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But They Claim To Have No Knowledge Of This Being Done And Say The Devs Did It, Actually, So Who The Fuck Knows, But Yeah It Was Nutaku Releasing It So We Remain Suspicious That Looks Like Pedo Bait Any Way You Slice It Honestly This Isn't Weird At All Holy Shit --- I mean, the headline would be less snappy if you told the truth. But you wouldn't be spreading misinformation, which is always nice.

To what extent could you map out the VN scene? All the various fandoms, the EVN vs JVN split, translated vs untranslated. Using the VNDB voting stats, I did a little analysis of the VN fandom and came up with some clear clustering. I hope you enjoy it~ https://bunnyadvocate.tumblr.com/post/168412595697/visualising-the-vn-market I'd love to hear any suggestions for other categories to investigate as I'll do a follow up post in a week's time.

I'd say she's most probably too young and inexperienced to see the gist of the problem. She probably doesn't see it the same way we do, including the possibility others might have been using her for their own benefit, while she just keeps drawing. Those statements are highly dubious to believe in from a freelancer's standpoint, because freelancing is underpaid nearly everywhere. The only exception is US, but you'll still earn much more, if you're a popular SNS artist open for private commissions, than a freelancer of a similar calibre, working for small companies / indie studios. You won't be able to survive on your own through freelancing for a single, small company in Europe - especially one like Winged Cloud and Spain... isn't currently the most wealthiest country, either. In fact, quite the contrary. It's just hard to believe in that post, unless someone's also directly providing for her daily necessities (bills, rent, housing, etc). Been there, done that. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. A stable contract is a lot better in nearly every single way. Depending on the place you live in, you get money, insurance, medical care and pay taxes like any normal, respecting citizen should. Anything else is either illegal work or plain refusal of your own future, as without discharged tax you're not earning for your pension. I'd be on the streets or living with my parents right now, if I'd continue small time freelancing in my country. It's NG, period. Europe is currently a bad place for artists in general, unless you make it to the top.

Hey there lovely people, I've mentioned in my introduction thread that I'm a bit of a graphomaniac - I most likely spend unreasonable amounts of time writing reviews on Crunchyroll and Steam, writing those might be a hobby of mine just as much as watching/reading the stuff I write about. Before I registered on Fuwa, an owner of a certain obscure otaku website noticed my "talent" and invited me to write articles for him - while I quickly realized that it was pretty much a waste of time and only delivered a few texts, that experience gave me a few ideas on content I could create for the benefit of my favourite western VNs and their authors. While looking for an outlet that would be interested in my writing, I actually found this community and later decided to get involved (regardless on whether it could help me with sharing my compulsive creativity). Now while I rightfully gave up on the idea that anyone would want something of mine published on the Fuwa frontpage, there's still this nice little blog functionality available here. I could use it to produce two kinds of content I had in mind earlier: 1. Reviews of Western VNs that were not caught by FuwaReviews team or any blog included in the Reviews portal (possibly even polemic reviews when I'm done with "undiscovered" stuff). 2. Interviews with notable western developers about their games and all things VN-related (should be doable, considering that they're often one-person studios or tiny indie teams desperate for positive exposure). I know that western VNs don't receive much attention/aren't highly regarded here and we're a fairly small community anyway. So the question is: would anyone here be interested in reading the crap I've described above (if you want to know what my writing looks like, you can check the Steam link next to my profile picture or my Crunchyroll account - obviously the blog would have longer, more detailed entries). I will appreciate all honest feedback, I won't be doing much about it in the coming two-three weeks anyway because of RL commitments, but I would love to see whether there's any demand for what I had in mind or should I just crawl to a shady corner and not bother anyone with my weirdness. ;p Cheers!

Nice, maybe they'll finally ban SakuraGame next.

SonoHana Nyuu Jene. Ai x Aya = best girls.

The Key to Home is 100% pedo bait and if Steam doesn't want that on their store then that's fine by me.

(https://i.imgur.com/qPnpByO.png). Alternatively, right click the pic and click save as.

Just finished watching Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood for about the tenth time. This time I watched it with my son (15) since he's old enough to enjoy it now as a rite of passage. Goddamnit I think I cry more every time I watch it. Sure I'm not saying anything new about this well known series, however, the way it starts is amazing enough but by the last 10 episodes I can't stop myself from shedding tears. I'm wondering when there will ever be a series this good again on so many levels.

If the point of the VN and the developers was to take an stance AGAINST promoting crimes against children they didn't do a very good job and the message doesn't convey AT ALL... Specially not when your main artist draw just loli hentai and the art in the VN itself depict children in very suggestive posses or in places that you would relate to a jav and I'm not just saying that while I look at the cover and one of the girls (they all have between 8 and 11 yo) has like a condom in her mouth, yes, yes I know, it's probably just a healthy food or something that will turn that little girl into a strong woman : D

Welcome to Fuwanovel, and you got quite an interesting thread title there. If you feel like to read VN more you could ask for more recommendation here, and good luck in regsrd of your writing there if you want to pursue that. Hope you have fun here.

Wait, you had standards this whole time? How could you! In other confession news I finally managed to finish off my tesl certification course last night so I'm pretty damn excited about that

Ugu?

Just finished Dramatical Murder, probably the most popular BL novel around. I'm always afraid to try super popular things bc overhype kinda ruins the experience in the end, but I'm glad this didn't happen here The game really is pretty good, upbeat and light-hearted but with a good dose of feels. The characters were also interesting and that made each route better than the last! Later today, I'll probably finish Nurse Love Addiction, my first Yuri VN. Aaaah, what a cute game this is! All of these girls are so adorable and Asuka is such a funny and nice MC! But WHAT DA HELL WERE THOSE BAD ENDINGS?????? They pulled some really creepy stuff, but Asuka was with a pure smile in her face in all CGs. Damn, Itsuki's one was...

Welcome newest addition to the house of troubles may you find your way to the truth Also yeah I did roll my eyes but that's alright Have you tried reading Ever 17 yet?

Why else would Nick want to fire Tonee89 and replace him with Wanaca? If there's one thing you can always count on with shitty CEOs, it's that they will do anything they can get away with to maximize profits, even if it's only in the short term. It's not unusual for a company to treat its bottom line poorly. And seriously, it's hard to take what she says at face value when Nick has been known to take control of others' social media accounts. He could very easily be trying to save his own ass. I don't want to rule out the possibility that this is really Wanaca, but I'd feel better if she went in for an actual interview. Her reason for not participating in one seems way too convenient. What exactly is stopping her anyways? If she's getting paid less than Tonee89, I can't imagine why she wouldn't move to a better company that pays more.

I don't like conspiracy theories, but it's either just a fairly poorly constructed clarification (language barrier?) or there's something seriously fishy about it. I mean, she doesn't have a contract because she "trusts her boss so much"? After years of working for the same company non-stop? Also, it's the only company in the world that needs talented artists and she wouldn't have money to buy food without it? Like Narcossis said, it really doesn't prove anything. No example of her supposed commission work for other companies, no specifics on her relationship with Winged Cloud. Just "I'm happy, nothing to see here, don't look any further". It doesn't mean that the allegations are true, but they're strong enough to be worried about (and to blacklist Winged Cloud, I've considered buying Sakura Dungeon out of curiousity but definitely won't do it now).

The VN reading community likes to argue over the relative merits of so-called "literal" and "liberal" translation, with most people tending to perceive everyone else as being a hardline supporter of one or the other. While I'm sure everybody who knows my views would classify me as a proponent of liberal translation, I tend to think I'm more a proponent of being accurate to the intent of the original text. This blog post is going to outline a couple of specific uses of language which I believe show some of the weaknesses of attempting "literal translation." This isn't going to be anything like an attempt to provide an exhaustive argument against literal translation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least trying to be a little bit convincing. Still, regardless of your position on that particular argument, you might at least find the examples enlightening. Broadly, I'm going to be talking about figurative language. That's a fancy phrase encompassing a lot of common expressions and classes of expression which exist in every natural human language, as far as I know, and certainly in both Japanese and English. Idioms, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, symbolism: all of these are classes of figurative language. For starters, let's talk about idioms. The relevant definition of "idiom", per wiktionary, is, "An expression peculiar to or characteristic of a particular language, especially when the meaning is illogical or separate from the meanings of its component words." The argument pretty much writes itself, right? By definition, if you try to literally translate the words in an idiom, you're going to end up with something at best inaccurate, and at worst completely illogical. Just googling "Japanese idioms" and reading what you see is going to find you dozens of examples of cases where you have to either avoid literal translation or end up with a translation that doesn't make sense. For instance, translating 十人十色 as "ten men, ten colors" isn't going to be comprehensible to an English reader, but the venerable English idiom "different strokes for different folks," which is equivalent in meaning if not exactly in tone, is probably going to fit the bill. Idioms offer pretty much a slam dunk argument in favor of liberal translation*. That said, idioms are not that common an occurrence. However, there are also lesser examples: cases where literal translation yields something meaningful and accurate, but still less accurate than a liberal translation could manage. My personal favorite example of a Japanese expression which is not an idiom, but which still benefits massively from a "liberal" translation, is the combination of the noun 背中 (back) and the adjective 大きい (large, big). These two words are often put together in Japanese when praising men, as a way to say a man has a certain, protoypically masculine, attractive physical characteristic. The phrase also carries a subtextual metaphor of reliability: a big back can bear a lot of weight, presumably. Once you start looking for "big backs", you'll see them popping up in literal JP->EN translations all over the place, from Little Busters! to HoshiMemo. The problem is, there's a common English expression which means exactly the same thing as that Japanese expression: "broad shoulders." Now, no dictionary is going to tell you that you can correctly translate 背中, in isolation, as "shoulders." But what's amazing about this pair of Japanese and English expressions is that they not only have the same denotation, but also the same connotation. Both expressions describe the same physical trait, and they both also imply the same personality trait of reliability: a broad pair of shoulders, also, can be trusted to carry your burden. The expression "broad shoulders", like its Japanese cousin, sits somewhere between simple non-figurative use of language and an idiom: just knowing the definition of the individual words gets you to the correct meaning of the expression, and even the connotation of implied reliability, when present, is usually obvious. So, by definition, they aren't idioms. But even so, if translated literally in either direction, the original phrase will end up as a pale shadow of what it should be. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be described as broad-shouldered than as big-backed. *Unless you believe the purpose of a translation is to teach you Japanese idioms, in which case there isn't enough common ground to even have an argument. I personally like to read translated fiction for the same reason I like to read fiction originally written in English: to enjoy a well-crafted story.

Some examples from the project I'm working on to further illustrate the point: Literal translation: "Yeah... Who knows as of when we'll be able to become that kind of big person..." This version only gets the point across with difficulty. Instead, I wrote: "Yeah... Who knows how much time we'll need to become as dependable as him." "That's probably why it took time to properly digest the bigness of adults inside our chests..." This one sounds almost comical in English. I changed it to "That must be why it took us so long to realize how thoughtful adults are." I always assumed it was common knowledge that translation is about carrying over meaning, not words. Imagine my incredulity when I learned that some people actually prefer the latter.

You could as well learn japanese and stop playing shitty games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Time for some status update for my JP VN's I guess. Well, I already finished Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata some weeks ago. This was actually one of the titles I was mostly looking forward to this year, because it's the quasi successor to Kiriya Hakushakuke no Roku Shimai which is still one my all time favorites. What made it special is that it was a very ero heavy title that also offered an intriguing, mysterious plot that resembles Innocent Grey's semi-realistic style very closely. But in contrast to Innocent Grey's titles, it was much less gory and more focused on heroines and fan service. But the combination of an ero heavy VN with a strong supporting plot is still extremely rare. Especially since the production values were very high with art from M&M and a great soundtrack. The title was still released under the label of Atelier Kaguya when M&M was still the artist of Team Heartbeat before they 'rebelled' and created studio Astronauts Sirius which is mostly known for their H-heavy gameplay titles now. Astronauts Sirius usually has a good sense for game mechanics and their titles are usually less grindy than Eushully & Co who managed to take grinding on a whole new level. For that reason it's usually possible to finish one of their titles in reasonable time. Their biggest weakness is that their stories unfortunatley tend to suck. So you play an Astronauts VN because of the gameplay and M&M's sexy art, but hardly because of the story. For that reason I was hesitant what to expect from the new Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata, especially since their last try in 'story' Saint Estella was quite disappointing. I was still slightly optimistic though, since they broke their fixed annual release cycle for it and gave it about half a year more development time. And to give a short preemptive consclusion, I was both positively surprised and relieved that they succeeded with it for the most part. In Hyakki Ryouran no Yakata you play a student from the University of Tokyo who comes to Yugoshi mountain in search for his professor. During his search he stumbles upon an old, mysterious mansion and is invited to join a certain marriage ritual of the Mikado family along with several other candidates. The story is set up in a similar way like an old Hitchcock movie, where several people meet in a house where one or more of the participants are murdered and you have to figure out the culprit. It's therefore a very traditonal murder mystery at heart - just with way more sex in it. The VN also takes a different approach to many other story VN's, that make POV switching almost a new sport, in that it keeps its protagonist POV almost for the whole time. This makes the VN very immersive - you only know what the protagonist knows and sees and nothing more except for the knowledge you gain from previous routes. There's a lot of intrigue and hidden secrets to discover and one play through will only reveal parts of the story. I was honestly impressed how much effort they took to give every character a unique identity and reasons why they are part of the story. Everyone has its place is part of a big mystery. One my favorite characters was actually Iwaki Akio, a detective who also tries to solve the mystery for his own reasons. He's more or less your ally for a good part of the story. The characters are also for the most part more 'grey' instead of just black and white, with both character strengths and flaws. The routes of the VN are roughly separated in three parts - the introduction route, the main routes and the true route. The introduction route was a bit of a suprise since all heroine routes are locked and the VN is pretty much kinetic. H scenes there are actually plot relevant except some 'preview semi H-scenes' for the main heroines which were probably only included to keep readers who are only there for 'one reason' at least mildly entertained. But I found the plot surprisingly engaging and dig through it in pretty much one sitting. The VN pretty much forces you into a bad end here which is already spoiled at the start. After that the main routes are unlocked and you can pick heroines and events via map movement. Now you'll have to change the events of the introduction route. To succeed with a heroine route you also have to find certain items along the way, the protagonist will usually use to free himself from unpleasant situations or get important information. If you missed a required item you'll run in a bad end, where you'll usually get killed and you might also see (a rather tame) rape scene. The routes itself vary in quality. Since the introduction route already tells a lot of the story, the heroine arcs were a bit too much uneven on the fan service side. Aya's route felt almost redundant with the introduction route and Yuri's felt more like a side route. Considering Yuri was the heroine I was mostly looking toward too, that was a bit disappointing. She didn't even get an appropriate ending. And that's almost a shame since she was a quite interesting character. She wasn't just a tsundere, she was borderline cruel and your job was more or less to save her from herself. Fumika had surprisingly the strongest route besides the main heroine Ririka. The other side routes were pretty much just fan service. After that the true route around Ririka unlocks and the final secrets about the hidden shrine and the dark god of the Mikado family gets revealed. Although it felt a bit rushed and lacked some information about the previous miko, it was still good enough to leave me satisfied. In comparison to its predecessor Kiriya Shimai, I'd say it has probably a better written main plot, but the heroine routes besides the main heroine Riririka felt a bit more lacking. Kiriya Shimai had more fleshed out heroine routes but the main plot was probably a bit weaker. Though it's quite some time that I read it. Other weaknesses are shared by both and are also known from Innocent Grey VN's. Picking another route can result in lots of text skipping with frequent interruptions sinec you have to pick the right location. Since the VN is also very ero heavy, the heroines tend to be rather 'willing' even if the H-scenes itself are probably at least less random than in Kara no Shoujo. The VN also has a very tight time frame that makes relationship developments a bit unrealistic. But overall, I was pretty satisfied with the VN despite some flaws. Production values were top notch with great art and soundtrack that helped greatly to create a thriliing, mysterious atmosphere. The story might not be as refined as in a true Innocent Grey VN, but it's still very solid and easily wipes the floor with what most other VN releases dare to offer. I also appreciate the fact that the VN isn't overambitious and tries to create an epic conflict with hardly any substance to back it. The VN focuses on the mansion and its involved characters, locations and events, and that part is rather well done. Character ranking: Yuri > Aya > Ririka > Fumika Overall rating: 8/10 Besides my reread of Kara no Shoujo 2, this was probably the best VN I've read this year. I finished it well under a week, which is extremely fast for my standards. Besides that, I finished two routes in Shin Koihime Eiyuutan, one good and one bad. But I stalled it for a while when Hyakki came up. The VN just offers short fan service routes anyway and I still dislike the mass over class with far too many heroines you're apparently involved with and you often don't even get the choice with whom you want to get involved with. I also don't think I'll continue with Ikusa Megami Verita. Having two hero parties in a grinding game is just too much and I was neither impressed by the story nor the characters so far. I rather start a newer Eushully VN instead when I get motivated again. I also had a look on what Atelier Kaguya's non-rebel studios had to offer for some 'light entertainment'. I tried out Love Tore form Team HonkyTonk Pumpkin first which turned out to be probably the best 'pure nukige' I've played so far. I played it's successor JD Onsen last year which impressed me with its outstanding animation quality but disappointed with its silly plot. Love Tore was more of a traditional dating sim and I liked the character designs a bit more, but the animation quality was just as good. Overall rating: 7.5/10 I then also I tried Niizuma Fuwa Toro from Team CheshireCat but it turned out as a quite disappointing 5/10. Though I'll also have a look on some of Team Bare & Bunny's newer releases, even if I still feel burned by the buggy crash festival that Baku Ane was. I also started with Caucasus since MangaGamer doesn't seem to care about story VN's anymore. It was quite troublesome since it's the first VN I couldn't hook in Windows 10 and had to create a Win7 virtual machine just for it.

Think this is pretty important news. Summary of the video (not mine): If true, this is extremely fucked up.