Leaderboard

Eight months after their last update, Frontwing finally updates the fans on the current state of their projects. Other than Sharin no Kuni, there are a lot of open questions. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frontwing/support-visual-novel-islands-english-game-and-anim/posts/3633384 What do you think? Have you ever bought or supported Frontwings kickstarter projects? Bad or good experiences with it?

終のステラ The setting is in a post-apocalyptic world where large singularity machines roam around and pose a threat to anyone who comes near them. The MC, Jude, is a Transporter who gets a request to transport an android to a certain place for the revival of humanity. Jude finds the android in an old ruin, and names her Philia. Philia wants to be a human, and Jude promises to take her to the professor who might be able to make her human. So the two travels together while trying to figure out how to be human. Philia has a child-like innocence lacking knowledge of most things with her being a complete blank state. You watch her slowly learn about the world. She doesn't want to eat deer as she feels sorry for it, but she's fine with eating fish. I guess it shows the hypocrisy of humans as mammals are closer to us, so we can relate it to it more. She often reminds Jude of his daughter. Her lack of sense of danger with Jude's realistic outlook makes for a good contrast. They both experience both the beautiful and ugly side of human nature through their travel. This works seems to be about finding the boundary between machine and human. What does it mean to be human? Does having a human body make someone human even if their mind is an AI? Or is the mind what matters, if an AI passes the turing test, does that mean they are indistinguishable from humans? It explores what is necessary for an AI to gain an ego. The professor says that for an AI to gain an ego, it is necessary to have instinct and fear. An AI stuck in a CPU case cannot gain a mind, because they cannot experience instinct and fear without a body. They need a body that can be stimulated by the outside world. I wonder what does /u/gambs think as this seems close to his field of study? It talks about the uncanny valley: a robot that looks too close to human becomes creepy. A simple robot with a ribbon looks cuter. But the uncanny valley can be conquered by making them indistinguishable from humans. As usual, Tanaka Romeo's prose is amazing. I have zero complaints. The background art looks great with the scenery. Tanaka Romeo explores the relationship between parent and child well. How a child is seeking the attention of their parent to prevent from being abandoned. Why are parents willing to die for their kids? Jude's answer is because it's their instict to preserve their genes. Sounds like something Setoguchi would say, hahaha. But he adds later on, that it can develop past instinct into true love after spending time with them. What the professor wanted was as I expected a 人柱 ending: sacrifice the few for the many. While it might be good for society, if it doesn't prove beneficial for the people being sacrificed it's a conflict of interest. So Jude ends up risking his life to save Philia. At its core, it's an adventure of two people who learn more about the world：its beauty and ugliness, what it means to be human, and about family love. Tanaka Romeo has created another great piece. For those who also just want to read a moege, not to worry, Philia is moe as hell. You can ignore all the complicated story and just focus on how moe Philia is. 美少女万華鏡 -神が造りたもうた少女たち- I can see why some people can like Biman 3 so much. It has lots of meme, and lots of it is based on Steins; Gate. But the story is rather meh. It's decent enough for a sci-fi, but there are plenty of better ones. What I would praise it for though is I guess the threesomes scenes which the previous Biman games did not have. It explores the relationship between religion, science, and the masses. How religion is used as a tool by those in power to keep themselves at the top, and the masses use it to mentally support themselves in hard times. It is amazing how self-aware Japanese are of religion, while accepting it themselves： 「苦しい時の神頼み。」 But honestly, compared to Tsui no Stella, it is rather shallow. Still, It is a decent game with a rather strong ending.

I don't exactly know if the translator can find more time to do more programming work and then finally do the QA here, but of course I hope that he can finally find the time to do both and thus finally have Eustia released after a very long wait to have it in English (It's been more than 11 years since the release). Let's see if we finally can see the full translation patch in Spring 2023 later. PS - I can still say that I like to see whenever there's a number increase in the current bar, especially when the increase is quite big like few days ago which lead to finally we had reach past 90% TLC-ed mark in Licia's chapter.