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NSFW? I'll say it straight out... in my mind, Draculius is one of the top two vampire VNs in existence... with the other one being Vermilion by Light. Meromero Cute was a company that had a tendency toward making... eccentric works. Mahou Shoujo no Taisetsu na koto is particularly memorable for the cross-dressing protagonist who spends a ridiculous amount of time being reverse-raped in a magical girl costume... It used the fact that nobody expects mahou shoujo stories and settings to be consistent to go a bit crazy... Draculius is a bit different... the protagonist, Jun, is the kind of guy who would be a hero in an otome game. While he isn't voiced (a mistake in my mind, but one that is common) his narration and lines have so much personality that you never see him as a 'standard' protagonist. There are precisely two paths in this VN... a 'joke' path where Jun doesn't make the full transition to a vampire during the story (focused on Rian and Zeno), and a true path, where Jun confronts the people hiding behind the curtains in the course of building his vampiric harem of a trigger-happy tsundere vampire-hunting nun, an ancient vampire who was once his father's vassal and lover, a vampire 'ojousama' whom everyone takes joy in teasing, and a loyal werewolf maid who makes a hobby out of tricking her mistress into making a fool of herself. The action in this VN is actually a bit above the standard for chuunige of the era, though it doesn't match works by Light. At times there are battles of wits, and there is enough comedy to make a lot of modern charage seem boring. To this day, I've never met a loli in a VN that matches Belche for characterization (yes, I include stuff by Favorite). The multitude of roles she takes on and the layers to her personality and viewpoint on life make her one of the few 'ancient heroines' who doesn't seem in the least bit fake. One of the things that is most important in a vampire story of any type is the perspective... to be blunt, a vampire setting where the vampires don't drink blood or are fundamentally harmless is... boring, to say the least. Vampires in Draculius are nothing of the sort... in particular 'Seconds', vampires made from humans, can only turn humans into zombie-like Roams (and can potentially do so just by biting someone), so vampirism is actually a legitimate threat. Firsts, like the protagonist and Rian (also called Shiso, like the True Ancestors in the Tsukihime world), don't have any of the vulnerabilities of their servant vampires... and they can make vampires that are sane. However, most Firsts perspectives are... warped, to say the least. There is nothing worse than a justified sense of superiority to make people insanely arrogant, lol. The actual story of this tilts back and forth between the more absurd slice-of-life and the more serious parts, but this is one of those rare VNs that manages the balance nearly perfectly. People die, the protagonist kills, and the enemy is ruthless (as is Belche, lol). However, the slice of life in this VN tends to serve as a bright and amusing contrast to the darker elements, keeping it from becoming a purely serious VN. Overall, replaying this VN has confirmed to me something that I had more or less guessed over the last few years... they don't make ones like this one anymore, lol. Edit: The pic is Belche just after she became a vampire. Edit2: ... for those who wonder, the h-scenes in this VN... are pretty unique. Most of them switch between Jun's and the girls' perspectives...

I’m on vacation, which as a dad, is usually more exhausting for me than not being on vacation. That means no rants about the evils of third-person direct address in VN translations this week — sorry! I just don’t have it in me. Instead, I thought I’d give a long overdue plug to a project I helped out on last year: ff80c38’s 2x Ren’Py port of True Remembrance. And by “helped out on,” I mean ff80c38 did everything; I simply pitched in with a little Photoshopping and typesetting at the very end. This was a total passion project on his part, and it shows. If you’re not familiar with it, True Remembrance is a short kinetic novel released by Shiba Satomi in 2003, then gussied up and re-released in 2006. (insani subsequently published a wonderful English-language translation of it two years later in 2008.) I’ve always had a soft spot for this VN, in part because it’s not afraid to be quiet and contemplative. It underplays its emotions rather than underlining them and, as a result, feels more like a found storybook than a modern trope fest. There’s a plot, of course — there are guns and spies and dystopian futures and unexpected twists — but to TR’s credit, it’s never about those. The visual novel’s gaze stays fixed on its characters, exploring their empty spaces and pondering how they might be filled, if ever. True Remembrance is not a perfect VN, not by any means. The art is on the simpler side, which some might consider a plus, and the game’s writing often stumbles when it comes to comic relief — pretty much any scene in the café, for instance. Still, its measured tone is a rare find, and for that, I treasure it. The original freeware release of True Remembrance only ran on Windows; this Ren’Py port adds Mac and Linux to the roster. It also supports higher resolutions, hence the 2X identifier. And let me just say that, across the board, ff80c38 approached this port with utmost respect for the source material. Not a letter of the script was changed, and great care was taken in resizing (or in some cases, recreating) graphics for the new resolutions. Finally, I can’t stress to you enough that this version is entirely unofficial, released late last year in hopes it might help a few more people find True Remembrance. So listen: if you’re not running Mac or Linux and/or don’t really care about higher-res assets, I urge you to pick up the original English release at insani’s site instead. It’ll do ya good. But if that's not feasible, for whatever reason, please think of ff80c38’s project as another snowy back alley into Shiba Satomi’s world. Download: Windows / macOS / Linux Postscript: Why-oh-why isn’t Mimei of the Transmission Tower, the author’s other VN, translated yet? Seriously. I know insani was considering working on it at one point, but that was years ago. This has long been one of my white whales, and I’d love to be able to read it in English before the world ends sometime in late November.

Visual Novel Translation Status (06/25/2016) Okay, for all French reader or user here, don't worry. What I mean here is the title for opening song of one VN in image header (Grisaia no Meikyuu) in French (Because Grisaia like to use French, so I decided to use the Frech from opening title for this week review). The opening title was World's End, and I must admit it was quite catchy, although I still thinking Kajitsu was enough. But if you want to play Meikyuu, go ahead and beware of cliffhanger at the end. Anyway, here's my VNTS Review for this week and sorry for a bit late here. As for this week, we had many progress from fan translation alone. While for Sekai and Mangagamer, it was still their usual. However, this week we had surprise from other segment. So I think I'll start from Mangagamer section first, then Fan Translation, Sekai, and finally Other. Oh, beforehand as the opening news for anyone who cares, we had Sonicomi entering Golden Master according to JAST Twitter here (I should report it at last week, but I forgot). Mangagamer Nothing too excited if we looking from their progress, although full translation of Da Capo 3 was of course welcome news here (At least Kouryuu managed to fulfill his promise by fully translating it before AX 2016, or to be exact 11 or so days before it). But even after translating finished there's still editing (Which right now it was at 98%), scripting, and beta testing. Hopefully they'll managed to release Da Capo 3 this year. For more info, this VN was had some history once again with Fuwanovel. I'll try to elaborate more later. For other progress, we had Pygmalion 16% edited, Fata Morgana fandisc 18% translated, Imopara 2 48% translated and a quarter edited, and Kuroinu 80% translated and 21% edited. Not much comment needed here, other than if Pygmalion need 2 weeks for 8% editing progress, will it fully edited at December first week I wonder (And obviously it'll be released in 2017 duh). I think that's all for Mangagamer section this week. Oh, and by the way none of the project was in scripting if you still curious how about Mangagamer will give us news in regard of their in scripting project. Fan Translation We had so many progress from here. Let me try to round up all of them here. Hanasaki had Hikari's route 16% translated. By the way admin Tay, you mistaken Inori for Hikari. The right one once again it was Hikari's route that translated at 16%. Majokoi was at 17.08% translated and 10.68% edited. By the way, the team was in need of 2 beta testers. If you interested, just look at this blog post here. Oh, and they almost had prologue patch ready for release. Bishoujo Mangekyou was fully translated and 20.3% edited. Arcadeotic said the release date could be in a few months (Hopefully this year). Tsui Yuri was 40% translated and 30% edited. Kanobito was had 110 scripts left to translated according to @mitchhamilton. Good luck to endure more sex scene Mitch, because from VNDB and some review I knew that this game had high sex count. Majikoi A-1 fandisc was released. Good for hardcore Majikoi fan I guess. Although I didn't care too much about this, I'm still thanking the team for completing original Majikoi translation project though. Tsuki no Yorisou project was finally added to the VNTS. Congratulations, and since if we look at the overall translation progress it was quite hard to tell if this project was advancing or not, I'll just report the progress from the route. And for this week we had prologue and common route fully translated, and Luna route was at 15% translated. Astral Air was touching 90% progress for both translation and editing (Actually each week before the percentage was the progress for both), or to be exact the progress itself was at 92.50% (Too bad it wasn't 4% progress though (Only 3.67% progress), but I'm still grateful okay). Okay, since Tay already said congratulation to Chuee at his Twitter, let me said congratulations for very big progress to the translator himself, @SupremeTentacle. Okay, I think that's all for roundup this week at Fan translation section. For last word, I think this section was had most exciting if we look at the progress, although for the release it was quite not so exciting to me though (Only Majikoi A -1 fandisc, although once again if you hardcore Majikoi fan go ahead and play it). Sekai Project Actually also their usual once again if we look at their progress. Okay for the opening news, congratulations for very big success kickstarter for Princess Knight (Around 36,000 fund gathered, which was 3 times original goal (12,000)). And this week we had 2 projects completed in term of translation progress (Darekoi and WEE Episode 3), while we also had one almost completed translation project here (Nashville was translated at 98.04%). For more progress, we had Maitetsu was at 13.09% translated and Chrono Clock was at 20.95% translated. For My Little Kitties, well I think it's like Nekopara, only we had one catgirl and also we had Sakura Ayane and Uchida Maaya working as seiyuu there somehow in Korean VN (By the way, I remember that their role at Gochiusa was Cocoa and Sharo respectively). As for the biggest release from Sekai, it was obviously Meikyuu and I think I'd commented enough both on forum and the first paragraph. Other Okay, actually other than Corona Blossom Chapter 1 which almost funded at this point (Only 489 left to be funded) there's no update from this section. But this section was had surprised us. The surprise was ChuSingura 46+1 Chapter 1 was released and free to play at the Steam. It means that the Kickstarter was real, if it's a bit unrefined. Actually from some review that I'd read, ChuSingura was one of very good VN, and actually this release could maybe introduce the good VN to the people outside Japan. Although if I may said, this release had the problem. Not in term of translation or the censorship (The censorship reason was actually understandable because unlike MoeNovel case, this time there's a reason that they had experience to released it on PSP before), but more in engine which one user said it was more likely caused by the engine wasn't fitting for the VN itself and more fitting to the mobage. Hopefully if JAPAN or NextNinja still willing to release next ChuSingura chapters, they will fix the engine to make the game more comfortable to play. Also hopefully the JAPAN will to fix the communication with the fan. Oh, and for last word, if I may praise JAPAN here, it would be their decision to release ChuSingura Chapter 1 because from there we could see of how serious they were actually by sort of showing translation example. I think that's all for this week, and sorry if I miss some progress. See you next week. PS - Forgot one more progress, and it's Bokuten. For Bokuten, right now it was 95% edited.