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Zalor got a reaction from SabrinaF in Visual Novels on Android
A while back there was a serious effort to get more VNs to work on Android. Way back in 2013 actually, I would recommend reading this thread: Android Visual Novel [Let's play visual novel on the go!]. However a more up to date thread from 2018 goes over it a bit, and most people in that thread don't seem to recommend it. If on the off chance you can read Japanese, there are some high profile VNs you can get on the Play Store. I'm pretty sure KEY has some of its VNs on it. They may be in English, but I'm pretty sure they are Japanese only for now, might be worth at least checking to confirm for sure.
I think Katawa Shoujo might also have a port for Android. Which is a VN I would highly recommend.
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Zalor reacted to Silvz in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
this is exactly the message of Umineko! Glad that you reached it
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Zalor reacted to Mr Poltroon in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
Okay. I'll just focus on crime theories for now, as I don't have much to add on the tea parties and ???. It's witches witching about.
Full spoilers for the entirety of Umineko.
Episode 1 murder theory:
That's my theory.
I now present to you episode two stream of consciousness. This time I wrote far less about random details. That may mean I was more invested, or maybe less. I'm not sure.
To be honest, I don't appreciate the author telling me how to enjoy my mystery novels, but fine. I can try and solve them, see? (To be honest, I now realise that Ryukishi07 really did give us everything we needed to get through all the hard parts if we'd read through Umineko once.)
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Zalor reacted to Nandemonai in Basically, how better are translator groups at choosing which VN to translate?
Localization companies have a lot of constraints. The business requires co-operation with the Japanese side of things. No game can be released without the consent and involvement of the rights holders. The Japanese IP holder can't just sign on the dotted line and take easy royalty money. They have to do work. Legal work, chasing down VA contract clearance. Graphics work, uncensoring the artwork and finding original assets. Programming work, updating the game engine to handle incompatibilities with Western OS default settings and the fact that Western languages use characters that, in Japanese, nobody ever uses so you're free to use things like apostrophes and commas as game scripting commands.
Witness Kara no Shoujo and Koihime initially releasing with no VA because they couldn't afford to pay the VA fees. Witness a certain game I know of not ever getting an editing pass to fix issues, even though company staff privately admitted to me they wanted to - because the Japanese side didn't want to give the localizer their script compiler, and didn't want to be bothered because they'd already provided one fix and seemed to feel 'why jerk us around fixing one thing at a time'? Witness Pulltop, releasing Princess Waltz under Jast USA (great game by the way) then deciding to start MoeNovel. Or Jast USA getting Steins;Gate but not being the ones to release it on Steam, or anything else by them. Navel pulled out of a partnership with MangaGamer to release Shuffle! on Steam all by themselves.
The licensors have a lot of pull, and they absolutely will use it. And the truth is, VNs sell a truly pitiful number of copies in English. Koihime had no VA because they didn't think the game could sell two thousand copies. It eventually did, after close to two years. After they decided to cheat a bit and include the size of their hard copy print run in the 2K (assuming it would eventually sell through) because they didn't want to do a hard copy release of it with no voice. Things are somewhat better if your game can get on Steam, but after Steam opened the floodgates suddenly there's lots of games on Steam and so few nowadays get the eye-popping sales figures IMHHW or Nekopara did once upon a time.
So even though sales are declining slowly but steadily in Japan, as mobile inexorably cannibalizes everything else people used to spend money on, they're still - even far removed from what they used to be at the peak, like they are nowadays - still far higher than they are in English. This makes it a tough sell for most companies.
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Zalor got a reaction from Chronopolis in Basically, how much can VNDB scores be trusted?
Absolutely savage take, and completely agreed.
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Zalor reacted to Mr Poltroon in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
But what does my young foolish self do, who took that key and dropped it down the drain? Never read a mystery novel in my life, and frankly, haven't read any since, if not for other mystery visual novels.
Regardless, I've decided to give it another try. Here's a stream of consciousness for the first episode of Umineko, which I started on Thursday and only now finished.
Spoilers for the entire novel as I've read the whole thing and will be using the bits and bobs I remember as I go through.
I'll follow with the tea party and ??? and then possibly clearer thoughts. Also I'll make a blogpost for my everything on Episode 1 at some point.
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Zalor reacted to philipmikh in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
Its important to mention that episode 8 has extra content in the manga version and the ending is a little bit more satisfying
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Zalor reacted to alpacaman in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
Umineko does have a pretty clear conclusion, both in terms of plot and themes, it just doesn't bother to explain all of its murder mysteries in way that satisfies anyone looking for clear-cut "logical" solutions, which is kind of the point. My theory for why Umineko is more controversial in Japan is that its critique of a certain hyper-rationalist mindset hits a lot closer to home with a larger portion of the consumer base there. Ryukishi07 reacting to a possible need for answers to the howdunnits based on material reality by effectively shrugging and saying "I gave you Battler's and Ange's "truth", if you are not satisfied with that, go figure it out yourself" is a big middle finger to these people (if the inclusion of Erika didn't piss them off enough (and I could go on about how great of a character she is)). Especially since Japanese popular media, or at least the parts I know, tend to package their social commentary in a way that mostly spares out the individual consuming it.
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Zalor got a reaction from Kenshin_sama in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
The funny thing for me is that my impression of Japanese creatives (writers, mangaka, game devs, etc) is very positive and I think they have a lot of brilliant minds working in those fields. But my impression of the Japanese consumer base lowers with every year. I think the oppressive education system makes a minority of people snap and a subset of that minority express it through art, which is why their fiction can be so good. But the majority of Japanese manage to conform to the system, and for those who conform I think it permanently damages their creative thinking abilities. It's interesting how Higurashi is the favorite Ryukishi07 work in Japan, and Umineko (which is comparatively a more experimental and imo overall a deeper work) is somewhat scorned in Japan but highly praised in the west. Maybe at my core I'm fundamentally westerncentric, but I think the west is right on this one. Umi > Higurashi. Although without a doubt both are very good.
I think Ryukishi07 was tongue and cheekly referring to his Japanese audience in these quotes: pic1, pic2
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Zalor got a reaction from Mr Poltroon in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
You put things really well. Umineko's vast scale and how everything gets tied up is my favorite part. As you said, the core story is arguable extremely simple, but its how the real story is everything in between and how vast in scale that is which I love. In a real way, it gets you to question what is the value of reading a story? Enjoying the fun of it and accepting all the fantastical absurdities (magic), or understanding and intellectually dissecting it in search for the "truth", like some kind of detective? Being somebody who for a long time subscribed to the latter style of thinking, I've since adopted the former perspective. In large part, though not entirely because of Umineko. Furthermore concluding a work so long and complicated is no easy feat, and the ending has been having me reread scenes from the VN obsessively. Which hasn't happened to me since I read Suba Hibi.
I completely understand your struggle with organizing an analysis of the gold and the golden land. But if you ever were to write it, I would definitely read it.
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Zalor got a reaction from alpacaman in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
You put things really well. Umineko's vast scale and how everything gets tied up is my favorite part. As you said, the core story is arguable extremely simple, but its how the real story is everything in between and how vast in scale that is which I love. In a real way, it gets you to question what is the value of reading a story? Enjoying the fun of it and accepting all the fantastical absurdities (magic), or understanding and intellectually dissecting it in search for the "truth", like some kind of detective? Being somebody who for a long time subscribed to the latter style of thinking, I've since adopted the former perspective. In large part, though not entirely because of Umineko. Furthermore concluding a work so long and complicated is no easy feat, and the ending has been having me reread scenes from the VN obsessively. Which hasn't happened to me since I read Suba Hibi.
I completely understand your struggle with organizing an analysis of the gold and the golden land. But if you ever were to write it, I would definitely read it.
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Zalor got a reaction from Dreamysyu in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
You put things really well. Umineko's vast scale and how everything gets tied up is my favorite part. As you said, the core story is arguable extremely simple, but its how the real story is everything in between and how vast in scale that is which I love. In a real way, it gets you to question what is the value of reading a story? Enjoying the fun of it and accepting all the fantastical absurdities (magic), or understanding and intellectually dissecting it in search for the "truth", like some kind of detective? Being somebody who for a long time subscribed to the latter style of thinking, I've since adopted the former perspective. In large part, though not entirely because of Umineko. Furthermore concluding a work so long and complicated is no easy feat, and the ending has been having me reread scenes from the VN obsessively. Which hasn't happened to me since I read Suba Hibi.
I completely understand your struggle with organizing an analysis of the gold and the golden land. But if you ever were to write it, I would definitely read it.
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Zalor reacted to alpacaman in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
Anyway it's kind of impossible to discuss Umineko in a comprehensive fashion because it's so massive. Even if you edited down all the maniacal laughing, uryuu-ing and over-the-top fight scenes you would stil probably end up with an 80+ hours read where every single 10 hour chapter gives you more food for thought than most actual 80 hour VNs out there. Some time ago I planned on writing a blog post about how the gold from the Golden Land is a metaphor for truth, but I scrapped it after realizing all the introduced concepts I would have had to explain and all the plot points I had half-forgotten I would have had to read up on and I just couldn't decide where to even start.
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Zalor got a reaction from Mr Poltroon in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
Wow, somebody really did God's work with that. I'll check that fan made VN then. Since generally I'm not a huge fan of manga.
I felt that same way. I've procrastinated reading Umineko for maybe as long as Fuwa has been around. And if you already read through it once, I couldn't imagine rereading the whole thing again. That said, kind of like with Suba Hibi there is a certain joy in not completely knowing and theorizing based on your own interpretations.
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Zalor reacted to Dreamysyu in Umineko Discussion (SPOILERS)
@Zalor
Well, in my case, Umineko was what made me fall in love with them.
Have you tried reading the manga for Episode 8? It makes some things clearer that the VN. If you don't want to read the manga (I personally never did that) you may try this fan-made VN which converts the scenes that were changed in the manga into a VN format.
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Zalor got a reaction from hungofhydra in Greeting from a humble reader
Haha welcome to the club. Key is a great stating place for VNs, and where many long time VN fans got their start. Kanon was one of my first VNs, and look I've been reading VNs for almost 10 years now lol.
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Zalor got a reaction from Larxe1 in 2020 Notable releases
Seconding this. There are plenty of great older VNs worth checking out. And the above ones are fantastic
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Zalor reacted to Silvz in 2020 Notable releases
You haven't played Higurashi, Umineko nor Ciconia. So you could start with those
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Zalor reacted to Dreamysyu in Villains that don't go "Too Far"
I'm not 100% sure about what you're asking for, but, perhaps, Shinsekai Yori? I try to be vague, but it's still a spoiler that only gets revealed at the very end, so I'll use the spoiler box.
I'll make another post if I think of anything else. For now, nothing else comes to mind.
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Zalor got a reaction from Mr Poltroon in Villains that don't go "Too Far"
I'm not entirely sure if it's what you are looking for, but since you mentioned Psycho Pass I think its equally applicable. The book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has an even more methodical and pathological system of human societal organization. And it also fits the criteria where the villains (the system and the select few people predetermined from birth to be in the 'World controller class') don't do anything crazy that could put the system at risk of collapse.
I would also argue that Gendo Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion perfectly fits in your desired category.
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Zalor reacted to Zakamutt in Greetings from CSS!
>post doen't even link to anything
keeping up the royal tradition of inbreeding I see
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Zalor got a reaction from soup_is_boiling in For those who prefer to buy/own visual novels on Steam, what is your primary reason why?
I'm the opposite, for a very long time I did my very best to avoid reading any VNs or getting any games if it meant I had to make a Steam account. I don't like Steam bothering me for updates, nor do I like getting their pop-ups for various other miscellaneous things when you use their client even slightly unconventionally. That said, there is a huge convenience factor to it. Especially since there is a good crossover between gamers and VN readers. So I definitely understand why Steam became the default option for many once VNs started gaining in popularity in western markets.
That said, I really do hate how a handful of tech monopolies (or oligopolies if you want to get technical about it) have so much control over virtually everything we do. And I kind of hoped that at least VNs could manage to avoid falling into their orbit. If big Eroge had to exist (to facetiously quote @Zakamutt signature), I would rather that monopoly belong to an actual Visual Novel company that cares about visual novels to some extent. Steam really doesn't care about VNs, yet they are happy to take advantage of an unfair market place to absorb the western VN market.
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Zalor got a reaction from Tay in Any way to switch to some kind of dark mode on the current site theme?
Didn't know people liked the dark theme, I'm glad to see a return to Fuwa Green. I still will forever associate the site with this look:
Also a rare sighting of Tay reminiscing about Aaeru.