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The TPP is still the worst trade deal to ever come into existence and we can only hope it's burned to the ground, but at the very least Japan has given some reassurance to the doujin market with the following statement by prime minister Abe: For those who don't know about the situation yet, some of the TPP's vague clauses could mean doujin artists can be sued without the copyright holder's intervention, which would mean serious harm to an entire industry. The doujin market is important as it is often where up and coming artists and authors start their careers, it's not just a place where fan made porn gets made, and I'm happy Abe, despite not being the greatest human being on Earth, acknowledges this. Things could still change, of course, and Japan immediately held a meeting after these remarks to discuss copyright laws, mainly targeting anime hosting sites, but it seems that at least parodies can safely continue to exist for the time being. Source: ANN

Yes, I do beleive that VNs as a medium can tap into realistic modes of human thought. Very few of them do, but there are some out there, and the medium definitely has the potential to have more of such works. I emphasize the ability of VNs to communicate human thought, because even in VNs where some unrealistic events are happening, the emotions and that characters feel could still be portrayed realistically. A few VNs that I feel succeed in capturing realistic emotional (and sometimes intellectual) responses are: Narcissu, Symphonic Rain, Yume Miru Kusuri, and Swan Song. Then there is Sayooshi, which while it portrayed the perspective of an insane person, did a really good job in portraying his insanity. There is no reason why VNs can't have intellectual merit. There exists a scarcity of such works because 1) it is an entirely new medium that has only really been around since the 90's. 2) The medium isn't profitable enough, and when money is tight, content creators are more scared of the risk of doing creating something unique.

The only good thing about the TPP are the exceptions, no surprise there. What Abe said has been the official position on the matter for some time now, but it's still nice to hear it affirmed like this. Rooke: If parody works died, that would mean the death of things like Touhou fandom. I don't think your personal distastes make for a particularly compelling argument. Nor does your assumption that things would work out just fine without parody works, particularly in light of the fact that the West, which you're using for comparison, doesn't, for example, have anything even remotely approaching the Japanese H-Manga market.

Doujins or not doujins, copyright law has become utterly retarded and needs to be burned to the ground and redone entirely - if only to take into account the immense structural changes the internet brought to cultural habits, in terms of creation or experience. TPP is the furthering of a neo-liberal agenda to a downright terrifying point and none of those who create or experience cultural items have any interest in it. Only transnational companies, producers, editors and shareholders do.

Visual Novel Translation Status (04/09/2016) To be honest the title for this week was quite cheesy and for the header image this time it was quite hard to find the fitting title. Anyway, the man on MC's lap (Yes the header image was from otome game) was Hanbei Takenaka from just recently released Destiny Princess. Anyway, this is another my review on VNTS here, and from now on I'll commented based on each segment just like last week. For my opening comment, this week was quite plain to be honest. And if Tay interested in otome game, I'm not by the way. Sekai Project Well, not much to be honest other than KARAKARA managed to reach the progress at 77.22% and Maitetsu at 6.39%. Both of those was more interesting because of the seiyuu to be honest, and also factoring the opening video (Or maybe I'm far more interested in those 2 production value). For Korean VN, the progress was at 1.29%. Lucid9, the girl's sprite quite good looking, although I must questioning why Sekai released only prologue here and if you allow me to speculate maybe they want try to repeat Katawa Shoujo success which start from releasing the common route first, and then waiting for 4 years to finally released the full version. The production value was quite high with voice acting there, and well let's just hope Lucid9 take time to made the character route worthwhile unlike No One But You which is rushed according to the review here. One last note, as for Root Double (And in response to Decay musing), I'd still suspect Regista or Yeti was behind the delay instead of Sekai, but I think if somehow the Japanese company managed to force Sekai to delay it more in this month, well there's still May to speculate I guess (Or in another word I'm willing to wait for 51 days more). Fan Translation Astral Air this time managed to pick up again at 0.69% compared to last week which is only at 0.2%, and interestingly apparently Chuee (or Supreme Tentacle) also pick up on Corona's route this week. Sakusaku, I think I already made the comment on my thread, but let's wait until May 2nd for more update here once again. Irotoridori, well this one had history in regard of the translation and good luck akerou (Oh the progress now was at 8%). Monster Girl Quest Paradox, I knew the original had interesting story but maybe this game set in alternate history (Also will the artist update the H-Scene drawing so we'll more willing to lost instead of encourage us to winning indirectly because of bad drawing) and to be honest I didn't know much about this. I think this time we had some interesting news from community member here. For Ittaku, congratulations to find one more editor for To Hearts 2 and by the way for anyone else who read this will some of you interested to editing twin route at To Heart 2 (Not mine since I didn't had confidence enough in English editing). As for Bishoujo Mangekyou, congratulations for reaching 50.5% for the progress, Arcadeotic and if you ask me the VN was quite interesting with the score apparently quite high at VNDB for something labeled nukige (The again so does Monster Girl Quest), the premise was like teacher and vampire thing, and according to VNDB Ringorin was voicing white haired girl. Good luck Arcadeotic. We also had new translation project from dergonu (Maybe will be added on VNTS project in coming weeks) here, and by the way if you expected it was yuri VN, the answer was correct. Good luck Dergonu, and as for the progress right now it was at 3.1%. Oh, and about Tokyo Necro, I think I just wait and see for this since there's a wall with name JAST USA there, and recently I saw the CG from there and it was very scary (Some of these involving brain iirc). Oh, congratulation for the establishment of 'Dracu Riot Completion Translation' project, although to be honest there's still not much news and progress this week, other than good luck Decay in your new position. But seeing fiddle's habit when they submit the progress when each route is finished back at Noble Noodle Works translation project, I think that's understandable. And for the untranslated script in Miu's route, the line count was comparable to some short VN (Around 5000 lines) so maybe the progress still take a while. Well, let me said thanks to one of 'Elite Four of Fuwanovel' Nosebleed here for establishing this project once again. As for my closing comment, for Sharin localization announcement, no much comment needed. Also I'm waiting for Dangan Ronpa 2 if only because of the involvement many famous seiyuu there. For Fata Morgana house, not interested but maybe there was some user here who interested with that kind of graphic. I think that's all for this week.

So I decided to make this topic cause I wanted to see how many VN and anime lovers actually like rap music. Maybe its a stereotype thing but, it doesn't seem like people who like anime and stuff are likely to like rap but, maybe that's just me. I myself really love it, it gets me pumped for a upcoming game, turning up in the car, or at a party or something HA like i go to party's Some rap music is trash I can agree with that but some rappers instead of talking about "Fucking bitches and getting money" And "Doing drugs off a gold rimmed Bugatti" Some rappers actually put meaning and time into their rhymes instead of just saying shit over a loud beat. Don't get me wrong I enjoy some of the main stream stuff but, I feel like main stream rap is all the same thing. Like stated above all they say is stuff like "Fuck bitches get money" and i feel like it gets a bad rap cause of it maybe that's just me though. So the real question is do any of you listen to rap hate it or somewhere in between Edit: My favorite rappers include but are not limited to: Chance the rapper, Watsky, G-Eazy, NWA, Dr Dre, Drake and anyone from odd future Side note: sorry about the punctuation English isn't my first language and i really struggle with that aspect of it

It's probably long overdue, but here it goes! Hello everyone! I've been lurking the main Fuwa site for years now obsessively checking fan translation statuses, and December of last year I made an account on the forums thinking I'd totally join the community only for me to end up lurking even harder. hehehehe.........My anti-social tendencies are far too strong. My first visual novel was Fate/Stay Night, waaaaay back in 2009. To be honest what guided me to visual novels was the shitty DEEN adaptation, the wasted potential of the series bothered me deeply. How could they set up this interesting premise and barely scratch the surface of that potential? (The me of 2009 would've loved Fate/zero) My bothered self then read some reviews on MAL to validate my impression on the series, through that action I learned that the source of the narrative was something called a "visual novel". With that knowledge, and few Google searches later I had Fate setup on my shit Windows ME. The Fate route didn't really impress me much since I had just finished the anime days earlier, but once I got to UBW that's when things got interesting. The premise wasn't built upon in the way I expected, but I felt that it didn't necessarily have to because what it built up to was very satisfying and entertaining in its own special way. Those moments where the script, visuals, and music all came together, got me absolutely hooked on visual novels as a whole. Even though, these moments always seem to be buried in heaps of slice-of-life fluff. I've been reading them ever since and loosely following the fan translation scene. I must say watching this fandom grow and flourish, has warmed my cynical heart. Back in 2009 I couldn't even imagine some titles getting official releases, let alone them raising hundreds of thousands of dollars through crowd funding alone.(Proud contributor to the Clannad, MuvLuv, and Double Root kickstarters) Such short turnaround from original Japanese release to English release would've been a dream back then when waiting years (2+ at least) for translation was the norm. ( I waited 6 years for that Hollow Ataraxia translation, it's a miracle it came out at all really.) There are probably people here that have been into this much much longer that can easily recall scarcer times and that alone earns my respect, because your foundation allowed many others to experience this medium that otherwise would've faded into obscurity. Man, I'm already sucking up to my senpai and I haven't even legit talked to any of you yet. If I set them up properly, feel free to look into my scrub levels. If not here are links to profiles, where you can proceed to judge me in every way, shape, or form. MAL: http://myanimelist.net/profile/Kaykeiokay VNDB: https://vndb.org/u48090 Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/Kaykeiokay I'm also a video game collector and it seems like quite a few of you are gamers too, so I'll just leave my Grouvee account here. https://www.grouvee.com/user/kaykeiokay/ I'm open to recommendations from absolutely any genre (okay, maybe not hardcore loli. I don't wanna go to jail) , so GIVE ME YOUR WORST! Oh yeah, Call me Kay if someone already claimed that then call me Kei. Okay?

Russian. There are lots of interesting Russian writers I'd like to read in the original language...

Yeah, I've also come around on this completely since my initial post, thanks to @Chuee's explanation. I had no idea the voice actress had recognition, let alone the kinds of numbers he mentioned. Armed with that information, it now looks like a pretty solid marketing move. JAST USA: 1, Me: 0

I listened to some short clips in a YouTube review and, I don't know--the ditzy English voice seems to fit the ditzy character of Sonico. Seems fine. And as the reviewer points out, Jessica Nigri IS more or less the English personification of Sonico. I wouldn't use the English dub, but I can definitely see how this is a great publicity move by JAST that could appeal to fans of the anime. Don't underestimate the size of the dub-only audience, nor the influence of an idol with her own rabid fanbase. I'm sure some people will pick this game up purely because Jessica Nigri is voicing Sonico. And that's not necessarily a bad thing--especially if that exposes them to other titles from JAST like School Days. I can definitely see myself reviewing and promoting this game simply because it's a great opportunity to attract new fans into the fold. I watched a short clip of the gameplay. As others have said, the other characters don't appear to be voiced in the JP version. I watched her converse with an older guy and only her lines were voiced.

People that cant appreciate hiphop in some ways are silly or takes themself too seriously :^ ). Anyways, yeah I fucking love rap, grew up with it. My crew back in school was really into hiphop for some reason and while I had my own punk/metal periods, I always managed to hold on to this with my friends. I can also thank them for not turning into a "true" metal fan, that would have been horrible lol. Just gonna post random favorites in different sides of the spectrum

As someone who really enjoys learning new languages, my best tip is: don't ask the internet what you should learn. If you don't know anything about a language or the culture it comes from, you have a high chance of not really enjoying the learning process. Now I'm not saying experimenting is bad, but you should really only learn something you find interest in. You can learn a language because you like how it sounds, or maybe for a job you just got in. But asking random strangers what language you should learn doesn't seem like a very clever idea. Most responses you're going to get are either a) the culture/country is awesome or b) you can get a good job with it. But this applies to the person speaking, not you. You're the one that should decide these matters. Every language has merits, but they will ALWAYS be relative to your criteria, not other people's criteria. I always thought German is a pretty cool language, but I do not see how learning it would be useful to me and so I am not spending years learning it and am instead investing my time in things I know will be useful either right now or in the future. You can argue learning something is always useful, but languages take a lot of time to master, and you can never learn all of them, so you'll always have to make a choice of what matters most to you. So yeah, think about a language you personally find useful to know, otherwise I think you're likely wasting your time. Unless that was exactly your goal, in which case I suggest learning ancient Greek.

Why don't you try learn Norwegian, it's very intressing language and I can teach you Norwegian

If you want reasons to learn a language maybe you should provide what you think you would use a language for. Are you interested in visiting countries? Do you plan to read literature in its original language? If you learn spanish, there's a long tradition of spanish literature but also chilean or argentinian literature, for example.

It really is quite good. My biggest complaint however is that it feels like they only had about two routes worth of material but had to throw in a third route, maybe out of a sense of obligation. The route that suffered the most because of this is of course the best girl's route, Sorami's. It felt like they just sort of ran out of ideas for the fights in that route, and had many of the same encounters/villains as Raziel's but simply approached from a different angle. Also those repeat fights just felt abbreviated and substanceless. It was still good, but it wasn't blood pumping the whole time like Raziel's was. Sorami's route felt like too much of a retread for that. The final fight was rather great, though, and I liked the ending. So there's that, at least. I'm reading Lilith's route right now and it's like it has all of the inspiration that was missing from Sorami's. It's excellent so far.

I know that the guy who made kanjidamage.com is both a Japanese culture enthusiast and an avid fan of rap, among other seemingly mutually exclusive activities. I'm a big fan of Waka Flocka, meanwhile.

Hello again, I decided to show some more fan art I haven't posted here yet! The first one is a pic from January with Rin (digital). The second one is form last week with Saber Lily (traditional) drawing. I hope you'll like them! P.s. I have one pretty big digital drawing in process. Can you guess the title and character?

Grimo Love is a nukige. Now, you'll notice that I generally don't bother to rate or comment on nukige... because most of the time I drop them inside of ten minutes. However, Grimo Love has this sort of dread fascination to it that kept me playing right until the end (incidentally, it wasn't the story or the characters that kept me going). I'm going to be blunt. This VN doesn't really have a story. Oh, there is one in there that probably would have made for a ridiculously good charage with story if they'd bothered to develop it properly... and the sheer amount of detailed sprites in this VN makes me want to ask why they didn't. However, this is ultimately a nukige and it has that ever-so-familiar 'sex under the necessity' trope going for it. In this case, the protagonist is a member of the student council and the Second Literature Club (descended from the ancient Occult Research Club, whose leader died ten years before). This VN is so full of supernatural incidents that they actually overwhelm the nukige H by a ratio of 10:1... and that's just weird, for a nukige (and it is one, from the feeling). The school in this VN, its characters, and the constant incidents are comedic and feel unbelievably surreal... and virtually endless. This VN is seriously long. It took me twenty hours to finish, and most of the time I was either smiling or outright laughing. If you asked me whether this was a pure comedy, I'd say no... but despite all the horrifying incidents that supposedly occur or almost occur around the characters (with a witch teacher who loves evil grimoires constantly causing trouble, ghosts and youkai attracted to the school like moths to a flame, and a vampire True Ancestor sleeping on the emergency stairs, how could it be peaceful? lol) it never quite manages to be serious. Sure, there is a really half-hearted attempt to make certain parts serious... but the characters and their reactions are so silly and blase that it is impossible to take even zombies, ogres, and evil gods seriously. The protagonist's blase reaction to everything that happens around him is what defines a lot of the VN's atmosphere, and since he basically has sex with all the girls as a result of such incidents (or the girls' whims) it is kind of hard to take anything in this VN seriously. In other words, I laughed but I never cried. Anyway, now down to my thoughts on Jeanne... Liarsoft's new game. I only started it about five hours ago, but I'm already ready to drop it. Sorry, I just have trouble with Alice in Wonderland-type down the rabbit-hole stories. Mixing it with chuuni-ism and a former French Resistance fighter doesn't actually help as much as you might think, at least for me. I'm sometimes surprised at how intolerant I can be of this kind of stuff... but it doesn't really help that the writer is making it out to be a huge mystery when what is going on is blatantly obvious to anyone who has read a little bit of history and surrealist fantasy. As a point of reference, I just have unforgiving tastes when it comes to serious fantasy in general. My dislike for surrealist fantasy (I like down in the dirt fantasy much better) is an inevitable result of having outgrown that kind of crap when I was in second grade, lol. Just making it more mature doesn't make it interesting for me. Anyway, I'm going to play a random VN until I can get into a mood to forgive this VN for being a part of a sub-genre type that I generally avoid like the plague, so don't expect another post on it for at least a few days.

Seconded. Also globally, almost as many people speak Russian as Spanish.

OMG THIS IS FIRE!

Good to hear that Gahkthun's translation is quality material; that's definitely a point in its favor. I normally have pretty low standards for translation as well (We're lucky to get a translation at all with most VNs) , but the steam punk series is kinda an exception for me since I've heard the originals have such great writing. Don't be down on yourself for using a guide, sometimes the frustration just isn't worth it and can sour your experience in an otherwise great VN. I remember there was a VN where I was presented with 2 choices and both choices led to a bad end; it totally baffled me I was sure I made the correct choices leading up to this but no matter what I did it led to that bad end. After hours of frustration I caved and looked at a guide, the solution was to simply not choose anything now this would be fine is this concept was introduced earlier, but that particular choice was the only one. (BULLSHIT)

Kendrick, G-Eazy, J Cole and Logic are who I've mostly been listening to. Always open to recommendations though

First, I should comment on Misaki's route... As is to be expected of a true route in a VN with as much story as this one, Misaki's route is incomparable in both length and content to the other three routes. In terms of emotional impact, it literally leaves the other routes in the dust, while finishing off the other heroines' issues almost as if they were a mere aside, lol. That said, not all the emotions associated with this route are positive... there are some seriously heartbreaking moments throughout the story, including a parting that will absolutely destroy anyone who liked the rest of the VN. The ending is definitely a tear-jerker, and I found myself crying like a baby for it. Now, for the wrap-up... Sound-wise, this VN has great music... though the music doesn't have the kind of dominant force that you see in some VNs like Hapymaher. Rather, it has many unique BGMs that are utilized well to enhance the atmosphere of the story. Since this is a sign of good game design in general, I thought it was worth mentioning. Visually... it is an Applique game. Applique's style is pretty close to the mainstream, and most people who play mainstream charage will probably be comfortable with it. Now... for the overall story. I'm going to be blunt... if one were to wrap all the routes into the Misaki route (with their details included to some degree) and turn it into a kinetic novel, this VN would have been much better. The protagonist's dependency is a bit exasperating at times, as well. The way they did the common route - and in particular the issue with how it ends - leaves much to be desired, and Koharu's route feels out of place compared to the other three. What pushes this VN onto the level of VN of the Month quality is the quality of its prose and the Misaki route. While this won't beat Akeiro for March's VN of the Month, it is still one worth remembering.

Honestly I'm not really concerned about this whatsoever. They've already confirmed it will still maintain the Japanese audio as well so if JAST wants to try something different like this all the power to them. As long as we don't have to worry about english replacing the japanese audio this should do nothing but open up the game to a wider audience.

Like the full fledged weeaboo I am, I only listen to superior Japanese rap.

Just finished Akeiro Kaikitan, And It Was Good. Clephas already did a review on his blog, and he hit all the major points. I'll disagree with Clephas in one thing though - I thought Akeiro was a better game than the already very good Nanairo Reincarnation. Akeiro fixed what I thought the greatest weakness of the Nanairo was: actual differentiation between the routes. Nanairo had one story with short differences in the ending. Akeiro routes can be very different (and much darker), but always for a good reason. Each route results from the Protagonist choosing different actions in the Common part, learning different things, then acting on that info - and each makes sense. This all cumulates in the True route, an amazing conclusion to the buildup in the previous routes. The weak points of the game are a bit of lack of focus (for example: 3 routes are romantic, 3 aren't), a bit of reliance on the previous game for lore, and a bit of a Deus Ex to set up the True Route. Hardly major, but they keep it from being perfect. Not sure if I'd go so far as to call it a 9/10, but it is one of the better 8/10s I've read.

@bigfatround0 okay, but again, is there anything really interesting apart speaking with spanish people? Like VN/manga/anime is main benefit for lot of people to learn japanese. I have no plans to live in US. And seems only spanish-speaking country I would probably visit is Chile, which could probably not happen at all.

Wat! And why aren't you my pet in-game? I demand info... or I'll rekt you, like always

[WARNING] [This entry will have massive amounts of bias within it. If you don't want to hear me gushing about Dracu-Riot, I'd suggest turning away now. Also spoilerz. You have been warned.] Elina is a vampire from Russia. She is a pervert, who will say dirty joke at any possible event. Later in her rout it is revealed that she is a masochist. As a special vampire, she can only drink vampires' blood, human blood has no effect. She works in a casino. Honestly, this route is really good, and I can definetly see why this route is the favorite of so many people, although I'm positive that this being the only translated route for so lomg has quite a lot to do with it. Anyways, in the Common Route, the groundwork for Elina is given to her personality and in the finale of the Common Route we see her ability and how she is "special" from other vampires, but different from Yuuto. After that she and Yuuto have a discussion, in which Yuuto promises to keep Elina's secret for himself and at the same time aid her. This character development in the Common Route is probably the second best based purely by the character interactions and screentime, only losing to Miu. The start of the heroines' routes are fundamentally the same across the board, and Elina's route is no different. It starts by Elina and Yuuto interacting more and more, getting close at the same time. However,this is done really well in Elina's route, mostly by Elina and Yuuto's pleasable interactions and events, but also because of Elina's special condition. It brings a nice sense of unity. Overall, this part is really nice and fluffy, and it gradually gets more serious with Elina's condition getting more severe, and then this part of the route is brought to its eclipse from the two Elina's attacks against Yuuto. Shortly after they start dating. This curve from close friends to partners is actually quite smooth in this route and it's one of the better ones in this game. The dating part however is not. It's more or less the same as Azusa's: It's nice, but it really lacks that difference from before they started dating. But unlike Azusa, the story-part here is present the whole time and built upon continously. The H-scenes are all in this part. They are quite close to each other, but they aren't clumped together like in Azusa's route. It would've been nice if there was some leftover for the latter part of the route, but the finale really doesn't give time for that, and that's why After Stories exist. The H-scenes however are one of the best in the game, along with Miu's. The way Elina moans has some kind of black magic within it, because it's out of this world. The final part of this route consist of Yuuto and Elina running away from Russian research site from a false accusation. This version of the finale is one of the best in this game. The pacing and the input of the lesser characters are brilliantly executed. The final part with the casino blackout is made so good by the input from the other characters from before. The revelation of Elina and Yuuto's secrets could have been executed much better, but that's a minor nitpick. The scheme and the final showdown with Sayo and the Russian official was really good. There were hints to give the player some way to find out about the solution, but they barely miss out. This time around Motoki plays a minor role in the finale, and the introduction of Sophia brings a nice side to Elina's character. The aftermath after the credits is arguably the best. It tells how all the other characters feel about the absence of Elina and Yuuto. The return of these two is also made so, that it isn't overly sweet nor disappointingly dull. It's pretty much perfect. Whats my verdict? Well, taking all of these things into an account, this route places as my 3rd favorite. It gets some nostalgia points for being my first route, and the same could be said tomthe majority of people, but it can't beat Miu, and I liked Rio's character, her route's events and direction, and Motoki's involvement in her route more. This route is by no means a bad one, quite contradictory. This route is really good, but not to my liking enough. As a character, Elina is suberb, but I like Miu more. To be fair, only a heartless person wouldn't like this pervert Russian. She's cute, sexy and kind. There's nothing not to love. Now then, by process of elimination, the only character left is Miu. I will be playing her route right away, so look forward to her.

What I learned from VN, well I know crack, registry edit, patch, ISO, system locale, and torrent if you mean that involving in VN give me something to learn. Oh and understanding Japan from the spoken line a little. For more serious answer, I think not really since we got so many 17 or so years old MC got many thing to deal with the problem in their real life that was too heavy for that kind of age. But I think it's quite entertaining in some way (Not in a bad way of course). Also I think we couldn't quite compared it to real life if we talk about VN, and about comparison to b/s/m I think it's based on different target market. Most VN was made with certain target in Japan (Teenager and adult, so hopefully the audience could differ between fantasy and reality), while b/s/m was probably tried to please general audience here (Of course it would need some kind of the reality grounded into it) I think. Sorry if I could not write well here. Edit - While I said I didn't believe VN, I agree that sometimes there's was a lesson that we could get from VN too. It's depend on the people if they could got the lesson from VN or not, I think.

I haven't really kept up to date with music but 50 is my favorite rapper. Chamillionaire is right behind him and following him is Flo Rida.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I don't listen to it terribly often, but there's nothing inherent to it that I dislike. It's more that I just don't pay attention to the rap scene and I never know when anything good is released. I end up listening to only a few of the most popular albums released each year. That's pretty much good enough for my mainstream white ass.

I finished off my first run through of Raidy III. I decided to mess around while mapping out the last dungeon, and spent much of the time in Zoolander Mode. *Reaches the end of a hallway that turns left* "I can turn left." *Hits the right arrow key three times and proceeds* "... I'm not an ambiturner."

It occurs to me that some of you probably don't actually read the blog, so I'll post it here if you want to discuss it: The way A-1 and A-2s files are structured, such as the script and image names, as well as things such as the eventtype text, heavily suggest Minatosoft is planning to release all the games as a single version at some point. I wouldn't say I'm 100% sure of it, but they've certainly put quite a bit of effort in to a file system that will let them do that.

We already are since you went and drank and Amazoned yourself 80 books. May as well go whole hog and admit you pre-ordered the sequel to 50 Shades of Grey and get it over with now. <- chemistry! But... but we're friends, right? Right? Young teacher... the subject... of schoolgirl fantasies...

At some point we made an experiment with the Musumaker translation. I tried translating around 20 lines using TA+jParser. Afterwards RaurosFalls (the real translator) reviewed and corrected the translation. I then read the result more closely to see how well I did. Conclusion: * Hiragana knowledge isn't that important (relatively speaking). I used romaji furigana due to not being strong in hiragana * Vocabulary isn't that important due to being able to look up everything quite fast. Most of the time just hovering the mouse of a word is enough (not always) * Grammar is very important. More or less all mistakes were grammar related. The issue is that the tools provides you with the correct words, but you have to know the grammar in order to put them together correctly. Without a proper understanding of grammar, you get "Jack punch Bill", but can't tell if it is "Jack punches Bill" or "Jack is punched by Bill" or "Jack wants to punch Bill" or even the negative version of each, like "Jack didn't punch Bill". This is why I say in order to get started, the most needed skill is grammar. Don't get me wrong. The other skills are useful and needed in the long run. I'm talking about how to get to the point where you can read the first line somewhat reliable and without resorting to guesswork. Particles is usually a unique topic. However for this post I include it in what I refer to as grammar. After all it is a tool to tell what is the main object and so on, which is usually referred to as grammar. I think once the grammar has been mastered, it would make sense to switch the furigana to hiragana. It shouldn't be done too late as hiragana is important to master as well, but doing it too early distracts the focus from grammar and the learning process becomes overburdened, which in turn makes people run away screaming and they learn nothing.

It's almost stupid to choose in which medium you believe or not. In fact, it is stupid. Fictions are fictions, no matter how you experience them, be it books, vns or movies. I don't gulp down what I read out of credulity but it still manages me to make me curious on several subjects; which leads me to make some research on the matter and actually learn something as a result (or just to think about what I am experiencing if it is somehow thought-provoking). And that happens in every single medium. You can't dismiss a whole medium no matter what it is as it will never be inherently inferior or superior to anything by itself.

I thought there were some bad parts to Lucia's route, mostly in the last third, but overall I enjoyed it a fair amount. Tonokawa's routes on the other hand (Chihaya and Shizuru), that shit was just inexcusable. To people hoping that they improve the pacing, they're certainly not going to remove scenes from the famously long common route, so...

I regard machine translation as a stepping stone to learning Japanese. Once you get a taste of the full spectrum of games available if you don't limit yourself to English games, you'll become more motivated to take the next step. Most people get stuck at the starting phase of learning Japanese because you can't actually read anything until you've acquired near-fluency. Machine translation allows you to see through the language barrier, even if the resulting picture is fairly distorted. It can also help you pick up some basic vocabulary early on through matching voices with the output, especially since MT will always give the same translation for the same word (human translators often won't).

I won't lie, I enjoyed HuniePop. It was a fun little Bejeweled clone + vestigial eroge + cynical message about base human nature. It was fun to play, fun to replay and even fun to try and 100%-complete. Fun, fun, fun. The developer's second game is, in many ways, an entirely different animal, at least as far as gameplay and graphics are concerned. Sex scenes are gone, the art style is markedly different, and the genre is probably best-described as a real-time click-happy time management game. In HunieCam Studio, the player takes control of a camwhore operation and has to keep it running by recruiting and managing up to 18 different girls (including the entire "basic" cast of HuniePop, complete with shamelessly reused voice assets). After employing girls, you can have them perform various activities, the most important of which are (obviously) camming, which earns you money, and posing for dirty photoshoots, which earns you fans. More fans = more money earned from subsequent cam sessions. Fans themselves are attracted to particular fetishes (teen, latina, etc etc), and when a girl performs a photoshoot, she earns new fans based on fetishes she satisfies. Similarly, only fans attracted to a particular fetish will watch the cam session. Each girl starts with two distinct fetishes (distributed in such way that no two girls share both) and can acquire more by means of accessories that you can procure from the adult shop. Each girl also has two skill attributes that can be trained. Talent increases money earned from camming, while Style gets her more fans from the photoshoots. It's all rather straightforward. Other activities girls can perform include shopping for alcohol or cigarettes (some girls drink and/or smoke, and you have to keep the supply up or they'll get stressed), performing at the strip club (which increases Talent), shopping for clothes (which increases Style), recruiting new girls at the model agency, browsing the adult shop (which lets you pick up one of six random accessories upon completion), relaxing at the spa in order to remove stress, and... visiting a hotel for some "private time" with rich clients. Yes, you can actually be a pimp in this game. I wonder if Steam folks are even aware of that. All of this happens in nigh-unpausable real time. I mean, sure, you can pause easily by bringing up various management screens, but it's not the kind of game that lends itself to tinkering with things at your leisure. Virtually every resource you earn (money, fans, booze, even friggin' skill points) must also be manually extracted from corresponding buildings by rapidly clicking them (or, mercifully, by clicking and holding LMB). The process can be automated via upgrades, but even then resources trickle very slowly when you're not actively extracting them, and since you can't manually extract them from multiple buildings simultaneously, you're forced to prioritize. Furthermore, you can speed up any current activity using the same method, but ain't nobody got time for that when you're busy gathering the money. All in all, I more or less hated the gameplay in HunieCam Studio. It's simultaneously stressful and boring (I didn't even know that was possible), and all novelty wears off within half an hour, leaving nothing but grind to look forward to. Once you get to 4-5 employed girls, the game turns into the proverbial equivalent of herding cats. Moreover, some elements of the gameplay system are a bit... illogical. For example, since fans are attracted to a fetish (and NOT to a particular girl), you can have a girl with maxed-out Style do all the photoshoots, and have another girl with maxed-out Talent (and same fetish) do all cam sessions. I'm not an expert at this sort of thing ((c) Kazami Yuuji), but wouldn't at least some of those imaginary people want to see a cam show starring the girl they've actually seen in photos, rather than some other girl who also happens to have Huge Tits or Thick Ass? Not to mention that the above approach is actually more efficient for the player, in terms of both income and time management. Girls' salaries increase exponentially with each skill point earned, and it makes very little sense to level one girl in both Style and Talent. After all, she can't be in two places at the same time, and two girls trained in Talent or Style, respectively, will earn you the same amount of money or fans (and their combined salaries will be lower), with the added bonus of, y'know, being able to do two things instead of one. The game makes specialization in a narrow range of fetishes much more appealing than diversification, but purposefully inhibits your initial ability to specialize. This is solved by hiring girls with matching fetishes (as I said above, no two girls have two identical fetishes, so there is some recruiting strategy involved) and equipping them with identical accessories, thus giving them more matching fetishes. So yes, specialization in both skills and fetishes is the best way to play... But why would you do that to yourself? Once you get the message, check out all the bios (some of them are admittedly funny), listen to girls' soundbites the first few times and click on things for a while, HunieCam Studio has nothing more to offer you. Now, I hear you can unlock outfits and hairstyles in a similar vein to HuniePop, but I couldn't even get that far. At some point it became clear to me that I'm wasting my fucking time, which is a minor miracle considering how much of said time I generally waste on games without stumbling upon the above realization. Maybe I'm just not the kind of person that gets hooked on a game like HunieCam Studio, that is a definite possibility. So, you know, I wouldn't advise against buying it. Hell, I had my share of mild chuckles over the course of 2 hours I spent in it. Maybe I'll even go back and resume managing my collection of DFCs (it's one of the easier fetishes to build around, what with two girls who don't demand a lot of money and can be specialized... I wanted to build around fiery latinas at first (cause, you know, thatsmyfetish.gif), but the goddamn Brazilian chick with pre-maxed skills drove me to bankruptcy, so there's that). But the bottom line is, the gameplay is just not very fun unless you're a grind monkey addicted to floating numbers. 'Tis a shame.

Do you really think they're going to "die" on this hill? And do you really think this will be an unpopular feature? This game was likely never made for you in the first place, so you commenting on the necessity of the dub seems pointless. The anime has its share of fans among a certain subset of otaku, and I'm sure a lot of them liked the dub well enough to justify this. This game is for them, after all. Like bigfatround said, lonely nerds will eat this shit up. Like I said before, this is actually going to be one of JAST's most popular titles with some pretty far-reaching appeal. I think the prospect of a dub by their favored cosplayer/voice actress will get some people pretty excited. Don't approach this from the mindset of a typical VN fan.

Fisted to death by Kiri What trickery is this?! \ /

Chapter 3 is DONE! Hope you enjoy!

I've waited almost a year for this. Finally. I'm sure it'll be glorious. Now then. This year, I'll celebrate Easter by sharing my genuine and honest opinion of many Fuwanovel members. Mostly those I happen to remember. You can also request it yourself if I don't mention you by default. A fair warning, whilst I don't often think ill of someone, there are some I might. A thousand apologies. Besides that, I also have a little game (some of you may remember it, I tried it our last year, but due to circumstances, was unable to finish it). I've updated it a little (though most characters are still out of date), and this time I do have the solutions! If you've been pinged in this post, you're probably in there, unless you aren't. Can you find yourself? Each image represents a member (or two). Can you guess them all? GUESS WHO: Anything you say about this must be in spoilers. Many things can be seen as clues, so I'm adamant about this. Besides that, onwards to opinions. These are in a brainstorm thoughtspill format. Not coherent. Too bad. For you. OBJECTIVE OPINIONS OF FUWANOVEL PLEBS: Most of those people are in the egg. Some people in the egg aren't there. This all said, here's the solution, but be sure to at least try first. Even though some are pretty much impossible to guess. EGG SOLUTION: Now I'm off to have lunch and realise I forgot something really important. Happy Easter, people!