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Welp so much for September lol, I just binged the rest of Chaos;Child last night, meaning Hana's route, then Uki's route, then Nono's and finally the true route. It's a pretty good VN. Chaos;Child takes place 6 years after the key events of Chaos;Head's New Generation Madness killings and the Shibuya Earthquake, but focuses on a new cast, so an indirect sequel. The protagonist is an upgraded version of Chaos;Head's (first) Takumi Nishijou by the name of (first) Takuru Miyashiro: upgraded in that he's less of an extreme hikkikomori (shut in) who avoided social contact at all costs and was a stuttering mess if he did interact with people, and more of just a typical awkward high school boy with his own hard beliefs on him being a right-sider and everyone else a wrong-sider. A much more bearable protagonist if you ask me. Takuru is the president of his own newspaper club, with the members being his inseparable ditzy childhood friend Serika Onoe, his naggy but evercaring foster sister Nono Kurusu who's also the student council president and VP of the newspaper club (she's my best girl btw), Hana Kazuki the 'mute' gamer girl who only ever utters "Mmm" and mainly just plays her online ESO2 game in the newspaper clubroom, and Shinji Itou the male protagonist best friend support guy. Other characters include Hinae Arimura: a blonde twintail kouhai who acts very superficially friendly around her friends and Mio Kunosato, the "what if we take Steins;gate's Kurisu and make her completely unlikeable" cold hard facts scientist type. Takuru used to be a part of Dr. Sakuma Wataru's household: Sakuma is an easygoing doctor who owns his own Aoba Clinic and he adopted Takuru, Nono, and siblings Yui & Yuto Tachibana- orphans from the Shibuya Earthquake 6 years ago. The family eventually grew fairly tight-knit, always gathering for supper to exchange pleasantries about their days under a "keep no secrets from each other" policy. However, Takuru angrily moved out into his own trailer 6 months prior to the start of Chaos;Child after feeling betrayed when the secrets policy was violated against him by none other than Nono (resulting in him calling her Kurusu, her last name, from that point on. Ouch). As president of the newspaper club, Takuru has a thirst for chasing exotic cases he feels would shake the world. Fortunately for him, a new set of bizarre murders start occurring in Shibuya- and interestingly enough they are dated to occur on the same days as the ones that occurred during the New Generation Madness killings from Chaos;Head 6 years ago! Takuru easily gets hook-line-and-sinker'd and begins to obsess over investigating and solving the case, much to Nono's dismay. The first 6 chapters will meander between Takuru's everyday slice of life with his newspaper club shenanigans, his friends, and his adoptive family as the New Generation Madness Killings continue to make headlines all over Shibuya. Will Takuru be able to solve the case, or is he getting in way over his head?! Story: 8.5/10. Common route starts off slow with the slice of life and preparing for culture festival but once the term Gigalomaniac makes it onto the screen the story starts picking up. It involves a lot of pseudoscience/supernatural powers that can affect reality jargon and are channeled via Di-Swords (A.K.A. BIG F*CKING exotic supernatural swords) btw so it can feel a bit Chuuni at times. The concept of delusions was interesting. There are a fair amount of plot revelations that change the very nature of characters entirely that can add some "let me go back to this scene now that I know this" reread value. Overall enjoyable. Characters: 9/10. Takuru was nowhere near as unbearable as Takumi. Nono would probably be on my top 5 heroines if I did have a list. Idk, the student council president + nagging worrywart but legitimately caring older sister type was a complete and utter win for me. Hinae was the guilty pleasure. Hana and Uki were kind of like the filler heroines, but passable. Art: 9/10. Has that clean modern moe look. Particularly loved all of best girl Nono CGs. Some CGs can look a bit low quality though. Music: 8/10. They got some good tracks. The title theme World is pretty up there along with their other works like Steins;gate + (0). Visible Essence is the revelation theme and its quite badass when you do get it. !!!SPOILERS!!! MISC. THOUGHTS/COMMENTS (MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS) Finally can rant about the juicy bits. Overall: 8.5/10. Legit did not think I would like this sci-fi adv VN as much due to how much I despised Chaos;Head. It was good enough that I actually want to reread Chaos;Head so I can catch up on all the story beats and whatnot, but ahh nvm. Will look forward to reading Robotics;Notes + DaSH when they do come out to EN on the Switch later this year. I'll watch the 6.5/10 MAL rated anime of Chaos;Child real quick because I like to see things animated even though they'll probably butcher it so bad since only lol12episodes for a 30-50+ hr VN. E: lol yeah, the anime is only enjoyable as a "let's watch a recap of Chaos;child" right after finishing the VN itself. So many disappointed people who were like I don't get it or it's a rushed mess (which it definitely was, but I obviously was able to keep up and just enjoy seeing everything animated)

I don't know what the future holds for VNs, but I would like to see more emphasis on visual storytelling, because I see a lot of potential in that area. Muv-Luv Alternative and Mahoutsukai no Yoru comes to my mind, where they used lots of CGs and effects to add more immersion to the scenes. Most VNs just use static character sprites and then CGs in key moments (and ero scenes).

I see increasing movement towards mobile (especially free-to-play) and Steam. Chinese-language releases have great potential short-term, but long-term the opportunities for non-Chinese companies may dry up due to increased government oversight and the exit of Valve from China. Mobile will bring a focus on sporadic gameplay and de-emphasis on narrative. Developers aiming to release on Steam will shift away from school settings, and ero content will likely be designed to be modular and non-essential to the story so it can be easily removed. Steam releases will bring an increasing focus on interactivity, gameplay, and animation. The Japanese market remains saturated, and small and mid-sized developers will continue to fail amid stagnating or tightening market conditions; much of the growth and adaptation will be powered by English developers. Crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Patreon will continue to be a key driver of growth and innovation in the English market.

Yesterday I finished Midori's route in Natsu no Ame. It had very different tone compared to Rikako's route - it was much more lighthearted. I'd compare its mood to Making Lovers. For now, I think Midori might be my favorite character from this VN First h-scene happened totally out of the blue, but well, it wasn't something that couldn't happen at all, so I won't complain too much And scenes themselves, while fairly generic, had some nice dialogues in them, so all in all they were nice. By that I mean, there was some love there, not just technical descriptions of fucking coupled with moans and slurps (although those were present as well) Also, I really liked kissing CG before third scene. BTW now that I browsed through CG gallery, it seems that Rikako is the only one with four h-scenes - other heroines have three. And perhaps that fourth one was the one too many? Because, while reading Midori's route, I didn't have that feeling of h-content being forced / squeezed in, or at least not as much as in Rikako's route. Maybe they had better lead-ins (apart from the first one ) Now I'm reading Hinako's (osananajimi) route. It's again more serious mood than Midori's. Some people said it was boring - let's see how will it turn out for me.

The update for this week. Common: 100.0% Bethly: 100.0% Mizuha: 0.0% Yuzuki: 15.94% Momiji: 100.0% Hinata: 100.0% Total: 65.0% Once again no much to say, so that's all for this week update from Irru.