Beato
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Finally finished Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kamen and I can't really say anything but... wow. I wrote a big wall of text with my impressions here but for anyone who wants a tldr: Utaware2 turned out incredibly good and I recommend it even if you weren't super fond of the original (though it certainly adds to the experience if you were). I'd also encourage people who don't consider themselves good enough at japanese to read without a text hooker to challenge themselves and read it anyway. I had only read one japanese VN (Eustia) with the help of a text-hooker before reading Utawarerumono portable this summer and Itsuwari no Kamen is just my third VN in JP. The Utawarerumo series is probably one of the best examples to challenge oneself with as it's almost entirely voiced (even the narration). Just get an okayish phone dictionary (I use the free imiwa) and learn some basic stroke order so you can look up kanji using the SKIP method (radical search is awful for everything but very complicated kanji or kanji where you can't make out all the radicals) and you should be good to go.
Big wall of text with impressions below.
The original Utawarerumono was the first visual novel I read so I have always had a certain fondness for it and that only improved after I read the much better console ver this summer. But I never regarded it as anything particularly outstanding and I didn't expect much more than something similarly pleasant but not particularly exceptional from Utaware 2. It turned out way better than I expected.
Like I said earlier in the thread in difference to the first Utawarerumono which was a war story with a quite a bit of slice of life Utaware 2 starts out as mostly entirely slice of life with very little plot. This was a an incredibly good decision as this means that when the plot actually kicks in you really care about the characters. These scenes are also incredibly enjoyable to read, and are quite varied with everything from inventing sweets and sake tasting to all the guys getting drunk and naked. And while I personally would have preferred having the slice of life scenes a bit more spread out over the course of the story I can't really consider it bad pasing since I don't recall feeling bored even once while reading it!
One of the big reason the slice of life works so well is the characters. Haku, Kuon, Oshutoru and Nekone ended up as my favourites but all the characters are absolutely wonderful. The absence of harem elements also makes all the female characters' interactions with Haku and each other really refreshing. In fact there's pretty much no place you could insert an h-scene, not even one of those really awkward ones like in the PC ver of first game because most of the female characters simply don't see Haku that way.
The voice actors also does a really wonderful job, Haku in particuliar is voiced by the amazing Fujiwara Keiji who does an incredible job with him. Like the first one Utaware 2 has 2 types of narration, narration that describes what is happening, and narration that describes what a character is thinking. The second type of narration is just like the first game entirely voiced, and listening to Fujikei's voice as Haku thinks about everything from plot related stuff to how to avoid having to work is an absolute joy. I'm really glad they went with a veteran seiyuu for him, though the "newbie" seiyuu's are no slouches either. Taneda Risa (who is one of my favs) is wonderful as Kuon and I was also very impressed with Oshutoru and Nekone's seiyuus, neither of whom I've heard before.
The art is also wonderful with Amaduyu doing main duty and Misato as a co-artist. The designs manage to echo the first Utawarerumono while also conveying the this time more Chinese inspired culture as opposed to Utaware 1's ainu inspired one. The music is also really good with a soundtrack consisting of an entire 60 tracks(!) despite not being a very long read (while it probably took me like 40-50 hours I'd say it'd take maybe 25-35 for someone who doesn't need to look up words all the time). The music is also very well used with plenty of tracks specific to certain scenes, something I always love as it makes those scenes feel just a bit more special. The Opening song "Nuedori", which also serves as the ending theme is an incredible song, with Suara (of course) providing the vocals. When it comes to vocal songs Utaware has always been amazing in all its iterations but I'd consider Nuedori the best one yet (possibly tied with the Kimi ga Tame, the ending theme of the original Utaware), the way they used auto mode to time the last lines of the story to the music before the credits hit gave me goosebumps.
What really makes Utaware 2 awesome though is what happens at the very end, the events between the final boss until the credits. The story goes in a direction I never could have anticipated, with some developments that will have massive repercussions in the sequel. It's pretty much impossible to talk about what happens without spoiling it so I won't but it made me incredibly hyped for Utaware 3. While Utaware 1 was a self contained story Utaware 2 is basically part 1 of a bigger story (I'm guessing a two parter), so needless to say it ends with a giant cliffhanger.
I encourage everyone who doesn't know jp to not spoil themselves as the anime looks like it'll be a pretty good adaptation (though I haven't checked it out yet) and an official English release of the VN is quite possible as all Aquaplus' latest stuff have gotten localized. The only thing I could see which would hinder a localization is the very low amount of gameplay. It's very fun but there isn't a lot of it and most of the stages are really short and easy. if you want to know more about the gameplay Moogy wrote a bit about it here.
- Chronopolis and Bolverk
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I don't necessarily think everything should be available right away but I do think there should be a way to skip past stuff in single player games. A lot of games these days are completely bloated with content or have some parts that simply aren't fun to play or even badly made. I still haven't finished Batman Arkham Asylum because I got stuck on one of the boss fights, the problem wasn't just that it was difficult (though I admit I'm not terribly good at that game) but that it was tedious, HP sponge bosses where you have to repeat the same few actions in the exact same way over and over again simply aren't fun to me (they're pretty much extended quicktime events in a way as you have no choice in how to play) and is definitely not what most people are praising that game for. Why should I have to suffer trough parts that are tedious or annoying to play when I could spend the same time actually having fun?
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Reading Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kamen. It's pretty great so far.
I've been watching the anime, and soundly enjoying it. Mixed emotions, though - should I watch the anime or wait until I get a copy of the game (probably 1+ years). If you've seen any of the anime, how is it holding up to the game so far?
I'm refraining from watching the anime until I'm done with the game so I can't say but I'm probably going to watch it later. I'm pretty curious on how they'll adapt it as it doesn't exactly have much of a story yet. And I'm also pretty sure that the game is including a plot point that was cut out from the original anime adaption so I'm not sure what they'll do there.
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Reading Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kamen. It's pretty great so far. They've managed to keep pretty much all the good stuff from Utawarerumono like the fantastic atmosphere, good art and music and the fun slice of life scenes while also improving the stuff that weren't as good like the characters. In the original Utawarerumono the cast was fun and pretty likable but I only really cared about the Hakuoro/Eruruw/Aruruw trio who weren't exactly great characters either. This time I love the entire cast and they all play off each other really well.
Compared to the first game which was a mix of slice of life and war/politics Itsuwari no Kamen is mostly slice of life and the battles are pretty much all stuff that would be side quests if this was a regular rpg. Most of the scenes are just the characters hanging out with each other and lots of eating and drinking (especially drinking). That it's not a harem (yet at least) also makes everyones interactions feel much more natural. I'm assuming that there will be plot and serious stuff later but I honestly wouldn't mind if it just continued like this to the end. -
I have been reading VNs since 2008 yet for various reasons I've only read around 50 (I have 46 listed on my vndb but there are a couple more that I've never finished). That I shouldn't be considered a "true fan" or whatever of something that has been my hobby for 7 years purely because I haven't read "enough" content seems pretty silly to me.
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Just finished The Catcher in the Rye, I don't really know what to say about it honestly. I was pretty neutral during most of it but the ending tied it up pretty well so I guess that I ended up kinda liking it in the end. I think that the first two thirds could have been a bit shorter though (not that it's a long book) since it mostly just makes the same points all over. It's pretty easy to see how it came to be so influential at least.
Probably going to read something in japanese next, I borrowed Nemuri by Haruki Murakami from the international library a while ago and it needs to be returned soon so I should probably get to that.
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I don't really think that the visuals are the biggest problem. A CG can add texture to a sex scene just like any other scene in a visual novel, how the character look at each other and how they touch, and what expressions they make can add things to the narrative. The problem with the sex scenes in visual novels is that they are usually so inconsequential that you could just replace them with a black screen that says "and then we had sex" without losing anything. And this goes for both the text and images.
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JAST USA has been incredibly slow with all their releases, they take fan translations that are 100% completed and perfectly usable, usually the QC already done, and for some reason take years to release them, usually with the excuse that the fan translation was nearly entirely useless and so they had to do it all over(Which frustates me, because all the fan translated VNs I've read are usually incredibly well done, you don't fan translate an entire novel in your spare time and do it lazily, it's a major undertaking.
Most fan-translations certainly aren't well done and even if they were there's still no guarantee that we'd have Seinarukana now. I get the frustration with companies picking up almost finished fan-tls (though I personally think official releases are good) but this wasn't the case with Seinarukana.
Seinarukana started as a fan-tl back in 2010. The translator was a guy named nighteye. Sometime between october 2010 and april 2011 nighteye disappeared. He was replaced by a guy named Renkosuke. Later the same year, in July 2011 JAST announced that they had licensed Seinarukana, the project was currently 30% translated, far from a completed translation. However sometime during 2012 Renkosuke also disappeared.
In february 2013 it was announced that a guy called Inskipp had been called in to replace him. It had also been decided that the old translation was going to be scrapped because of issues with the quality (nighteye's parts in particuliar were apparently pretty bad) and to improve the consistency. A short time afterwards Inskipp is replaced by Aroduc for some unspecified reason. Aroduc finishes his initial rough translation in august 2013. After that there was qc, editing and programming that needed to be done which would've taken a fair bit of time no matter what.
This isn't to say that Jast have handled this project well, they haven't and it almost certainly would have been released by now if say, Mangagamer was doing it. But there are actually tons of fan-tls that were way more finished than Seinarukana was when Jast picked it up that still were dropped or stalled. We have no idea if Aroduc would have picked up Seinarukana if he hadn't been hired by Jast. It probably would still have been sitting there, half-finished without a translator just like dozens of other fan-tls.
- sanahtlig, Tehoa and Darklord Rooke
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Honestly most of the examples in this thread would probably make her laugh even more as "sex under necessity" typically just justifies the porn existing (or adding more of it) it still doesn't make it not porn. I think convincing your friend is going to be pretty hard friend since she is partially right, most popular Visual Novels with sexual content are stories that include porn. Obviously these visual novels aren't just porn, but the sex scenes themselves absolutely are.
There's a pretty huge difference between visual novels where the fact that the characters have sex with each other is necessary/important and visual novels where the sex scenes themselves are necessary/important.
There is a huge amount of VNs that fit the first example but those that fit the second example are incredibly rare.
Nearly all VNs that I see people praise as having sex scenes for the story and not just for porn only fit the first example. I mean there's nothing wrong with liking porn but I wish we would stop pretending that most sex scenes in visual novels are there for any other reason.
I mean in most Visual Novels when you reach a h-scene the story just....stops. The protagonist might be incredibly interesting, full of interesting monologues and funny remarks. Yet as soon as the H-scene comes this is all replaced by things like "I rub her breasts" or "It feels like I'm about to explode". And no matter the heroine's personality she'll turn incredibly meek and docile when the time comes. Unless it's a femdom scene, but even then her personality will be just as stereotypical, completely changed into exactly the sort of person the scene requires. She'll be incredibly embarrassed or even ignorant about sex but then suddenly become incredibly assertive if it's needed.
A pretty good litmus test: Could this scene be replaced by a fade to black without losing anything of the story? If you can then it probably isn't necessary.
A lot of VNs with medium-to-high sexual content will actually pass this, because even if a lot of the scenes fit my earlier issues with narrative stops and personality changes they still contribute something to the VN as a whole (especially the atmosphere) and removing them would change things quite a lot. A lot of HRPGs for example probably wouldn't be the same without sexual content, even if I'm personally not fond of said content. I mean these scenes are typically still porn but they don't detract from the general experience.
The main offenders are the VNs with low sexual content, the stuff people usually talk about when discussing VNs. People will defend them saying that the scenes are important to the story, and sex is an important part of life right? And yeah it is an important part of life but these VNs sure doesn't treat it with the same gravity as it might treat other content. Instead of spending 20 minutes on moans and descriptions of various fluids they could use them to actually add something to the overall narrative. You could use the opportunity to explore the characters at their most vulnerable, in what ways they are the same and in what ways they are different. What do they feel about sex? What does it mean to them and their relationship? There are tons of stuff you could explore yet it is incredibly rare to see this in a visual novel.
The only Visual Novels I've read that manage to do this Inganock and Sharnoth as they at least attempt to use the opportunity to reveal some of the characters feeling we might not see in other situations.
I wrote a bit of a mini-essay here, but I think the potential uses of sexual content in VN is pretty interesting.
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English titles I buy physical when it's possible. Japanese titles, though, I buy digital except for collectors editions to save on shipping. I have a 8 GB card for english releases that I got with the Vita, though I'm going to buy a 32 GB card when I run out of space, and a 32 GB card for my japanese games.
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Pretty exiting. I wonder if if they'll use the cast from Dual Destinies or if they'll cast new VAs (or use the movie cast like they did in Layton VS AA but I doubt that).
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Hmm now to decide between the 70$ or 150$ tier... :/
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Either you have changed the text speed or you have enabled the option to display a whole page at a time.
The text speed is controlled by pressing 1,2 or 3 on your keyboard.
If you have switched to one page display mode you can switch back to normal mode or from normal mode to full page mode by pressing O.
These are the default shortcuts to onscripter so if Umineko uses custom ones it won't work but I'm pretty sure it uses the default.
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BL = Boys Love (i.e yaoi)
Most translated otomege I've seen is usually yaoi oriented, hence why removing it from the search makes the list so short.
While Aaeru for some reason put all the BL and Otome in the same section on our site (probably because they're both targeted at women) they actually mean different things. Otome-game is only used for games where you play a female characters with male love interests. BL is not a sub-part of otome, it's a different category entirely.
Also most Otome with sex scenes are generally regarded as pretty bad. There are a couple of titles that are supposed to be good though like Koezaru wa Akai Hana and Chou no Doku Hana no Kusari, none of them are translated however.
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It's well-rated on both EGS and VNDB, about as good as Liar-soft's Steampunk series. The CG count is surprisingly low however. I counted 59 unique CG and 80 CG total. Many games have several times that (especially when variations are counted). Venus Blood Hypno has ~120 unique CG, and it's a gameplay-focused title; presumably a lot of their budget went into designing the gameplay system.
Liarsoft games don't make much money so they are done pretty cheaply, their cg count is usally low and they're usally partially voiced (which Yurirei is). The Steampunk Series is their flagship series so it gets better treatment with full voice and a bit more cg (the next Steampunk series game isn't being published by Liarsoft so I wonder if Sakurai owns all the rights or if she has som agreement with Liar).
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Yes, *cough* non-porny *cough*. Not to mention Inganock depicts a relationship between an adult man and an underaged girl in it's purest form. I think you're going a little bit overboard on what might, and might not happen. If anything, there's a chance for the Steampunk Collection, but don't expect any of the original 18+ games on Steam anytime soon.
Oh I didn't mean that they were not porny at all, it's just that if Gahkthun could get in the others (Celenaria excepted), should be able to get in too. I personally believe that Gahkthun probably wouldn't get in, actually. Which is sad because I don't think it's going to sell that well and steam exposure would help a lot.
Inganock would most likely need to be slightly censored but there isn't any sex or a romantic relationship between Gii and Kia, so only a couple of cgs would be affected, the text itself should be fine unless I remember the scene wrong.
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You know what's exciting about this?
Gahkthun has the same kind of mild erotic content. We could end up getting a Sakurai game uncensored on Steam (with a good translation!).
If Nekopara is anything to go by, those games could sell truckloads to horny teens just from having anime boobs.
If Gahkthun can get on steam it's pretty much a guarantee that it'll do decently as Mangagamer has hinted that even their worst selling steam titles (like Dengeki Stryker) do better than most of their non steam titles.
In which case we'll almost definitely get the rest of the steampunk series considering that all of them except Celenaria (which has regular mosaic:ed genitals) has h-scenes that are way less porny than Gahkthuns (and Sona-Nyl even has a console version). The only thing to worry about is that Gahkthun's scenes might be deemed too porny for steam because of the giant breasts.
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The reason the database is not currently being updated is not due to a lack of enthusiasm but because of the upcoming redesign of the site. With the removal of the torrents there is no reason for us to to refrain from adding licensed titles to the site as well, this mean that a ton of new VNs need to be added to the site. The problem is that the upcoming site will very likely change the size of several image resources which means that the current ones won't be able to be reused. Considering how many VNs are missing from the database adding them all right now might very well involve creating hundreds of images that will have to be thrown away once the new redesign finally arrives.
I could obviously update the entries that already existed on the site before we decided on the redesign (such as majikoi S), but honestly it feels very strange to only update existing entries without adding any new ones so that's why I have refrained from doing so until now.
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Are we getting the Xtend edition though?
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I don't think it's as long as both put together but yes. It's a 4mb script whereas the whole muv luv series is around 5mb. That's still very long and since it would be a translation from scratch it wouldn't be cheap.
And it would probably need licensing for the voices and music and stuff as well, it's not Jam Project but that still can't be cheap.
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Isn't Kiminozo like just as long as Extra/Unlimited + Alternative? Who is going to translate this? And if they intend to raise enough money to translate a title that is just as long as the Muv-Luv series why can't they use that money to fund a retranslation of Muv-luv instead?
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I don't even care if the original route is also preserved. Having several routes is both tonally and thematically inconsistent with MLA and tampering with it 10 years after like that feels pretty gross. And why are they using terms like "more immersion" like it's fucking skyrim?
Fall 2015 Anime Discussion
in Anime/Manga Talk
Posted
The new Utawarerumono anime is not an alternative adaption but a sequel set between 15-20 years after the original. It is based on a VN called Utawarerumono Itsuwari no Kamen which is a sequel to the original Utawarerumono VN. It only came out a month ago so it obviously doesn't have an english translation yet.
A lot of people are saying that it's is completely unrelated to the original but this isn't true and they're probably just assuming it based on the first few episodes. While you probably could enjoy Itsuwari no Kamen without having either read the original VN or seen the original anime I do not reccomend doing so. Itsuwari no Kamen pretty much assumes that you've experienced the original Utawarerumono and therefore doesn't always explain things you'd already understand if you've done so.