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Hello everyone. My name is OriginalRen and I enjoy Japanese animation. I don't recognize a lot of people on this website, but I used to do some stuff a long time ago on Fuwanovel and met some pretty cool people. It's been a really long time since then. A friend of mine named @solidbatman mentioned this website the other day and it made me wonder what's been happening. Seeing as he made an introduction thread, I thought I would make one to say hello as well. How is everyone doing?

This might be not super newsworthy, but it seems that one of the rare, both highly-rated and translated JP yurige suddenly made it to Steam. It's an all-ages title, so there should be no issue with censorship this time. From the preview it looks quite sweet and it's also dirt-cheap ($9 with the launch discount). Anyone around here played it/can tell whether it's pure fluff or there's some kind of drama/intrigue hidden in it? I don't mind pure fluff by the way, but in G-rated form, it probably won't be for everyone.

*looks at backlog* *sighs* *buy anyway*

ah, lonely yuri. very nice read. probably my first yuri vn... it set the standards to high.

Read this ages ago. So far as I recall, one of the best pure fluff I've read.

OH MY GOD MY WAIFU IS BACK

I like space anime too.

i'm solidbuttman, longtime member of this here website. After many months away (like a year or two?) I'm starting to get back into VNs again and might even read one. A+ if you ask me. I like old space anime, realistically drawn anime titties, and history. I am a couple months away from graduating university and am writing a big ass thesis on some boring american civil war tax crap. I mostly play Final Fantast XIV because i am irredeemable. I basically recognize no one here anymore so its like joining a whole new website. ps I was the one who wrote the official Fuwareview for Little Busters!

Well, I think every piece of media can do that. It can confront you with situations you never though about or make you empathize with people in positions you would never find yourself in. Present you with an idea you never encountered before or make it more persuasive than when you've seen it in other places. It very much depends on your personal experience and how much that specific VN/book/etc. resonates with you. Reading Analogue had a bit of that for me, as it made me think about discrimination and despair of being put in a drastically subordinate position in society. Made me slightly more sensitive to minority issues, because I understood a bit better what it means to be oppressed. Not really a life-changing experience, but one that pushed me even further in a direction I was already leaning towards. I'm absolutely sure that a VN, just like a book, can have even bigger influence - there's just not one that will bring "spiritual change" to everyone who reads it, because we're too different from each other.

Oh yeah I just noticed that this morning while I was randomly browsing Steam. It's pure fluff but it has a very sweet and gentle nature to it. The only slightly negative thing I have to say about it is that it's quite short.

one of the few pure fluff VNs i've really enjoyed, its really sweet and feels kinda real and stuff. Its really adorable, you should all get it

Yeah, same, and I'll die of shame if some people are to find out about it.

We have an official one now! Here: Darky's discord is still open and we have about the same amount of members though, so do check it out anyway.

Seems like Fuwa is the forum where dreams can come true. lol Call me if you ever need an inbetweener.

Even though I usually run with a female avatar on forums, I've made it a point to stick to male on MMOs after getting hit on a few times.

I never care that a story is slow if the slow part are done right. I personally love a lot of slow-paced stories, especially the ones that focus on character interactions and development. Some of my favorite stories in different media are extremely slow-paced, to the point that many people will probably find them pretty boring. At the same time, what I really care about is that the story actually has to be good. I don't really want to go through 30 hours of unfunny comedy to reach the good parts, even if the comedic parts actually turn out to be important in the end. Another plus is that, even in the slow parts, the story needs to at least go somewhere. Basing my opinion on the anime, Steins;Gate does it pretty well, and I don't really understand the common criticism about its first half. Actually, some episodes in the second half were actually worse.

Confession I absolutely hate rpgs that only give you the barest amount of customization options. 2 alternate faces, 2 different and hairstyles and you think that is acceptable?

I can relate, even if for me is the reverse. I like to alternate between male and female avatars, and I do agree with you guys that the male ones are a lot more boring to look at than the female ones! Step up your game, developers!!!

Thanks. Although you should thank @Clephas for supplying most of the lore through his comments, which I really like, so it was greatly appreciated. I have yet to come up with the lore for the OEL Union and Keyland, though I do have a rough idea for the former, and it involves a certain western VN that took the world by storm in 2017.

Here's an infinitely better version of your avatar: Anyways, welcome and all that good stuff

I confess that for the last few years pretty much all the music I listen to is weeb music, and not all of them even good weeb music at that. Am I beyond salvation?

Obviously

Very belated one to say this (Exactly 3 months lol), but since that particular member decided to get active again I figured that I should congratulate him. Happy very belated 18th birthday, @VirginSmasher and hope you'll have a good nine months ahead. Oh, and happy belated birthday to @solidbatman as well.

good shit. i actually still use pancakes in my stuff as a reminder of that stream way back. even if no one else remembers it.

This is a good way of putting it. IMO VA does add to the presentation of a VN, and it helps to make the characters more real. Emotion can also carry over quite well (even if you don't understand what they're saying) - Fate/Stay Night for example, with Jouji Nakata as Kotomine Kirei: even if his voice crops up in other stuff I can't help but shudder when I hear him . That's not to say that unvoiced VNs are bad - it's an oft-cited example, surely, but I really liked Katawa Shoujo and of course that doesn't have voice acting. I guess the best way of saying it would be that I appreciate it if it is there, and I'd prefer to buy (in the case of something like G Senjou no Maou) a VN that has it, but if it's not available that's not a big deal and if I was considering buying the VN then at that point I'd be more interested in the story than whether or not it has voice acting.

Someone above said he'll only read KEY when they get +18 patches...... I can't lol enough. Although I could just endorse the stereotype of them being terrible, I can add that the newest novels don't have any sex content - Clannad, Rewrite, Planetarian, and that other short one. It's way wiser to read fan fics instead of waiting for something that doesn't even exist. About this....... I love that they are doing this this way, instead of overpricing the KS and the game itself, and it's nice to see "Key's old style" again, but the coloring is terrible, just horrible. I can get past this if the story is good, and I doubt Mangagamer would risk their reputation with a mediocer game.

you'd have to be more specific oh good. Key is still going strong. how wonderful.

Awwww... I should've named a planet after you. I completely forgot that you existed on the forums. Planet @solidbatman; a forgotten opportunity, but his greatness still hangs with us on Fuwa.

Well, it's lovely to meet you since I don't know you very well. That was a cleverly spun (bun?) introduction. I don't want to ass-ume anything about you, but it seems you've been around for a while and this is the tail-end of your hiatus. Welcome back, butty!

Well, he (?) is listed as an assistant writer for that VN and probably didn't write much there. I wouldn't base my opinion only on that. Edit. But, yeah, it's better than nothing.

I actually don't mind Itaru's artwork (except maybe pre-Clannad) but I'd agree that in this case it doesn't look great. The coloring in particular doesn't look well done. As for the project, I'll probably at least go for the digital game tier even though the artwork isn't a selling point and I don't have much confidence in the writer. Unlike others I don't see a problem with MangaGamer doing crowdfunding for an original project and I might as well support their first outing—it's not like they can be that much worse than some of the other projects I've supported in the past.

I need to hang out in the intro threads more often. It is so warm and cozy in here. @LunarianLight Maybe we'll start our own little animation studio together some day, and we'll laugh about how we met on Fuwa. <3

I know no one cares about the Oscars anymore (or ever) but now came the time to prove how The Shape of the Water is the best otomemu ever. # FAQ Q) What da hell is an otomemu? A) It's a short for 乙女ムーヴィ (otomemuvi). It's like a ge, but not really. (This bullshit is copyrighted by Maggie not really) Q) Why the FAQ is at the start of the post? A) You wouldn't be able to handle the suspense of not knowing what a otomemu is. Q) This is unfunny. A) And that's not a question. The Q stand for question, smartass, ask something and leave your stupid comments in your pocket! Okay, back in the ge. Oh, I mean the mu. So, the Oscars made me realize how much of a otomege The Shape of Water can be. Don't believe? Just follow me! It have a silent female MC that was just doing her mundane job when suddenly she found love in the least expected place; It stars a mysterious aloof guy and only route option and everybody loves the sexy and mysterious trope, right? We have a totally random sex scene shove in for the same reasons as a lot eroge, whatever they are. It's with side character, so you don't need to fear that any kind of NTR is coming; It have the token glasses guy that all otomege seems to have but this time he didn't had a route because that's what all animes do, cut routes (in this particular case, I didn't wanted a route with him anyway); It have a incredibly short gay subplot for the yays because BL is also for girls; It's a pure love story as the meaning of otome would suggest; If you watch it with subs, the experience will be kinda like a OELVN with non anime art emulating School Days style so it can totally be considered a ge along with being a mu. So, with this post I hope to clean the slate of the otomemus because Twilight is such a bakamu and 50 Shades a kusomu, it's refreshing to see a kamige once in a while. Murica also proved that The Shape of the Water was the best VN of 2017 and now I can finally say that Guillermo del Toro is a better VN writer than SCA-Ji. Deal with that, weebs. Cheers!

Thanks a bunch bro. I received help yesterday and was able to modify the font. I also used FontCreator before reading your post, so I guess this is the best tool around for this haha Also thanks for going out of your way to actually offering to send me the program. I really appreciate the help

It's always fascinating reading these little histories of sites and all the drama that went down. This definitely makes me glad though that I never sought out Reddit. I was mostly content to frequent a small vn group on the Escapist back when I was seriously playing vn's. There were only a few of us and I don't remember any drama going down except when some loudmouth would post something disparaging about vn's on the site proper. It's a shame you had to go through that and I'm glad that you are doing better.

I'd say one thing, playing the OG .hack was a lot of fun, especially with all the tributes to the series .hack//G.U gives us.

I was quite surprised how widespread that authoritarian attitude was. My philosophy back then was that we mods were stewards of the community, trying to make it nice for everyone, rather than overseers on a powertrip. I was always happy to discuss why we'd done a mod action, and not just with an evasive "it's the rules," but to explain *why* that rule existed. Anyone who modmailed us got a prompt response within 24 hours, and I was always happy to give someone another chance if they apologised for whatever they'd done. I thought my fellow mods felt the same, so imagine my surprise when I was suddenly on the outside of that process and all my modmails, apologies, and pleas for help went unanswered. They wouldn't even tell me I was banned, they just had automod remove my comments covertly. As for the regular forum style, while it certainly has its merits, the problem I have is with it having just one chain of messages it's awfully easy to get derailed or have 2 people arguing and drown out the chance for anyone else to chat. Fuwa helps with that though as it has notifications for if someone replied to you etc, so it's easier to continue a conversation in between other messages, but still, I prefer reddit's tree structure personally. Ah yeah that's a major problem on bigger subreddits with more comments, so much stuff gets hidden. I think generally /r/visualnovels was small enough that comments being hidden was fairly rare, plus we discouraged downvoting except if someone was being rude, but yeah there can be problems with circlejerks. Haha. There was an even older shitpost that used to be famous, one guy posted an AMA (ask me anything) as he'd read 500 VNs (back in the days when the average on /r/visualnovels was 17). The guy went on about how he judged VNs by the quality of their "lighting" in the CGs. I still can't tell if the guy was just trolling, or just really weird (as much as I love the VN fandom, we do tend to attract an eccentric bunch - me included). Thanks Zedge, it was a pretty soul destroying experience to go through. I don't think she intended any harm, it's just that she was hurt and couldn't deal with it, and with all those around her wanting to protect her, an unhealthy atmosphere built up where no compromise could be considered. Yeah I doubt it'll ever grow significantly, it's a huge investment to learn Japanese. My respect to those who manage it, I don't have that willpower. It's made it kind of hard to trust people again, as I thought I could trust insanityy, I thought she was my best friend. Did I just imagine it? Did I just project what I hoped she felt too onto her? I hope not, but those kinds of fears are hard to shake after your world crumbles and those you thought were life-long friends just abruptly cut contact when you most needed help. I'm glad you enjoy the trend posts, I have a lot of fun researching it. The posts are only so intermittent because it's such a pain writing it up in a long post, but it's always worth it when someone says they enjoyed it.

This already sounds like the best VN ever. ~~~~~ Looked through some other messed up tags and found this:

Being consistently good is way harder than begin low and then peak higher, the inability to be at least digestible in all the sections is like a plague that infects most of story driven vns and make them crap.

It should be noted that to have a slow build up, the story needs to be consistently ... well, built up. Stories that dick around for 30 hours can be fun, but it's hard to describe that as "building the story". Usually I do enjoy a slow build up, where the world is gradually peeled back or new facets and skills of the characters slowly revealed that sort of thing. But only if the scenes had purpose and weren't just "hijinks".

Sorry all of you about your eyes Thanks a lot, and sorry for that horrible format, I hope is ok now. Thanks a lot, and sorry for the trouble, it really helped me to fix things, I`m new posting on forums and didnt know how to preview my post

Aaaaaahhh, thank you so much! ^^ There's a lot of interesting stuff here though, especially if you gather everything worthwhile from 2-week or monthly periods. And everything that gives a bit of life to the frontpage is a great thing, so I'm excited about the idea far beyond my own stuff possibly being featured. I'm a bit too busy producing content for the blog and handling RL stuff to really participate though... :<

Link here: https://discord.gg/F79q4dp After about a week of setting it up, I am proud to announce that fuwanovel's official discord server is finally open! I imagine this is superfluous to most of you, but for the unaware, discord is a real time chatting service that's all the rage with the new kids nowdays. Making a discord account takes only a few seconds and is as simple as the image below so please relax, congregate and get to know all the locals in our small forum community!

Looking forward to this myself. Checking every week to see the TLC progress, hopefully it will be ready by the end of the year. Keep up the good work.

I was bribed.