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The western otome scene offers a decent amount of hidden gems – small, often obscure titles, that nonetheless offer impressive artistic qualities and/or interesting, unique ideas. It also never stops being surprising to me how many of those games are published for free, sometimes even without any Patreon support or other direct forms of monetization on the part of their creators. Magical Otoge Ciel and Magical Otoge Anholly, developed by Batensan and published for free on Itch.io in 2015 and 2016, are among many high-quality, free otome VNs produced by the booming indie scene in recent years. Still, their author was able to establish a fairly interesting, distinct style both when it goes to art and the storytelling, very consistent between instalments and likely to be continued this year with the upcoming Magical Otoge Iris (with major hints at other, future projects). As both games are fairly short and simple, I've decided to review them together – the very similar writing, art assets and even shared elements such as UI structure and parts of the soundtrack make it justifiable to treat them basically as episodes of a single game. But what are they really about? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Introduction Welcome, fellow Fuwamembers, to the FuwaRecognition thread. Starting this March, we’ll be highlighting some of the best contributions made by our members each month. From snazzy blog articles to delicious forum threads, and perhaps even a few things more on the shitpost part of the spectrum, we'll keep an eye out for the cream of the crop. And then we'll gather them here. Just for you. *holds up giant APPLAUSE sign* A-hem, so this is the first time we're doing this and it might be a bit rough; next time will be at the end of March. Anyways; without further ado, let's get to our highlights. By @Zakamutt. Threads Our first highlight on threads comes from two Ask Me Anything topics posted in the span of this month: from our dear provisional Tay, @Kaguya, and from the anti-moege task force founder himself, the saltlord himself @VirginSmasher. It’s now Kags’ fifth year on these dear forums, and members of new ’n old had a lot of questions, climbing over to 50 comments, almost unheard of in this day and age of lacklustre forum interaction. Even after the glory days of lolis long passed, Kaguya still swears close to his heart how they indeed are the master-race that rule over this weeb-dom, mostly in nukige form. Charming. @VirginSmasher’s AMA, on the other hand, is mostly an appreciation of past glory and his good friends, met before he died out, but he also remembered some newer members who are already becoming an integral part of these forums of today. Quite a lot of internal banter and jokes flew here and there, but it is quite touching to see even older members returning from long breaks of apparent irremovable death. As you might have seen, we have a new EVN on the horizon, or rather, KickStarter: One Last Crane, developed by @Blissful-Works This visual novel is being developed by an Indonesian team with some members over at Tokyo, Japan, and it has a an odd goal amount of 10,052 dollars, though this is due the publicization of the project being handled from Japan, which also makes the whole project page ask all money in yens. A risky play, let’s see if it pays out for them. The novel is planned on being released for four languages: English, Japanese, Chinese, and Indonesian. Quite the amount for still quite a small goal, but we’ll have to see how it pans out in the end, at least they are in no shortage of ambition. While the art-style itself is quite generic, it does look modern and does its job as presentation well enough, not to mention that the KickStarter page itself is quite stylish, but only time will tell how it’ll go over. All we can do is wait. @EastCoastDrifter has done something unique on the forums that no one would even think of. He loves space, and he has extended his love to the members of the Fuwanovel community by creating a Fuwanovel Solar System. Using a program called Space Engine, Drifter has taken the liberty to name all planets in this system after very prominent Fuwamembers. It’s a great tribute to the community and you should really check it out. Furthermore, Drifter says he’s not done, and has plans to create more Fuwa solar systems to feature more members in the future. If you want a planet named after you, feel free to post in the linked thread or contact Drifter personally. By @Arcadeotic and @EastCoastDrifter. Blogs Hi I'm Zaka and I'm the only one that cares about blogs on the team. Maybe. I didn't actually ask the other guys. Shit. So uhh, here's my recs... @Clephas writes accessibly about (for the most part) untranslated Japanese visual novels. This time, we have some posts about the recently released third VN in the Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru series, of which the first actually has a translation by MangaGamer. Unfortunately, the second is where people think it actually got good. We start with a more general note on the series, then move on to a review of Otoboku 3 itself. While Clephas has been writing for quite a while, @MaggieROBOT is a bit newer to the scene. She focuses on Otome and BL VNs, and for this post we'd like to show you her post on an upcoming BL visual novel (fresh from the pot, baby. That thing is probably the first blog post to come right after this one. Oh yeah. That's how we roll. - Kaguya) as well as her review of the robot-romance Otome VN Sakuya. Go ahead and look for her post complaining about a trap in a moege not having a route if you like things on the more humorous side of the spectrum Just For Fun! During the process of writing this post. Well you know I’m all about that nepotism baby. That's right, this is just for you. Rising 1.8% female readership (thanks Maggie) local GM and blog post connoisseur Kaguya here. To close the blog review section up, we’ll be highlighting the post where I wonderfully delve into the mind of writer Setoguchi Ren’ya, explaining his past and his involvements with the little-known work The Shawshank Redemption as well as how that work affected the VN industry, finishing things with a bang as I explain his history and the hidden messages within Swan Song. And finishing things off in a suitable grand scale, much like a writer who traps himself into writing continuously larger powerlevels until his shounen manga gets to a point where it doesn't even resemble the original, we will be looking at two posts made by Fuwanovel's current closest figure to Jesus, @Kiriririri (Who unlike our creator, did revive. How about that?) He died for our sins as he bravely made two deep posts about the current state of the VN community that were completely hidden by the evil staff... Until now. Gaze upon them and marvel, this is the true work of a genius!! February is over. We bled. We sweat. Friendships were broken and renewed, and old members revived from their graves and mingled with the new pringles to take us where we are now. And the community persists, as glorious as ever. March is here. And in this rewind, I declare FebruaryFuwa absolutely Fabulous!

First, I should mention that my original review of the first Hataraku Otona didn’t really do it justice. Oh, I mentioned what I liked about it, but I was busy as hell that month, so it was what amounts to a short commentary. As such, I’m going to go into more detail this time around. Hataraku Otona 2 is the second game in the series (if you exclude the spin-off Hataraku Otaku no Ren’ai Jijou). The characters from the original game return as side characters, several years older, and it isn’t made clear who Oga Itsuki ended up with (though there are hints that it might be a harem situation, lol). Similar to Itsuki, the new protagonist is a socially inept salaryman at the same company (one of Itsuki’s subordinates, actually), who receives advice from Itsuki almost identical to that Itsuki himself received from his immediate superior in the original game. As a result, he sets out to try to turn his life around, seeking more connections with others and actively seeking to find a girlfriend. Like the original game, the protagonist holds several one-night stands in the common route that both help give him confidence and help him grow as a character (since he honestly liked each of the women as people, even if they weren’t in love). However, the same as the original, it is inevitable that some will bash this game because the protagonist isn’t a lily-pure ‘one woman, one lover’ man (seriously...pfft). The common route is perhaps a bit shorter than the average charage common route (though not by much), and mostly serves as a very basic introduction to the heroines (extremely basic). Most of the character development for the heroines is done in their paths. Asahi Asahi was an odd choice for my first heroine in this game. Normally, I’m not interested in ‘genkikko’, and I almost headed for Suzune instead. However, in retrospect, I don’t regret choosing her for the first heroine. Asahi is a part-timer at her father’s izakaya (Japanese-style restaurant/bar) and several other places who always has a smile on her face. She is well-liked by the customers and is generally about as good at customer service as it is possible to be. What I was startled by in this path is the sheer sensitivity with which her true character is slowly brought forth during her relationship with the protagonist. I honestly cried with Asahi when her emotions finally came out into the open, and I watched through the protagonist’s eyes as he waited for her to rely on him. The end result was also immensely satisfying, and I was surprised not to regret a single moment of reading the ichaicha in this path. Suzune Suzune is the newbie bartender at ‘Tama’ (the bar that is the central location for many of the events in both games). Her manner is refined and her movements graceful, but, unfortunately for her, she is one of those people who can get drunk on the fumes. Suzune’s path is significantly weaker than Asahi’s, and it is in some ways a rehashing of Miyu’s path from the first game… watered down. Like Miyu, Suzune has parental issues, and those issues, rather than her interactions with the protagonist, are the center of the path’s events. Unfortunately, the problem is solved quickly and with no real build up (this is the weak point, compared to Asahi’s path), and I honestly felt that this path was handled much less sensitively than Asahi’s, to my disappointment. Sora Sora is a hikikomori working at her grandfather’s old book store (old book store as in antique books). She has trouble talking or meeting other peoples’ eyes, and she is very psychologically weak. Predictably, her path is all about breaking out of the vicious cycle of hikikomori-ism… and she does grow quite a bit during the path. However, the pacing in this path is… not very good. Up until right before the end, it feels fine, but the game all of the sudden cuts to the ending right after what should have been her ‘turning point’. As such, it felt like the story lacked a real climax and was just an excuse for six h-scenes, lol. Rikako Rikako is a cheery, strong-willed nurse the protagonist meets when visiting Itsuki (the protagonist from the first game) in the hospital. Easygoing and generous on the surface, she is actually very much a straight arrow, and being a nurse is not just a job to her but a calling. She is the oldest of the heroines (the second oldest, to my surprise, being Sora), being almost thirty. Her route is, given her job, predictably focused around the difficulty of matching a nurse’s irregular schedule with that of a lover. While there is little in the way of extreme drama, it hits all the points you would expect when it comes to a romance between a salaryman and a nurse. Manami Manami is one of the protagonist’s coworkers, sitting at the desk next to his. She is a shy and serious young woman with a slight hesitation to her speech patterns that seems to be a product of a generalized low sense of self-esteem. Her path is my second favorite in this VN. Like Asahi’s path, it is written very well, and the emotions of both characters are portrayed with the utmost effectiveness. Manami grows a lot as a character in this story, and by the end she is almost a completely different person, in some ways. She quickly became the type of heroine you just have to cheer on. Bad Ending Yes, there is a bad ending in this game, and I went through the trouble of getting it as my third path… This path is essentially one long series of one-night stands, adultery, and the like… a path where the protagonist never finds love. It ends… in a rather startling manner, to say the least. Conclusions There are a few negative issues with this VN. The first is that the writer gave a lot more emphasis to Manami’s, Asahi’s, and Rikako’s paths than the remaining two (believe me, it is noticeable). The second is that certain parts of the dating portions are completely patternized (to be specific, there is a beach scene/beach h-scene at about the same relatively point in every path). This is a huge negative, as it pulls you out of your vicarious experience with the heroine you are pursuing at the time. The last point is that the protagonist is definitely a cipher, unlike Itsuki from the first game. Sadly, while his basic personality remains the same from path to path (sincere, persistently caring, mildly shy, high sex drive), I can honestly say he doesn’t really grow as a person in any of the paths… and you never really get to understand him as a whole, round character like you did Itsuki from the first game. On the other hand, this game does exactly what it advertises it will do… provide you with slice of life romance in an adult setting. That is a rare benefit, and -despite the negatives – this game does it relatively well. I honestly enjoyed playing this game, but I also saw numerous points at which it could have been improved by avoiding the patternizing I mentioned above.

Hi hi, everyone! It was surely a good week for us BL fans with the announcement of JAST's new BL brand. Think about it, we'll be able to see Sweet Pool uncensored shortly before hitting 50. Okay, enough JAST jokes and N+C in general. Since they're not saying much about Slow Damage, I already reported everything they announced in that thread the other day. Well, guess I sabotaged my own blog, rip. So why not talk about an obscure upcoming game? Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you today Nie no Machi (no VNDB page yet, now I went full obscure hm? But here's the game's main website)! Dying was never so festive. Wait, WHAT??? (I'll explain in a minute) Okay, I'm saying it's obscure, so how the hell I found out about it? In fact, this debut game from Zombilica was featured in the last edition of Cool-B, a japanese magazine about BL and girl games. If you played any japanese BL game, you probably already stumble in some special artwork of it made for this one magazine. And what exactly is it about? It follows the story of Hisora, that after following a young man dressed in mourning clothes he fell into another world. Oho, I'm not really a fan of isekais, but with a harem of pretty boys I can change my mind... Too bas this another world is pretty much a town occupied by only by spirits of the dead. The safe place is an inn occupied by... people that fell into a coma in the world of the living and end up trapped there. So our boys must found a way to escape this spirit world. And something tells me that them being half dead won't stop the author to kill some of them noooooooooooo. Our heroes in adorable chibi form: Naruomi, Hisora (MC), Asuku, Mio and Koko The character's designs are simple, but charming. Personally, I loved Hisora's hair, that in some CGs looks kinda purplish. And I'll bet that the best boy will be.......... Ouya! Okay, joking or not aside, between our available romanceable options... I'll think I'll bet on Mio (third one). I mean, look at the others! Poor Asuku (the first one) looks dead inside, the second one's name is Koko da hell dude, and the fourth one Naruomi seems good too, but he'll probably won't be as adorable as the smirky bastard besides him, RIGHT? How can someone even doubt such a pure and gentle smile? /s I like bitchy love interests in VNs, I may have problems. But, if we looks again into the first image I put here... seems like we have a secret love interest there. Hmmmm... The voice actors were revealed already, but no samples available. The scenario is written by Toritani Shizu (鳥谷しず), and the art is handled by Rinno Miki (厘のミキ). The game is slated to be released in 2018. Meanwhile, let me get addicted to the song of the PV (careful, there's 2 NSFW CGs there. They're censored, the camera quickly pans to a more safe spot of the CG and they last for about a second each, around 1:04~1:05, but still, don't get fired for nothing! The song is pretty cool nevertheless)!!! I'm planning to get the game whenever it's available so I'll be back with impressions! Eventually! (if I can hook it to use a parser, that is)