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First, I’ll say a few words about the Tiny Dungeon series. This series is made up of five games (if you include Endless Dungeon, which is a sequel/canon ending that brings a conclusion to the post-Brave and Slave events). The first three VNs are each focused on one of the three main heroines… Veil Sein, Ururu Kajuta, and Note Ruum. The fourth VN – Brave or Slave – brings an end to the story began in Black and White, and the fifth – Endless Dungeon – is a final conclusion and after-story for the entire group. The first VN, Black and White, contains the common route and the Veil Sein (the demon girl) route. Veil is probably the most obvious deredere heroine in existence… since she doesn’t have a drop of tsun in her body. She loves Hime, lives for him, and without hesitation will erase the existence of anyone who bothers him. The fact that she has the power to do so (the most powerful individual in the demon realm) kind of makes her scary to the various people who don’t like Hime (obviously). Needless to say, I love her, lol. Anyway, this VN, like all the VNs in the Tiny Dungeon series, balances hilarity, serious drama, and emotional moments in a way that you generally won’t see in a VN that is so relatively easy to read. That’s not to say it is a really easy read (it tends to range between 4.5-7)… but it is much easier to read than most VNs with action scenes. The music in all these VNs is pretty good, primarily utilizing piano and techno pieces to enhance and create moods as is appropriate, and they are generally tastefully presented. The voices can be a bit exaggerated, and there is one scene early on when you’ll notice a bit of fuzziness in the background (as a friend explained to me, it is the engine the game runs on, rather than the actual voice-acting or recording itself). However, they are nonetheless generally suited to their characters… and there are a lot of characters. In this VN, there are three main heroines (as stated above) and four total sub-heroines in the series who make up Hime’s hare- I mean, his group of friends. They consist of Amia (Note’s little sister), Opera (Ururu’s psychotic maid), Fon (the dragon/demon hybrid), and Kou (the protagonist’s human roommate). There are also another dozen or so major and minor characters who appear on screen and have a significant effect on the story as a whole, though not all of them appear in the first game. Generally speaking, there is no point in any of the main-series VNs where there is no point to what is going on. The story is always moving forward or creating the basis for moving forward, and the comedy that is used to frost the cake is ever-present, save for in the most tense scenes. Hime, the protagonist, is a natural leader and hard worker who has an incredibly strong will and a reasonable level of intelligence (he’s not a genius, but neither is he average). More importantly, he understands people and has a big, accepting heart. Generally speaking, he is one of the few unvoiced protagonists outside of a chuunige where I truly and absolutely enjoyed every second behind his eyes… One thing you have to keep in mind about this VN is that it is one part in four… and the events in this game are inevitably going to break your heart at times. I know I cried several times in the course of this VN, even though I’ve already played it before. Overall, this VN still gets a strong recommendation from me, both for relatively advanced beginners and veterans alike.

In this post I'll attempt to introduce JWPce (for those who don't know what it is) (* = refer to JWPce User Manual) JWPce JWPce (Japanese Word Processor for Windows) by Glenn Rosenthal is a program designed for English speakers who are studying Japanese. Now, JWPce has BUNCH of functions (13 others) but I'm only going to talk about the DICTIONARY FUNCTION. Upon searching a word, the dictionary will give you the word in Kanji, the word in Hiragana and the meaning of the word. The dictionary is not limited to Japanese to English. Press Ctrl A to search from English to Japanese. (To return to Japanese to English, Ctrl K) How to use the Dictionary for Learning Japanese through Visual Novels Rains told me about this program. lol This is what I'm using to read Raw VNs. (I'm not an expert yet) After opening the program, press F6. On the left side, you'll see buttons such as Search, Sort... Click Options. A window will appear. Look on the left side and check Track Clipboard. Then OK. Say you have a hooked Japanese sentence on the ITH. Upon highlighting a word (in the ITH) that you do not know, the dictionary will automatically search that word. This is the result of the procedure I described above. If you look at the upper right side of the dictionary, you'll see four stuff you can check or uncheck. These things are used to limit the search. A matter of one's preference. Personally, I check them all so that only the needed meanings are shown and the search is fast (but there are disadvantages too). Basically, you will be reading the text on the ITH which means that parsing (identifying words, particles, etc.) is done by you. In case no matches are found, a warning is triggered and the default warning sound is annoying. Sound can be made tolerable by changing your Windows theme. JWPce uses EDICT, ENAMDICT, and other dictionaries (you can add others) at the same time.* It also has a USER DICTIONARY - a personalized dictionary you can make.* Note: ☆ JWPce is free under the terms of GNU General Public License Link to download ☆ No romaji in this program. Go learn Kana first. ☆ Radical Look-up (F5) is useful for Kanjis you can't hook ☆ Again, to make the warning sound quite acceptable in the ears, I suggest changing your theme. ☆ There are times when the program crashes. This is because of certain words (it can't search). I suggest moving to the next line of the game and open the program again. ☆ To recognize the kanji more (make it bigger) or for more details about a certain kanji, point the mouse to the kanji (on the dictionary), right click then click Get info. ☆ I suggest reading the User Manual (atleast the section about dictionary) ☆ Some things I said are based only on my observations. Stuff may vary. ☆ credit to rainsismyfav for introducing me to JWPce / ITH method I will answer questions I can / am willing to answer. Also please correct me for false information I might have stated. See you around.

Bless of Dragon is the second VN in the Tiny Dungeon series (see http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blog/46/entry-727-tiny-dungeon-black-and-white/ for my comments on Black and White). The picture above is of Fon, who is one of this VN's two side-heroines (Opera the maid is the other). She is a half-dragon, half-demon girl with her own major issues that come out into the open in this VN, which is focused on Ururu Kajuta, the loli-dragon princess. Ururu is technically what would be called a 'loli-babaa', because she is in the latter of her second century of life. It says a lot about her that her base personality that she is still childish enough that she willingly calls the protagonist 'nii-sama', for you moe-freaks out there. Hime, as always, grows a lot during the course of this VN, exceeding the expectations of those around him at every turn, though he isn't some kind of 'I am powerful!' type, but rather the type that improves through solid hard work and constant consideration and learning. The serious (deadly) action scenes in this VN are a bit more plentiful than those in Black and White... but in exchange, the emotions surrounding them tend to be more intense (though the last confrontation in Black and White outmatches all of those in the other two 'heroine' games). In addition, the usual comedy is offset by the sheer tragedy of certain events... This is a characteristic you will probably be familiar with already, if you played Black and White before this one, like you were supposed to. Ururu also shows herself to be an individual worthy of the insanely (a cross between half-religious zealotry and obsessive idol-worshipping fandom) loyal dragon race that is under her rule, which will probably surprise the heck out of those who are used to thinking of her as lolicon bait. This shows off perhaps one of the things I like most about this series... the characters do confront their individual problems, at some point in the series, and that grants a definite sense of substance to the whole thing. For those who follow my Random VN part of the blog, I will be going through the other two VNs in the main series as well as a second playthrough of Endless Dungeon in the near future, so look forward to it.