Zalor
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Blog Comments posted by Zalor
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It seems fairly interesting. My primary concern is with it being so obscure, if there are even any places to download it anymore, lol.
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It starts with anime, and than the next thing you know your kids learn Japanese, Chinese, Korean and move to one of those countries. Lol, I'm exaggerating a lot. But I do think you made a good point that a lot of weebs eventfully expand their interest to other Asian cultures. Despite the fact that I almost failed Chinese in high school, after studying Japanese for over a year (with an emphasis on reading and Kanji), I'm actually thinking about studying Chinese next fall. I think weebism is just an early symptom for over all Asianophilia.
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Instead of reading this I could be learning Japanese...
But in all honesty, learning to read Japanese is easier than you would think (mostly thanks to ITH and translation aggregator). I've been self studying for a bit over a year and I can finally read untranslated VNs decently well so long as I have those tools aiding me. Now speaking the language is where I truly struggle. Just like how you learn to read by reading, you learn to speak by speaking (and my speaking practice is comparatively much lower). I am convinced that within 1 - 2 years of self studying with an emphasize on reading, you will be able to read untranslated VNs. But if you want to speak and communicate in the language, that's where classes come in handy (and why I'm in a class now). Also, vice-versa. Classes won't really help much with reading, you're better off self studying if you want to read Japanese stuff.
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It's been 6 months for me. (Technically a year, but I spent my first 6 months grinding kanji via Heisig, I don't recommend this, lol). I am convinced that learning grammar and exposing yourself to the written language is great practice (and you can learn a lot from it). But I am not convinced you can actually reach fluency using this method.
By just reading, you can attain literacy, but your speaking, listening, and writing skills will be far poorer.
Recently I started formal Japanese classes, and while my prior experience of self study mixed with reading VNs has given me a huge advantage in reading and comprehension, my speaking and listening skills really are poor in comparison.
I'm not denigrating this method. It's great for attaining literacy. And certainly fantastic practice for those already in Japanese classes. But those who are considering using this method (especially for independent study) should know that attaining literacy is different from attaining fluency.
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This blog post goes really indepthly in things that were only touched in a Japanese theater class I once took. Thanks Clephas!
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Do I need to? There aren't any images I really want to use. Hell, I've had my Steam account for 11 years, and it still doesn't have an avatar, and never has. Weird thing to get me on though. >:
Even though we don't really frequent the same threads much, I recognize your username partly because I know you as "that guy who never changed his avatar",(
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Katsuragi-sensei was a pretty cool minor character who makes the most appearances in Saori's route. It was cool how he brought together the frustration of a denied future, with the strong goal of guiding the next generation towards their futures .
It's weird how this (of everything you said) is what most interests me about the VN. I like seeing the teacher/mentor archetype in VNs and anime, especially when it's done well, and it seems like you're saying it is.
However:
The everyday school scenes in Gurenka were merely passable. They didn't really serve a purpose or go anywhere. I get the feeling this is common of second-rate Visual Novels.
When you say "merely passable" how does that compare to the 'everyday' scenes in the more modern Key titles? If the school scenes are more like the ones in G-Senjou I could probably tolerate it though.
It's quite human to take comfort in a current set of friends, with the unconscious notion that things will always remain like that. However, time is finite, and the time we have together is even more limited.
This kind of strikes home for me. Recently I graduated from HS, and the last couple of weeks with my group of friends was weird. (It was a lot like a VN). Everything was like it always was, but we all knew (but rarely spoke) about the impending graduation. It was like we didn't want to think about that big inevitable change that would end the monotonous cycle we grew accustomed to. So in this sense, I can understand the characters wanting to protect their everyday lives. It stems from a fear of involuntary change (I would guess, as I haven't read the VN).
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Thanks for the explanations everybody. I didn't realize that Western media outrage had so much to do with this. Or rather, I knew such incidents happened; but I didn't know it had such a tremendous effect.
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It's important to put his response in the context of the eroge industry as a whole. His views are decidedly liberal compared to his counterparts at other companies. The eroge industry itself has decided that eroge should not be sold to foreigners. By even considering supporting non-Japanese OSs, he risks being shunned by the rest of the industry. He's taking a real social risk here. And that's very courageous of him.
My problem isn't with him as an individual (I understand why his position is guarded). But with the industry as a whole. And if his views are "liberal", I would hate to see the conservative views.
I really don't understand what could possibly be bad with expanding to overseas markets. It's obvious there is demand. As companies do they not want money?
What bothers me the most is the irrationality of this collective stance by the industry.
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It still sounds like they are xenophobic to me, especially with comments like these:
To be blunt, when we received very early reports of the bug from users we believed to be Chinese, our user support team felt they were really skirting the line with regards to the JP ONLY clause, thinking 'I hope these people are playing within the country.' They puzzled over how to handle the issue.
If a user buys a game in Japan, returns to his home country, and plays it on his own PC purely for his own enjoyment--is that ok? Where's the line? As just one company of many in this industry, it's extremely hard to make such a decision.
Why is this even a question? Of course it's okay. They purchased the game didn't they? So they have the right to do whatever the hell they want with it afterwards.
Also, I have no idea what is wrong with this:
In the past, certain distributors bought up Japanese eroge and sold them overseas without consulting Japanese developers. This led to an international scandal, causing considerable turmoil within Japan as well. Since then, we've been obligated to display warnings like "For sale in Japan only" during game start-up and on the packaging.
So long as the distributors buying up Japanese eroge are buying them and not smuggling them; then there is nothing wrong with them selling them over seas. If a book is released in the US, there is nothing wrong with me buying up a couple hundred copies and reselling them to customers in other countries.
The fact that these issues are even questions in the first place is what is Xenophobic.
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I'm glad you're doing this. I say this mostly as an acquaintance who appreciates your presence here in this community. I'm not sure what else to say, but I felt like commenting something.
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Just so you're aware: this post / promotion triggers my internal scam alerts. You need to be very careful how you pitch this. I would NOT title a post "Help raise awareness for suicide" (Buy my game!). If you want to pitch it like that, have a respected 3rd party with no vested interested in your project make that pitch for you.
I know firecat has the best of intentions. And suicide is a serious (as well as a highly complicated) issue.
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Wow, thanks for sharing this. I honestly had no idea before this recognition post.
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Whore has become a legend... A notorious legend.
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I'm so glad somebody shipped Nosebleed and Whore together.
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For those wondering about the inspiration for this post: a user named bitch added a host of people (including me) to a PM conversation where Nosebleed had asked said person to change his name. I was not amused.
Later on the user named 'bitch' made a new account called 'whore' and a did a similar thing. Added a bunch of people and complained that Nosebleed hacked him. Quickly after sending the pm, the user 'whore' got banned. All around it was a pretty amusing experience.
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Back when I was still relatively new to this site (and to the VN community in general) your constant use of terms like; nukige, chuunige, moege, utsuge, etc. irritated me. Some times I even had trouble finding definitions for some of the obscure VN terminology you used. VN community jargon no longer bothers me, and at this point I'm so used to it that those terms are now a part of my vocabulary too. xD However, in my view those weird jargony words are a great example of how the VN community can be a tough community for beginners to get into.
Chuunige is probably the most recognizable (to anyone who has played one), but I honestly have only run across like three or four people who actually used it over there... and it was relatively recent (I'm thinking reverse-influence as a possibility, which would be funny).
I'm pretty sure I brought up chuuni games as a concept over here and someone else started calling them chuunige.
That's pretty interesting. So western fans of Japanese visual novels created what you call 'Pseudo-Japanisms' like chuunige and charage, and now those western original terms that were originally inspired by Japanese Otaku slang has started to infiltrate the Japanese Otaku vocabulary. Wow, it seems that western VN fans have a bit more of an influence on the Japanese VN community than I originally thought.
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Just out of curiosity, how was female on Fuwa treated in the past?
I've been on this site for quite a while, and for the most part it has always seemed like people hardly care about what your gender is. In fact, considering that it was a women (Aaeru) who founded and ran Fuwanovel for its first year (late summer of 2012 - late summer of 2013) I don't think people cared much about gender. So I'm also interested in what DatYanderegirl is referring to.
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Then Zalor is not an eternal, right? After all, Zalor changed his avatar to a bigger, and more pixelized version of his current one, and then back, at one point in time if I'm not mistaken.
Lol, you remember that. My current avatar is an in-between size of my original one, and the big one I used for no longer than an hour. It took slight experimentation, but I ultimately found the perfect size! I feel Eternals deserve the right to find the perfect aspect ratio. Even for us, perfection can take some time to find. ;P
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I just read your article on the lewdgamer website. I completely agree that censoring a nukige is stupid and does not deserve to be rewarded with a purchase. That's just as dumb as buying a porno where all the sex scenes were cut out. Which in my view is just as dumb as watching an ecchi anime (you might as well go with full blown hentai). But I think Steam's censorship polices can be good for VNs in the long term. Thanks to the censorship policies story based VNs are starting to sell better than nukige focused ones (I think that's what you alluded to in the article).
With Steam as a tool to expand the market, we can reasonably hope to see more story based VNs get localized. And hopefully even see higher quality OELVNs get developed.
- Chronopolis and sanahtlig
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Sayonara wo Oshiete: A VN That Mastered The Use of Atmopshere
in Zalor's Seminar
A blog by Zalor in General
Posted
From other things I've read from you, I think we both share a huge appreciation for VNs that take advantage of audio and visuals to enhance the writing. And for people who appreciate such things, I feel that video is the best possible trailer for the VN. I really do wish it would get translated so more people could read it. I believe what happened is that the VN was picked up by a team, got translated around 30%, and then the main translator shifted to doing the Subarashiki Hibi translation. I think the Subarashiki Hibi translation is pretty much done, but then it got officially picked up, and so now there is another delay. Hopefully, once Subarashiki Hibi gets released he will return to translating Sayooshi.