Leaderboard

Now, Ruitomo is one of 'those legendary VNs', the first kamige written by the Akatsuki Works team. It is well-known and often discussed amongst vets of playing untranslated VNs, and you can see how this was the formative stage for a team that would go on to make numerous great games in the future, most of them chuunige. First off, Ruitomo isn't a chuunige, at least in the classic sense. The protagonist is a trap who is bound by an inherited curse not to reveal his true gender, and the story begins with him encountering several others that also possess similar curses, as well as powers that he doesn't possess. Ruitomo is one of those games that doesn't easily fall into a genre or sub-genre, as it has elements of action, mystery, mindfuck, fantasy, and romance all wrapped into one big bundle. So, I just have to shrug and call it a 'story-focused VN', lol (as vague a term as moege or charage, haha). One thing that you should know about all Hino Wataru-written Akatsuki Works VNs... in every one of them a version of Akaneko (the final heroine of this one) appears, with the same personality, similar habits, and the same voice actor (Akaneko, Eru from Hello, Lady, Yuki from Comyu). Similarly, there is always at least one 'straight-man' heroine who tends to prefer correctness over everything else (Iyo in Ruitomo, Saku in Hello, Lady, Benio in Comyu, etc) I once read a crappy review that said this was a VN about friendship *spews laughter*. Sorry, but that was one reviewer who mistook one element of the story for the whole point of it. The real central theme of this VN is isolation, social ostracism, and moral relativity. Technically, all Akatsuki Works VNs indulge in moral relativity, so you can just ignore that one, since it is Hino Wataru's favorite dog to beat. The isolation and social ostracism elements are fairly obvious from the beginning. All the heroines and the protagonist are social outcasts by means of their curses. The protagonist is the most obvious example as it forces him to lie and distance others from himself, but others have their own issues. For instance, Rui's curse, the inability to make promises of any kind, is crippling in a modern world, where you have to be able to sign a contract just to find a place to live or 'promise' to be at work on time. To one extent or another, the others' curses hold them isolated and ostracized from society as well. Tomo is driven by a strong desire to escape his curse, intensified as time goes on by his growing fondness for his fellow curse-bearers and the guilt for deceiving them. I honestly can't help but like Tomo... he is selfish enough to be human but selfless enough when it comes to his friends to give his all for them. A lot of people who hate Akihito from Comyu will probably find Tomo to be far more pleasant, as that other's less pleasant qualities are diluted and his more pleasant ones enhanced in Tomo. He lacks Akihito's female-directed philanthropic spirit, but he does have a strong generosity of spirit to him... without the somewhat indiscriminate sexual mores of Akihito. One thing I think a lot of people who try to read this VN have trouble with, besides the somewhat complex turns of phrase that are endemic to all Hino Wataru works, is the way so much of the dialogue between the characters, even in the slice-of-life scenes, is... oblique, requiring reading between the lines to grasp the full content. A lot of this comes from the curses, both referencing them, avoiding referencing them, and avoiding activating them. However, at least some of it is simply an extension of how relatively easy with one another the group is in normal situations, despite their often conflicting personalities. These conversations are easier to follow if you get the characters' personalities and roles in the group, but if you have trouble with that kind of thing, you'll probably be left behind at times. Ruitomo has a definite playing order, with you being forced to play Rui's path before reading Atori's, Koyori's, and Iyo's (preferably in that order, or at least with Iyo as the last of the second three) and completing those four opening up Akaneko's path (the true path). I'll be blunt when I say that grasping the whole of the story without reading the first four paths is virtually impossible, so 'cheaters' who use 100% save files to get the true end first will just be screwing themselves over, lol. This VN's story starts out in the middle... one of Hino Wataru's questionable habits. For better or worse, he likes to thrust you into the middle of the prologue before dragging you back to the beginning of it, and Ruitomo is the VN that suffers the most for it, in my experience. To be blunt, it is really hard to figure out what is going on during the first scene, so about one-third of the people I've talked to that tried to read this VN dropped it or stalled within the first quarter of the prologue. However, as the VN goes on, its characters, their personalities, their troubles, and their experiences grow on you rapidly, until you can't help but be entranced. One thing that I was seriously impressed about, coming back to play this through a second time, was the meticulous way Hino Wataru designed the common route and the paths... he made sure everything was perfectly consistent as a whole, even if it didn't seem like it at first, and every single scene had at least some meaning in the greater context of the game as a whole, even if it might have seemed irrelevant or secondary in the path in which it existed. This shows off the rather impressive capacity for 'management of the details' that a very few writers in the VN world manage to display. There is a good reason why creating a large-scale story-focused VN (whether chuunige or not) tends to be rare. Most writers simply can't manage to maintain the internal consistency that you see in a VN like this one. Overall, I was actually more impressed this time around than I was the first time I played this. It is called a kamige for a reason... brilliance of design, emotional stimulation, intellectual stimulation, etc. The fact is that VNs on this level are exceedingly rare and always worth the price I pay to buy them. PS: I'll play the fandisc soon, though I might or might not manage to replay it before I begin playing this month's releases.

Visual Novel Translation Status (08/27/2016) Sorry for very late review here, and my reason here that I also had some real life issue like admin Tay here. Anyway for the title, since Dies Irae mean 'Day of Wrath' and for now that we just got unclear confirmation, so I decided to use lesser form for wrath here (Anger) as the title. About the announcement, well if Dies Irae will be translated and released, this is definitely big news here but for now we still lack of info here (If Dies Irae got released, I'll using 'Day of Wrath' as VNTS Review title here). For now I would said let's just wait and see here, although since Decay said about the confirmation about being translated, might as well check the confirmation later (I admit that I'd still not see the confirmation yet). Oh, and about censoring H for Steam release, no problem for me if they bring Updated Expansion here. For this week, nothing special here although Sekai still give their usual update. As usual here Mangagamer will give the update between 2 weeks each ie biweekly so we must wait for next week to see their update. Speaking about Mangagamer here, this week they released 2 more of their nukige (Orc Castle and Detective Masochist). Didn't know much about Orc Castle here, but I think we'll had M detective here if we looking from the title. For my opinion about nukige release here, if those 2 releases will help Mangagamer sales to announce and license more good VN like back in Otakon, why not? Feel free to disagree though. Sekai once again give their usual update with one more update here. For usual one Chrono Clock was 31.44% translated, Maitetsu was 24.71% translated, Tenshin Rahman was finally past 40% translating progress (40.69%) and Hoshimemo was 29% retranslated here. Not much comment for usual update here, but for Hoshimemo I think it was quite redundant here because while I see some people had the problem with quality of the current translation, majority people out there didn't had too much problem with it (Including me to be honest). Although I said it was redundant here, I would still like to said good luck here to Akerou for retranslating Hoshimemo. This week there's also not much progress for fan translation itself, although of course usual progress was always welcome here (Bishoujo Mangekyou was at 48% edited and 36% QC-ing; and for Majokoi we had 36.2% translated, 20.9% edited, and 11.7% TLC here). Speaking about progress, this time Tsui Yuri give unusual progress here, which was at 33% retranslated right now (Guess I'll see what it means next week). Speaking about the leader of Tsui Yuri translation project (Dergonu), this time he started some guro VN with name Shi ni Iku Kimi, Yakata ni Mebuko Zuou. My taste aside here (Not my taste once again), good luck with the project and as for the progress we had 1 of 69 scripts translated here. This week we also had the progress from Nocturnal Illusion Renewal namely the editing by Ryechu was started. Oh, for this week we also had another project established to translating Loverable, which from first look it was some kind of moege. Good luck to the team here. And for last progress, might as well write it again that for Clover Days we had twins route at halfway (50%) translated. Actually this week we had release for fan translation segment, too bad it's not the one that I should looking forward. If some of you wonder there, the release was Mahoyo translation patch up to chapter 6. About Mahoyo, while I knew that there was some praise about it, it was still incomplete even if it's fully translated (12 or 13 chapters, and it'll probably take very long time to be completed) because Nasu was planning for more 2 of the sequels here, and looking from of how Fate franchise gathering the money so much for Nasu and Type Moon, safe to said that it'll take long time because obviously Type Moon will pay more attention to Fate franchise here. For Hanasaki, I'd already said about this but once again looks like the Saga Planet VN will be cursed just like August and Yuzusoft in the past (The project never completed). As for Decay comment about Hanasaki, it'll be quite interesting for sure if it's come true but then again if for example I was JAST CEO, I also could said that Shadow of Pygmalion (Licensed by Mangagamer) was my personal favorite VN here. What I want to imply here that if Baba said that Hatsuyuki Sakura was his favorite VN here didn't mean that his company translated Saga Planet VN here. Well, let's just see if VisualArts will localized Saga Planet VN by themselves or keep it 'cursed' later. I think that's all for my VNTS Review right now, and sorry for being very late here. See you next week.