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Now I know many of you are reading that title and either saying, "Bats, there are already histories of Fuwanovel written by other members! What makes yours any different?" History is history after all. I have wanted to do this many times, and right now is a good time I think. Fuwanovel has a ton of new members, members that are post-Aaeru, post- Vax, post- Ryoji, post- torrents. Fuwanovel today is vastly different than what it was just 2 short years ago. I have been browsing the dankest of visual novel websites, Fuwanovel, for 3.5ish years now. I feel I am an a unique position to tell the story of Fuwanovel as I see it. Many of you know that I used to be a global moderator. Even less of you likely know that I also used to be a site administrator. For that reason, I got to see many of the changes happening to Fuwanovel behind closed doors. I was a part of some of the decision making that led Fuwanovel to where it is now. So, this post will be all about that jazz. This post will not be white washed. It will not be some Fuwa Propaganda. I have made many mistakes in my time on Fuwanovel, and in my eyes, so have other people. Please do not report this post, or censor it because you think I am insulting people. I am keeping this as respectful as possible. Now that the breading of this historical sandwich is in place, how about a little background as to why I joined Fuwanovel. Back when I joined, on November 20th, 2012, I had read but two VNs. Katawa Shoujo and Analogue: A Hate Story. Analogue was what got the ball rolling, and after an RPGFan.com suggestion, I decided to read Ever17. I found a particular site that offered VN downloads, however they were multi-part .rar files. Screw that. I am a lazy solidbatman who wants one download and one only. So, I continued my search, found Fuwanovel, and downloaded Ever17 from the old front page. If you are very new, and don't know what Fuwanovel used to be, let me explain. Fuwanovel, until somewhat recently, offered pre-patched torrents of visual novels. These were portable, download and play VNs with minimal effort required from the user. Aaeru's goal was to make playing VNs as easy as possible, and this was well before Steam VNs were even a blip on the radar really. Sure, one or two existed like Analogue, but it was nothing compared to what we have now. These pre-patched VNs did not always work, but generally, results were fine. Back to me now, I did not actually join Fuwanovel upon downloading Ever17. That did not come until I was enjoying Ever17, and downloaded Never7 to follow up with. Unfortunately, Never7 had a sound issue, and I was unable to solve it on my own. So, I joined the Fuwanovel forums in what I still think is the best introduction post ever written. At the time, I was planning on just messing around a little bit, getting my help for Never7, and moving on. Instead, I found a helpful, extremely friendly, tight knit community eager to spread their love of visual novels to anyone willing to listen. I was still friendly back then too. I quickly took part in anime discussions, gaming discussions, and generally helping people out whenever possible. Fuwanovel was a baby still, only being formed in August 2012, and was just gaining its footing. To this day, I still have not sought help for my Never7 problem on Fuwanovel. I eventually found my way into Steve's teamspeak server, and with his encouragement, I finished Clannad. Early on, I actually was friends with Steve, and enjoyed talking to him. This was before either of us were moderators. We had many a good discussion about various anime and VNs, and I quickly learned that in his teamspeak, no link was a the only kind of safe link. He also learned of my distaste for sexualized lolis, and was constantly posting things to trip me up into looking at one. Much fun was had on his Teamspeak, and eventually Tay popped in to ask us if we wished to become moderators. This may have also been around the time as the IRC room AMApocolypse. Snotsuku, a resident troll, decided to intice everyone into spamming the forums with AMA threads. Oddly enough, this marked my early encounter with Zakamutt, as he and Kendjin both were slapped on the wrists for their actions and Snow faced a temporary ban. I do remember helping Tay and Ryoji sort that mess out (it resulted in a dedicated IRC thread, and the beginnings of the Games and Chatter board) but again, I don't remember if I was a moderator yet. Notable members that become moderators with me were Steve, Down, and Luch. Luch, while quiet, helped many people with technical issues resulting from downloads on Fuwanovel. Down is Down and is still what I consider the gold standard for how a moderator should handle himself on a large forum. Steve and I, well, our relationship began crumbling at this time. We both had very very different ideas on how Fuwanovel should move forward. If memory serves, on of the first messy staff arguments was over a NSFW loli image being posted. Another early argument was over whether or not the forums should have links to pirated localized VNs. The loli debate pitted Steve and Aaeru against Ryoji and I. Ryoji and I were similar in that we were crass, loud, filled with profanity. Steve was... Steve. Condescending, and the type to put his fingers in his ears and go, "Not listening!" His walls of texts failed to address issues raised, which only served to make Ryoji and I even angrier. Aaeru just did not seem to understand at times what was going on, or was too timid to jump into the bloodbath. I was extremely disrespectful in those arguments, and absolutely should have carried myself better. Tay came in, reached something of a compromise that was begrudgingly accepted by both sides. Arguments between Steve, and I continued over everything. Spam posts, loli images, piracy. It was a mess. Again, my anger typically got the best of me, and Tay, or another moderator would swoop in and attempt to resolve the situation. I stopped going to Steve's TS and began hanging out on the IRC chat room. It was there the birth of Kaguya was witnessed. From spammer to global mod. Not before getting banned from the IRC for abusing frodo the bot. Kaguya was a crazy spammer. We even caught him liking his own posts to boost his reputation. Baby Kaguya just did not give a fuck, and that was part of his appeal to some I suppose. I don't recall if Nosebleed ever hung out in the irc room. He can let you know if he did. Regardless, some shapign up happened and suddenly boom, global mod. Now something interesting happened somewhere in that time frame that resulted in me being promoted to an admin. Ryoji left Fuwanovel after basically shaping the forums. I don't think it would be wise to really get into the specifics, but it was not really a good situation. I volunteered to take on the admin spot, while in the back of my mind knowing it would be a temporary promotion. The first thing I did was finally clamp down on sexualized loli images, and pirated links on the forums. This once again led me to bump heads with Steve and Aaeru. It took me an entire day of arguing with Steve on his TS before he finally agreed to put any sexualized loli images in spoilers and label them NSFW. He also agreed to keep them only in his loli thread. It was exhausting arguing with Steve. Things were going somewhat smoothly, until Fuwapocolypse 1 happened. Aaeru kind of vanished around the same time, causing a massive headache for poor Tay. I found myself completely useless in the situation. I believe the problem was that Aaeru had pirated the forum software, and it finally caught up to use with a take down. Tay managed to raise some funds, and we purchased the legit copy that we use today. Nayleen was a huge help around that time, so I stepped down right about the same time he became an admin. I decided I no longer wanted to be staff for Fwuanovel. My constant fighting had helped nothing, and I just wanted to be done. At this time, the original Fuwanovel blog, VisualNovelAer was sort of dead I think. There was the random post now and again, but it was dead and social media outreach was smallish. Aaeru's disappearance left Tay high and dry, and then came the second Fuwapocolypse. At issue was the fact Tay had been threatened with legal action. With Aaeru completely vanished, IP holders went after Tay for being in charge of the site. This resulted in Tay having to lay low for a while and severely limit his itneractions with the site. Cybersteel took over hosting the server and Steve became admin. That was a disaster. Steve asked me to come back onto the staff to balance it out a bit I guess. I reluctantly agreed, only to find the same old issues at play. Steve was unwilling to listen to anyone but his little echo chamber, which infuriated me, leading me to go off again and again before finally asking to be relieved of my mod powers. It took 3 hours of arguing with Steve just to get off the mod team. -End Part I- I will work on this more, adding more detail as I find some older posts with some of this action, and remember things better. For example, Grisaia and Clannad getting western releases caused some issues, and so did the final Loli Battle (which resulted in Steve finally leaving Fuwanovel and Sanah becoming the new defender of Fuwa Lolis ) The rebirth of the blog, the birth of FuwaReviews, the death of torrents, and social media stuff will be covered in Part 2 when I do it. Also look forward to irc explosions, Original Ren's appearance, and other more member centric focused stuff. Maybe I'll even get into Aaeru nearly killing Fuwanovel for good. Was kind of swept under the rug for various, good reasons. I have made my fair share of mistakes with Fuwanovel. I've been too adversarial at times, disrespectful, and just mean. I fully admit a lot of my strong language is uncalled for. I also admit that I think of plenty of people on Fuwanovel as entitled, ignorant, fools with too many ideals and not enough practicality. I am also aware that many of you likely feel the same way about me. I'm fine with that. I can dish it out, and I can take it.

I wonder, what position would translation quality be in if they asked that question again after the Flowers fiasco? Maybe people needed to be reminded of how important TL quality is because MG has generally been doing a pretty good job lately. Translation is one of those things where when it's good, people tend not to notice or even think about it. They only notice when it's bad. It's still a sad reality that the average consumer appears to not care, as we've seen examples of time and time again with VNs.

The Venus Blood series strikes a balance that I think Alicesoft failed to hit with Haruka. It has complex gameplay that is quite challenging on the harder difficulties, a substantive main story with two major arcs (law and chaos), and H-scenes that form a plot arc all their own. As you say, Haruka ends up being more or less a string of H-scenes (and the superfluous and repetitive nature of them quickly grated on me), while the Venus Blood series can be enjoyed by those looking purely for ero and also by those who aren't interested in the ero at all.

"....translation quality, being seemingly a rather minor concern for most coming in at 6th place beneath the presence of erotic content...". am i the only one to find said fact is little disturbing, but oh well debonosu has already proven that everything´s going to sell, regardless of the amount of efforts poured into it...

We actually announced Umineko last year!

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.

Hello fellow members of fuwanovel! (Just gonna say it now... I'm writing this all in one go and I suck at proofreading. There is probably a typo or ... 900. Just try to not rip all your hair out. Thank you. ) Man, it feels like just yesterday that I reached 500 posts and made one of these threads. When I finally got my title, I was so excited. I was one of the cool kids I reached 500 posts the 22nd of january 2016, and I joined fuwanovel 25th of september 2015.Today, 4th of march 2016 I reached 1k posts. Now, I call myself a spammer a lot for kicks, though it's not like I actually actively try to spam threads with useless banter. ( most of the time ) Honestly, the reason I've made so many posts over such a small period of time is: I love this community. I spend most of my free time here on fuwanovel. When I'm reading a VN, fuwanovel is always open on my other monitor. When I'm at school, I keep checking the site when I have time, and it's just become that place I always go when I don't have anything to do. It's literally been set as my homepage at this point, and so when I go on my PC to check my email or whatever and I notice a notification on fuwa, I'll always go and check what it is. It's really become a habit now. Fuwanovel has really been an important part of my life these past few months and it's been something that's actually helped me figure out what kind of education I want moving forward. If it wasn't for fuwanovel, I never would have gotten this much into learning Japanese, and I never would have dreamed of going for a bachelor degree in Japanese language and culture, (which is what I have now actually applied for. If everything goes well, I'll be starting my studies in august, and by next year, I'll be studying in a university in Japan.) Visual novels was something I didn't know much about when I came here. I had played like two and knew essentially nothing about … Well, anything surrounding VNs. Heck, when I first finished Makina's route in Grisaia and got the bad end, I thought that meant I wouldn't be able to get a different outcome as I had no idea all you needed to do was load the save and re-do the choice I really was a noob back then. Now, @Kawasumi and @CeruleanGamer have corrupted me, and XX of the dead, Maggot baits and such is on my reading list Really though, I wanted to make this thread to give a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone on fuwanovel. I feel like I've gotten to know most of the users here by now, and it's rare that I'll see someone who isn't actually new for the first time. Not everyone will know me, as I haven't been here that long yet, though I do hope that people have started to notice me, going "ah right, that weirdo from Norway who is obsessed with yuri". Not only have I met a lot of really cool people here that I've gotten to know fairly well, but I've also written my first ever light novel / book, whatever you want to call it. I've loved writing for a long time, but I never finished anything before. I just kind of made up the story in my head and left it there. With the motivation I got from you guys here, I kept on going and actually finished the book in just a few months. Thanks to the surprisingly positive reception of my story, I just kept on going and wrote almost 140 pages in a few months. I even had someone offer to make a scetch of the main character for free, simply because they wanted to. I've had an absolute blast here so far, and I'm looking forward to spending more time here, (that is, as long as @Tay doesn't break the site again anytime soon Sorry. Just had to say that. We all appreciate your hard work Tay.) That also applies to every single staff member on this site of course, be it board mods, global mods, admins or chatmods. You guys are great, really. You keep this site alive and I think I can say on behalf of everyone, thank you!!! This thread got a whole lot more serious than the first one, (which we discovered had the word "awesome" used 13 times, thanks to @Flutterz counting them up ) I'd just like to say thanks to some of the people on this site, though once again, like in the last thread, don't take any offense if I don't mention you. (Let's face it, no one wants to be mentioned by this weird yuri freak anyways ) First off, @VirginSmasher, @mitchhamilton, @DarkZedge, @Arcadeotic, @Kiriririri, @TexasDice, @Kawasumi, @CeruleanGamer, @XReaper, @Forgetful Frank, @Nashetania. You guys are all spammers and you should be ashamed of yourself! Naw, seriously though, I love all of you. Especially you kiri-senpai. Now gime back my lolis @Kaguya You have called me a lot of names, though I just take it that means you love me (Oh, you don't .. Ok Oh, and I WILL read Dies Irae one day, mark my words! ) @Nosebleed Pretty much the same that I told you last time, you are a great person and ... Um, the salami story you made made me cry. Please write a sequel. I demand a sequel!!! @Flutterz, @Eclipsed, @Zenophilious, @Down, @Kurisu-Chan and all the other staff members, I love you guys. (So pls don't ban me ) @12kami Stop trying to butcher me. I'm just a poor little yuri fan @Jade Traps are still evil. Yuri prevails. And a special thanks to [Deleted member] RIP. Chatmod-chan, poor little chatmod-chan. (Yeah did you guys forget? I was a chatmod for a whole week! HAH! Don't worry though, no one were accidentaly banned by me ... Probably. ) That is it. If you didin't get mentioned, I obviously hate you. /sarcasm. Thanks again to everyone on the forum, new members, old members, staff members, everyone!. Yes, even you Jade. Cheers guys! Here is to another 1k posts! (Since I'm a spammer and all, see you in 2 weeks with my 5k posts thread )

A good translation should be a matter of course for a professional company and not something I should have to 'request' in a priority list. Just like a computer game should be released in a bug free state without having to request that in particular. Naturally, reality is different and those things unfortunately happen far too often, but I'm still too stubborn to request something that should be a given.

The gameplay is basic, the story non-existent, the sim aspects bloated, the only thing it has going for it are the sex scenes. Basically they went into a relationship with a developer of excellent gameplay titles and released ... a nukige. I'm very happy for them that it's rated highly in Japan, I'm under no illusions why it's rated so highly though.

Rance and Baldr Sky 1 and 2 and Shin Koihime also in the top ten. 3 gameplay titles It's good to know 'which relationship types are present' is more important than if the thing was TL'd competently. I'm surprised 'which fetish types are present' didn't nudge TL quality down to 7th, but maybe that wasn't an option this year ...

Is alright. I like A. Helps us forget S was a thing.

Either Wanko's or Momoyo's those are in my opinion the best two but Mayucchi comes close aswell. Also no problem you can play them later or not at all, that's your choice i'm just giving advice

Yay, I got my own part <3 Man, those were the days. Fuwa was the first forum I participated in actively, and back then I could just go on posting about absolutely nothing forever. I still remember you did give me that Legendary Spammer title before I got to 500 posts - thanks for it, by the way (even though you removed it a day later ) At times you've been a pain, but nowdays I'm mostly happy you're around, as I think about just any member I talked to in 2013. Oh, I never did get banned from IRC, by the way. If it happened, it lasted for a pretty short time... After frodo I did still pop up a lot there, after all. I complained the bot was gone for like, 2 weeks Looking forward to the rest.

I felt like it

Well, if you've played Meikyuu and Rakuen, you know why Heath Oslo is such a memorable antagonist Another one for me is the main antagonist of Gahkthun, but because that fellow is a huge spoiler,

I tell everyone about it, whenever I can, then it releases and I get it and then I never play it anyway because I slack off. Then a new game comes out and the cycle repeats itself

You have to be quite the spammer in order to post the same thing twice. *Hypocrisy level rises*

One short, nice one is Sepia Tears And other one I like is Corpse Party, but that is in the horror genre, so it might not suit you.

Ehh, in my opinion SAO is only justifiable if you draw the line at just the Aincrad arc (not even a full season). The ending for season one was not gratifying at all, to me, to such an extent that I'm not even watching season two - I can see the way the wind's blowing. But maybe I'm just salty because the second half of season one made me a Suguha fan, despite her hopeless situation, and the ending did absolutely nothing to alleviate that despair.

Alright, sorry it has been around a week (it's been a pretty busy week for me irl). I'll dedicate this post on my thoughts and memories of Fuwanovel in 2014. Fall/Late Summer of 2013 through 2014: To be honest with you, I feel like the Fall of 2013 meshes in with 2014, so I will start from there. And the reason I think this, is because 2014 was a standstill year, and a lot of that was attributed to Aaeru disappearing. The site was kind of dying during the summer of 2013, and this was also when Aaeru was noticeably less active. A lot of people that used to be really active in the Spring started either disappearing or just posting significantly less. This included me. Looking back on it, I think it was a kind of a burn out. During the spring, a lot of people had fun discussing all sorts of VN related topics. Many people that never really had a chance before to talk about VNs in depth with other people, got really deep and open about this passion. But by the summer, I think a lot of things were discussed to exhaustion, and people were starting to get bored, and consequently leaving. Aaeru finally left in fall of 2013, and Tay took over the site from there on. A lot of the remainder of 2013 from that point onward, seemed to be Fuwanovel picking itself up off the ground. I think at that time Tay was struggling with what purpose Fuwanovel should serve to the VN community. While torrents were still up at that time, and so the site still served as a place to easily get translated VNs; Tay wanted to give the community a purpose beyond that. At that point Fuwanovel was pretty much just a seedbox, and people who wanted to could hang out on the forums. So around late 2013 and early 2014, Tay was coming up with ideas to try to bring the community together in a communal project. I think Tay was weary of people joining the community, being really active for a while, and then ultimately leaving. And I think he thought people usually eventually left, because after discussing VNs for a while, the community lacked any purpose beyond that so they got bored and left. So by coming up with projects, he hoped people would be incentivised to stay. It was actually during this time that I returned briefly from a hiatus, and I think Tay was happy to see me back. He even pmed me welcoming me back. Which honestly really touched me. I just dug through my pm history, and he actually signed the message with his real name. So yeah, that made me very happy. Returning to my point. In the pm he mentioned a VN literary journal he was trying to start with the community. This was an idea that ultimately fell through, but it was an interesting idea. He wanted different people to contribute articles they could write, and to put them together in a journal. Another idea I remember from around that time, was an attempt to make a community VN. Whereas the literary journal did see some progress before falling apart, the community VN never got off the ground. This was mostly because lots of people had passionate VN ideas they came up with, but they were not interested in doing other peoples ideas. So ultimately it just remained as an idea. By the summer of 2014, there was simultaneous frustration about the lack of direction, but also improvement. At this point OriginalRen had started doing podcasts and other various community building projects. (I think he started a bit earlier than the summer, but not by much). Which was very helpful in getting the community involved with each other. It was around this time that Zaka started seriously being involved with the fuwa blog. I don't remember what about, but I remember on one thread regarding the productivity of this site back then, Rooke and Zaka got in a big argument. It was also in the Summer of 2014 where I posted my first serious analytical article about a VN. Something I still try to do when I have the time and motivation for it. In this case it was a close reading of two routes in Key's classic Kanon. Anyway, that was my view of late summer/fall of 2013 through 2014. The site started stagnating, Aaeru left, then Tay tried to bring the community together through community project proposals, ultimately the community finally started to rebuild by summer of 2014. Big thanks go to Zakamutt for taking up the blog, OriginalRen for doing his podcasts/streams and other miscellaneous activities, and Tay for taking over the site and doing his best (and succeeding) in rebuilding it. P.S. Also important to note. Fuwanovel's pre-patched pre-installed torrents remained up on the site for all of 2014. Something that changed in 2015 (when I get to that part).

ME3 gets a bum rap. People were angered over the ending, but take that issue away and it was a pretty solid instalment. It had more RPG mechanics than ME2. It had just as much story as ME2 (which was one big recruitment drive, really. Head writer left after ME1.) Shooter mechanics were better than both of the previous games. It wasn’t nearly as buggy as ME1. Choices didn’t change much but it did change your experience through the game. All in all, ME3 is a better RPG than ME2, and a better game than ME1 (ME1 was the best RPG.) In comparison, Sunrider Liberation made hardly any improvements. Situations are completely different, tbh.

Chaos;head did an amazing job with the horror scenes (when you see the gore stuff on the internet for example) and didn't go for the wall of text thing, if you write something interesting and good it doesnt matter in which way you present it it will be good no matter what, NVL is just another way to present your narration but it's not a condition to have a great horror scene.

What's even worse from what I gathered : - You cannot import your save properly (which means that all the cool enhancements you bought for your ship and mech are not here anymore), hopefully its a bug that will be fixed in the future. - Some features from the previous games are missing (like the side quests, or even being able to talk to your ship members in between missions) - Not sure, but it seemed that the gameplay worsened, especially regarding how shields are handled. - Forced romance despite the fact you had choices that seemingly prepared for heroine routes in Mask of Arcadius. - Choices are basically useless in this episode. It's inferior to his predecessors in nearly every way, and when you know that the sequels were free, you can't help but feel bitter. And the (amateur?) japanese voice acting is not enough to compensate all the flaws I feel, even for the people that might be interested by that.

Good ol' Marenovel? : P

So we have all had that one game that we waited months for. You sit there, staring at the screen, waiting for the game to release, and as soon as the download finish, you pass out form sheer bliss. (Something along those lines, right? ) Personally I have kind of a ritual when it comes to new releases that I´ve been super hyped for for a long time. I buy a couple of cans of redbull, log off the internet and just immerse myself completely in the game. The first playing session is usually at least 4 hours, some a lot longer, and I make sure that I have the time to do so, usually saving it for the weekend. (Or I simply say, fuck you school, and stay home ) If anyone disturbs me during this time, I maul them like a baby wolverine. My question, do you have a ritual of sorts / a pattern that you always go through when you finally get to play a game you have been hyped for for a long time? What is it? And what was the most recent game you were super hyped for? For me, the game I´ve been uber hyped for most recently was Beat blades haruka, and I spent this entire weekend no-lifing the crap out of it Before that, it was Nekopara vol.2. I wanted those damn nekos for so long

This probably will only matter to a select few of you, but I figured I should probably give an update on what has happened to me and why I just dropped off the face of Cyber-Earth, both here on the main site, and on the Skype groups. Well, first off, please let me clarify that I have no intention of leaving the site. I still love Fuwanovel just as much as I did when I first stumbled in here, as the lowly pleb that I once was. However, I am sure that my long string of inactivity has probably left some of the people who know me thinking I am either slowly dying and distancing myself from the community, or that perhaps I just don't care, and have surrendered myself to the 3D realm. Both of these trains of thought are not exactly right. Well, to put it simply, I have just been under a great deal of stress over the last six months or so. First off, I dropped out of University, as I wish to switch over to college and take IT. Second, I have been unemployed ever since and no job has given me the light of day. I currently have one thing hanging in the air precariously, but I have a pretty high degree of pessimism as I am currently basing all future outcomes on previous ones. Last main point; I've been in a really dark spot due to the stress of being unable to find a job. Everyone has been very understanding in my life, and I can't thank them enough for that, but I've just felt so useless due to being a very unproductive member of society. The only thing that really keeps me from caving in is the loving support of my girlfriend, without whom I am sure I would be completely and utterly defeated and on some kind of watch list. So why does this matter? I have always been very vocal about my personal feelings and the like in various threads, with the Confessions thread immediately coming to mind. How is this any different then what is already public knowledge? Well, all of this extra stress has started leaking into my writing persona. Until now, my writing persona and my real life persona have been one and the same. I act the exact same way I do in real life, and I have no shame in saying that. The problem is, I don't want you guys to start seeing me differently. I want to remain that friendly feels guy that some of you guys seem to somehow tolerate. I mean like, yeah, I do get around to posting every now and again, and I do check in on the Skype groups whenever I can. I just don't stay active because I usually just get bogged down shortly after. Again, I just don't want you guys to start seeing me differently. So yeah, I am going to cut this short. This is not a goodbye. This is not even a notice of a temporary leave. This is just letting people who might care, even just a little bit, know what is up with my fading in and out of the community. So yeah, sorry for taking up your time with my real world problems. As I have said many times in this post, just letting you guys know why I am so ded. ^^''

I more or less expect an equivalent amount of effort to go into translation as went into writing the original game.

Yes, I'm serious about dropping this VN. There are a number of reasons... but the main one is a pet peeve that has recently become my primary one when it comes to VNs... and that is flowcharts. I HATE flowcharts. Making it worse is that Kadenz Fermata's flowchart is combined with an unbelievably annoying 'gameplay' system that requires you to take a really half-assed 'active' part in the battles to bring them to the best possible conclusion... even though that conclusion is often identical to the one that would have occurred if you hadn't intervened. I'm not kidding. Every single battle scene - and there are a lot of them - requires you to 'intervene' breaking fourth wall setup) and change the flow of the battle by picking a course of action to take... and without a walkthrough, it is pretty close to impossible to figure out. Moreover, if you don't manage to get the best result, you get the bad ending... again. I say again because the game takes you through one of the two protagonists' viewpoints to the end, where everything is irredeemably fucked over, and then forces you to start over from the beginning (adding a whole bunch of extra side-character events to the story, but essentially following the same path with a lot of extra battles and a newborn ability to 'intervene'). I never thought I'd run into a chuunige where I hated the battle scenes, but this game actually makes it possible. Nachsten tended to play up the old-style chuunige 'endless powerups' to the extreme, and for that reason I named it 'the first true generic chuunige'. In other words... Nachsten is to chuunige what Shuffle is to charage/moege... the 'average' of the whole mess. Making an already stale formula tedious? Did they really think that was a good idea? About halfway through my seventh battle scene in Kadenz, I realized I wasn't even enjoying the game anymore. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is for someone as addicted and biased toward chuunige as I am? I adore chuunige battle scenes. I love the over the top moves and CGs... but this is the first time I've ever encountered one where I grew completely apathetic about the battles. A part of it is that I don't believe in breaking the fourth wall in VNs like this... I think it is a terrible idea, and the results are almost never good. Another issue is Freya... I never thought it was possible, but Lacryma managed to create a female protagonist who is basically a copy of the third-rate 2001-2005 'heroine who is a naive, unbelievably stupid and thoughtless tool'. I never once wanted to root for her during the entire thing. I hate fanatics/zealots who are incapable of facing reality, and she is pretty much the epitome of that. It is barely tolerable in a heroine and enjoyable as 'side-character who dies horribly, suddenly, and meaninglessly just for kicks', but it is completely unforgivable in a protagonist, at least for me. Last of all... I was never enthusiastic about them actually creating a direct sequel after they milked the original story so thoroughly before tacking that shitty/half-assed set of endings onto it. Fortissimo isn't that great a story (though the setting is almost halfway decent), and I honestly thought it was a particularly bad example of a battle royale situation. Continuing to use the same characters in Kadenz with an addition of yet more (bringing the cast over 20) just thinned my overall interest in them, and in the end I found myself not even the least bit interest in what happened to anyone. This VN also has some serious art issues... though I'll set aside characters who were obviously drawn (as in even to my less than discerning eye) by different artists. However, the slipups with sprite proportions (one sprite suddenly being outright bigger than the rest for no real reason) drove me a bit wild at times... and the sudden shifting in some of the non-battle CGs to Irosekai's style kind of made me go 'eh, what?' Of course, I also have to mention issues with sound... such as the fact that the voices are so low in this game as to be almost impossible to hear over the BGM even on the lowest settings at times... or the fact that sound effects will sometimes carry over to multiple scenes... To put it straight to you, everything Nachsten did wrong, this also did wrong, while adding even more problems due to the designers getting 'clever' with their half-assed ideas 'to get the player involved'. Edit: I really do think that this is a perfect example of an immense amount of money being poured into a 4th class game. Where Nachsten is tolerable, this one strays into kusoge territory due to the tedium of completing it.

Probably why bbh was picked by alicesoft to be their opening game in their partnership with Mangagamer. They looked up a list of Mangagamer titles and picked something of theirs that fitted in best. bbh is a fantastic nukige, it may not have excellent gameplay or story, but it excels in what it's objective was.

To be honest, the writing is still pretty amusing and enjoyable to read. For a nukige, it's probably the best one of those yet that MG has released.

And yet it's one of their highest rated in Japan. From their perspective, maybe it's a top tier title. Well, BBH is doing well on their weekly sales charts, I'm sure there will be future Alicesoft from MG.

they´ve already stated that the "secret" stuff is beeing done for the jp dev directly, as for the way of distributing it...who knows at this point...

I've heard the same things from everybody else who I've talked about it with so far. I'm currently on the exchange student's route and it hasn't been that interesting romance wise, but the avatar gig plot is entertaining.

The top ten don't look so bad overall, but having a rape nukige series on first place and a yuri nukige series on third place is a bit sad. But I wonder if this sentence has a deeper meaning. Maybe a hint for Sorcery Jokers from 3rdEye?!

You know I've never gone to a Con... Some friends/family have in the past but I never got around to it. This thread has got me interested. Unfortunately Seattle is a bit too far for me. There was a time I'd road trip or fly just about anywhere for gatherings and such but I just don't have it in me anymore. I'm showing my age Funny thing is I'm never played Katawa Shoujo. I keep meaning to... I'm fairly new to VNs as well. I've known about them for a long time but hadn't taken the plunge until recently. Which is strange considering how long I've been into anime and manga (lets just say decades).

DW pls no one wants shota Gil pls gib genderbent Gil

I plan on completely overhauling the main page soon. In the meantime... Apedemak! Pride of the Pack

So, I've finally attained access to the Dev Board Blogs What does this mean exactly? Well it means that my TL Updates will be directed there instead of here It's been fun, but now this'll just be my personal blog Cheers

Yeah Sepia Tears... I'll always recommend that one. You play over a week worth of events and the protagonists are very good, especially the girl. She really scored with me. ST is also available for Android.

nah, there isnt enough horror stuff out there. We need more.

I lock the door, put my headphones on and simply start to read, while saying to myself "it's probably shit" repeatedly. That way, I prevent myself both from being disappointed and from mom catching me fap. After that, I read for as long as I can. No magic tricks involved here.

Some animes that meet your requirements after checking my MAL: F/SN Unlimited Blade Works - It's not too long, enjoyable to watch with amazing animation and a happy ending that feels pretty well closed. I haven't read the VN though, so I can't compare it to the original story. Gosick - Amazing mistery story that connects its arcs very well, with likeable characters and, again, a closed happy ending. Nagi no Asukara - A lot of slice of life and romance, so the story has a lot of ups and downs, but it ends well. Hanasaku Iroha - Slice of life again. The ending is not AS closed compared to the other recommendations, but it is happy. The one I'd probably recommend the most is Gosick. It's enjoyable all the way through and it left me with a nice feeling of completion; I wouldn't ask for more episodes.

Well, yeah yuri protag tend to be even more brainless and cookie-cutter than your average protag, but there are some above average yuri protagonists

NVL allows for faster reading and better immersion, and I don't have to keep alternating between the text and the sprites.

I went into the first game expecting a cakewalk, and got my arse handed to me over and over again. It's a pretty serious little strategy game.

Is it done yet? Is it done now? Have you finished it now? Will it be done tomorrow? Was it done yesterday? Hello? Nah, keep working at your own pace man, if someone starts pestering you just tell me and I'll get them がんばれ！

Hows this @DarkZedge? As Virgin was unable to contain his lust for the wide eyed innocent Dergonu, he took him away to his private lodge so he could perform unspeakable acts upon Dergonu's soft, delicate body. Dergonu: "No Virgin. Get a hold of yourself. I love yuri's not yaoi." Virgin heard Dergonu's yelling but could only hear the deafening lust coming from his libido. Virgin: "It's too late Dergonu. First I shall take your innocence. Then I shall take your virginity! Dergonu: "NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" its currently a work in progress.

If anything, we're better nowdays- standard first line for discussions back in the day: " sigh, GODDAMNIT SHUT UP AND LISTEN. For 2 seconds just shut up and listen. Truly listen for a minute." I do think there's still a sense of community around. Just look at the newcomers, it's the same as its always been. They go, meet each other, make some nice little groups and praise the site to heavens and above. It's just that we have lots of old-timers leaving and I guess it feels like our circles are getting smaller and we're getting disconnected. Maybe I'm just an idiot, though. I dunno. And I wish Maeda well.

I agree, personally i really like Grisaia and am looking forward to Mekyuu and Rakuen which sekai project is working on : D