JAST Blue is slowly but surely releasing Nitro+ CHIRAL's catalogue in the west. While these games had their patch long ago and every person with a passing interest in BL probably already read them, these releases certainly made it easier for fans of physical versions, HD CGs, uncensored dicks, merch or just our good old users of windows 10, as the original have a hard time to even run properly in our favorite OS (N+C did release compatibility versions, but it's not like the old patches even work with those).
This year it's Togainu no Chi's time, N+C's very first game and the most edgy of the bunch. I DID review this game in the past but huh... it REALLY doesn't do a good job at promoting the game...
Okay, so, if I didn't like this title in the first place, why am I even here? Because I really feel it's worth mentioning the demo of the game (you can grab it here (JAST) or here (Steam)) contain one whole route for free and it's most likely porn-free even, so if you ever get slightly interested in this but not enough to spend money, hey, today is your luck day! It's only the third best boy, but they can't be THAT generous now, can they?
Is this a good game to get into the BL side of Nitroplus? Well, if you ask me, no. But I won't pretend parent Nitroplus isn't edgy af too and this game is actually pretty popular to this day, even among Japanese fans, so maybe I'm the one with shit taste here!
Okay, so it's halfway through December already, a New Year is approaching, so it's damn time for one of those generic and nostalgic lists where you reminisce about the good shit that went down in the year that's coming to an end. And since this is a VN forum, I'll refrain from talking too much about how much I liked Devil May Cry 5 (best action game alright, well deserved) or how many hours I wasted in idol anime (you know, seeing DMC5 and idol anime in the same sentence is both weird and amusing xD), so let's focus on my list of the 10 best VNs I've read this year (out of 31*). Note that not all of them were really released this year, but I should consider myself luck to even be able to read them before 2035, Sumaga's release date, considering my slow reading speed. Then...
*Disclaimer: those 31 only include VNs that last more than 15 minutes so I can actually write a full paragraph on my impressions about them.
10) Karasu to Lion
Okay, I wasn't expecting to start the list of some random doujin I pulled from the corners of VNDB. I admit I just picked this one because it's short, every vote cast before mine was a 9 and Ryou looked kinda as cute as any other dark-haired-blue-eyed anime boi www So KtL or "Blushing boys: The VN" (bless) is a very cute and fluffy slice of life romance between a shy senpai and a head-over-heels-in-love kouhai, at least it was until the not so good porn and the weirdly dark bad ends came, and that's why this isn't ranked higher. It was actually more entertaining when nothing of "plot" was happening and it was just moege scenarios.
09) Steam Prison
One of the few PC japanese otome releases of the year, Steam Prison had one interesting world and society going on there and some good plot points, but I feel the execution could be a bit better. The story had all the potential to create huge disasters, but it always solved them the fastest or easiest way possible. The cast is pretty solid though, and they had some fun banter going on at times, I really liked Ulrik and Adage (even if the latter can be very emo on occasion ww), both route and hero.
08) No, Thank You!!!
I've start this in the end of 2018 but only properly finish it in January 2019 so it counts, right??? The common route is pretty funny and interesting and the twist is quite good, as it changes the way you look at the story as a whole. As such the first and the second route were each a different experience, but I felt the effect kinda worn out a bit on the remaining routes. It does have your share of surprises, but it's not really the same as the initial big twist. The porn was a bit of a drag on most occasions and I just wanted the plot to keep going and, even if I know it would be a bit out-of-place in this story in particular, I would appreciate a bit more (or rather the existence) of actual lovey dovey romance. I loved Hiroshi, love me too, Hiroshi.
07) Heart of the Woods
A VN that makes that assumption that "every EVN is low quality or a cheap imitation of the japanese ones" all but an unfunny meme. Very high quality art, good characters, nice ero content, and not only a main but also a side couple for us to cheer are all its strongest points. If I really have to nitpick something, I would say the plot is just okay, never doing anything really ground breaking or highly memorable. But hey, it's still worth every cent as it's one hell of a cute read! If the lack of voices bother you, a voiced version is underway soon tm. Justice for Morgan!
06) Hashihime of the Old Book Town
I still can't stop thinking about this game. The setting, the themes, the cast, the emotions, the style. And surprisingly it was pretty much done by one person (yeah, I notice I love everything that strikes my doujin bone wwwww) I really adore Hashihime's world and these past few days I started collecting every other piece of trivia the author shared outside the game itself. It really pains me that the mess that is the last route REALLY bring it down to 6th place when it could be an easy top 3. I even went back to writing reviews specifically for this game. I want to hug Kawase, but he's a germophobe, so I don't know, he can step on me then I guess.
05) True Remembrance
Hey look, another doujin! Think I should rename this top. I've read this way back on February 2019, many years late to the Insani patches party. Blame my late introduction to FSN. But now I corrected that mistake and had one very good time with it! The incredible setting, the relationship between Black Iris and La, each unique episode/chapter, it's short but it knows very well how to best use its duration. Maybe it could be a tiny bit longer, it would help me remember that I read this, something that inevitably longer novels have the advantage.
04) Death Mark
Not only of doujins Maggie lives, but also horror games. Movies can give me some thrill but the fear of your character turning a wrong corner and finding a powerful indestructible spirit? Yeah, that shit is my jam and the feeling of being constantly on edge out of fear of the unknown and committing mistakes are two things this game delivers. Add to that some detective work to defeat the spirits in the most efficient way (you can defeat them in two ways: the easy way nets you some bad conclusions but the game doesn't end there and you can even reach the normal end down the line. The smart way gives you the True End) and you have one easy recipe to hook me. Not that every puzzle/question the game threw at me was well done or made sense at all, mind you. But damn, I still remember that weird chanting from the Kanon Soldier chapter. It's replaying in my mind right now. Mashita is superior.
03) Lemures Blue no Gozen 2 Ji
Or Gay Angst: The Game. Well, the angst don't really come from the fact they are gay for once, but boy, how many tragic backstories, tragic present stories can a short game have??? Even if there's plenty of supernatural stuff throw in, most of the sad stuff comes from bullying, suicide, grief and abuse, very mundane and real things, that made it all the more emotional for me. But it does have a lot of pure love, friendship and self-love themes that makes your heart warm after all. The romance is actually very soft as, if I recall correctly, we only get as far hand holding here. And can I really really praise how beautiful assets, be it the sprites or soundtrack, it managed to pull for a free game? Top doujin stuff and highly memorable. I kinda love everyone, I can't pick one boy >.<
02) Nie no Machi
Another "cheat" entry, as I've read one (and a half?) route in 2018. But boy, this VN is mostly slice of life, but I didn't get bored with it once. I just didn't read this faster because my japanese reading speed is even crappier than my english one (well, I don't need a hook + dictionary for english). The "hotel between life and afterlife" setting probably helped in keeping things fresh and interesting and every hero and even the side character had something to add to the experience... for better or for worse xD But in every route our protagonist Hisora help the heroes reach their happy ending and oh I so love uplifting stuff. It's actually impressive how my first impression of the heroes get almost completely reversed by the time their routes rolled in, and grumpy Asuku ended up with the best boy prize, someone I didn't feel much for in the common route. Just be careful as this also have its share of really tragic backstories and very gory and graphic bad endings (no guide mentioned this about the bad endings so let's say I got traumatized). Bonus points for being one of my favorite games when it comes to coloring, its color palette is so very pleasant to look at, not blinding white + high brightness pastel nor MS Paint levels of vibrant nor your generic boring Adobe tones, only soft goodness!!!!
01) Sweet Pool
And here it is. My favorite VN that I read in 2019. And the VN that is currently sitting as my second favorite VN ever. A great horror story similar to Saya no Uta in some good ways, it tells the tale of Youji, whose daily life was quickly disrupted by the weird changes happening in his own body... and the creepy ways his school mates react to it. The fear of not knowing what's happening with yourself, the contrast between human reason and animal instinct that drive the characters' actions, the whole somber atmosphere and color palette (yeah, you probably noticed how coloring is important to me wwww) and the soundtrack that's sometimes ambient and others dissonant (in a good way) are all the highlights of this beautiful game. It's definitely not for everyone (some plot points can be... weirder than Saya's), and a romance that's more on the "licking each others wounds" side won't win everyone over for sure, but for me this is another win for Nitroplus in my book and peak Nitroplus CHIRAL by far. I just wish Youji all the happiness in the world as he suffers too much and he doesn't deserve it, my heart.......
And that was my 2019! Overall, I think it was a very positive year for localization choices and my own picks, so guess I'll stick with this weeb hobby for one more year Here's hoping 2020 will be even better! My wishlist is filled with enough reading material for 5 years, which ones will be the gems? I'm soon to hit 100 read VNs too, maybe I'll return with another top. Until then! o/
Taisho x Alice was sadly remembered in the western otomege fandom for one of the worst otome localizations disasters. It read like garbage, had several bugs and it featured amateur english voice acting as if reading engrish wasn't enough. It failed so spectacularly the localization didn't even get past episode 1 out of 3. Well, thankfully tbh. Still, the damage was there and for a long time we believed we would never see a proper localization of this cute fairy tale reimagination in the west.
Until now.
Primula (TaiAli developer) decided to give english audiences one more chance, complete in a multilanguage package with japanese and chinese options to boot! Rejoice folks as Taisho x Alice episode 1 is now available on steam with a proper translation (translator this time around is our precious verdelish and from what I read from her previous VN translations it's likely top notch)! Episode 1 have only 2 heroes but they have full proper routes. The rest is in episodes 2 and 3, coming soon if episode 1 sells well enough. It's not always we get second chances in VN localization scene so let's say one huge thank you to Primula and support if you can and if you dig cute otomes! *points to strong female protagonist tag in VNDB, hint, hint*
DISCLAIMER: sadly I wasn't paid for this promotion, I did it out of hype alone.
Well, this blog is... quite unused lately, but I had to come back to talk about this game. The one that effectively reignited my enthusiasm for VNs that was waning a bit for some months. The one that made me sit and only think about reading it for all weekend when I was reading best boy's route. Yes, the long-awaited psychedelic artsy and moody historical game, the latest BL game by Mangagamer Hashihime of the Old Book Town. From the introduction, you can see it was totally worth my time, but was the entirety of the game such good? Details below. And before anyone asks, Hashihime is a water yokai.
Me, writing about my thought on this game in an epic manner
This piece by the little developers ADELTA tells us the story of Tamamori, an incredibly lazy and somewhat self-centered aspiring writer, and his two childhood friends, the quiet bookworm that sometimes is a bit too focused on reading Minakami and the completely ruthless and sharp-tongued clean freak Kawase, living in the district of Jinbouchou in 1922, after moving from the countryside to attend the Tokyo Imperial University, a feat that only our poor protagonist failed to do. So he starts to work in a mysterious used bookstore and meet all kinds of weird people, except some of them are all but his delusions as he have the habit to daydream quite a lot. But when things start to get real weird and supernatural and his friends start dying, Tamamori suddenly goes back in time, only three days to be more precise, but it's enough of a chance to undo his friends' deaths. But will someone actually believe his story?
The beginning is incredibly strong, doing a great job transporting us to Japan's Taishou Era with a lot of attention to detail. There's a ton of cultural references, most of them highlighted so you can click on them for a glossary explanation to pop up with on-screen on the go (although you can make them highlight only on the first time the word appears or disable it entirely). The world it's trying to build is our own, but it feels actually charming and make you curious about the era rather than a storm of unknown terms and explanations that makes you wonder why the characters are explaning something they should know. It flows really naturally, just the characters talking about what was "in" in their time. The main references, especially in the first few routes, are japanese authors of the era and, while my experience wasn't diminished at all for not having read a single one of those books, I do wonder how I would perceive the story itself, or catch even more subtle references, actually knowing the multiple times quoted Dogra Magra by Yumeno Kyusaku, or some less quoted works by Kuroiwa Ruikou or Ozaki Kouyou.
The story is mainly a mystery, so your peaceful historical slice of life will turn into an irrational scenario when you're least expecting, and the mood shifts went all well. You and Tamamori will progress through the story in confusion more often than not, but keeping in check everything you learned until now can offer some fun theory crafting along the way and very satisfying "I knew it!" moments when some answers finally reveals themselves. That worked most on small details for me though, since some twist are very hard to see them coming. The time travel plot is used mostly effectively too, draining poor Tamamori's mental health with each failed loop. That also allowed for several bad ending scenarios to take place even with each route having a single ending, leaving you constantly in the edge of your seat because you never what, how or when things will go south.
We have these cutouts instead of regular sprites, but they have quite some variations in clothing and expression
There are a lot of good themes explored in this game, but the strongest ones all revolves around our three childhood friends (the group is actually composed by four people, but the fourth one is meh at best). Only after the story takes a weird turn that Tamamori notices but since they moved to the capital they all started growing apart somewhat, and it all may have started way back in the countryside. Their relationship, and most relationship between the main cast, stem from negative emotions such as loneliness, guilty, obsession, pity or even hatred, so Tamamori's journey through time for trust, love and to mend their friendship is one of my favorite aspects of the story, and the hardships he faces along the way were heartbreaking and emotional, turning him into a very memorable protagonist, even if he starts the game as one big good-for-nothing (and he is well aware of that).
Let's remember though that the game sells itself as psychedelic so this journey will be full of CGs in weird and vibrant coloring, very magical parts, talking animals, delusion sequences, a lot of insanity overall and some explanations that makes very little sense the first time you read them. While not excessive to turn someone off entirely for being too bizarre, it can make people unsatisfied as some plot points only have weirdly metaphorical explanations... while others I still have to think about where to look at in the game to understand their answers. It's definitely food for thought though, one that can definitely make people who likes rereading things excited as there's several clues and foreshadowing all over the place that are only possible to catch a second time around.
The story structure is a very simple one. The game have an enforced playing order and the only choices you have are to get into the routes. First time around you only have chapter 1 (as the game calls it, but it's Minakami's route) unlocked, and it'll look like this is a kinetic novel. After clearing it, the choice to the chapter 2 reveals itself, and after clearing it the choice to chapter 3 appears and so on. There are 5 chapters in total, all of them branching off the "main path", in a "bus stop" like fashion with Minakami's ending as the last stop if you didn't let off before. Each chapter focus on a different hero, and that's where the enforced order makes it annoying. Only 2 heroes interested me at first, and I ultimately only enjoyed 3 routes, but I can't even suggest to others to skip one chapter entirely because it's right in the middle of the game and you need it to unlock the next one. I can see why lock Minakami's route as the first one, as the others works best if you have some knowledge about the supernatural lore, but chapter 2, 3 and 4 could probably be read in any other or even skipped without losing all that much.
I think the VN itself says Minakami keeps his eyes open only a few millimeters to read xD
On the characters and routes themselves. Minakami is our first boy and, in my opinion, the best route of the game. Yeah, right off the bat to hook you on. According to the scenario writer herself, each route have a literary genre as base and Minakami's is "romance". And indeed, it was one sweet ride to save him. It's the longest route, but you'll find out very soon why this route will make you cry a lot. I can also add there's one good mini arc about a transgender side character here where the fact she is transgender is actually pointed out for once.
Chapter 2 is for Tamamori's second friend Kawase. His theme is "mystery". And indeed, this guy is full of them. His abrasive personality, that is downright cruel on occasion, may make people not like him much, but he ended up being my best boy, help. >.< Some of his banter with Tamamori is really funny and the few glimpses of positive emotions he lets through his evil mask are genuine, or even cute if you're a fan of gap moe effect (like me). His route is very nice and its narrative complements quite well Minakami's route, and the support cast here is a really interesting bunch, so I think there's something to enjoy even if you're not the biggest fan of his character. Oh well, he never goes full well nor even a half nor a quarter deredere (romance is Minakami's theme after all), but his rudeness is a spice that's part of his charm ;p
Chapter 3's hero is Hanazawa, Tamamori's third childhood friend, one that's 3 years older than him and one that our protagonist doesn't see in 8 years. Yeah, he's the meh guy I mentioned earlier. AND the route you could skip I used as example of why the enforced order is a bad idea. His theme is "adventure", but it's more a character theme than a route theme. His route is so short and thus underwhelming, adding literally nothing to the story nor exploring the character. So I don't even have much to say. The ending will meme you hard though, I warn you.
Chapter 4 is for Hikawa Kijuurou aka Professor, the used bookstore faithful costumer and a massive dork. I'm not even fan of the blindly obsessed types, but man is it impossible to hate this guy. His dumb reactions, cute giggles when he "scores" very little with Tamamori like learning his name or his knees failing at the audacious idea of becoming friends with his crush will either leaves you laughing or going aaawww as the guy is a social failure but a very moe one at that. His theme is "sci-fi". The route does takes a weird turn by the end, even by the game standards www, that can considered a bit of a "cheat", but it was pretty nice overall, raising some interesting questions that are often ignored in time travel stories.
And then there's chapter 5. Oh boy, chapter 5. Theme is "bizarre thriller" and bizarre is, indeed, the right word for it. It takes a completely different approach to the plot as a whole, moving the story in the totally opposite direction with different themes, lessons and motivations. Unfortunately it's less like Fate Stay Night's Heaven's Feel and more like a glorified bad ending. And the game even forces you to go for it last so you can end it all in a low note, instead of the sweet endings of most of the other routes. It's quite a short route too, far too short to explain most of it, but its main twist have such massive destructive power you'll either just brush it off as "just one of many routes, I will focus on the better ones instead", have the whole VN completely ruined or find it a really smart, shocking and amazing ending, depending how you take it. I can't say more without spoiling, so I'll just say I'm with the brush it off camp, and I would have rated the game higher if not for this one route.
Professor reading the next section of this review.
Sex scenes are your average VN stuff, just to show their relationship is going to another stage, but are safe to skip without losing much. In fact, I think the all-ages version that supposedly would be released on Steam would be real good for this one VN. It would make recommending it to mystery/historical fiction lovers easier www. And frankly, it would get rid of 2 h-scenes that are really awful context-wise (one is a rape scene and the other is... concerning). Although I must say you'll miss some funny banter that happens during the normal h-scenes if you skip them, like one of the heroes chanting sutras to get rid of his everlasting boner and Tamamori not moving and then demanding another hero to say "please" before simply hoping into a different position. Each hero get one scene, usually in the end of their routes. And if you really must know, Tamamori is always the bottom, but 2 heroes did volunteer to be on the receiving end, but our MC simply didn't agree. Oh man, why. Worth to mention too that the Mangagamer version is fully uncensored, so you can see Tamamori's impressive average size. To be fair, he is a rather short guy (5'3"/160 cm tall), but without looking like a shota, bless, we need more non-shota short boys in VNs.
Art is simple but have that "doujin charm" that I love (it's hard to explain what that means wwwwww). This VN have quite an impressive number of CGs, 159 in total not including variations. Characters are mostly really really normal, with normal hair colors and haircuts, it was almost refreshing! Every mob character made just to populate backgrounds is a shadow though, but there's some eeriness to it. Speaking of backgrounds, the game have both gloomy, cool colored ones and bright, vibrant colored ones, that kinda goes well with all the mood shifts the VN goes through. The music also helps to set the mood, be it calm, tense or one of relief, and the jazzy tracks in particular were quite pleasant to listen to. You can also play back the opening/ending songs in the main menu, but sadly only those. Voice acting is well done, there's no big names in the cast or anything, but they conveyed pretty well the characters' personality and emotions.
I did have other minor grips with the system in general, like noticing the area where you could click in the system buttons are a loooot smaller than their actual size, some random line breaks in the middle of the text box for no reason mainly on Kawase's route and a handful of lines that advanced by itself, but nothing that renders the game unplayable.
I refuse to provide context for this CG
In conclusion, Hashihime is one hell of an addition to the small pool of localized BL VNs, a truly unique experience, and a great bizarre and artsy plotge in general (are there other games in this category www? maybe Inganock??? both have a lot of literary references too hmmm). The 3 good routes are very high quality for me, but sadly it gets dragged down by 2 subpar routes when you rate the game as a whole. The last route is highly divisive but you'll definitely have something to appreciate in this adventure, be it the ending route itself or anything else despite the ending route. Well, Minakami would probably like all routes regardless. According to Kawase, "that guy enjoys anything as long as it's written. He would even enjoy reading the diary of a tuberculosis patient" (exact words).
Heya, people! It's such a long time I don't see you guys, I almost forgot my password to this forum. Guess Fuwa is still alive and kicking just like me, huh. First of all, sorry I disappeared from the face of the Earth and if I disappointed any fans I might had in this site (silly me). Since last time I posted back in February, a lot of things happened so if anyone's curious (maybe the aforementioned imaginary fans of mine) about what the hell's been happening with me, do keep reading. I talk about VNs, anime, and other disgusting weeb things, but it does include some personal shit. Well, a blog is a blog.
1) Maybe I mentioned this a huge while ago at some point, but I'm pursuing a master's degree in the structural engineering field. All was going well and good, but now it came the time for me to write my thesis. Oof. So yeah, that's the main reason I became a ghost as my weekday free times went down the drain along with my hopes and dreams. It doesn't help my thesis requires some programming knowledge that may be more than what I can chew, sasuga me (whining aside, it's coming along fine as of now, let's hope I can keep it up).
2) Not only my free time evaporated but also my attention spam. I'm honestly having a hard time staying focused for more than 40 minutes in the same task. When that happens, I usually take a short break to relax before going back. Except I move on to something else, oops.
3) Related to the problem mentioned in 2, I fearfully discovered a new wonderful world that's now high in my interests list: gacha games. Their content is usually bite sized (except in events, but I don't play all that seriously... I think), I can auto play to grind, and I can play on the train going to uni. No huge time investment at once required, so what can possibly go wrong (dramatic zoom on my face)? Fortunately, I'm still keeping my two accounts (yep) free-to-play and I feel that I grew a lot on the self control department because of this www. Seriously though, never invite me to a casino trip, I may have an undiscovered gamble addiction and I don't want to open that door. But yeah, if anyone else plays Opera Omnia or Shining Live send me a friend inviteeeeeeeeeeeeee!
4) Even with all that going on, I still find time to at least watch my anime and read my VNs, surprisingly. Thank God for weekend. Guess cutting yourself off of social media truly does wonders too, huh. Not that I check Twitter on occasion to look at art or anything... Soooo about that weeb shit...
4.1) La Squadra was right all along
4.2) I'm still a proud BL trash. From what I recently finished, the highlights are Sweet Pool and Nie no Machi. Both are really really amazing games, both scored higher than 9 in my book, and I definitely want to write a review for them at some point. Spread that love, Maggie!
4.3) I'm actually a bit slow on the otomege department, sorry >.< I did get Steam Prison and read both of the Prisoner Routes, but I'm not in the right mindset to keep going with it. I wouldn't enjoy it if I force myself through it. Eltcreed and Ulrik were striking my fancy, so I want to savor them. ......Okay, that came out wrong.
4.4) EVN ftw, I always find some time to read them. Nanoreno gave me some nice short experiences, the highlight being Monochrome Blues despite the ending kek. Oh, and read Heart of the Woods, people. It's an order. High quality shit right there.
4.5) Also I keep stumbling upon horror games and I'm okay with this. Recently I played Death Mark. As usual, I went without a walkthrough, solving every mystery by myself. Totally worth it. And it also have very good sound design. Mashita best boi.
4.6) It does sounds like a lot, but there's nothing much more than what I mentioned wwwwww
4.7) Did I mentioned La Squadra? (<-- edit that bit out, I totally did, as I should)
5) Now, about my Fuwa life. I'll probably remain on indefinite hiatus, but every time I find the file I wrote some ideas for Dank a Ronpa, I feel sad. "How could I write such a shit story?" Jokes aside, I can try to maybe finish it at some point when Derg finished his battle royale. Such a rude, I gave him such a brutal death in my story and I didn't even debut on his smh. But yeah, I accept suggestion of what to do with it? Give it a Berserk treatment and finish it soon TM? Write all the bad ideas I had for it and let you guys fill the blanks yourselves in a very lazy way? Make each one of you write a chapter, put everything together, approve it as canon and call it a day? Decisions, decisions. Actually, I'm actually paying a homage to it in this post, as I'm not proof reading anything, hope you spot the reference.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand that's it, I guess. For all of you that reach this line without pressing page down 3 times in less than 3 seconds, a big thank you. Please smash that like button and subscribe to someone's channel that's more active than me. Love, peace, and hope to see you all eventually when I get my degree! Until them!
I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER HOW LONG AGO: Not even time travel saved tymmur, but it's not like Dreamysyu, VirginSmasher and Zander would give up so fast! After finding a whopping amount of 1 (one) clue, our heroes started marching to the court room.
After whatever won the poll, our heroes finally reached a red velvet room, decorated with golden statues and chains. An extravagant atmosphere, that also made everyone dizzy, just like Ranzo's ego. Speaking of the Devil, he just started singing a Velvet Underground song. Back to the room's interior, we could also see a circle of golden platforms in the exact middle of the room, an arrangement that permitted them to see everyone else should they step behind the platforms. Well, not "should", "must", they have to do it, to save America, or whatever other noble reason. Maggiekuma's throne was located closer to the corner, in a higher ground where it was possible to see everything the plebeians bellow were doing.
"Sooooooo, you guys are finally here!" said Maggiekuma, savoring some popcorn.
"And whose fault is it, that we're this late?" we can count on batman to rub salt on other people's wound.
"Okay, look, I already waste half a screen worth of space with that poll, so let's drop the issue about my lateness! You have better things to discuss!" angrily said Maggiekuma, throwing popcorn at our heroes. Kiri didn't seem offended.
"Yeah, like, we can discuss how h-scenes are important to the plot!" Dergonu proposed a circle jerking.
"We would stay here all day if we were to discuss that. Instead, shouldn't we discuss... I don't know... about tymmur's death???" Dreamysyu put his protagonism to good use.
"Oh right, we should honour the bugger." Poltroon said in a dignified way, almost contradicting his behaviour in the last chapter.
"You say that like we're disrespecting him, but these bunch of lines we're saying that never ends is a nice shout out to the fella." justified Fiddle.
"Now that's what I call a fantastic homage!" agreed Ranzo, even though deep down they thought that their performance of Fucking Wizard by Reverend Bizarre that was edited out of the story to not split the audience due to musical differences was better.
"Okay, I... think I can allow that. But can you guys at least, pretty please, babble while going to your designated seats?" not even I understand Maggiekuma's attempts to save time at this point.
"If I remember right here, we have to find the culprit hiding here and then vote for him here so we can continue to live here." littleshogun made a recap.
"So what, we just talk and talk about it until the culprit eventually blurts it all out?" Virgin proposed.
"That wouldn't be half as fun! So let me explain some additional rules to the trial session!"
Said Zander, with his now healed physical injury and forever persisting mental damage.
"No need. I microwaved my way through a time where we already listened to the rules before this, so I can tell you guys!" Kurisu saving the day.
"You could have, you know, looked for the culprit's name..." Or not.
"Well, in short, we have to talk non stop about the same things over and over again even if they are painfully obvious until someone with half a brain figures the bullshit in our arguments and fire a truth bullet through it. We can add some random babble in the conversation too, to make things more of a chore than harder per se."
"Putting it like this... god, this game sucks!" everything sucks for you, bats.
"So, all we gotta do is shoot first, eh?" said Lesiak, firing a bullet that would put Clint Eastwood's characters to shame. Sasuga, Ultimate Westerner. Too bad SeniorBlitz happened to be in front of him, so he ended with a bullet in his skull. Sasuga, Ultimate Westerner.
RIP.
"Eeerr... that sounded like Lesiak put a... silencer in his gun." it looked like a very lame and inappropriate joke made by Dergonu, but it was also a nice shout out to Senior's pun habits.
"To be quite honest, I think this game will be much more balanced now. He was too overpowered with that guide of his." said the guy that claimed he knows everything about the progress of the story.
"I have to agree with that as well. One should not defy the gods." said the guy that defy the gods himself.
"Even if we don't like it, you have a point. Now everyone have a fair chance." said the tsun that can time travel. "I'm not a tsundere!" that's not what I said. "A-a-a-a-a-and I'm not just a tsun either!"
"Well, except the part about killing each other mid trial, even if I don't really care if you guys actually do it, the trial goes exactly like Kurisu explained. So start presenting some proof or something."
"Oh, I have some!" Kenshin finally got the ball rolling.
"I also happen to have some." Zander said calmly like this:
"I also have something to show." Virgin said proudly. Not even Dreamysyu, that was with him had any idea what kind of clue he found.
"Let's start with mine, since I raised my hand first! Okay, I gathered some pics from the crime scene. Maggiekuma, can you lend me a screen to project those?" said Kenshin.
"This is really necessary? I mean, we're handling guro material here..." Lesiak asked before I have to rate this fic 18+.
"Guro..." Dergonu seems to be controlling himself to not say anything else.
"About guro here, I think I could give my opinion on it, but since I'm not into strangling and tentacle anal rape here, I think I'll pass on this here." littleshogun gave his opinion.
".............Not only you're being awfully specific, but no one asked if anyone liked guro either." Ranzo tsukkomied for a moment.
"Eeerrr, but don't we just looked at the body? Ignoring that it was 2 eons ago outside the story. How 2D pics can be worse than the real deal?" Virgin asked.
"I'm not sure if this 2D vs 3D argument's going to fly on court, mister Virgin." you guys are already on court, mister Poltroon, but he was so naturally on mood for trials that he didn't even noticed his language quirk.
"To be honest, the only thing those pics will show is what I'm about to describe." Zander started. "I investigated the body and made a shocking discover: it wasn't the gif that killed tymmur, he was electrocuted!"
"Impossible. How such a detail went unnoticed by the gods?" bellowed Clephas, making a question that I didn't really think the answer to.
"His feet were stuck into a bucket full of water together with an electric wire. So it means... that someone entered the scene, probably knocked tymmur out cold, stuck his feet into the bucket, put the wire there, send the gif as a red flag and then fled." Dreamysyu put all the pieces together. "But... when did the culprit find the time to do all that?"
"He doesn't need time if they can time travel..." Ranzo preferred to chaotic-evilly accuse anyone without proof just for the lulz than actually help.
"True that, but unfortunately for your lulz, I have some further proof I'm not the killer. Isn't that right, Kenshin_sama?!" Kurisu said, throwing their ace in the moment they judged to be the most dramatic!
"Why people only present evidence on dramatic prompts and not, like, right at the start?" Danganronpa is to blame, bats.
"Oh right! The message on the blackboard! I have a pic of it as well!" Kenshin said what they knew. "When both of us entered the scene, we saw this 'Podology services for free!' message written with pink chalk on the blackboard, so maybe that's what baited tymmur."
"I don't even know what podology is supposed to be, what's your point?" Virgin didn't understand gay speak.
"I'm not sure either, but maybe... you're trying to say that tymmur put his feet inside that bucket by himself??" dramatic song starts playing.
"WHATA TWIIIIIIIIIIIST!" not really, Maggiekuma. You're the only one excited here.
"Wait a moment. If that's true... why we didn't saw that message when we went to crime scene?" Lesiak questioned.
"Because I eventually erased it to write a differences chart between the anime and the VN version of S;G 0 there." calmly explained Kurisu.
"Destroying evidence, eh?" Poltroon suddenly became Canadian.
"To be honest, it made the episode even more fun to watch, building that chart." the order of the words in Kenshin's explanation looks like something poorly translated from japanese. And then, everyone just removed Kenshin and Kurisu from the blame list because I don't want to drag this any longer.
"Okay, I think it's finally time for me to shine!" Virgin raised from his seat, at least I hope I mentioned they were sitting before.
"Oh yeah, you apparently had some evidence." Zander trusted Virgin as much as Virgin trusted him.
"Yeah, and it's that now dead guy's guide!"
"Wait, isn't this cheating?" Dergonu uphold the rules with seriousness.
"Not when I'm the one doing it!" said Virgin, quickly turning the pages of Senior's guide. "Soooo, if I got to the right page, I think the way to advance is... to ask Dergonu to hack the system?"
"Dergonu, care to explain?" Fiddle asked, judging his comrade.
"Oh riiiiight, I was hacking the system to get access to the monitors early, so maybe I can do it again to check some unusual activity." I'm not sure if Dergonu can even do that, but Kaguya is not in the story so this have to do. After some *insert meme and oversimplified explanation of hacker doing stuff* in a laptop that Maggiekuma lent to them, Dergonu turned back to his friends with a sullen expression. "It's no use, I can't even see traces of Kurisu's magecraft there."
"Some mod you are." Zander rolled his eyes.
"☆=(ゝω･)/" Kiri intervene for the first time! "ヾ(｀・ω・´)ノ" They said.
"Can someone localize this?"
"They're saying that maybe Poltroon or Clephas can try to get access to the system too. They aren't the Ultimate Mod, but maybe their permissions are wacky enough for that to work." Fiddle translated.
"WHAT ARE YOU EVEN OBJECTING TO?????" Dreamysyu asked themselves if Maggie didn't do that just because she so wanted to use that pic.
"Did Kiri really says all of that with just that smiley?" batman asked the real question.
"Yes." Fiddle only nodded, because they know. And somehow everyone just accepted it and the plot moved forward.
"Well, since batman stole my catchphrase..." not really, Mr. Edgeworth. "I'll hack into this system of yours instead, to finally make a grandiose entrance in this trial." I think it's a fair trade, solving plot problems instead of saying a meme catchphrase. And with that, his fingers danced through the keyboard of Maggiekuma's laptop. "Ohoooo... what is this?"
"Cut the suspense, did you find out who send the gif?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. And it was... someone named Dergonu!"
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!
"Absurd! It's not me!!! Just look into my account activity!!! It was pretty much inactive before Dreamysyu asked for my help earlier this morning!" Dergone yelled.
"Just for the record, I'm not confirming this piece of information." Dreamysyu threw Dergonu under the bus.
"TRAITOR!"
"Fret not, my fellow moderator. I never said it was you that did it. I said an account with the name 'Dergonu' is the responsible for this mess, apparently. And for some reason, this Dergonu is also following your account." Poltroon explained.
"But wasn't that Dergonu following Dergonu Dergonu themselves?" Kenshin put it in a confusing way, but it was the painful truth.
"Oh yeah, that's right. So forget what I said about not fretting, Dergonu, please do fret." Poltroon dealt the final blow.
"Wait, we're not doing that retarded rhythm game from Danganronpa now, are we?" Ranzo asked. Even if he was a music enthusiast, no one deserves that annoying game.
"No lol, that minigame is stupid, I can go down without that and with my dignity instead, thank you very much." Dergonu explained.
"So it WAS you the culprit here. You must be quite interested here in how to mouth those obviously delicious and long and thick bananas here to actually commit murder for it here." littleshogun disapproved.
".................I think you're the only one that still remembers that was supposed to be our motivation." Virgin felt some degeneration in the air.
"Nah man, I didn't do it for some dumb book." Dergonu switched to their evil villain personality. For some reason, no one was really surprised.
"So, why did you kill tymmur?"
"For the ~~***GURO***~~, of course!" And them they started some chant that looked like a chuuni villain speech. "KILL, PUNCH, STAB, BLEEEEED!!!! Why is this frustrated Derg so mad? I hope you can't answer me, as your brains escape through your ears! Dance, Derg, at the rhythm of the falling severed fingers! Crawl in my direction leaving your intestines in your trails! You can't take your eyes of Derg, so I'll take them out for you maggots!" for some reason, Dergonu started talking about themselves in third person, something as bad as guro.
"Okay, but where's the sexual part in those things you describe? That's just regular gore." asked Dreamysyu.
"Well, I'm sexy (/ω＼)" Kiri wasn't amused with Dergonu trying to copy them.
"Is this... the real Dergonu?" Lesiak asked, somehow surprised that he didn't recognize his friend that had a whopping amount of maybe 5 lines in 3 chapters worth of characterization.
"Actually, now everything is starting to make sense." Really? "They did that... because they wanted to be guroed themselves."
"mWAHAHAKWAKWA~ mAYBE?! <3" Dergonu's maniacal laugh echoed in the chamber.
"Well, if that's what this shell of a human being is asking for..." Clephas started a summoning spell. "KILL, PUNCH, STAB, BLEEEEED!!!!..." no, I won't create 2 mantras in a single chapter.
"HOLD YOUR HORSES! I CAN HANDLE THIS!" said Maggiekuma, wanting to shine in this chapter as well. "The Punishment time is on the house! And I prepared some pretty cool Visual Novel style execution!" Saying that, Maggiekuma took an old grimoire whose cover was covered in a cat's hide. The Legendary Nekonomicon. It seems Senior's soul is still trapped in the courtroom, as the lame puns are out of control. Cutting off one of their finger and pouring the blood over the cursed book's page, Maggiekuma summoned Dergonu's executioner. "Who's better to punish bad Dergonu than the very own Empress of the Banished Lands?"
In the next moment. The sky suddenly went dark. They were indoors, but they noticed it through a TV that Maggiekuma turned on in that instant or something. But the reason for that suddenly invaded the courtroom too. Wasps. A fuck ton of them. Their buzzing was quite loud, almost looking like they were omegaloling at the characters' misery. The characters that had closer ties with Hell knew what were those wasps. The poster boys (boys is even the right word here?) of the Banished Lands, the symbol of the Queen. And indeed, short after, she appeared. The High Mistress Neko, the Ultimate Catgirl. Clad in a beautiful samurai armor and carrying a giant samurai sword, she was danger incarnate. She also had massive breasts that were in fact just two gigantic spherical bombs just to be even more dangerous. She approached Dergonu with a smile on her face, the wasps flying around her now buzzing a chorus latin song to be even more chuuni.
"Ahaha, so you're the boy who needs some punishment?" she asked in a voice that almost made you want to be punished.
"Only if you don't be gentle with me." Well, apparently Dergonu DID wanted to be punished.
"Desu wa~" said the Neko Queen in gratuitous japanese that didn't really make any sense here. "So, time to...!"
[The content of Dergonu's execution was considered too extreme for Fuwa rules, so I removed it according. I count with the help of fans to restore this content! Thanks for the comprehension! Actually no, fuck you.]
Even if the guroing was lazily cut, I didn't rewrite the scars it left in the other guys that lived and watched everything in horror. Although Ranzo did like the violent style of the High Mistress, so they actually took some notes of things to copy when they eventually tries to kill someone. It will be censored all the same to be honest. Eventually the Neko Samurai walked away with her wasp companions, what left our heroes begging for it to be just a dream.
"Let me guess, you'll copy that 'Dreamysyu woke up in their usual seat blah blah blah' again next time, right?" now even Dreamysyu is snarking at me.
NEXT TIME: Two more down, thirteen to go. What awaits our heroes next?
"Hopefully not another long ass waiting again!" Virgin released one last drop of poison.
As many (hopefully) of you know, I like to read a lot of different things, providing my stomach and the laws of my country allow it. My VNDB list will never reach Clephas level of completeness, so I'm aiming for something different instead: to have the most random, hipster, no prejudice, unlike any other VN list. Of course, as slow as I am, I can only hope to achieve this dream within the next 30 years or so, but hey I'm still young!
I have conquered otomege, devoured BL, collected EVNs, discovered yuri, threaded in chuuni waters, tiptoed into nakige, read through memeges, tasted horror, and tried my hand with gameplay hybrids. But how can I call myself a Ultimate VN Reader if I never read a single nukige? No, I have to change that. I must to. So I decided to give a chance to the glorious fangame our friendly neighbors Asonn, Arcadeotic, Hanako, HMN, Jptje, Nandemonai, Zakamutt, and other sweeties (because the list is damn long), shared with the West: Maki Fes!
What were the impressions of Maggie, guaranteed 12% female readership of Fuwa, someone who totally didn't went in for the memes and that totally knew something about Love Live beforehand? Find out now!
There's a catchy song in the title screen, pretty much the only song I remember from the game.
In Maki Fes!, you play as Matt yourself! The boyfriend (wait, it should be girlfriend if I had to play as myself. Well, I can stick with Matt just fine) of the cute red haired tsundereish Maki! How lucky are you? Nukige convenience is convenient, alright! Not a bad start to be honest, I was expecting something more stupid, but Maki Fes already proved itself as above average intellectual level than my preconceived opinion of what constitutes an average nukige. Anyway, Maki needs to write a song and you, as a good boyfriend, agree to help her get some inspiration. And yeeeeeees, that means lots of porn!
Maki is pretty much the only character you'll meet through the entire game, since more girl means harem or yuri, right? And that's not what this doujinge is about. And she's fully voiced! The actress does a very good job for most part, except during those background moans that goes like a machine gun shooting fast going "a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a" that got annoying after two loops. The art is also quite pleasant to look at, Maki pouting and smiling are just the cutest. I enjoyed her character, but I don't know the original to say if she's going too OOC.
So! The game provide you with the following scenarios, and all of them leads to porn. Yes, some of these choices leading to porn is quite creative, I know. The twist would be if the last option didn't, but that's not what happens here.
Choices, oh choices.
If you don't want to be spoilered, stop reading right here! Not that I consider sexual position a spoiler, but hey, there's weird folks of all kinds out there! So let's go over what I get out of each scenes. And no, it wasn't masturbatory material.
"Let's recall our first time!": Exactly what it says on the tin. It was quite a sweet scene, where Matt the protagonist was mindful of Maki, and if she was feeling comfortable. Of course, she had to say the typical "you can be more rough, I know you're holding yourself back", but hey, at least they discussed it! Relationship is all about two people understanding and being respectful with each other after all! Another thing that I have to praise this game is that the classic "Cum inside/Cum outside" option only affect the CG right after it, and not the ending, so I could pick "Cum outside" to my heart's content.
"Wear your maid outfit!": This one was nice too, as far as h-scenes goes. It's a blowjob scene and HEY, it have simple ANIMATIONS (*insert here the face of a surprised girl that never saw a animated VN before)! The translation of this scene was pretty good too, I was amazed with how many different porn sound effects this guy could came (get it? ) up with. It also had a marriage proposal discussion there that I liked, but I can guess 80% of the people that played this game didn't even noticed it.
"Our good luck charm!": This was one of the last scenes I read, so there wasn't much of my patience left. I think it was something about writing good luck wishes on Maki's butt. Yep. Of course, not with a pen or a penis, but with his finger. Oh yeah, this guy goes on and on about Maki's cellulite free butt but this game don't have a single anal scene. For shame, game, for shame!
"I'm hungry!": I can only say one thing. How Maki decided she wanted to feed this guy and do it like this???????????
"Dancing is inspiring!": Probably, but it was the very last scene I read and at that point I just wanted the game to end. Four scenes is my limit for h-scenes one after another. Multiple rounds indeed is a lie. Oh yeah, the scene. I think it was a cowgirl scene and... that's it.
"Use traditional elements!": Was it on that scene that Maki came with the penetration alone? God, that was dumb. This guy have such lame foreplay skill it's a wonder Maki can even come once. Oh yeah, there's pee in this scene, weird that Zaka didn't work on this. How does her pee makes an arc in the air though? Pretty sure you need a penis to do that...
"You need some excitement!": Man, this scene have one weird dick. It looked like a fishing hook. Animating it didn't make it any better. But I think this scene had some well crafted puns cumversation, so it was somewhat amusing.
"I wanna fuck!": (Chorus: FUCK!)* Now that's a scene where Matt truly shines! And Maki as well. How could a forget when she uttered my favorite quote of the game, "My nipples are playing the blues!"? Now that's what I call talented nipples!
*Joke stolen from ZakaTM
After seeing all scenes, you can finally watch the desired True Ending, that I'll not spoil here. That was... tiring to be honest, but also educational (?) to say the least. It helped me to understand some before unexplored corners of the VN fandom. And I can't really doubt that it must be a nice game if used as intended. Should I be ashamed that this was my first contact with anything related to Love Live? Maybe. But now I can proudly (??) say that my VNDB list is one step closer to perfection. And since I already ticked the nukige checkbox, I can safely remove any other nukiges/games tagged with high sexual content from my wishlist!
...Wait, that one nukige is BL.
...
Guess I'm making a nukige misadventures part 2.
Unrelated PS: No, I didn't forget about Dankaronpa, chapter 4 is halfway done. Maybe next week!
DISCLAIMER: I didn't ask for anyone's permission before deciding who's gonna be killed here, sorry actually not sorry about that. That's a dankier representation of these guys that may or may not reflect how they are in real life. I tried to use you guys' avatar or username as base for your appearances and everyone using a cute girl avatar must now be grateful. This entire story had zero proofreading and makes zero sense. Support the official Danganronpa release if you want a quality story, and the patch for the PSP is the best version for the first game, thanks for asking.
Dreamysyu wakes up in his usual third seat of the roll beside the window, the setting sun coloring their majestic white hair orange. Just with this tiny introduction we can already see how they have all the needed traits to be the Ultimate Protagonist, and that's why we're following them now. They are already used to have a narrator describing every single thought that pop in their head.
"No, and please stop doing that." was what they are thinking but honestly I don't give a damn.
Anyway, seeing that the school was deserted, Dreamysyu's first thought was that they overslept and missed the entirety of philosophy class, that happened to be their favorite subject but not the author's so it was natural it was skipped here. If that was the case, it was almost time for horse riding club activities with their cute kouhai. Or just the kouhai riding because they're the protagonist. But as soon as they stepped outside they noticed something. The school was deserted. Not a single soul or background character was in sight. It's almost like... they were transported to an eroge school that's only populated by the main cast. Looking outside the window, Dreamysyu saw an unnatural amount of cherry trees in full bloom in the middle of July and the ocean not far in every single direction meaning they were in some non existing island near Japan. Way too eroge. Now the kouhai riding scene seems to be even closer to their grasp. Oh yeah, but most likely there's no kouhai anymore. Why even live as a protagonist like this?
Right as Dreamysyu thought at least one girl must be around and everything would go back to normal by the end of the story so no need to panic... they heard voices. More than one. Coming from the auditorium...
"My harem!" wasn't what they are thinking, but I can mess with them a little bit~
Dreamysyu opened the door and found 15 other bizarre students, almost all of them somewhat angry. "Tsk, another one?" someone said. "This must be the last one." another one that played Danganronpa before answered. Despite the hostile atmosphere, and Dreamysyu hostile appearance itself, a person approaches them. A cute girl with blue twintails, that managed to stay cheerful despite everything. Well, nothing happened yet, maybe that's why.
"Hiiiiiii, and welcome to the Survivors' Club!" they already decided everybody else was killed, figures. "I'm Dergonu and I'll be glad to help you if you have any questions!"
Dreamysyu was ready to raise an eyebrow but stopped. Dergonu. They remember that name. They are the Ultimate Mod, someone that did so good a job as a mod that they pretty much wiped out three forums into oblivion, such was the extension of the shitposting there. So mostly likely they know some behind the scenes stuff, it wouldn't hurt to stick around them...
"No, I'm the one that truly knows everything." said a bespectacled dark haired woman with a hat that I'm guessing is a beret. Wait, did they just answered the narration?
"Fiddle-samaaaaaaaaaaaa!! <3" yelled Dergonu before Fiddle could yet again answer the narration. And that name explained everything. Fiddle was known as the Ultimate Mastermind, said to have manipulated dozen other fanfics Fuwa users dared to write. Dreamysyu asked if this one would be any different, and Fiddle promptly shaked his head in a no, maybe spoiling the whole thing in the first chapter.
"I can, and I will."
"Wow, way to ruin the mystery. As expected of someone who liked Noble Works." said angrily a white haired guy with a gas mask. Although he's also white haired and faceless to boot, he wasn't the main character, maybe because there's way too much moe around for him to care about it. Because of that display, Dreamysyu recognized him in an instant: that was VirginSmasher, the Ultimate EOP. Said to have read all english non moege VNs in a spam of a single month, the experiment clearly corrupted his soul and it shows. In fact, he was already displeased to being forced to participate of such third-rate fanfic.
"1/10 VN already, if we can even call this that." Virgin wasn't the only one that was displeased, that was indeed quite enough salt in the room. But the person that said the last line takes the cake. solidbatman, the Ultimate Salt. Even the Black Sea tried to steal the title from him, and lost. They can't drop out of the story because only I can decide that, but they already rate this a 1/10 in the middle of the prologue. Sasuga, jeez. And for all effects, solidbatman looks exactly like Batman because everything is better with Batman.
"D-d-don't give it such a poor score so fast! After you read all scenes and read all text, I'm sure you'll give it at least a 8! And it does improve after the third choice of the second common route!" said a horned guy, going all technical. He had a huge encyclopedia in his arms, and he seemed to be looking at it right at this moment to know what exactly he was supposed to say next. Needless to say, that could only be SeniorBlitz, the Ultimate Guide, the guy said to be the only one that read the entire "book of answers for everything" that he now holds, and not just the tl;dr version that consisted of a tiny post-it with a 42 on it.
"To be fair, you have to go multiple extra playthrough to fully understand Ste... I mean, this fic." said a cool with an almost zombie expression red haired girl with an out of place christmas hat. They were pretty well know, even more now that Steins;Gate 0 is airing.
"Oh, it's Kurisu-chan, the Ultimate Tsundere!" said a poor soul, asking to be berated.
"It's ULTIMATE STEINS;GATE FAN! I'm not even a Tsundere, how can I even be the Ultimate one! -Taku!" and then they proceed to talk about the last episode of S;G 0 unprompted just to prove their point of being the Ultimate S;G fan. Whoever was watching it too joined the conversation eventually.
"This problem here does not change the fact that we have lots of Ultimates here." said an adorable blonde girl with a magical girl outfit. littleshogun, the Ultimate Magical Girl, seemed unfazed by everyone else, probably because of their experience with weird encounters with evil forces during all of their years working as a magical girl.
"The purity of this magical girl... stirs the darkness. O Old Ones, lord of tentacled infernal beasts... I hope I can hold your thirst back with these hands of mine..." calmly stated a long haired blond, majestic and evil-looking man, even if that was in no way a calm matter. Even if he said that he hopes he can hold something or other, he probably can, single handed. That was the power of Clephas, the Ultimate Chuuni. He saw things, he did things... Even the Old Ones must be scared of him at this point.
"Hey hey, enough with all this weebness. Moe kids already are a bit more than what I can handle, don't include tentacles too!" said another person from the pissed crowd. They were a beautiful brunette in a wedding dress that had all the right of being pissed if this story prevented them to marry his favorite boy. Oh well. The judge of anything weeb with strong sarcasm that I will not emulate all too well, probably, the new angry person is Zander, the Ultimate Outsider.
"I might add that probably a weeb that gave me my Ultimate name, I'm not outside anything. Well, maybe outside a list of people going to jail, hell or both..."
"You DO know that tentacle are a common japanese trope that's almost a history class on weebness if you actually look for the origin of the correlation between Magical Girls and tentacles, right?" said a glasses guy that looked all so smart. His face screams confidence, as expected of an Ultimate, but also passion for all the knowledge he acquired in the filthy pool of weeb hobbies. That was Pl_Lesiak, the man who looked at weebness in the eyes and came back victorious. Although he likes western weeb inspired things a bit too much, that's why his title quickly changed to Ultimate Westerner. Okay now, this title seems like he did some cowboy movies, and that's precisely why I decided to give him twin pistols in this story. The reason for that can be because a lot of people thought the same and then he went "why not?", I don't know.
"'Twas indeed a bloody confusion." thought the red-claded young man besides Lesiak, after he told him his tale some time during my narration. He also had a dignified air and a posture as elegant and powerful as someone doing a gentle motion to raise their dead servants with necromancy. It couldn't be anyone else other than Mr Poltroon, the Ultimate Gentleman. And if someone have a better idea of how to write a gentleman without him sounding like an old brit, be my guest.
"But now everything is A-Okay!" said a bubbly blue haired maid. Dreamysyu approached them because for a moment I almost forgot to use my protagonist for anything. But was it really necessary to ask who are they? Everyone there knew Kenshin_sama, the Ultimate Isekaier. Travelling to different worlds time and time again, the world within this tale is no different, so they were actually excited to explore one more world. They used their smartphone that they got in yet another world to take a lot of photos already and post everything in Jun Inoue's thread. Without them noticing, Kurisu-chan used the chance to complain about Re:Zero for a bit.
"(ᗒᗨᗕ)" said another Ultimate, agreeing with Kenshin. Not that Zander allowed themselves to understand such a weebty so alien and far from proper english. Not that the cute pink haired girl cared, they just continued going （＾ω＾） around. If someone asked for the name of the tiny pink haired moe, they'll probably answer (⁎˃ᆺ˂) or something, so Dreamysyu did his protagonist part and told everyone they're Kiriririri, the Ultimate Moeblob.
"I'm going to vomit if the happiness mood keeps going for too long. Can we kill each other yet?" said another short girl with some curtained bangs and pink eyes, spoiling yet another plot point if we can believe Fiddle's words that they already spoiled one. Stars appeared in their eyes as soon as they said the word "murder", what made them wave around happily, knocking Senior's encyclopedia on the floor on purpose just because. The book was so thick it could have opened a hole in the floor, but I'm not letting them escape this easily, so it just made a loud sound like whatever an elephant's fart sounds like. Even if they just look like a bully for now, in fact Ranzo is the Ultimate Bastard, hellbent on destruction and everyone else's disgrace. They couldn't simply leave all the fun to Clephas, or all the hatred to batman. They wanted a time to shine, even if killing everyone else was necessary for this. It actually was necessary, so of course they were enjoying this fic, and sadly maybe they're the only one.
"I must agree that some people here are way too happy, even though everyone in school suddenly vanished and we're now trapped in a cheap imitation of the facility in some weird island and..." he actually said 34 more lines, but let's cut to the chase, shall we? tymmur, the Ultimate Orator, also had issues with how slow this story was going. Said to have recited the whole bible, Rewrite and France Shoujo before breathing in again, he looked like a wise old man in a glittered rainbow shirt that would totally be followed by some slave lolis if those still existed in the school. Well, there's Kiri, but I digress.
"How horrible! How could a nice guy do something like this?" though the reader, but you need not worry. He's actually pretty nice with shotas, especially if they hook up with other shotas, he's just like this with 2D prostitute lolis that aren't protected by any 3D law.
"For the sake of my sanity, I'll disagree." said Zander, what prompted tymmur to say another 67 lines, but since this chapter is almost over I'll skip it again.
"Pardon my interruption of thy argument, sir, but I'm afraid we are not alone in this school..." said Poltroon, with a fierce expression of wanting to draw his sword if he had one. An annoying nihihi echoed through the room and it was coming... from the monitor on the wall that suddenly went on with a stream!
"I see your all getting along! Yay! Welcome to the..."
"*You're." Fiddle corrected before the naked girl could utter another mistake. Still feeling bad, eventually they introduced themselves as Mitchnomi, a 1/3 bear, a 1/3 rabbit, a 1/3 comic relif, all bad. They are doing the role of Monomi so naturaly they got shooed away not long after by the students.
"KYAAAAAAAAAA!" screamed the rabbit girl, that apparently got shooed away in the other side of the monitor too.
"...Can we just pretend this didn't happen and go back to... whatever was happening in the story?" batman asked and then everyone remembered what Poltroon said. It was really just about Mitchnomi? For once, everyone shut up and paid attention to the surrounding sounds. Something... was coming from the corridor. A stupid laugh soon echoed.
"Upupupu... Pupupu... Upupupupupu!"
"Da fuck is this?" is what Dreamysyu should have asked at the very beginning of the story.
"Upupupu... Upupupwahahahahahahaha!" the laugh got even louder. Well, of course, the person laughing just entered the room, flames erupting behind them for whatever epic reason. Ranzo found it amazing and set fire to the curtain too. Clephas wanted to summon some things too, but decided against because it was still too early in the story for final boss moments.
"Who... are you?" asked Dergonu, hoping for something not stupid.
"Bitch please, who else could I be? The one and only, powerful and sexy, MAGGIEKUMA!"
"I am not seeing a bear here." littleshogun pointed to the pretty boy that's now in front of the kids. They had white hair and black clothes so it totally fits the mono part of the name, even the 2B plushie they're carrying fits, but noooo I had to pick the kuma part. You can all agree with me that Monomaggie doesn't sound just as good.
"Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaares if I'm not a bear! Moe is the new thing, so hopefully pretty boys are here to stay." Maggiekuma explained why they decided to stick with the 9S in their avatar and not 2B.
"They will, if you choose the second choice and then the fourth after [SPOILERS] dies! That way, you'll rule the world and make everyone likes whatever you want" Senior just gave me a dangerous but awesome idea.
"∠(^ー^)" Kiri doesn't seem to mind.
"Good thing I didn't have any expectation for this story." Virgin already gave up.
"But you can end all of this... Killing everyone!" dramatic close up in Maggiekuma's face.
"All according to the keikaku!" said Ranzo with a grim, even if they didn't really have a fucking plan.
NEXT TIME: The rules of the deathgame and... Someone dies! But that's a twist!
LAST WEEK: Dreamysyu was all alone in the school, but not really. They then found a bunch of new friends, but not really. After a lot of bitching, Maggiekuma arrives and gives them shocking news, but not really.
"Of course, I'm only saying da shocking rules... NOW!"
"I only care about them if everything is allowed." Zander was in a rebellious mood.
"Whatever happens, the torrents are still not allowed. Let's keep the Fuwa spirit!" said Dergonu, forever trying to moderate.
"Okay, listen up now! You guys have to kill each other. And if the murderer gets away with it, they can leave this place."
"................................Did we really wait a full week just for this???????????" I hope Dreamysyu wasn't the only one expecting something more epic in this part.
"No worries, everyone is waiting for the part where someone dies, as announced." Thank you very much, Fiddle.
"It is better that way, too. We would not be able to abuse a loophole otherwise." Poltroon was getting ready for the game like the white dot that is a moogle in the image below.
"This guy gets it! And of course, I'll also be able to change the rules as I see fit in the middle of the game..." Totally not because of unplanned plot holes.
"Sooo, can I kill everyone right now and just leave?" batman the killjoy said.
"No, I want to hear more about the rules!" To the untrained ear, it looked like Senior just choose the "hear the tutorial again" option because they pressed X so mechanically after the long-winded explanation that ended up picking the wrong option just because it was the one highlighted, but no. He picked the option on purpose, to force Maggiekuma to tell them the details, thus ruining any plan they, Poltroon, batman, and probably Ranzo, were making. That, and because it would unlock one more CG.
"Ooooookay." Said Maggiekuma in a pout that made tymmur's eyes turn into glittering hearts. "Omaera will kill one hito per week, so this fic doesn't owari that hayaku, and the hitogoroshi will be the kuro. Then we'll do a saiban to found out who's the kuro. If omaera guess correctly the kuro, only the kuro will receive oshioki. But if the guiltless omaera were ooooh so wrong, minna receives oshioki except the kuro, that'll be free to go!" Maggiekuma finishes murdering grammar and making my fingers bleed to type that. Apparently the option also unlocked full weeb language for the game.
"...Can you repeat that, but now in english?" Zander's ears were also bleeding. But not for long, because Clephas quickly collected it with some gravity-defying powers to give it as a sacrifice for some God as old as him.
"d(*ﾟーﾟ*)" Kiri, on the other hand, understood everything perfectly.
"So, happy killing!~"
"I think I know who I'll kill first..." Kurisu-chan announced proudly.
"It CAN'T be me." Maggiekuma added, since they were too cute to die.
"Oh..." At least 8 people went tsk.
"Of course, kill the shota first. It's always the young and pure anime characters that have to go first... You guys should be ashamed of promoting such stereotyped behaviour against lolis and shotas, just for the sake of you people feeling superior and..." And so the first day on this weird school ended, and it ended before tymmur's speech that totally missed the point that everyone was trying to kill the villain of the fic.
***
Dreamysyu wakes up in his usual third seat of the roll beside the window, the setting sun coloring their majestic white hair orange. Just with this tiny introduction we can already see how they have all the needed traits to be the Ultimate Protagonist, and that's why we're following them now. They are already used to have a narrator describing every single thought that pop into their head. Like this one:
"Fuck, I'm on a time loop!" but before they could look for weird kids in a small shrine in the woods, they remembered that the narrator always bulli them, so it was safe to ignore them.
"Hey, there you are, Dreamy-chan!" said Kenshin, approaching while jumping up and down. Wiggle wiggle, would remember Ranzo if they were around.
"How's everyone today, Kenshin?"
"I haven't found everyone yet, but I don't think they changed much, since we have only one greatly exaggerated trait..."
"I see..."
"They're probably in the cafeteria already, so we should join them too!" Kenshin almost grabbed Dreamysyu's hand, but Dreamysyu backed. Nevermind the fact that they shouldn't trust anyone so easily in a setting like this, but handholding is a bit too lewd. And they didn't want to enter any routes if both of them are about to die.
"No, Kenshin, I think... we should keep some distance between us..."
"Why's that?"
"We're on this battle royale..." (AN: I almost wrote beetle royale, that would make an awesome alternative version, but that's for some other time)
"And?"
"Fuck, that author's note almost made me forget what I was saying. Anyway, we shouldn't be too friendly with each other because... I'm the main character. If we become friends, then you'll probably have a horrible and painful death just so I can angst and go in a roaring rampage of revenge and... It'll definitely not end well for you!"
"I think you could have a bit more faith in the others." He definitely shouldn't tho. "Besides, I'll be fine! After so many dimensional travels, I finally got the rare dual wield skill, so my strength is unbeatable now!"
"...........Hey, who's supposed to be the main character here?" Dreamysyu slowly realised maybe they weren't the badass protag, but the average guy one.
After that, both of them went to the cafeteria. The breakfast was only a bunch of bananas. Everyone except tymmur, Fiddle and Clephas had such a hard time to find a way to eat it in a non-sexy manner that the breakfast became dinner and then the day ended.
***
Dreamysyu woke up normally because they aren't that stupid to be fooled twice in the same chapter. And the first person they saw was Mitchnomi, pissed because they couldn't do a "good morning message" stream because all the monitors were showing episode 4 of Steins;Gate 0, probably because of some sorcery pulled by Kurisu-chan. Since Dreamysyu didn't want to hear any good morning message in Mitchnomi's voice, they just walked away, letting the rabbit girl cursing behind.
Back to the cafeteria. Still bananas.
"At this rate, we'll all die from starvation instead. We have to do something." pointed Lesiak, trying to avoid a pretty lame conclusion.
"You puny mortals fail to absorb even such a simple and inferior plant... when the time comes, I'll just watch while you are absorbed like these fruits by more advanced species..." Clephas decided to do an armageddon premonition instead.
"ヽ(ﾟ∀｡)ﾉ" Kiri took Clephas' advice the wrong way and started to use an IV thing to eat, or whatever, the banana. It worked only because it's a fic, don't try this at home.
"Without the IV part here, Kiri's idea is not bad. We can mash the bananas and eat them here." suggested shogun.
"The levels of hygiene in your idea, considering what we have here, are touching, please continue." salted Zander.
"I have a better idea!" said... Maggikuma???
"Let me guess, here comes another cliffhanger..." smartassed Virgin.
"Even better. I'll give you guys a MOTIVE for committing murder!"
"I want to dig your grave. I want to collect your shadow. I want to terminate your body. I want to commit murder!" Ranzo started singing a weird song from some Swedish metal band not known enough for anyone to sing along.
"...I think we already have enough motives to be honest." but batman wasn't enough to stop Maggiekuma.
"Okay, if you commit murder now, you'll get this book on "how to eat bananas in a non-suggestive way" totally free of charge! Just need to call!"
"......................That's the motive???" Kenshin was transitioning to the "leave isekai" arc.
"Hey, it's not like we d-don't know how to eat a s-simple banana or anything..." Kurisu-chan protested or something.
"Weeeeeeeell, if you guys don't want it... happy starving!~" Maggikuma poofed out of there.
"I-it will be fine! I-I'm sure my guide has some choice that says what's the best way... to eat it." Senior tried to make everyone feel daijoubu, but only silence answered him...
"You need not worry, we will find another way to get the wank out of this sodding contraption." Poltroon ended the conversation, even of no one was sure what he meant.
***
Later that day, Dreamysyu found Mitchnomi... again cursing the monitors. Wait, was Kurisu-chan still watching old episodes of Steins;Gate 0 (probably yes)? Pitying the poor bunny girl, Dreamysyu decided to help. After calling Dergonu, to use his mod powers to see what was wrong with the monitors, Mitchnomi finally calmed down. Even more after Dergonu found out that one monitor in classroom 2-B was apparently free from Kurisu-chan's tyranny. And the monitor there was very big too, hooray Mitchnomi! The three of them run there, but what they found...
...WAS A DEAD BODY!
tymmur's. His eyeballs apparently exploded and glittering blood was escaping from the holes. No one was supposed to be outside, but you could hear a lot of gays' crying and lolis being relieved. And in the monitor... a single gif, vibrating so violently it would break Fuwa's rules to even post something similar here... But even then... the three couldn't take their eyes off it...
"Oh, this reminds me of a song!" entered Ranzo, ruining once again the punchline of the chapter.
NEXT TIME: only 15 students now! Will the group investigate the death properly? And what song did Ranzo remember?
TWO WEEKS AGO: Some bananas happened and then tymmur was murdered and our heroes were too powerless to do something about it because I couldn't write this chapter sooner.
"At least we could strengthen our friendship in the meantime..." contemplated Dreamysyu, sitting in the corridor alongside Dergonu, Mitchnomi and Ranzo. The last time we saw them, they were staring the cursed gif looping at the monitor at classroom 2-B. If they were still staring at it, two weeks later, by now they would have nor eyes nor brains nor anything, as every cell of their body would be as pulverized as an unlucky member of the Avengers. Instead, they got the hell out of the room and decided to have a picnic in the corridor. It was enough time for them to max out all Social Links between themselves, while doing aaaaaaaall the things that good close male friends do together, like drink beer, have sex with each other, tell inside jokes, karaoke, a blood pact and read the h-scenes of euphoria. Actually, scratch that, Ranzo was the only one singing. They started with Bleeding Eyes by Masterplan, but after seeing Rinne's enema h-scene, they're now stuck with a looping Suicide Song by Hatsune Miku.
"Maaaaan, that was good! But I think we're supposed to do something else now..." pondered Dergonu. Mitchnomi could have explained the rules about the investigation about now, since they were one of the higher ups, and also a bear, but sadly they died of hepatitis B after the blood pact part.
"Oh yeah, we gotta investigate tymmur's murder! Rest in peace, man..." said Dreamysyu, putting his main character cape once again. With that, they enter the crime scene once again to see...
...KURISU-CHAN WATCHING STEINS;GATE 0!
"...Wait, what? Here too?"
"Yeah, I noticed that no one was using this room so I invited Kenshin to a two-weeks-long anime marathon consisting of the original S;G and all the released S;G 0 episodes." explained Kurisu.
"I thought that you did your hackerman thing everywhere but here..." me too, Dergonu.
"That was right, so I went back in time and fixed that."
"...Wait, at least you saved tymmur, or any of us, while you did that???"
"They saved ME, because now I finally catch up with S;G 0!" replied Kenshin, making Dreamysyu feel a bit NTRed.
"Actually tymmur is right here." pointed Ranzo to the same chair tymmur was last time. Still dead tho.
"But if the screen now is showing only S;G 0 reruns, what killed him in this timeline?"
"The same thing, I'm afraid. Check his phone, someone PMed him the thing." said Dreamysyu, quickly averting his gaze before their eyes exploded.
"Looks like this fic needs the Meaningless Choices tag, 'cause whatever we do, we can't save tymmur." said Senior, creepily appearing behind them. The rest soon followed, led by an angry Maggiekuma trying to put the story back on track.
"Jumping Christ, I tried to make a Corpse Discovery Announcement but I couldn't even access my own system! I knew I should have put Nayleen in this fic... Oh well, guess I'll have to explain it in person. As I weebly explained last time... do you guys even remember it?"
"How could we forget?" said Zander, proudly covering his war scars.
"Gotcha, the thing is, someone is trying to leave this place sacrificing all the remaining students. Sooo what you guys are waiting for? Foil his plan! If the murderer doesn't get away with it, they alone will be punished. The clock's ticking, so let's start this scavenger hunt for clues! No murder is perfect after all, so look for some fingerprints or whatever." Maggiekuma's limited knowledge about detective stuff is somewhat sad.
"Playing games after one of our mates met such a fate... This is indeed remarkably sick..." Poltroon expressed his disgust.
"Everything for the views!"
"I would like to ask how many minutes will we have for this task, but it's probably an indeterminate amount that will end conveniently after all clues were found." Fiddle correctly said.
"Yeah, works for me! Also, here. ZA MAGGIEKUMA FAIRU! 'All info you couldn't possibly discover just investigating' edition! I'll leave it at the main character's hand! Now, happy hunting!~" Maggiekuma outed.
"Even if we didn't start anything here, I would like to say that batman is the most suspicious one here. He is always using gifs here after all." littleshogun gave their opinion.
"Bitch please, that's clearly not barbaric enough to be something made by my hand!"
"I would say that Kenshin is the most suspicious actually. They appeared here out of nowhere and not many people here have a cell phone with them..." Ranzo continued with the distrusting one another atmosphere for the hell of it.
"But they have a strong alibi, AKA me." Kurisu didn't want to lose a fellow Steins;Gater.
"How do we even remember what happened in other timelines?" pondered Virgin, but not really, since he hardly cares anymore.
"(￣`Д´￣)9" Kiri tried to help clearing Kenshin's suspicion, showing that they have a cell phone as well. And surprisingly, no one started to suspect them, as everyone agreed that Kiri only use his phone to play Kirikoi, tweet and other moe stuff.
"Guys, instead of trying to guess who's the killer, how about we start investigating? The correct answer will appear naturally then." Lesiak made everyone shut the fuck up.
"I'm with you. I'm with this feeling... that the cause of his death isn't what it seems. It looks more that all of this... it's just to confuse us." Dreamysyu's not wrong, this fic is hardly cohesive.
"They'll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed down and hope that we will never see the truth around!" So come on! Oh yeah, this one I can sing along!
"I'll help you investigate. Mystery is right up my alley." Virgin suggested a partnership.
"Oh, let me join too! Just give me a minute to look for the choice that let me join your party!" since it'll take quite some time for Senior to skip his black bible of choices, let's just focus on what the other guys are doing.
"First, let's read the Maggikuma File. EVERYONE, GATHER HERE!" and they did so.
"Okay. Name of the victim: tymmur. Time of death: around 11 AM. Age: 79 (maybe more, since he's a wizard). Height: 1,80 cm. Orientation: homosexual. Favorite Musumaker h-scene..." Dreamysyu blue screened for a while. "...What any of this have to do with the investigation...?"
"Better look at the body directly." Virgin tried to steal Dreamysyu's spotlight, when both of them were alone again.
"I prefer to collect some testimonies first."
"And why's that?"
"Everyone's fictional counterpart in this story is fucking stupid, someone will probably spill the beans if pressured."
"Fair."
"Let's start with Clephas."
"Are you suggesting that I, the Lord of the JOPs, would mingle with you, inferior beings? And just for a senseless slaughter that fails to appease even goddesses such as Ishtar?" Clephas had a point, I don't think Musumaker's h-scenes would please a goddess of sexuality. Since Clephas knew way more h-scenes than Dreamysyu or Virgin, they just leave it to him to calm the gods and kept investigating.
"Let's talk with Poltroon now."
"..." Poltroon brilliantly said.
"What are you even doing, man?"
"Honoring the memory of our fallen comrade. Let me dedicate this moment of silence to him."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Dude, it's way past one minute now."
"For someone such as tymmur, one minute is not enough. Not a single one of his lines would fit in that interval."
"...That's something the Ultimate Gentleman would do, I suppose." said Dreamysyu and Virgin at the same time, as they left him alone and went to talk with the others.
"Sigh... This is going nowhere..." Dreamysyu was trying hard to stay positive.
"Let's see what we do have. Dergonu, Ranzo and you were together so all of you have alibis. Kenshin and Kurisu have alibis as well. Fiddle said himself, he's the final boss, so I don't think he would try something as early as chapter 3. Kiri seems harmless, but they play moege, suspicious af. Batman and Clephas would probably do something more barbaric than this. I'm not the culprit and that's true 'cause I'm always right. That leaves us with Lesiak, shogun, Blitz, Poltroon, and Zander. Of all of those, Zander is the most suspicious."
"Are they? I can't remember them doing anything strange..."
"Just look at him!"
"Despite my ear damage last chapter, and the damage that my brain sustains every time I found a grammatical error in this mess, I can hear you quite well, Virgin." speaking of the devil.
"Whatever. What are you so-not-suspiciously doing?"
"I'm investigating the body."
"Huh? Someone actually listened to my idea???" Virgin thought that was pure madness.
"...Enough with the hearing puns."
"Anyway. Did you find something out?"
"Oh, most certainly! Look at his feet!"
"I prefer hips, myself." I'll let you choose who said this.
"Not like that! Look, they're stuffed right into a bucket full of water together with this electric wire. Thoughts?"
"I knew the gif was only a distraction! It was a false flag all along!!" Dreamysyu, for the first time in a while, thought that the fic is finally making some sense.
"Actually, the gif was a big fucking clue, since it was a vibrating gif of an anime girl being electrocuted. A goof from the murderer, most likely."
"Why no one noticed this before????? And why only his eyes exploded????? What kinda electrocution is that????" Virgin thought otherwise.
"Probably because this development was rushed for the views or for the feels or whatever, making it as poorly planned as the game night of someone going through a KEY VN without a walkthrough." salt is the main reason batman worked alone.
"...Want me to take some pictures to use as evidence?" Kenshin wanted to be helpful.
"Oh, do that! It's pretty much the only clue I found here."
"...The ONLY clue?"
"So. It is time." Fiddle eerily prophesied.
"I finally found the choice! I just don't understand why I'll join the party if I say "Panties ahoy!" to Kiri..." I think people hardly care about it now, Senior.
"Ding ding ding, TAIMU APU!" announced Maggiekuma over the monitor, that plotholely was again under their command. "Now hurry your asses over here!" and the asses went there.
NEXT TIME: The first trial! Place your bets now, who killed tymmur?
"..." and that was the sound of Poltroon, still in silence.
"Enjoy the silence..." sang Ranzo, like any other chapter ending.
It have at least a female protagonist though! Serious now, this short title developed by Alice in Dissonance, and published by Sekai Project, was released back in February and since it's not moe enough and it didn't have any h-scene or censorship, it kinda slip under everyone's radar, myself included. I find it randomly when I was looking for short novels on Steam, but I'm thankful for the amount of adorableness I found in such tiny gem.
Both Mhakna and Fairy Bell from the title
Mhakna Gramura and Fairy Bell tells the story of Mhakna, a young girl that prays for a Fairy for happier days, just to have her wish granted and then carried to the beautiful and magical Enles Land with her best friend Sebiarno. But there's one condition, they must promise they'll give up on growing. The story is presented in chapter format and each one show a different adventure of the two kids in a fairy tale setting. It made me remember Sekien no Inganock structure but with more hope and less repetition, or a RPG Maker game named AliceMare but happier.
A thing worth mentioning is that, according the developers, Mhakna Gramura is a fairy tale written by Alissyn Rievegh, a Sanne'Ajrizdia-language (a fictional language) author in the world of Fault Milestone, Alice in Dissonance more known series. So it's a story inside a story. I know absolutely nothing about Fault and that didn't hinder my enjoyment one bit. But Mhakna does have some fictional language going on at times, probably the one mentioned above, but it's not hard to distiguish what's supposed to be a greeting and what's supposed to be food. Although halfway through, you get furigana (yes, in english) for some words. But if the idea of having furigana in english hurts your elitist soul, you can switch the the entire game language to japanese in the main menu! You also unlock a glossary by the time you finish the game, but for me it was a bit too late, I barely remember where each word was used.
Protect these kids' smiiiiiiiiiles
The chapters themselves are pretty short, ranging from two to ten minutes long, 20 chapter total. It really is a very short reading, but unlike the aforementioned Sekien no Inganock, each new side character you met along the way comes back at least once so you get to understand their side of the story and what made them pray for Fairy Bell. More explanations and backstory are also unlocked in the glossary, for anyone that could feel unsatisfied. Of course, nothing is all sunshine and rainbows in this VN so be prepare to be hit with some feels. One chapter in particular was quite sad, and that's also thanks to its well written children characters, who actually act and think like children for 95% of the time.
The art is incredibly good. The game doesn't have sprites, instead the background image transitions along with the lines, enhancing the story book feels. Some parts of the images have very simple animations (like when we can see Fairy Bell moving up and down when she's hovering, rain and tears falling, etc), and that added a lot of charm and uniqueness to this experience. The coloring is very pretty as well.
And even the music! The tracks are a mix of relaxing and lively tracks, but the music for sad and weird moments also do their job well. Everything in this novel, art, music and story blended together really well. There's no voice acting, but the game is short, so it'll be over before you starting missing voice acting.
Even the side characters are so adorable...
After playing and seeing a lot of dark and gritty games or VNs where sex is your only reward, a innocent, pure and a bit childish game like this was a nice breath of fresh air in between longer reads. Even if it's pretty short, it's well worth its 5 USD price. If you're a sucker for fairy tale inspired stories, like me, this VN is satisfying!
Nitroplus sure is popular and there's always hype surrounding their games. Their imprint Nitro+CHIRAL receives the same treatment by the BL fanbase. And that was one of the reasons that I was afraid to approach their games. Overhype frequently kills anime and manga for me, and I believe that the more a media is popular, the more parroting we see instead of legitimate opinions, I can't even count the times I read reviews that, if you erased all positive adjectives, you ended up with nothing. Even so, I tried to play this game because its plot was genuinely interesting. Too bad it got so easily abandoned halfway through the game.
Game's cover is more badass than the game itself
Togainu no Chi, Nitro+CHIRAL's debut title released in 2005, tells the story of Akira, a champion in some turf war style game, that got falsely accused of a crime. Japan is in a pretty post apocalyptic state and its society is falling apart so he had almost no hope in ever clearing up the misunderstanding. Except a woman named Emma appears before Akira with a deal to free him. And for that, he have to enter another game, this time a battle royale, named Igura. Accepting the terms, Akira travel to the ruins of Tokyo, where Igura take place. The world building is well done and full of good ideas, that unfortunately falls flat when you reach the character routes. The game takes its time to explain all rules of Igura and show all of the weird quirks the game master added just for fun, just to gives us like two fights and then shift the focus of the plot to something else. Of the five routes, only one actually elaborate a bit more about Igura and that ended up being my favorite route. Of course, they tried to tie the Igura plot with the game's true plot, but the excuse they used still doesn't make Igura actually important for anything.
This feeling of disconnection between the beginning and the later parts of the game was so strong that it almost made me want to try the game's trial. Like, the prologue had special portraits for characters that had only one scene worth of appearance (the game have three or so base NPC faces, but these guys are different), three completely useless character had sprites, there's a fighting sequence with some homeless people that acted like wild animals that's never explained or even mentioned again. I do wonder if the game was supposed to be one thing and because some development problems it became something else...
Even Akira is sad with how the game turned out...
Now for the characters. First we have Akira, the main character, and mostly a silent badass type of guy. Or that's what we expect him to be based on the prologue. For a said champion, he's overpowered way too easily by pretty much any character that cross paths with him. Add the fact that after 90% of said defeats his opponent states how pretty Akira is and how much he wants to rape him (of course, stating too that he doesn't care if he's a guy), and we have one of the most "damsel in distress" MC I ever saw. The thing he said the most in the entire VN is "let go!", seriously (his "hanaseyo!" just played in my mind). Sure, he accomplish some things by himself, but nothing end game tier. He just goes where the plot carries him, over and over again. And to make things worse, his development is tied to the fact that he should warm more to others and not to his uselessness in combat.
Among our five heroes we have: Keisuke, the clingy childhood friend; Rin, an energetic shota; Motomi, a laid back older guy; Shiki, the edgelord that goes around killing guys with a katana and vanishing the next second; and Nano, a mysterious guy that says a lot of things that doesn't make much sense. We also have bad endings with Arbitro, a super eccentric guy, and his two bodyguards Gunji and Kiriwar, but they're pretty short and not really plot relevant. With the exception of Shiki, all of the others have some character growth.
Personally, I loved Rin's and Motomi's routes, since it developed well not only each character, but also the couple. You can see them growing up and moving on together. Keisuke is your typical childhood friend route, but his route have a twist that's sadly repeated in every single route, making his route completely pointless if you don't care too much about his character. Nano's route had a good start, but guess he was a bit too detached for a medium length game, so his development was way too rushed in the end. Shiki's route is a complete disaster that I'll talk about in the H-scene part of the review, because his route barely had anything else.
"No love for an older guy, huh", Motomi thought, remembering how N+C put him out of view in the blowjob part of the h-scene...
The h-scenes... sigh. There's eleven scenes in total, and only three aren't rape. And they aren't even dubious consent scenes, it's no consent whatsoever. And most of them are totally gratuitous. There are more routes than consensual h-scenes, so... you know what to expect. I could actually forgive such a ratio if this was some dark and dramatic story. It's not. It's the actually the same annoying BL cliché that plagues a lot of older works: rape turned love. Guy A forces himself on guy B (usually the MC) because "he can't express himself very well". But no worries, because the rapist liked the other guy all along. And the one raped can see beyond the abuse, guy A have other worthy qualities. And then, happy couple ending~ Aaaaw, can I vomit already? I mean, what? How can they even call that romance??? I know the game deals with some dark themes, so the least they could do is treat it with seriousness and not like some "cute" shipping material. Although this description here fits mostly Shiki (except one of his bad endings, that actually depicts some sort of mindbreaking), there's one more character that had a rape scene that came completely out of nowhere, for no real reason and it so happened to be the only h-scene of the route... My headcanon is that one of the "drugs" (drugs are never named in those media, huh?) they use actually turns them into rapists, but who knows the right answer.
And when that's not the problem, we have the unnatural dialogue. "But we're both guys!", oh I didn't even noticed, thanks for telling me! "I don't like guys, it's just you!", he's a guy regardless, give up. "I don't care if you're a guy, you have a pretty face!" (actually this particular quote wasn't in a h-scene, but in a rape attempt scene) I thought that was the norm for BL MCs, how is that not gay? The game really goes out of its way to basically say "NO HOMO!" sometimes... There's so many turn off moments that only positive thing I can say about the h-scenes is that Akira's voice actor do an AMAZING job, one of the best h-scenes voice acting I heard.
Nano!!! Please don't sleep!!! I swear Shiki's route is almost over!!!
The art is nothing really special. The background can get a bit repetitive with so many gray tones, the CGs are good, better than the sprites, the usual stuff. The soundtrack on the other end is pretty good, enhancing various okay moments to something cool. It sets the mood just right, the song that plays in the bonding/emotional scenes in particular had such a lonely vibe, I liked it a lot. And the good ending song is so beautiful I constantly hear it (and I feel obligated to share it).
And, because it's an old game, I had to add one more section to this review: technical stuff. It's a known fact that this game have some compatibility problems with windows 8.1 and 10. Back when I played it in windows 8.1, I had to do several "tricks" (compatibility mode with windows XP, put it in high priority in task manager) to unfreeze the game after loading a save file. I had to change the tricks (clicking in specific points in the screen, don't ask why) to play it in windows 10, but after some updates it's now completely unplayable for me. Some people had more luck and said tricks still works, others never had any problem, but are you feeling lucky? Nitro+CHIRAL released a new windows 10 compatible version, but, as you can guess, you can't use the english patch in this version.
Another way to play this game is grab the all-ages PS2 version that even added a new route. Even then, I couldn't really bother with reading this again. It's storytelling is so outdated and filled with bad BL stereotypes. But unfortunately there's so few BL translated that this became some sort of mandatory reading.
In one particular thread about otome games, fellow Fuwan Plk_Lesiak said something that made me think. "It looks like a lot of japanese otome games are written by men" (along these lines). I can't really describe why is that, but I have the same feeling. But hey, maybe we're both wrong so I decide to do a little research. I looked into the team of some big japanese otome companies and tried to find their scenario writers. Here's what I found!
For Otomate:
Code:Realize, a very popular JP otomege, was written by five people and the main one is Nishimura Yuu, a male who's a freelancer LN writer. In the game's fandisc though, that's more romance oriented I should add, a woman named Kojima Nao is credited instead. Collar x Mallice was written by three people, two of them I couldn't find information about their gender. The remaining one, Sahara Yuki, is a woman. She also helped with Rejet's Black Wolves Saga, Ken ga Kimi and Bad Medicine. The director is also a female. Kokuchou no Psychedelica was written by a team of three females and also directed by a female. 7'scarlet is the first one I found that only one person is credit. And this person is Kanazawa Tomio, male. Period Cube also has a single person credited: Seki Ryouko, female. Amnesia was written by two females.
For Rejet:
Tokyo Yamanote Boys (at least the first one because it's such a long series) was written by one male and one female. Tiny x Machinegun's plot was written by Yamada Yuumi, female.
The Dot Kareshi series also have multiple writers, but the main one for the 2nd and 3rd games (the best ones imo) is Urai Anna, female, nice comedy there girl I loved that game.
There's way more games here with very little information about the writer compared to Otomate...
For Honeybee:
Re:Birthday Song, jeez, there are ten people credited there, at least the three main ones are female. Ayakashi Gohan, same as above. Starry Sky series have less writers, but still, all of them are female.
For Kalmia8:
No info about Little Miss Lonesome or Kami-sama Nante Yondenai!, but Torikago no Marriage was written by two females. One look at its VNDB page and you'll see how different the latter is in comparison with the other two games. It doesn't even seem like it's by the same company!
For Karin Entertainment (this is not as famous, but just to do a comparison):
Princess Nightmare and Eikoku Tantei Mysteria were written by one female (the same one, in fact). Zettai Meikyuu Himitsu no Oyayubi-hime and Danzai no Maria were written by two females.
So, what can I say after all this research? It seems that as the company gets bigger, we have less females, less information and more Frankenstein's creature of a plot, dear lord, I couldn't get over ten people yet...
Sometimes, I want to pick a game with a setting that I'm not used to read about. It's good to try something different once in a while, right? Medieval, fantasy, steampunk and robot-infested future settings quickly catch my attention, but I need an extra push to try something more mundane, more post-apocalyptic or something like this game. Mafia stories. I understand about mafias as much as know about cars (as in: nothing, seriously I tell them apart by color), but the art was so pleasant to look at, so why not? Of course, the BL part was the other push. Good thing what awaited me was a cool and very badass game.
Why Ugajin (glasses guy) is there with the heroes with locked routes? He must feel so important...
The story follows our protagonist JJ (center in the above pic), a famous hitman that always do his job right. One day, he's given an assassination mission by the mafia that pretty much controls the region, King Caesar. Said mafia will probably start a war with the opposing mafia, Dragon's Head, soon, making the choice to involve himself with them a bit dangerous, but the job pays too well to be ignored. Too bad the wrong people were killed, the target escaped, JJ was blamed for all of it even if he did nothing wrong and and now the guys from the biggest mafia around are pissed off. To make things even worse, the wrong people that were killed happened to be the parents of one of our heroes, Azusa, and after he saw JJ in the crime scene he started to follow him around to find a chance to kill him.
Wow, lots of things already happened and this is like 15 minutes into the game. The rest of the game also jumps to one action scene to the other with not very long parts of slow building up in between (some exceptions in certain routes), to keep you always entertained. The scenes are packed with regular gun fights with no absurd tricks or superpowers involved and the author makes the scenes longer giving us a lot of gun trivia. Since I only know about guns through Resident Evil games, I was a bit lost when sometimes the attacks were identified by ammunition and not by character mid fight, but I got the hang of it with time. In fact, the guns are so important that you'll notice that each hero weapon of choice kinda matches their personality.
On the other hand, like a lot of action movies, it's not uncommon for you to be asking yourself "but what about the plot?". Calling it a charage is a lot of stretch, but each route in Omerta have it's own plot and half of the time it doesn't revolve around what happened in the prologue that I described. The intro sequence serves more to introduce the characters and to show you where JJ stands in this whole mess. And before you can pick your choices, he's pretty much avoiding both mafias and living with Azusa in his shadow.
Better not to pick another snarky choice...
Not having an overaching plot can be a bit disappointing for some people, but that's not a bad thing in the least! Having a very good amount of heroes (seven in total) with different alignment, the game gives you the opportunity of explore their life in this harsh world and take a look at both sides of the conflict. Your allies in one route are your enemies in another. I felt their portrayal were a bit too much black and white (one mafia is clearly portrayed as the good guys and the other as the bad ones), but some shades of gray in their morality are in fact present.
As for the routes themselves, the game splits into three routes and only then it splits into the heroes. If you decide to ally yourself with King Caesar, you have tsundere boy Kiryu and seductive boss Luca. If you decide to go to Dragon's Head instead, you have manipulative Ugajin and the boss everyone fear Liu. And at last, if you decide to stay neutral, you have the blabbermouth Tachibana, the guy that knows well how the city works Toudou and our bratty cat-ears-haired Azusa. At first, Luca, Liu and Azusa's route are locked, but they only need a single playthrough to unlock. Order is also not enforced, so you can really read in the order you prefer. The only recommendation I give is to read the subordinates of each mafia before the bosses. And if you think that the prologue's arc is the closest thing to call a true route, let Azusa's route for last. Either way, there's one epilogue that takes things from most routes that is the Grand Ending (as the game itself calls it) of Omerta.
The game didn't gave me a threesome route with these guys, and I'm still pissed
The characters themselves are interesting even when some of them aren't exactly likable. This game is tagged with "Villainous Hero" in VNDB, after all. But if there's one character that steals the show, it's the protagonist. JJ is one badass guy in the action scenes, and he stays true to his "killing with no hesitation" nature for the vast majority of the novel. Even so, he's also caring and even a bit naive in the "slice-of-life" parts. Seriously, who would thought that a hitman could be this cute? Well, it makes some sense seeing that he's a dork who lived on the run most of the time. Not many opportunities for normal human interaction.
The romance is done in an very uneven way. Of the seven routes, two follows the "MC was swept away by the hero's affection" pattern, one have more of a "close friends that also have sex with each other" vibe (that I liked a lot), one is the villain route so there's more pity than love there (also nicely done), one have that true canon hero vibe since the very beginning of the route so we could see the love already there somewhat and in the last two the romantic development was so fast that I almost thought that I skipped something by mistake. It's good to have some variation, but in at least two of those I felt the romance very unconvincing. Not that I was expecting epic and fluffy romance in a mafia story anyway. Althought I must say that I was very sad to not have a route with a particular side character...
The H-scenes are very good. Like VERY GOOD. The art in it was so good, the voice acting was also very well done, there's some nice variation of positions (the CGs never felt recycled, just changing one of the guys) and the MC is bottom in some routes and top on others. H-scenes alone, of all the BL games I played, this one takes the prize for me. Of course, since most of the heroes (and the MC himself) are no saints, there's rape and dubious consent in spades in there and I felt quite bad about liking some of those CGs aaaaah, some of them used for threat and domination and not for "love" at least. While this is understandable in the setting, 80% of the time this is done to Azusa, that is the weakest guy, so it felt more like picking on the weak. Not cool.
If you're planning to skip them without seeing even a glimpse of the CG though, unfortunately they're very randomly located in the game. Not that is hard to see one coming... most of the time. There's a PSP port that got rid of all the H-scenes, but, while it was more than welcome with some rape scenes and some replacements were even more gay than the original, if that was even possible, I kinda missed some of the best H-scenes (I have both version: read the PC one and skimmed through the PSP one).
Stop hurting my precious cat boy please...
The soundtrack is nothing special. The tracks were cool, but nothing really memorable. Voice acting was quite good, at least for the main characters and the side characters that had more screen time. I could listen to Luca's voice all day, Kiryu's tsun voice is just adorable and Ugajin have the same voice actor as Emiya Shirou from F/SN (and they sound exactly the same) so the H-scene was... funny to listen to say the least. Almost everyone that don't have a sprite have a cheesy or generic voice, but well, they are generic anyway.
Despite all the problems, Omerta was a fun read and very badass. It's hard to make the MC the most likable character, but here they did a good job. Of course, maybe their portrayal of the mafia world is completely wrong, I wouldn't know any better, but eh, just enjoy this piece of entertainment. Because entertainment you can definitely find here. I hope to come back to review the fandisc, but I have to read it first... I can't wait to meet these boys again!
I know no one cares about the Oscars anymore (or ever) but now came the time to prove how The Shape of the Water is the best otomemu ever.
# FAQ
Q) What da hell is an otomemu? A) It's a short for 乙女ムーヴィ (otomemuvi). It's like a ge, but not really. (This bullshit is copyrighted by Maggie not really)
Q) Why the FAQ is at the start of the post? A) You wouldn't be able to handle the suspense of not knowing what a otomemu is.
Q) This is unfunny. A) And that's not a question. The Q stand for question, smartass, ask something and leave your stupid comments in your pocket!
Okay, back in the ge. Oh, I mean the mu. So, the Oscars made me realize how much of a otomege The Shape of Water can be. Don't believe? Just follow me!
It have a silent female MC that was just doing her mundane job when suddenly she found love in the least expected place;
It stars a mysterious aloof guy and only route option and everybody loves the sexy and mysterious trope, right?
We have a totally random sex scene shove in for the same reasons as a lot eroge, whatever they are. It's with side character, so you don't need to fear that any kind of NTR is coming;
It have the token glasses guy that all otomege seems to have but this time he didn't had a route because that's what all animes do, cut routes (in this particular case, I didn't wanted a route with him anyway);
It have a incredibly short gay subplot for the yays because BL is also for girls;
It's a pure love story as the meaning of otome would suggest;
If you watch it with subs, the experience will be kinda like a OELVN with non anime art emulating School Days style so it can totally be considered a ge along with being a mu.
So, with this post I hope to clean the slate of the otomemus because Twilight is such a bakamu and 50 Shades a kusomu, it's refreshing to see a kamige once in a while. Murica also proved that The Shape of the Water was the best VN of 2017 and now I can finally say that Guillermo del Toro is a better VN writer than SCA-Ji. Deal with that, weebs. Cheers!
Hi hi, everyone! It was surely a good week for us BL fans with the announcement of JAST's new BL brand. Think about it, we'll be able to see Sweet Pool uncensored shortly before hitting 50. Okay, enough JAST jokes and N+C in general. Since they're not saying much about Slow Damage, I already reported everything they announced in that thread the other day. Well, guess I sabotaged my own blog, rip. So why not talk about an obscure upcoming game? Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you today Nie no Machi (no VNDB page yet, now I went full obscure hm? But here's the game's main website)!
Dying was never so festive. Wait, WHAT??? (I'll explain in a minute)
Okay, I'm saying it's obscure, so how the hell I found out about it? In fact, this debut game from Zombilica was featured in the last edition of Cool-B, a japanese magazine about BL and girl games. If you played any japanese BL game, you probably already stumble in some special artwork of it made for this one magazine.
And what exactly is it about? It follows the story of Hisora, that after following a young man dressed in mourning clothes he fell into another world. Oho, I'm not really a fan of isekais, but with a harem of pretty boys I can change my mind... Too bas this another world is pretty much a town occupied by only by spirits of the dead. The safe place is an inn occupied by... people that fell into a coma in the world of the living and end up trapped there. So our boys must found a way to escape this spirit world. And something tells me that them being half dead won't stop the author to kill some of them noooooooooooo.
Our heroes in adorable chibi form: Naruomi, Hisora (MC), Asuku, Mio and Koko
The character's designs are simple, but charming. Personally, I loved Hisora's hair, that in some CGs looks kinda purplish. And I'll bet that the best boy will be.......... Ouya!
Okay, joking or not aside, between our available romanceable options...
I'll think I'll bet on Mio (third one). I mean, look at the others! Poor Asuku (the first one) looks dead inside, the second one's name is Koko da hell dude, and the fourth one Naruomi seems good too, but he'll probably won't be as adorable as the smirky bastard besides him, RIGHT? How can someone even doubt such a pure and gentle smile? /s
I like bitchy love interests in VNs, I may have problems. But, if we looks again into the first image I put here... seems like we have a secret love interest there. Hmmmm... The voice actors were revealed already, but no samples available.
The scenario is written by Toritani Shizu (鳥谷しず), and the art is handled by Rinno Miki (厘のミキ). The game is slated to be released in 2018. Meanwhile, let me get addicted to the song of the PV (careful, there's 2 NSFW CGs there. They're censored, the camera quickly pans to a more safe spot of the CG and they last for about a second each, around 1:04~1:05, but still, don't get fired for nothing! The song is pretty cool nevertheless)!!! I'm planning to get the game whenever it's available so I'll be back with impressions! Eventually! (if I can hook it to use a parser, that is)
It took me only a minute to come up with my random username. That is because I love stories with robots, even more if they are love interests. Their struggle with the fact they are not human despite looking like one or acting like one is something I really enjoy to read, and cry while doing so. And that's what pulled me towards this otomege by Tetrascope. The complete story of this game is split across 3 games: the free edition, that have the base story and it was translated by people from Fuwa; the paid edition, that adds 18+ content and one additional route, untranslated; and the short append story called "Sweet Present for Shin", also untranslated. I checked all of them, and my experience with them was mostly pleasant, even if not all three parts were absolutely necessary.
From the intro movie
The story starts in distant future Tokyo, where robotic engineering is advanced enough to have robots indistinguishable from real people around. Although, when I say indistinguishable, I meant physically, since most of them don't possess any way of make rational decisions or emotions. They all follow the strict program built into their heads. Our hero Sakuya is the sole exception. Created by the genius scientist that also the father of our protagonist Akane (you can change her name, this is the default one), Sakuya is so human-like that the biggest robotics company don't waste a chance to strike a deal with our girl to buy him for science.
The setting is pretty well crafted, with topics like unemployment, sexbots, and anti-robots movements on the rising being touched at least once in the novel. Sadly, the novel is short and its focus is in the romance between a human and a robot, so all of these questions are pretty underdeveloped. We know those problems exist, and that they are too big to tackle in a novel so short, but not much discussion about it is done either.
The romance in the first route, the one in the free edition, in the other hand is pretty sweet and satisfying. Sakuya is simply the cutest boy in terms of personality I ever met in a VN. And he's not even human. He's pure, gentle and caring, sometimes naive and sometimes mature. It's easy to forget that he's an android, and that also happens with Akane and Sakuya himself. And the fact that he's not human, but also too emotional to be a robot, it's the biggest source of drama for our characters.
Sakuya's asking to hold hands, WHERE'S THE CHOICE SO I COULD SAY YES???
As Sakuya struggle with what he should be... Our protagonist Akane takes the long and dense road. She acts like our usual shoujo manga protagonist, with all of the "what is this feeling?" type of things... except she's supposed to be 23, so usually she comes across as childish. In fact, Sakuya constantly gets right what she's feeling and the only thing about human interaction he knows is mostly through movies. So yeah, originality is not her strongest asset.
Last but not least is Shin, Akane's childhood friend. At first you'll think he'll provide some love triangle drama, but that not happens here. Instead, he serves as a good foil for Sakuya. While Sakuya is a robot who looks like a human, Shin is pretty much a human who looks like a robot. He's always calm and composed, almost emotionless. His sprites have very little variations in expression. Even when he's talking about his memories or feelings, he's as blank as ever. The game is not voiced, so we only have to imagine how monotone he must be in those scenes. But despite all that, he does provide some interesting interactions with Akane.
All flashbacks are in this style, making everything even more cute
Now, let's cover what you'll get in each version. The free version is the essential one if you're interested in this game. It covers pretty much everything I said up to this point. There's no sex scenes in this version, but they are implied, and that's more than enough in this game. The paid version adds not only the porn, but also a new route and three new extra stories (that you can access in the extra menu after clearing certain endings). Is it worth though? Short answer: no.
The porn that was added in the free version route is alright. We can see both Akane and Sakuya on screen, and Sakuya is as gentle as you would expect of him. But let's remember, he's a robot. Even he says at some point that he doesn't feel any physical pleasure from the act. So his face is mostly lacking in expressions, except when he reacts to Akane's reactions. It's porn that focus only in the girl again, but this time the boy really cares about how she's feeling it.
The new route... it's very subpar. Most of all because of the route structure, that tricks you into thinking it's a route for Shin when it's not, and it's ending, that shift the tone of the novel to the point that I wondered if the author even cared about the character development they build until said point of the story, because they shattered it to pieces in an absolute ex Machina way. Good thing I read this first, I would have hated to finish the game in this route. Needless to say, the porn of this route is just as bad. The extra scenes are fun though, but you won't lose much if you decide to pick the free version. This version is only recommended if you want to support Tetrascope, the game is just 800 yen on DLsite, it's pretty cheap it won't hurt. It's untranslated, but the free game section subs did appeared for me even in the paid version.
Young Akane, Shin and Sakuya in "Sweet Present for Shin"
And finally we have Sweet Present for Shin. This is the closest of a route for Shin we'll ever get, and it was as sweet and cute as the original game. It happens 5 years before the main game, but it's better appreciated if you play after it. Finally we can see Shin a bit flustered! It's very short, but still have three endings and one epilogue that ended my time spent with Sakuya, Akane and Shin in a pretty heartwarming note.
Sakuya had everything that I like: robots, robot drama, cute characters and romance. Even if the paid version route was pretty bad, it wasn't enough to diminish my love for this game. Moe robots are the best!
Or: These game characters should learn to stop worrying and love the dong
Disclaimer: The following opinion is genuine. But I like to express myself in creative ways after so many mostly serious posts, so shit ensues. A review will be up next week, please keep supporting this blog.
After so many dicks, I looked back to my complete VNs folder and tried to do one of the most dumb things a fan can do: compare not completely alike games. Bl games comes in all kinds of packages, with different plot genres and structures, but as long as they are under the same umbrella definition of BL, I noticed they all share the same types of mistakes. Misses that I found in BL anime and manga too. Of course, when I say all I don't mean AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL of them, but I'm trying to raise awareness of the problems that I usually spot in the majority of the popular releases. I already saw every one of those pitfalls being avoided in mangas, so there's hope in this world.
Since Fuwa surely love some top X, I'll organize it in some top 5 countdown fashion. Do notice that I'll not tackle what I see in doujinshis here, because seriously, who wants to fix the fantasy world of short doujins? Hell, if everything they did there had 100% realism, instead of 17/20 pages of porn we would get 17/20 pages of (trying to) pay bills.
But enough sadness, let's get this over with!
5) Girls
Okay okay, maybe lots of people don't want tits in their BL works, but unless we're on a prison/gang/old army/all-boys school/world where mpreg is a thing (90% of the games are out already...), we need some of them! Of the works I read, if I happen to see some girl, one of the following happens:
She's some character's mom. Then she dies/is murdered and the guy angsts;
She's some character's sister. Then she dies/is murdered and the guy goes into a roaring rampage of revenge (in both cases, she dies within the first five minutes of the novel);
She's the main villain. She eventually dies;
Plot twist, she's actually male! Because of this maaaaybe she can survive.
She totally confused me for a second...
I would love to see some day a BL story where the MC have some female best friend and they talk about boys together aaah~
4) Porn that doesn't sound like your average BxG h-scene
Seriously, if some games didn't keep reminding me that both participants have dicks, I would think that I was reading some R18 otomege. Even some CGs seems like the guy on top is totally hitting the wrong place, artists, please get basic anatomy right thank you. I wouldn't copy a whole scene of this type here because effort, but it's as full of "yameteeeee, yaaaaaaa, Ryou-kun (random name) dameeee" as you're expecting.
And what's the deal of only the guy on the receiving end feeling it? Draw some expressions on the other guy too! It almost looks like that while the uke is having the time of his life, the seme suddenly realized that he'll probably die before Kentaro Miura finishes Berserk. Probably he and all of us, actually.
Not BL, but I'll never forget Akihito pulling a Sad Affleck in the middle of the porn years before Sad Aflleck was a thing!
(Image edited by ESRB)
3) Characters that actually identify themselves as gay/bisexual
Okay, we get that social stigma exists and all that... But BL VNs are usually more "edgy" than Yuri ones... Sometimes society collapsed already, what are you waiting for, you dummy??? "Oh, I'm totally not gay, it's just because it's you!" Yeah sure, Jun-kun (random name) only liked Kou-kun (random name), not a single woman (they exists? See point 5 above) or guy before. Or after. You're really not gay, Jun-kun, you're Kousexual apparently.
The scenario is even worse for bisexual characters. Remember any? Exactly.
Just kidding, I remember him! In fact... Everyone is bi in this pic. This is one bitastic game!
2) Condoms
Eeeer, just because none of you guys can become pregnant (if mpreg isn't a thing in their world, that is) doesn't mean it's all okay... But maybe if they DID try to use one, the following could happen, so guess in the end it's all the same...
FINISH HIM!
(ESRB attacked again, thank you for your understanding)
Hey there! Today let's talk a bit about drama CDs, a kinda add-on to the stories of some visual novels that's super popular in otome and BL fandoms. I'm talking about these two particular fanbases, but it's not uncommon for light novels, manga and anime series, or video games from all kinds of genres to have side stories released in this format. And we even have original stories released like this.
Drama CDs, or audio dramas, are exactly what it says on the tin. An audiobook of sorts with dialogues, inner thoughts of characters and narrations, read aloud by the voice actors of the media in question. Visual Novels without the visual aspect. The perspective can shift from character to character from time to time, and you'll know when it happened when other person starts narrating. If the main character is unvoiced in the main game, common in otome for self insertion reasons and such, these drama CDs are our chance to finally hear their voices.
The big otomege japanese companies, like Otomate and Rejet, release drama CDs for most of it's popular series. And they are frequently announced in their big events, with the presence of the voice actors in question, to the fangirls' delight. I must admit that, since I started following these things, I learned quite a few names of voice actors and even when they use alias (more common in BL than otome, whyyyy is thaaaat), they don't fool me anymore.
Related links given to me by CDJapan when I was looking for drama CDs. Not only I recognize four of these names, but I also know a bunch of previous roles of three of them.
There's some different types of drama CD as well. Some features interactions between characters with a short and simple storyline. They are usually called talk CDs. Some otome games that have this type of drama cds are Amnesia (CD's name is "Meido no Kuni no Amnesia"), Hakuouki ("Chizuru Yuukai Jikenchou") and Arcana Famiglia ("Il dolce Regalo").
Cover of "Chizuru Yuukai Jikenchou". The harem is strong with this girl...
We also have the otome CDs that, unlike the talk CDs, have only one guy speaking with you or his inner thoughts about you. I mean, the main character. So yeah, an entire CD of your favorite guy whispering in your ear, I can see the appeal. You can usually recognize one by their name pattern: "Series name Vol. X - Character name". So just pick your favorite character and press play to enjoy! Series that have this type of CD are Diabolik Lovers (for masochist girls) and Norn9 (this game have three MCs, so the drama CDs are divided by girl, a track for each one of their love interests)
Together with the otome CDs, we also have the character CDs, that features one of the guys singing instead of talking. Sometimes we have duets, but it really depends on the series. The naming pattern is similar to otome CDs, but it usually have "character CD" specified. As examples, we have Collar X Malice and Code Realize.
Cover of Norn9 Trio Drama CD Vol. 1. Guys of all ages to please everyone!
Now if you want something more... spicy, they also got you covered, with the R18 otome CDs. If you didn't press ctrl in all h-scenes you came across, you know what to expect here. Moaning, kissing and all those other background sounds. I never came across any game that had an extra CD like this, maybe they didn't wanted to ruin the pure maiden image, it's more common for these CDs to contain original stories. But I did saw the opposite happen actually, an original R18 CD turned into an otomege. Meet Jooubachi no Oubou!
For BL... we have pretty much the same things except the otome variation. The biggest BL company, Nitro+CHIRAL, sure love to make comedic and ecchi ones, but Karin Chatnoir Omega released even the singing variation for their series Omerta.
As one can guess, all of them are in japanese only. It's a fun way to practice your hearing, but never fear! We also have fantranslations for some of these titles, so don't let it discourage you!
Just don't do like fujoshi Kotone Fujisaki from Keijo!! and listen to your precious BL drama CDs in public. Unless you control very well your reactions...
Now that I informed you about this world of voice actor fangirling, let me share my opinion about this. Yes, eargasm is really important in my games. I play lots of unvoiced stuff, but damn, a good voice acting can really make some okay scenes be a lot better (looking at you, Togainu no Chi). And I can count two times when it was a great deal for me...
First time: I usually research a lot about my game before buying because I hate to waste my time and money in things I know I'll dislike halfway through it. The one and only thing I didn't look about too much was Code Realize, and I even paid almost 40 USD for it, because a) I love steampunk; b) art is gorgeous (art is a big deal for me); and c) Suwabe Jun'ichi was in the cast. Yeeeeeep...... And it was worth every cent in the end, thanks nihon gods.
Second time: I just started playing Omerta, the game was casually showing us the boys and stuff, that usual prologue stuff. Then this blond god appeared before my eyes...
My nose sustained major damage by excessive bleeding
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, he seems like a good candidate for best guy of the game. It was already good, but then he started to speak (voice sample)...
Holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit, the flood, I didn't even need a h-scene, take meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
*Cahan*, forgive me. And what about you guys? Do you have any voice actor you like a lot? Share with me while I hear this cover of a Vocaloid song by DMMD Ren's voice actor nonstop!
Hi, ladies and gentlemen! Today, I bring you a bit of history and information about the origins of some BL related terms. Of course, I'm not the supreme autority in japanese BL culture, very far from that, in fact I did a lot of research for this post, so feel free to correct any mistakes, I would love to learn more about it!
Let's start with the main one. What's Yaoi? In the west, is the most generic term to describe works that have romance and usually sex between two males. By now, you must have noticed that I never use this term, be it in this blog or around the forums. Why's that? Because it's a short for the expression "YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi" that roughly translates to "No climax, no ending, no meaning". Pretty much our classic "porn without plot". It was a term used by two manga artists in the '70s to dismiss poor quality doujinshis, and this was appropriated by early BL authors when the genre started to go beyond fanfiction of popular shounen series. Yeah, sure, the low quality and no plot parts are pretty much true for tons of male on male doujinshis I found around in the internet, but BL as a genre now is a lot more than just this! It's natural to distance itself of this old label now. Even if the fans accept it by learning how to laugh at themselves... I still prefer a serious label any day. Japanese sites that sells games and manga magazines all tag those works as BL now, so yaoi is way less used over there, except for refering to parody doujinshis and such. Here in the west, on the other hand, I see the term all the time used by either long time fans that didn't bother to switch out the term they got used to or by people outside the fanbase. Looking around here on Fuwanovel or VNDB, places where the bishoujoge fans far outnumbers the BL fans, like pretty much any other VN discussion place, I see the yaoi term being used quite a few times. Okay, in VNDB maybe it's because the tag is named like this and it could be too much unnecessary work to try to change it now, so they're forgiven for now.
Now now. What if a work have romance between two guys but no sex? Yaoi was for porn without plot, but what should we call the works that don't have porn either? Are you guys familiar with the expression Shounen Ai? Here in the west, that's exactly how we call these kinds of work! Well, too bad it's not exactly right. You see, Shounen Ai was a term to describe manga that were inspired by tanbi literature. These stories (both Shounen Ai and tanbi) were about the pursuit of beauty in the form of romance between a older man and a pure and innocent younger one (read as: teens, late teens or young adults. Younger than this is shotacon), with flowery language and unusual kanji. Meaning, the term Shounen Ai in Japan actually refers to pederasty (and that means "love of boys" in greek). Sure, these manga didn't exactly have any porn in it either, but the association of "no porn" and this term was never a thing in Japan. And they don't even use this term anymore, since this is pretty much a dead type of manga style anyway, much like tanbi. They call everything BL and the rest of the tags that gives away if it have porn or not.
But what about Bara? The even-more-niche gay romance works, usually created by gay men for a gay audience, full of very masculine guys? Are they also known by the name of BL in Japan, even if they are so different of their female oriented counterpart? No, they aren't called BL... and not Bara either. Bara probably comes from the name of a early popular gay magazine (that's not sold anymore) called Barazoku (translates to rose tribe). But that magazine didn't focus only in manga, it also contained news, short stories, interviews, pornographic pictures and even some space for personal advertisement to search for a romantic partner. It was the first gay magazine to be sold in popular bookshops of Japan, so that's maybe why the association was made. Hey, even BL was once called June, because that was the name of one of the earliest magazines for BL works! Well okay, that was some milestone, but guess japanese publishing industry don't use the association. So, what are more masculine guys romance games/manga called? Guess... ML, or Men's Love. Yep. Although, for manga, they also use Geikomi (as in gay comic). So yeah, if you ever want to look for this type of content in japanese sites, you know what you need to look for.
Not BL, but still interesting to mention, maybe the origin of the Yuri term... was a column of Barazoku that tried to appeal for lesbian readers named Yurizoku no Heya (Lily tribe's room) back in the '70s. And yes, Shoujo Ai is used in a similar manner than Shounen Ai, to refer to works that deals with pedophilia (I never saw a yuri manga with a lolicon girl though... but I'm still a yuri noob, there's still much for me to see). Unlike all other BL terms though, Yuri is vastly used in Japan, but GL (or Girl's Love) sometimes pops up here and there.
And now, to wrap things up, what's my opinion about all this terms mess? Frankly, I'm a bit torn... I really dislike the misuse of the terms, but how can little me do something to change such widespread terms in the west at this point? I'll also not even try to correct every single person that uses yaoi instead of BL, but now you know that it kinda annoys me a bit. The most important thing is that we can understand each other, even if we use different terms, but at least I tried to raise awareness so you don't embarrass yourself in your trip to Japan. Cheers!
I'll admit that I only picked up this otomege because I grew up playing RPGs and I have a soft spot for 8bit era games, even if I was born when that era was looong gone. In the end, the game itself have no 8bit whatsoever, aside of the menu, nor does it have "many H temptations" like the VNDB summary suggests, but it DOES have a lot of RPG-style fun that made me satisfied in the end. (OBS: VNDB says that the translation is partial, but it's actually complete already, for all three games.)
Second game's title screen
Dot Kareshi is a series of three short VNs by Rejet that tells the story of a girl that played lots of RPG (totally not me) but sucked hard at them (totally not me, seriously this time). Then, she ended up inside the game by mysterious circumstances and found out that the characters she controled become corrupted by her terrible play style. All three games follow the same formula and not even once the game explains to you how the hell you ended up in that situation. Even better, in the second game it pokes fun at itself because of this lame plot device and by the third game they're not even trying. Just by this, you can see what these games are all about: comedy. The game is constantly making jokes about various RPG tropes and situations that I often run across when I played these types of games myself. The corrupted personality of the guys? I would probably have created some of those myself, like the Wizard that was always angry and feeling neglected because the girl always skipped his magic effect animations.
Token shota, look how adorable (?) he is.
The routes work in a very easy way. Pick the boy you want, clear the quest associated with him and try to score points with him along the way. Don't worry, no gameplay involved. Just don't expect chuuni level of description in the battle parts of the quest, as they are narrated by the characters themselves, describing what item and magic they used or merely saying something like "ha!" when they used physical attacks. Each route have two endings, "stay in the game" and "get out with your boy" and which one is the best depends on the boy, as I see it. But the game thought that getting out was the best for everyone, since it requires you to max the guys affection... And that's another easy feat, because the game have a status screen, so you can pick a choice and see this screen to check how many points you got. Oh, but if you score way too few points, you get a more or less harem (bad?) ending that's really worth to see, especially in the second and third games.
About the boys, the cast includes lots of classic RPG classes in the first two games. The first one gives you a Thief, a Wizard, a Hero and a Priest. The second gives you more unusual choices, like a Dancer and a Beastmaster. And when they run out of ideas, the third game gives you the "villain routes", with options like a Slime and even the final boss, that, this time, got corrupted by the action of the girl indirectly. Like the rest of the game, they also are massive jokes. Take one trait of them, usually the one that got warped by MC's gameplay, and exaggerate it a lot. You got the gist of the boys's personalities. The games are very short so the jokes never felt overused and I laughed a lot of the boys interactions, especially during the second game. The party only reached the end of the "game inside the game" because MC was controling them, because geez, they're a bunch of idiots (in a funny and not enfuriating way)!
Unfortunately, if you're looking for romance with your fantasy boys... Better look elsewhere, it's the weakest part of the game. Firstly, the main character simply don't exist. She's referred as "You" (but it's totally not me!) every time and she doesn't have a single speaking line. Not only she's unvoiced, she only reacts with exclamation marks and other color coded symbols (like a red one for anger and a pink one for embarrassment) that appear in a bubble at the side of the screen. She actually appears in CGs, but it's always the same generic girl with a shadow covering her eyes. On top of that, because the game is super short, there's like no development in the romance. Sure, you can say the guys are in love with her already because they wouldn't be able to do anything without her, literally. But what about the girl? We have hug and kiss CGs for most of the normal and best endings, but we'll have to just believe that things went well between them... somehow.
This line only appears because it was right after a choice. Usually, the protagonist don't say anything.
Speaking about the games in separate now... Please note that they have completely independent stories and can be read in any order. The first chapter was the weakest one. I had a few laughs through it, but the perviness of the boys was a bit tiring and not very funny. Thief's (yeah, no one have a name, only their classes, FF1 style) character was also supposed to be all flirty, but he never convinced me, so his character felt a bit bland. My favorite route ended up being Wizard's, simply because the conclusion of his battle was priceless.
First four boys
The second chapter. THE SECOND CHAPTER. Now, this one is good and definetely the best. It's very very funny, I can't even choose my favorite part of it. Knight is surely the best boy, but meathead Monk is a pervy executed in a way more ridiculous and funny than the first chapter cast. Even the weakest route, Beastmaster's, because he's an ass sometimes, ended up being really enjoyable because of Knight and Monk. And Dancer's random dances just adds to the mess that it's this party. Believe it, they managed to ruin all the sexiness that could be an hot spring scene and I loved it.
These guys together are way too funny
The third chapter is also pretty good, but not as funny as the second one (but still funnier than the first). Why's that? Because somehow or other they decided to make the villain routes... the most moe ones. The guys are so adorable and harmless, I wanted to protect them all! Of course, the game also make fun of their harmlessness, and I laughed, but it didn't stopped me to find a certain tsundere extremely cute. And just to mention, there's not only villains in this chapter, there's also an NPC named only Villager. He's da man, I'm only saying this. Just leave the "bad" ending for last!
The one in the right is not a girl, it's one of the heroes. Actually, it's not a guy either, it's a slime!
Soundtrack is fine, and some songs even have some 8bit beats that add to the charm. Voice acting is really good, as expected of some well known names in the cast, like Hirakawa Daisuke (Saint Germain from Code Realize), Toriumi Kousuke (Saito Hajime from Hakuouki), Namikawa Daisuke (Sasazuka Takeru from Collar x Mallice) and Sugita Tomokazu (Kitagawa Yusuke from Persona 5).
In the end, Dot Kareshi was an overall positive experience, even more after I finished the first chapter. But even then, it worked well as an introduction to the game. It's a short journey, more or less 2,5 hours for each game (may vary, I'm a slow reader), but full of laughter and a bit of nostalgia, of my own time playing fantasy RPGs. And moral of the story: treat your RPG characters well!
Recommended if you like RPG and short comedic novels.
Skip it if you want important romance plots and a protagonist that actually exists.
Or: The ballad of the girl that couldn't control some borderline shotacon impulses.
Hiii guys and gals! This week I'll just post this quick rambling because I have tons of studying left to do for my master's degree entrance exam. So let me tell you a short story about something I love in VNs: pretty boys. (Don't worry, there's moege too, the title isn't a lie like the cake)
Okay, it's not like I don't like 2D pretty girls. They're awesome too, in their ways, but... I don't know, my eyes just got pulled to the boys, in all the wrong places.
I read tons of varied stuff. I don't put a link for my VNDB list on my profile because that wouldn't help anyone in giving me recommendations. Even I never found a pattern in that list, an amalgamation of otomege, BL, galge, Yuri, OELVN and one obvious troll VN made purposely bad but still so bad it's so good. BUT! I noticed I never read a single moege. Of course, my (preconceived) opinion of them are that they are boring and have way too many routes and excessive length. I'm a completionist, but read all routes in a moege seems like a chore I'm not sure I want to go through. But preconceived notions are bad, like real bad, so I started to look for something that picked my interest.
And I stumble upon something called Haruoto Alice * Gram. Judge me all you want, but I clicked in it just because this adorable Hatsune Miku expy in winter clothes! Kyaaaaa~ Because first you see the heroines, then if the game is shit.
Okay, the character design is already pleasant enough for my eyes (wait, but all moeges have cute designs, that isn't the problem with them!)! I mean, these girls are all kinda cute!
There's one more, but she was too meh, I didn't bother with her too much. Okay, their tits are a bit too balloon for my tastes, but I can easily ignore this. I'm determined to give some moege a chance, I can't give up so easi...
I kept scrolling the vndb page...
And stumble on... him.
KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! OMG, SO CUTE!!!! WHY THERE'S NOT A ROUTE WITH HIM HERE?? A TRAP ROUTE IS FINE TOO!! I WANT HIM!!! DAMN, WHAT A WASTE!!!
Wait, this is a moege... Of course... there's no route with him...
Before I read this 2011 game from Pil/Slash, a developer infamous for doing weird shit, I heard several people in the BL community say that this game is like the kamige of BL games. Sure, I took it with a grain of salt, since fanbases in general hyper-inflate scores like no tomorrow. Even the most popular Nitro+Chiral BL games are good but nowhere near kamige level. I accepted it and started this game, one that felt very different from your average BL right from the start.
Turns out that they were right about the kamige-tier thing.
The cover with our heroes.
Written by Kusaka Matsuri, same scenario writer of Black Cyc's Gore Screaming Show, Shingakkou tells the story of Michael, a boy enrolled in a boarding religious school going back home for Christmas Eve... only to find his family murdered, an inverted cross painted with blood in the wall and the entire house burning down. And all of this is like, ten minutes into the game. With only his twin brother Gaby by his side, Michael turns his back on God and go back to the school only to get his revenge, because is there that the possible culprit is hiding, along with a secret cult that worships the devil.
Despite the anti-religious feel of the prologue, and good part of the common route where Michael mocks internally all his old habits that he's only reproducing not to be expelled, the message of the game is really one of love and forgiveness, a journey where Michael needs to learn to believe in God, other people and himself again. It's really incredible the amount of development he goes through the novel, I was almost shocked when I went back to the common route after finishing a route and saw irritable Michael again. And fortunately, said development isn't just him growing a spine, because he have one from the start. And I'm not a religious person myself, but even then I found the message (and the endings) extremely beautiful and touching, and not a propaganda of sorts, like some exorcism themed movies.
Gaby is the one on the left, Michael on the right.
But! Before we can go to those positive messages, we have to pass some horror stuff. And with "horror stuff" I mean: bizarre surreal images flashing, unknown sounds interrupting the conversation, jumpscares, cute (but in the end not really) laughing coming from nowhere, tons of allucination sequences, have to hear a character called Lucifer say things he wasn't supposed to know and even the music stops when he does so. Remember to play it in bright places! Seriously, the slice of life parts are the calm before the storm and you'll feel it. There's always that sense of dread after the story takes its turn for the worse so Michael (and you) is constantly unease. So the balance SoL/Plot is handled pretty well. And of course they have to turn it up the horror part for the bad endings, making Michael goes insane with some supernatural brainwashing, showing us all types of surreal scenarios. And when you're feeling all down for failing the choices, the Devil even appears on screen to laugh at you. My first bad ending was almost a traumatizing experience.
Speaking of the supernatural, lots of occurrences are blamed in the "powers of the Devil" and, lacking other explanations, Michael and you're kinda forced to believe that it exists and it can totally screw you over masterfully. If you're looking for a story where every single occurrence of mysterious shit is explained, better look elsewhere. Although I could argue that explaining stuff here would kinda ruin the atmosphere...
A thing worth mentioning is that the game have a "grotesque switch" to censor the worst CGs (even if there's nothing really gory here, just nightmare inducing). But this also blurry the text of said parts, so for the sake of the experience, bear it and leave it on.
Speaking of jump scares... This screams really pierces your ears.
Now to the routes. We have five guys to choose, but only three are available at start. My recommended order of the first three is Leonid (long white hair), Cecil (short brown hair), then Neil (red hair). While I agree the last two should be locked, forcing you to play all of the first three seemed a bit too much for me. Finishing the game once is enough. Sure, all of the routes offer you something nice to read, but this VN is not a multiple routes mystery. There's one culprit and he's correctly guessed in every single route. So why this huge lock is in place I have no idea. The first routes can be a bit slow, especially if you go with my recommended order, but the game REALLY picks up when you reach Neil's route. There's some repetition even in the characters routes, but this game features one of the fastest skips I ever saw. But at least the game provides you with some choices that you can pick whatever you want and see some different scenes (that are very far from the choice itself, and not just some "different hero reaction right afterwards") that don't really affect the outcome of the story.
So why did I put the two slower routes first? Because Leonid's twists works better if you read his route first. Cecil is a nakige-like (there's still horror parts, it's not all fluffy, but it's full of feels) route that can be read at any point. And Neil's the one most strongly connected with the main plot. So it feels a lot better to read all the plot at once, since the last two routes are also super plot heavy. And weird. Good weird stuff.
The relationship between the characters moves in a pleasant pace, with their romance gradually kicking in. There's plenty of time for them to know each other and the sex scenes are usually located in the end of each route. It's nice to see the romance actually growing and not starting out of nowhere leaving you to believe that the heroes fall for the MC at first sight. Maybe some of those interactions are kinda overlong, but nothing in an annoying level. And since the boys grew in a religious school and the story happens in the '50s or so, expect them to be a bit torn about liking other boys, "this is a sin" is a sentence you'll see multiple times.
Aaaaaaaaw...
Sex scenes are divided in three categories: vanilla, rape and weird shit. They aren't thaaat important to the plot so it's safe to skip them, just remember that they happened, but I must add that at least the ones in the weird shit tier (one in a character's route, another in a bad ending) are completely disgusting and involve some non-human beings (just allucinations, but still horrible to look at) and should definitely be watched for nausea reasons. Disclaimer: I'm a bit weak so maybe it's not that bad...
The vanilla ones are kinda charming since they are a bit awkwardly cute. Unlike most VNs that I read, the boys are a bit confused at how sex should goes. And that's perfectly normal, since they're innocent 16 or so years old boys that lives in a seminary with pretty much zero exposure to anything sex related (of course, because they're all goody two shoes, but the deliquent Neil is a completely different story and he actually have some experience). In one particular scene, the kissing just stops and Michael even wonders what he and his partner should do next. And also, you can pick who's the one that will be on top, a fine addition that pleases both people that want the MC to have the upper hand in the relationship and people that thinks it's weird tiny and cute Michael to top his tall senpai. And for sensitive people, look at these guys. Half of them are kinda girlish (Cecil is the most), so no excuses! Imagine some flats and play the damn game!
The rape scenes... In fact, this game have a rapist route. I had pretty low expectations for this route, since one thing I really hate is rape-turned-love (when brainwashing and drama are NOT involved). But this game surprised me yet again because the rape scenes were handled with the necessary seriousness. Some particular scenes were disgusting to see and a bit painful to hear the voice acting (and it wasn't because it was bad acting). It was very very heartbreaking to see the victims confused, avoiding other people, feeling guilty and crying of shame. So when the victim decided to actually end the relationship because there's no love in it, my opinion of the route improved greatly, because sadly this development is incredibly rare. And this route's ending is so beautiful, bittersweet and satisfying that was one of the best endings of the novel, even better than the true ending.
Another thing worth mentioning is that this game also contains incest. Twincest, in fact. And the excuse they gave to it is nothing like "but they're not blood related" (well, they're twins, that wouldn't work) or "it's fine because it's true love" and it was weirdly good for me. Just be prepared for some surreal, dream-like sex scene.
Cecil is asking who should top. And after this question they tossed a coin, seriously.
The art is a bit old shoujo manga style, and that maybe isn't for everyone, but it grew on me kinda fast. The sprites have lots of facial variation and even some minor characters have sprites, which is a plus. And we also have corpse-like-people sprites for some allucination sequences. It's super creepy.
The music are all very good, using chorus to some great effects, be to sound solemn or creepy. Except the ending song, that is some upbeat thing that have nothing to do with the game, except maybe the routes that end very happy, but oh well. Voice acting was also very good, everyone is full of emotion and even the side characters do a nice job. Michael is probably the best, but damn, that principal was two times more annoying because of the voice acting. Lucifer's chilling voice is another worth mentioning, since the secret society parts wouldn't be as terrifying without him.
Quote aside, this is the kind of CG that keeps flashing.
Without spoiling too much, I need to share a few words about the ending(s). The villain was fearsome, I liked who they choose to be the culprit and see his plan working left me at the edge of my seat. But his motivation is really hard to get. His character as a whole is a bit hard to understand. The game gives you lots of backstory, and what happened to him over the years, for you to think about, but the workings of his mind was a bit beyond me. Of course, read with the possibility that maybe I'm a bit dumb.
In the end, Shingakkou was one of the best visual novels I ever read and I really wanted to find another that packs such a powerful punch. It was pure when it was supposed to be pure and scary when it was supposed to be scary. The characters were amazing and the plot was good not only comparing it with the other BL titles I read (that would be an overkill for them), but even with other bishoujo eroges I played. BL titles are a bit niche, I know, but I can't recommend this game enough.
Read it if you like horror and mind fucking in general.
Avoid it if you dislike long novels (some parts drags a bit), incest, pedophilia and some questionable religion talk (Lucifer is the worst offender, obviously).
Hey everyone! Today I'll talk about one of the most popular japanese otomeges from one of the most popular japanese developers: Hakuouki! Seeing there's tons of releases/sequels/prequels/spin-offs of this game, in different platforms even, I'm doing a simple guide for everyone trying to start your journey but have no idea where to begin.
First, what is Hakuouki? It's a game by Otomate/Idea Factory, released back in 2008 for PS2, it tells you the story of some beautiful men in the Shinsengumi (that is, long story short, a special police force of the late shogunate period, 1864). The name of the guys are all from real existing persons, but some extra supernatural elements like demons and vampires were throw in the story for fun. If you're a fan of stories set in Japan's past so this game is just for you because the atmosphere is the best part of the game! Also with you like katanas. The main character is a bit bland and mostly useless, but the samurai boys are interesting enough! The fights are also fun, not super epic chuuni style, but good with some tragedy stuff. Also good to note is that it was first localized in 2012, a time where otomeges in the western market were still rare.
Anyone wanted long haired bishies? They're all (except that second one from the left) so beautiful~
Still with me? Want to give it a go? Okay! Let's put things in order!
Looking at the english versions, the very first you should get is one of the following:
1) the Android or iOS version that's named simply "Hakuoki";
2) the Memories of Shinsengumi version for 3DS, that have some side stories that wasn't included in the first PS2 version (that's also not included in the Android/iOS version);
3) the Stories of the Shinsengumi version for PS3, that also includes the fandisc (there's actually NO other way of reading the fandisc in english outside of this version);
4) the Steam version (the age check is because of violence and not porn), although I advise against this one simply because this version (also available for PSVita) was split in two parts AND PART TWO WASN'T LOCALIZED YET! YOU'LL ONLY BUY HALF THE GAME! Supposedly there new routes here, since it's a remake of the original, but you'll have to wait until next year to see the full game, or you can just pick the other versions. Part one's name is Kyoto Winds and part two is Edo Blossoms.
That's enough to understand the general idea of the game. Did you liked and want more? What's the next step? If you bought the PS3 version, read the fandisc, Hakuouki Zuisouroku, since it expands some stories of the main game (those stories aren't sequels, they happen in the middle of the first game)! And of course, there's some extra short stories for each of our guys, including ones that weren't available first time around! It's fun and fluffy most of the time, to break the serious atmosphere of the main scenario (Well, that's what fandisc are for...) ^.^ Unfortunately, you need to understand japanese to keep going...
Next entry in your journey is Hakuouki Reimeiroku, a prequel. The catch here is that title is not an otome. WHAT? Yeah, you read that right. The protagonist is a guy (no, sadly no BL), there's no romance to be found here and the focus is actually fighting, bloody fighting, even with the MC loses tons of them. And honor, friendship and loyalty stuff. Pretty cool actually, especially for people that don't play otomeges for romance! There's plenty of versions for you to choose (DS (should work with an emulator), PSVita and PS3), but no PC (I noticed that otomate seems to hate PC for some reason... ¬¬).
With no girls around, no BL is a waste of ikemens...
After that, comes Hakuouki Kaikoroku, a mobile game that expands even more the lore of the original. It's like a second fandisc, with more short stories and tons of interactions between our characters.
And, with that you just finished the main dish of the Hakuouki series! Wait, there's more? Well, of course, let's go over the spin-offs! I should note that all of them are completely useless to the lore, so only play them if you end up being a Hakuouki completionist.
On the serious side, we have the Urakata Hakuouki games (the first one and its fandisc). It's set in the same world of the main series, but with a new MC and new boys (all of them still based on real people). Weirdly enough, you can actually start here, since the story here is mostly recycling some ideas from the first game. So either you play this if you really REALLY liked the original's ideas or start with this title. This game also have RPG elements, something that didn't let the otomege fanbase all that happy...
On the silly side we have three more games: Hakuouki Yuugiroku and its sequel, just a collection of mini games with chibi characters and some short stories and CGs in between (but I don't think it's worth playing these for the story), and Hakuouki SSL, an officially made fanfic-of-sorts high school AU story. Yes, really. It's cute and happy, unlike the more serious main game, so if you want some giggles, this game is good enough.
Blush boys in a doki doki school scenario
And that concludes aaaaaaaaaall entries of the Hakuouki series. Phew! Was it worth? That's for you to decide. Lots of fans of the series were a bit annoyed by the constant milking of the frachise by otomate, but I think they finally stoped. I just hope they don't do same with Code Realize, bc I'm following this series for now, and I don't need more games than I can buy... In my humble opinion, a good place to stop is either after Reimeiroku or Kaikoroku. Or before Reimeiroku, if you're in for the romance.
Oh... there's still all those anime adaptations to talk about... Eer, this blog is about gaming so I'll stop here! For now. Next time, in BL news, I'll try to do my first review! Until then!
Hi there, guys and gals! Part 2 of my Kickstarter special, this time with some BL titles! What new things these guys will bring us? Let's find out! Again, I'm only listing projects that were 100% funded already, but it's never too late to follow them!
OBS: Seiyuu Danshi also fits here, but since I already talk about it in the last BL post, I'll skip it for now.
Sentimental Trickster
DEMO ON THE OFFICIAL SITE
Let's start with a normal slice of life college stuff, that seems to be unusual for BL games whatever the reason. This game follows shota MC Haru trying to adapt to a new city and a new home. But then he meets a bunch of new guys and then everything works out... I hope so. Haru seems to be kinda bratty and sarcastic, so I wouldn't be surprised if he actually start picking fights and be all snarky with his love interests... The art seems a bit outdated, but old shoujos also have it's charms, right?
1st degree
DEMO ON ITCH.IO
Anyone remembers them? They posted here on Fuwa some months back, and I'm following it since them! It's story is about a psychopathic detective that decided to dirty his own hands to solve a case. One thing that draws attention in the KS description is this sentence "Who will he [MC] choose to love, and who will he resolve to kill?". Yep, in this game we have to KILL THE REMAINING LOVE INTERESTS TO SEE SOMEONE'S GOOD ENDING. Dear god, can I handle this? Oh, and did I mention we have a threesome route? Not everything is blood and tears here XD The game is expected to release in early 2019.
Full Service
DEMO ON THE OFFICIAL SITE
Well, how about we talk about muscular bara guys now? This game tells the story of average MC Tomoki and his chance encounter with the dudes that work in a spa, and then becomes a regular there. Seriously, you can even pick who's gonna massage you there. But this is not a nukige (I think), we'll have plenty of other activities to choose in MC's free time! And of course, he needs to work too, massages aren't for free (maybe in the good ending, but...). The game is expected to release in January 2018.
Chess of Blades
A loli in a BL game? She's the villain, I'm calling it now!
DEMO ON ITCH.IO
Last week, I brought you a masquerade otome. Now, I bring a masquerade BL :3 Guess I just love the theme. Anyway, this game is about a murder that occurs in a ball and our prince-like MC Rivian will have to solve the mystery. And maybe find something more there. The game features 3 boys and 2 versions, one PG13 and other R18, for you to choose. I really loved the art of this one! The game is expected to release around Christmas, wait, this is later this week! Yay!
And that concludes my KS special! Next time, with otomege, I'll teach you guys how to make sense of Hakuouki's releases. Until then!
