Leaderboard

Rooke is a stealth master. As such, under the cover of darkness (and many prank and distracting telephone calls,) I have snuck into Tay’s office and snagged some ripping correspondence from his secretary’s desk. Let us see what we’ve uncovered today! Oooh, interesting. A little hard to read, a little heated. I'm also holding a reply in my hand, I wonder what it says. So there you go, people are falling over themselves to congratulate Tay on his excellent coverage of otome VNs on Fuwanovel. I am pleased to see this I wonder if SecretOtomeLover has received his reply? Well, I suppose if I’m holding the only copy in my hands, it may be a bit difficult. I should return it but alas it’s too risky - breaking and entering is serious business. Oh well, learning the value of backups is never a bad thing.

Katawa Shoujo was a first for me in a few fields, which I might have discussed briefly in an earlier post. It was my first visual novel, and while I'm not exactly a font of knowledge of experience in the medium, it opened me up to a wonderful (if expensive and sometimes questionable) form of storytelling. It was the first exposure I had to a Japanese-style thing, and while not being actually Japanese itself, got me on that road too. It was also the first internet forum I got properly involved with, back in February 2014. I managed to rack up over 1,000 posts of mostly (if I'm honest) trying to figure out whether Emi or Rin is bestgirl, mooning over artwork, and just general mindless shitposting. Really, I look back on the time and it's a strange mixture of trying to figure out why I spent so much time there, and being sincerely glad I did. Just distracting myself on there and discussing essentially irrelevant bumph helped me out vastly during a crappy stage of my life, and for that I'm forever grateful towards it. However, being a forum based around a singular VN there's only so much somebody can contribute (at least, without being excellent at art or a damn good creative writer). The amount of times a lemon joke can be made, or a Rinfidel can be declared eventually dries up, and so after spending roughly a year on it, I basically stopped going on there. Every now and then I would pop my head back in to see if I was missing anything interesting, but then even those occasions started to disappear, and about 9-10 months went by. I figured that, today, I might just see how this little community was doing. I was never what I would call a major part of the community, but as I've already alluded to I was fond of it - I just had nothing left to offer. Yet, I opened it up and what greeted me was a sad state of inactivity. It was, I admit, never the fastest moving forum in the world, but typically things would move at a fair-t'-middling pace most of the time - a good 10 or so topics a day with at least one comment, perhaps one or two with a decent conversation on. But this time, there were 8 topics explored in the 'Public Discussion' field since the start of April. I found one or two conversations - short, but conversations nevertheless - that had taken place, largely among people who were regulars when I used to frequent, but very few new faces. To be fair, for what it is it's had a bloody good run (the forums themselves opened in 2007 in their current guise) and to call it dead would be unfair - it's not like nothing's happening - but it seems to be approaching a moribund, final state. Whether it happens next year, or the year after, who knows, but for myself it brings a very real feeling of sadness. I understand this is how forums work. People come and go, some stay for longer than others; this is just a fact of life in these places, and for more 'limited' forums one only expects a natural lifespan, obviously culminating in death. But to see a community start to fade, particularly one I held dear during my time there... Yeah, it does bring me down a little. And that got me thinking. I regularly partake in two internet communities, and it made me appreciate how much I actually feel towards these people; people who I've never met and am never likely to meet. Most will likely phase out as time goes by - be it days, months, years - and I fully expect it will be the same for me. I'll likely only think about them once in a while, a thought like "Oh, I wonder how such-and-such is getting on nowadays". The two I am part of are both far more expansive in their scope than the KS forums - Fuwanovel for... well, obviously visual novels, and the other for music - and I suppose that they will probably last longer than I give them my attention as a consequence. But the fact that these communities leave such an indelible mark on my being, however small I may think they are, means that one day I am likely to feel this feeling of sadness once again, whether I come back to find it nearly gone, or whether I stick around long enough to see it fall. Sorry for being a bit of a bummer, but this hit me a little harder than I suppose it might/should and wished to vent a little. Here's Renge singing

https://vndb.org/v11110

Hey everyone, I'm new to fuwanovel and sort of new to VNs in general. I was first introduced to VNs when I discovered Sono Hanabira a few years ago. But I haven't played that much so far besides Sono Hanabira and a few other VNs that were easy to download and run. A friend keeps trying to get me to play Dramatical Murder and Togainu no Chi, and I'd like to play them, but I've had a hell of a time trying to get them to work on my computer Anyway, I'm interested in a wide range of genres, but when it comes to hentai & eroge, I'm mainly just interested in yaoi and yuri. Overall, I read manga more than I watch anime. I'm hopelessly obsessed with Kuroshitsuji and Love Live (pretty much every part of the franchise). I also collect doujinshi, of the fanzine variety. I have over 50 of them. I hope to learn about some more VNs here...as well as get help for playing some of them on my computer.

My name's Hasa. I'm currently working as one of the translators for Koiseyo Imouto Banchou Translation Project. My favorite VN is Tsuki ni Yorisou Otome no Sahou and my avatar is Luna, one of the heroines from the game. She's my waifu forever xD I hope I get to have great times with you guys here in these wonderful VN forums o/

Make sure you don't work for this guy: http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-developers-must-avoid-the-wage-slave-attitude/ The money quotation IMO is: "You can’t 'make fun' on a schedule, under budget, on time with a bunch of people who are all grumbling about what a miserable time they are having finishing a game together." Since the second half of that sentence is actually predicated on a failure of the first part, I'll just paraphrase this to: I don't know how to make games on a schedule, under budget, on time. - Alex St. John Although I do also really like the part where he explains that making games is not "an actual job", and that's why you should feel privileged to be shat on as an employee in that industry. I've literally never seen a better exemplar of everything that's wrong with American white collar businesses. I hate the "love your job" mentality that pervades modern middle-class moralizing morons like this man. It doesn't make anybody any happier. Hard-working people don't get to eat dinner with their families for months because a bunch of idiots, like this clown, fail to predict how much work it would take to make, say, Madden 2016, despite having gone through exactly the same experience year after year for decades, with Madden 2015, Madden 2014, ... And then this guy comes along and tells them that, simply because they're working on video games, this is some massively privileged position that deserves their undivided love, and if they want to work on them they should be willing to throw away everything else in their lives. I guess fussing with the deployment scripts for the eightieth time so you can rev the service backing your game is doing God's work, or something. Screw that, and screw him. Now, don't misunderstand. If at all possible, you should find a job you like. It makes the hours go by a lot faster, and you'll even enjoy your time there most of the time. But unless you're in the 0.01% of people who actually live to work, rather than the remaining 99.99% who work to live, you probably are better off if you don't love your job and you realize that that's ok.

The ESRB does have a questionnaire like that, but not quite as dramatic. I used to play around with their auto rating tool before they quietly removed it for exposing too much about their process, and if you have sex scenes in your game the ESRB will get nosy about them. If the dialogue is sexually explicit, how much skin is shown, etc. Showing breasts/buttocks in sex scenes got an M rating unless it was frequent. Gahkthun's scenes were infrequent enough to get the M. According to this tool, penis/vagina was an automatic AO, no matter what context it was shown in, so I don't know what bribe money Rockstar's got where they've shown peen twice in the GTA series.

Hmm, I wonder about this. With games like Kara no Shoujo 2, Gahkthun, and Tokyo Babel (especially Tokyo Babel) heavily underperforming, MangaGamer might start doing a lot more moege. Sekai Project already heavily favors moege. The only company that barely ever touches moe is JAST. But they've announced like one major new title in the last 18 months, so they haven't responded to the market trends by virtue of doing nothing at all. Looking at SP's upcoming catalogue, they have KARAKARA, Wagamama High Spec, Hoshizora no Memoria (although the story elements are a bit more prominent in that one), Tenshin Ranman, Paca Plus (ugh, and is that even still happening?), Japanese School Life, and Maitetsu. Then they have some titles somewhere in-between like Chrono Clock and and Ley Line. Almost all of their non-doujin releases are moege or close to it, and a lot of their doujin releases are, too. It seems like the really serious story-heavy stuff, and especially the action stuff, might actually start getting abandoned by the major publishers soon if the current sales trends keep up. So if you want to make a fan translation that will never get picked up, choose some obscure Light title or something.

This actually worries me to some extent. The biggest logical reason to buy up a fan translation (rather than doing your own) is the belief that doing so allows you to acquire the translation for less than what would be a fair market rate (the other, of course, being saved time). What might seem like fair compensation for something you expected to do for free might be a far cry from what you might ask for in a more traditional contract.

Remind me never to bet on @littleshogun's predictions. Obviously it was that eminently approachable and popular game, Sharin!

Confession: Today I learned that "?!" and "!?" are considered equally correct, even though I've always used "?!" and I find "!?" weird. As a side bonus of learning that, I also learned about the gnaborretni.

I'm actually almost finished proofreading and editing, and it should be done in a week or two! Then all Dergonu has to do is look through it himself and if all is well, he can upload it in the coming weeks. It's awesome seeing that another fellow Fuwa-user willing to offer their services to projects, good on you @AaronIsCrunchy! If Dergonu starts to release Vol.2 within the next 5 months while you're still free, I'd say definitely take up Dergonu's offer on helping him out with that. After I'm finished editing Vol.1, I plan on focusing on my own light novel that I've written some rough ideas about over the last few months, but not started yet because I want to finish editing Vol.1 in its entirety first. It's thanks to reading and editing Dergonu's that's inspired me to write my own.

Thanks for the feedback! Really great to hear that you enjoyed it I am in the process of writing vol.2, and will make a thread on the forum soon, once a little more has been finished. So stay tuned for that! I was concerned about how the interactions in the story would be when both Kitsune and her people were being discussed. I will try to find a way to make this easier to understand. Forgetful Frank is currently editing the book, but if he needs some help, or if I start getting vol.2 released in not too long, I will gladly take you up on your offer. I will definietly send you a PM if I/ when I need help!

It's a good thing. Having the majority of translation being done officially encourages a standard of quality you won't get with an active fan-translation scene. Not to mention the incentive of money gives people a reason to stick in it longer, translate faster, and translate more stuff. Anime fan-translation has basically died down to where it's only a few groups that still do actual translation, or changing of translation (using the official TL as base). That's basically where VNs are at now, where all the people who used to be in fan-translation now work on official stuff (much like anime translation too). Give a few years for the current non-dead projects to finish or die and you'll probably see the fan-translation scene practically dead.

I'd like to think that people on Fuwa would be above launching personal attacks at people because of clashing opinions. If anyone who engaged in that behaviour is reading this post, knock it off. You're being juvenile. I just reread Suzu’s posts above. Nothing stated should have caused people to get ticked enough to lash out. You may disagree but there shouldn’t be such intense emotions involved. If you did lash out, it’s because you have too much time on your hands. Go and make yourself useful somewhere. EDIT: It’s funny, that in all the years of being an ‘arsehole’ on the forums no one’s ever tried to abuse me in private. Please give it a go, fellas, I’m feeling left out. And I have an awesome thread idea called ‘People's retarded flame attempts – stupid as well as boring’ that I want to create. Personal attacks have become so mundane in recent times, they’re a virtual yawn fest, broken up with brief periods of laughter due to the ridiculousness of the fellow 'shouting.' Insults used to be much more creative ‘back in the day’. Unfortunately I’m low on examples, so if any of you ‘keyboard warriors’ would like to provide me with some, you know how to PM me. Thanks in advance.

This won't "kill" fan translations so long as Japan keeps releasing games exclusively in Japanese, that's just a fact. Even anime still has fansub groups despite being much more widely available nowadays. You have to understand most fan translators translate a game because they like it and want to share it with other people. If a company comes along that has the proper channels to make that game legally available in the Western market, there's very little reason not to accept such an offer. Complaints are usually from people that have only pirated games before and are salty about having to pay money now. Of course there are valid criticisms to be made in the actual localization processes for each game, namely the fact a lot of erotic content is being left behind in favor of all ages releases, but the concept of a company buying a fan translation isn't really destroying the world as we know it. Also fan groups asking for donations are 10 times shadier than ChuSinGura's Kickstarter project.

So I just spent most of the evening reading this, and I figured I'd give you my thoughts! The first thing I'll say is probably the most obvious thing: the growing relationship between Kitsune and Sakura is pretty damn adorable. Some of the descriptions of Sakura's interactions with her make me feel really fuzzy, so that's a big +1 The pacing was, surprisingly, rather good. I say surprisingly as in a lot of 'amateur' stories (for lack of better wording) things move forward at a breakneck speed in some parts, and the gravity of a situation can be lost. Yours is largely good though! I think a little more 'padding' (not the right word, but you know) might not be a bad thing towards the end as the bulk of the action happens, but aside from that good stuff. My biggest complaint is probably why Kitsune is called Kitsune. It's okay for most of it, but in the scenes where she is among her own people, having 'kitsune' (as in the species) and Kitsune (as in the adorable foxgirl character) in the same sentence can get somewhat confusing. It's not a dealbreaker, but it does throw me off a bit sometimes. I know you said it hasn't been edited yet so I won't make too big a deal out of it, but it does need cleaning up. I volunteer my services if you so wish? I don't have too much going on now for the next 5 months or so, so I could do with something to do Overall rating is about 7/10 I'd say. Would read and begrudge my lack of fan art ability again. Nice one

Visual Novel Translation Status (04/16/2016) Another 4 release, and for this time I used combination between Lucid9 and Campus Note to made it into 'The Lucid Note'. Coincidentally it was also name of failed kickstarted project here, so guess I help to revive the project here. Well, let's get back to usual business here which of course my commentary for VNTS for this week. And since Decay mentioned that Tay still helping even if he studying, I'd also should thank him as well here. From 4 release at this week I think only Lucid 9 that interest me. Asagi? Well, let's just said I'd far more interested with smaller heroine chest or in this case Yukikaze, which also had the translation project established (Although will I play Yukikaze or not in future is another story. And by the way Asagi and Yukikaze was nukige). Dandy Shot, I think my answer to otome was not interested but I think the story was involving around night life in the bar. Campus Note, the story was involving life in campus and apparently the release date for Japan and English version was the same, or in other word just like Nekopara Vol. 1 back in the end of 2014. As for Lucid9, it was just common route, but I think for the effort it'd already win No One But You and most importantly it's free. I think my comment was hopefully Lucid9 staff would be able to develop good heroine route. As for my opening comment, compared to the last week, this week we had many update. Let's try to sort it out here. And for JAST, there's no announcement other than if some of you interested to got free Sonico there's a contest and it's limited to 16 winner. Sekai Project This time we had KARAKARA at 95.98%, Maitetsu at 6.96%, World End Economica (WEE) Episode 3 at 51.23%, and Darekoi at 37.71%. For Darekoi, I didn't know so no much comment other than the story will take place in some isolated village or something like that. KARAKARA, well that's quite some quick progress, around 19% or so in one week although from the progress it's easy to guess that it'll be probably short VN (Actually, there is another method to guess it, but it's quite complicated to write). Maitetsu was slowed down with the progress only at 0.57%. As for WEE Episode 3, congratulations for reaching more than half for the progress and this mean it's about time that the English speaker will see all of WEE episode translated in English. Ironically, the biggest news from Sekai was not contained in the update itself, but from DavidB Twitter itself. What he tweeted is that the review copy from Root Double was started to emailed out, although I just knew it recently while the tweet was from April 12th. For information I just learned that review copy mean something like the copy of the game to be reviewed. As for Root Double information, I didn't need to type much in here, isn't it. For Decay, since you'll review it guess I'll looking forward to your review of Root Double later. Oh, almost forgot about one progress. For Grisaia, according to this post here Meikyuu was facing challenge in regard of porting from PSV to PC and Rakuen was about 20% translated. Good if you paid attention and waiting patiently for Grisaia translation. As for me, I think I'd satisfied with just Kajitsu only. Mangagamer Looks like Mangagamer will had big update every 2 weeks. So, let's start the recap here according to Mangagamer tweet. Kuroinu was 43% at this time Imopara was at 41.5% transalted and 14.4% edited (Quite fast I see) Evangile W was translated at 38% and edited at 17.3% Da Capo 3 87.8% translated and 80.8% edited Supipara was in scripting Bokuten was translated at 87% Pygmalion was 73% translated I think I could not comment much other than good progress. Da Capo 3 might finished in July if the translation keep up like this. As for Pygmalion, looks like we'll got it finished quite fast too and Bokuten also had good progress there. While Supipara was had very good scenery porn, I think I'll better wait until minori managed to made all planned episode, which is to said would take very very very long time. I think the most interesting news from Mangagamer to me was not Gahktun going to Steam, but Mangagamer announced Himawari progress in Twitter. Although Himawari was already in scripting for a while, it kinda made me wonder why just now Mangagamer announced it on Twitter. Perhaps the script was already in Mangagamer hand and right now they started to did the scripting by themselves (Or maybe it's just my wishful thinking), but the situation was kinda interesting. Anyway, let's see what Mangagamer will offer in next 2 weeks. Fan Translation First of all, congratulations to Arcadeotic for the release of partial patch of Bishoujo Mangekyou. As for Dergonu project, right now it was at 8.9% (I'll inform Decay about it later) and our Nosebleed also involved as TLC there. Speaking about Nosebleed project, I think is some of you want to continue the translation project of Immoral Little, just ask him for the script. As for my opinion, I understand about his burnout since sex scene usually only contain like Ahh... or Oohh..., so it's not that interesting to be translated. And speaking about burnout from translating sex scene, after translating Haruka looks like Arunaru suffering trauma from blowjob scene (According to him blowjob was the most scene back at Haruka). Anyway, since Nosebleed drop Immoral Little, good luck in your effort for translating Miu's route (He said it was more fun than translating Immoral Little). Astral Air as usual was stable, and this time it move at 0.96% which compared to last week was bigger jump, although slightly. Looks like they'll translate Corona route first before translating Yuuki. As for the note about Daitoshokan, I think I had slightly doubt about that but if it's true, then finally August curse will be break after Yuzusoft. For Libra, at this time it was 80% translation for common route, or in their word main route. And finally for the most recent news, the translator for ToHeart 2 Ittaku announced that he'll also translate Izumi's route at Clover Days. Here's his post for the proof, and let's see it later. I think that's all I could write for this VNTS commentary.

Didn't see a topic about this game, so I decided I would make one! This game has just recently been released in English here*, and is free to play for everyone who has an account. Making an account is completely free and just requires an email address. This is a gacha-based game kinda like fate/grand order, where you spend "flower gems" for a chance at rare and powerful girls, or spend "gacha seeds" for a chance at more common girls. Flower gems can also be used to increase your unit limit or equipment limit, or to restore your stamina or raid points. You earn flower gems by completing quests in-game while eliminating every enemy on the map, or you can exchange real-life currency for them. It is possible to earn anything and everything in this game without spending a single penny. This was just a quick summary of the main mechanics of the game. There is a good in-game tutorial, so go ahead and give it a try! If you are unsure about anything, just go ahead and drop a comment in here, and I or some other member of the fuwa FKG community will do our best to answer you! (Hopefully ) *The link I have provided is to the all-ages version of the game. There is also an 18+ version of the game which can be found on the adult portal of the same site. If you wish to play on one, but then decide to change to the other, don't worry, the servers are the same, so you can simply open the version of your choice without losing any progress.

So looks like ill be the first to officially sign up. My highest rank is Challenger 1 Division 3. I wholeheartedly approve Originalren as a commentator. He is both skilled and pleasant to listen to.

My party. The leveling mechanic is really sucks IMO, but welp.

To be honest, I wasn’t really interested in playing this VN, as you might have noticed if you read my previous entries. However, I ended up playing it because, once I stopped taking the pain meds (thus going into withdrawal… viva Bucket and Water Bottle!), I had a mind just clear enough to read something on the level of a charage or slightly more complex but not enough to read something like Dies Irae or Jeanne. I’m going to be straight up about this VN… like a lot of stuff Takahiro gets involved with, it is a bit outside of the ‘mainstream’ of VN culture, even setting aside the fact that there is no ero in it (which is actually out of character for Minato soft, considering the general ‘free sex’ feeling of their Majikoi/Tsuyokiss world games). Why do I say this? Simply put, it is because it actually has real drama throughout the entire VN, rather than just one or two per heroine path. That’s not to say this is a terribly serious VN… to be blunt, if I were just to talk about serious drama, Tsujidou and Majikoi have both better and darker drama. However, the general ‘light and joking’ feeling of this VN coupled with the more serious aspects of the game-making made for a pretty interesting read… until the endings. There are no exceptions… the endings in this VN suck. I don’t say that to be mean. I say it because it is the truth. This feels like a VN where the producer/director intends to create a direct sequel and never had any intention of ‘closing out’ the story conclusively. To be honest, if they do make a sequel, I would like it to be based at least a few years onward, since they pretty much exhausted the possibilities of the school setting for this one. The VN is funny, the content is interesting, the drama – even if it isn’t always emotionally engaging – is interesting intellectually… but the endings (and oddly the romance) are just crappy in this VN. It didn’t make me angry, because I was never very emotionally invested in this game (sadly, this game fails somewhat in this regard, but it doesn’t seem to have been a focus in the first place). However, it did leave me feeling this vague sense that I’d left something unfinished… and not in a good way (in other words, I’m not really looking forward to a continuation). This is actually becoming something of a habit for any project Takahiro gets involved with, and it is the primary reason I stopped looking forward to this a few weeks before the release. Overall, it is hard to figure out a group of people who will specifically like this VN. If you just want to spend most of a VN laughing despite there being interesting drama, this is a good choice. However, if you just want to do the ichaicha moe-moe thing, this isn’t a good choice. It also isn’t a good choice if you look at it through the eyes of someone who played the previous VNs that had Takahiro involved. However, being a Romeo fan is probably a plus for this VN, as his scenario/plot style covers a lot of genres. This is, in a very real way, a VN that touches on the grim realities of the eroge industry (well, for the creators, not so much for the money-people), especially in Teruha’s path. The fact that it does so in a humorous fashion only outlines this more clearly.

Confession: I think I just made @Soulless Watcher's day even worse.

Well, sorry there Fred. Looks like I miss the joke there. My bet was based on the release date, and I think I just using my experience to guess based on that, like when I browse in some site and find Crescendo as one of best VN. Although if we talked about the VN player from 2012, the answer of the first VN should be obvious *facepalm*. But I think while my answer was wrong there, Crescendo still good VN for the beginner, especially back when there's many release from G-Collection (You know what) and I think it still is. PS - To OP wolfrayet, if you interested to talk about VN Translation history, I think I could try to tell the story about it although it may not quite comprehensive though.

Moe girls use "!?" btw. Confession: I always used "?!" but when I realized that cute girls use "!?" I changed to it

Here's my format. For words where an English word is more helpful, I add the English meaning at the front. For colors and things that are hard to imagine, I sometimes add pictures. I also have a few, but not very many kanji definitions, which are based off of goo's kanji entries. I only use those when I want to explicitly see the meanings of the kanji, usually words alone will do. I get my definitions from http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/ . Sometimes I supplement with goo's thesaurus differentiation and examples. When the result's not in goo, by searching google + 意味, you'll get a http://www.weblio.jp/ , or a yahoo or goo Q&A page. I feel like maybe 1/4 of my deck is of wierd/random stuff I almost never see. Not sure what I think about that. Probably no need to go overboard with rare words to start.

I see Thanks for the heads-up

You're welcome. The weird thing that happened for me is that when I originally downloaded the Fuwanovel torrent, I would try to mount the togainu.img file, but I would get an error message saying the image was corrupted. Even changing it to an .iso didn't work. So then I installed Virtual Clone Drive, which can mount .ccd files like the one in the torrent. Once I installed that, I right clicked the togainu.ccd file, and mounted it. That got everything working for me, and I was finally able to install the (virtual) disc. So if your friend can't even mount the disc, then I would start with that. If she's gotten that far, but then gets an "administrator" error message when trying to load the installer, even when she's logged in as administrator, then you have to go and download an updated version of the game (togainunochi.exe), which I found on the aarinfantasy forum:http://aarinfantasy.com/forum/f49/t188768-togainu-no-chi-administrator.html

I have Windows 8, but there might be similar issues between the two. When I originally downloaded the game using the Fuwanovel torrent, it didn't work for me at all. I ended up having to download Directx 9.0, download VirtualCloneDrive to mount the disc (Daemon Lite never worked for me...), then do the update 101, then download a new, updated version of the game (togainunochi.exe), then download a new updated version of the patch, then copy the new script, and still, most of the patch didn't work. BUT the script updated and worked. So now I can read it, but the script is the only thing in english, not any of the other stuff like the character names or configuration stuff or anything. I guess the script is what's important though. If this stuff sounds like it might work for you then I can show you links to where I downloaded all the updated stuff. Cause none of this is in the original Fuwanovel torrent. And I couldn't even get it installed in the first place from what was on the torrent. I don't recommend using the Fuwanovel torrent if you have Windows 8 or newer.

Wow, you're a fast reader! What do you mean by 'cruel'? No spoilers if possible.

I recently discovered this site for learning Japanese: https://www.renshuu.org I like it very much. It's far better than Anki for me, mainly because of one thing: it keeps me motivated. It manages my learning sessions for me, it uses a well defined dictionary and has many pre-compiled lessons (JLPT, Kanji Kentai, some popular textbooks) where you can make your "deck" from and you can choose what kind of questions you want to be ask (meaning, reading and such...). You can also input kana instead of using multiple choices for questioning. For kanjis, I have made two schedules for me. One for recognizing kanjis which is faster and covers more characters and one for actually reading them which also asks me for readings and radicals but introduces kanjis at a slower rate.

because that one sucks (i think it's called modi ocr or something like that) try with this one http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/

This entire argument is based on the assumption that this was their plan all along, but who's to say it was? Kohaku has released a free fan patch before. I'm sure when they started Ley Line, they fully intended to release that for free, too. Who knows when they struck a deal with Sekai Project, it probably wasn't until a good time has passed after they began working on it. And once you sign a deal like that, things become a LOT more complicated with regards to what you can and can't say, and when.

the only anki deck that has examples with every word is an n5 level vocabulary one, I haven't seen any other one like that so far even n4 level nor a kanji one. btw if you are learning them so you can look them up later on you should study the radicals, it is much more easier and it is actually what you want, if you understand how a kanji is composed, what radicals is using, you can look up a really difficult kanji in a very easy way. Radicals = 214, kanji = a whole lot more lol.

I'd reckon there's a kanji deck with related words attached to it, I sorta doubt there's one with input though, even though that's possible. You can do it the vanilla way and add words to anki as you go, ones which that have a kanji you want to be able to produce, or a on-yomi reading you want to learn. I ran into the same annoyance as you, after one or two hundred words added in that fashion the kanji input problem comes up a lot less often.

Your thread asks what are people's thoughts on companies buying fan translations, and those are my thoughts, not really sure if you wanted something else? The first paragraph of your reply is just corroborating what I said: people just want free stuff. Regarding donating to fan groups: sure anyone can do what they want with their money, but it's pretty shady to ask for money for something that's technically illegal to begin with. In the end all you're paying for is the fan groups' work, nothing goes towards the creator of the product, and that's what I have some problem with on an ethical level. Fan translations, as the name implies, shouldn't be about earning money. Regarding fangroups not being upfront, I'm not really sure what you mean. There might be a case where they're unable to disclose information due to NDA agreements, for example. If you're donating to a fan group, ultimately the responsibility falls on you.

Now, I hardly consider myself an English major - but with almost 40 years under my belt, I've had plenty of time to read traditional works (before my eyes reached a point I could no longer~). I'm confident in my literacy enough that I would notice when something does - and does not - "read well". And I like to pretend I have reasonable standards - you may have missed my long-winded post about linguistics and higher English literacy? Regardless, at this point it's just turning into a dick waving contest about taste and opinions. I've actually had to deal with a handful of personal attacks due to my last few posts, so I'm just about fed up with the topic. Anyone with a problem with my (fairly reasonable) stance can fuck off and ignore me - live and let live. And If that causes me to lose respect with people here, to hell with them then.

For the cliche word here "Welcome to the Fuwanovel and hope you enjoy your stay here", although I'd definitely happy we got another new member here though. If you talked about Love Live, I think there were some user here who was fans of it, and I at least knew that @Jade and @bigfatround0 was fan of them (Although for bigfatround0 he was more Honoka fan though, judging from his avatar). As for me, I'm not too much of a fan, but at least I knew that Love Live was very popular in internet and also in Japan. Since you talk about Sono Hanabira, for yuri VN how about Katahane, Aoishiro, and Yurirei for your next VN. Katahane and Aoishiro was more like more subtle in regard of yuri (And Katahane was had one straight couple, but if you want more nitpicking the seiyuu for male in straight couple was female), while Yurirei was not so subtle in regard of yuri. And if you had any problem to playing VN, just come here and ask the help from us. Once again welcome to moonstarfc and hope you had fun here. Also for a little suggestion you better look forward for moe picture in your thread.

So I went on Amazon today to check out the progress of my order, got distracted by suggestions, one thing led to another...

Meanwhile me at Down's camp all this time:

There's something so beautifully messed-up about this

Welp, sorry for coming after this was kill, but i made a new one, (Still the same one really) but this time i upped the quality since it looked a bit pixelated before: Bye bye now!

I think that is the wrong way to look at it. Just ask Apple. Over the years they have made products, which didn't match any existing markets. Sometimes it went poorly (like the Newton) and sometimes it went well and sort of created the market for the product (iTunes Store, iPhone, computers small enough to put on a table, home computers with floppy drives, CDs etc). I would say VNs are sort of the same thing. They can't really get into an existing market, but it has a chance of making a market of its own. With VNs trying to create a new market, it certainly have to rely on good reputation and type. Sadly I feel like VNs suffer from what happened to the gaming industry in the 80s. Some people managed to make great games and then Wall Street went in to get easy money and released garbage. It was a disaster because great quality and garbage got mixed together. The poor quality companies died, but so did some good ones because selling a $30 game is hard when the shop has a barrel of $5 games. Even if they were of worse quality, people went for 6 games for the price of 1. There is a number of great VNs out there, but there is certainly also quite a lot of garbage, which isn't worth the money or time. Money isn't the greatest in VNs, but that haven't stopped some companies from mass releasing cheap VNs with little or no contents. While there is a market for both, it does mean that somebody plays a good VN, tells somebody else about it and the other person goes "I'm not sure about this thing. I will pick a cheaper one first to see what it is" and then the result is a dropped VN and no more VNs for that person. I think the quality/price issue might be the biggest issue for VNs becoming popular. There is also the Rapelay issue, which told people what products from Japan is all about. It doesn't matter what the truth is. Whenever a VN tries to make it into the general market, people "knowing it all" warns about it because it's one of those evil things. Clearly it's much better to play a game where you shoot everybody.

Ehh, I think both @tymmur and @Rooke are wrong about the motivation for the constant school setting. Rooke claims the target audience is in school. Tymmur basically claims the target audience was in school. I propose, instead, that the target audience wishes they were in school. VNs are almost always going for simple entertainment, and more specifically entertainment through escapism. The school setting is probably no more common a VN cliché than the bland self-insert protagonist and the gaggle of girls following around said protagonist. The whole suite of clichés is obviously architected around providing a nice, comfortable world for the reader to escape to. That they can relate to it is important, sure, and it's especially easy to relate to something you are, but the core of the motivation is that the reader wants to be there. Now, obviously there are plenty of VNs out there breaking that mold, and for that matter there are plenty of VNs doing good things even within that mold. Most of them are, nonetheless, probably going to get dismissed by any literary critic as escapism. But for what it's worth, despite the negative overtones usually associated with the word, I don't view entertainment in general or escapism in particular as a negative in the slightest - it's probably how I spend the majority of my life, and by choice.

Makes more sense if youve seen the first Dr Tran, but this is definitely my fave

Also have Syphethia's second outfit finished and a sneak peak of the design of the text box and quickmenu etc.