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Introduction: When it comes to reading VN's in Japanese, required skills can be grouped into four areas: Vocab, grammar, basic parsing skill, and kanji skill. In this post, for each area I'm going to explain: -what knowing skills in the area are good for -how you might study them -how much you'll need to start reading. I'll also give some related tips. The requirements mentioned below are a conservative estimate. I've known people who've jumped in to playing VN's with less or much less, but I'm giving a safe estimate. A level which at most people, without any special knack for learning languages through immersion, should be able to gain traction. If you learn this much before starting an easyish VN, the amount you are completely lost should be significantly less than the percentage you are able to pick up and improve from. This is not a comprehensive how-to guide by any means. Just an informative post. ------------------ 1. Vocab Knowing enough vocab to study your grammar resource without being bogged down by vocab: -About 30 verbs and 50 other words for Genki 1/ Tae kim Basic. -By the time you get to Genki 2/Tae Kim Essential you'll want a good set of verbs (about 100), and maybe about 300 total vocabulary. -~600 words about how much you'll want to be able to study N3 grammar without getting bogged down in vocab. Having enough vocab to start your first VN: -I recommend over 1000, but anywhere from 800-1300 is good. I remember trying Clannad with only 800, and I felt like ramming my head into a wall. It's also important to pick an easy title. It will still feel hard no matter what, but an easy title will be much more helpful and rewarding to play. You also must just translation aggregator and ITH. They are the reason why Visual Novels are the best medium for learning Japanese out of anime/books/movies/drama/etc. Vocab Lists: There's a dedicated verb list here: http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/ Verbs are helpful to learn, because they are often the most important part of the sentence AND you need to to have stuff to conjugate. In general JLPT-based vocab list is here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/ Regarding English definitions: Be mentally open and flexible. If the english definition doesn't quite add up, don't try and think about it too hard. Focus instead on associating the word with the situations where you see it. For example, you might be confused by the word 都合 and it's unhelpful definition J-E definition, but if you seen 都合がいい used in a situation where you know it means "is convenient for me" from context then remember that occurence. There might be (there are, in fact), other usages of the word 都合, but that doesn't hurt you in anyway. The next time you see 都合 you can pair it against this meaning and see if that makes any sense. 2. Grammar Skills With N5+N4 grammar you will be barely able to start making your way through a VN. Without N4, you will have quite limited gains in the long term from reading visual novels. (Equivalent to Genki 1+2.) -Required to be able to play VN's With N3 grammar, everything will feel a lot clearer, the amount of grammar you'll understand will exceed 60%. (Equiv. to Intermediate approach to Integrated Japanese). Highly recommended to study this before or soon after you start your first VN. N2 grammar further cuts the amount of unknown grammar you face in three. N1 is kind of like a bonus that gives you a lot of uncommon or formal expressions. It's NOT comprehensive at all, in terms of covered all Japanese phrases. From my experience, some of the phrases you learn in here show up often in novels (ばかり、んばかり), others quite less. Good to know, though Expressions not covered in JLPT There are a lot of patterns and phrases not covered in JLPT that you will see in typical native reading material. Examples (社長に議長, phrases like なんだと！？ Xってなんだ？　ですって！？　～てくれないかな。 オレって、なんてバカなんだ ) Not to worry, many of them can be picked up as you go. For the rest, once you get settled into reading, you can start noting down those phrases you don't get and google them or ask other people. Imabi for grammar You can also try studying from http://www.imabi.net/. It's a phenomenal reference, it's just goes into tons of depth, too much. I think there's 2 or 3 times as much information there is covered by JLPT up to JLPT 1. As such it's going to be overwhelming for a beginner and is much better suited as a reference for intermediate or advanced learners. 3. Basic Parsing Skill Knowing the different types of words (Covered by doing a vocab list of about 100 verbs, and then the JLPT 5 list. You also have to have done or be doing Tae Kim's Basic Guide, since he explains what na-adj's, i-adj's, and other word types are, etc.). -(nouns, suru-verbs/nouns, verbs, na-adj's, i-adj's, adverbs, temporal adverbs) -Required to be able to play VN's. Knowing the basic sentence structure and how words can modify each other and fit in a sentence.: (adjectives modifying nouns, verbs). The knowledge is covered by Tae Kim Basic + a mix of Essential Grammar and Genki 1/2. I personally find Tae Kim's explanation good even though the learning curve is steep and his lessons aren't good for review like Genki books are. He tries to convey to you the big picture. -Required to be able to play VN's. Being able to breakdown sentences and spot the different types of words based on their position. -you can practice this by reading bits of text in your genki textbook, but more likely, the first time you really gain this skill is going to be the first month in which you read a visual novel with TA. Heavily practiced during your first month or two of reading VN's. 4. Kanji Skill: Learning to spots radicals in kanji (could be covered by doing the 214 radicals, about 1 month. You could also do this ongoing basis, learning how to spot the radicals that make up a kanji, for the words you learn.) -not needed to read VN's with TL aggregator, but extremely helpful for learning new words which have new kanji. Learning to remember kanji, ie. start recognizing when words share the same kanji. (it is a long ongoing gradual process. You can start doing this with the vocab you learn once you are comfortable learning vocab. You can also pick out words you see in vn's and check whether they use the same kanji by typing them out (example 朝（あさ）　and　朝食（ちょうしょく）　use the same kanji.). Oh course, to be able to easily produce the kanji you want to compare you need to remember how to spell a word that contains it (in this case 朝). So, as your vocab expands, you'll be able to compare more kanji. Note that to be able to do this comparing you must be able to spot radicals in kanji (previous level skill). -moderately helpful for learning vocabs. The same way remembering radicals helps learning with kanji: if you know the kanji clearly, you can remember a word just by the two kanji it uses, which is very precise and doesn't take a lot of mental bandwidth. It also means that you will much more rarely confuse words which have similiar looking kanji. The following two skills are for more advanced, they won't be particularly useful until much later. You might not notice the problems they solve until later as well. I include them mainly for completeness. Learning on-yomi for many of the Jyouyou kanji (start when you are intermediate-advanced, a medium-long process) -helpful for exactly what it is, reading kanji words and compounds correctly. -don't need to worry about this. From learning vocab you might pick up some of the common ones, but there's no need to pursue this actively for a while. Learning kanji meaning: (start when you are advanced, and can use a J-J dictionary) -suffixes like 府、省、性、症, as well normal kanji whose different meanings apply to clusters of words. -helpful for kanji compounds which won't directly show up in dictionaries -helpful for developing a native level understanding of vocabulary (not everything can be learned by exposure). A lot of literary words are fairly influenced by their kanji meanings, though sometimes consulting the word differentiation explanations can be more helpful. One last topic... On learning enough grammar and jumping into works too difficult for you. Reading a VN isn't the best way to learn basic sentence structure. However, it's a great way to reinforce grammar points you've learned. It's also a great way to get an understanding of conversational patterns you won't find in textbooks or JLPT. But you won't have the presence of mind to pay attention to that if you are bogged down by not knowing basic grammar. There are benefits for venturing early into native material or difficult vn's, but you wouldn't give a grade two student Tolkien, or even Harry Potter to improve their English. All the fancy prose and unusual concept would distract you from the more immediately useful things like, say: basic sentence structure. There are works which are the right level, and there are VN's which you really want to read. For the best experience, it's best to find some combination of the two. ------------------ Ok that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions: I didn't really go into the details of how to study, instead focusing on the, well, skills involved. But it's also hard to remember what it's like for someone just starting out. I remember parts of studying very clearly, but I forget the thousands of things I used to be puzzled through varying stages of understanding but now take for granted. The process was all I could think about for the longest time. Now I don't give it much thought, it's just a regular part of my life, reading and a bit of studying. It's not bad idea, to just find a type of study that you know is helpful, stop thinking about all the right ways and wrong ways and magic tricks which don't exist, and just do it, for a while. Regularly. For a month or three.

There’s no getting around it. If you’re looking to edit visual novels, at some point you’re going to have roll up your sleeves, put on the rubber gloves, and get elbow-deep in some H. The good news is that if you come prepared, practice your technique, and set some clear boundaries, it can be a pleasurable experience for both you and the reader. First, a disclaimer: I don’t like pineapple on my pizza, and I don’t like H-scenes in my VNs. It’s not a prudish thing; it’s a narrative thing. They’re rarely well crafted — you can feel all the hallmarks of the B-team being brought in to write them — and they almost never add plot/characterization that couldn’t have been handled better some other way. (I’ll pause here so you can mention Amane’s route from Grisaia, an exception that helps prove the rule.) Let’s be honest: they’re shoehorned in to help sell product. It’s built into the economics of the eroge genre. And honestly, that’s fine. I try to be sanguine about it and think of H-scenes as banner ads or TV commercials. They’re profit centers that help support the content I’m actually interested in. (I suspect more than a few developers feel the same way.) Long story short, H-scenes ain’t going anywhere. So how do we deal with them? Go in with a game plan. [Warning, there will be some NSFW language from this point forward. Sorry! It’s all part of seeing how the sausage is made.] 1. Do your research In raw translation, sex scenes from a Japanese visual novel tend to be far from erotic. More often than not, they read like an obsessively detailed transcript of a gynecological exam. That’s not because the Japanese writing team suddenly forgot they were supposed to be penning a passionate sex scene. It’s just that what’s erotic in one culture isn’t always as erotic in another. It’s your job (along with the translator) to help bridge that cultural divide and come up with something that feels faithful to the original, yet still sexy in English. Your first stop? Research. Read some English-language erotica so you can get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. Sites like literotica.com even have stories broken out into fairly specific categories, so if you know you’ll be editing BDSM, threesome, and footjob scripts, you’ll have no problem finding what you need. (If you have all three in a single scene, you still might be in luck.) There’s also a category called “First Time,” which is more broadly useful, given how fixated many VNs are on virgins. Read, read, and read some more. Pay attention to the verbs, the nouns, the pacing. Try to quickly form a model of what makes a sex scene successful, then look to carry those techniques over to your VN script. 2. Pack a box lunch If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this: bring a big bag of dicks; you’ll need them. Better pack a few pussies while you’re at it. By the time you’ve edited your third or fourth H-script, you’ll find you’ve run dry of good synonyms for the male and female genitalia. In KoiRizo, the raw script mostly used the word "thing" for the protag’s package, which ended up sounding childish and/or ambiguous in English. (I only kept it in a few instances where such a reaction might be appropriate — for example, when the route partner catches her very first glimpse of Lil’ Protag: “Is that your ... thing?”). The remainder of the original script was a mix of the clinical ("my mucous membrane”) and the hilarious (“my soiled meat stick”). As for ladyparts, the original script relied heavy on metaphor and indirect reference — lots of openings, entrances, gates, doors, depths, special places, overflowing pots of nectar, etc. So what’s missing from the above? The common English erotica standbys: “dick” and “cock” for men, “pussy” for women. There’s a reason for that. KoiRizo complicated things by using the Japanese equivalents of these very sparingly, reserving them mainly for shock effect in dialogue — “e.g., OMG, she just said ‘cock!’ Things must be getting real.” Moreover, when these words were finally hauled out, the devs bleeped the VO and censored the text string (e.g., “p*ssy”). That meant it was very obvious when those words were being used and when they weren’t. All of which presented quite a challenge to the team: if we were to preserve those “shocking” character moments, we couldn’t use the most common English terms 99% of the time. And so, I fell back on a shortlist of alternate references: pole, rod, erection, hard-on, manhood, etc. By the time I was done editing, however, this list felt far too limited; those words were overused pencils worn down to their nubs. This is one of those areas where, in hindsight, I feel like I could have done a better job with KoiRizo. The takeaway: If I ever tackle a VN this H-heavy again — doubtful — I’ll come packing a much longer list of euphemisms. 3. Bring a raincoat Compared to its English counterpart, Japanese erotica seems downright obsessed with fluids: saliva, vaginal secretions, semen, urine — you name it. The look, the sound, the feel, the taste, the smell, the volume. You’ll be describing a lot of liquids in a lot of ways, so get ready to break out the thesaurus. And an umbrella. 4. Embrace the improbable Let’s admit it: VN sex is over-the-top ridiculous. In a matter of seconds, sheepish virgins turn into seasoned pornstars, cramming 20 orgasms and 40 positions into a quickie broom closet hookup. (Oh so much cramming.) This is the nature of the genre, so don’t fight it; embrace it. Trying to force realism onto a typical H-scene would be like trying to force realism onto a Dragon Ball Z fight: everyone still looks constipated, but no one’s having any fun. If you’re that desperate to edit sadly mundane sex scenes, wait for the VN version of Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs to come out. Till then, work with what you have. I remember a tiny dustup a while back when another TL team supposedly wrote lubricant into an H-scene because they felt the acts described would be difficult or painful without it. It’s a minor thing, but if the original writer left the lube out, I’m inclined to do so too. These portions of the script are wish fulfillment at their best/worst, so just leave them be. Except ... 5. Reject the impossible ... Except when the improbable becomes the impossible. More often than not, this is either the result of a mistranslation or an error by the original writers. (As an example of the latter, KoiRizo was haunted by an entity we dubbed “phantom Riho.” A couple of times, the devs would forget they were writing another girl’s scene and use Riho’s name for a line or two instead. We fixed this in our version, but still ...) Anyway, as editor, it’s your job to keep an eye out for the impossible. Is the protag’s penis simultaneously in someone’s vagina, anus, mouth, and ear? Did the heroine’s hymen suddenly regenerate? (Starfish Girl is mah waifu!) Did a corded vibrator suddenly become a battery-operated one? Ask to have the TL double-checked and, if that still doesn’t resolve the issue, use your best judgement to fix the error while causing minimal disruption to the surrounding lines. 6. Set your limits This is important. Know what you’re comfortable with going into a project and make those boundaries abundantly clear. Some VNs can venture into very unpleasant territory — rape, abuse, gore, catgirls, etc. — and it’s best to ask yourself up front if you could, in good conscience, commit to editing that sort of content. Set your limits early on, then make sure your team’s fully aware of them. 7. Have a sense of humor At the end of the day, VNs are entertainment. Unless you’re editing Saya no Uta 2: Vom Harder, it’s probably okay to approach your H-scripts with a subtle sense of play. A decent chunk of your audience will either be fast-forwarding through these scenes outright, or paying far more attention to the visuals than the script. So think of these times as exhibition games in your script editing schedule. They’re opportunities to spread your wings a little bit, try a few stylistic experiments — maybe even slip in a sly joke or two. And even if everything doesn’t quite work, we’ll still respect you in the morning.

Contents of this Update: 1. Introduction 2. Site analytics 3. Abbreviated financial report 4. Loligeddon feedback survey 5. Commentary from Tay ----------------------------------- 1. Introduction I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything. - Tay ----------------------------------- 2. Site analytics A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find: Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits ----------------------------------- 3. Abbreviated Financial report Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs: I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds) We’ve had one full round of software license fees We paid $100 past site debts Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme $70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds. Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed Free: #Renenvy ----------------------------------- 4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs. ----------------------------------- 5. Commentary from Tay Commentary on Analytics: It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future. So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends: Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015 Walkthroughs are still a huge draw New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards. The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.) Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015 The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July. The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement Autoposting is the bomb Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good. The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well. Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great Commentary on Site Finances: I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly. Commentary on Site Leadership: Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings. I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be. Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better. As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad. Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below. Commentary on the Forums: I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust. I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon. Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them. Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries. Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes? Commentary on the Front Site: Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius. Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages. The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.) After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans. Conclusion Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it. Tay

Invisible Apartment 2 invisibleapartment.com I'm glad to announce that the production of Invisible Apartment 2 was a success! The sequel to the original cyberpunk visual novel Invisible Apartment. After more than a year the sequel is now available on Steam and Itch.io. After a successful Kickstarter campaign www.kickstarter.com/projects/921792122/invisible-apartment-2-visual-novel/description and Months of production the visual novel is now in the wild. Set in a future in a mega city where surveillance and hacking are part of every day life, it revolves around human relations, their dreams and their fight for living a free life. Invisible Apartment 2 is our first longer format visual novel. Part one, which is already available on Steam for some time now was a free introduction to the whole series. This part takes place months after the events of the previous part with a bunch of new characters and a ton of new locations. You can find more info & download links to all parts of the series at invisibleapartment.com The backer rewards have been packaged and sent: We now plan the production of Invisible Apartment 3. A crowdfunding campaign will launch soon. Stay tuned Vysoko Anime Production

My feelings on this are very complicated.

Joining Fuwa.

Or maybe it was another Sakura game; there's so many of them and they're pretty easy to confuse

http://www.kizumonogatari-movie.com/ IT'S HAPPENING. AWOJDNBNCDJHSBCFHSDJBVCDHSJVNHVXDJHBXDJVBXDNMBVXNM!!!

Hey everyone. I'm glad to announce that we're reviving the Mentorship Program after reworking it a bit. The thread will be divided into two main parts, one talking about the overall changes and one talking about the recruitment process. Feel free to share your thoughts once you're done reading this wall of text. Rework Introduction to the Mentorship Program: New VN players will be able to easily request a player mentor who has some experience playing VNs and is willing to be a friend and contact as they begin this great adventure. The mentor will email/PM an introduction to the new player, talk about the VN player's first game (and, ideally, nerd out with them), suggest follow-up games based on the new player's preferences, and be willing to answer quick questions such as "How do I make my computer Japanese?" or "What is a senpai-sama?". What was changed with the rework: How is this different from the original experiment? Well, we tweaked a few stuff here and there. I don't know exactly how many Mentors we had, but I believe starting with too many was a mistake, so we're going to start low and add more with time if needed. For starters, me and Tay thought about going with 5. I'm now the Mentorship Coordinator, meaning I'll be responsible for gathering feedback, redirecting the mentees to their mentors and all that. I'm basically going to be the one doing what Tay would have had to do, giving him some more space to focus on other aspects of the website that need a bit more of his attention. This also ensures a more efficient communication route for everyone, as we all know Tay is a really busy man. You could say that I'm a quality of life bridge. We don't have anything set yet, but I'd like to post an update regarding the project status every now and then, maybe monthly. This would contain feedback from all the involved parties. What the mentors think about how we're doing, what the mentees think about the usefulness of the project, my very own thoughts about the efficiency and progress we achieved compared to the previous update. I highly value communication, not only between the involved, but with the community as well, it's a way to show that we are, in fact, doing what we volunteered to do, and that we're a reliable way to introduce someone to the genre. Recruitment Now that I explained what was changed, let's go for the fun part, the recruitment. Requirements: Played at least 4 of the Starter VNs listed below, and find it enjoyable to talk about them. Capacity to open-mindedly nerd out about visual novels. You need to be nice. Have some Fuwa exposure: Been a member of Fuwanovel for at least six months and have at least 100 posts. Starter VNs: Katawa Shoujo Planetarian Narcissu Fate/Stay Night Clannad G-Senjou Steins;Gate Eden* Higurashi Saya no Uta Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo What you'll do as a mentor: You'll get an email/PM with a new mentee's contact information. With that in hands, you'll send that person a PM/email (based on their preferences) introducing yourself, telling a little about your history with VNs, and whatever else you feel fit for a first message. After that, essentially, just be nice and be a friend. Answer their questions, talk about the game they're playing, nerd out with them (Sakura = best girl), offer game suggestions, show them around Fuwa, help them find the next game to try, etc. Make friends! What changed from before? I added a few VNs to the Starter list, and with that, I felt that increasing the minimum amount of read VNs from the list was needed. While some might find some of the additions questionable, I believe lots of people are being introduced to the genre through steam, which makes games available there a bit more valuable. The same goes for short and popular ones such as SnU and for ones with great anime adaptations such as Steins;Gate. I'll probably add more eventually, but that should be a good list for now. I removed the part that said "Not a big time commitment", as that's something entirely up to how your interaction goes and to how many mentees you choose to take. Just keep in mind that as we're trying to have just a few mentors for now, we might have to set a minimum of newcomers each will have to take care of, just not sure how many. I didn't mentioned the Handbook because I'm still to work on it, some small changes will be made and some will be updated, don't worry, you'll have it once it's ready. Final words I find the Mentorship Program to be a really great thing we have here, and simply letting it die would be a shame, that's why I decided to talk with Tay and revive it. Interested in being a Mentor? Send me a PM with the following form filled and we'll talk more there. This thread is an announcement and the changes should be discussed here, please don't post your form here nor PM me with your thoughts about the rework, unless you, for whatever reason, really don't want to make them public.

Had a long day? Then I have just the thing! Adorable and heart-melting MOE!

I can't take this as anything but the evilest reply I've seen in a while.

Lol, dat source code tho "No, you can't see it today."

Steam Reviews is like the Youtube comments section of the gaming world. Except, well, the Youtube comments section itself. The common denominator is too low, leading to a lot of idiots or tepid jokes appearing in the section.

glad your to see you back tay, i you thought were strapped to a tree in a sinking isle, on a different matter ill will get back to sending hate mails and boxes of skin and teeth.

I've not travelled much either but would really love to. That being said, the United Kingdom is a great place to be. I mean sure, we have some crappy places and some which are too stuck up for their own good, but when you can get from a place like London, a sprawling, non-stop metropolis to the South Downs (which features some of the most beautiful scenery ever... Arundel Castle <3) in one hour, it's fantastic. If you wanna know more about the UK then just ask, and I'll answer it the best I can As far as where I'd like to travel, and where I'm planning to go... So many places. However, I particularly want to visit Jyväskylä in Finland and then look around the Saimaa lake system (forests and lakes are my thing, so both is pretty much heaven). I also wish to go to Japan which probably doesn't come as much of a shock, though I'm far more interested in going to Hokkaido and Shikoku.

First, the ero option isn't going to work here. At the very least, making eroge-VNs mainstream as part of the OELVN culture isn't going to work. 2D culture in general just isn't as well established here as it is over there and our artists just don't have the skill yet, for the most part. Second, we have to work with what we have and the Japanese don't. Where the Japanese have moe-art and the tendency to go for emotional surrealism and exaggerated emotions at every turn; we have the ability to write a more serious, less emo-dependent story. Not only that, we don't have their taboos against violence, and so our writers are less limited than theirs are in that sense. Third, to make OELVNs more successful, we have to draw in a non-otaku crowd. To be blunt, I think the best aim would be to go for the bibliophiles who read comics as well. This is a surprisingly large crowd, and if you wrote something literate enough to satisfy them with a solid visual and audio style, then you would have a much larger potential fanbase than OELVNs can hope for at present. Fourth... to be blunt, you'll have to distance yourselves from standard eroge-VNs in style. At present, too many OELVNs are imitations of the Japanese style, which lays on the sexuality like a fat guy pouring maple syrup over his pancakes.

Details, man. Details I beg to differ. Majikoi was the introductory game for many. It got a lot of people interested in VNs

lol

Laziness, and a reluctance to think for themselves.

I'd say 0/10 for clickbait but I seem to have some sort of mental disorder which makes me find most of your posts humorous.

The patriarchy must have done this.

Just got some AliceSoft stuff in and thought I could share it here. I needed stuff to tide me over until the next Rance game/OVA drops. C82 AliceSoft set:

It sounds like they're just glorifying the standard h-scene replacements/minor rewrites that go into most all-ages releases so Steam users don't feel like they're missing out.

might be left to mention that it seems both versions (uncut + all ages) are going to differ not only in terms of them consisting of ero content or not, as from their last post i got the vibe xero is somehow rewriting the all ages version (including xtra content?), so that it wont be inferior when compared to the original one. definitely a nice moove from both, mikandi & xero who are closely working together on bringing us fine stuff in the west, without leaving their (future) customers in the dark. thumbs up & glad i supported them for a good while now

Well I am happy to see they are at least responding to the potential customers and give us information. They seem eager at least.

The day I was born; I am still living with that shame.

Up to date I haven't really visited a lot of countries. Denmark, Egypt, Turkey, Greece (Crete) and England. The biggest experience was probably Egypt when I saw the pyramids and bathed in the Red Sea. London is always an experience when you live in a decently large city compared to my country's standard (roughly 110k population) compared to London with a couple of millions. But what do I want to visit: China - I am really interested in the Chinese history and it would be awesome to experience it. USA - Route 66. I love driving. Driving that road and at the same time experience USA in a different view would be nice. Bigger cities/capitols in Europe. I really think the eastern part of Europe is interesting and probably really beautiful with the unique style. Austria/Switzerland - Skiing in the Alps. Russia - Just to see the country with my own eyes. I am fascinated by the Russian history too. Japan - Yet again the history is fascinating. The list probably goes on when I figure out new stuff. Yes I have a history fetish.

This is a great article. It is missing one vital discussion though IMO - having translated lots of H scenes now - and that is a discussion about what to do about onomatopoeia. H scenes contain obscene amounts of onomatopoeia. Japanese love their sound effects and they read and sound perfectly normal in their language, but in English they are, for the most part, downright childish and stupid. I tried to translate them to meaningful sound equivalents in English for a while and then gave up in disgust after running out of sounds we actually use in English. After that I just transliterated the sound effects and these days I'm wondering if all of them should just be dropped entirely and only the dialogue and text translated, leaving only ellipsis for the sound effect only lines.

That's amazing considering it came out less than 3 weeks ago (Sept 11th, a fitting day indeed).

I'll give him two weeks.

Never have I read such a serious article seriously and laughed so hard. You sir, are a poet and a scholar.

Confession: I am terribly sad and relieved when I woke up this morning and opened skype and found the title is that ren left fuwa then I went to check the remove member's lounge thingy and found that it was removed and that Ren left this goodbye message on his profile. I don't know how much rant happened cause I was kinda busy. I am kinda sad because I was someone who enjoyed his existence... and I am kinda relieved because we all know he needs to get away from the site and go back to his irl friends and family and spend some time with them. Hopefully he comes back better than before. Oh well rip.

H-Scenes are tons of fun. Especially when the word penis is never used, and genitals are always referred to with non-decent sounding words. Then add on all the terribly strange sounding lines that make you cringe. Something like "The joy of being born a woman" or something? That one was nice.

Yeah... I'm going to need some help when I get to this stuff.

when someone thought it was a good idea to make a super long cheat code.

Glad to see we have so many people We might need an additional DM to accommodate everyone, but it's good that so many people are interested. We also need to get through schedule-type stuff...

Good... ? Yeah, it's good. They also want to raise the funds to do what would presumably be a proper english translation. I don't know how they plan on doing it, I'll have reservations if they don't plan on working with any of the established players in the game because even if your intent is to hire native speakers to do the translation, there's a lot in this business that can go wrong if you have no experience and managing a team of foreigners as a small company will probably lead to issues. Or hey, maybe this will work out and will lead into an era of Japanese companies being more proactive. edit: Seems like they're using some international consulting firm who might be suited for international business management so maybe they know what they're doing:; https://mikandi.jp/ MiKandi Japan seems to be owned by an indiivdual named Aaron Jenkins and it their sort of reminds me of the JAST approach. MiKandi might be trying to become another player in the eroge localization market. So no, my initial impression of this being handled by onomatope seems be have been off-base.

I'd like to take a step back and appreciate the fact that modern stereotypes have evolved to such a point that one can say, generally without rebuke, "Go read a book, [bundle of sticks]."

Wait, they still make books in 2015?

I can only speak for myself, but I'll be straight with you. Most of what you do doesn't interest me. Occasionally you do a podcast on a topic that does interest me, and I volunteer--only to realize that hardly anyone actually watches because, well, people wouldn't be hanging out on forums in the first place if they preferred to get their news and discussion through the audio medium. I'm not quite sure why you expect everyone to flock to your activities. Maybe, just maybe, a lot of people just want to post occasionally on topics that interest them and don't have any particular interest in these community building activities you're offering? I can sympathize with the burnout and lack of appreciation you're feeling, but maybe it's not the community that needs to change. Maybe it's you. And maybe it's me. It's a lot easier to change your own behavior than to change the behavior of tens, hundreds, or thousands of others. If you feel your passion ebbing, maybe it's time to move on. Whether you keep doing what you're doing or not, the community will remain mostly the same. You're one small cog in a machine. Your actions have little effect on others. But your actions have great effect on yourself. Maybe it's time to put your effort where it counts the most: towards yourself.

The operation went good. I have a new liver now, and I misread the heart operation. They strengthened the inner walls in my heart and added a pacemaker. So I am well and good. Will be back home in three days.

Here are some of my most recent drawings in full resolution; [EDITED: Apparently the post's images were lost after the site update so I reuploaded some new ones] Hitokiri Battousai (Rurouni Kenshin): Tohsaka Rin and Archer (Unlimited Blade Works): Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin): Heiwajima Shizuo (Durarara!!) This random anime girl I found on the internet... I forgot what I wrote here last time... ^^;; I'd been exposed to drawing since I was very little and it's become an undying hobby ever since. Half of these were drawn back when I was in highschool, usually for a friend's birthday. I haven't been drawing anything lately since uni though, I never really had the time. Hopefully I will sometime soon, it's a hobby I love to much to let go. Please visit my DeviantArt to see more of what I've drawn~. Thank you! http://dimdito.deviantart.com/

i don't even

But seriously though, I really do think I'd make a good teacher. Your story just makes me more certain of this, how hard could it be For those that don't know, I may or may not have ranted about MangaGamer's writing ability. Apparently I sounded like a "crazy person" .....