alpacaman

Alrighty, it's posting time! I'm going to finish Iwaihime until this weekend, but so far I've read Kanae's and Riria's routes and I'm currently reading Kiko's. 
Well... It's not getting any better. To be honest, the only reason I haven't dropped it already is because I'm reading this for my vn club, so I do want to discuss it with the people there, even if it's to complain lol
Kanae's Route: Hum... This one was just weird, I guess. I don't know, I just noticed that the thing that made me really want to stop reading is the pacing, again. Well, it's not like this problem would disappear from one part of the game to the other. 
Riria's Route: In a nutshell, can Lily just fuck off?
I'm still reading Kiko's but man, this is going to be one heck of a route... Sexism and traditional gender roles: the route! Oh boy, I can't wait!  Hahaha... haha... ha...
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As soon as I finish this one, I'll start the zero escape games aaa I can't wait!

You guys kind of underestimate the effort and resources necessary to make a decent VN. Art is really expensive, and voice acting even more expensive if it's meant to not sound like shit. VNs are a really good, cheap tool for people that want to create basic interactive stories for fun or are artists and want to apply their own skills in such a way... But when we get to levels of quality that could be attractive to a mainstream audience the difference between VNs and simple 3D game or other types of 2D games isn't that massive. And I'm not sure I have to remind anyone how huge 2D/retro gaming is right now, so we shouldn't really have to use AAA games as the point of reference...
Anyway, I think most arguments people already listed are valid (massive amounts on text in aggressively pushed "kamige", questionable porn, anime aesthetic)... But an important point people forget about is how many, often high-quality VNs don't have mainstream appeal because they defy expectation/do not provide the kind of interactivity Western audience wants. Every time I see Steam users complaining about a VN they played not being a game or having too few choices, it reminds my how either bizarre or dull the idea of interactive literature is for an average gamer... And at the same time, people who are not into games in the first place have few incentives to get into this particular niche of otaku media. And the way the industry handle stuff hardly helps. One genuine perk of VNs over other otaku media is conclusive romance, but for example, we in the West never get the anime tie-in titles that let you pursue a non-canon romance from popular shows. We never see VNs coming to the West with a proper marketing budget either. The result is that you have things like Steins;Gate and Clannad, with legendary-status anime adaptations, being the only VNs with proper reach, alongside gameplay-heavy adventure games such as Danganronpa or Ace Attorney and occasional lowest-common-denominator moe crap like Nekopara...
I don't know if I'm right about it, but the longer I look at it, the more botched the whole "bringing VNs into the Western market" feels. Mostly because it relies on the existing fan community nearly in 100% and its ideas of outreach stopped at MoeNovel's delusions of 12-years-old French girls playing Pulltop's waifu games. Either VNs truly have no appeal in the West outside of porn and the small crowd of people looking for romantic stories, or they are selected and marketed in an atrocious way. I would hope it's at least partially the latter, because that still can be remedied to some extent... Like not letting this category on VNDB to forever stay massively neglected.

I personally think that VNs right now are in a sense stuck in a cursed loop. VNs as a medium just really lack variety and as a result appeal to a small number of people. Even most all-ages titles follow the same story structure: even in non-adult titles a male protagonist always has to be surrounded by a lot of female love interests; it almost always has to take place in high-school; even in plot-focused stories there are a lot of slice-of-life scenes, which aren't even well written, and mostly just serve as a way to stall the story for some time rather than developing the characters; finally, the personalities of the protagonist, the heroines and even the side characters typically just follow certain well-known archetypes. So, if you just happen not to enjoy some of these titles and just want to find something more unique, you're much better off watching some anime or reading a manga. Otome games are a bit different, but, from my limited experience with them, they seem to have a bag of different, though slightly similar, problems. There are indeed some unique and experimental VNs that do things differently, but most of these are doujin titles and don't get that much exposure. Most of them aren't even that good, since good authors are likely to join some company at some point and start making a lot more standard VNs, or leave the medium altogether. Also, we, the current VN fans, enjoy these tropes to at lest to some extend, and a lot of us actually prefer them. As a result, in a short run it's not a very good strategy for companies to experiment with story structures, since they don't know if the fans would like these changes, and they just stick to the strategy that worked thus far. And VNs are also expensive to make, so they don't allow for much flexibility. Nowadays, manga and light novel authors don't even have to make any initial investment at all, since they just can start posting their stories online and see how people react to them, or even completely stick to episodic online distribution. In case of VNs, even a single financially unsuccessful product can make a whole company go bankrupt.
I personally think that if VNs somehow let this loop, there's a good chance that they would start appeal to a bigger number of people. They probably wouldn't be the same people as the current VN fans. Will they ever do that? I doubt it, but I don't know. EVNs might actually lead to something interesting at some point, who knows?

Well, I think most Ryukishi's VNs need to be read at least twice if you want to properly understand them. I personally read Higurashi after I already watched the anime adaptations, and I was really impressed with how well-written and filled with small unnoticeable details it was. To be honest, I think that it probably made me enjoy it even more than if I read it blind. The problem with Umineko is that it's just way too long. I've been wanting to reread it for years, but, honestly, I just don't want to spend 100 more hours on a story that I already know, no matter how much I love that story. Even if it probably deserves it, but, well...

Afaik the remake uses the original script (without H-scenes).
The main issue with the final route imo is how disconnected it is from the main game. The "not caring about side characters introduced 30 hours into the game" part wouldn't be as much of a problem if there was something you cared about in the first half that carried over, like
 

So I'm currently re-reading episode 1 (at a very slow pace since I only pick it up when I have the mental capacity to properly process it, wich sadly isn't that often at the moment) and it's even better than I remember. There are just so many clever details I completely missed the first time. Like how the narration switches from first person to third person in the scene where Maria reads the letter after dinner. Which is such a hilarious scene btw, with this deep female voice coming from Maria's happily smiling sprite and all the adults losing their minds not over how absurd this all is but over the prospect of losing their share of Kinzo's inheritance.
Also so far the VN is stuffed with symbolism that went over my head the first time because I read it as a mystery novel, some of it rather obvious, like the wilting rose and the charm (especially as it's directly contrasted with the gold bar). It's pretty amazing how from the start the story is constructed in way that it can be read both as a murder mystery, as a fantasy story and as what Umineko calls "with love". To use the example of the charm Maria gives to Jessica who passes it on to her mother can be read either as a literal magic charm that protects Natsuhi, a gesture of sympathy (or love) from Jessica to her mother or as a clue for who the culprit is as
One other random thought I had while reading: Could it be Maria is autistic, not in the internet insult sense, but going by actual diagnostic criteria? She displays quite a few typical symptoms. In the beginning it's mentioned how her she has rather minimal facial expressions. She has a rather monotonous way of speaking (not so much in the dub, but that wasn't part of the original release), using rather simple and stereotyped speach patterns and echolalia. She lives in her own world and is neither able to pick up irony, fit in with her classmates, nor is she able to adapt to different social contexts. She also displays some compulsive behavioural patterns, like when she obsesses over the wilting rose and even heavy rain cannot stop her from keeping up her search for it.

Cyriak is kind of infamous for his weird videos. A few years back the rap duo Run The Jewels published a cat themed remix album called Meow The Jewels (which is worth listening to on its own) and Cyriak directed the video for one of the singles:
 
 

Honestly, wtf is wrong with the internet?

Yeah, the pacing so far seems like AiD were originally planning on wrapping things up somewhere around maybe milestone 4 or 5. Which I would be totally fine with, if they manage to get back to their original schedule of one release every year or two. What AiD is especially good at imo is telling small emotional moral tales and tying them into the character arcs of their main cast. Rushing to wrap up the central conflict in one chapter or two would probably take away the space for them to that.

A short preview video for side:below got released. Looks like we're (finally) getting somewhere.

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I finished playing VA-11 Hall-A recently and it was quite enjoyable. The bartending mechanics were nicely woven into the story and surprisingly challenging at times.
The protagonist, Jill, is adorable and relatable and made for an overall enjoyable experience in the game. She has these weird quirks that contrast with her serious demeanor and makes her all the more endearing. The rest of the cast also have some interesting personalities that kinda make them stand out in their own way, and it was interesting to hear about their views on society. I always made it a point to serve the right drink at the right time so I don't miss out on any good dialogue.
Oh, and Dorothy is a lot of fun :3
The ending managed to make me cry a bit. It was bittersweet, but still left me feeling hopeful for Jill. I'm very much content with how things turned out overall and how well the game managed to leave an impression on me.
 
The game may or may not need a guide depending on how observant you are, but some choices are just really difficult to get without one. That said, whenever I did find the most optimal answer, I'm always able to trace it back to subtle hints in the dialogue. If any of you go in blind for your first playthrough, I'd recommend paying extra careful attention to each client's preferences and to Jill whenever she talks about a drink's history. Thankfully the game is fairly forgiving on mistakes, so you'll be fine as long as you're not a total jerk.
 
Overall, I highly recommend it!

Okay. I'll just focus on crime theories for now, as I don't have much to add on the tea parties and ???. It's witches witching about.
Full spoilers for the entirety of Umineko.
Episode 1 murder theory:
That's my theory.
I now present to you episode two stream of consciousness. This time I wrote far less about random details. That may mean I was more invested, or maybe less. I'm not sure.
To be honest, I don't appreciate the author telling me how to enjoy my mystery novels, but fine. I can try and solve them, see? (To be honest, I now realise that Ryukishi07 really did give us everything we needed to get through all the hard parts if we'd read through Umineko once.)
 

Finally done with the Umineko question arcs. It ended up taking a lot longer than I expected (almost two months), mostly because the first two episodes were less exciting than I hoped for, which led to me putting them on hold several times in favor of other games and VNs. Things started getting more interesting in episode 3, and then even more so in the fourth and final episode.
 

I've probably forgotten to mention some things, but this'll have to do for now. I know there's a recent Umineko discussion post here on the forums that I'd love to read, but I haven't dared venture into it due to fear of getting spoiled in some way. I'll probably have to put it off until I'm done.

On that note, I think it's about time I move on to the answer arcs, and I'm looking forward to seeing if any of my theories managed to hit the nail on the head.

So I finished the YU-NO remake. My main takeaway is that it was a poor decision to do a shot for shot copy (minus the h-scenes) imo. Not in the sense that the things that they reworked are necessarily bad, although the visuals certainly aren't perfect. I haven't played the original so I have no nostalgia for its artstyle or voice acting. But rather there is a disconnect between its updated packaging and its script and gameplay system which are both barely able to hide their age. For example the pacing, story progression and plot construction are pretty weird from today's standards. They totally made sense when the original came out. The multi-route mystery was a novelty at the time and I imagine employing a point-and-click adventure gameplay mechanics for progression probably made the most sense at the time but in a 2019 release the pacing feels excrutiatingly slow at time when you have to click different places on screen to get lots of tiny pieces of information, especially as most of what you learn doesn't really have an impact on the true route. I think a reworked script that employed a more modern VN-route structure and got rid of some its more dated aspects could have worked wonders for a YU-NO remake and made it worthwhile for both fans of the original and new readers. As for the remake we actually got, just upscaling the original art and adding the QOL features to the gameplay would probably have carried better results imo.
The current Umineko discussion has made me kind of want to re-read it next. Originally I planned to wait for Umineko Gold, but that project sadly seems to be dead in the water (pun somewhat intended).

But what does my young foolish self do, who took that key and dropped it down the drain? Never read a mystery novel in my life, and frankly, haven't read any since, if not for other mystery visual novels.
 
Regardless, I've decided to give it another try. Here's a stream of consciousness for the first episode of Umineko, which I started on Thursday and only now finished.
Spoilers for the entire novel as I've read the whole thing and will be using the bits and bobs I remember as I go through.
I'll follow with the tea party and ??? and then possibly clearer thoughts. Also I'll make a blogpost for my everything on Episode 1 at some point.

Umineko does have a pretty clear conclusion, both in terms of plot and themes, it just doesn't bother to explain all of its murder mysteries in way that satisfies anyone looking for clear-cut "logical" solutions, which is kind of the point. My theory for why Umineko is more controversial in Japan is that its critique of a certain hyper-rationalist mindset hits a lot closer to home with a larger portion of the consumer base there. Ryukishi07 reacting to a possible need for answers to the howdunnits based on material reality by effectively shrugging and saying "I gave you Battler's and Ange's "truth", if you are not satisfied with that, go figure it out yourself" is a big middle finger to these people (if the inclusion of Erika didn't piss them off enough (and I could go on about how great of a character she is)). Especially since Japanese popular media, or at least the parts I know, tend to package their social commentary in a way that mostly spares out the individual consuming it. 

You put things really well. Umineko's vast scale and how everything gets tied up is my favorite part. As you said, the core story is arguable extremely simple, but its how the real story is everything in between and how vast in scale that is which I love. In a real way, it gets you to question what is the value of reading a story? Enjoying the fun of it and accepting all the fantastical absurdities (magic), or understanding and intellectually dissecting it in search for the "truth", like some kind of detective? Being somebody who for a long time subscribed to the latter style of thinking, I've since adopted the former perspective. In large part, though not entirely because of Umineko. Furthermore concluding a work so long and complicated is no easy feat, and the ending has been having me reread scenes from the VN obsessively. Which hasn't happened to me since I read Suba Hibi.  
I completely understand your struggle with organizing an analysis of the gold and the golden land. But if you ever were to write it, I would definitely read it.  

Anyway it's kind of impossible to discuss Umineko in a comprehensive fashion because it's so massive. Even if you edited down all the maniacal laughing, uryuu-ing and over-the-top fight scenes you would stil probably end up with an 80+ hours read where every single 10 hour chapter gives you more food for thought than most actual 80 hour VNs out there. Some time ago I planned on writing a blog post about how the gold from the Golden Land is a metaphor for truth, but I scrapped it after realizing all the introduced concepts I would have had to explain and all the plot points I had half-forgotten I would have had to read up on and I just couldn't decide where to even start.

Anyway it's kind of impossible to discuss Umineko in a comprehensive fashion because it's so massive. Even if you edited down all the maniacal laughing, uryuu-ing and over-the-top fight scenes you would stil probably end up with an 80+ hours read where every single 10 hour chapter gives you more food for thought than most actual 80 hour VNs out there. Some time ago I planned on writing a blog post about how the gold from the Golden Land is a metaphor for truth, but I scrapped it after realizing all the introduced concepts I would have had to explain and all the plot points I had half-forgotten I would have had to read up on and I just couldn't decide where to even start.

Anyway it's kind of impossible to discuss Umineko in a comprehensive fashion because it's so massive. Even if you edited down all the maniacal laughing, uryuu-ing and over-the-top fight scenes you would stil probably end up with an 80+ hours read where every single 10 hour chapter gives you more food for thought than most actual 80 hour VNs out there. Some time ago I planned on writing a blog post about how the gold from the Golden Land is a metaphor for truth, but I scrapped it after realizing all the introduced concepts I would have had to explain and all the plot points I had half-forgotten I would have had to read up on and I just couldn't decide where to even start.

Phew... I finished it. After 3 months of reading it, little by little, I decided to seriously read it and finished today!
I enjoyed Clannad as a whole, it wasn't a bad experience, but After Story didn't hit me as hard as I thought it would. Maybe it's because I already knew what was going to happen or maybe it's for other reasons. Either way, it was 7/10 for me.

My thoughts on After Story:
 
After that, I did Sunohara's Ending and Jet Saito and had a damn good laugh, hahaha!
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My next reading will be the little bit left to finish Ace Attorney: Miles Investigations and then return to Kara no Shoujo 2 

Grisaia no Kajitsu isn't rated a 2/10 or anything close to a 2/10. Ergo, the scores cannot be trusted.

Yamaguchi Mioko's album Tsukihime from 1983 reminds me a lot of Clannad's soundtrack when it comes to arrangements and overall atmosphere. For me it totally hits the sweet spot of being melancholic and relaxing at the same time: