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I already blogged my opinions of the Japanese version, for those who are interested... http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/922-kyuuketsu-hime-no-libra/ Generally speaking, it is a VN that manages to be better than I would have thought, considering the company it comes from... enough so that I can honestly recommend it, though it is by no means a kamige. Edit: I'll be clear, it is pretty rare these days for me to actually come out and say 'I recommend it' with a VN after playing it all the way through. I'm a lot more likely to slice into it mercilessly if it fails in any major way. Most of the VNs I have played released in the last three to four months or so have been... lackluster. While that isn't saying much, this VN does leave most of them in the dust, which is a recommendation. This VN is a good one, it is worth playing, and it will be worth buying when it comes out localized, for those interested in its genres. It isn't a huge 'genre-crosser' in terms of appeal, but it does appeal to those who want less nerfed vampires in their VNs (vampires that are dark, violent, etc).

Blick Winkel

Mmm... first of all, this is by Onamatope, a company previously known only for its harem-ge from the Mecha-con series. The Mecha-con series fell somewhere into that thin area between a nukige and a moege, and it was actually pretty decent for something in that area of the VN universe. So, keeping that experience in mind, I went into this VN with a more open mind than some people probably would have. Fortunately, this VN wasn't a disappointment, precisely because I wasn't looking for it to be something out of this world. Ok, first... this is a chuunige, in the sense that it follows a format I think most people will be familiar with... this young guy is transformed and forced into a world where he has to fight to survive, with many pretty girls around him... sound familiar? It should. That right there is the basis for about ninety-percent of the entire 'gakuen battle' type chuunige sub-genre. In a few ways, this VN definitely borrows from Draculius, which I still think is the best non-superviolent vampire VN. There are a lot of differences between the two... but they share the commonality of allowing for a coexistence of slice-of-life and comedy with a more serious background story. I'll say it straight out though... there should have been an Iris path. I don't say this because I'm a lolicon (though the protagonist and his ancestors all were, apparently) - as I'm not - but because Iris was, at first, second and third glance, the most interesting female character in the VN. All the heroines had their moments... in fact, I was really, really surprised at the degree to which they managed to balance all the paths and gave the heroines an equal amount of story. Due to the fact that the first half of their paths are the same, you might think Aoi and Lycoris got a bit screwed over, but their events after the split are distinct enough - and long enough - that I can't really say either got screwed over by the scenario designer's choices. In that sense, this VN is something of a triumph of the art of scenario design, which was one of the areas in which Onamatope generally shined in its near-nukige Mecha-con series as well (one of the reasons my impressions of those games were positive). In terms of raw writing... the battle writing is actually some of the better non-Light and non-Propeller I've seen. That isn't to say it is first class, because it isn't. The protagonist is way too much of a hetare when it comes to dealing with his vampirism, and the fact that they chose to make all the heroines, sub-heroines, and the protagonist a bit 'baka' was a bit of an odd choice that had moments where it fell flat. The regular narrative writing is better than you generally see in a nakige (which generally get favored with the best moege-variant writers), and I can honestly say that the pacing didn't throw me off very often, though there were some shaky moments midway and early on. In terms of visuals... this VN definitely needed more combat CGs. I knew they would cut corners on this, as Onamatope is not a company that can afford the kind of budgets for visuals that monsters like Will and Light can. There was a bit too much reuse of the same tachie poses to simulate combat, and the best I can say is that they gave the protagonist a face and a tachie for once, which was a huge plus. ... unfortunately they didn't give him a voice. Perhaps one of the biggest no-nos with a modern chuunige is to fail to give the protagonist a voice. The simple reason for this? Because the protagonist in a chuunige is always intended to be an actual person, rather than a simple self-insert. As such, it is rather ridiculous to give into that particular convention when even using a random staff member would probably satisfy most people. Generally speaking, the music in this game is... generic-sounding in the sense that chuunige music can ever be generic-sounding. That means that the tunes are ones I suspect get sold to every company intending to make this type of VN, with a few twists and changes in the rhythm to make them sound different to the ears of someone who doesn't listen. On the positive side, there is no point in this VN where I felt like the music was misused, which is a far bigger flaw that simply reusing music tracks from other games. Overall, what can those of you looking forward to the localization look forward to? I'd say that if you want some slice-of-life with vampires merged with a low-level chuunige story, this will definitely be something to look forward to. On the other hand, fans of more serious chuunige will not be satisfied by this, as the game is just to light in the slice-of-life scenes and the protagonist is a bit too much of a near-hetare when it comes to the vampire issues.

If you’re the image editor for a VN translation, you’ll probably spend at least half your time setting English type. Lots of it. (The other half will be spent laboriously retouching out all the Japanese text you’re about to replace.) Sounds simple on the surface, right? Any pixel monkey can copy/paste from a translation document. But there’s a lot more to good typesetting than just clicking with text tool and banging away on the keyboard. Just like good prose, there’s a certain rhythm to good type. A practiced designer will make numerous small adjustments along the way that allow the to reader glide effortlessly through whatever’s being said. Reading good type should be like driving on a well-paved road. And the one thing all good display type has in common: someone took the time to kern it. The Basics of Kerning I won’t go into a detailed discussion of kerning here — the terminology, the history, the fact that it sounds like something you’d have to pay an escort extra for. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, there are lots of sites out there for you to read. Better yet, buy yourself The Elements of Typographic Style, the best book about type you could ever hope to own. Call it an early Christmas present to yourself. For our purposes, it’s enough to say that kerning means to adjust the empty space between any two adjacent characters, either bringing them closer together or pushing them father apart. And why would you want to do that? Otherwise, you’ll have gaps and crashes in your type that’ll make things feel ever so slightly off. To illustrate, I browsed over to a free font site and downloaded a typeface at random. (There’s a very good reason I did this, rather than using some industry-standard font like Helvetica or Times Roman. I’ll get to that in a minute.) Downloading, downloading … done! Okay, let’s set some type. Here we have a few words set in Font X — name redacted to protect the innocent. At first glance, everything seems fine. But then you look closer and start noticing little things. Like what are these weird gaps between the first two letters of some words? Some are almost as wide as the full space between words. And hey, what about these letters over here that are more or less crashing into each other? That can’t be good, right? Nope. These are problems. They need to be fixed. Kerning Pairs The reason I picked a free font is because most professional typefaces (aka, “ones you pay a lot of money for”) are designed to avoid the majority of such issues. Once a typographer has crafted all the characters for a font, he or she will then spend countless hours specifying “kerning pairs” for it — basically, instructions on how close each letter should sit next to every other letter. (Here’s how close A should be to B, here’s how close A should be to b, etc.) While some letter pairings may look good at default spacing, others will need to pull tighter or push father out to look right. Professional fonts will often contain hundreds of these kerning pairs. It’s mind-numbing work that takes far more time than most amateur typographers are willing to put into a freebie font project. That work still needs to get done, however, but now it’s on your shoulders instead. And, since most fan translation projects use free fonts for budgetary reasons, odds are you’ll have a whole lot of mess to clean up. Congratulations! Thankfully, once you’ve learned how, it’s pretty easy stuff. I work in Photoshop, so I’ll be showing its kerning interface here. If you use another program, it likely has something similar. Here’s Photoshop’s character palette, with the kerning field highlighted: The "0" you see there means there’s no kerning currently being applied to the characters on either side of your text cursor. Make this number negative, and the two letters will start pulling closer together. Make it positive, and they’ll start pushing farther apart. (Photoshop measures this in units 1/1000 ems, but that’s bar trivia you don’t really need to remember. Just know that in most cases, you’ll be entering numbers in the range of -100 to +100.) You can see the results of some sample values below. In Photoshop, you also have the option of “Metrics” (apply whatever kerning pairs the typographer included in the font, if any) or “Optical” (let Photoshop guess what looks good, basically). Play around to get a feel for things, then advance your cursor through your type, letter pair by letter pair, and adjust this value until the two letters are the right distance apart. Rinse and repeat. And what’s the “right” distance? The one that looks right, of course. It’s a subjective thing, and this is where practice and design experience come into play. Like The Sands Through The Hourglass One of the first art directors I worked under offered me this analogy, which I’ve always rather liked: Imagine the negative space between letters as vases lined up in a row. They’re all different shapes, these vases, but you want each to be able to hold an equal amount of sand (or M&Ms or whatever). Kern until your vases all look like they could all hold the same amount. This is an imprecise rule, of course, and you’ll often want to make your “vases” bigger or smaller for visual effect, but it gives a beginner a good baseline approach. So let’s take that approach here. Let’s go through, fix all the obvious gaps and crashes we noted earlier, then make smaller adjustments to even out the text overall. (We call this giving the type an even “color.”) After some quick fiddling, we end up with something like this before and after: It’s subtle, but the "after" type just feels nicer overall. And if your text is a UI element that some poor reader will spend countless hours staring at, you want to make sure it’s as nice as you can manage. Because the longer you spend with something, the more obvious and annoying its flaws become. (Said every roommate ever.) The good news is you don’t need to do this everywhere. It’d be insanity to kern entire sentences or paragraphs of text, especially since the effect is barely perceptible at those point sizes. You only really need to worry about kerning display type — things like buttons, headlines, title screens, etc. If your type is over 16pt, it probably needs to be kerned. The good news is, as you learn the keyboard shortcuts for your particular application/platform, you’ll be able to breeze through a piece of type in a matter of seconds. In fact, a lot of designers find sitting down and kerning type to be mindlessly relaxing, like knitting or playing Minesweeper or making fun of the animations in Fallout 4. Mind Your Gaps So that’s kerning in a nutshell kernel. It’s the absolute easiest way to step up your type game, and it’s quick enough that there’s no reason not to do it. As a bonus, there’s a fun little online game out there to let you practice your kerning skills in hypothetical situations and compare them to a professional designer’s solution. It’s a fun way to kill some time at work while you boost your skills.

How does this even work Photic Sneeze Reflex. For some reason, some people (like me and Kiriririri) have a sneezing fit that triggers when we step into bright sunlight. It means that we should only stay inside playing porn games ; )

Preface: For those of you who don't know, I, solidbatman, chronicle the various peoples of Fuwanovel, detailing their life story, and giving insight into just the kind of person they are. To read past entries, I urge you to read OriginalRen: An Original Biography and Professor Rooke. For those of you curious enough about me, I do detail some of my adventures here. Introduction: Today, my fellow readers, I seek to answer your questions regarding one of the more mysterious figures here at Fuwanovel. Some say he isn't real, that he is simply a spirit sent from Japan to tease the West with VNs. Others say he is a communist sleeper agent, set on turning otakus into Marxists to lead the People's Revolution. And still others say he is a med student who got bitched out by a just Colombian doctor when he attempted to commandeer his ornately decorated office. I'm here to tell you, Tay is real. As real as the dirt beneath your feet, but not as real as firecat's ability to predict the future. Let us, together, go down the road that is Tay's past. Enter, the untold Tay Story. Tay was born in 1321 in the great salt flats of Utah. For an adult, living in the salt flats of Utah is a feat, but for a baby, it is basically a death sentence. Baby Tay defied the odds, not only surviving the salt flats, but thriving in them. The salt fueled him, gave him strength and power. When he emerged from the salt flats in 1322, he was a 7 foot tall hunk of a baby. Despite appearing god-like, with a finely sculpted body (that Michelangelo would later attempt to immortalize in his Statue of David), 7 foot baby Tay did not know how to live among others. So for 691 years, Tay remained in hiding, only venturing out to find new reading materials. One day, after traversing the Pacific Ocean, Tay came upon a mythical land, known as Japan. Perhaps it was Fate that led him to this moment. When he returned home, Tay knew what he had to do. At the same time, ɐıןɐɹʇsnɐ uı, a young woman, who too had been touched (appropriately) by Japan, began work on a temple that she called Fuwanovel. Fuwanovel, at the time was ugly, and in need of great help. Tay, with his supernatural hearing, heard about Fuwanovel, and quickly ran to ɐıןɐɹʇsnɐ to help. This, is when Tay became the being we speak legend of today. One day in ɐıןɐɹʇsnɐ, Tay came upon a group of girls. One was missing her legs, another her arms, another was just annoying as fuck, and the other was also annoying as fuck but didn't talk but was somehow even more annoying than the one that did talk. Tay was moved by this, (the author of this biography would like to note that, regarding himself, he was not moved by this and thought this was shit.) and decided to become a doktor to help those stupid ass girls. To do this though, he had to go through many trials. Among them, an attack from Gangamamer and the Pulltop Yakuza (which will be detailed in the prequel entry to this at a later date). Tay's soul was drained, but he continued marching on, even as he was abandoned by those around him. He doktor'd Fuwanovel into good health, and replaced the old, creaking parts with new, broken as fuck creaking parts. But someone, somewhere was lurking, waiting for their moment to strike. This strike, would shake the foundations of Fuwanovel to its core, and leave it in ruins. Would 7 foot baby Tay rise up to the challenge? Or would he fall into despair? Or would he just say fuck it and quit like another Fuwa Leader did? Find out next time!

If this means another Ren stream, then I'm in.

Winged Cloud must be grateful to all the fans who spread the word of every single game they release to all corners of the VN community. Fans like solidbatman. Wonder if they'll do an adult release of this one too. Probably not.

Confession: I finally asked for and exchanged phone numbers with a certain female someone who used to frequent Fuwanovel.

Thanks for letting us known. I will clear my schedule to do a 48 hour marathon of Sakura Beach 2. Truly, I have found a light shining in the darkness that is my life.

I have a strange obligation to say that the Sakura series is bad.

Do note that 5. is not true anymore. It is not stickied, it is just locked and no more at the first page of the forum. I think that is scummy way to hide it from people while still claiming that it is their public statement. Overall I personally find the whole debacle silly, but I also think that it is obvious that some people do find cropping CGs to be very bad. That is good enough reason why it should be publicly stated.

I was wasting my time on tumbrl and saw this photo I was really curious about it at that time I thought it was some anime then found out it was a "game" *I download it then read it and got depressed for 1 month *Did some research about vns then found out that one of the writers took a lot of inspiration in narcissu to write Katawa shoujo so I read it...1 week depressed and that's how everything started

Pretty sure he was responding to Abyssal's post about lacking discipline and saving himself until he's 30. And being envious of a relationship implies they have someone you don't, for example a relationship. You really need to work on your reading comprehension Suit yourself. No no, please, allow me. I will endeavour to make good use of any opportunity to praise Ren's reading comprehension abilities. On many occasions have I found his ability to interpret things that just aren't there quite astonishing! Keep up the good work, my jolly good fellow.

UPDATE: SP will ask AKB2 about possibility of 4:3 support): http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466479176329/ ~~ I wanted to inform everyone that in order to achieve "HD widescreen assets" Sekai Project severely cropped all existing CGs in the laziest manner I've seen. Check this out: You can't even see his arm, the plate, a chunk of his head, the sake bottle and glass. The dead guy's arm which used to be in full view is now barely visible. When I posted these examples on steam they permanently banned me and claimed I was promoting piracy. My post was completely deleted without a trace. Not only that but someone else decided to take up the task to post a more neutral thread on steam and the thread was instantly locked. http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466477714445/ [Edit: as of this moment the thread that used to be locked is now also entirely deleted.] Deleting and locking anything that might criticize their shortcomings is rather petty even for Sekai Project. They're splitting releases into voiced and un-voiced versions now which is just ridiculous, what's next microtransactions? Split each route into paid dlc? They've made it clear that they treat adult content as if it were cancerous, yet they continue to pick up titles with +18 content. Personally speaking, I've been supporting visual novels for a long time now and I've bought just about every release because I used to believe in western localization and that things would improve if we showed our support. But things are just getting worse at this rate and that was more or less my wake up call to stop investing money in companies like Sekai Project. It's really tiring having to ask every time a title is announced "Will we even get the full +18 release?", "what's getting censored?", "How will it be handled?", "Do we have to buy the goddamn game twice if we also want it on steam?". Like you can't even be excited because there's so many questions left unanswered we can only expect the worst and they completely ignore us hoping we'll buy the steam version, and then announce the +18 at the last minute expecting us to double dip, rather than just offering steam keys like MangaGamer does. Not to mention they suck funds out of us through kickstarter for practically every release. They're just abusing it now, taking already translated games that fans did on their own free time, and charging us money for it while making us pay for the licensing fees. That's just fucked up. Welcome to the new EA games of Visual Novels everyone. [Edit: Looks like reddit caught wind and has been following the whole thing as well. Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rds22/gsenjou_no_maou_steam_version_169_cgs_are_cropped/ ]

?? A fix for what? He wants to play in 800x600 with uncropped CGs and old backgrounds. Probably?

So you mean for us to not be like the people who fucked up the games industry? HAH! In all honesty, I agree, but the chances of it happening are low.

Dem 20 seconds. Me and Flutterz were quantum entangled on this thought process.

I won't be buying this until there's some sort of fix, then.

Mmm... generally speaking, there aren't any 'meeting of the worlds' types in VNs yet...Gate is pretty unique in that sense. In the sense of a character going to another world and making an impact, Koihime Musou is the only one I can think of off hand that has been translated. However, there are a pretty large number of those that are untranslated... though most were made a minimum of six years or more ago.

Ace Attorney was my first VN. It was when the internet meme rage was at its peak and people made a big deal out of the OBJECTION! thing from Ace attorney. I was like, wtf is so funny about this? I played the game and got hooked into visual novels instantly. Then I visited Hongfire, anime sharing reddit and other visual novel sites, and slowly got hooked into more vn gemres particularly the NTR genre. Funny that my first NTR VN was The Sagara Family and the NTR was just a sub route in that game but just from that, I developed my fetish for NTR... After playing many of Elf's NTR VNs I knew this was my calling and my passion, to corrupt the poor fuwanovelians into liking NTR. I consider myself a VN connoisseur since I am not just a NTR fan but many sorts of fetishes. I have over 800 VNs read so far. If you know something disgusting or horrendous fetish in VNs, I have probably seen it and almost nothing fazes me anymore.

Confession: Same as me then : )

As someone who has considered hiring a hooker several times I say: don't do it. It won't fix the underlying problem, being that you feel unhappy about yourself in your current state, which encompasses a lot more than just your virginity. I promise that if you find a way to be happy with yourself it won't seem like such a problem any more.

Confession: Been a long time since I have been at this level of disappointed. o-o /whining Confession 2: Someone should send me pizza. ^^

B-but my loli waifu...

With good reason, as should be obvious. ...That reason being that on the first day I immediately jumped into following every single person I recalled were part of my previous friend list. I irrefutably forgot some.

So much hate here... I thought I won't touch even 18+ version because of cropping, but... With some of CG backgrounds elements cropped we get: - Better Backgrounds(more things are visible) - Higher resolution sprites - New improved UI - Character portraits on the left side of textbox - Better Font - Song titles appear at the top right - "Polished" translation As you can see this new version is superior to old one... I agree that they should add possibility to play in 4:3 mode 800x600 with uncropped CGs, however that would nbe really hard to do, probably. I'll patiently wait for 18+ release and support AkabeiSoft, so we can get more of their VNs. Stop the hate guys, from the looks of it they did what they could to bring US the best possible version of the game.

Confession: I am both relieved and sad that you share the same nail biting problem as I do. It's like I don't even have cuticles sometimes. I hope the therapy helps with your anxiety, even if it doesn't help your nails.

Confession: I really need to fix my nail biting habit. It's gotten to the point where I bit a hole through the base of the nail on my thumb. And yes, this is actually possible. One thing I've learned from this nasty habit is that when you gnaw against the grain of your nail, you can actually chew off parts of your nail that aren't at the top. It's less painful than chewing the top of your nail until you start touching the skin underneath it. After that, it hurts like hell! Now I'm gonna have to deal with a weird gap in my nail until it grows back properly. Having an anxiety disorder sucks. Also, after talking it over with my psychologist, I'm starting to realize how deeply embedded this is due to my childhood. I'll always have a lot of respect for my step dad and the discipline he instilled in me, but the toll it has taken on my mental health ended up being too much. He used fear tactics to keep me in line, and there was never a time where I wasn't nervous around him. At least my therapy starts Tuesday!

@Jun Inoue I have no idea what are you talking about.

... I'd like to see someone partner with Light and bring over Vermilion... That VN is the best superviolent vampire VN I've played, lol.

Wow, a story about a boy who just wants to live a normal life and now is magically a girl magnet? How original!

Needed more plot to my hentai as simple as it sounds.

snatcher and policenauts <3 I'm currently playing Katawa Shoujo right now. It's my second one. depressing you say? Im not readyyyyyy lol It's not a depressing visual novel (it does have some pretty sad moments) but that's the effect it cause in almost everyone you will find out why xD

Not sure if these count, but I ended up playing... -Snatcher -Rise of the Dragon -The Curse of Monkey Island all around the same time; Sega CD days (1993).

I've seen a good amount of people voice their satisfaction with the no-voice option, so it seems like a pretty good idea on their part.

I'll forward this on up to Sekai Project I mean the god damn developer of the VN and not the publisher.

You should not say such things, sempai. Let us go to the roof and have our boxed lunch. (And seriously, every VN I've read so far involves going to the roof of a buiding...)

it was a logical consequence of when i first started becoming socially arkward, resulting in me becoming socially arkward the more... edit: sega saturn - dyoukusei

WinterfuryZX, I think this is possible to do. I believe even I can do it Just as we would have only 800x600 4:3 CG they would look kinda bad (in case if they used high-resx and not upscale). /upd OH SHI~! Look what I found! Background images are ALREADY high resx 1100x900! They were intentionally cropped before output on screen in the game!! While resource files are still big ones, like this: So it is absolutely possible to make high-resx version for whole game, I believe that's what AB2 done. And no problem to do a patch which would show scaled width image for 800x600 (and not just part of it like it shows now on Rooke screenshot), without any need to rebuy Sekai version just for backgrounds. Unfortunately all CG are 800x600, so they seems upscaled them? Or they still had old mockups in higher resx? Will see later.

Nice review an 8 coming from you is an excellent score , can't wait to back this project.

Because d'awww

After having read the reddit post, I really do have to agree that this specific community (the VN community) is very easily offended and quick to overreact over every little thing. I remember when all the FuwaMods swapped their forum avatars with each other's and they suddenly got called out for being unprofessional and immature. Like what the fuck lol. Mods aren't allowed to have a bit of fun now? I don't know what attributes to this - maybe it's because a majority of the fanbase are literally teens - but it's ridiculous how butthurt people get over nothing

Those wacky Saudi Arabians flying their jets around.

Wow, I could overlook all the stuff they stuff they have done so far, but this might be the last straw. Well, glad im learning JP so I dont need sleazy localization companies anymore soon.

If you want action grisaia no kajitsu and majikoi .

TL;DR

Psychology is the study of mind and behavior. It is an academic discipline and an applied science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. Google exists for a reason. That's why I was trying to narrow it down to anime that features things like PTSD, schizophrenia, OCD, sociopathy... Or in a broader way examples of actual psychology as a science, used in fiction. For example, Death Note for me is nothing but a straightforward Shônen Jump manga that transposes to a "battle of wits" kind of story what is usually done in "battle of fists" kind of story in this magazine. I haven't watched One Outs but it seems like a regular sports manga. Serial Experiment Lain's themes have more to do with philosophy and sociology, the introspection done on the character of Lain and on which the anime centers, which is done in a very Evangelion-like way, is more akin to a narrative tool than an example of "psychology". Mawaru Penguindrum is a character drama with underlying themes as various as family and terrorism, going through many others in the process (it's a bit messy in this aspect). There's nothing very "psychological" about it. If we were to count as psychology any fiction that describes the mental processes of its characters or can be assimilated to a character study, we end up with the majority of all fiction ever done in our category, which is usually a symptom of an ill-defined category.

Sekai wants to make money. Most companies do. Most companies do not exist to make "Deep Blue" happy in every way possible. Sekai has proven that a Steam release results in far more sales than a regular, 18+ release which is why they push all ages as much as possible. Get the most copies sold, get as much profit as they can to keep operating. Or we could just go back to the days of getting ignored, only getting nukige from MG, 1 VN a decade from Jast and whatever fan tl crumbs we could find.