege-variants will probably not be able to stand the darkness of this game.  If you don't have a reasonably high tolerance for guro and dark atmospheres, this is going to be a hard VN for you to enjoy.  Zombie-lovers will probably flock to this VN by the thousands if it ever gets translated, because it really does draw in a lot of what people like about the 'zombie apocalypse' style movies and TV shows, while giving it a uniquely Japanese/otaku media flavor.  However, this VN is emotionally draining, so I do recommend taking it in smaller doses than I did (every minute I wasn't working for the past four days).  In my opinion, this VN can be considered a straight-out kamige, but it is also a VN that picks its readers... simply because it is so high-stress.
  21. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Weaboos and Otakus: Top Eight most Annoying Questions (Clephas version)   
    Generally speaking, if you are a weaboo and/or otaku and you reveal your hobby, you generally tend to end up on the receiving end of all sorts of unbelievably irritating questions.  This is my list of the most annoying questions I've heard as an otaku/weaboo.
    1.  "Is that a cartoon?"  Almost every anime fan gets asked this at some point, though generally speaking, this is an event that was a lot more common when I first started watching anime.  To be blunt, American cartoons tend to be one of two types... the kid-oriented or the adult-oriented comedy (Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park).  However, anime's sheer variance leads a lot of fans - including me - to want to clearly delineate a difference between the two, despite the fact that the actual Japanese anime definition includes Western cartoons.
    2.  "Why do you hate your country?" This is perhaps the dumbest question I've ever heard, but I've been on the receiving end of it countless times during my weaboo life.  The fact is, I don't hate my country.  My country does a lot of stupid things, but it raised me, it helped form my personality, and it has kept me fed.  I simply prefer to study Japanese culture and language over American.  Unfortunately, trying to explain that this is essentially a matter of aesthetic tastes is pretty pointless in the case of those who ask this question (since they've already made their own conclusions).
    3.  "Why are you dressing up like that?"  When you cosplay, this is perhaps the most unbelievably obvious question you can ever get.  Back when I still cosplayed, it drove me insane to be asked why I was dressing up that way when it was bloody obvious I was doing it for fun because I liked the anime/books/etc it was based off of.
    4.  "Why is there a poster of a cartoon character on your wall?"  This gets old, fast.  When I still bothered buying swag, it was as annoying as hell to have the occasional visitor to my room ask this and similar questions about the swag in my room. 
    5.  "Why do you like the Japanese when they are the ones who started WWII?" This is mostly a question asked by someone who has only read US history books or high school level world history textbooks... WWII was the results of both sides' arrogance and over a half-century of bitter economic competition, preceded by an even more arrogant series of attempts to turn Japan into a Western satellite country (ie. late nineteenth and early twentieth century China).  That said, the question has absolutely nothing to do with why I like Japan.  I like Japan because its unique cultural development has so many interesting aspects to study, and I am fully aware of the insanity of war-era Japan and the cultural quirks that led to it, unlike the people who ask this question.
    6.  "Japanese games are all the same... why do you play them?"  This is a more recent question and one of the few that has a legitimate point, though it is made from ignorance (usually some newbie listening to a long-time vet complain).  The fact is, otaku media, in particular their games, are slow to change... The shifts in the market are slow, and so gluts of certain types of games are endemic to the industry.  The same applies to all otaku media, really.  Japanese business-people hate change and are slow to adapt to it.  The eccentric exceptions are just that... exceptions.  The answer to the question I usually give is that I honestly just enjoy Japanese style more than Western when it comes to telling a story, and more than half of my reason for living is experiencing good stories.
    7.  "That Japanese sword look like it would break with a single whack of this hammer... why don't you just buy a broadsword?"  lol... this question I got when I was showing off my 日本刀 (a katana actually made in Japan in the old manner) to another guy who does broadsword fencing.  The simple answer to this question that I gave him is that my sword is prettier, because I didn't want to get into the arguments about the difference in purpose.  The more complex answer is that katanas make more sense in an era without metal armor than a broadsword (katanas are designed to slice, as opposed to the way western blades are designed to smash and crush as much as cut).  Again, there is also the aesthetic, lol.
    8.  "Do you support what the Japanese did in China during WWII?" Now this question... I've never got how people can ask this question.  Do people really think that even a weaboo would lack that much common sense and clarity of thought?  Seriously?!  Of course I don't in any way support Japan's actions during WWII.  Only someone who hasn't read history could have.  In regards to America, there were mitigating circumstances and legitimate reasons, but China was another matter entirely.  China, for all intents and purposes, was basically a helpless, defenseless region (I don't call it a country because it wasn't and hadn't been since Britain won the wars in the nineteenth century), and there was absolutely no need for any of the excesses Japan undertook during the invasions and occupation there.  The same goes for Korea.  I almost punched the last person who asked me this question.
     
  22. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas for a blog entry, Neko-rabu #1   
    None of my incarnations has ever been very good at pretending to be nice. 
    Yes, that is an understatement, from a purely objective perspective.  However, when you are a sentient universe-eating monster that used to be a fat, bald otaku from a frontier planet in a rather pathetic galaxy in an even more pathetic universe, it is kind of hard to understand how to be ‘nice’. 
    Understand, I was just out to have a few drinks, perhaps eat some of the more nasty criminals that infested the city of Neo Lovenia, and maybe find a few people worth loving… I had no intention of getting involved in something so utterly boring as a slum-dwellers’ riot when I left the sewer-level apartment I’d chosen more out of memories of a certain child’s cartoon back ‘home’ than any practical reasons.  Unfortunately, as with most matters involving mortals, I wasn’t exactly given a choice whether to get involved or not.
    Especially when a really pretty girl hidden under the rags of a filthy slum-dwelling piece of mortal trash was tossed off a bridge, straight into my arms…
    That, in and of itself, would not have been much of a problem.  On any other day, I would have simply eaten the girl, made her into one of my trillions of immortal servants, then gone on about the business of getting myself debauched in the biggest city on one of the most degenerate planets in all of that particular universe.
    Unfortunately, the men in the silly blue robes with the magic staffs had the bad taste to try to blast me with lightning bolts, probably thinking I was one of the girl’s allies.  Since this verged on that most terrible of all sins, incivility, I decided to retaliate in kind.
    It wasn’t my fault that the fragile matter of that particular space-time continuum wasn’t up to the task of withstanding the equivalent of a sigh of exasperation from me.
    The bridge, the rioting slum-dwellers in their filthy rags, and the entire unit of what passed for police on that particular sorry excuse for a civilized world, were suddenly wiped from existence, along with a large portion of the surrounding streets and buildings… and a perfect half-sphere of the water running through the reservoir below. 
    Needless to say, I was somewhat dismayed.  While I tended to devour all sorts of nasty things in my true form, I generally refrained from drinking the water on planets like that one… one could never tell just what was in it, after all.  The oily taste of rotten fish and the bits of effluvia that tended to infest the waters on backward worlds like this one filled my mouth, reminding me of why I generally refrained from such activities when in mortal form.
    The girl in my arms was quite unconscious, and I was briefly tempted to just toss her in the river and be done with it… but she was also unreasonably pretty underneath all that grime.  So pretty, in fact, that she reminded me of my own mortal days, when I spent most of every day staring at a computer screen at animated beauty because the world around me was so ugly.  As such, I believe that it is only reasonable that I should be forgiven for deciding to refrain from eating her before I got to know her.
    Once an erogamer, always an erogamer, after all. 
    Having returned to my home, such as it was, I found myself at a loss.  Being a sensible creature, I’d long-since arranged for my own pocket dimension full of all the creature comforts to follow me wherever I went, and there was no chance of trouble from the outside entering without my permission.  Unfortunately, I had seemingly lost my wits, deciding to bring a mere mortal child, however pretty, to my sanctum, full of walls of eroge, anime blu-rays, and video games from every era of my pox-infested homeworld’s technological age.
    As such, I was quite well-aware that my home wasn’t exactly suitable for the inhabitance of beings of the female persuasion.  The nightmare of many otakus yet to obtain the power of true enlightenment, of taking a girlfriend home only for her to find out about his hidden passions and reject him furiously, briefly raised its head. 
    I shook my head, smiling somewhat wryly at my rather prosaic worry.  After all, if all else failed I could always eat the girl anyway.  Pretty as she was, she would be even prettier with glowing orange eyes and a bear-trap smile full of endless hunger.  However, now that I had refrained from eating her once, I found it difficult to consider doing so anyway.   I am nothing if not stubborn, as a particularly bone-headed (literally) Neanderthal discovered when we got into a headbutting contest during one of my many pleasure trips to my homeworld’s distant past.
    So it was that I found myself transforming the girl’s rags into a simple kimono (again, once a weaboo, always a weaboo), cleaning her body by the simple expedient of turning all non-living matter on the surface of her skin into quick-evaporating anti-bacterial soap. 
    Why did I have to inherit the original’s otaku-obsessions?  I wondered, feeling a bit exasperated.  All of the avatars made by the original have their own quirks and individual leanings, though the essential nature of the being we represent is unchangeable.  However, I am one of the few unfortunates to have inherited the original’s ‘hobby’ and tastes. 
    The one thing all of us inherit is ‘hunger’.  It takes different forms, depending on the individual, but all of us eat people.  If it is the simple fondness one might have for their favorite meal, the result tends to be what most mortal races would call a ‘monster’.  The individual’s basic personality survives being eaten… but their body and their desires are changed drastically.  In the billions of years since my maker had eaten this particular universe, I’d come to understand just how differently our emotions toward those we eat effect various species.
    If we happened to actually know and like the person in question, the result that came out the other side was generally superficially unchanged… after all, the more we know and like someone, the less likely we are to want to turn them into a duplicate of ourselves. 
    But I digress.  I was speaking of our ‘hunger’.  In some cases it manifests as lust, in others it manifests as greed, in some it manifests as sadism, and yet in others it can manifest as a desire to kill.  It isn’t always negative… if it was, very few universes would have managed to survive our presence. 
    In my case, it is pride, the desire for recognition given free reign.  Need I state how paradoxical my otaku hobbies and my ‘hunger’ are?  I’ve not quite gone so far down that path as the original went… so I’m not about to proudly state that I love eroge to the world.  Unfortunately, that meant that I was generally forced to hide my hobbies on whatever world I chose to use as a foothold at a given time.
    As such, I vanished the various otaku paraphernalia in the room, transforming the walls into something resembling the inside of a castle lord’s room from the Middle Ages (imagined by me), with a four-poster canopied bed, deep purple silk sheets, covering the walls with bookshelves filled old-fashioned hand-written, hand-bound books in the local language (translated in an instant).  As a bow to my ever-present weabooism, I left the katana and wakizashi hanging sheathed on nails driven into the wall and the set of samurai armor I’d created in one of my all-too-common fits of obsessive madness on its stand in the corner of the room closest to the heavy varnished-wood door. 
    I took another look at the girl and sighed deeply.  Her fuzzy black cat ears and silky black tail attracted my otaku-obsessions like a fly to honey, and the fact that she was a Japanese-style bishoujo only made it worse (considering the whole reason this universe had been devoured was because the original found out there were naturally-occurring cat-people there). 
    The urge to eat her was briefly overwhelming, but it soon receded, tamed by certain… other feelings.  Unlike the original, I have some restraint, after all. 
    I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and carried her over to the bed, where I dropped her, covering her with a down-filled quilt I materialized out of thin air.  Her white, oh-so-white skin which contrasted so wonderfully with her midnight-black hair once again invited me to dine upon my guest, but I had little difficulty suppressing the urge this time.
    That done, I picked a random book off of the shelves and began reading, Hmm… Waylander by Gemmel… my original’s tastes are a bit predictable.  I reflected as I waited for her to wake.
    The story was about a kingslayer assassin, and it was written by one of the original’s childhood favorite authors.  While the story started as a straightforward revenge story, describing the rapid collapse of the man who became Waylander into the worst pits of human nature, it was still an enjoyable read… very much like cheap fantasy junk food.
    A few hours later, I sensed her stirring in the bed, her ears twitching and her breathing becoming shallower.  An instant later, she shot upright, screaming. 
    Irritated, I created a sound barrier around her head and waited for her to stop.  The cat-like ears of the native form I was using were highly sensitive, and her screaming could have awakened the dead.
    I observed her closely, seeing that her wide, unfocused eyes were a large, brilliant emerald in color and her teeth had the prominent canines that distinguished her visually from humankind, together with her ears and tail. 
    Eventually, her eyes focused, and her screaming stopped, and I released the sound barrier, waiting for her to speak. 
    “…w…wh…who are you?”  She asked in obvious confusion, her voice hoarse, most likely from the screaming.
    “My name is Clephas.” I replied, giving her what I thought was a gentle, reassuring smile.
  23. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, Tackling More Complex Graphics [VN Image Editing]   
    Here in the United States, we’ll be spending Thursday the way The Lord God intended: eating our weight in meat, potatoes, and gravy, then farting ourselves to sleep on our uncles’ living room couches. Those of you from other countries have good reason to be jealous; there’s no slumber quite as deep or blissful as the post-Thanksgiving coma. But guess what, my forlorn foreign friends? This year, you’re in luck. That’s right — I’ve decided to write another image editing post. With any luck, this’ll put you to sleep faster than the second season of The Walking Dead.
    I know. Those are lofty claims, but I’m ready to deliver a Thanksgiving miracle. You’re welcome.
    Insomniacs of the World, Good Night.
    So at the tail end of image editing on a yet-to-be-released otome translation, I got a care package from the TL team with an additional set of graphics that needed retouching. Most of it was straightforward stuff — modal UI elements, chapter title screens, etc. — but one folder in particular seemed to emanate waves of pure evil. You know that feeling you get when your phone rings at 7 o’clock on a Sunday morning? And you can see it’s your boss calling? And every hung-over bone in your body screams at you not to answer, but you know you have to? Yeah, kind of like that.
    So I opened it.
    Inside were 13 different full-screen maps, all very similar to the one above, showing the in-game route from one castle to another. I could already see it was going to be a relatively painful retouching job — lots of smallish text set against an intricately illustrated and heavily weathered map. Complicating matters was the fact that the same map was then repeated 12 more times with slight variations, each image representing the path traveled by the characters over the course of a particular chapter.
    Ouch.
    Image editing is all about measuring twice and cutting once. The more you mess with an image, the more room there is for errors and inconsistencies to creep in — and the more time you waste. So in this case, my first job was to see how much each map actually differed from the next. With any luck, I could create a base map template that contained 90% of the heavy retouching — those elements that were common to all maps — then paste the individual elements for all the other maps on top of that. In Photoshop, the easiest way to do this is layering one image over another, then applying the Difference blending mode. (For you programmers out there, you can think of this as running a diff command on two text files.) The result looks something like this:
    The black pixels represent areas where the two images are identical; the non-black pixels show where they differ. In this case, after doing this with all the images, I could see there were two main points of difference between the maps. First, the inset box on the lower right, which shows the characters’ origin, destination, and the direction of travel, along with thumbnail pictures of each location. Second, the path indicator along the road, with a highlighted road marker showing the characters’ final destination. With this info in hand, I could now start tackling the retouching itself, while setting the Photoshop file up for maximum efficiency and flexibility.
    The first step in building a map template was to remove the Japanese text from the image:
    Tedious stuff, but fairly standard. You might notice that I only removed the text from one of the orange road marker “capsules.” There were a couple reasons for that. For one, there weren’t a lot of similar patches of texture to pull from for cloning, so retouching them all would be a pain in the ass and produce uneven results. Moreover, it would be inefficient, since other than the weathering, they all look more or less identical. So in this case, I drew a selection path around the one retouched capsule, turned it into a smart object, then duped it about 20 times for all the other markers along the road:
    Better, but not quite there yet. It’s painfully obvious that all the capsules are identical, and they stick out like sore thumbs; they’re crisp and clean while the rest of the map looks beat up and worn. So my next step was to blend them into the map and add an element of irregularity by duplicating the original map image, floating it up to the top, then applying the Lighter Color blending mode. This mode compares the two images pixel by pixel, and whichever pixel is lighter gets displayed in the final image. Since the capsules were comparatively dark, this effectively lets me pick up the weathered areas of the map where the lighter parchment shows through and apply it only to the capsules.
    Much better. They look baked into the map now. As a final touch, I also added the slightest bit of canvas texture as an FX layer set to Color Burn to bring back some level of darker noise to the capsules. Not too much, though; since we have to be able to read 4-9 small English letters as opposed to a couple large kanji characters, we need to allow for some increased contrast.
    Done and done. I was finally in a position where I could start adding the translated text to the map. And that’s where I decided to break one of my cardinal rules: never set English type in vertical stacks. Every rule has its exception, though, and this was one right here. The lettering in older, hand-drawn maps was often a loosey-goosey affair, with cartographers squeezing in type wherever they could, however they could. Horizontal, vertical, curved — whatever it took to cram words into the space available. English vertical type would have been right at home on a document like this. Since most of the place names on this map were short, and the space available to me was largely vertical blocks, I decided to go for it. I picked a Western font I thought captured the feel of the original map lettering, then re-set all the type.
    With the base map template finished, I could quickly set about outputting those other 12 map variants. This basically involved creating a dozen layer group overlays for the inset box in the lower right, each one holding updated text and location images copy/pasted from the original maps, along with UI indicators as needed — the blue swirl indicating current location, and the hand-drawn arrow indicating direction of travel. Then I created another set of overlays for the red path line drawn over the map itself. Since the capsules were all smart objects, I could easily highlight individual ones as needed by selectively applying a light orange Color Overlay FX with a Soft Light blending mode.
    Think that bright red line and arrow on the road looks shockingly bad? Me too, especially considering how well art directed the rest of the VN is. It’s almost like the devs had an intern add it in Windows Paint at the last second or something. Oy vey.
    Anyway, everything else came together quickly after that. In short order, all the maps were exported and the new files were back in the hands of the team.
    Asleep yet?
    All told, the project took about 90 minutes for 13 images, with the first half an hour or so spent reviewing the maps and coming up with a plan of attack. Had I not “wasted” that time up front, I could have easily spent 2-3X longer trying to get things done in less efficient ways — if not more.
    So what have we learned today?
    When it comes to image editing, always measure twice and cut once. Plan ahead, especially on more complex projects. Always be willing to break, or at least bend, your own rules if a situation demands it. I will be made up of approximately 93% pumpkin pie by this time tomorrow. #3 is a very conservative estimate.
  24. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, A Few Thoughts on Cheese   
    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.
  25. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Darbury for a blog entry, POLL: To San or Not to San (Honorifics in VNs)   
    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.
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