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Mephisto

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Hi everyone, I've been a lurker of this website for a little over a month or so, enjoying the content offered here. I'm not sure why I enjoy visual novels so much, although it is probably related to how much I like reading in general. As most people likely did, I started out watching anime before I drifted over to where I am now. I found it rather disappointing that although my friends in real life can enjoy anime, most of them shy away from visual novels. That's part of the reason this community interested me so much, since it made me really happy to find people who liked reading visual novels.

I'm always open to suggestions on good things to read (normal book or VN) and here's a rough list of what I've read/played already

Eien no Aselia - (2/7 routes done)

G-Senjou no Maou - Complete (One of the best)

Chaos Head - Complete

Clannad - (Watched the anime, never really got into the VN, although i love the music)

Fate Stay Night - Complete

Steins;Gate - Complete (One of my favorites)

Utawarerumono - Complete

Princess Waltz - Complete

Kamidori Alchemy Meister - one play through

Sengoku Rance - Complete

ef~ - Finished the first two sections, really enjoyed them, but haven't had a chance to finish it up yet.

Daibanchou - Finished Kunagi's route

Little Busters - Due to how highly regarded it is, I'm kind of embarrassed that I didn't even finish the first route I was on.(Rin) I simply wasn't particularly fond of Riki as a protagonist. I probably would've enjoyed it more if he was a girl.

And that's more or less the haul. For a little more about myself, I like to pretend I'm older, but I'm actually only an eighteen year old kid living in California. I'll be heading off to college next year (no idea where yet, but my SAT scores are high and my grades aren't bad) and plan to study computer engineering.

As for skills, I can speak conversational chinese (although my reading and writing is awful) and can play the piano (If I have sheet music I can probably play it, although more complicated pieces will obviously need more time. My sight-reading is excellent, but my musicality needs a bit of work. The more familiar I am with it, the better it'll sound.)

Right now (today actually) I've started the epic journey of learning how to read/write Japanese. Although it will likely take longer than predicted, I hope to be proficient enough at it within two months to be of use in any translating venture. (I can speed through most of the Kanji due to it being written similarly to Chinese, but I'm slightly worried about the Hiragana/katakana. Those un-uniform squiggles make my head hurt.)

Anyway, thats the end of this long introduction. I hope to get to know more of you here in the future :)

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Hey there & welcome to fuwanovel! It's nice for you to join us and come out of lurking!

What was your VN? Got a favorite? Preferred genre? As for recommendations, I suggest you check out Narcissu and Planetarian if you're willing to read a kinetic novel. Hoshizora no Memoria is good too; I haven't finished it yet but the art and common route had me hooked.

+2 for being a Californian who has yet to enter college (I'm the same, though I still have a bit more time than you before I enter college xD). How long have you been playing piano/learning how to read and play music?

I'm currently learning Japanese too. I started with the kata & hiragana first (currently doing kanji) and it's not as bad as it seems.

Hope to see you around the forums more often! :3

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Welcome! I'm practically a noob at vn's compared to you having only done Analogue: A Hate Story, 2 routes in Ever17, and how ever many routes of Clannad (I've lost count). I'm looking forward to the Clannad anime, but I'm holding off until I at least get After Story. Hope you enjoy it here, everyone is super friendly. Good luck with university as well!

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Hiya zoom, Piano-wise it's mostly whatever catches my fancy that I can find sheet music for. I learned how to play Innocence from Katawa Shoujo since I really liked it, but the piano portion is kind of empty without the violins.

Recently I've finished Eikyuu no Kizuna (

) <- a video of someone else playing it

and I'm currently working on Gate of Steiner (

) <- someone totally amazing playing it.

I'm nearly done with gate of steiner, I just need to get the arpeggiated portion down. (It's the part that sounds the most difficult.) I have all the chords and the rest of the stuff down already, and the general musicality. (I hope so at least. I have it divided in to "phrases" and it starts soft at the beginning of each phrase, increasing in volume, and then near the end it falls back. It's not how it's exactly supposed to be, but it's somewhere to work from.)

I actually haven't played a lot of traditional music. I've learned Fur Elise and Turkish March (Although I've forgotten most of Fur Elise except the obvious memorable intro). I've also worked on Canon in D and I've finished the intro and what I consider as basically a piano "solo", but the ending is really tough for me due to all the jumping around. I can't seem to connect it together well enough.

Some stuff I'd love to be able to play is the intro to Angel Beats. I've tried it, but I've never managed it yet. My left hand is extremely weak compared to my right hand in ability, and that song needs a particularly strong left hand. (Or at least it seems like that to me.) I think I can finally play the intro right before the chord, but it falls apart shortly after that.

The Kanji is actually pretty fun, since it helps me refresh on Chinese as well. I can understand how confusing some of it can be though, and the more complicated words will definitely slow me down a lot. I think it's pretty awesome that you managed to learn an asian language without some prior knowledge in it though, because it really is extremely difficult.

@Daeyamati

If you mean what my first VN was, I honestly don't remember. Now that I think about it, I probably played VN's before I realized what they were. I think it may have been Katawa Shoujo or Clannad (After watching the anime), but I can't be sure. My favorite is still definitely Steins;gate (Science nerd, loved all the physics although I can't understand the significance of a Kerr Black Hole that has a visible singularity or something like that.) Will check those out, as I don't particularly hate kinetic novels as long as the stories are interesting. (Utawarerumono was kind of dissapointing though, after an amazing beginning)

@batman Clannad is amazing. I remember touching the VN after watching the anime, and Sunohara was absolutely hilarious in the VN. If I didn't lose my save files due to having to replace my laptop's hard drive, I would probably have cleared all the routes.

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Welcome to Fuwanovel ^^

I see you've played more VNs than I have, but there's one you should try: Hoshizora no Memoria

It's one of the best VNs I've played.

I'm playing Little Busters right now and I'm really enjoying it, I guess our tastes are a bit different.

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Right now (today actually) I've started the epic journey of learning how to read/write Japanese. Although it will likely take longer than predicted, I hope to be proficient enough at it within two months to be of use in any translating venture.

Welcome aboard! Reading the threads helps motivation, you'll see.

Two months seems optimistic, if you can do it congrats' :blink:

My favorite is still definitely Steins;gate (Science nerd, loved all the physics although I can't understand the significance of a Kerr Black Hole that has a visible singularity or something like that.)

Don't worry, the author doesn't know either :D Kagaku Adventures VNs are typically the kind of story written by people who love science but obviously didn't make science studies, it's all science generic culture put rather randomly inside. (Not that i'm blaming them, the result is awesome :) )

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Welcome! I loved the videos -- very impressive. : ) I've tried my hands at the angel beats intro as well, and I'm totally with you on the strong-left-hand-ness of it.

You've played tons of the classic VNs! Have a favorite?

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Thanks for the welcomes!

@Down yeah, I'm aware that two months is definitely a optimistic estimate, but it's in the realm of possibility. Setting a goal like that just forces me to work harder to make it reality, which is always good motivation.

@Tay Just to clear up misconceptions, those videos aren't of me actually playing (although I can play the first one pretty well now and almost there on the second one)

and as mentioned a bit earlier, favorite is definitely Steins;Gate

@Tief The actual death waltz or the touhou song that is referred to as the death waltz? Regardless of which, it's no to both. The first one is ridiculous and written for an orchestra, and the second one is ridiculous and written for someone with 8 hands.

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Hi & welcome to the forums!

Good luck with the Japanese learning.. seriously, kanji is the major hurdle, so you'll have no problems with katakana and hiragana once you've looked over them a few times.

Your piano playing is fantastic *_* (I suck at music..) and I would love to hear/see you play the Angel Beats OP if you manage it.

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Hiya zoom, Piano-wise it's mostly whatever catches my fancy that I can find sheet music for. I learned how to play Innocence from Katawa Shoujo since I really liked it, but the piano portion is kind of empty without the violins.

Recently I've finished Eikyuu no Kizuna and I'm currently working on Gate of Steiner.

I'm nearly done with gate of steiner, I just need to get the arpeggiated portion down. (It's the part that sounds the most difficult.) I have all the chords and the rest of the stuff down already, and the general musicality. (I hope so at least. I have it divided in to "phrases" and it starts soft at the beginning of each phrase, increasing in volume, and then near the end it falls back. It's not how it's exactly supposed to be, but it's somewhere to work from.)

I actually haven't played a lot of traditional music. I've learned Fur Elise and Turkish March (Although I've forgotten most of Fur Elise except the obvious memorable intro). I've also worked on Canon in D and I've finished the intro and what I consider as basically a piano "solo", but the ending is really tough for me due to all the jumping around. I can't seem to connect it together well enough.

Some stuff I'd love to be able to play is the intro to Angel Beats. I've tried it, but I've never managed it yet. My left hand is extremely weak compared to my right hand in ability, and that song needs a particularly strong left hand. (Or at least it seems like that to me.) I think I can finally play the intro right before the chord, but it falls apart shortly after that.

The Kanji is actually pretty fun, since it helps me refresh on Chinese as well. I can understand how confusing some of it can be though, and the more complicated words will definitely slow me down a lot. I think it's pretty awesome that you managed to learn an asian language without some prior knowledge in it though, because it really is extremely difficult.

Heh... yeah, I've messed around with playing some VN music on the piano...like Air and Kanon. But I'm also a big classical music fan. Since you mentioned Fur Elise, I figure the Turkish March you played was Beethoven's? I really like that one, though the one I learned was Mozart's, and that one's good too.

But I don't play much classical anymore, it takes a lot of work to learn, and I realized I just don't have the personality type to perform on stage, no amount of practice can overcome that. I still listen to it a lot though on Youtube.

Btw, last fall I bought a couple of synthesizers off Ebay. Now, I want to learn how to control these from a PC. Because with MIDI you can record each instrument separately, and have them all play back together. Should make for some interesting covers/remixes maybe even some original songs, if I ever make it that far...

Japanese was HARD, that's true enough, because I'm no genius, just an average guy. I wouldn't have even tried except for 3 things:

-Watching subtitled anime lo these many years made it seem less "foreign"

-It wasn't the first foreign language I learned

-Computerized lookup made it possible to read decently without knowing all kanji (so the "reward" came earlier)

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Heh... yeah, I've messed around with playing some VN music on the piano...like Air and Kanon. But I'm also a big classical music fan. Since you mentioned Fur Elise, I figure the Turkish March you played was Beethoven's? I really like that one, though the one I learned was Mozart's, and that one's good too.

But I don't play much classical anymore, it takes a lot of work to learn, and I realized I just don't have the personality type to perform on stage, no amount of practice can overcome that. I still listen to it a lot though on Youtube.

Btw, last fall I bought a couple of synthesizers off Ebay. Now, I want to learn how to control these from a PC. Because with MIDI you can record each instrument separately, and have them all play back together. Should make for some interesting covers/remixes maybe even some original songs, if I ever make it that far...

Japanese was HARD, that's true enough, because I'm no genius, just an average guy. I wouldn't have even tried except for 3 things:

-Watching subtitled anime lo these many years made it seem less "foreign"

-It wasn't the first foreign language I learned

-Computerized lookup made it possible to read decently without knowing all kanji (so the "reward" came earlier)

I wasn't even aware Beethoven had a version of Turkish March as well, I also learned the Mozart version. It was quite fun to learn at the time. I also don't play much classical anymore although for different reasons. A majority of the music I'm playing now comes from things I hear online that I want to play, and I usually end up trying to learn those instead of learning classical songs. (And yeah, they do take a lot of work)

By synthesizer do you mean a keyboard? Depending on how old it is, you might need a MIDI to usb cable to connect it to a computer/laptop(new ones have direct USB to USB), and then you run a MIDI program on the computer such as ableton.. and that's about all I know. I never really looked in to working with a synthesizer although I have a keyboard that I use occasionally for fun. It looks pretty complicated though, so it'd be great to find someone who knows how to work one to show you the ropes.

That "reward" factor you mention is pretty interesting. I think it's definitely a large factor in the choice of whether or not one continues with their studies in a certain field. How did you use computerized look-up?

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Beethoven's is a completely different piece, but it's awesome. Requires you to jump long distances across the keyboard with octaves...and hopefully land on the right notes :-)

One synthesizer is a keyboard, the other is just a module. Both have MIDI ports In, Out, and Thru. I just got a MIDI-to-USB cable today. It just has one MIDI In and one MIDI out. But, MIDI Thru on one synthesizer can be connected to MIDI In on another (daisy-chain). Next, I have to learn to use a MIDI sequencer...

To sail the stormy seas of kanji, I bought a Canon pocket electronic dictionary for manga. For VNs, I use AGTH+Translation Aggregator but without the translation, just setting it to JParser which is the EDICT mouse-over mode. For websites, I use another EDICT mouse-over dictionary called Rikai-chan.

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@Tief The actual death waltz or the touhou song that is referred to as the death waltz? Regardless of which, it's no to both. The first one is ridiculous and written for an orchestra, and the second one is ridiculous and written for someone with 8 hands.

Ok, just curious, because I once looked ad a midi file of the actual death waltz on synthesia, and the entire screen filled up in a few seconds and it didn't stop until the end.

Thanks though

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