Plk_Lesiak

Since being published by Alienworks in mid-2016, Highway Blossoms earned its place as one of the highest-rated yuri VNs on VNDB and could easily be considered as one of the most successful Western visual novels to date. The game from the very beginning stood out through its unusual setting, plot structure and high production qualities, seemingly appealing even to the more demanding or JP-focused yuri fans. It wasn’t a great surprise then that Highway Blossoms’ authors, despite their second title, The Human Reignition Project, being stuck in a development hell, decided to further capitalize on their previous success and create an updated version of HB, with features such as partially reworked art and full voice acting (the initial release had none). The Remastered edition was released on May 18th 2018, two years after the game’s premiere, with quite a lot of fanfare and became available as a free update for both existing and potential owners of the game. So, how that does the enhanced version of everyone’s favourite yuri EVN presents itself, and does it live up top the hype? Spoiler: it does. Kind of... Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Thanks for the advice. I'll be pretty much expecting the worst when approaching, so I don't think it could put me off easily overdoing the porn bits, but I'll take the route selection thing to heart. I probably won't do more research on it, so I don't spoil myself too much. :>

Yeah, I'd normally be a bit apprehensive about buying it, but I guess I'm a bit burned out on the usual stuff right now... Winter break will as good moment as any to check it out and I think my curiosity will win with the repulsion. I mean, it's not something I expect to "enjoy" per se, but it should be interesting, if the good things I've heard about it are just as true as the bad ones. :3 Plus, a short bonus story. Because of certain events which I won't disclose, I'm, for a while now, cut from my credit card and using my brother's for online purchases (it's, like, basically his fault so he can't complain about it :p). So, when I saw the discount, I've texted him: M: Can I buy a game outside of Steam, for 20 bucks? B: What kind of game? M: Well... It's a long story... B: ...is it legal? M: It's from a safe and reputable source! B: Sure... Not sure what he imagined that I'm buying, but I'll probably leave it at that. I don't think he'd be able to come up with anything even close to euphoria in his mind, so I better not give him the title and unwillingly encourage to do research on it.

I imagine they've saved those mostly for the daily deals. Putting nukige or some old moege no one cares about on those would be a bit anticlimactic. :>

"I've been transported to an anime high school full of horny girls, but it's a yuri anime??" A true-to-life story of average otaku's persistent sexual and romantic frustrations.

For the next 12 days, MangaGamer store will feature both a set of fixed discounts and some sweet daily deals, today's one being -70% on Edelweiss titles. While, as usual, most of the things on sale are crappy nukige, there are a few worthwhile titles even now and really cool stuff will definitely show up among those short-term discounts. And, through some unexplainable lapse of judgment, I actually did end up grabbing euphoria for -50%. I guess this year's Christmas will be all red and brown...?

More like, he has nothing to lose anymore and can be 100% honest with his audience. Though, I actually got curious after reading it. Even if it's hit and miss when it goes to heroines, I'll take that any day over 10000th identical moege that just does the same thing as every other one on the market.

Welcome to Fuwanovel, newbie! We'll gladly guide you on your way to even deeper degeneracy and weebness. Hope you'll have fun around here!

Well, I was getting that from the substance of what you wrote at least as much as the form. Especially the fragment where you bashed me for going off-topic felt borderline-unpleasant, so I was mostly trying to unload the tension. I most likely failed. ;p Aye, sadly, we might be in minority even among the Western VN fans and if what Dergonu usually says is true, we would definitely be in minority among Japanese eroge fans - there h-scenes are pretty much always an appreciated bonus. [Redacted] I think my brain got fried today with all the crap I'm working on, probably should stop posting for today...

Really glad you find them useful! ^^ I also really enjoy those small VNs, especially in times like this, when I'm chronically overworked and low on free time. Going to throw this one on the subreddit today, I'm very curious whether anyone wants to hear about free EVNs there. :3

Oh, well, you're definitely disproving my point about hentai being narratively empty. But I think there's a difference between erotic scenes that are made to titillate the reader in subtle ways and have a significant narrative function (like the 18+ scenes in Kindres Spirits or Highway Blossoms) and plain fanservice. Hentai is mostly plain fanservice - which is not a bad thing by itself, I don't want to deny anyone their fapping material or deny that a good romance story and porn can complement each other. The problem arrives when every adult-oriented VN needs fanservice h-scenes to sell and money people shove them in where they don't belong. I'd get minus 500 karma if I wrote it on r/visualnovels, but I'm actually all for portrayal of sex in VNs. I just think that typical eroge hentai scenes are a very shitty way of doing that.

You seem to be in a pretty foul mood today. Well, I don't think you're wrong, but my approach to this is more treating the h-scenes as a necessary evil and focusing on the other values the plot-focused VNs have. Just like microtransaction in many "normal" games, they might be something marketing staff pushes into products (making them less enjoyable for me personally but more lucrative overall), but it doesn't minimize the passion and creative input of the people that worked on it. Plus, not all VNs are eroge and at least with some of the 18+ ones we can hope for proper all-ages releases. Plus, we're talking about the entertainment industry. Everything here is ultimately done for profit and when the bottom line tramples creative concerns, we're getting exploitative shit instead of a compelling product. But it doesn't mean there are no masterpieces created within the VN/anime industry or the compromises necessary to make them profitable should make us disregard their positive qualities.

OK, I'm done with Netsozou TRap - here are my general thoughts (copied from my Crunchyroll review): The sad thing is, this show actually had some potential. I realized that I'm not against this kind of messed-up cheating drama if it sets up the tone right and sticks to it. I actually liked the School Days anime quite a lot, because it not just followed some particularly awful characters, but led them to a properly horrible conclusion. In a way, it was a logical conclusion of the harem fantasy - a scenario in which the protagonist screws every girl around him without thinking of the consequences and is punished for it. And that's exactly what this show needed in order to be at least marginally satisfying - a tragedy, and a one horrible enough to show the characters the full extent of their misgivings. And it ends up with a "I know you sexually and emotionally abused me for the last 11 episodes, but now I understand you did it out of love". And I find that way more perverse than any head in the bag on any boat...

Well, indeed, but I think Maggie addressed that well enough. The thing is, eroge VAs are not really mainstream celebrities. They chose a relatively lucrative niche where voicing porn scenes is a requirement, but you won't see many of them talking about it in cable TV. And if you ask Kana Hanazawa or some other highly-popular anime VA to voice straight-up porn scenes, I imagine they would decline the same way the Western VAs would, just maybe with less ideology attached to it. On the other hand, if there was a booming eroge industry in the West requiring skilled VAs capable of doing both dramatic acting and voicing hentai, I'm pretty sure you'd find similar amounts of talents willing to do it (even if under pseudonyms etc.). Especially because I imagine that voicing an erotic game is still not comparable to working in the sex industry, or something similar that would borderline disqualify you from finding a normal job.

Well, yeah, sure, in the confines of our rooms at least. Remember the recent "should I tell my gf?" thread. And yeah, I guess I was mixing two issues. One is that I think plain porn is always plain porn and I don't think Japanese people have magical powers to extract deeper meaning from hentai. There simply is none. The second is that we shouldn't overstate the "liberal" approach to sexuality in Japan. It's different, but it doesn't mean pornography or eroge are as "accepted" or "mainstream" as some people would like to believe - I was mostly reacting to some statements by the OP, like that Japan's culture is "more promiscuous".

I'm pretty sure Japanese people don't see them any different, they're just not embarassed/bothered about having pure fap material in their narrative games. And remember, in you watch anime for example, you might notice that while the approach to sex is in many ways more relaxed in Japan (although it's, as always, pretty complicated and nuanced), eroge players are not exactly the most respected group in society and the games themselves not completely devoid of stigma. There wouldn't be laws forcing mosaics over everything in a country fully accepting of pornography.

Welcome to the second part of my Yuri Game Jam 2018 summary! Just like the last week's article (if you haven't read part 1, check it out now!), this post will offer you a short overview of visual novels that entered the event this year, this time with the focus being solely on fully-released titles. While in the previous post there were very few surprises (with mostly the two titles I actually expected to deliver quality experiences standing out from the crowd), this time there were a few unexpected latecomers to the event and games that genuinely surpassed my expectations – Scrambled: Syd City being probably the most notable one, and quite possibly the best VN in YGJ this year. It will also make a small trip outside of the VN sphere, but what that is exactly about, you'll see at the end of the article... Enjoy! ----------------------------------------------------------------- A Game About Ants This story about two colonies of anthropomorphized ants and two simply workers that brought those together despite the distrust and differences between them is one of the most charming and compelling stories in this year’s YGJ. Thanks to its relatively longer script (it takes around 2 hours to fully read through), A Game About Ants manages to not only convey an amusing “love beyond prejudice” main plot, but also set it in a pretty elaborate "political" context of a clash between the aforementioned ant nests (heavily inspired by actual species of ants, with their specific appearances, habits and social hierarchies). The end result is a really intriguing and visually pleasant experience, also featuring probably the most sensual scene of antennae “kiss” you’ll ever see in a visual novel... And, quite likely, anywhere else. Do you really want to miss out on that? Final Rating: Highly Recommended Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Happy Birthday to @VirginSmasher! Eh, kids these days... They barely stop using diapers and already they go around smashing pussies and hating on moege. What has this world come to?

It definitely could, but it much depends on when you use them and how you handle the transitions. I imagined them being "interludes" of sorts between the normal story sections, showing the events that are bigger in scale, cover longer periods of time or include many characters outside of the main cast (just as you would see storybook-style, narrated segments in some RPGs, filling you on events that aren't shown through gameplay), but obviously I don't know how you story is going to be structured. Saving them for the end might be a good idea too, if you think you can tell the core story properly without any CGs.

Well, a lot, obviously. But I wouldn't hold that against anyone. Like aren't most people around here neurotic nerds? That might be a good idea, although if you get a free moment, I'd also suggest grabbing a beer/a glass of whisky and chilling out here or on Discord when your inhibitions and anxiety break a bit. Maybe shitposting a little. You make yourself no favours by getting loudly embarrassed again, these things are not worth taking this seriously. I cringe everyday at embarrassing memories from my on-line past, but you shouldn't let them limit you like this, especially when you apparently have reasons to check out Fuwa from time to time, despite of what you claimed earlier. :>

Looks pretty meat to me - definitely unique, as while there are tons of nicely-drawn VNs on Steam, I haven't seen much this. Also it shouldn't look cheap, if you stylize the UI and execute the artstyle well enough... It might be a bit too much if the game game was just this IMO. Still, if you combine traditional sprites and backgrounds for more casual scenes and use the hieroglyphics to portrait more complex/important ones, I'd be all for it. Also, if these are easier/cheaper to make, it will simply let you include more unique illustrations, which is always a great thing. EVNs often end up very light on CGs and leave many events understated because of the budget constraints. Hieroglyphs are a very nice tool because they let you show many things in a very simplified manner (court events, battles etc), which might be "inferior" to drawing them realistically, but much better than just describing them.

That's a nakige setup all-right. Are you planning for seperate routes for each of the major characters you listed there, or focus on Skye? Proper multi-route yurige are actually pretty rare and would stand out nicely from the crowd. I also very much dig that art sample, quite gorgeous. I'm not a writing expert by any means, so I'm not sure I can give meaningful advice on that, but I think you can approach writing yuri just like any other kind of story - female lead is a change in perspective and requires slightly different characterisation, just like Cykaki suggested, but don't necessarily change the fundamentals of your story. There are certain storytelling tropes commonly used in yuri, but you shouldn't actively try to follow them IMO. I would also argue against ecchi and for cautious use of erotic segments - the fanservice simply doesn't fit the type of story you're apparently trying to make. Although considering AIs backstory and Skye's description for example, an erotic scene between those two could have a lot of meaning. Just don't include such stuff without clear purpose. A lot also depends on how much realism you include. Do you ignore LGBT issues like Nurse Love Addiction and make everyone "gay by default", touch upon them in minor ways like Flowers, or make them a major focus of the story? I don't think there's a wrong choice here, but it's important to be consistent and it will affect the tone of your story and the process of writing the characters in a major way. Also, well, I don't know if I can speak for anyone but myself, but a lot of yuri media is very heavy on drama, Flowers included, so I don't think it's anything people would dislike by default. "Friends to lovers" is also a pretty common yuri trope... But as with any other romance genre, anything goes, as long as its well-written and compelling on some way. Don't have any clear arguements for or against it TBH, apart from the fact that it let's you set up an elaborate and believable bond between the heroines and prevent the romance from showing out of nowhere.

So on this beautiful, sleepless night (my stomach was apparently fed up with the way I was treating it lately and went for a mutiny), I've finished watching Aoi Hana... And TBH, this was quite a beautiful show. I understand well why people might not really enjoy it - the art is heavily dated, some plot elements seriously overstated, the conclusion open-ended and involving friendship rather than straight-up romance. It's also this kind of old-school, non-fanservice'y yuri that can easily bore someone who isn't very tolerant of slow-paced, SoL content - I can imagine that in manga form it could've been genuinely dull, just as @Ranzo suggested. I, however, loved most of it. While Fumi is a fairly meek and at times annoying character, A-chan is absolutely lovely and the drama in the show, for the most part, feel genuine and interesting. It's also not as detached from reality as most yuri shows, dealing with the social stigma and uncertainty that would come from the characters being in similar positions is RL Japan. It was definitely imperfect when it goes to details, but generally highly satisfying - I would definitely love to see more yuri shows like that instead of creepy comedies or fanservice-filled disasters such as Citrus (although with Bloom into You I can't complain that much I guess). A solid 8/10. Learning a bit more about Strawberry Panic, I'll probably skip it for now and go straight to Maria-sama ga Miteru the first opportunity I get. Before that, however, I don't think it would feel right to go forward without watching the worst yuri anime ever created: Netsuzou TRap. It's a short series with 9-minute episodes, so I won't be wasting much time for it, but I'm extremely curious about just how dreadful it can be...

Just a small update - the petition crossed 220k signatures now and might even reach quarter million within 24 hours from campaign's launch. I'm still unsure whether it has any chance at making a difference, but it will definitely make some execs at Tumblr feel uneasy and if it gets rejected, I hope the huge "FU" towards the community will encourage even many SFW creators to leave the site. With this kind of response, things should definitely get interesting. :>

Maybe you can find this little thread helpful? Basically, as many as there are needed to create all things listed there and put them together. It will vary wildly depending on the specifics of the project and the skillsets of people involved, but expanding slightly on what Ranzo wrote you'll find 1. Writer, 2. Character/CG artist, 3. Background Artist, 4. GUI Designer, 5. Programmer, 6. Editor, 7. Composer as typical roles in VN development, often with people serving multiple positions in an indie project. In high-budget VNs, on the other hand, you might see multiple people working on every aspect of the game, artists specialized in very specific tasks (ex. colouring), a designated director and a proffessional voice acting cast.