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About this blog

This is a blog primarily focusing on but not limited to VNs.  It is primarily designed to express my opinion on otaku media (jrpgs, anime, manga, LNs, VNs, etc), individual VNs, and otaku community issues.   Most of the posts are related to my VN of the Month and Random VN columns, originally started in threads in the forums. 

As of March of 2017, I'm also looking for people to help with VN of the Month.

Entries in this blog

Random VN: Primary ~Magical★Trouble★Scramble~

Primary was one of my earliest fantasy charage... and in many ways it shaped what I was willing to forgive in the genre, rather than how I looked at the genre as a whole. Primary has a lot of good points... the heroines are interesting, the protagonist's motivations are compelling, and the actual central issues of the overarching story are potentially fascinating.  However... it makes the mistake many charage of the type do, of failing to utilize the setting to its fullest extent in most of
Clephas

Clephas

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Kanojo to Ore no Lovely Day

To be honest, Parasol is one of those companies I have extremely mixed feelings about.  Roughly half of the games I've played from them, i dropped before finishing out of frustration or boredom.  This company is primarily a charage maker, so this probably won't surprise a lot of the people who read this blog, lol.  That said, this game was a surprisingly good one, wiping away the foul taste left over from Hoshi Koi.  It also told me that I'd judged Hoshi Koi about as fairly as I ever do wit
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Kenseiki Alpha Ride Part 2: The Protagonists

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 the
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Kenseiki Alpha Ride Part 3 (updated)

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 definitel
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Agobarrier: Some afterthoughts on a great writer

Agobarrier, who was the writer of Shuffle (the work most familiar to people here) was one of my favorite non-chuuni VN writers.  Ironically, his best works were all written after leaving Navel and its massive stream of liquid cash to form Rosebleu, my favorite comedy company.  I started going back through his entire library of works (or at least the ones I've played and own) since I heard of his death in mid-April, and as I replay his final work, Valkyrie Runabout, I feel a need to look back on
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Isekai Mono: 'Otherworld travels' as a genre

Traveling to other worlds is so common a plot element in otaku media that it has actually become a fantasy sub-genre in and of itself.  This is actually one of my favorite plot elements... if it isn't screwed up magnificently (like in RE:Zero) by putting the wrong sort of person into the mess. The first otaku media that hit me with this was The Vision of Escaflowne, followed by Fushigi Yuugi.  The latter isn't one of my favorite anime, but I did like it up to a point.  The former is one of
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Random VN: Kouyoku no Soleil

Kouyoku no Soleil was the first Soleil game I ever played... and from a purely action perspective, it was fun... but it lacked something from my perspective because so much of the game is steeped in pre-existing knowledge from the other games (literally, this game pulls stuff in from Shirogane, Gouen, Soukyuu, and even Primary).  Basically, this story starts with the Norns fighting one another over what to do about the original Norse Mythology world, which hasn't moved on from the moment th
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Random VNs: Ouzoku

For a lot of old fans, this is Softhouse Chara's defining masterpiece... and with good reason.  It has superb, complex gameplay that rewards careful forethought and strategic thinking and more than thirty unit types to play around with, running from common infantry to dragons.  It also has a solid story with decent storytelling (though, true to Softhouse Chara form, it isn't the focus of the game). First, I should say that the first time I played this game, I seriously screwed up in my earl
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Crazy Charage Settings

Now, I love nothing more than an interesting setting, and I'm tired of normal charage in general... so one of the biggest points that can be used to draw me into a charage is a crazy setting.  Crazy charage settings are settings that have no possibility whatsoever of happening in real life or are so far outside of common sense that they are inconceivable as a real possibility to most people.  This includes fantasy settings and sci-fi settings, but more often it includes a simple concept tak
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Shoujo-Tachi wa Kouya o Mezasu

To be honest, I wasn’t really interested in playing this VN, as you might have noticed if you read my previous entries.  However, I ended  up playing it because, once I stopped taking the pain meds (thus going into withdrawal… viva Bucket and Water Bottle!), I had a mind just clear enough to read something on the level of a charage or slightly more complex but not enough to read something like Dies Irae or Jeanne. I’m going to be straight up about this VN… like a lot of stuff Takahiro get
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Possibilities for August's releases: VN of the Month

Tou no Shita no Exircitus (https://vndb.org/v17835 )- This company tends to produce either excellent games or horrible games. Astronauts is constantly exploring the borderline between nukige, normal VNs, and gameplay-focused VNs and frequently tips over into one of the three. However, because they do occasionally produce good games, I can't ignore them, lol. Tenkiame (https://vndb.org/v17337 )- Because I love kitsune. Traveling Stars (https://vndb.org/v16459 )- This is the newest VN fr
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Random VN: Otome ga Musubu Tsukiyo no Kirameki

Ototsuki is one of the few, in fact the only, Ensemble trap protagonist game I hadn't at least tried.  There were a number of reasons for this, but the biggest one was that it came out after my burnout on SOL reached its peak.  By that time, I had no energy for any kind of SOL VNs, even ones in genres I normally liked.  In retrospect, I'm glad I waited until I recovered before playing this, because this is the game that proves that Ensemble still has potential as a company, despite the last five
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VN of the Year Candidates so far

This is the list, as it currently stands, of VNs being considered and those previously considered but disqualified for VN of the Year 2017.  While this year hasn't been good for producing kamige, it has succeeded in producing a number of memorable ones. Being Considered Ojou-sama no Hanbun wa Ren'ai de Dekiteimasu Oni ga Kuru. ~Ane ga Hinshi de Pinchi Desu~ Haruru Minamo ni Suisei Ginka Additions from 12/30/2017 Bakumatsu Jinchuu Houkoku Resshiden Miburo Y
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VN of the Month December 2016

Before I announce the VN of the Month, I'm going to go ahead and apologize to those who wanted me to play Honoguraki... to be blunt, I don't have the energy for it.  Ragnarok sucked me dry, and I need to get away from undead and demons for a while.  Moreover, I hate zombies in the first place (so many reasons), so I'd be unlikely to give a pleasant review or comment anyway. Now... it is kind of startling how so many great games got packed into a single month.  December 2016 was a monster mo
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My new relationship with SOL

If yall haven't guessed (or just read my previous posts) my primary reason for giving up VN of the Month was being buried in SOL... well, that and the fact that playing that many new VNs a month took up too much of my time and left me none for any pursuits beyond work.  My immediate realization afterwards was that I quite simply couldn't play SOL games at all for the first few months.   After years of constant overdosing on saccharine fake romance and meaningless conversations that exist on
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VNs

Random VN: Raillore no Ryakudatsusha

Raillore is 3rdeye's  most recent chuunige, made back in 2019.  At the time, I tried to play it and dropped it after the prologue, for a number of reasons.  The primary reason was the lack of narration in combat scenes... For some reason, 3rdEye has almost no narration in this game, comparative even to charage.  Instead, battle scenes are done using CGs, brief animations, and sound-effects.  Unfortunately, this means you generally have no idea of what is going on, due to the limitations of such
Clephas

Clephas in VNs

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March 2019: What I'm going to play

It appears that March is going to be my first death march of this year (as compared to me doing it every month for the five years previous).  The simple reason is that, for some insane reason, a bunch of companies released a bunch of interesting games all at once this month (it is technically still March). First, we have Alpha Nighthawk, a game by Liar Soft that just looked too interesting for me to ignore (which I normally would have).  My initial impression from the first scene is... that
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Renai Kyoushitsu

Yes, despite myself, I played this.  Renai Kyoushitsu is the first VN from an entirely new company (the writer and artist are both new to VNs as well), and it seems to be, in concept, a simple charage of the type where a male protagonist goes to a newly-coed former girls' school and finds himself the only guy (a fairly normal situation in VNs, though less so in the last few years).  The VN has a really weird atmosphere (not psycho-weird, but rather just plain weird) at first, primarily because t
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Random VN: Tojita Sekai no Tori Colony

This VN is an odd duck on my long list of recommended VNs.  While its existence as a time loop story is a trope, the way the game's story handles it is pretty interesting.  I went ahead and revealed this as a loop story because you find it out so early on that hiding it as a spoiler is meaningless.  The game's story begins with the protagonist meeting (and helping out) Nodoka, one of the four heroines, and her confessing her love to him on the next day when she transfers into the class.  Wh
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Random VN: Meguri, Hitohira part 1

Due to work and other stuff, I hadn't had time to really get into this until recently, and with friday signaling the release of October's list of VNs, at least one of which (Deep One) will play immediately, I felt that it would be fitting to go ahead and give you my initial impression  of the game.  My first impression, after playing through the prologue, was that, while this game is pretty old, it is also very... familiar in an odd way.  At first, I couldn't figure out where that impressio
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Toki ga Tsumugu Yakusoku Part 3: Final thoughts

First, I should comment on Misaki's route... As is to be expected of a true route in a VN with as much story as this one, Misaki's route is incomparable in both length and content to the other three routes.  In terms of emotional impact, it literally leaves the other routes in the dust, while finishing off the other heroines' issues almost as if they were a mere aside, lol.  That said, not all the emotions associated with this route are positive... there are some seriously heartbreaking mom
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Venting sorrow: I lost my cat today

I love my cat. Let’s get that out of the way from the beginning. Even though she is gone, as of today, I have never, for one moment, believed that I would ever stop loving her. For seventeen years and eight months, this calico wonder has made her home in my heart, never failing to wrap me around her paw and jerk me around by my heart strings. As the undisputed mistress of all she surveyed (all eleven rooms and corridors of it), she has dominated the lives and conversation of our family
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Clephas

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JRPG series: Shin Megami Tensei

I've been friendly with the Shin Megami Tensei series for over twenty years now, since the release of the incredibly crappy localization of the original Persona on the ps1 (believe me, it is one of the worst localizations of all time).  That said, I saw the series as just a darker than normal jrpg series... until I played SMT: Nocturne for the PS2. Nocturne is frequently referred to, both seriously and derisively, as 'Pokemon with demons and a cohesive story'.  Seriously.  While the Persona
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For JVN Beginners: Clephas's Fantasy/sci-fi/science fantasy SOL/charage recs

First, I should state for those who are unfamiliar with my history that I have played a seriously ridiculous number of SOL romance/charage over the past decade.  While the sheer number I played exhausted me and I frequently desired something else to play, I don't think I ever came to truly hate the genre, regardless of how much it bored me.  What I liked most were ones that contained science fiction, fantasy, or science fantasy elements.   Now, for those who are unclear about the difference
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Tasogare no Folklore

I do not regret playing this game. I needed to say this first, because this game has a pretty high level of emotional impact.  The actual characters are quiet for the most part, but the relationships in this game are so twisted that even thinking about them being real would make a saint wince.  This story centers around a young personal servant, Kumagata Arima, and his young mistress, Otobe Supika.  It is the Taishou Era (pre-WWII, late teens to late twenties of the twentieth century),
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