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I like looking at the new topics that are put out, but sometimes there are a lot that come very quickly, and sometimes I miss one or two topics I would have been able to contribute to. We have plenty of white space, any chance we can double the number of recent topics?

It also makes you a much bigger target for legal action, companies will be more aggressive with C&Ds if a group is accepting money, even if it's just donations. They don't want anyone earning money off of their work.

When playing a Visual Novel, especially Japanese ones, there was always one thing that I found disappointing: the use of "choices". I have yet to find a VN where the choices you make are really meaningful. 1°) Way too often, the choices you make in a VN are either : - Go with/support heroine A or Don't go with/support heroine A. - Choose heroine A / B / C / D - Go to location A / B / C / D, which will make you meet heroine A / B / C / D Those choices are always very practical, and never appeal morally to the reader, it's mostly either random, or either depending on whether you like the heroine or not. They aren't that many games where the choices you make actually force you to consider the situation you're in, and uses the mood or a moral dilemma to influence your decision (All VN are not like that fortunately, those who stand out as very good VN tend to have more meaningful choices, Steins;Gate being a very good example, but also G-senjou and Grisaia to some extent). 2°) Something I find more in some OELVN, but that I have yet to find in japanese VN, is choices that actually asks for your opinion on something. Because sometimes there are questions that don't have any "right" or "wrong" answers, or at least where the answer is not obvious. Those choices don't have to be necessarily practical (= they can or cannot have an influence on the plot or on future decisions). But I feel that it makes you grow as a player, and sometimes even as a human being if the VN asks you the right questions. It can even make you learn something about yourself. For example, wouldn't it be interesting to have a choice where you're asked : "Is it okay to sacrifice a few to save many?" => Yes / No "Is it okay to sacrifice many to save your loved one?" => Yes/ No "What is the best way for a human being to be happy?" => Being with his loved one / Being wealthy / Succeed in your projects/... You could go as far as having only those kind of choices in a VN, and make it that the personality of your character is modeled progressively based on those choices. Let's just take a stupid example : take a star wars VN. Have the main protagonist be a jedi. Maybe those kind of choices you make before would actually determine whether you'd fall on the dark side or not. If you decided that it was okay to sacrifice people earlier, maybe it would change the course of one of the later event, thus making you getting closer to the dark side. (not an ideal example, but you get my point). Basically, it's not exactly a "The story changes and adapts to the choice you make." but rather a "The story changes and adapts to how you shape the personality of your character." I do realize that it requires much more writing and creates a much more complicated flowchart when it comes to the storyline, but it's nothing impossible to realize. 3°) Lack of dilemma when a choice is given to a player was always something I felt missing. Again, it doesn't have to be very practical or not, though it can be very interesting sometimes. "Yourself, your best friend and a young child are starving. You only have food for one person." => Keep the food to yourself. => Give the food to your best friend. => Give the food to the child. With an example like that, it could or could not have consequences, either it does nothing except changing some dialog lines (if played well, you can still create feelings of guilt, sadness or anger for the character), or it could give you a "point" for this character for the choice of the route later on, or it could even decide about who would survive or die if you go to an extreme case. It could also be this choice that makes the difference between one of the character helping you or abandoning you when you're in a pinch. Maybe it's something proper to japanese mentality and culture, or just because the companies want to take the least risks as possible and want to spare their readers, but a VN is rarely a "b*tch" to you. It will rarely put you in a situation of "conflict of love and duty", and in dilemmas situations. Maybe because sometimes those choices can be harsh to make, and cruel, and that the VN can basically trick you because of the fact that you can never guess if a choice is relevant or not. But again, it would create a very interesting experience imo. 4°) Lack of pressure when selecting a choice. This one is more of a gimmick, but most of the time, there isn't any pressure on the reader when he has to make a choice. What about adding a time limit to pressure him? Especially if the choice is a dilemma, it makes it even more effective. "A woman and her young child are going to die. You can only save one of those, and the person will accompany you for the rest of the story. If you save the child, he will be a burden, if you save the woman, she will hate you forever for not saving her child." => Save the children => Save the woman => Save none of them Now imagine you have a timer to choose which one. If you don't choose anything by the end of the time, none of them will be saved. Again, it adds pressure on the player, but at the same time, it's much more immersing. You are taking the real decisions, it feels like you are becoming the main protagonist. In the end, I feel that the use of such a system for choices is something that the western VN scene could pull out easily and more naturally, because we are actually used to those kind of development where characters you're attached to die (Walking Dead, Game of Thrones...). We are used to stories that are more "cruel" with their own characters. And you, people of Fuwanovel, as VN readers, what are your thoughts on that? Do you know of any VN that already use choices similar to what I described? Would you be ready to play games with such a system? Would you enjoy it?

Swan Song is a Japanese visual novel that would give you seemingly insignificant choices (like bringing a rock or something as a weapon) and than making that choice significant later down the line. However, while the story made me question my morality, the choices themselves rarely did. I agree, the only time I feel like I made important choices that questioned my personal philosophies was when I read Episode 1 of Dysfunctional Systems. I think creating meaningful choices is definitely something OELVN might have more potential for. However, this is just me speculating, but I think one of the reasons for that is the differnce between western games and Japanese games. Western games seem to place more emphasize on life, death, morality; whereas Japanese games generally are more focused on world and character building.

Previous thread became the unlimited chat works, this one is fated to become the merry christmas thread! For the sake of returning to topic and denying fate I'll ask: Any news on the project?

Their personal meaning to me I already explained in this thread As for the medium itself, it's a medium. As it stands it's certainly a window into Japanese culture and subculture. To be it's an incredibly good medium, but it's also incredibly underutilized. There's two parts to a VN so let's start with the story part. Many people mentioned screen/anime, novel, and manga/comics. I am going to be different and say there is one other thing VN is more functionally closer to than any of those three: Theater. That I have amateur theater background has nothing to do with this Let's break it down: VN has tachi-e, background, and CG. It needs a lot less descriptive writing than novel, but can convey close to the same amount of details. It can not convey as much detail as screen or comics, but in turn invites the audience to fill in with their imagination (before someone butcher me, manga just means comics in Japanese. Yes I know they mean only Japanese comics in English) It has music to help build mood, something it shares with screen. And there is acting. In this case voice acting, again to help with mood. What also shares all those characteristics? Theater. They are both middle points between showing you the entire scene and leaving it entirely to your imagination. Now VN don't have actual acting-acting, and probably can not be used for a musical. But it can convey thoughts and description better than a soliloquy or the chorus can. If I were to put rank the five: Screen, Comics, Theater, Novel, and VN in different categories, from 5 to 1, 5 being most 1 being least, I would put it: Screen Comics Theater Novel Visual Novel Time Needed 1 3 2 5 4 Mood-Immersion 2 1 4 3 5 Descriptive Details 5 4 2 1 3 Plot/Character Details 1 2 3 5 4 Open to Imagination 1 2 3 5 4 Now these are not set in stone, but just in general. So as a storytelling medium, I feel VN is like an even more personal version of Theater. It's also a nice balance compared to other forms. Each form has something very specific to it. VN is it's ability give the audience the visual and audio input from a character's point of view for long periods (or even most). Theater by design must be third person, while comics and screen can not only limit their first person view to short segments for emphasis. Novels can be written for first person, but has no sound or sight. I feel this allows VN to be the most personal of all the forms. Third person could definitely be done on the VN format (interestingly all the third person VN I've read are SLG or RPG) but I prefer first person. VN can provide enough details for narration to be minimum, or even non existent, so might as well not squander the chance to make the story personal, with access to thoughts and stuff. Having said all that, I feel VN is being limited by its fanbase and dating-sims history. I hope some day there could be something like, I don't know, a WWII VN or Fantasy VN with little or no romance. VN I feel is the only one of the four mediums that is limited to centering on comedy/romance/drama and taking little experimentation in other genres, instead of a more frequent, wider reach. With that I go to the game part. Of those 5 mediums, VN is the one unique in that it makes the audience participate, and in ways far engaging than Theater or Choose-your-own-adventure novels can without needing to sacrifice story-telling in theory (in practice it will likely happen). Yet I haven't seen any go down this route. At best I've seen games and story in the same software but more-or-less independent of each other. (Though Key has a interesting thing of writing replayability and routes into the story itself). I hope someday I can find a VN where the story path is decided by gameplay, like what objective you pick in an SLG, how you do in an RPG, etc. Long Live the Queen does this. And it's quite refreshing and entertaining. Just that both story and gameplay are very barebone.

This thread still needs help to grow. Feel free to post your useful resources, with a small description of what it is. You can also ask any questions related to this topic. ------------ Chances are, if you read VN, at some point you'll get interested in learning Japanese. This thread will NOT tell you how to learn japanese, I'm not qualified for that. This is a compilation of useful resources you might need, put together by helpful members and myself. If you know absolutely nothing about the language, I recommend you to read a bit about it before. Read some wikipedia pages and the introductions of various guides. The best way to approach things is probably to try out a bit of everything and see what works for you. Here are the categories of resources presented: *Learning methods: more-or-less complete schedule other people put together. *Useful softwares, apps & cie *Kanji & Kana *Grammar *Practice material Learning methods Those hardly consist of rigid guides that'll take you all the way, but they might help to give you an idea on how to approach learning the language. Don't spend too much time looking for methods, you'll most likely end up doing things in a different way anyway. Tae Kim's complete guide to japanese (everything is not complete yet) Nukemarine's Suggested Guide for Beginners "It's a guide on how to learn japanese by plowing through anki cards in a effective manner. It's made by a community member at Koohi forums. (I'd like to mention you can learn vocab very fast with this method and keep it in memory. But you learn without a lot of context, which has its negative sides.)" (Bolverk) The Tay way (note that this is from 2013 and no longer in use) Aaeru's "learn how to read VN in two years" Useful softwares Those are basic tools you'll almost certainly need, or at least try out, in your learning of japanese. Google IME: Allows you to type in Japanese. Click this link, click the big blue button, install: you can now switch your typing mode to japanese. Rikaichan: Firefox app that gives you a dictionary entry for a word by simply hovering over it. Extremely useful. Also exists for Chrome. Anki: A flash card software with a built-in algorithm for learning efficiency. Exists on Android and iOS too. (Regular hand-written flash-cards can be a useful tool too). Use shared decks to find vocab/kanji pre-made decks. Note about Anki: the use of Anki is advocated as necessary by some and deemed completely useless by others. Starting out with basic vocab/kanji grinding will probably help you ease into practice material, however learning tons of words, or worse even tons of kanji out of context is not a good idea. It's up to you to find out whether you want to use Anki (and whether you can). ITH, TA, Mecab, Jparser: ITH is a text hooker that'll extract the text from, say, a VN for you. Translation Aggregator will pass said text through parsers and dictionaries. Extremely useful to practice on VNs. Some tips and other softs for ITH here Chiitrans: a useful alternative to ITH/TA. Same principle. Read the tuto for more details. Visual Novel Reader: Another alternative to ITH/TA. Note about text hookers: it might seem obvious but do NOT use machine translations with your text hookers. You won't learn anything from the garbage it feeds you and you won't even actually understand what's going on, whether you think you do or not. It is also not a very good idea to rely on parsers for grammar purposes. Parsers are far from perfect. They certainly can't replace a grammar resource and basic googling. Think of text hookers as crutches you use until you become able to read without constantly looking up vocabulary. It is also a good idea to switch to japanese-japanese dictionaries as soon as you can - only they will give you the nuances of the words, and they're also much less flawed than existing free j-e dictionaries. Kanji & Kana Learning the hiragana and katakana should be about the first thing you do. It's not very long or difficult. Becoming accustomed to reading them is longer but it eventually comes. Kanjis are probably the biggest psychological barrier for japanese learners. I don't have a magical method to suggest, but do tell yourself it's really not that hard if you stop thinking too hard about it and trying to find the best, most optimized method for learning them. Try to learn the basic ones, see where you can get, and start practicing on reading as soon as you can. RealKana: This is just an example among others of ways to learn the kana. It's the first thing you should do anyway, and it's not hard or long. Heisig's Remember the Kanji: A method for learning kanji through memo stories, by association with an english keyword. Good for starters, probably won't get you through the whole kanji learning though. See Tay's guide and this website too. Kanjidamage: Learning the kanjis through radicals and memo sentences. I'm not a fan of his method, but it has some interesting information in the introduction and on some kanjis. Grammar Basic grammar: Tae Kim's guide: The most popular (and free!) guide on the internet. Rather compact, has all the essential grammar with good explanations and examples. A must. Genki: To take things more slowly, or have a different view on points you didn't get. (No links for that one yet, it's not free, sorry) Nihongomori: this is a youtube channel with videos explaining grammar, but also vocab and other misc things, done by native speakers (in english for the basics, japanese later). It goes from basic grammar (JLPT N5-N4 level) up to finer points (N2-N1 level) so it actually covers intermediate/advanced grammar too. The videos are pretty fun and well done, if you like the video media it might work good for you. More advanced grammar: Imabi: Lots of in-depth explanations about various grammar subjects. Not recommended for pure beginners and not written as a guide. If you want to go further than that, you'll need to go into japanese grammar books. Don't forget a simple research on the internet can give you lots of explanations about pretty much anything anyway. Advanced grammar: If you want to go further into grammar than that (for example if you want to read 古典 and such), you'll probably need to go into japanese grammar textbooks. This guide is approved as being really good. (Change the encoding of the page to Japanese EUC-JP for it to display correctly) This page could be useful too. Feel free to do your own research! Others: A grammar cheat sheet. Not for beginners, obviously. Nihongoresources: A grammar guide. Never tried it. Practice Material General advice: Try to avoid material based on comedy (because you need a good enough knowledge to get the jokes), or that rely heavily on slang or local dialect. Also, avoid things that have too much technical vocabulary (hard sci-fi) or chuuni stuff with abstract concepts and archaic kanjis. Chokochoko: Some practice texts (articles on various stuff), ranked by JLPT difficulty. Children's tales: easy place to start. Japanese subtitles for lots of anime. VNs in japanese: *Relatively easy language for a story-focused VN. *List of VN for beginners, with two levels of difficulty. *A big list of Visual novels to read if you are confident enough (~JPTL N2). I won't point you out to raw mangas, of course, but if you can find high enough quality scans (or can afford to import them) it's obviously a great way to practice. Every shoujo and shonen manga have furiganas on every kanjis. Seinen/josei may not have them, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily more difficult. Dictionaries, vocabulary resources Note: Japanese-english dictionaries (the free ones you'll find on the internet) are pretty much all based on Edict. Of course, as a beginner you have to use j-e dictionaries, but 1) edict is far from perfect 2) j-e dictionaries are inherently limited anyway: only japanese dictionaries will give you the right nuance (and they're rather excellent). So as soon as you can, switch to japanese dictionaries. The jump is not easy but it's necessary, especially if you intend to read VNs with a higher level of language. Overall, the internet is your friend! A simple search will often yield whatever you're looking for. Finding your way, especially in japanese websites, is the most useful skill you can develop (although once again you need to reach a certain level of confidence first). Jisho: Jap/eng dictionary. Tangorin: Same thing. WWWJDIC Dictionary site. Japanese online dictionary. Requires good enough knowledge of japanese to be used. Slang dictionary. Same as above. Writing recognition: Tries to find a kanji directly written with your mouse. Tanos: Various JLPT-related resources: vocabulary and kanji lists, etc. Blog posts and articles about learning japanese Blogpost by garejei: Tips and a view on kanji memorization. ----- Thanks to Clephas, Bolverk, cryofrzd, Okami, garejei, Mephisto and probably a bunch of others I forgot to add (sorry!) for their contributions.

Lewy loves this change and feels that having the option of closing those panels is preventing some users from experiencing the full glory of the new forum page. He wants to know if you can remove the 'X' button Serious mode: I'm for the suggestion Eclipsed made.

Yeah, was never a fan of the route system incorporated in VNs. Imo of all the subcategories of Interactive Storytelling, VNs are by far the worst in how they utilise choices. My thoughts on choices in VNs revolve more around character freedom, and having the world reacting to your choices. Western studios practice the “choice and consequence” mechanic, which is far more my thing. I like to see real consequences to my choices instead of a couple of lines of flavour dialogue and flags which dictate which version of the story (A, B, C, or D) a user reads. I’d like to see the consequences of my actions affect my environment (I lost my job, I got thrown out of my apartment, my buddy died.) I’d like to see actual, meaningful options for what I can do. – I could fight the guy, try and use diplomacy, try and use cunning behind the scenes, run and hide. Some Western studios do this well but I can’t think of many Japanese VN’s which give you that option. I think VNs have a set formula which they don't want to break away from, and I think partly because of this the genre has stagnated.

Always nice to see someone who enjoys Little Busters. Have a Little Busters image. I hope to see you around!

The only good parts were in the third chapter when Homura and co. showed up as their interactions with Asuka and co. were enjoyable and Ikaruga's part of the first chapter. All in all I recommend playing the Hanzo storyline first just to get it out of the way and if you play it after Gessen you will be disappointed at least. On the other hand I've played up to chapter 4 of Homura and co.'s story...and my God has it made up for the Hanzo story mode (and more) as this is the most entertaining of the story modes so far. The best example for why can be seen in Hikage who may now be the funniest character in the series. Getting to it soon. I'm pretty sure everyone just plays these for the Hebijo.

Yes, but only if batman is writing the script. Hm, to be honest I don't know if this would work as well for VNs as it does for anime.

Little Busters Forever indeed Welcome to the forums Paul

Please~~~~~~~ We need Jinpou's Revolution in Fuwa. {Special thanks to Sajaki}

it seems that mentioning 'tsundere' works like a mating call on kurisu-chan

Greetings fellow VN lover, glad to have you in fuwa forums. Legend has it that Zaka is actually a goat, and that both Edward and Jacob were actually on team Flutterz. Speaking of Flutterz here have a Flutterz

Well it's pretty easy, if you heard my voice you would thing i sound like a roughly aged old man, because my voice is so deep, who can't decide if he's drunk or sober as i slur my words when i'm in the middle of thinking and speak sharp and fast when i have my thoughts in order. You on the other hand sound refined, clean and overall properly well despite being six years my senior and your voice is quite soft, i'm a bit envious

Nosebleed is a R smile non idolized idol with white hair and yellow eyes and... >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka >Nosebleed is Honoka (ノ ゜Д゜)ノ ︵ ┻━┻ Maki-chan, is that you?

Had to change my background in celebration for the release of Tsukimonogatari...

Don't forget TiagxOurai!

Sure, why not? Merry Christmas, everyone. Hope you're all enjoying your holidays. Forgive my horrible timing, I was busy wasting my time in nord ruins of Skyrim these days. I've already wrote how did I get to know about visual novels in my small introduction on my profile page, but I don't mind saying it again here - I discovered G-Senjou no Maou on a hentai-streaming site. I've been using torrents for downloading for quite some time before that, so I searched for torrent trackers that might be seeding it and accidentally stumbled upon Fuwanovel. After finishing Haru's route I downloaded Grisaia no Kajitsu and If My Heart Had Wings afterwards. At that time I've become interested in the forum of Fuwa, and I registered my first account (it says "retired" now). My first impression was a little odd, to say the least. I've been an active member on an anime forum before coming here, but I haven't seen as many people having waifus and preferring 2D world to 3D as here. I enjoy both of them myself, but I still prefer 3D to 2D. I grew accustomed pretty quickly, made a couple of friends. "Kinda" tried to contribute to this awesome community of yours, but that good will didn't last for long. Partly because of my own laziness and partly because of the lack of any attractive things to contribute to. Now, "Pretty Much Entire Life History" part is coming up. Are you really interested? I'm 17 years old. Born in Russia, living in Italy with my mother and her partner. No brothers or sisters. My father can as well be dead. How the heck did I end up here? A few months after I was born my father took my mother and me to our parents to Ukraine. Upon arriving there he told us that he thinks he's not ready to have a family yet. Living us to our parents, he returned back to Moscow. My mother, after recovering after the stress, received an offer to go working in Italy. She accepted it, and I was left with my grandparents. A few years after she got there, she found a man who she fell in love with. They started living together and at that time she started to prepare the documents for me to transfer here. She spent more than 6 years doing it, and at the time everything was ready I was 12 years old. Upon arriving here the family of her husband started to create all sorts of troubles to me and my mother. We've never been able to discover the true reason behind it, but the most plausible possibility is that once her husband discovered that his children he had with his previous wife were being jealous of my mother and me he decided to get rid of us. Under the pretence of finding a job as a manager of a restaurant to my mother, he moved us with our belongings to a new place, where we spent 2 years until we had to close because we weren't able to pay rent nor for the restaurant, nor for the place we were living in anymore. At that time my mother got in touch with a man we're currently living with. He invited us to stay with him, and so we're living together for a third year already. Happy end? Not really. The man has tons of his own problems to solve, so he can't fully dedicate his attention to us. Can't say he's any eager about it either. To heat the house we have to use electric heaters because there's no heating in the place we're living. We can't keep constantly turned on either because the electric bill grows to the sky. We do have a fireplace, which fills the apartment with smoke whenever you try to start a fire in it. Apparently the chimney is too short for the smoke to escape efficiently. Perhaps I should add that there are no jobs to be found here. But we're living near the sea, so I suppose it's all worth it. Too bad it adds enormous amount of humidity to the apartment, though. Unlike Tiago, I'm a natural optimist. Everything has a positive side to it, you just have to see it. I like pondering about philosophical matters (that's a little hobby of mine). Aside from that - I love music, especially listening to it. Currently learning Japanese, but who cares. Pretty Much Entire Life History - check. Ah. Holiday message, right. Happy holidays! I hope you'll spend them having as much fun as you want, doing what you want when you want where you want. Thanks again for such an awesome community, everyone. Please continue being awesome. P.S. Heizei - I'm expecting a similar thread from you now.

Welcome to the Fuwa forums where potato is a fruit and a nosebleed is actual a wild Kaninchen with thumbs READ IT and embrace thine feels. Depressed for weeks though? HA what a joke, i've been depressed ever since the day after it's release in 2009. The feels still remain

no please..................................................................no

Do want. 10/10

I'm okay with the true end being really delayed, after all, the fanbase already knows about it. On the other hand, lots of us know nothing about many members of the main cast aside from their general details. I think all volumes will have the common route, but remember how the game system will work: Considering this, I think even the common route will differ a lot from each gameplay you do, or maybe you get locked into a route pretty early. Either way, I think this style will fit really well.

tHe CAlL Just two days ago this thread was called epic. It's not the first time the thread has been described that way, and it won't be the last. Well. Actually. It very well could be. Especially since it has been called to die. Your crisis, dear citizens of the coliseum, awaits in the Arena. You have seven days.

Oh Thank you very much for letting me know! I'll have to look into em' see if they are something ill enjoy reading. Thank you for your time, and helping me out! It's much appreciated.

Mission Yuela Route Serawi Route Emelita Route

I didn't read others posts, but here are my quick thoughts A VN doesn't necessarily have to have Japanese art or culture.. it's more like a medium to me. A game that has story and characters told in a story text-based format almost like a storybook. Because of this, it tends to be focused more on story-telling and character development more.. and then there are other options like "choices" or other game mechanics sometimes included. So yeah.. pretty much what it's called, a Visual Novel. Trying to make Visual Novels popular in the west... to me just means, to help make that game style, those types of games more popular and accepted in mainstream. So we can get more games like 999, Danganronpa, etc. I do think of "Japanese" Visual Novels more though, because I play more of those kinds and enjoy them and tend to like the anime-art style. I Almost even consider The Walking Dead, Beyond Two Souls, etc. as VNs for some similarity.. just because they are story-driven and have interactive choice-making... but they probably don't fit with what most people consider to be VN. There are some games that have VN gameplay elements in it, but aren't exactly considered VN either... so it's a bit hard to say exactly. I do enjoy VNs though, either just parts of it or the whole thing in a game. lol... no. Maybe when I was 10, but now that I'm older I'd like to read something more serious or complicated. Not saying Disney isn't good, but their stories tend to be childish and predictable, for me at least. I'd watch it, but I'd rather Read something else.

Username: draganada1337 1V1 ME ON RUST, FAGGOT!!!!1 I mostly play CoD: AW now. I also like to play P4AU and UNiB

Since you like yuri I would suspect that you would like this, Za awesome recommendation for lef.

Given your tastes and your limited free time I recommend Naricssu. Its really good, very much on the depressing side though, and its only like 3 hours long. It also has a prequel, which I recommend you read after the original. Eldritchcherub recommend Swan Song, that VN is also excellent, but longer. Welcome to the Forums by the way.

Welcome to the forums! I'm surprised to see that you don't possess Canadian blood even though you live in Canada. It's not weird though. Do enjoy your time here!

In that reddit thread Diamon linked to, Dovac implied published OELVNs would undergo a more rigorous quality checking procedure in the future. Checking the screenshots for this game I either remember Sakura Spirit having better writing than it did, or that statement was a big fat lie. Because I can't see much difference in the quality of writing going from Sakura Spirit to Sakura Angels.

Welcome to the party!

Welcome to the forums! That Katawa Shoujo experience sounds about right. -_-

Rats. Looks like I have some emotional training to do before attempting to read this Maybe you can check out Kaguya-sama's 50 VNs list!

This part just broke my heart (but was really cute )

Yo Daniel, welcome to the forums *grumble grumble* I've been meaning to read Katawa Shoujo for a while now, but being depressed for WEEKS afterwards doesn't sound very fun xD

Ello and welcome, please do not forget your required reading of Muv Luv Alternative.

Welcome. Don't get mistaken. Your nationality is Canadian. Your mixed origins are your ethnicity.

I love the low-twintails hairstyle. A character with that hairstyle is almost an instant win to me.

I just want kingdom hearts 3 :|

People are bashing this surprisingly often... but I didn't go into this VN expecting a masterpiece (good god, what kind of expectations do people have for a doujin-game anyway?), unlike some people. I knew from the first scene that this was a moege, nothing more, nothing less. Moreover, it was a straight-up 'pure' moege, meaning there is no depth of characters, no exploration of society or people, just cuteness, archetypical enjoyment, and eye-candy. People really need to learn to take a step back and go 'so what can I really expect in a given situation?' Seriously. There is a very good reason why I bash pure moege like crazy. Pure moege have nothing resembling depth, and the lack the dubious 'virtue' of being pure fap material that a nukige possesses. Charage took the best aspects (though that too is a dubious concept) of moege and added on in-depth character development and character dynamics, in order to increase emotional attachment to the cast. This is the type of moege we are most familiar with... and the 'purest' one that sells nowadays. Why am I raving? Because people are divided into 'I love the cuteness' and 'it is so stupid' camps. Am I the only person who can take a step back, look at this VN objectively, and both bash and praise it as it deserves? Because it does deserve both. This happens every single, freaking time a new translated VN comes out. The two sides get polarized and no one is willing to admit when they are wrong. Worse, this VN is only four hours long in Japanese, so there really isn't that much to argue about in the first place. So why am I getting complaints because I didn't side with either group? Subjectively, this is a soothing VN, but that is about all I can say for it. Objectively, it is pretty visually and impressive for a doujin effort, but it lacks a story and fails utterly to make effective use of the setting it introduces. There, now you have both sides of my thoughts. That pretty much covers everything there is to say about Nekopara in two sentences. Edit: Now the Fuwans know why I object to any and all attempts to translate 'pure' moege. There are some things people are just better off not experiencing. Edit2: At the same time, I strive for objectivity because I see that as the duty of being one of the very few people who have the capabilities and patience to pound their way through VN after VN in Japanese. My views here are only ever meant to be a point of reference, save in a few cases where I seriously warn off any who might attempt to read a particular VN. If I chose to review purely based on my subjective point of view, there are a lot of VNs in this thread that would have resulted in a lot more poison from me. Edit3: Oh, and I'm adding Unionism Quartet to my list of December VNs because this one turned out to be so short (managed to play this in the background while working). That means that that and Holy Breaker will be the last two. Look forward to those, since Holy Breaker is, interestingly enough, made by a single person... meaning he basically did what he wanted to it without restrictions (hehe). Unionism... looks like it could be a charage or a nukige.

*hiss* Because of scenes like this: They need it. They want it. They love it. Those things aren't important. Was is important, are scenes like this: I rest my case.

Watamote: Oh my god i talked to a guy! (」゜ロ゜)」 (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ (╯°Д°）╯︵/(.□ . \) ヽ(#ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ┌┛Σ(ノ´Д`)ノ ヽ(｀Д´)ノ　(д´ノ)　ヽ(　　　)ノ　(ヽ´△) ヽ(´△`)ﾉ

Not a sentence, but.. "What." - Serial Experiments Lain