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ChaosRaven

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ChaosRaven Fuwa Elite

ChaosRaven

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... I've created an account. I'm actually around lurking the forums for a few years now, but since I was mostly active in the MangaGamer forums I always hesitated to create an account here since I prefer to have at least 'some' presence in one forum instead of no presence in many forums. Unfortunately, the MangaGamer forums suffer from 'Down Syndrome' for quite a while now and I'm slowly beginning to believe that they axed it for good. I was even worried that the Fuwa forums got infected too, considering they were down a few times too recently. Creating the account was already an adventure of itself, because the account confirmation e-mail wasn't sent and I had to contact the admins to get the account validated.

Anyway, I think I've never written an introductory post in a forum, so bear with me.

Hmm, I guess it's best to start with how I got to VN's: My first visual novel was Fate/Stay Night and I found out about it because I heard that the anime was based on it and there was a route for Rin Tohsaka who is one of my all time favorite characters. I couldn't resist and then searched for other visual novels for animes. And so I found Shuffle through a... *cough* torrent *cough*. That brought me to MangaGamer (where I bought it later on) and with Koihime Musou I got more or less addicted to VN's.

What draws me the most to visual novels is the same that brought me to animes: Art, and especially bishojo art :-). I was always a huge art junky, not just manga art, but also western fantasy and science fiction art. I was and still am a big fan of drawings from Luis Royo, Cris Ortega, Jonathon Bowser, Jose del Nido or Keith Parkinson just to name a few.

My favorite VN's in English so far are Fate/Stay Night, G-Senjou no Maou, Koihime Musou and Tick Tack. In general I like stuff from Navel, AkabeiSoft2, BaseSon, Innocent Grey, Caramel Box, Eushully and Favorite. My favorite character is Ai from Tick Tack *points to avatar*.

Last year I also started reading Japanese VN's with a text hooker since I ran out of English VN's that interest me. I had about 2 years preparation time with educational books but it was still tough, because the kanji are very hard to learn and extremely easy to forget. The Japanese also tend to drop particles left and right which is a particular nasty habit of them. Still, it kinda works and I've now access to the Japanese VN's I always wanted to read. Last year I read everything from Ricotta (Walkure Romanze, Princess Lover) and some stuff from Ciel (Fault!! eries), Feng (Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi + fan disc), Atelier Kaguya/Astronauts artist M&M (Kiriya Hakushakuke no Roku Shimai, Demonion) and from Clip Craft (Unionism Quartet).

This year I try to tackle some stuff from Hibiki Works/Akabei Soft3 artist Iizuki Tasuku (Lovely & Cation 1 & 2, Melty Lovers), Tigre Soft artist Tomose Shunsaku (Akatsuki no Goei, Reminiscence), Purple Software artist Koku (Mirai Nostalgia, Hapymaher, Chrono Clock), Ensemble artist Kimishima Ao (Hana to Otome ni Shukufuku o, Otome ga Tsumugu Koi no Canvas, Otome ga Kanaderu Koi no Aria) and Eushully artist Hatozuki Tsumiki (Ikusa Megami series, Madou Koukaku, Kami no Rhapsody). I won't manage to read everything but we'll see how far I'll come. I'm about to start cross reading Akatsuki no Goei and Lovely & Cation. I'm also interested in stuff from Light and August, but I'm not sure if I can handle the story heavy content yet.

I'm not a big fan of straight nukiges since I need at least a bit of story, but I like some ero heavy titles like Koihime Musou, Unionism Quartet, Walkure Romanze or Kiriya Shimai. I keep my distance from fetish heavy stuff like Black Lilith, Clock Up, etc. Semi-dark stuff from M&M is pretty much my limit. But I can stomach gory stuff if it's of non-sexual nature like in Innocent Grey VN's. And while I can read nakige, I do have problems with utsuge if it gets too depressing.

I like mystery and moeges although I'm slowly getting fed up of the never ending school life theme. Especially since I prefer more mature characters. I usually don't play loli routes even if some loli characters are amongst my favorites like Eden's Sion, Hoshizora's Mare, Comyu's Mayuki or F/SN's Illyasviel. A relationship requires a certain maturity of the involved characters, both in a mental and physical sense. If I don't get that feeling then I prefer to stick to the role of the responsible and caring onii-chan. There are also characters I just like to hang out with because they are funny or otherwise entertaining. I like interesting characters in general, not just female ones. For example, G-Senjou's Azai Gonzou is a fantastic antagonist character. I don't read VN's just for heroine routes with H-content.

On the other hand, I'm not a big friend of story VN's with characters that are just mere plot devices. A VN without interesting and/or likable characters is just a soulless husk for me.

Ah, I fear that got far too long already, so I better stop now with a final greeting to everyone.

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KuroganeHomura Fuwa Senior

KuroganeHomura

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1 hour ago, ChaosRaven said:

And while I can read nakige, I do have problems with utsuge if it gets too depressing.

You should definitely read Houkago no Futekikakusha at some point. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

 

Anyway, welcome!

Assuming you're reading with text hooker + dictionary rather than + machine translator, you'll get better pretty quickly. At some point you should drop the extractor and shift to only looking up words you don't know that seem important, even if you only do that for some easier VNs in the beginning. I've found getting used to reading without the ever-present crutch of "I can just copy that word and this word and(...) and look it all up!" makes a world of a difference. And while you probably know them already, I'll link guidetojapanese and imabi anyway, just in case. Grammar is much more important than vocabulary since, as you've surely noticed already, making sense of a sentence with unfamiliar grammar is a lot harder than making sense of one with only unfamiliar vocabulary.

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ChaosRaven Fuwa Elite

ChaosRaven

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1 hour ago, Kawasumi said:

Anyways you have some nice "to play" vns that certainly is on my wishlist at some point in time too. (some VNs with incredible art you might be interested in is this and this )

Fortissimo EXS has indeed fine art, however it's from La'cryma which is related to Circus. Therefore there might be the chance that MangaGamer are going for it since they have a partnership with Circus. Currently I try to avoid reading VN's from companies with a partnership with one of the English publishers MangaGamer, Jast or Sekai Project because I've the naive hope it might get officially licensed.

Purple Software is a bit of an exception because Sekai Project announced Chrono Clock when I already had bought Hapymaher. It was a very pleasant surprise. Can't say the same for MangaGamer though. They seem to replace their partners every year and I'm slowly loosing faith that they'll license anything from Navel, BaseSon or Caramel Box ever again.

Sakura no Uta is probably more interesting because of its famous writer SCA-Ji. But popular writers tend to be a bit hit and miss for me. I like Nasu and Looseboy, but Ryukishi07 is somehow confusing since he constantly seems to swap between kamige and kuzoge quality writing and I couldn't understand the hype around Romeo at all. The only thing I've read from SCA-Ji so far is Ikikoi and that was far from impressive.

40 minutes ago, xToki said:

but but school life is the very essence of moe!

I read that several years ago and at that time it was quite entertaining because the route endings were so creative. There was everything from hilarious, romantic to completely screwed up. However, the characters were lacking somehow and left a never again feeling when I was finally finished with it. So, no Shiny Days for me.

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Kawasumi Fuwa Elite

Kawasumi

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I cant get why noone has been translating fortissimo tbh, but I think that your hope for it is in vain, you're better off just being better at reading japanese in the meantime anyway :P.

SCA-Ji as far as I know become a lot better with subahibi, many would call it his "magnus opus" even though objectively Sakuuta is better. Anyway subahibi and sakuuta is basically considered kamige material while his earlier material...eh not so much (as the case with ikikoi)

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ChaosRaven Fuwa Elite

ChaosRaven

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5 hours ago, KuroganeHomura said:

Assuming you're reading with text hooker + dictionary rather than + machine translator, you'll get better pretty quickly. At some point you should drop the extractor and shift to only looking up words you don't know that seem important, even if you only do that for some easier VNs in the beginning. I've found getting used to reading without the ever-present crutch of "I can just copy that word and this word and(...) and look it all up!" makes a world of a difference. And while you probably know them already, I'll link guidetojapanese and imabi anyway, just in case. Grammar is much more important than vocabulary since, as you've surely noticed already, making sense of a sentence with unfamiliar grammar is a lot harder than making sense of one with only unfamiliar vocabulary.

I usually switch on the fly between reading the machine translation and the Japanese text wih looking up the unknown words depending on how fit I am. I'm currently using Chiitrans Lite for that thanks to a suggestion in a thread of this forum. Before that I used ITH and Translation Aggregator. IMHO the biggest advantage of Chiitrans Lite that no sentences are lost because the clipboard hooks of Translation Aggregator are so unreliable. I've never seen anyone complaining about that so I'm not sure it it's a common problem, but at least for me it was a huge problem that got solved with Chiitrans.

I also used Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese already even if I'm not finished with it yet. It's a great guide and IMHO better than my own Japanese textbooks. Though I'm probably not ready yet to get rid of the machine translation part. But I start to recognize the simple kanji and kanji words which is a huge sign of progress for me. Maybe in 1 - 2 years I take the next step.

2 hours ago, Funyarinpa said:

With your appreciation for art, you might consider playing Umineko and Higurashi with their original sprites for a good dose of horror. :P

Oh yeah, Ryukishi07 and his twisted believe that he can actually draw *shudder*. I'm still not sure if he became a famous horror writer because of his writing skills or because the people were just so shocked of his art that they required medical assistance. The PS2 graphics for Umineko are pretty good though.

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KuroganeHomura Fuwa Senior

KuroganeHomura

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4 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

I usually switch on the fly between reading the machine translation and the Japanese text wih looking up the unknown words depending on how fit I am. I'm currently using Chiitrans Lite for that thanks to a suggestion in a thread of this forum. Before that I used ITH and Translation Aggregator. IMHO the biggest advantage of Chiitrans Lite that no sentences are lost because the clipboard hooks of Translation Aggregator are so unreliable. I've never seen anyone complaining about that so I'm not sure it it's a common problem, but at least for me it was a huge problem that got solved with Chiitrans.

I also used Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese already even if I'm not finished with it yet. It's a great guide and IMHO better than my own Japanese textbooks. Though I'm probably not ready yet to get rid of the machine translation part. But I start to recognize the simple kanji and kanji words which is a huge sign of progress for me. Maybe in 1 - 2 years I take the next step.

Well, depends on how quickly you want to improve. When I started reading VNs, I used to play in window mode, copy every sentence into a browser window and look the words up by hovering over them (Rikaichan). I've found that improves your vocabulary pretty quickly, although of course reading takes somewhat longer that way. Not to mention you'll understand a lot more than if you use a machine translation.

I used to use ITH and yeah, I know that problem where sometimes only parts of sentences were copied over. If I ever need to use a text hooker again, I'll give Chiitrans a shot. Thanks for the suggestion. =)

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sanahtlig Fuwa Master

sanahtlig

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On 1/17/2016 at 6:38 PM, ChaosRaven said:

Before that I used ITH and Translation Aggregator. IMHO the biggest advantage of Chiitrans Lite that no sentences are lost because the clipboard hooks of Translation Aggregator are so unreliable. I've never seen anyone complaining about that so I'm not sure it it's a common problem, but at least for me it was a huge problem that got solved with Chiitrans.

I think that's an issue with settings in the context manager (Ctrl-M) that control how TA manages duplicate lines and flooding.  Adjusting those settings would probably fix the issue.

Anyway, welcome.  You were one of the more useful posters on the MG forums, and someone whose posts I followed, so their loss is our gain.

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