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Hapymaher is an interesting read. It's a multi-route mystery with some really entertaining comedy bits throughout. Many people have called it a nakige, and I can definitely see where it could make a lot of people emotional, but it didn't really make me emotional almost at all. I think personally I may have just been distracted by trying to figure out what was going on at any given point in time to get emotional, so YMMV. Some parts are stronger than others, but overall it tells an entertaining story that manages to draw the reader in at various points, even if the major parts are foreshadowed well in advance. Overall I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys a multi-route mystery or just a well told story. Systems in this VN are pretty standard. I do like to call out that they do let you do custom mapping of buttons, which is incredibly useful for me as I prefer using space bar over enter to advance text. BGM is pretty unique in that it doesn't just blend in and felt like it was actually adding something to the story rather than simply being there, as well as being memorable. I do feel that the BGM is probably in my top 5 or so and I feel like I will actually remember it for quite a while, which can't be said for most VN BGM's for me. The story is pretty obviously influenced by Alice in Wonderland, right down to the character designs. Characters are pretty straightforward but cute and memorable. Character designs are pretty good, my favorite among the Purple Software games at least. There's Yayoi, the upperclassman who acts as a sort-of advisor to the MC, Saki, the childhood friend / sister who enjoys tormenting the MC, Keiko, the underclassman who is stubborn and standoffish. Alice, the naive, energetic, sort of mysterious girl, and Maia the sadistic younger sister. There's also some support cast that are entertaining in their own ways. I personally found all the characters entertaining to different levels. I found Saki to be particularly adorable throughout the story. Yayoi was also fun - and is voiced by my favorite VA Kazane. Keiko I found to be a bit of a one note character personally. I won't go into details regarding the routes as they would be full of spoilers, but they were interesting and shared quite a bit of story between them with entirely different last chapters (8 chapters in the VN in total with a few intermissions). I found all the routes to be entertaining in their own ways, there were some emotional high - and low - points in the stories that are designed fairly well to get you involved in each heroine's individual history and story moving forward. I particularly enjoyed Yayoi's route personally, as it was the most relatable to myself, but I feel most people would probably enjoy Saki's route (among the three main heroines) the most. I liked Keiko's route less than the others, but that's probably partially because I was less of a fan of her character as she felt somewhat one note at times. In total there were 8 endings if you include the bad end, normal end, each heroine's route, and 1 true end at the very end of everything. Because of the shared scenes, each route you play through takes less time than the route before it (in most cases). Due to the nature of the mystery and shared scenes, if you're a completionist like I am, I think it's best to follow a recommended route order of Bad End > Yayoi > Keiko > Saki > Maia > Normal End > Alice > True End - although both the bad end and normal end are completely skippable and Yayoi/Saki/Keiko can technically be done in any order. I do think the normal end adds to the story, while the bad end won't be missed except by completionists like myself. My argument for the order of Yayoi > Keiko > Saki is so that you slowly find out more information without seeing it in a weird order and possibly getting confused, as I feel Saki's route has the most useful information in it (at least in my opinion). The order I followed was actually Yayoi / Saki / Keiko and I feel that Keiko's route then dragged a bit as I felt I already had most of the information necessary to keep moving forward. Ultimately I'd recommend Hapymaher to most readers, especially those who enjoy a well told story, multi-route mysteries, or a subdued nakige, especially if you're a fan of a mix of them. The BGM and systems were particularly strong suits in my opinion. Characters and routes themselves were solid without any obvious weaknesses or anything to complain about.

Visual Novel Translation Status (01/14/2017) Welcome to my VNTS Review for this week then, and for the title I'll say it in PPS below but let me said that I knew the image header was from Meikyuu. As for the big release, it's obviously Meikyuu unrated which Sekai was delayed the release from the promised time (December). And for Grisaia fan, have fun for enjoying full version of Meikyuu then which also had the missing H content there (Duh). Meikyuu unrated aside, this week we also had Dies Irae managed to successfully gathered the fund, and quite surprising at that. Personally I just think that hopefully they could AT LEAST gather the base goal (Quite possible) if we looking from how chaotic the Kickstarter was. There's stuff like troll pledge which managed to drop 10,000 funds when KA was almost end and there's another drop at 9,000 iirc. Not to mention it was quite slow at the gathering compared to Root Double from the last year. But there's a surprise in which not only they managed to gather exceeding the base cost, they managed to gather 220,000 in two last days which obviously quite sharp jump looking from daily funds. Once again congratulations for successful Kickstsrter after I'm worry looking at that every day. Let's look forward to the release then. Other than those two big news (Meikyu unrated and Dies Irae KS success), there's not much if we look at the update although there's some exception though of course. Speaking about exception, I was talking about Chrono Clock in which this week they managed to translated 83.79% of it which to be said it's quite nice jump after seeing it was progressing quite slow for two weeks. Although it's still not quite enough if they want to release it at late January though, so hopefully they could improve more for next week (Also hoping that they managed to overcome the technical problem). Other than Chrono Clock, they had Maitetsu was at 84.53% translated, Tensin Ranman was reaching 95% translated mark (95.15%), and Bokukotsu at 24.63% translated. Also there's progress from two of their secret projects (2nd project was at 55% translated and 4th project was at 41% translated). For last update, Akerou managed to reach 90% mark of Hoshimemo retranslation for real (Last update said that he almost retranslated 90% of Hoshimemo). For fan translation, there's a sad news namely that Kimisora was stalled because the translator was apparently had some sort of real life issue and the team said that they'll try to search another way to continuing the project. Well, hope the best for the team. Although with that came anohger project though, which unfortunately not the one that I interested (Gakuen Heaven, and it was BL VN). And this week there's also an update from Luna Translation. The most significant one would be Witch Garden common route translation was finished and right now it was in editing. Although there's some progress from other projects though, such as for SKM they try to convert the game file to be inserted in translation tool (And translating H Scenes in meantime). Also there's some effort in regard of restarting Kanobito progress and hoping that they could release it in current state according to the Tweet. For last update right now, there's Majokoi which is right now was at 68.5% translated and 56.5% edited. That's all for this week VNTS, and maybe I'll add dome update here later. See you next week. PS - There's update from Loverable in which right now it was at 46.4% translated, 14.17% QC-ed, 14.55% edited, and 15.58% TLC-ed. PPS (3/8) - For the title, maybe the the ending song title for Meikyuu would be appropriate here seeing that it was final release for Meikyuu (With restored H Scenes) instead of the opening title. So for the title, since once again Grisaia like using French in their title I decided to use the French for the ending song title. Which in this case it would be 'Sousei no Thanatos', also could be translated as 'The birth of Thanatos' as true ending song title. Of corse my title would be the French translation for the ending song, albeit loosely.