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Akatsuki no Goei is something of an oddball if you ignore the existence of Grisaia, but they share some major traits. Both have a relatively 'peaceful' (if dramatic) first game that involves romantic paths that are mostly irrelevant to the third game. Both have a psychologically-scarred, killer protagonist with a criminal past. Both have a quirky sense of humor that is mostly generated by the protagonist's abnormal actions... I could go on, but I'll move on to my point. The most blatantly obvious similarity is that both series have three games, the first, the fandisc, then the third as a conclusion. In both cases, the conclusion is more serious, but that is where the similarities end. Whereas Grisaia's third game went down the kinetic novel path, giving you only one ending to see, Akagoei's third game, Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron actually has three main routes with over fifteen endings, each with a different heroine. Now, I'm going to hit the titular reason why I wrote this post. Akagoei can be seen one of two ways, based on knowledge gained from playing Reminiscence. You can either see the fandisc as irrelevant save for the long experience of Kaito's past seen in Anzu's route, giving you the background knowledge to give flavor to the third game.... or you can see the FD's endings as an alternative to the ones in Tsumibukaki Shuumatsuron, a conclusion that a lot of the fans of the SOL and comedy elements of the series picked. This is actually very typical of Kinugasa Shougo. Kinugasa, from all accounts, hates canon endings. He doesn't like to produce firm conclusions, and he always wants to leave the reader guessing on one level or another. I'm about 90% sure Kinugasa created Tigre and made Reminiscence solely to make people confused, because it draws elements from all three games into the background, while not telling you what actually happened at all. A few of those elements include: Akemi's path events in 3, Tae after-story from the FD, Reika path events from 1 and 3, and any number of other things. It is also pretty clear, probably intentionally so, that a lot of the characters from Akagoei left descendants to appear in Reminiscence, though you can only guess who is who by appearance and their roles in the underground society. In other words, feel free to draw your own conclusions when it comes to this series... that's about half the fun.

This week updates were surprisingly early, so here's the update below as usual: Common: 100.0% Sora: 0.0% Marika: 100.0% Natsuki: 0.0% Misa: 100.0% Rikka: 0.0% Touko: 0.0% Total: 36.36% As for Misa's patch, they said that it wouldn't be out tomorrow because they still need with the editing and stuff. But looking from their usual pace, I would say that it should be possible that we get the patch by the next week if all goes well. Also Trip here did say that he'll take a break before starting on Rikka's route, which is understandable since Rikka's route here is the longest one in regard of line count, so perhaps we should expect that Rikka's route translation here will take a while. That's all for this week update.

I'm thankful for this forum's non-Americans, because their sad existence reminds me of how great it is to be an American.

Chuunige is one of the visual novel genres that are barely present in OELVN scene, at least to any “serious” capacity – among the more popular and high-quality releases there’s very few that would even loosely fit the “fighting VN” formula, or especially effectively replicate the unique feel of this particular current in Japanese fiction. Recently, however, a fledgeling studio under the name of Epic Works decided to remedy this sorry state of affairs by creating a content-rich, Fate-inspired EVN called Episicava. The first volume, of what was apparently planned to become a longer series, was released on Steam in April 2018, in a slightly disastrous state – full of graphical bugs and various technical issues, the game made a rather poor first impression. However, since those problems were mostly fixed with patches in the months after launch, it’s a good moment to look at Episicava and ask the most important question – did it manage, in its improved state, to capture some of the magic of Fate/Stay Night or Dies Irae in a downscaled, low-budget form of an EVN? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

There have often been times in the Grisaia series when Michiru and Yumiko were compared to one another by Yuuji, and this was not surprising. Both Michiru and Yumiko are tsunderes on some level - Michiru being the fake tsundere, and while Yumiko is more of a kuudere, there have been occasional tsun-tsun moments with her. Such superficial similarities aside, both individuals also suffer from the more textbook forms of social anxiety (Makina's anxiety is a bit more complex and special, hence why I'm leaving her out for the sake of this post), and both have compensated this anxiety with unhealthy methods. The difference between such methods, however, is where Yumiko excels in "The Labyrinth of Grisaia", whereas Michiru is still stuck in her old unhealthy ways. Grisaia spoilers at this point: This is the reason why sometimes, I really dislike the comic relief, because they're essentially a sacrifice who won't grow beyond being an idiot. Sometimes, a story does fix this by claiming that the goofball's charm lies in him or her being an idiot. Grisaia does something similar (very seldomly), but for such a serious story dealing with mental health problems, I just couldn't accept such a disrespectful answer. It's not only disrespectful to the character and fans of the character wanting to see her grow as a person, but also disrespectful towards real life patients suffering from similar issues. Now, as to whether Yumiko's After Story is better than Michiru's due to this important difference in character growth... it is, on some level. Yumiko's AS is still, as @Dreamysyu put it, kinda boring. If I'm to rank the different AS, I'd say it goes something like this: Sachi > Amane > Makina > Yumiko > Michiru Yes, Michiru's AS is at the bottom. After seeing how much Yumiko grew, especially, I just couldn't tolerate how much Michiru has regressed. It's frustrating to see for a fan of hers like myself. Having said that, with Michiru's weakness reminding myself of my own weakness as a person, I don't know if I could ever enjoy seeing her again in the same positive light when I read future stories. She's become something of an eyesore.

I am thankful that I decided on a whim to read a visual novel. I never was an anime fan, and I'm still not, but I saw Sodapoppin on twitch playing Princess Evangile (I still have no idea why he was playing it lol) and it looked like a nice little feel good story. So I gave it a shot and liked it. When I looked for another good VN to read after finishing PE, I learned about G-Senjou no Mao. That one cemented my interest in VNs.

I would say so. Well, I thought about that and the truth is I know very little about this kind of third-rate JP chuunige. I know the really good ones are able to mix the cliches into something satisfying and craft an engaging story out of them. The "angry shounen" line was mainly to signify the lack of depth - a VN of this size would usually have some of it even if it's mostly about the corny action sequences, here... It's just a lot of shouting and purely-literary gore. Kind of missing the point I guess...?

Well, it does sound like a very generic chuunige from the way you describe it. Even classics like Dies Irae has most of the same problems and overused tropes (and it's one of the reasons why I became kind of bored with it after just finishing one route). The reason why they are considered good VNs, on the other hand, is that they have some other very good points that make the whole overall experience worth it. This VN... probably doesn't have something like that, from what I understand.

Confession: I've grown to hate Sundays lately. I usually have my Sundays completely free BTW. Doesn't make much sense to hate it, right, hating the only day when you can truly rest? The thing is, I don't like just sitting on my ass. I want to do something. But on Sundays, I'm usually so burned out that even watching anime feels like a chore. It's too much of an emotional investment. At some point, I half-wish I had some work to be done, so I could distract myself from the general misery. I eventually start doing stuff, but everything ends up half-assed and I usually give up after a short burst of any activity. So, Sundays suck. Somehow.

Something about your statement tells me Michiru's fate in Rakuen is a lot worse... Hopefully - and I'm saying this with desperate optimism - So yeah, hopefully it's something like that... But... even if it is, that still doesn't change how mediocre Michiru's AS is. If anything, this makes her AS feel even more like filler material now compared to the other AS.

Actually, this reminded me that the biggest problem with Michiru's AS I personally had is that I felt as if it completely disregarded her development from the original route. Now I'm interested in what your reaction on Rakuen is going to be.

I'm thankful for having experienced 428 Shibuya Scramble. It's not everyday (literally) that you get to experience an amazing game like this that emotionally shook me to the core. I mean, I literally have to wait for two or three years before something this impactful pops into my life, you know? Be it a movie, anime, or a video game. The last time I was this emotionally moved was... maybe six years ago, when I experienced the consequences of all my decisions in the previous Mass Effect games. Man, that was... nerve-wrecking, having to contemplate all that I've done for my crew-members of Normandy, and having to live with their deaths (or survival). 428 was something similar, but on a much more simpler scale. It's more traditional and idealistic, but in that sense, it's also more heartwarming. Your role in saving Shibuya feels just as important as the many wonderful characters in there trying their best to help out, no matter how small their role might be. Anyway, I'm not going to go into too much details here. I'm just thankful I got to experience something like this, and perhaps lament a bit that I probably won't experience something as impactful for a long time to come. I'm also thankful that I got Fate/hollow ataraxia to work on my computer at last, after the many bugs and errors I previously experienced. The long-awaited sequel to one of the greatest VNs of all time has finally been voice-patched. Now we just need to get an anime adaptation... On a similar note... ROOT DOUBLE IS FINALLY WORKING TOO! I thought I would never get to play this game yesterday because I kept experiencing some weird bug. It's not exactly expensive since I got it 60% off, but still. Thankful, thankful, thankful. I would also like to thank Sekai Project for translating this, along with the many, many VNs they've translated, and the many VNs to come. Keep up the good work, SP. Finally, I would like to thank @Ramaladni for commenting on my newly-created blog. We might not have been able to come to an agreement regarding our views of VNs with choices, but I'm thankful he commented on it, since new blogs like this often get ignored.

I finished YMK. Whoa, that was a ride. But then, @Stormwolf was right It was better than I expected, and didn't disturb me as much as I feared. I started with Nekoko's route. In the beginning that route was like one big WTF - but that's understandable considering Nekoko's circumstances and her route's main theme. But the ending made up for it (not just epilogue, but generally last 3rd of this route). Also, the plot twist really surprised me I also liked the 4th wall breaking - or VN's self-consciousness - in this route, with Nekoko giving "affection points" to Kouhei, and his frequent talks with Tsubaki about eroge - route systems, character's behaviour etc. (This comes up in other routes too, but in Nekoko's it was most pronounced). Next was Mizuki. That route was pretty crazy too - when I think about it, Mizuki had something in common with Nekoko - she also tried doing various crazy things as an escape. Sometimes I almost couldn't catch up with her But Mizuki's ending was maybe the best in whole game. At last I read Aeka's route. It was definitely the heaviest of them all, but very good. It does really good job at making player want to protect Aeka, and then fall for her along with Kouhei. Don't know what to say, as almost anything will be spoiler for this route. Also, while maybe slightly exaggerated, the whole bullying theme and mechanisms of it were presented almost disturbingly realistically. Final sequence got me by surprise, it was very strong too. It was difficult to go for Nekoko's route first, as the game surely made me feel like trash for abandoning Aeka - to not get on her route you have to completely ignore her, and that's really painful. (on the second playthrough, when aiming for Mizuki, auto-skip eased that pain ). Also, antagonist in that route... Another strong point of the whole VN is Kouhei's family - that's right, here we have eroge protagonist living with full family (well, adoptive, but still) - now that's something you don't find often. And on top of that, they're great people, really caring for him. Now about H-scenes - yes, there were a lot, but authors made the effort to justify them within a story. Well, in Nekoko's route they were a bit random to me - except the last one - but then again, everything she did was random, so it fits I guess. I think in that route the reality was bent the most to allow for h-scenes, but still, somehow it worked. In Mizuki's and especially in Aeka's route sex scenes fit well into the story. There were also some really important and moving dialogues during Aeka's scenes - I like that. So - except maybe a little for Nekoko's route - no complaints about h-content from me Well, maybe HCGs could use a bit more variation, because often they don't align with the text (like, characters being in completely different pose). Translation is OK - there were some rough lines and typos, but it read well. All in all - I'm glad that I gave it a chance and read it. 8/10

Pumpkin pie!

thankful for all the food i could eat!

is this a meme?

maybe this can help you : http://azure.kdays.cn/onekeyunlock i think it's only for the engine siglus, but since i dont know what vn it is..