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Win10 in a nutshell.

Heh, if you read it closely both translators muddled up their metaphors here. A curtain is used for concealment (think theatre curtains) or prettying up a frame (normal curtains,) but here they both use it as a backdrop (not a curtain.) A common mistake is when people think they want to make writing sound grand by adding more words. That's got little to do with it. Grand writing can be lengthy or brief, rather it's the precision of language use and clarity of images presented which marks grand language. Grand language is precise, and the images conjured tend to be evocative and ... well, make sense. Basically GHS needs to practice writing more instead of writing 300 page essays dissecting Cross Channel: A distant memory shrouded in the mists of time. Though I could not remember the year or my age, I remember a grand bedroom befitting one well born. There were many places one could sit, the canopied bed, the European styled chair, but I always preferred the floor. Especially on nights like that. Through the window, strewn on a blanket of darkness, twinkled countless specks of light. A twinkling that ended only at the window frame. And in the glass that separated that world from mine was the image of a young lady. Full of grace and clothed in a western dress, she was kept secluded from the world. Obviously not a translator but it's not really a place to be grandiose is it? xD I mean, they're describing a room and a sky for heaven's sake xD The bits of prose in that excerpt are some of the worst pieces of writing I've seen all year 0.0

A great poet once said "people die when they are killed."

This is the first of hopefully many little eroge reviews I decided to write, mostly for older and more obscure games since these are the games I find most interesting and like to talk about. You can use these reviews to find something for you to read (I will try to avoid spoiler as much as possible) but since I know that most people probably aren't interested in actually playing these games and might only be interested in reading about them, I will also add a spoiler section at the end of each review where I talk about the themes and endings of the games in depth and tell you about my personal feelings and impressions that can't be talked about without giving away the meat of the story. Hajimari no Kisetsu ~Izakaya Fuyu Monogatari~ (do not look at the tags or the screenshots on its entry because they are all spoilers) is the second visual novel by R.A.N.Software, a little eroge company which was active in 1997 till 2000 and you probably never have heard of. It's written by someone who never has written any other eroge again (at least not under this pseudonym) and drawn by people who either vanished like the writer or continued to work on eroge but never used the same art style again. All in all, Hajimari no Kisetsu seems like a pretty unique game, so why don't we take the time to look at this strange little eroge in detail? Story: Our nameable protagonist is in his last year of his university life. His girlfriend Kaori already graduated and works now as an office lady for a very big company. Because of her work he doesn't see her as often anymore and when she finds the time to meet with him for a few hours, they don't know what to talk about since their lives are so different now. The protagonist remembers the happy memories he had with her, especially when they went skiing a year ago and to rekindle their love he wants to go with her to the same ski resort again. Protagonist meets Kaori for the first time in a flashback Themes: Eroge are escapism. We all know it. What annoys me, especially with eroge in the last few years, is how safe-spacey they became. If you play a feel-good game, you know you will get feel-good scenes ... and nothing else. Erogamer became fragile and eroge companies know that. Drama in most charage is cheap, light and will be resolved in just a few scenes. We don't want to upset the player, he might even think that being in a relationship is not just fun and happy times! Or worse, he might get the impression that his waifu has other things on her mind than him, maybe even has her own life! And if a writer tries to break out of this limitation, it often seems like trolling and the readers are rightfully angry at the game; having a bittersweet resolution at the end of a route that consisted only of sugar and rainbows is neither appropriate nor meaningful; it's just mean-spirited. But this is also true for different genres; NTR heroines are most of the time unredeemable sluts and you have to wonder why the protagonist married her in the first place. It seems logical that an NTR game consists of only NTR scenes, but without the right buildup and good characterization, it can never be more than simple fetish fuel. And I really have to wonder why Nakige and Utsuge are oftentimes so painfully obvious labeled as such; how can you be emotionally invested when you already know how it ends? Well, the answer to this is probably that people want to get their emotional thrills in a safe environment. Being invested in a relationship with problems is only nice, if you know that the relationship can be saved at the end. If you are invested in this situation and the situation ends badly for the characters involved, you will feel bad yourself and that is not the feeling you wanted to have when you decided to read this story. This leads to a dilemma; do you want to be safe but never really that emotional attached or do you want to experience something surprising and truly thrilling but with the risk that you might get extremely disappointed and depressed by the outcome? The innkeeper knows that the only solution to problems is drowning them in alcohol. Hajimari no Kisetsu is certainly not a safe space. Right from the beginning, you notice that something is wrong. Kaori isn't satisfied with the restaurant you choose for your meeting with her, even though it's the same restaurant where you meet her for the first time. She isn't too thrilled about the idea of drinking beer and would instead rather take a glass of wine. And she also doesn't show much interest in your ordinary life and prefers to talk about her new designer handbag. Where did she even get this thing from? Looks expensive... mhm... Chances are you have experienced this kind of human interaction in your own real life, too. This steady process of people changing and slowly drifting apart. It's irritating, but you can't do anything against it. When the protagonist tries to invoke nostalgia in her, hoping that she shows signs that the old Kaori is still somewhere in her, she reacts coldly. A career woman like her has no interest in the past. Someone here seems a little out of place... Hajimari's greatest achievement is that the game portraits its characters so humanly. Kaori is not a bad woman for having different goals in life than the protagonist. It's also not necessary a bad thing that she changed over time. It's a human thing to do. Maybe it's even the protagonist who stays a child and simply can't keep up with her? ... but also, is it so wrong to not change and being happy with who you are? This winter, our protagonist will find the answers to these questions. He will find out what he wants to do with his life and, even more importantly, what kind of human being he wants to be. Characters: I like the protagonist of this story. He speaks in Kansai-ben which makes the game a little bit harder to read, but really helps to bring the point across that he has more in common with a country bumpkin than a well-spoken member of the high society even though he is by no means stupid. He is not very strong or confident, but also not useless or weak-minded. He is just a normal guy, who wants to do the right thing, but is seldom in the position to actually act on it. In fact, even though he always wants to do something, he rarely is able to actual do anything. Not because the game does not give the player the choice to do, but because it's simply impossible for him. This is not a story, where the protagonist solves every problem the heroine has. This is a story, where the protagonist gives the heroine the strength by being on her side, so she can overcome the problems herself. And to be honest, there are really far too few eroge like this. One of my favorite endings is actually a bad end you can get rather quickly by simply saying "I don't want that, I go home." The protagonist proves his worth by standing up to himself, and even though the bad ending credits roll, the usual bad end BGM is replaced by a more hopeful tune, emphasizing that the protagonist grew up a little and might have a better future in front of him now. Because somehow, this is more important than bedding your waifu. A side-character has to rescue the protagonist who wanted to rescue a woman... Gameplay: Speaking of endings, there are 24 "bad ends" and 4 "good ends". They are all interesting and one of the reasons (the other being spoilers) you shouldn't use a guide (there doesn't exist one anyway) to go straight to one of the good ends. Sadly, there are many choices that are badly designed because there is no indication that some of them are a hard route fork (like "going to the first floor" or "second floor"). But there are also some quite interesting choices which help forming the story in a meaningful way. For example, there is a choice during your already achieved happy end where you can choose between uncovering the secrets of your heroine's past or decide not to do it. You will get your happy end either way, but your choice does make difference in how you approach your eventual relationship with her. When you get a bad end, there is some hint for you telling you what you should have done differently, but it's really not important since in most cases it comes simply down to changing the decision of your last choice. I found everything the game has to offer easily on my own except for one good end which is a little bit non-obvious but makes sense in hindsight. I even had to use the Waybackmachine and read some random Japanese comment on a random Japanese website to get the necessary hint to unlock it. I will not spoil it here, so you can feel the same despair I felt. Choose wisely how to approach her, if at all. Emotional women are dangerous. Hajimari no Kisetsu is not a long game and every route can easily be finished in one reading session. The game tells short, romantic stories. They are a little bit cliché'd, but very nice and well-intentioned. There are scenes that make you feel good and some that make you feel depressed, but there is always a nice balance between the two extremes. And it's well earned. Even if you forget some of the details of the story a few months after you read it, you probably wont forget some of the scenes. At least for me that was the case. I did not regret spending my time with this game. Sound and Art: Let's talk about some technical aspects. This game was released in 1998 and sadly it shows. The biggest misstep is to not have any voices. Especially the kind of seiyuu work of the late 90s would have been perfect for this kind of game. There are many dramatic scenes which would be even better with some passionate dubbing. The soundtrack is very nice. Every character has its own theme, themes have several variations and the melodies are pleasant to listen to. You can choose between CD-Audio and MIDI, but the MIDI version, depending on your MIDI configuration of course, is not much worse. Seems to me the CD-Tracks are simple MIDI recordings. That could have been better. The game has no backlog and no "already read" skip function which is really a problem when you try to find all the different endings. You might think that you are on a known path because you skipped over slight text variations when in fact it's the beginning of a new route. The game has an old school omake room, where you can check CGs, endings and music by talking with the characters. Hentai scenes are short, tastefully written and quite romantic. Aside from the nice story, the art is the best feature of this eroge. Your mileage may vary, but to me it captures perfectly the whimsical, romantic and melancholic mood of the winter days. Sadly the artists never worked on another game, or at least not with this art style. Speaking of the staff, the writer also was never read again. What a shame. This makes this game even more unique though. Heh. Conclusion: Don't get the impression that this game is a masterpiece. It's not. It's just a nice little gem. It's not mind-blowing, but certainly thought-provoking. Not flashy, but pleasant ... except when it isn't. If you are alone on a cold, rainy evening and want to read something appropriate you can immerse yourself in for a short time, this is a good recommendation. This will not be the best thing you've ever read, but it will become a bittersweet memory you'll remember fondly. ... Now onto the spoiler discussion. Read this only if you've played the game or you don't care and just want to know what it's about: Thanks for reading. If you have questions, suggestions or something else on your mind, feel free to comment. The next time, I will talk about the sickest eroge I have ever read and explain why it's not as sick as you expected but far more sick than you thought.

None taken Translating hundreds of thousands of words so that he can quote sections here and there is probably the biggest waste of time I've heard of. If that was the reason behind his translation of Cross Channel then I have to congratulate him for inventing such a unique way of wasting years of his life. Normal people would translate the relevant sections within the essay itself instead of producing a separate few hundred thousand word "throw away" translation (which was never meant to be good) solely so he could quote a few thousand words from it xD (and even that number is too many.) That is the very definition of inefficient behaviour (so very much doing it wrong.) So I would have to question the point on that count. Content and themes can be summarised, select quotes could have been translated within the document. Secondly and probably more importantly, considering that some of his prose is almost impossible to decipher, I would have to wonder if the translation served any point at all. If you put forth an incompetent translation, then any conclusions or statements drawn from that translation is lost. Words have been improperly used, the style has been butchered, meaning has been lost. Because of this, as an accompanying text to any reasoned argument it's almost pointless. Nabokov needed no translation accompaniment to Turgenev when he critiqued his work, rather he quoted and explained the relevant points within the text: And when Nabokov did release a translation along with his commentary, it was an exemplary translation (not a throw away one,) because doing anything else would have been an affront to the author (he wanted liberal translators put in the stocks and other stuff. He was very passionate of translation quality ... the zealot.) To me, the idea that the released translation accompaniment of Cross Channel was "never meant to be good" and "was just an aid" reeks of the excuses used by people who want to dodge criticism of their work. An excuse to sidestep judgement and criticism. Just my 2c Basically, if what GHS wants to do is write essays then he should stick to writing essays. Translate and quote the relevant passages within the text itself.

No offense, but this is such an arrogant and entitled statement, I have to call you out on it. His intend was never to make a "good" translation of Cross Channel, his only purpose was to write his essay on Cross Channel. Also translating the game was a necessary evil because he needed a quotable source and Ixrec's translation was too liberal. He needed a translation that was very close to the Japanese script, because his thesis was based on nuances not found in Amaterasu's version. Saying he should rather practice writing and translate games instead of writing essays is extremely disrespectful to him and the work he did. Maybe I'm the only one, but I really appreciated his book. It's a very interested read and helped me to like Cross Channel (which I actually don't really like) a little more by offering some new points, ideas and theories I hadn't thought of yet. I might not agree with everything he wrote, but at least he gave us some interesting and original thoughts. That's 100% more than most people in the English VN community can offer (not you Rooke, you write usually very interesting comments) who are ironically the first when it comes to dismissing GHS' work and calling him a troll. Which leads me to: What even is this? This is exactly what it wanted to be; a literal translation of the original prose. You call him out on being too wordy when that was exactly the point of it. When he released his book (and with it his translation of Cross Channel, since the translation is an attachment to the book, not the other way around) he explicitly stated that the translation is not supposed to be a "normal" translation, not supposed to be read the first time you play the game and should only be seen as an accompanying material. A purpose it accomplishes adequately, by the way, and which would not have been possible if he translated it any other way. I know you know that, I know that most people in this thread know that, and still, you guys deliberately choose to ignore this fact just so you can thrash his works and efforts and make him look like an illiterate. I wonder why? What is the reason for being this envious, malicious and toxic? Has anyone of you actually read his book? What do you think of the points he made? Do you want to engage in a discussion about his thesis? ... Of course, you don't. That would take effort and actual thinking. It's much easier to make someone into a meme and criticize him for the things, he never was out do to. In some way GHS is really a troll, but not in the way most people try to depict him. He is the kind of troll who, every time he surfaces, gets people to show their true color, while still providing interesting and thought-provoking material. Just like last month, when he released his (pretty interesting) book and translations of the talestune games, and was again misquoted and badmouthed by people who didn't even read his essay or only skimmed through it to find something they can take out of context and make fun of it. The level of shallowness, pretentiousness and lynch mob mentality in the English VN community is really astonishing. GHS is indeed a troll, the best kind of troll. Not the kind of troll the VN community wants, but the kind it deserves.

I haven't actually finished a VN since Chrono Clock, and I chose not to review that in the end because of the ongoing negotiations I was party to with its publisher. Before that, last finished Himawari in January. And then Supipara last August. Ouch. I don't have as much time as I used to for frivolously playing VNs, true, but to be honest, I also don't have quite as much drive as I used to. I still love VNs and enjoy reading them, but working on VN translation makes me want to do other shit after I mentally exhaust myself for the day. I'm halfway through Dies Irae and I plan on finishing that eventually. Hopefully sometime this month, but maybe next month instead. I'll review it once I'm done. After that, who knows. I don't want to quit reviewing but if I'm not finishing any new releases then I'll never have anything to review. Maybe once I finish Dracu-Riot I'll binge on a few games.

I don't run FuwaReviews anymore (That's Palas), but as somebody who used to run it, I can at least shed a little light on what's going on, and explain why I stopped doing reviews in the first place: So, for those who aren't aware, I work for quite a few different companies in the localization industry in various different roles. I won't provide that list here because you can find most/all of them by looking around. Some of these companies I started working for in the past couple years. Before that, I had a ton of connections with a lot of different devs, and I was able to get us signed up for review keys from something like a dozen companies/teams/groups/whatever you wanna call them. Some of those connections are still around today, while others have pulled out for various reasons (none of which were our fault—at least not that I'm aware of). During that time, we had pretty consistent reviews, a great set of reviewers (many of whom are still on the team), and it was 20% thanks to our reviewers and 80% thanks to Flutterz (seriously, he edited everything for us and is amazing—10/10 would recommend) that we were able to be that blessed. Thanks to our connections, I was usually able to just be like "Hay [company] can I get key for x?" and then divvy out the keys to whoever wanted them. Then, everybody started getting busy. A few reviewers, including myself, fell off the face of the Earth/peaced out/couldn't spend time playing VNs. It sucked. I put out a call for new reviewers and got basically nobody (except Decay—love you bae). I got slammed with school and life and official stuff, so I stepped down. Bats took over and tried to keep the ship afloat, but during this time we lost roughly half of our connections for various reason (not because of this swap, just bad timing). We attempted to pick up more reviewers, but nobody fit the bill. We have a general process for our reviewers, which is why we had to turn down quite a few people. We try to remain unbiased (though, like any review site, it happens), and we write enough to justify our reasons. A lot of our posts are on the longer side, follow a pretty straightforward format, and give people a good idea of what to expect. We also anticipate that our writers have some mastery of the English language, so that we can get reviews edited in a timely manner. Not much to ask for: you spent two to 40+ hours playing a game, hopefully you'll be willing to spend thirty minutes to an hour writing a solid review. So we were having problems finding reviewers. And while I say "We," I mean Bats. Later, some "things" happened. At the time, we had a rule in place (mostly for me) that we cannot review any title we worked on. For the record, I never reviewed a title I directly worked on, and any titles I did work on had a disclaimer, especially when I was the one who got the key. It's the ethical thing to do. But, because that wasn't enough, we had to strengthen the rule to "We can't review games from a company we work/worked for." I understand why that rule is in place, but the number of companies I can do reviews for is fewer than the number of companies I can't do reviews for, so I was finished. Bats left the VN scene completely shortly after this, and Palas stepped up. He's doing what he can, but there are a lot of roadblocks. The fact that a couple other reviewers also had restrictions placed on them caused a bit of a dead space that we still weren't able to fill because nobody applied and met the basic requirements to be a reviewer. We still have a strong team, but virtually all of us are involved with something (official, unofficial, or non-VN related) in one way or another, and it's difficult to make it work. Would I love to run FuwaReviews again and get it back to the glory days? Yes, of course I would. But I can't. I'm too involved in the community for that to work out. Instead, I'll have to depend on somebody else, and I look forward to seeing if we can make it work out. And maybe, one day, I'll do a JAST game review. Maybe.

Visual Novel Translation Status (07/08/2017) I'll be combined both of this week VNTS Review and my opinion in regard of AX into this blogpost here, and let me say welcome to this week VNTS Review (I'll tell the the title at PS later if some of you were somehow curious). As for this week, first of all there's quite a lot of announcement from AX and the genre was quite widespread from my observation (Including otome and BL VNs), and there's also the matter that many of those announced title were in development. Overall, for this time I think I was quite content with AX as of now (Even with some redundant announcements) and let's see what I could write here in regard both of this week and AX. JAST USA JAST, well once again good thing that I didn't expect much from them in regard of AX lol, although I still give some credit for them though for announced the estimated timeline for their in translation title if those weren't delayed later. As for the updates, JAST promised us that they'll release Eiyuu Senki this summer, Katahane remake at early 2018, Princess X at this autumn, and Flowers Summer arc at winter (Quite ironic I knew, but at least it'll be appropriate at Australia later because it'll be summer there lol. About 60% translated according to Meru right now). What I knew for now is that all of the release date were vague, but at least we could always treat those as the estimated time when JAST would release those (Maybe there'll be sudden release for those VNs later). Anyway, out of those four I think I just keep my eyes on Flowers for now. For the announcement, well at least it's only one redundant announcement instead of two if I may say something about JAST there lol (Keep in mind that was my opinion). Note that it wasn't improvement in regard of announcement number from the last year though, because JAST was only announced two titles compared to three titles at last year. The redundant announcement by JAST in question was Majikoi, in which it was already translated since back at 2015 by the team from here and this is the translation thread. Although I may said it redundant, Majikoi was definitely one of big VN that many people wanted to be fully translated in the past (So much that the thread was exploded to around 37 pages then shortened to 2 pages, because too many people posted encouragement word there). For a history trivia, Majikoi was one VN that had many translation history started with when Takajun translated 4 out of 5 main routes, then he translated the 85% of the 5th main route and he disappeared after saying that he must work around 12 to 13 hours (He still had work or not I didn't knew). Then it was picked by the team at Fuwanovel here, and finally once again we had 2015 release comprised of both of Takajun and new team translation. Almost forget that Peter Payne himself tried to pick this back at VNDB (2014), and back then I was afraid that it mean it'll be taken by JAST (JAST was already infamous for slow release even back then iirc). Well, in the end it it didn't really change the fact that Majikoi announcement was redundant to me here though, although if they announced it back at 2014 maybe it'll be different there. Good luck to the new team (Maji Translation) there if they really retranslated Takajun translation, and hopefully the translation could satisfy the fan that want Majikoi to be officialy localized. Another announcement from JAST was Machine Child. No much info to me here other than the illustrator was Oyari Ashito (Romanesque, Quartett), the gameplay was like Princess Maker, and it was still in development (Apparently Oyari want to make this game from long time ago according to one source iirc). Not my interest to said it lightly there. Fan Translation Well obviously there wasn't any announcement from this section back at AX, although since Sekai was used to be fan translator maybe I should add those announcement from Sekai here. Joking aside, this week they still had some usual updates here so let's see what's updates that we had for this week. The updates goes like we had Sansha Mendan was at almost 90% translated (89.4% translated); Eustia was at 17.63% translated (11.19% edited and 10.28% TLC-ed); Koiken Otome fandisc did had Shiho's route was at 45% translated (By the way, the new name for the translator group was 'Dergonu-sama and his kawaii crew' which is quite interesting name lol); Loverable was at 78.01% translated (Nanako's route was at 42.19% translated), 20.73% edited, and 45.31% TLC -ed; and Majokoi was at 89.7% translated, 63.6% TLC-ed, and 88.2% edited (Fred also said that the translator for Hijiri's route was started to work so that's should be the good news for Majokoi, although he also warned that if all progress was at 100% didn't mean that it was over). For the rest, right now Tsui Yuri was facing a difficult technical problem so there wouldn't be any progress from them now, and hopefully they would be able to overcame it. As for Amagami, I think it was quite nice dedication there that they kept translating it after several years, and the VN itself was apparently quite good. Although too bad that it was for console though so I wouldn't be interested to that (My laptop couldn't handle PS2 emulator if I may say my honest reason). Oh, and by the way in regard of inserting voice for Ataraxia, I admit that they were quite fast and right now they estimated that by September it would be ready for release. As for Tsujidou, right now Ai's route was at 11.18% translated and overall translation was at 22.69% translated. Not much that I could comment in regard of Tsujidou progress for this week unfortunately, but at least it's stable enough for now. That's all for fan translation. Other Considering that only Frontwing that had interesting announcements (ie updates), maybe I better call this section 'Frontwing' lol. Back to topic, I'd pretty much didn't interested with Akysys announcements there (All of those were otome, and for Vita to boot) but if you either otome or BL fan then those announcements would be good for you. Also if some people here look forward to seeing translated Chaos Child, be happy because the estimated release time was already announced (At September later). For Frontwing, I would said that Subahibi wasn't new announcement because it was already known back at February. Subahibi aside, let's see what Frontwing had for this AX. This time Frontwing announced Momoiro Closet and two secret projects, which would be revealed later. As for Momoiro Closet, didn't had much info for now other than apparently it'll had female MC which was a student council president, a daughter of good politician, and an otaku; MC will met with a man who also an otaku as well; and it was still in development. Not quite interested with Momoiro for now, but I think both of Frontwing secret projets could be Hatsumira (Written by Fujisaki Ryuta by the way) and Yuki Koi Melt (Yukikoi) if only those two did had planned English release, and both of Hatsumira and Island had a man who was standed at the unknown land - also there's a hint of the secret projects was suggest the similarities between Island and one of secret projects. Keep in mind that it was just my speculation at the secret projects, and therefore it might be wrong (It was too obvious anyway). As for Subahibi, it was good that they finally release it at end August later. It did had small controversy though, namely that the bestiality scenes was censored because it was too brutal to be shown to the reader. I think what I could say is that I prefer them to censor yaoi sex scene to be honest instead of bestiality, but it's not like those two scenes were had bigger part in the overall story anyway. But since they already decided that, I guess not much we could do here and I would like to see whether there would be the patch to uncensored bestiality or not. Quite interesting release that we must buy the first chapter for $30, then we got the rest of the VN as 18+ patch which mean that Frontwing didn't managed to find another easy way to fit it on Steam without removing the sex scenes in the first place - understandable though because it could be hard to felt disturbed if one removed the sex scenes, and yaoi and bestiality aside some of sex scenes could be disturbing to said it lightly. As for Herkz comments in regard of Subahibi translation, to put it bluntly he was the one that people called him infamous troll along with Moogy iirc so I think it didn't matter whatever opinion that he had in regard of Subahibi release - also looks like he had some personal grudge from back when Frontwing release Chiru Chiru without his permission. Also if I may be blunt, once again his twitter just looks like he had some tantrum like Aroduc back at September last year. I admit that perhaps Herkz had some point behind his tantrum, but regardless I'd pretty much okay with whatever translation that Subahibi had. Oh, by the way Island release was delayed to 2018 in order to coordinate it with anime adaptation. Maybe I should check anime season list for next year. And even if this wasn't in AX, MoeNovel did said that they had new project, although looking at their previous titles (Except Konosora, but that's another case) I wouldn't said that I interested with the new title very much. Sekai Project I give them point for not make me shocked like last year in regard of their announcements lol. Back to topic, this year once again they had many announcements although most of the projects were still in development though. Oh, and they also had Denpa announced that they would had 18+ version for Sekai announcement so at least from now on we didn't need to worry anymore in regard of 18+ version of Sekai announcement (Probably). Before going to the announcements, let's see what update that they had first. For the update other than usual Bokuko slight update, Sekai announced that they would release Saku Saku at autumn and Baldr Sky duology in one package at early next year (2018). Oh, and if some of you look forward to play Wagahigh, look forward to 25th because Sekai will release Wagahigh at that date. I would still wary of delay for those three though, but for now let's just wait and see. As for the announcements summary for in development VNs, didn't think that Island Diary would be interesting, and so does with Eternal. As for Novectale, interesting that they chose to had partnership with Sekai and this time they had new VN (Nakarma) in development. They don't have the detail yet, but apparently they would had underground setting which had some humanoid creature, and it also would had tabletop RPG gameplay so I think it'll be quite interesting. Forgot to say that at least Novectale didn't dependent on Fata Morgana as I worried about beforehand. For the Ninja Girl (The full title was mouthful lol) the girls were kinda cute, but my focus is to the writer himself which also wrote Harumade Kururu which is quite interesting - by the way, I already knew that Harumade wasn't a nukige in the first place and quite interested with that. Too bad that it wasn't announced by Denpa here. I think for now I would like to just wait and see here in regard both of Nakarma and Ninja Girl. No comment for Rewrite+ here, although apparently it got new scenes and improved writing though, so it might be good if one want more Rewrite (To me just another redundant announcement here). Apparently it was got the new translator which he would translating it from the scratch instead of using Ixrec translation, although either way my opinion was still didn't care much though. Quite interesting though that Visual Arts finally working together with Sekai. As for Nanairo Reincarnation, the premise was like a university student was living together with many youkai at his home, because his family was also had task to calmed a wondering spirits. I did heard some good thing in regard of Nanairo, so I'm gonna look forward to this one. Same goes with Senren Banka as well, if only because of the graphic and interesting opening song. Forgot to said that while the premise was quite epic looking - MC was the chosen one who could take the sword from the rock, and the sword turned out to be a little girl, I think I'm just gonna expect this as charage/moege one instead of story VN because I saw many review that was disappointed because they expect an epic story, and turned out it was just normal charage in the end of heroines route. Forgot to said that both of those announcements would be had 18+ content, and so does Tenshin Ranman which Denpa announced as well. Congratulations to the Decay and his team in regard of Dracu Riot official announcement. As for my opinion, since we already had leaked patch here I didn't shocked like last year when Saku Saku was announced. For a little history lesson, Dracu Riot was translated by Insem first before he stopped giving some progress and after 31 months Insem finally give ~90% translated patch. Of course, just like Majikoi there's a team that willing to continue translated the rest of Miu's route (Decay was one of the member), and then Decay found out that the problem with the translation was quite severe. Of course he planned to doing some editing start from the beginning after Miu's route was fully translated, but back at September last year the patch was leaked and Decay was upset. Long story short, the patch was taken down and Sekai was announced Dracu Riot. Quite interesting that even with leaked patch, there're still some people that was complained about official release although it wasn't as severe as back when Saku Saku announced though. Well, in the end I would said good luck to Decay there and also it's up to Decay if he want to going official or not. By the way, Dracu Riot will also got 18+ version. Forgot to said that I didn't care for Denpasoft new VNs here by the way, because those two VNs were only short nukige. Also turn out that Harumade Kururu illustrator came to Denpa panel in order to announced his new project (Island Diary). Mangagamer Once again Mangagamer did won by had the most interesting announcement to me here (They only announced 3 new title and 2 in production title). But before going to the announcement, let's see what update they had for this week. As for the updates, Hapymaher was at 85% translated and 78% edited, Maggot Bait was at 42% translated, Hashihime was at 76% translated, Boukaku was almost finished the testing, and Naked Butler was about to do the testing. For secret projects, the 2nd was at 91% translated and the 3rd was at 71% translated and 68% edited. Didn't care for Umineko hardcopy announcement, but if you look forward for Evangile W wait until 28th because Mangagamer will be released it at 28th later. That's all for the update. For the AX announcements, let's start with Space Life which showed us of how money grubbing Circus were. Okay Circus was already like that in the past with Da Capo, but one thing to note that even back at Da Capo they still had some flat chested heroine (This trait was extended to Dal Segno), while in here all of the heroines were had big chest. Well I knew that I sounded like a pervert here, but one thing is that MoeNovel did had same strategy in regard of the heroines bust size (Quite big) so I would said that Circus was following MoeNovel footstep (It's their business strategy though I think). Anyway, as for the premise it's quite....... interesting I guess with big breasted sexualized internet browser thing (I bet that Internet Explorer woman was the slowest out there lol). Let's just wait and see about this for now in regard of the release, and by the way it's already completed both of translation and editing progress. For Itaru Hinoue new project, I think it might be not good if we just looking at the writer, because the writer himself apparently was still new. I think in regard of VN, the writer should be the one that had the most influence with the story or if not then it's director job to do that. I still don't knew of how good Itaru project would be turned out, considering that her position should be only an illustrator. Then again, maybe the writer would show his potential later though although to be safe I won't expect much with Hinoue VN, even with apparently an interesting premise (It's a nakige apparently). Back at March iirc, Mangagamer did had some hints which directed towards marriage. The hints was 'something four' which was associated with the marriage (Don't mind if wiki call it something old). Well, turned out that three of four secret projects that was revealed at AX did had marriage theme to some extend. The most obvious one was Moonstone's Magical Marriage Lunatic aka the 3rd secret project, in which we had our MC who was quite a playboy because he was make a childhood promise to five girls from each different dimensions (MC was stranded out to different dimension). Then each girls were coming to MC's dimension vowing to marry him, and even worse his childhood friend (Obviously a girl) declared rivalry against the marriage vows. By the way, the girls from different dimension were goddess, vampire, tenko, witch, and succubuss. I must admit that Marriage get good graphic like Evangile and the opening song was very interesting remix of wedding march, but unfortunately I'd heard that it wasn't quite good compared to two other Mangagamer announcement, so I'll pass this for now. For less obvious one in regard of marriage, there's Damekoi aka the 4th secret project in which it was quite good and widely accepted. Also quite hard to translate because the writer was also would write White Album 2, which according to Moogy quite hard to translate. Of course since it was hard to translate, we had our Garejei and Conjueror duo to handle the translation and right now it was already completed at both of translating and editing. Anyway, the premise was like there was an apparently useless man (At 28 by the way) was get fired and get divorced as well (A dark aspect of marriage), and starting to pull himself together while living with a girl who still at 16 yet already more mature and responsible, if only because her mother left her. From now on the pair would likely face some challenge to overcame their trouble. I look forward to this VN if you ask my opinion. The last announcement here was Evenicle aka the 2nd secret project. It's pretty obvious that Arunaru would handle this one (Because this is Alice Soft RPG), and I think he would be finished this year considering that it was at 91% translated already (The editing need to be catch up though). As for the VN, it had polygamy which is a situation where a man could had more than one wives. The premise was we had our MC want to be knight so he could marry more than one girl, and the MC himself was quite pervert (Nicer than Rance though, although he was quite a playboy). Didn't care about Senran Kagura thing to be honest, but I already tried this and it was quite addictive (I mean Evenicle). Forgot to said that also there's a hint that directed toward Evenicle here actually, but I thought that it would be Drapekoi lol. Looking forward to Evenicle in English here. That's all for overall my AX commentary and this week VNTS Review. See you next week. PS - For the title since we had vampire at Dracu Riot I decided to parodying Twilight once again, and combining it with Reincarnation from 'Nanairo Reincarnation' so we got 'Twilight Reincarnation' here (Quite simple I knew).

Visual Novel Translation Status (07/15/2017) The reason for the title was because we had image header from Subahibi, and we had Subahibi giving the Germany title as well (Usual Frontwing, like French at Grisaia), and since we had Alice allusion at Subahibi I thought that if I used Germany title of 'Alice in Wonderland' it would be fitting (I apologize if any Germany people get upset here), only that instead of Alice I'll using 'Hasaki' because the girl in image header was Hasaki from Subahibi. Welcome to this week VNTS Review, in which this week there's no much update from official company although I suppose that's given after many announcements from last week AX. Let's see what updates that we had for this week, even if the updates was not a lot and therefore this week post would be short. Looks like I couldn't access Sekai project progress somehow right now, so it mean that there's no visible updates from Sekai unfortunately. Although to tell the truth it didn't matter though seeing that most of the visible project was already fully translated. Hope I could access the progress in the future, although if that's Sekai new policy then so be it. Lack of visible translation progress aside, actually there's one in which it was from Tokeijikake trilogy 2nd VN (Daybreak) and right now it was at three quarter translated. Sekai also said that right now they performing QA for the first VN, because apparently it was still need some debugging in order to reduce crash when not play on Japanese locale. Oh, and apparently it'll be available soon for the KS backer although it would still had some bug though. There's also Serment RPG VN hybrid thing that had Steam store opened, although I wasn't quite interested with that for now. This week Frontwing decided to do some Kickstarter for Subahibi in order to produce the hard copy. For the first glance the goal was higher than usual hardcopy only Kickstarter (At $80,000), but actually it make sense though with apparently there'll be many merchandise and there's also stretch goal of $180,000 which apparently there will be some side story that would be wrote by the author (SCA-JI) himself. Not interested with the tiers to be blunt (I'd never interested with those at any Kickstarters in the first place), but good luck to Fronwing in regard of their Kickstarter and I'll report the gathered fund weekly. Oh, I checked their Tumblr in regard of 18+ patch and found out that the Steam version didn't censor yuri scene much, so maybe Steam was more acceptable with explicit content compared to few years ago imo. For newly released VN (Sorcerer's Dream), there's a talk that the VN was had many translation error although the title wasn't interesting to me though, so I'll pass this one (Congratulation for the release though). There's many usual updates from fan translation segment, so let's try to roundup the progress here. For this week we had Clover Days Anzu's route was at around 81% translated; Majokoi was both at 90% translated and edited (70.36% TLC-ed); Loverable was at 79.55% translated (Nanako's route was past halfway (52.06%) translated), 20.75% edited, and 46.65% TLC-ed; Sansha Mendan was reaching past 90% mark (92.5%) translated; Venus Blood Chimera was at 46% translated; and Eustia was at 17.73% translated and 10.97% TLC-ed. For Ataraxia voice inserting, right now it was finished although they said that it'll take a while before the release. Pabloc was also had some update with his Konosora restoration project, namely that he'll had the common route QC-ed as well because the translation was still bad and therefore it'll take a while before the release (Hopefully this year). We also had Ate the Moon Translation came back, and this time the team was decided to take on Tsuki Yori Yoritsou Otome no Sahou or as I called Tsukiyori which also known as trap VN from Navel (They already planned the translation for a while). Speaking about Tsukiyori actually it's already had the translation project in the past with another team, but it was dropped because the previous translator was too busy. For now I would like to keep my eyes on the project, and good luck to the team in regard of translating Tsukiyori. They already had the progress, and right now it was at 4.9% translated and 2.5% edited. Keep in mind that the updates might take month, because the translator herself tell us that she was quite busy. And since we had Alice for this week title, might as well said that right now Alice no Kuni otome VN progress was reaching 90% (All of it) and right now they want more translator (Not interested with Alice no Kuni, but good luck nevertheless). I think that's all for this week, and see you next week. PS - There's an update from Tsurezure in regard of Tsujidou (Duh), and this time they managed to reached a quarter (25.93%) translated mark for overall translation with Ai's route was at 21.87% translated. No much I could say in regard of that for this week, and that's all for now.

Sounds like a perfectly accurate description of ROM if you ask me.

It is a dakimakura with a CD, similar to this one: http://www.suruga-ya.jp/product/detail/864009039001 You can buy the Miyako one from these: http://samuraibuyer.jp/cn/item/detail.php?item_cd=B00B5VUT9K http://jmty.jp/kagawa/sale-hom/article-2cmjw https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00B5VUT9K/ https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/227614286

Yes, bottom 4 items are "Heroine Visualize Note PCs". A-3 is making progress, just little by little.

We tossed this idea around for a while, but the problem is that the content and format of these user-submitted reviews was so inconsistent that editing them to at least match the straightforward format we use would have been a nightmare that I would never wish upon anybody. When I asked for reviews/reviewers a couple years ago, I got a bunch of 1-2 sentence "reviews." There were one or two reviews at most that nearly met our requirements, but we ended up scrapping those as well because they still required more information to fulfill our requirements and Tay and I agreed that trying to get those up and running was more work than what we wanted to do. This is also huge for us. We want to create conversation using our reviews, and knowing that people actually take the time to read our reviews is an incredible feeling.

Wtf!? There better be a patch restoring that bestiality scene! I will not accept anything less!

Guys, thank you for your answers! I completely understand you having to step aside because of life matters, as I already did something similar before. It saddens me to have few reviews, but at the same time I got happy knowing Ryechu is getting more opportunities to work, so congrats Fred, about Symphonic Rain, that is exacly the kind of review that I would like to read before buying the game. I also have read it before, and would not want to buy it to have a bad experience. Wouldn't be interesting to have user reviews on the website? Whenever a game was released, users could send their reviews and after analysis have them posted. Just an idea. I usually don't comment on the website, but I do here on the forums. I remember even doing that on a recent review you posted here (though I don't recall which one, maybe Chrono Clock). I have also read pretty much all available reviews until now

From my perspective as one of the current reviewers, and speaking only for myself, not for FuwaReviews at large or Palas in particular as the head, I see a combination of factors influencing the rate at which we publish reviews (which, btw, I don't think is all that slow; we've maybe had some outlier slow months recently with only one review a month, but these things are going to be cyclical): Reading a VN simply takes time, and we're all busy individuals doing various things. Reading a VN to review it vs. reading it for pleasure is actually a surprisingly different experience. Reading something with the intent to review it actually puts a fair bit of mental burden on me, vs. simply reading it normally, for better and worse: I spend time stepping back and assessing how I'm feeling about certain things, taking notes, constantly considering collecting screenshots, etc. All told, it's actually a fair bit less entertaining to read this way. That said, the psychological payoff of actually putting out the review and having a big public conversation with people about a game is substantial (and is the reason I do reviews). It actually takes a while to write a review. Even if you're thoughtfully preparing along the way while reading it, like I mentioned, preparing the final review takes a few hours (at least for me). Basically, choosing to do a review is signing up for a fair bit of work. We don't have all that many active reviewers. Looks like only 5 reviewers have posted something in the last 10 months? Palas recruited another reviewer fairly recently, and I myself only joined the team within the last year, so this isn't an area where we're completely stagnating, but finding interested and qualified people is not easy. To have a review, you have to have a game that people want to review. There are a ton of VNs coming out all the time, of course, but individual reviewers have their own preferences and interests, and not much incentive or desire (hopefully understandably) to review outside of things they're already interested in. And even within the bounds of those interests, things don't always work out. As an example, the Symphonic Rain HD remaster came out recently, and I picked it up with the intent of reviewing it since I really liked it back when I read the fan TL years ago. However, a couple hours in, I realized the release was sub-par in a lot of ways (backlog didn't work correctly, lots of proofing errors, translation did a poor job of capturing characterization), and I just couldn't stand the thought of sinking 40 hours into ruining my pleasant memories of a game by playing a bad release of it at that level of elevated scrutiny, just to wind up saying, "This game I loved got a sub-standard official localization and HD remaster," even though I think that's exactly the sort of review that would be great to put out there, in that it would likely create an interesting conversation. Now, all that said, I can personally say that I'm planning to pick up WagaHigh on release date and review it, since for whatever combination of reasons, it's caught my eye. I don't know how long it will take—my time is always limited—but you have my word there will be a review of it before too long after release. I also want to add one important request, as a reviewer. If you want to support FuwaReviews, from my perspective, the best thing you can do is to make sure to comment on the reviews, in whichever venue you prefer: the tweets (retweets are always appreciated), the FuwaReviews blog posts themselves, associated forum threads, the Facebook post I guess (I've never even looked at those to see if there are comments... I probably should...). Doing reviews, for me, is an extension of why I'm on Fuwanovel in the first place: I like VNs, and I want to talk to people about them. The payoff of all that time spent reviewing a game is all in that subsequent conversation a review sparks.

Don't you dare besmirch "Please Bang My Wife," Ningen.

http://www.minatosoft.com/10th_anniversary_final/ http://minatosoft.com/10th_anniversary/spark.html

I'll never touch shocking party after getting to 666 plays on that song, never again.

When the novel is open and running, with text displaying, go to te side menu, and go to "Menu" then "Text Preferences". Change the text thread to UTF16 or anything that displays the right text. Some pics for help in this thread: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/17863-vnr-text-problem

its bad for us ;W;, I want my vns for myself, dont dare touch my black cyc vns western vn industry!

So both Dies Irae and Subahibi will get localized the same year. 2017 is looking pretty good for western VN fans.