Magical Dears is the newest VN by one of Navel's subordinate companies, Navel Honeybell... and to be honest, I was interested to see what they would do with it. The VN itself is your standard slice-of-life charage based in an alternate Earth where magicians have been working behind the scenes to save the world since the dawn of civilization. In this world, the magicians revealed themselves when they realized that intervening behind the scenes to prevent disasters had already reached its limit as a strategy, and in exchange for their activities, they asked for independent lands of their own to live, work, and train. Unfortunately, magic society's female:male ratio is at 10000:1 by the time the story begins, so the males are kept locked up for their own safety until they can reach adulthood and be put to work doing what guys do best, lol. Anyway, despite this setting, this VN isn't a nukige... but it does have its problems. It has some decent concepts, and the idea of competing in magical battles for social status and money is interesting. However, the battles themselves are described poorly and the protagonist is made to be an overwhelmingly powerful individual... except the description of the battles makes this aspect so weak as to take all the fun out of it. More annoyingly, Navel has repeated one of the mistakes they made with Tsuriotsu 2... cutting voices for certain characters during random scenes. I'm on Diana's route, and during an entire chapter of it, Minazuki (one of the two imouto heroines) had her voice cut altogether. If it had been just a few lines, I would have forgotten it soon enough, but an entire chapter in which she played a vital role, and in an important scene rather than a mere slice-of-life scene? To be honest, this is one of those times I don't think I can comprehend just how stupid Navel can be. One of the most frustrating aspects of this VN is that it has all the makings of a first-rate harem non-nukige with a real story... and they made the mistake of making it a mere charage and cutting lots of corners. The second you get into a heroine route, the pacing becomes choppy, and the heroines become more and more... uninteresting. It is hard to figure out why an experienced studio like Navel would make so many amateurish mistakes in what is obviously a high-budget VN. Edit: Minazuki doesn't have a voice right to the end of Diana's path... Edit2: Diana's path For various reasons, I almost always choose the 'famous heroines' first, because their paths tend to either be the worst or the best in most VNs they come in. Diana's path... was a bit weak. This was simply because her characterization during the common route was generally less distinctive than the other heroines, and the fact that her lifestyle wasn't integrally linked to the protagonist's seemed to lead to difficulties in bringing her character to life. As a result, much of the drama of her path lacks the emotional impact it should have had, leading me to feel that the path was a failure, overall.
Mmm... there isn't too much extra to comment on with the Katsumi's and Michiru's paths. They are of about the same length as the previous two (which means about one and a half times as long as the average charage route) with a lot of buildup before the relationships actually form. That was my complaint with the other two, and that hasn't changed here. Similarly to the other routes, I felt that the drama actually inside the route was a bit lacking compared to the common route. Katsumi's route is your classic 'blood-related imouto route', with some of the same difficulties other such heroine routes share (inevitably) and it follows the usual pattern of 'blind love>realization of others' reactions>worry and fear>resolution'. The main difference is that the fantasy elements involved in the story in general allowed for a different resolution than is the norm and that there was never any opposition or hesitation from the group of friends. The ending is - like in the other routes - pleasing... though since she is the VN's resident loli, I think the lolicons might feel weird about it. Michiru's route... is your classic 'osananajimi' route... there were some differences, but the big issue - as always - was the protagonist getting around his tendency to see Michiru as 'one of the guys', though it was perhaps less problematic than is the norm in most osananajimi routes because of the way the common route sets things up. Overall, this VN is a high-quality charage, with the drama focused in the common route for the most part. There are some parts that grate on the nerves, but that is inevitable due to my tastes, so people who like this type of VN will lap it up, lol.
First, I should explain why I felt a need to make a title like that... though it is really quite simple. Out of Lump of Sugar's last five VNs, three were complete kusoge. Only one of them was something worth remembering (Sekai to Sekai no Mannaka de) and the others were just downright rotten, due to their use of really stupid gimmicky progression systems (flowcharts with tons of scene-locks and going back and forth, Magical Charming's half-assed 'gameplay' etc etc) that ruined the games even apart from the actual quality of the stories and characters... which was generally pretty poor. This VN, however, brings back at least some of the magic of what made me like Lump of Sugar in the first place... 'soft' moe fantasy that has enough emotional depth to make me actually care about the moe-moe characters. While it isn't a nakige like Mannaka was (it is a light fantasy romance in the style that was popular back around 2005-2009), it is nonetheless a good read... for people who actually like this type of game. The fact that this is what I hoped for out of this company enhanced my enjoyment somewhat, but the general concept - which was weird enough to capture my interest - is what kept me reading... and the fact that the girls hit good moe points without being tedious about it (repetitiveness, endless dating, etc.). The fact that the events in this VN are presented in such a way as to make you actually care about the struggles of the characters that I would normally call trivial is one of the signs of a really good VN design, and I only rarely wanted to hurry things along (to be honest, Sera's route was kind of frustrating at times due to her... inability to deal with her own emotions, though it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the moege I've played in the past). So far, I've played the common route and Sera's route... and unfortunately, my plans require me to move on to Hatsuru (mostly because my back injury leaves me in a state where I don't have the presence of mind to do a lot of work through the pain meds) before I find out whether I have to have surgery, lol. If nothing else, I'll have something to look forward to when I've returned back to a level of health where a painkiller haze isn't interfering with my concentration. Sera's route... to be honest, it is hard to know how different it will be from the others, but is basic theme is personal growth and moving on with life. The ending's epilogue is pretty nice... especially since it is based at least several years after the end of the main story of her path. As I said above, there are some irritating aspects about the formative stages of their relationship, primarily driven by Sera's inability to handle her own emotions, but in the end, it isn't that bad. Edit: Oh, and if you are wondering why I don't give an outline of the basic plot/beginning of the story... its because this is one of those VNs that is way too easily spoiled by any summary at all. I'll be straight-up about this... if you decide to play this game, the vndb summary isn't going to be a problem (it is badly translated and doesn't give you any real info), but you should probably avoid checking out the information on purchase sites like Getchu, as they are pretty spoiler-heavy and this is a VN that is a better experience without the spoilers. It is weird enough that it is just more fun to sit back and read it as is, without a lot of pre-knowledge.
I went ahead and did Yuzuriha's path, since it and Sera's branch off from one another. Despite this fact, Yuzuriha's path is quite distinct from Sera's, so you don't need to worry about all of the text repeating or anything like that. Yuzuriha's path does have one thing in common with Sera's though... and that is that the relation formation stage is pretty long. In both cases, there is a lot of back and forth, chasing and being chased, and if you have trouble with that, this path might be a bit frustrating for you. Once you get past the formative stages, you get a cute couple... who are really slow about moving forward (this was the case with Sera as well), probably because Kiyosumi is pretty bad at reading people sometimes and tends to hold back rather than stepping forward most of the time, though he can be assertive when he needs to be. Again, for people who don't like this kind of relationship development, this path might be troublesome for you. I honestly got the urge to skip through this path repeatedly along the way, just so they would get to the drama... which was sort of anticlimactic. I guess it is because the actual events in the common route have so much impact, but the heroine paths in general feel like a winding down into 'normal' life afterward... and this is supported by the fact that so far, the ending epilogues have gone forward at least into married life after the main path's end. Of course, there are a lot of laughs along the way (love-comedy antics, mostly), so it isn't like the ride is boring, but the common route and the endings are the flower of this VN, more than the actual paths themselves.
PS: The main reason it took me all day to get this far? Drowsiness from the pain drugs... I keep falling asleep.
This is the newest VN by Ensemble, a subsidiary of Will which has previously specialized in 'ojousama-ge' (VNs where most or all the heroines - and sometimes the protagonist as well - are from a wealthy background). This VN takes a slightly different tack than the company's previous games... probably because of the effects of the mediocrity that was Golden Marriage and the kusoge that was Koi no Aria (incidentally, they also split off another subsidiary that specializes in ojousama-nukige, lol). The protagonist of this VN is pretty capable, and this is generally visible from the beginning. He is intelligent, physically excellent, and he is generally considered handsome by the girls of his school and the neighboring school, Shiraha. Shiraha and the protagonist's school are merging as a result of the falling number of children, and that is an important element of the overall story. One thing I found interesting about this VN is that it presents so many varying perspectives about the school merging while also pursuing the heroine paths. Each heroine is not only a strong character in and of themselves, they also represent a demographic or point of view that has something to say about the merging. As a side-note in a surprisingly good VN, I felt that the writer and scenario designer got his point across nicely. This VN splits off really, really early... meaning most of the VN is made up of the heroine routes. Unlike Koi no Aria, where content in general was cut and things felt truncated, this actually works out very well, giving the heroines plenty of character development and adding a lot of depth to their personal stories. Of course, there are a lot of minor issues that take away somewhat from the VN's quality... the fact that Ensemble decided not to include voices for the majority of the non-main characters probably says a lot more about the game's budget constraints than I really wanted to know, seeing as they have, in the past, voiced most of the generic characters in their VNs. Overall, this VN is a pretty solid charage with a very well-represented theme and deep character development. I can honestly recommend this to someone looking for a new charage to play whose protagonist isn't a nameless loser.
Edit: Sorry this was a bit short, for all that I was praising it. I'm in a lot of pain right now, so I honestly don't have the energy for a long post. For those interested in the imouto, Ichika, her 'path' is basically a short 'ah, I just realized I loved you! Let's have sex' path, so it is mostly for those who want some H-action with the adorable imouto. Saori's path follows one of the ojousama patterns, and Hiyori's follows another. In each case, there is enough variation and twists on the theme that they can be said to be distinctive, so don't worry that either path will be a rehash of the exact same pattern with a heroine from another VN. Yukie is your 'ecchi oneesan' heroine... an archetype that is getting rarer and rarer these days. Her path's drama is centered around the warped way in which they get close to one another, and more emphasis is placed on the school events than in the other paths. Mio's path focuses on the complicated emotions that come up with the loss of her school (she's a Shiraha student), as well as the conflicts that are born of those feelings. Akane's path is focused on club activities and is probably the most straightforward of all the paths (also the weakest of the main heroine paths). As I said above, it was pretty interesting how they wove the VN as a whole together by using the heroine routes as perspectives on the same issue, with no heroine route giving the same precise perspective.
Playing: Koisuru Kimochi no Kasanekata by Ensemble. This VN is by the same company that did Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas (kamige) and Ojousama ha Gokigen Naname. The company specializes in ojousama-ge (games with mostly wealthy heroines) and generally the protagonists in their VNs are either wealthy themselves or have some special talent that makes it logical for them to be around the wealthy. There last few games have been mediocre, unfortunately... Golden Marriage wasn't bad per se... but it wasn't great either. Koi no Aria was pretty bad, sadly. I honestly hadn't expected their quality to fall to such a degree so suddenly after the way Gokigen Naname got my hopes up by going at things from an entirely different direction from their earlier games. Planning to play: Hatsuru Koto Mirai Yori (the one I'm most interested in this month) Kodomo no Asobi (Lump of Sugar's latest game... to be honest, considering how horrible their last few games have been, I don't have my hopes up for this one) Naderebo (maybe, if I have time... new companies have begun to make me nervous after how many times I got burned this year) Yome Sagashi ga Hakadorisugite Yabai (Honestly, no real hopes for this... Hulotte is a pretty meh studio) Koko kara Natsu no Innocence (yay, Oppai Company, otherwise known as Clochette, has made a new game! lol Still, this company does make games with good characters and story... they just have really pervy h-scenes and busty heroines) Magical Dears (standard Navel... meaning it will probably be a fantasy charage of moderate quality that gets hyped ridiculously regardless of quality)
First, I should say that never before, in my seven years playing VNs, has a year been as... stale as this one has been. It is not that there haven't been good VNs coming out... it is just that no VNs I might consider worthy of a VN Hall of Fame have come out this entire year. Generally speaking, I can usually expect about three to five VNs in any given year to make it into my personal 'hall of fame'. Unfortunately, this year has literally produced none worthy of that group. Understand, when I say 'worthy', it doesn't necessarily mean that it is my 'favorite' VN. If I were to go by that standard, Silverio Vendetta would be in there, despite its rather glaring flaws. No, when I say something is worthy, it is that it is a VN that I think has lasting value at least partially independent of purely relativistic values (which tend to be the guides for my ratings in various genres). This bothers me. Last year was actually a pretty good one, with more than five VNs making a solid entry into my personal hall of fame. Only 2011 was better in the last five years, and that year was almost demonic when it came to producing first-rate VNs... I've come to expect that at least one or two VNs will be obvious candidates for my VN of the Year in any given year, and that I'll have at least ten to twelve runner-ups... but this year, I've yet to come across a solid candidate for runner-ups, much less for a struggle for the final VN of the Year. I love VNs, for all the pain they've put me through. I slog through dozens of near-kusoge every year so that I can excavate a few gems... and it is getting a bit depressing how pathetic what gems I do find look like. I do this because I honestly think that there is no better electronic medium for the telling of a good story, though books in general still do a better job in general (mostly because of the pathetic lack of first-rate writers and a willingness to back them up fully with art and system support). However, this year is just a bit too depressing for my tastes. I've had no great emotional explosions from playing a VN this year (other than a few really really good moments in Silverio Vendetta), and while there have been some technically good VNs, there hasn't been anything to approach Semiramis or Nanairo from last year in terms of blowing me away... or even anything approaching Hello, Lady for first class character dynamics and presentation. On the other hand, anime shows signs of making a comeback... which is surprising, considering how stagnant the medium has been for so long. Of course, it is likely to be just another 'peak' before another 'trough', but it is still nice to have that balancing out the lowest point in VNs I've experienced yet. I am a bit tired of playing kusoge though... October produced several good VNs... but that was at least in part because it was the most prolific month in this half of the year for non-nukige. Most of the stuff I didn't bother mentioning in the blogs was... not worth mentioning. I tried it, I wanted to be sick, I dropped it. Hopefully, the November or December releases will redeem this year at least a bit... I'd at least like to see one VN of the Year-worthy VN come out, because even I couldn't honestly name Silverio Vendetta as VN of the Year, despite my fondness for it being an obvious tribute to some of my favorite parts of Dies Irae.
I'm going to come right out and say it... Sca-ji slipped up a bit when he designed the true path. Oh, I could understand the big turning point event being as it is, but its effect on certain characters - Rin for instance - doesn't make nearly as much sense as he wants you to think. Rin's change is the most dramatic (for all that happens during the true path, the protagonist is pretty much rock solid, even if he wavers). It is also the most odd, even with the knowledge about her that Sca-ji has been pounding into you from the start (with his usual heavy-handedness). Ai can be considered the true path heroine... except that there isn't one. There is a side-ending for Ai that basically could be considered a normal ending, where the protagonist becomes completely dependent on her in most ways... and it feels almost like a bad ending, despite the easy atmosphere. She does play a role in the main part of the true path after the turning point, but that role is mostly unseen. Sca-ji's choice of turning points in the true path would have been - in many ways - better carried out as an unmovable point of all the heroine paths. My own feeling was that he wasted a perfect way to create an even stronger dramatic escalation for Makoto's, Shizuku's, and Rin's paths by choosing to structure the game the way he did, making you feel too much like the heroine paths were just a foil for what he really wanted to write... the true path. Considering that I actually enjoyed Rin's, Rina's, and Makoto's paths more than I did the true one, I honestly feel that he failed in that respect, actually weakening the VN as a whole by going that way. To be blunt, the turning point of the true path is pretty much the only incident that completely and utterly strips the protagonist of his armor of nonchalance, and seeing how each heroine would have dealt with it would have in and of itself provided a lot of enjoyment and added a lot more depth to the experience. As it is, the true path is actually more of a drag on the VN as a whole, rather than a good center. PS: Yes, I'm aware that, for everyone that agrees with that assessment, there will be a half dozen others who disagree, but that is how I experienced it. I'm biased against Sca-ji's style, and I honestly think he let his bad habits get out of control in the true path.
October VN of the Month Announcement This was actually a harder month to judge than any of the last three or four months, because there were multiple VN of the Month candidates that actually made it to a level where I thought them worth considering. Primal Hearts 2, Kyuuketsu Hime no Libra, and Sakura no Uta were all worthy of a VN of the Month, and it is typical of my experiences with the Japanese VN industry that all of them should be released at the same time. Libra is an excellent light chuunige/slice-of-life/comedy hybrid that has its flaws but overall manages to be more than it seems from the outside. Primal Hearts 2 was a sequel that easily surpasses the original in most ways, taking many of the best elements and discarding some of the worst ones of the original. Sakura no Uta, despite being a deeply flawed work, is nonetheless one that has a lot of artistic (not making a joke, no) value, even if Sca-ji's inability to restrain his love of pompousness and laying down the endless layers of foreshadowing tended to weaken the experience as a whole at times (as well as his tendency to go off on tangents to over-reinforce points he already made). As such, I had to go back and honestly consider each on its own merits... if one ignores its flaws, Sakura no Uta is the obvious forerunner. If one goes for completion as a single work within its genre, I'd have to point to Primal Hearts 2. Last of all, if I had to point to a work that took a lot of different elements from various VN genres to create something interesting within a somewhat stagnated hybrid genre, I would go for Libra. However, the point I made above stands... Sakura no Uta really is the obvious forerunner, based on pure writing quality and the existence of three excellent heroine paths. I honestly haven't encountered any better individual heroine paths than those in a long time, and it proves that Sca-ji is capable of doing that kind of work, if he really puts his mind to it... and though I still have reservations about making this announcement, Sakura no Uta is my VN of the Month for October.
For various reasons, I haven't had time to push my way through the rest of this VN. The biggest reason is simply because I had too much work to do. I haven't even been playing Fallout 4... god what a boring few days. Anyway, this latest entry covers Shizuku's path and the episode marked IV... both of which have a lot of similarities. Shizuku's path doesn't really feel like a heroine's path, to be frank about it. Almost all of it is a reminiscence of what occurred in the months immediately before the beginning of the story, leading up to the funeral scene that the story starts out. On the positive side, it does reveal a lot of secrets (Sui's secrets, Shizuku's, and just what Akashi and Naoya were doing in those few months), as well as the meaning of the beginning scene's stupid jokes. Perhaps it was because Shizuku's role in the VN as a whole up to this point was relatively weak (despite her living with the protagonist during the VN), but it was harder to get into her path, though I found it interesting, and I did like that it filled in the gaps left by the various heroine paths... but again, it felt more like an informative side path than a real heroine path. This is sad, because Shizuku in general is an interesting character (despite her lack of development during the common route). Her path lacks any serious drama because the drama she was involved in was done before the story began. This is a technique some writers in VNs use... but almost never works. Sadly, while this path might be a good tool to pull the VN as a whole together and fill in plot holes, it doesn't do justice to Shizuku at all. IV is a bit different... it covers the first meeting between the protagonist's father and mother, as well as revealing just why the relationships of the Natsume family are so weird and why no one talks about it. To be honest, I could have gone without them covering this directly... just knowing at the third person what went on with the Nakamura's was enough to give a full understanding of the background, and a bit of judicious infodumping would have had the same effect without showing me the protagonist's mom naked (considering the manner in which I read VNs, that just felt weird). Now... onto Ai's path and the true ending. For those looking forward to it... cheer me on, as I have no idea whether I'll have the time to finish this up before Friday.
Yeah, I said I was going to wait until I'd played at least two more heroines before I posted again... but Rin's path has enough impact that I felt a distinct need to post on it ahead of time. Misakura Rin is the protagonist's osananajimi... a childhood friend and one another's first love (this is said pretty much from the beginning, so it doesn't really count as a spoiler). For reasons the protagonist deliberately only hints at (typical Sca-ji) he has been avoiding any sort of contact with her for years... since she transferred out of the area. This is despite the fact that his memories with her are some of the ones he treasures the most from his childhood. To be honest, though Makoto's path is really good, the engagement with the protagonist and heroine is completely different in Rin's path. Unlike in my past experience with Sca-ji, the progression as Rin's personal issues are revealed in detail is carried out in a manner that is neither irritating nor excessive, and even the building of their relationship feels more natural than you generally see in a VN. Understand, if you have read a lot of Japanese literature, it is really easy to figure out where Sca-ji is going with Rin even without getting on her path. He lays the hints on pretty thickly, and the reaction of a certain fushigi-ko character (not a heroine) to Rin is the final nail in the coffin. If you honestly haven't figured out why the protagonist is so intent on avoiding building a relationship with Rin early on, you are probably pretty dense... though the details are - of course - only revealed in her path. In addition to the purely physical issues, there is a significant amount of psychological weirdness involved, and I have to make the suggestion that you keep in mind that Sca-ji can't seem to avoid inserting mysticism into any and all his stories on some level, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that read Ikikoi the way he tries to keep certain issues ambiguous throughout this path. I have to wonder if he himself has an ambiguous relationship with faith and fantasy, considering the way he writes about them. I honestly cried during the climax scene of Rin's path, and I was surprised to find myself actually ranking the path pretty high up there as emotional VN paths go... right up there with the true path of Irosekai and a few others that had me in tears. A lot of it is that the protagonist has that bad habit a lot of my favorite protagonists in emotional games have... he has an odd disregard for his own safety, health, and future when he puts them in balance with someone he cares about or even someone who simply needs his help. While I love pragmatist protagonists and even ones who can be cruel, that is mostly for the same reason as I like this type of protagonist... people that exist at extremes of the range of human personality are inevitably fascinating... far moreso than some humdrum 'normal' schoolboy, lol.
Edit: Linguistic issues Now on linguistics... I don't think most people who read VNs really understand how a simple choice of words can alter how someone views a whole issue. Above, in parenthesis, I said 'typical' Sca-ji in relation to what I referred to as a bad habit in a previous post. Now, if I were a long-standing fan of Sca-ji, I probably would have said 'classic' Sca-ji. What is the difference? By using 'typical' there, I inserted a note of sarcasm/cynicism into an otherwise neutral statement. If I were to have said 'classic', that would have altered it to sound somewhat fanboyish... I wonder how many of those who read this blog even realize how much reviewers manipulate you through simple word choices like these? Not only that, ninety percent of a writer's skill is in figuring out how to insert emotion using subtle word choices like this. The reason Masada - the writer of Dies Irae - attracts writers and reading-addicts like flies is because his prose really is a work of art, designed to gain a very specific reaction without entirely making you aware that he is doing it. The reason Sca-ji tends to irritate people like me is that he lacks subtlety from the perspective of people like me. Now understand, he is perfectly subtle from the perspective of your average reader. I doubt most people will pick up on more than ten percent of the hints he gives... but for people used to figuring out subtle hints as second nature, it feels like he is laying it on a bit thick, to the point of extreme repetition. Sometimes this works (Rin's path is an example of this) and at others it doesn't (my experience of Subahibi). This is an entirely subjective issue and not one that the mainstream will ever even recognize is there without some jaded jerk like me going out of his way to point it out. However, I felt a need to say just why my bias is always going to be against Sca-ji, because I can't stop it from coloring how I write about him.
Edit2: Rina and the Yuri path Rina's path is in some ways darker than Rin's. For all the depth of emotion involved in Rin's path, the entire thing was almost entirely between Rin and the protagonist, with only occasional intervention from third parties. However, throughout Rina's path, Yuumi plays an intimate role together with them. Indeed, a good portion of the path is devoted to a recounting of Rina's and her past from Yuumi's point of view, as well as the first meeting between Naoya and Rina. Yuumi as a child is pretty... messed up inside, at least partially because she is an honest to god born lesbian. In a moege, there would probably be a 3P path here... and while that kind of path is generally fun to read, it wouldn't have the depth this one did. After the recounting of the past, it splits into Rina's heroine route and a Yuri path between her and Yuumi. To be honest, I don't think I would have gotten as much from Rina's path if I hadn't chosen to do the yuri ending first, so I can honestly recommend it as something that adds some depth to Rina's ending, putting some things in perspective. Rina's path... is equally intimate to Rin's, but it lacks the kind of high-emotion cathartic drama that Rin's had (at least for me), at least in part because a great portion of the path was devoted to recounting the somewhat messed up formative time of Rina's and Yuumi's relationship. From a purely intellectual point of view, it was an excellent choice, but it had the effect of making the path deeper intellectually at the cost of emotional engagement, an occasional problem with that kind of flashback recounting.
First, I should say that I hated Subahibi. Those of you who loved it will probably try to convince me it was a kamige or that I'm not rating it without bias... but from my perspective, it ultimately fell flat. Part of this is because I absolutely loathed the psychedelic fantasy craze that went through otaku media around the turn of the century and gained full strength in VNs with Sumaga and Subahibi. Another part is that Sca-ji doesn't know when to shut up. Oh, I honestly think that if he wrote a chuunige, it would be awesome... but someone like him has no business writing a story where you aren't supposed to know at least something of what is going on from the beginning. For me, Subahibi was a slog, because I'd already figured out a good part of the protagonist's issues within the first chapter. The rest was, to me, a bunch of psychedelic BS that wasted my time because Sca-ji insisted on foreshadowing everything and dropping hints continually. That is, to me, the primary marker of his style, and it is seen in Ikikoi to an extent as well. The problem is, this is a hate born of the simple fact that mysteries don't hold any mystery for me and I don't really need someone constantly reminding me of something I already figured out while I'm trying to read a story. Naturally, this won't be an issue for the greater majority of people reading Subahibi. To be frank, most people simply haven't read as widely as I have, so catching the dozens of hints and bits of foreshadowing he lays on like peanut butter is probably not as easy for most as it is for me. Sakura no Uta does indeed suffer from this same - to me - flaw... but not quite to the extent Subahibi does, so it turned out to be bearable in comparison. I say this because it seems that Sca-ji is incapable of not overusing repetition and laying the hints out too thickly in anything he writes without ever saying anything outright. If Ikikoi was a straight charage that departed completely from his style in most ways, Sakura no Uta can be said to be a story-focused slice-of-life romance that retains many of the same qualities of his writing seen in Subahibi without the poisonous addition of psychedelic fantasy to the mix. Aside from that, those who played Ikikoi will probably nod in recognition at the character dynamic here. His love of creating abnormally strong relationships between the protagonist and the various characters is present here, and the fact that all the heroines are intimately related (whether by blood, his actions, or through those of his father) to the protagonist in some way - even if indirectly - before the story begins is probably the result of a decision that any other methodology would feel far more awkward. In the sense of taking the idea of a natural harem-maker protagonist and actually making him attractive to the reader, he succeeds for the most part. Ironically, the part where the protagonist is at his worst is during the beginning, because the first scene feels oddly awkward - to me - in comparison to the way he introduces the various relationships later on. This is because his bad habit - in my eyes - is on full blast during the first scene, making it almost worse than a first-scene infodump (a convention that is generally restricted to jrpgs rather than VNs). To be honest, if it weren't for the sheer length of the heroine route I've played so far - Makoto's - I would have been tempted to say that he fails on the character development, as two of the mains - Ai and Shizuku - are sort of left by the wayside in the first two paths so far (you are required to complete Rin's and Makoto's paths first). The fact that he was willing to devote so much text to a single heroine route - of a relatively minor heroine - tells me that he intends to do most of the intimate character development in the heroine routes, so I've chosen to reserve judgement for now. Makoto's path is really heavy on drama, both personal and in general, and it shows off both Makoto's and Yuuya's good points nicely, while not sugar-coating their flaws, for the most part. As a result, I honestly found myself satisfied with the path as a whole, and the resolution of the drama was also reasonably satisfying, even if the result of her personal issues wasn't entire satisfying for Makoto herself.
Look forward to part 2, which will cover at least two other heroines...
First, I should say that, despite Gamespot's glowing review of this game, I can honestly say that this game's story sucks. This is fairly typical of Bethesda, as the main stories of all their games have sucked. Frequently a side-quest chain will be the best part of the game's 'story'. For instance, the political issues in Skyrim were way more interesting than all that Dragonborn BS, and they never did manage to make the main story of Morrowind seem compelling. Fallout 4 suffers from the usual pitfalls of Bethesda using its own internal team to write the story, and I honestly thought that they completely wasted the settlements. That said, there are some high points in the game, so far... Codsworth is probably one of the most amusing companions they've ever produced, and Dogmeat actually feels like a companion rather than a hindrance in this one. The most jumbled and difficult to use mechanic of the game (and seemingly the most pointless) is the settlements. What do you basically do? You build buildings, fill them with beds, plant enough food and water to provide for the random settlers attracted by a radio beacon, set up a few shops and some auto-turrets for defenses... and basically they do nothing for you, if you don't bother setting up shops (the shops can be useful, obviously). Theoretically, setting up artillery in your settlements can give you an advantage, but I honestly don't think it is worth it. The only reason I bother is to have places to drop my junk after looting various buildings. Power armor in this game is a vehicle... and that has its downsides and upsides, as it is very much like being in a walking tank in terms of unstoppability... and it gobbles fusion cores. Fusion cores are a relatively rare find amongst (rarer than any non-unique item except the power armor itself) the items in this game, though you can buy at least one from every merchant in the game (including the ones you set up yourself)... at a cost of around five hundred caps, which is an impossible amount early on. That said, because you can purchase them in potentially unlimited amounts, power armor has more utility than you'd guess from the concept. I do suggest you keep a solid stock of cores on you and remove any cores from power armor you get out of (so someone else can't steal it). When it comes to dealing with armies of super mutants and other massive horrors, power armor can be a nice powerful crutch, lol. Enemies in this game work a lot better than they did in Fallout 3. Why do I say this? Because ghouls act a lot like fast-running, brain-eating superzombies (they can come crawling out of the weirdest places) and super mutants are even more insane than they were in the other games. Flying insects, moles, and dogs are all more dangerous/scary than they were n Fallout 3 or NV, and Deathclaws are even scarier. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for humans... raiders are weak, there is no really interesting human faction out there (the Minutemen being a bunch of idiots carrying around slow-firing lasers), and there is no even relatively interesting antagonist available. I mean, the entire thing takes me back to the bad Bond movies from the seventies... in a bad way. The idea behind the Institute is way too super-villainy for me. All in all, while the gameplay itself is fun, some parts, such as the settlement functions and inventory management, are clunky, and I honestly have to wonder if they really were trying to tell a story in this game at all...
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is perhaps one of the most complex series I've ever read... and that is saying a lot. It is high fantasy in the sense that it is based in a fantasy world that is unbelievably complex (it makes Game of Thrones look simple at times) and it has the combined moral ambiguity and dark humor of Glen Cook's Black Company series as well. However, where Steven Erikson shines the most is in his world-building... and in his character-creation. This is perfectly natural, as he is an anthropologist, and it tends to show in the way he portrays societies, nations, cultures, and people. There is no 'good' or 'evil' in this series, in the classic black and white sense that most high fantasy writers seem to prefer. While many characters are cruel, brutal, or tyrannical, he quite simply doesn't make flat characters that only exist to fulfill a specific role in the series. As an example... Cotillion, the God who is the Patron of Assassins (also known as the Rope), is perhaps one of the most ambiguous characters in the series. Many of the gods in this universe are petty, obsessive, cruel, or otherwise 'trashy' individuals despite their worshipers views of them, but Cotillion, despite being the patron of one of the most socially 'evil' professions in existence, is an individual who is as capable of compassion and giving unexpected gifts as any of the supposedly 'good' gods. Considering that he starts the series as an antagonist, this development of his character is perhaps one of the more obvious elements of deep character development I observed in the series. Erikson, throughout the series, uses various techniques to develop various characters. My single favorite character in the series, Anomander Rake, never has any first-person time. This is despite the fact that he is perhaps one of the most influential beings in the entire universe in which they are based. The opinions of others and reading about his interactions with the various characters are your sole points of reference on him... but he is subtly built up to be one of the most amazing representations of virtue - hidden behind a darker mien - that you see in the entire series. This is a man who has spent over three hundred thousand years doing his level best to keep his followers from committing collective suicide as a result of their racial despair at the abandonment of Mother Dark, the goddess that was once their patron. He leads them by example, rather than by command. He never asks more of them than they are willing to give, and when one of them finds joy, he is always the first to give them his blessings, even if it costs him their services in the most vital of times. In many ways, he is the very representative of divine compassion in the series (as he is technically an Ascendant and is worshiped by many of the race he was born from), as opposed to the odd representation of human compassion and folly that is the Paran family. In many ways, his departure from the stage is the defining moment for us, the readers... but his most defining moment came long before that, when he made the decisions that led up to that point. Another oddly ambiguous but admirable character is the God of Death, Hood. Hood is... perhaps the most ironic character in the series, by far. Originally, he was the King of the Jaghut, a race that abandoned society and racial unity because of how pointless they came to see it. Being the King of such a race would have been an ironic oxymoron in and of itself, but the fact that he became the God of Death by first declaring war on the concept, leading an army against it, only to die and drag an impossible victory from the ashes of defeat, creating the afterlife as it is known during the series. He is frequently indifferent, cruel, and/or petty in his treatment of others... but some of this is because he himself has been dead for hundreds of thousands of years and is more or less stuck carrying out a role that is almost anathema to his original reason for 'living'. In the series, there are degrees of racial and societal foolishness that dwarf what we have experienced... for example, the T'lan Imass. Once a race of human forerunners (intelligent tool and weapon users), when they discovered the nature of the Jaghut Tyrants that had enslaved them at times, they made themselves undead as a race for the sole purpose of committing genocide upon the Jaghut, most of whom just wanted to be left alone... thus ending the Imass as a race and condemning themselves to an endless existence as what amounts to dust-aspected revenants with weapons of stone. Another example are the Tiste Liosan, who took their racial father's sense of justice and twisted into a dogmatic religious belief in the fundamental justice of themselves as a people, regardless of their actual actions. Erikson's world is full of dichtonomy, corruption of ideals, hidden compassion, hidden glory, and dirt-covered heroism. At times, men and women of the worst sort will willingly give of themselves and at others, seeming pillars of virtue will commit horrifying sims or fall completely out of grace. In other words, the Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series that rejects absolutes. That is perhaps what makes it so much fun to read, as it is for the most part told through the eyes of various soldiers, many of whom are neither admirable nor good. The Bridgeburners, who are a presence in just about every book in the series, define the series' human heart, in many ways balancing out the more... changeable beings that float around them. At times, I even felt tempted to interpret them as the voice of 'modern man' in a world of ancients, though that is probably not entirely correct. In any case, this is a series that is generally fun to read and provides a lot of food for thought.
This is a VN by Windmill, the company that made Hyper Hyspeed Genius and Kamigakari Cross Heart, both great VNs, even if they were wildly different in focus and genre. While this VN doesn't quite measure up to them overall, it does have its moments, which I will outline below. First, the common path... it is your classic charage common path, though with the fantasy twist that the protagonist is sucked into another world whose only real differences materially is the existence of magic and the lack of cell phones and television. This VN tends to return to a slightly older comedy methodology, in that there is a relatively high amount of what is called 'lucky sukebe', with heroines that generally forgive the protagonist... eventually. The common route does a good job of introducing you to the characters, including the protagonist and heroines, and - like most sensible common routes - it has a single split-off point for all the heroines. The heroine routes... are extremely heavy on the ecchi and icha-icha. I'll be blunt, this VN makes no bones about the fact that it is focused on moe, ecchi, ichaicha, and romance. The drama is generally minimal and kept toward the end... and generally resolved with extreme ease and high speed so they can get back to the H-scenes, dating, and the excuse for an adorable final CG of the heroine that is the epilogue. Technically, the Nightmare, Lisley, is the main heroine... but there is no significant difference in length or quality between hers and the other paths. The protagonist for once is not a negative element for the story in this charage. He is indeed a kind-hearted harem-king style protagonist, but he is actually reasonably capable and actually has a personality that women might find attractive in a more general sense. His general endless optimism and his 'tennen' inability to see things in a negative light are the most obvious examples of this. Overall, this VN is a decent choice for someone who wants a soft, ecchi VN that stops well short of a nukige and has a decent but not particularly bumpy ride to each heroine's endings.
Yes, I have indeed decided to add books to my regular posts, mostly due to Rooke's suggestion. Understand, if you think I've read a lot of VNs... that is nothing in comparison to the number of books I've read over the twenty-eight years since I learned to read. That number is somewhere in the tens of thousands... and one of the reasons I can be so intolerant when it comes to the excessive reliance on conventions in VNs, lol. Honor Harrington Honor Harrington is both a character and a series written by David Weber, one of the more famous science fiction authors out there. He tends to write military sci-fi, mostly, and in a different way from Ringo (Ringo being the most famous name in military sci-fi), he has reshaped the way I saw science-fiction to some extent. Honor, in the book On Basilisk Station, is the captain of a light cruiser named Fearless that has been exiled to the hardship post/dumping ground of her star nation's holdings for the crime of being an incidental part of the humiliation of one of her more well-connected superiors. Throughout the series - up until this point (there are over twelve books now, and Harrington is both older and wiser), Harrington in many ways embodies all the military holds up as an ideal. She is courageous, intelligent, aware of her duty, and she has a knack for ending up in the worst positions you could imagine (both politically and militarily). Her character, over the course of the series, advances from a somewhat immature young officer to a wise woman who is all to0 aware of the cost of doing her duty. She and her treecat (an alien empathic animal that occasionally forms bonds with humans) survive some of the worst hells, psychological and physical, that you could imagine existing in the mortal universe... and endure the loss of those who don't. Now, a good military sci-fi series is no good without an enemy empire to deal with... and in this one, it is the People's Republic of Haven, a massive interstellar star nation with an apparently overwhelming advantage in numbers... but an economy that is going down the drain to the welfare state and the deliberate sabotage of the education system by the political elites (sounds kind of like a combination of democratic socialism for the first and Republican education policy for the latter, lol). In Haven, over two thirds of the population is on the Dole, the name for their welfare system which basically hands out a living allowance to everyone who wants it... in exchange for making the 'legislature' and all other government positions hereditary some three centuries before. Unfortunately, this has caused a slow but accelerating decay in the system as a whole, as entire generations grow up with the deliberately castrated education system and no incentive to try to rise above their peers. This has led Haven to a very simple - and short-term - strategy... conquer neighbors, gut their economies to feed the worthless mouths of the mob, then include them in the Dole... rinse and repeat, ever expanding outward. Unfortunately for Honor's homeland, Manticore, it has been slated as the next morsel to go down the throats of the faceless masses, and the antiquated but massive navy of the 'Peeps' is planning to make itself the fork. The first few novels are basically preliminaries to the outbreak of open war (albeit bloody ones), where Honor finds herself in some really nasty situations as she does her duty and in the process incidentally foils the best-laid plans of the other side. One thing to keep in mind is that warships in the Honorverse tend to have hundreds to thousands of crewmen... meaning that every breach of the hull can kill dozens, further meaning that even in a 'minor confrontation' dozens to hundreds will die... and Honor rarely gets into 'minor confrontations'. The guilt of a commander that loses men to the enemy is an important theme throughout the series, though not a primary one. Manticore, Honor's homeland, is a small three-planet, two-system star nation at the beginning, ruled by a constitutional monarchy, complete with a House of Lords and a House of Commons... Generally speaking, the position of the monarch is kind of similar to the current one of the Queen of England, both in law and substance... in other words, while she has very little actual direct authority by law, her influence is immensely strong, both as a symbol and as an individual. The House of Lords, which was basically formed by ennobled 'original' colonists who were there before the plague that caused them to bring in large numbers in a second wave, is supposed to act as a restraint on the elected House of Commons, and generally the Prime Minister is chosen from amongst its members. Manticore is probably the most advanced nation in the entire human-ruled galaxy (outside of genetics, which is Beowulf's and Mesa's specialty), at least partially because their prime system is at a wormhole junction that allows a much faster movement from one end of the ginormous Solarian Union to the other. This gives them massive amounts of money and direct access to technology from other worlds that has let them build up a huge advantage in relative terms over the People's Republic, which is an issue that is important throughout much of the series. In many ways, it is easy to think of Manticore as a futuristic version of the British Empire without the colonialist tendencies and racial arrogance. Throughout the series, characters on the 'side of good' are put in situations that are pure hell, forced to make hard decisions, and they frequently live or die by those decisions, with Honor always at the forefront. The series as a whole is really well-written... with realistic-feeling antagonists and easy to love characters on both sides of the war (Theisman from the second book comes to mind for the People's Republic), as well as people that are truly worthy of hate and contempt on both sides. The more serious elements are broken up by the humorous interactions of Honor, her subordinates, and her friends, and there are many times throughout the series when big issues of morality are brought to the forefront (such as the morality of gene-manipulation, stating a big one). If there is one thing you'll notice about any David Weber book... it is that he manages to create characters that make you want to cheer them on... even on the other side. He rarely, if ever produces a side of one of his books' wars that doesn't have people that are good despite the system they work within, and even the best of his people - including Honor herself - have their moments when they show the baseness of human nature's darker side. Honor is the type that leashes her dark side with duty and unleashes it on the enemies of her people... but that dark side definitely exists, chained beneath the surface (as is seen rather clearly in the second and fourth books). My conclusion about this series - which I've reread four times - is that I can honestly recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction and space operas... but for people who can't handle complexity - both of scenario and of moral/philosophical issues - they will probably have difficulty with it. The Honorverse is still going strong, currently... though it has several anthologies and two side-series (one based in the early days of Manticore and another focused on characters involved in the anti-slavery movement). Honor herself hasn't been sidelined... but the story has evolved beyond that small portion of space that contains Haven and Manticore, meaning that it is not so focused around her anymore.
I'll be perfectly honest... having finished Shizuma's path, the only thing I can say is that he was a total douche-bag intelligent self-hating moron to the end. Being inside his mind was depressing, right from the beginning to the end. While I loved most of the other characters on his path, I hated him and his heroines, also from beginning to end. Similar to Kai, he is actually more effective on foot than he is riding in Stigma. Stigma is slightly more durable than Alfaria, and she definitely has a lot better support skills. However, when it came down to it, all that meant was that I had to keep a piece of deadweight alive through the entire game. Gameplay-wise, that is a nightmare in both Kai's and Shizuma's paths. I did like the characters in Shizuma's path more than the ones in Kai's, because they seemed more human (except the psychopath). Unfortunately, there really was no reason why they should have stuck with Shizuma. He resents them through most of the game, takes out his frustrations on them frequently, and generally makes an ass of himself. Also, there was a huge load of 'what was the point of all that?' self-pity from Shizuma for about the last half of his path that made me feel like I wanted to smash his head in. Shizuma's story is dark... but it isn't the kind of darkness you can sit back and take pleasure in. It is the kind of darkness that gives you a headache because it is largely born out of Shizuma's idiocy after a certain point of the game. Yes, I unreservedly hate Shizuma. I don't mind characters that get twisted by the things they have to do, but self-hating, self-pitying idiots with 18 Intelligence and 0 Wisdom make me want to smash things. He does not evolve or really learn from his mistakes, and his paranoia gets old, fast. Story-wise... there are way too many inconsistencies between the two paths, even where they meet. I had to honestly throw my hands up in frustration at trying to figure out how they meant the game to make sense. Not only that, but throughout Shizuma's path you see bits of the backstage that should have really come to the forefront at some point but fizzle out, with the inability to access the third path making me want to do the 'crazy dance'. There should be a third path, because none of the crap that happens in this game is conclusive in any way. They hinted at a third path before release. So why can't I access it after completing both paths once, I wonder? If they mean to release it as a sequel, I'm just going to forget about this game entirely. I am also at least partially sure that heroine choice actually effects things more than it really should in this type of game, due to the sheer amount of extra battles I had to fight in comparison to Kai's path. Since Veridadear is a really easy to notice secondary heroine, I suppose going down her path probably creates a much different outcome from choosing Alfaria. Choosing Stigma in Shizuma's path resulted in a nightmare rollercoaster of endless death that made me bored halfway through (I know that sounds impossible - me loving endless death -, but the way the story for Shizuma's path stumbled so completely after the turning point made me want to scream).
Update Ok, the thing you have to do to access the third path is to complete Stigma's and Alfaria's path, as I suspected *sighs*. The difference in length and difficulty between Alfaria's path and Veridadear's path is pretty extreme... and at the end, after playing through the equivalent of two full VN-rpgs? You have to play yet another path... the best thing I can say about it is that you actually find out what was going on behind the scenes to some extent early on. I'm really tired of this game... for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, I'll keep playing this until it is over, lol.
So far, the protagonists of this story are its biggest downside. I don't say this to be mean... I just felt I needed to be frank with you all. The story itself is generally interesting, as is the cast of side-characters... but both protagonists definitely leave something to be desired. Kai Kai's side of the story would probably be best referred to as the 'Light' side of the first part of the VN. Why? Because, for all the horrible things that happen during the course of his story, none of them really tarnish or dirty him personally. That is fairly typical of a jrpg protagonist, as the 'natural hero' types tend to never really get dirtied by all the horrible things that go on around them or the people they have to kill in the course of the game. Oh, early in the game he is a little bit more pathetic, but when he loses a comrade, it drives him to 'resolve himself' to the fight to come with the typical guilt-driven passion you see from any number of similar heroes. To be honest, the degree to which his personality and character development is cliched is startling. Most writers make an effort to at least move the protagonist a little away from the 'middle of the road' archetypes... Shizuma Shizuma is a problem for an entirely different set of reasons. Number one is that he is a resurrection of the 'angst-driven anti-hero protagonist who is always irritated with or angry at something'. As I've gotten into his path, I don't see this quality fading all that much. Worse, he seems to have the fatal character flaw of being a smart idiot. He is intelligent, but he is blind to the obvious pitfalls around him. He fails to even consider that a certain delusion early on might be wrong, due to his obsessive personality, and he fails even more to choose an intelligent path to his goal, despite apparently being fairly smart. A lot of this comes from the impatience that is endemic to this kind of protagonist... but that doesn't change the fact that he looks like an idiot through almost the entire first quarter of his path, despite having the typical elitist arrogance of the naturally capable ('What, you can't do that? It's easy though.').
Edit: For those who are interested, Eternal has released an update fixing the bugs stated in the previous post, as well as rebalancing certain aspects of gameplay - the general weakness of combined mechpeople and a few other issues. 11/01/2015 1:33 AM, US Central Time
Due to work and school, I haven't been able to progress as much as I would have liked with this VN, but I have gotten moderately far, so I'll give you a bit of an update on my experiences. Gameplay Comments First, the gameplay... this is a straight strategy rpg in format, but it does have a few twists. First, the characters known as 'mech-people' and 'sword-people' can become what their name is... literally becoming a mech or a sword, through their pact with a particular character. In the case of the mech-people, this not only creates a more powerful unit to stand on the field, it also extends their attack range, making them more effective on the battlefield, both offensively and defensively (though at the cost of skills the mech can use being lower level and fewer in number than the characters in question). In opposition, the sword-people directly enhance the stats of their partner, giving them wider movement range, more powerful attacks, stronger defenses, etc. When joined with someone, both sides gain a precise fraction of the experience they would have otherwise gained (in the case of the Kai/Alfaria/Beldadia combo It gets split three ways, for instance). This has some advantages and more disadvantages. The advantage is both characters can get experience from killing enemies... but this advantage is weakened significantly by the fact that characters that join in a group combo generally get more experience than the two joined characters, making it a trade-off for grinding. Speaking of grinding... this game's experience-gaining is a huge pain in the butt, not the least of which because the enemies do massive level jumps (think two to five levels per battle), which makes it a serious pain to keep up, since your levels don't gain fast enough to make leveling anything other than a grind (you can replay any battle at any time on the world map). Another huge downside of this game... Alfaria is pathetically weak when not transformed, but Kai is actually more powerful on foot, at least midway through the game. This makes using the mechform usually not worth it for these two, except for the enhanced hp, but it does make it necessary, because Alfaria dying is usually a game over. Story and Characters So far, I'm still on Kai's side of the story, so I think it is going to be a while before I switch over to Shizuma. I'm going to be blunt... Alfaria feels a lot like a weaker, more naive version of Corona from Corona. She's basically a little kid in an adult's body, with a little kid's thought patterns. This is understandable in the context of the story, but it can be pretty annoying. Kai is pretty much your typical rpg protagonist... right down to the naivete and impulsiveness. To be honest, that irritated the hell out of me at first, though it has subsided somewhat as the story goes on (though he still has bursts of insanity where he does something unbelievably stupid). I chose Beldadia as my first playthrough heroine, and she is fairly interesting, not to mention she is a returning character from Yumina and Corona, a heroine for the first time in this one. I thought about spoiling her here, but lets just say that this VN puts her more in the spotlight this time around and let it go at that. The story in this VN is actually pretty good, in typical VN fashion... why do I say typical? Because in many ways, this story reminds me of why I generally go to VN hybrids more than actual srpgs and rpgs nowadays. Why? It is pretty simple... no taboo subjects. The story is dark, it is violent, and the characters make mistakes that actually get people killed in large numbers. Today's jrpgs tend to avoid things like death, except in the abstract, and as a result, their stories tend to... suck. Yes, I said it. Modern jrpgs suck donkey tits. The rare exceptions just prove the rule, rather than proving it wrong. That said, I don't know if I approve of them putting multiple protagonists in this story, especially considering the number of times the two protagonists end up clashing (it kind of feels like they are ruining the plot, to me). I'll have to see what it is like when I get to Shizuma's part before I decide if I can forgive them for committing the cardinal sin of a serious VN. Well, that's it for now... cheers!
Hello, my name is Clephas, and I am/was a weaboo. *snickers at the AA reference* I'm mostly posting on this matter to give those otakus who aren't necessarily weaboos an idea of what it is like to be a weaboo (ignoring social problems, for the moment, haha) and just why we exist in the first place. First, to correct a common misconception... not all weaboos are solely obsessed with Japanese culture/history/etc. In fact, most Western ones are or eventually become interested in all Asian cultures. There are a number of reasons for it usually starting with an obsession with Japan, and I'll try to cover them all for you. The most obvious reason is that Japan's culture is so obviously different from anything in the average Westerner's personal experience (extracting those that come from first-generation Asian immigrant families). To be blunt, the average American can at least guess at European sensibilities and the average European can do the same, with some mental effort. We share a basic religious background, our social contracts are based on the same basic philosophy (with differences in preferences), and we tend to have similar cultural ancestors if we look back into history. Heck, even most of Latin American can say the same. So, for the average white-on-white Westerner (or Hispanic as the case may be), there might be numerous personal differences, but the actual cultural differences are in the details rather than the base elements. On the other hand, there is literally no common base between us and most Asian cultures, save that which we forcibly transplanted during the colonial days of the past two centuries. Whereas we experienced various types of paganism and polytheism followed by Christianity, they experienced Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto... the list goes on. Not only that, the way we developed our cultures was essentially different. Confucianism in China (and the symbol of the Emperor in Japan) provided a sense of structure and continuity for centuries that altered greatly the way Chinese see the world even today, though most of its precepts have been altered almost beyond recognition in the millennia since their development. This sense of continuity (in aspects other than philosophical) over such a vast period of time is perhaps one of the biggest causes of differences between Chinese culture in particular and Asian culture in general. To be blunt, when the Chinese were already an Empire, our ancestors were mostly banging on drums in small settlements across the face of Europe, begging the elements not to starve our children or flood us out. The 'weight' of culture is so much greater in Japan in China that Westerners in general and Americans in particular can't help but be impressed (or offended/frightened as the case may be) on first encounter with it. That said, whether that first impression turns to fascination or apathy is entirely based on the individual. People that are more curious are more likely to get sucked into it, whereas those who prefer what they already have are more likely to simply set aside that first impression and move on. Another reason is that Japan is really really good at 'advertising' its culture... without really trying. How many of you watched Pokemon, DBZ, or even Voltron or Robotech as kids without even knowing what it was? I think you'd be surprised at how many otakus received an early baptism of Japanese ideas that planted the seeds for an eventual otaku and/or weaboo transformation. For that matter, how many of you saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (new or old) or one of the more modern Batman movies? Perhaps because of the intimate role we played in rebuilding post-war Japan, as well as the stream of Japanese who immigrated after the war, Japanese influence touches lightly on a great deal of our urban society (less so on the rural, though). The 'second baptism' that most Americans experience is negative... it is history class when you hit WWII. The ferocity and apparent insanity (in the average Westerner's eyes) of the Japanese during the war causes an almost involuntary fascination in those who read about it, that frequently leads to a search for answers as to just why they acted the way they did during the war. This inevitably leads to the samurai culture (both popular and historical), thus frequently creating new weaboos in droves, despite the fact that the WWII history is pretty horrifying the way it is presented (and even worse in reality). No one is more mouthy and annoying than a new convert of any sort... and those weaboos that most annoy people are generally this type... the ones who haven't yet realized that their obsession can annoy others and thus can't stop themselves from chattering endlessly about some new aspect they discovered along the way, as if they were the first to find that particular fact out. Tips for tempering your obsession If you are a weaboo, it is almost inevitable you will say too much to someone who isn't interested at some point. In that way, it is a lot like standard otakuism. However, if you want to at least limit your annoyance factors, here are a few tips. 1- Don't beautify every single aspect of Japanese culture you find. Samurai culture led to the insane nationalism and mass suicides of WWII. Geisha were glorified prostitutes (albeit artistically beautiful ones). Ninja were spies descended from thieves and common murderers. (etc. etc.) 2- Be aware that Japanese culture can take some seriously ugly turns in the modern era (the fact that police don't get involved in domestic affairs, the weak rape laws and enforcement of those laws, bullying in schools and at work, hikikomori, karoushi). 3- Be aware that the excessive pride of some Japanese has led to a resurrection of the same nationalism that caused their involvement in WWII (modern historical revisionism focused on WWII and the events immediately preceding it is a prime example of this). 4- The Japanese really did do most of the horrible things their neighbors said they did... not to mention the POW camps where they held the Philippines US troops during the war. 5- Japanese gun control only works because they have no history of regular people possessing personal arms. Well, that ends my lecture for the day.
The Ikusa Megami series is easily one of the best rpg series out there, as far as plot goes, including the more than two hundred jrpgs I played during my younger years. I'm saying this right off the bat, simply because it needs to be said. Ikusa Megami Zero is an example of the best of what can be done when a visual novel is fused with a traditional turn-based jrpg, and Verita is a nice sequel to it. I frankly consider Ikusa Megami Zero to be right up there with Star Ocean 2, Final Fantasy VI, Xenogears, and Suikoden 2 as a member of that rarefied group in terms of plot, and that is coming from someone jaded by more than twenty years playing such games. Sadly, it is unlikely most people over here will even give it a chance if it does come over here... and the reason is fairly simple... sex. Now, there are always people who defend or attack sexual content based on morality or the lack of it... but to be honest, I'm not interested in rehashing that idiotic argument once again here. One of the ironic factors of this series is that sex is so vital to the story (whereas it is a hindrance in any number of VNs I can name). The Tantric magic many of the non-human characters use to sustain their existence is vital to the story, and it is also vital to the understanding of the setting. It can't be avoided and it can't be cut out without effectively neutering one of the ongoing conflicts of the overarching story of the series in general. So, for those who dream of Sekai Project cutting out the sexual content and localizing this game... please don't do that to us, since it would be criminal... and this is from someone who generally skips H-scenes while doing something else. Perhaps the most powerful element of the series - other than Serika's legendary life - is the setting. From what I've read, it seems that Eushully originally intended the setting to only cover a single game... the first Ikusa Megami. However, while Ikusa Megami itself was considered only average as a game, the world-building the setting was widely praised by those who played it, and as a result, Ikusa Megami 2 got released, becoming even more popular. However, it was the release of Zero that basically converted the Japanese-playing Western community to the cause of seeing these games come over here. Going back into the distant (700 years or more distant) past of the world, it covers the formative years of Serika's lonely journey, as his life was destroyed, changed beyond all recognition to eventually result in the creation of the person he became. All along the way, through various characters and events, the gaps in the setting were further filled in, bringing the series even more to life. The setting of the series is a world that was basically created when a high-technological world (pretty much Earth) discovered a fantasy world with elves, dwarves, and other non-human races... and decided to merge the two worlds together (the details are pretty much deliberately wiped out by the gods long before the story's beginning, so don't expect everything to be told). This was quite naturally disastrous for both sides... but especially for the high technological civilization. That high technological civilization (humans) found itself at war with magic-wielding races with a strong faith in their gods, which granted those gods the power they needed to defeat the technological advantage the humans had... while also defeating the humans' gods, who were already weakened by the poor faith of the humans who worshiped them and further weakened when the gods of the invaded world began to convert the humans to their faiths. This eventually resulted in the death, sealing, or conversion of most of the gods of humanity, renamed 'the old gods' in the new world. Humanity had its memory of the past civilization reduced to a few ruins and distant legends, and most of humanity settled into a worship of the gods of the new, merged world. This in itself would have made for a pretty rich setting... but they take it to insane degrees of complexity when you throw demons, magic-technology, fights between darkness and light (followers and gods), neutral gods, and the rapid growth of humanity's sphere of influence into account. The constantly shifting moral perspectives, as well as the innumerable factions and nations that make up this setting, make for some really fascinating lore. That in and of itself would make it worth playing these games, but the inclusion of side-stories (such as Meishoku no Reiki and Madou Koukaku) and direct links to the main series (the Genrin no Kishougun games) adds even more depth to the physical world and its history, as you come to know various historical figures and other parts of the world. Now that I've waxed poetic (sort of) on the virtues of the story and setting... I should probably state that the series itself is pretty standard, gameplay wise. It uses your basic turn-based combat, for the most part, and this is generally a benefit, as it makes actually learning the basics of battle rather simple, outside of a few details. Since battles generally start and end quickly (outside of boss battles) if you know what you are doing, Zero, Verita, and Tenbin feel like less of a grind than they really should, based on the game type. The biggest difference between Zero and the other two games is that Zero is primarily telling a story, whereas the other two also have Star Ocean style EX dungeons that can serve as a huge challenge in comparison to the rest of the game, even if you have your characters maxed. Generally, the benefits of the series can be summed up like this: gameplay accessibility, good plot, and a deep setting. For those looking for a true hybrid of the best of jrpgs and visual novels, this series is an excellent choice.
I'm guessing some of those that follow my blog are wondering why I haven't started up any random VNs this month... there are a number of reasons. 1) I'm busy. I have my work, with an addition of university, which takes up about 80% of my time, save for a few days like today when I have time to rest and relax. 2) I simply don't have an appreciation for anything in my backlog right now. I cleared out most of the most interesting stuff over the last two years, and I'm keeping what little is left for a truly rainy day, when I'm not busy and I don't have anything better to do. 3) This has been a very dry quarter. July, August, and September were mostly dry of interesting releases, and I'm saving up energy for Kenseiki Alpha Ride, which I promised certain people I would play early on, rather than waiting until a later date as I commonly do with most gameplay-VNs. 4) This has been a particularly bad month irl. I've been helping my brother get ready to move his family into our place for a few months while their old place is on the market and they are closing on their new place, I've been applying for a graduate program, and I got several major commissions that have kept me locked down a lot more than I would have liked. 5) I promised myself I wouldn't play any more moege/charage until I've played Kenseiki or the new Fortissimo. Now for my thoughts... Today's post is going to be focused on what makes a good chuunige. I should probably define the origins of chuuni as opposed to what a chuunige is. First of all, if any of you have seen Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai, you have at least a vague idea of what chuunibyou is like. Basically, take your average D&D nut or cosplayer and add some delusions of glory to him, and you have a chuunibyou patient. That's simplifying matters somewhat, but it is also fairly accurate for a good portion of them, though. Chuuni, on the other hand, is literature, games, anime, etc. that feels like it comes out of the mind of a chuunibyou patient. Drama on a large scale, often in somewhat familiar settings, is probably the easiest and most obvious way to tell if something is chuuni. In addition, in a good chuuni-anything, the protagonist is never a self-insert carbon copy of your average harem-building protagonist. I say this because it is the easiest way to tell when something isn't a chuunige, as chuuni protagonists are supposed to experience and/or be something that is beyond what you can experience in your life, whether it is psychologically or physically. Most chuunige have action of some sort, but not all of them do. A famous chuunige that isn't mostly action - that a lot of you will have played - is G-senjou no Maou. In a way, Sharin no Kuni can also be considered a chuunige, for a similar reason. The more 'standard' type of chuunige is the 'gakuen battle' type. The most obvious translated examples of this are Tsukihime, FSN, and Comyu. In this type, a schoolkid somehow gets mixed up in a horrible situation that should kill him right off the bat, but he somehow survives to become central to 'the conflict'. A rarer type is the 'mature protagonist taking on the world' type. This is easily my favorite type, as protagonists in these VNs tend to have more solid philosophies and are less... idiotic. I think most people will agree that Shirou from FSN is a bit immature, though he had mature aspects. However, protagonists in these are adults, whether they are grown up fully or not. An example of this type that is translated would be Sharin no Kuni's protagonist. For untranslated, Hello, Lady and Vermillion Bind of Blood (Toshiro from Vermillion reminds me of Auron from FF X, hahaha) come to mind. Generally speaking, the themes of these VNs will be a lot larger in scale than you usually see in the gakuen battle types. This is because the themes are generally written to keep pace with the protagonists, lol. The last type is the 'poetic' type, where a writer is obviously masturbating with his keyboard. Masada's works are the most obvious examples of this (Dies Irae, Paradise Lost, Kajiri Kamui Kagura), though Light's 'other' chuuni-crew also writes similar VNs, and Devils Devel Concept and Bradyon Veda by Akatsuki Works both fall into this category. In this type of chuunige, the action, the story, and the visuals all exist as an excuse for the writer to try to blow you away. Currently, the only one of this type in translation is Tokyo Babel, whose release is sometime off... though I'm tempted to include Sekien no Inganock in this crew. For someone who loves complex, deep prose, these VNs are pure crack... but in exchange, they are also incredibly difficult to read for someone not native to the language. Overall, reading chuunige is all about having fun. It isn't about being moe-ed to death or being awed by the pretty pastel colors... it is about enjoying the part of you that never quite gave up that desire to be or see something more...
I'm going to be blunt, I wasn't really up for playing this in the first place, and as a result, my opinion of this VN is probably quite a bit lower than it actually deserves... but at the same time, it is probably a bit more realistic than those who are tricked by the pretty pictures. I mostly picked this one up to satisfy those who are curious and because it is technically a May release.
From a writing standpoint, this VN is about average, as moege go. There is nothing really special about the narration and the dialogue is actually weaker than I'm accustomed to from non-doujin titles. As such, there really isn't anything to praise linguistically. There are a lot of attempts at humor in this VN, but they are just that... attempts. Not only that, but the patchy way they voiced the game - about half is voiced, half is not - makes it hard to absorb oneself in reading this. It would have been better if they either forewent voices entirely if they didn't have the cash to at least fully voice the heroines in all scenes.
From a visual standpoint... this game is actually as good-looking as a commercial release, and the fact that all the major characters except the protagonist have tachie is a huge plus. As a potential minus (though not for me) the style is a bit old, though not so old that someone who hadn't experienced older styles would have noticed.
I already mentioned the voices above... but what I didn't mention was the music, which was singularly unimpressive, even if you are considering the fact that this was a doujin game. Most VNs manage to have at least a certain level of quality to their soundtracks, even if they are forgettable... but this one doesn't quite make it on that account.
As for the story... disappointing is the only word I had for it. I was surprised at how pathetic the presentation of the plot (such as it was) was, and I have to wonder why they bothered to release this if the endings in general were going to leave you feeling 'eh, what? It's over, that's it?'
Komorebi no Nostalgica is one of the more interesting VNs I've read in the past three years. I occasionally go back and play one of its paths when I want to restore my faith in VNs, and one of its primary themes is artificial intelligence. There are a number of different viewpoints represented in the VN about AIs, ranging from classic horror stories and instinctive repulsion to acceptance and/or affection. Cinema, who is the source of most of the central conflicts of the VN, is a humanoid robot created before the big war that basically wiped out the internet archives and a lot of humanity's knowledge of its own past. She was apparently customized immensely by the man known only as the 'Store Manager', who ran an underground video rental shop with her as the clerk. She isn't a heroine, but it wouldn't be incorrect to state that she is the focus of all the major events of the story. In many ways, her personality and setting resemble that of the heroine from Planetarian, and those who played that ancient will probably be able to easily recognize the earnest, almost childlike nature of the two. The generation of humanoid robots after her eventually developed a self-determining will and intelligence, becoming fully sentient, sparking a pogrom (of humans slaughtering robots that were suddenly seen as a threat) that led straight into a war that shattered human society as it existed at the time. The war was... a draw, though a draw that turned out more to the advantage of the robotic Metasera than to that of humanity. During the war, Cinema was put into hibernation and hidden by her creator, until she was awakened by the protagonist and his hare- *coughs* friends. The Metasera, having gained the right to self-determination in exchange for forfeiting their right to aggressive self-defense, live in small arcologies based in just about every major city of the planet, learning from and aiding humans as they seek to evolve their budding intelligence and emotions further. One of the heroines, Fluorite, is a Metasera, and it is through her that you get the writer's insight into the idea of the results of a 'naturally occurring' AI. Cinema, on the other hand, presents an entirely different path to the same goal... she is a low-spec virtual intelligence that is designed to grow into full sentience and in the end gains a far wider spread of emotions than the Metasera... while also showing off a surprising degree of emotional development, even before she gains that sentience. The idea of an AI that develops intelligence before emotion and causes a war (the Metasera) versus an AI that develops intelligence after emotion and is a friend to humanity from the beginning (Cinema) is one of the many hidden themes of the VN. There were innumerable times in the VN that I felt intellectually stimulated or driven to express raw emotion. The story is just that powerful, after all. Moreover, the protagonist and friends are of the first generation to grow up without knowledge of the world prior to the Metasera, and it is the writer's portrayal of this aspect that is frequently the most interesting.
As I’ve said before, Giga is at its best when it is doing the Baldr series. Why? Because their high production values really shine in a more serious setting, as it gives so many more tools for presentation. That’s not all… for some reason, in my experience Giga seems to be incapable of making a non-Baldr gem. Their stuff is inevitably visually beautiful and has great sound… but in exchange, the stories tend to be deeply flawed or poorly paced compared to other companies with less money power. This VN is no exception. I’ll be honest… this VN hit several of my major pet peeves from the very beginning. For one thing, they let you name the protagonist… and despite the immense amount of money the studio possesses, they didn’t even have the default name voiced by the heroines, which seems a waste. As such, this pissed me off from the very beginning. Making it worse is that the early VN is too openly a koukan-do type choice system, where you have to say what the heroines want to hear. This gets old fast, as it actually makes sounds and has a visual effect, which ironically gives me the ‘businesslike’ feeling I prefer to avoid in VNs. The heroine routes… are not something worthy of writing home about. I’ll be honest, I probably would have rated this game a bit higher if it weren’t for the first part of the game… but the heroine routes just don’t have much depth. It is like one long avalanche of ichaicha and H-scenes, making the game as a whole feel even more ‘businesslike’ to me, after the baptism of fire that was the common route. Making it worse is that there is no real depth to the heroines, which kind of defeats the point of having individual routes, as the protagonist is a non-entity self-insert ragdoll. Overall, this VN is a really flashy plaster covering over a lot of mediocre content. I was actually surprised at how bad this VN is, as Giga usually manages to do a little better (albeit not a great deal more so) than this with its non-Baldr games.
I've played a number of releases from September's releases, and I'm currently playing Renai Phase (which I'd promised not to, as Giga is incapable of making anything truly great outside of Baldr). However, this month really doesn't have anything I'd really consider VN of the Month material... Seikishi had its fingertips on the vague possibility, and it is undeniably the best thing I played from September. Unfortunately, 'the best from September' is not good enough.
The reason I'm already putting a 'batsu' mark on Renai Phase, even though I'm only halfway through it... is because the 'koukan do' system intrudes into the VN in a manner that breaks the storytelling completely. Whereas in most VNs, you have to guess which choices do what with how the heroines feel about you, this VN commits the sin of making a noise and showing a little visual effect every time... and it is really intrusive. I know this might sound like nitpicking, but the sheer number of choices in this VN means that this is hair-pulling level annoying. Not only that, but the protagonist in this VN is fully nameable, without the brilliant system Hoshi ori used that allowed it to have redeeming value. Last of all, the greatest sin of this VN is that, from the very beginning, the protagonist is setting out to get a girlfriend on a whim. To be honest, VNs that steal from dating sims piss me off in general, but this one is particularly offensive, in my eyes. Unless the heroine paths are superlative, in my opinion, this VN has already axed any hope of being VN of the Month material.
