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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

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.

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.