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Man, I've finally reached 1,000 post counts. It only took me 3 years, lol. My activity on this site has always been pretty volatile and spontaneous. Often I would be really active for a couple of months, then disappear for around half a year, and then return like nothing happened. It's for this reason that I don't feel like I know a lot of users very well. Especially newer ones. So I'm mostly going to dedicate this post as a retrospective of both my time here, and how much fuwa has changed. So hopefully even people who don't really recognize me, can at least take interest in some fuwahistory from this dinosaur ;P. The Fuwanovel community has changed significantly since I first joined in March 2013. Back then Fuwanovel was still a fairly new site, and the community was quite small. I really miss those days during the spring of 2013, which was my first round of activity on this forum. Back then, you ran into the same people all the time on the forums. There were few active users, but the ones that were active were fairly involved. A lot of the time it was the same people having conversations about different topics across the forums, and it felt like the community was a lot more unified. Whereas now, it seems to me at least, that users tend to stick to their favorite sub-forum or even thread (I feel like the people active on the fuwanovel confessions thread are their own sub-community, lol). I'm not criticizing this, and in a sense I feel like that is the natural progression of when online-communities get bigger. But back then, people would often post across all the boards; and you would see the same person’s views on different subjects. It allowed a chance to really get to know other users. Which is why even though the forums were fairly slow in activity back then, people remained; because of vibrant discussion and a comfortable small community. Regarding vibrant discussions, that was the reason I loved fuwanovel so much when I first joined. Before Fuwanovel, there wasn't really a good place to discuss VNs casually. The few other places where VN discussion did exist (notably vndb and JP), were fairly elitist and not welcoming to new comers and casual VN readers. Fuwanovel had a completely different vibe, everyone was outwardly friendly. Fuwanovel's goal since its inception was to make "VNs more popular in the west", and having a friendly community that welcomes the less initiated is crucial for such a cause. While admittedly most people that were active back then already had some experience with VNs, the friendly environment promoted discussion without fear of being judged. And I remember Aaeru (the founder of Fuwanovel) made it quite clear that fostering an anti-elitist vibe was a very important goal to her. But combined with being friendly, debate and intellectual exchanges were a huge aspect of many discussions back then. It was quite frequent that different sides would get into huge debates with each other, but would always have respect for the other. They were not flame wars because people were listening to the other side, and respected their views. I remember one of the first acquaintances I made on this site (I believe it was Sieg), was a guy I got into a long argument about G-Senjou no Maou with, and afterwards we became friends. Precisely because it was a small community, people usually posted meaningful replies and would then start a conversation with each other in the thread. If you are ever bored, I highly recommend looking at the really old threads on VN talk, as many of them are quite interesting. Aaeru would also very frequently get in huge debates with people (especially with Sanahtlig). Another aspect I miss about the old Fuwa, was the activity of the old staff, notably Ryoji, Tay and Aaeru. Ryoji has hardly been active since the summer of 2013 but was one of the first users to break 1000 post counts, back when merely having 100 was impressive. I will forever remember him as the Sage of Anime. He had been collecting and following anime since the 80's, and knew a lot about the topic. The only person who was his match was another user name Eldin, and when they conversed with each other we referred to it as "Ryoji vs Eldin". Both of them would talk about the most obscure anime that most people have never heard of, and get into intense debates about said long forgotten shows. It was quite entertaining, and fascinating to watch. Ryoji's wife, Kotomi, was also occasionally active on the site. It was always cool to see when the two of them posted in the same threads. Well, those were my thoughts on Ryoji, onto Tay from 2013. These days I feel like few people actually know Tay. I think for especially newer users he is the guy who runs the site, and is often too busy. But back in 2013 (and 2014 as well), Tay was really active. He would participate in many conversations, and he was a strong reason why many people felt that the community was so nice. He recognized users and got to know them. I remember after my first long absence from the forums when I returned, he sent me a pm greeting me back. That gesture deeply touched me, as already then, I felt like a lot of users that I once knew had left. This was back in late 2013, at that point Aaeru disappeared, and Ryoji was also no longer active, not to mention a lot of other formerly active people left. I didn't really know the new community (lol, this was back when Nosebleed was actually new) and I didn’t feel at home. But then with that one Pm from Tay, I knew that I wasn't forgotten. Tay really knew the community back then, and it was obvious he cared a lot about its users. This is still true about him, but now I feel he is too busy to be as engaged as he used to be, which I completely understand. I just want people to know that Tay really does care a lot about this community, and I am glad he runs this site. The last staff member I remember being active from 2013 was Aaeru. Unlike with both Ryoji and Tay, I never really interacted with Aaeru that much. She posted on my Introduction thread, and that’s about all I remember interacting with her. But what I do remember was her crusade against licensing and her vehement pro-piracy views. She believed two things very strongly about Priracy. 1) Was that Piracy was the most efficient means to spread word about VNs, and 2) That fan translators could do a faster job than official licensors and translators. To be honest with you, I agree with both these views still. I respect licensors, but Fan translators can translate any VN they want (they don’t need a license to do so), and I’ve noticed that they have usually been faster. Furthermore, of English translated VNs, I feel like more good ones have either been fan translated, or picked up from fan translators. They are still the backbone of the Western VN community in my view. Furthermore about Aaeru, it was her “Learn How to Read Japanese in 2 Years” thread that first motivated me to learn Japanese. I always assumed that it was an impossible task before that. But her thread convinced me that I could learn the language, and that motivated me to study. If it were not for that blog post, I probably would not know any Japanese right now. So I really must thank her for that. Even though Aaeru has long disappeared, I hope people don’t forget about her. While a lot of drama and controversy was started by her, we wouldn’t have Fuwanovel at all if it were not for her, and so we should pay our respects to her for at least that reason. The spring and the summer of 2013 were the golden age of the site for me. I’m glad that Fuwanovel has grown (and is continuing to grow). It makes me happy because it serves as evidence that Fuwanovel is succeeding in its mission statement to “Make Visual Novels popular in the west”. I have had plenty of great interactions with people during 2014 and 2015 (I have not been very active during 2016 thus far though). I’m constantly adapting to the community’s evolution and support where the site is going. But I don’t want the early days of Fuwanovel, the days that really first shaped the site, to be forgotten. I hope you guys didn’t mind my huge nostagiafest. In the title I mentioned that this was a "3 year retrospective". So if you are curious about my thoughts on 2014 and 2015 I would gladly share them. Every year of this site has been distinctly different, so I definitely have a lot to share. And if others have perspectives of old Fuwa to share, I would love to hear them.

The next time someone asks you what Fuwanovel is.

You are completely correct in that I don't really care about Japanese people across the world who I have only engaged with through their written works, other than about said writing. If I spent time worrying about everyone, no matter if I had an emotional connection to them, I'd be hit with blow after emotional blow literally every day. Not caring about everyone is a healthy part of human nature. I completely agree that emptily wishing people well rings extremely hollow, which is why I didn't. If you have a problem with the social construct causing this well-wishing, though, you should probably find a more appropriate angle of attack than a headline on a third-rate news website.

"Random man you don't know what he did hospitalized" "Jun Maeda, writer for blah blah blah, hosiptalized" I'm not going to fault anyone for writing a headline more interesting than the first one. Did you just wake up on the wrong side of the floor after falling off the third level of a bunk bed into a pit of spikes or something? -- Well, let's hope he stays alive to write the rest of the angel beats vns.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-03-01/clannad-charlotte-writer-jun-maeda-hospitalized/.99216 We haven't received any information (as of yet) about the cause, nor his current status. We can only pray the great writer of VNs is ok

Videogames have been hailed as some of the most amazing storytelling platforms of the 21st century, giving an all new interactive experience to immerse yourself in, and have created one of the largest industries currently in the world. As for Visual Novels, these take the story to all new levels with unique narrative and visual design, becoming the game equivalent of a choose your own adventure book. But when Visual Novels begin to include such themes as nudity and sex in them, they fall away from the mainstream "gaming" market, and even those who are interested in such a game would only know about them if they actively search for that sort of news and content. So, What would happen if Steam was to allow distribution and sales of R18+ Visual Novels? Surely the world would collapse. Steam has been opening itself up to all sorts of innovative inclusions to it's platform, including selling creative softwares for video editing, game capture, and music production. These aren't really games of course, but it makes sense. A lot of gamers are quite creative, from artists, to video editors and youtubers, everyone loves experiencing something awesome as much as someone loves making it. They're also pretty easy to market in sales. Then of course, we have actual visual novels on Steam. The recent releases of Danganronpa and Nekopara Vol. 2 are just some of the visual novels that are making it to the best selling list, and that's only in the last month. Previously includes the others in the Nekopara series, as well as the steam port of the long standing visual novel Clannad, yes it seems that even if it's not as big as the market is for Team Fortress 2 hats, there is a lot of people out there that want Visual Novels. Trends recently though, have been pointing towards a more mature entertainment industry, with such triple A titles like GTA5, Black Ops 3 and Witcher 3 all getting R18 releases on steam, as well as Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 getting almost the same ratings. Now most of these are violent and combat relative, so it'd be a bad example right? Well, kinda, but violence is one of the themes that give a mature rating, and the other one, is eroticism. I mean, we just got a VR Controller for adult games that as of writing this, needs only $1000 more to complete it's kickstarter goal and be a thing. The first step was already taken. The somewhat recent release of Kindred Spirits was Steam's first completely uncensored Visual Novel on Steam. While it was relatively soft in it's actual content, with the story being lighthearted, and the adult content being light and tasteful, it's still the first time that an R18 game has had no changes made to it whatsoever as it's published on Steam. It's also one of the first games on steam to include the "Nudity" tag ( even though Witcher 3 and GTA5 don't have that tag, mainly because it's not a main feature ) Now let's not get ahead of ourselves, I mean a good percentage of visual novels that exist these days are what's called "Nukige", which translates to "masturbation helper". These includes graphic scenes of sex and eroticism as their number one feature. They don't even need a story most of the time. You bought this game? Here's some boobs and sex, and stuff. Of course if these were introduced into the Steam world overnight, there would be a huge fan uproar. Some positive, but most negative. Somebody, think of the children! I don't think we can plan on where the line between good and bad will lay exactly, but the line itself is moving, inch by inch, in the direction of accepting such games into such an immense online community and ecosystem, it might just see this dying art be made financially feasible again. One or two japanese developers have denied the western world their games*, purely because there's no reliable platform for their sale, and they'll likely just fall into pirates hands instead. *( needs citation ) But it seems, regardless, we are moving this way slowly. Too slowly maybe? as a customer and user of steam, it'd seem that way, but on the business side of things, there's a lot to take into account. Selling violent games to people is relatively easy, but once you age restrict a product based on sexual content, there's a lot of national laws that need to be taken into account. For example, Australia has very strict anti-child porn laws in effect that include the ban of all adult film actors with A cup size breasts, regardless of their age, and of course this ban extends to other mediums, including a book that was banned because it described a-cup breasts* in an erotic way *( needs citation ). If Steam moves too quickly and doesn't consider national policy, they can find themselves in some serious trouble. If French and German consumer groups can take Valve to court ( with limited success ) over reselling digital games, which in itself is completely stupid, then who knows what damage breaking an actual national law would create. So, Steam has been moving very slowly on "Steamy content", but it might be the fastest it can go. So, you'll just have to wait for your english translated japanese manga games, and cat dating simulators. What do you think, is Steam moving in a good direction? Do you condone the dating and mating with fox gods and monster girls being uncensored on the biggest gaming distribution platform in the world? Let me know what you think. ~Jason

The nice thing about being hitler is that what you do doesn't actually matter. High treason is high treason and traitors should be hanged

Sorry, Ecipsed is my BM so he's right and y'all go to permaban hell before anything comes across him

lol. i just realized this is the second time you asked a question and i used if my heart had wings as an answer. i guess you can tell, i like that vn.

Oh boy. I also get to choose the character? I'd pick the Rance series. As, of course, Rance. ...What? You think I'd choose some serious story when I can run around being amazing, beating demons and raping people?

Maybe I'm just a jackass, but wishing somebody is well while using the tag "the great VN writer" makes me feel that you care nothing about him being an actual human being and care more about the fact that a guy who wrote some stories for Key doesn't die. Also, that tag seems rude. Rather than stating what he did in the actual post (write Clannad/Charlotte), the news report felt it important to state that in the title. To me, it's basically drawing attention from people for no reason when if they actually did know the guy and care about his well being, wouldn't need a title to tell us what he did. It just feels like the article is trying to draw useless "get well soon" responses from random fans. It just comes off wrong with the wording. Regardless, I hope things work out and he gets well soon.

I truly hope he is okay...

There is a good possibility that there is a possibility that monster rape is a possibility to possibly happen.

Just a lot of monster rape, more monster rape, and even more monster rape. Did I mention monster rape?

Reaper...i always thought about it but never said anything....your picture is a bit....

Time for me to start pestering our newly-crowned admins to add another emoticon! Plox gief :sacchan: \ /

to me griffith is pretty much the embodiment of an antihero, one who willingly sacrifices everything and everyone he once held dear, including the own child of his, all for the greater goal of obtaining enough power to ultimately create the kingdom he always desired/envisioned.

i dont have many SFW images of traps. are nipples allowed to show?

it was actually THE POWER OF TRAPS!!

Basically what it comes down to is this: people want source-oriented translations rather than target-oriented translations. A source-oriented translation is when you translate assuming the reader makes the effort to immerse himself into the cultural context of the work being translated, that that's what he looks for. A target-oriented translation is when you translate assuming you need to bring the work into the cultural context of the reader. I think it doesn't even need to be argued that people reading otaku subculture stuff want very source-oriented translations. The issue arises from the confusions between the source/target dichotomy (which is a real translation choice) and the literal/liberal dichotomy. The latter barely makes any sense in jp to english translations: a good source-oriented translation is not literal because a literal translation is not a good translation. The languages are not compatible that way for all the reasons evoked above and many more.

Hmm Yeah, I expected as much All of the catalysts were in place A true story? Check. Acting people who actually lived? Check. Dramatic story? Check. And the list goes on and on... Anyways, good job Leo, you most definetly deserved this

Let's say you are asked for a wish by the fairy goddess that if u want to get resurrected in a VN world which world would you wish and as which character......???

I wouldn't consider Fuwa a news site - the link in the OP is to ANN. Since this seemed obvious, I decided to try to tentatively play along with your statement which may or may not have just been written due to you not reading my post as I intended. Considering Run's whine kind of encompassed both this post and the ANN headline, I can understand why you'd get the wrong idea. And here, we see the dangers of joking on the Internet. Assuming you're not just continuing the chain of irony. Feels like a lose-lose situation, to be honest... sigh.

Enter Grisaia. ??? Profit. Grisaia is a nice one, yeah.

Hey, I never said kill him... I just accused him of being a cruel assassin who teleports people into the past and feeds off the potential lifespan energy. And that he has rock hard abs.

KUROINU HAHAHAHAHAHA Ze Reipu is gr8

Hope he's okay and that he can recover well

Preordered it! *ignores Fuwanovel and the outside world for the next few weeks*

I'm not. I checked what I bought from MG during the past 6 months, Euphoria and Beat Blades Haruka. And let's not talk about my older purchases of nukiges I own.

Yeah based on everything in here, it looks like it´s going to be epic! Speaking of the KS, you guys have any ETA on when it is going to go live?

Hooooooo Totally read it for the "characters and their boobs arcs" huh? Hmm, well, good luck to them I guess. Hope it goes well. Kickstarter never makes any sense when it comes to these things. Their rules are kind of stupid ..

In no particular order: 1) Shinsekai Yori 2) Shinsekai Yori 3) Shinsekai Yori 4) Shinsekai Yori 5) Shinsekai Yori Honorable mentions go to Fate/Zero, Psycho-Pass, and Madoka, so basically just give them all to Gen

lol... all but the last Kara no Kyoukai movie were first released well over five years ago... Overlord Mahou Koukou no Rettousei Fate/Zero Unlimited Bladeworks Sword Art Online (first arc of the first season only)

Shokugeki no Soma Charlotte High School DxD New and borN Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry The monogatari series in it's entirety Forgot a few i just remembered: Akame ga Kill Tokyo Ghoul Sword Art Online Tokyo Ravens

he evolved or turned into an "anti-hero" but you can't just erase his past, he is what he is, I think it doesn't fit on the story the way he is now... he is a grumpy man, a pure tsundere. You just can't go from killing for fun to save a puppy it's not logical, kyousuke or masaomi on the other hand both of them made more sense because they were never actually "bad" they didnt enjoy the bad things they did, it was just a way to achieve their goals, kyousuke was more confused than anything else he actually say it at the end of the true route "I was slave to money" so you can't even call them anti-heroes. Like Xreaper said graffith is an antihero (from berserk) Yes, he is a pure antihero, the perfect example of it.

It's great to have you around Zalor, your rare apparitions usually come together with an insightful post or a nice analysis. I recently read your blog post about SayoOshi (or whatever it's called) and things like that are, in my opinion at least, what makes us such an amazing place, the great content some of our members produce. Hope to see you around more. ...Oh, and congrats on the 1k posts.

Everyone's saying that SP should have investigated the company more, but really, these things will just happen sometimes - to much bigger publishers too! It doesn't seem like any of you have had much insight into how SP did the whole thing, so why are you so sure it's their fault? Hell, the creators had actually both completed a game and added partial voicing to it, which should speak in their favor. This is just part of the risk associated with crowdfunding; believe it or not, it is not (always) a glorified pre-ordering system. SP even delivered on translating the initial version of the VN. I'd put most of the blame on SRL for this one unless some info surfaces that actually points to SP being at fault. I'm glad Sekai Project decided to work with doujin circles - it's had a great success in the fault series. I'm not really a fan of the crowdfunding-as-risk-reduction approach they've been using, but please, try not to think in these absolute terms. It makes my head hurt, and I already have a headache tonight for unrelated reasons.

Nostalgia fests are good, stay cool Zalor

I just finished P3P ALL THE SLOW CLAPS ALL OF THEM JESUS FUCK FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK WHAT A FUCKING GAME MAN BEAUTIFUL (not P4G level doe) HOLY SHIT WOW 1AM

It doesn't take a genius to figure out why you'll never be able to express Japanese, a logographic language, in English and carry all the cultural context behind it. Even the kanji itself is part of the cultural context and you'll lose that immediately as you translate the language into a different alphabet, even if you were to be as literal as one can be, so there's no real good reason to complain about something not being literal enough, because it's impossible to carry the exact structure, meaning and context that Japanese has into a different language. A while ago I had an internal debate on whether or not I should keep 3rd person speech for a particular character since she switches between the normal and 3rd person in the story, but I decided against it because ultimately it just doesn't come across well in English. A lot of people have this quirk with translations where they like when a character refers to themselves by their given name, but they don't like when you convert the WHOLE text into 3rd speech (like changing an "I" to a "She" later on in the sentence). If one is to change a text into 3rd speech, EVERYTHING has to change to fit it, no matter how awkward it sounds, and that's why I decided I'll never do it. My solution was to find ways to portray her personality change without affecting the integral English grammar. At the end of the day, I know I lost the 3rd person speech, but it's 10 times more pleasing to read a dialogue that sounds coherent than reading something that sounds like it was written by a primary schooler. People need to learn to live with less literal translations and appreciate the English language a little bit more.

Her shallowness was used for some decent comedy, but she needed a lot more than that to have a good route. Most of the side routes were used for extra h scenes anyways which was magnified in Majikoi S.

I totally agree with this. It´s just a lot more comfortable to read something that isn´t a literal "copy paste" of the original text. It usually becomes strange and awkward to read. People being really stuck up about one line not being translated to its absolute literal meaning is kind of annoying in my opinion.

Thanks for this awesome look back at how Fuwanovel was before. (I just joined in 2015 and I almost have the same post count ... ) Guess we new folks spam a lot Gratz on 1k posts, and on a side note, I would love to see more posts about how the community changed over the other 2 years you have spent here.

i give. you win this round!

Oh come on ... Only the people who pre-ordered can get it at the moment? And here I was thinking I could finally buy stuff from Mangagamer again.

My birthday is officially ruined. Thanks Mangagamer.

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! S https://vndb.org/v6245 Introduction Good day everyone. This is the Maji de watashi ni koishinasai! S Walkthrough for the currently patched fully translated game. I made this first to fully explore the content of the game but since I’ve made a good progress with writing my own walkthrough, might as well share it with everyone. This is the sequel for the first Majikoi game which shows the future for the five main heroines while adding five more additional heroines to conquer. It’s great right? Since this is rated 18+, please be noted that there are a number of scenes that are for mature audiences. Falling under the said age is not advisable to play this game. With that said, have fun playing the game. GAME START! Description Majikoi is back and better than ever in this sequel to hit 2009 visual novel. Majikoi S takes place after the events of Majikoi and lets you choose which of Majikoi’s many endings to proceed from. Choose your favorite heroine and enjoy new romantic events with her, or choose to start with no commitment and romance one of 5 new heroines. - J-List Things to be noted before starting the game When starting the game for the first time, you are required to fill in your birth date. I recommend having a date closer to the actual date. This will give you an easy access to the Birthday Mode in the Extras rather than waiting for your actual birthday to view this mode. Well, you would be lucky if your actual birthday is near that you don’t have to adjust the date just to view this early. There is a random glitch where the game gives a completely different scenario when choosing from the dialogue box. It’s easy to notice based on what choice you pick and what the dialogue/ text comes after. When this happens, just reload to the previous choices and pick again. Tatsuko’s route needs to be played twice for the Clear mark to appear in the Future Selection screen. Childhood unlocks after completion of all 10 routes. (Momoyo, Kazuko, Miyako, Yukie, Chris, Tsubame, Monshiro, Margit, Kokoro, Tatsuko). Future where you are an acquaintance of Takae unlocks after all routes are completed. After completion, an ALL CLEAR!! text should appear on the top right of the Future Selection screen. By the end of this walkthrough, The CG, Music, Replay, Event and Movie Collection are completed. Try to go for choices that you haven’t pick to see a different scene. Choices with [sAVE] and [LOAD SAVE] are choices needed to proceed to the end of each chosen routes while then you are free to choose any choice for the ones not marked. Ending Guideline / Suggested Route Order The suggested playing order is listed below for those who wanted to play the game efficiently. You can also play this by following this order: Kosugi > Common Route > Tsubame > Monshiro > Margit > Kokoro > Agave After > Tatsuko > Future with Momoyo/Kazuko/Miyako/Yukie/Chris > Childhood Route Guideline Kosugi Route Future with Kosugi Continued Common Route 2nd year 1st semester (Clear) Future without a relationship Future with Momoyo S After Future with Kazuko S After Future with Miyako S After Future with Yukie S After Future with Chris After +S After Tsubame Route Future Where Tsubame Takes the Lead Future Where Yamato Takes the Lead Monshiro Route Monshiro Route Continued Margit Route Margit Route Continued Kokoro Route Future with Hermit Crabs S After Agave After Tatsuko Route Childhood Koyuki Route [LOAD SAVE 12] Fuck her hard. CG 123 [12/12]; CG 124 [4/4] Future with Chousokabe Iyo Route Future with Shima Future with the Maids Yumiko Route Another Future with Miyako Another Future with Miyako-1 Another Future with Miyako-2 Another Future with Miyako-3 Future Where You're An Acquaintance of Takae Attribution This walkthrough is based on the walkthrough from seiya-saiga.com which I adjusted based on the fully translated patch provided by our translators. Please check this walkthrough if there is something amiss Admin/Moderator-san. Thanks