Leaderboard

Outside of Japan, vndb.org seems to be the biggest information source about ADV-style games and Japanese eroge. Over the years several people have contributed to the website building a robust database. But the website founder who goes by Yorhel, is an extreme narcissist and hypocrite. Recently they have been pushing their personal agenda in form of absurd misinformation in quite a vigorous manner. They have no respect for the artists or the artform, and they'll do anything in their power to suppress facts against them. This includes gaslighting, abusing their position to ban and even delete posts on the website. Some of you might've been keeping up with these certain events, and already have an idea as to what I am talking about. But for those who might be clueless, I'll explain everything in as much detail as I can. It will make this post quite long, but it's better to be clear about everything. First I'll have to explain the pseudoscience of "Gender Identity" or "Gender Theory". Most of you probably already know about it, since it's practically everywhere these days; and some of you will even take offense here. But in case someone doesn't understand what I talking about, I'll explain it. The ideology or theory of "Gender Identity" is a new pseudoscience that has been getting popular recently. This pseudoscience claims that the concept of gender is made up, a "Societal Construct" they call it. According to this asinine theory, the concept of man and woman are merely an object of mind with no connection to material reality. In accordance to this theory; at birth a child is "Assigned" a "Gender", and then they are expected to play the role of the "Assigned Gender"; and that's how people end up "Identifying" as "Man" or "Woman". Simply put, this ideology claims that a person's "Gender" isn't defined by his/her gender (his/her body); but instead it's defined by the stereotype one decides to play. This forms the basis for all kinds of insanity. And people who refuse to play along with this insanity, are said to be committing "discrimination" or "hate crime". The founder of vndb.org Yorhel is a strong believer of this pseudoscience. They have been pushing changes to the website to make it more "Gender Inclusive". Yorhel claims that they are completely unbiased on the matter; their justification for these changes been that western games with "Gender Identity" characters are on the rise, and they only want to represent this new genre. That's a hypocritic lie; a simple tag such as "Gender Diverse Characters" or something along those lines would've sufficed to represent this genre. Instead they want this pseudoscience to be represented in vast detail. They have introduced several new tags for both games and characters, like "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Gender Nonconforming Individual". What does that really mean? It means that at least person involved in the act believes themselves to be a different "Gender". So it's the same as saying "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Christian" or "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Flat-earther". When these changes were introduced months ago, I tried to voice my objection. Yorhel wasted no time, instantly taking down my post. And I mean that in literal sense, they reacted a couple of seconds after I had made the post. I then got into a direct conversation with Yorhel, their intention being to intimidate and lecture me. This turned into a long and infuriating argument that went on for almost two days. (It wasn't a real time chat, we seem to be from time zones so we checked each other's messages at our time) Like I said it was a long and heated argument, I for myself losing my cool after dealing with this for a whole day. I can't mention everything that happened, but I'll try to mention all the important details; while also trying my best to not turn this into a complete rant. And here is link to one of my discussion posts that Yorhel hasn't deleted yet; instead they had immediately locked it right after banning me. https://vndb.org/t22172 During my long argument with Yorhel I tried voicing my concerns as this push will lead to misrepresentation and mislabelling of games. Believers of “Gender Theory” would mislabel several tropes found in anime and manga for sake of their agenda. This became one of the central points in the argument. I’ll explain these tropes in case someone is not familiar with it. Otokonoko (男の娘）, also known as Josou（女装）; outside of Japan this trope has names like “trap", “tomgirl", “femboy", etc. This is a character trope in Japanese media that’s generally about crossdressing boys. Specifically, it refers to boys who have strikingly feminine features, to a point where he looks very much like a girl. It usually involves crossdressing in feminine clothes to further push this concept of “a boy who looks like a girl”. Either the character himself will have a preference for feminine fashion, or he will be forced into crossdressing in comedic scenarios. Since we are discussing this, this character trope has nothing to do with the pseudoscience of “Gender Identity”. The character isn’t crossdressing because he believes himself to be a different “Gender". Futanari （フタナリ）, also known as “dickgirl" in english. This is a fictional trope about females with male genitals. That is, a fictional woman who has a penis. Usually fictional devices such as magic are employed to explain it, or sometimes the character is said to be naturally like that. This is a trope that defies reality in fiction, similar to how a fantasy author may choose to make the earth flat. It has no connection to, and doesn’t adhere to pseudoscience of “Gender being a made up thing". Tomboy; is a character trope that is less obscure than the other two I mentioned; and I assume everyone is familiar with it. It refers to young girls who take on a “Boyish" attitude. It’s a character trope that challenges traditional gender norms, but not in the sense of “Identifying as a different gender if you don’t fit in with the stereotypical women”. During my argument with Yorhel, they kept asserting how they have every right to force their personal beliefs onto these games. They acted exactly how you would expect a narcissist to, pulling all kinds of word tricks and sh!t games. At first they tried to turn the blame on me, telling me to “accept other people’s opinions”. I made myself clear that I don’t care about opinions, especially when they are wrong; and moreover this is about facts. Obviously they followed this with “What facts are you even talking about?”. When I mentioned my concern about works being mislabeled and misrepresented giving the example of Otokonoko, they quickly snapped at me, “As a matter of definition it is". I asked what did they even knew about it, and it turned out they were not at all familiar with the mentioned character trope. I explained the trope in detail, in order to make things clear. But now I get “but there is no consensus on the definition of Otokonoko/trap". It had became clear what motives this person had. But I still tried to reason with them. Getting frustrated I stated the very obvious, these games and characters have nothing to do with the pseudoscience of “Gender Identity” because that was never the intention of the authors and artists. As for what Yorhel had to say about this, these are exactly their words- “Does author intention even matter?” “Shouldn’t it depend on how one interprets it?” (or more specifically how they want to interpret it) This level of narcissism is sickening. This person is straight up telling me that someone’s work isn’t defined by the artists themselves; instead it should be presented in accordance to this person’s will. As an artist myself I took offense over such absurdity. That was a summary of what went down during my argument with Yorhel. They want facts to thrown out, and straight up told me that they have every right to misrepresent and mislabel other people’s work in accordance to their agenda. Like all believers of pseudoscience, they simply want to assert validation of their personal beliefs. And even after making such outrageous arguments, they still had the gall to say that they are completely impartial on the matter. After this I created a new discussion posts, the one I have linked to up above. This is where Yorhel finally banned me with a gaslighting effort. They then quickly locked the post to cut off any further discussion on the topic. And that wasn’t it, a couple of months later I created an alt account to start a new discussion post. This was one final attempt at negotiating a possible middle ground. This post was about suggestions of certain restrictions that would avoid mislabeling whilst still keeping these new tags. The very second this post was uploaded; and I mean it, the very second it was uploaded it got wiped off the website. This told me that Yorhel is now straight up suppressing any voice against their agenda. Yorhel has crossed all lines, proving themselves to be an extreme narcissist who has no respect for artists. Their personal agenda is all that matters to them now. They have already been pushing misinformation, and even suppressing facts. I know how controversial this could be. But I just wanted to dump out what I knew.

Since it's been a while, OP may not have seen the notification for this. They're responsive on the linked Discord though if you wanted to check in there. Last I heard, it sounds like it understandably had to take a backseat to work, but as far as I'm aware, it's still ongoing.

Sorry but I didn't find your highly politically influenced argument convincing at all. I suggest you take a step back and recognize that your views are excessively emotional on the matter. To be blunt, please don't bring America's perverse and dogmatic tribal politics onto the forum. You have the right to feel the way you do, but please refrain from trying to 'convince' everyone that yours is the only possible logical argument. Regardless of what 'views' Yorhel and the others might have (which I don't care about one way or the other), vndb serves its purpose of making people aware of new VNs when they come out and retaining basic information on VNs in general. I don't demand anything more of it, and I honestly don't care if they fiddle with tags for random reasons. It's their website and their efforts to maintain it are what have kept it alive for so long. Without vndb, finding visual novels would be much, much harder and more haphazard, like with anime and manga (which have way too many half-assed database sites with horrible structure that makes it hard to find anything). 'Rival' sites don't last long for a simple reason... those sites never manage to be convenient and relatively easy to search even if you don't know an individual visual novel's name. Edit: I should also note that vndb is not primarily or even secondarily a social media site. Ultimately, it is a database where one can (with a sense of moderation and responsibility) post information and reviews for VNs. Treating it like the poisonous swamps that are Reddit, Facebook, and X does no one any good. The social element has its issues, but the bare bones nature of the social features shows how little interest there is in that aspect in the first place. While it is technically a community, it is a community whose focus is on a niche medium of entertainment, not a place for people to rave about political viewpoints.

Science Fantasy is perhaps one of the most pervasive genres in existence. The most powerful example in Western culture would be Star Wars, which is often considered the penultimate science-fantasy by fanboys. However, the genre also gained some minor popularity elsewhere, with the Deathstalker Saga and a few others prior to the current fantasy/sci-fi publishing boom that hit after ebooks took off. The Superhero genre can also be considered to be science-fantasy in a general sense, making it a bigger umbrella than most think. JRPGs such as the old Breath of Fire series and Xenogears both included elements of science-fantasy, mixing magic and tech freely, and this was also seen in Final Fantasy VI, where magitech was at the center of the story for much of the game. For VNs, my beloved Silverio series is worth mentioning, as the series has a basis in science-fantasy rather than being pure fantasy. Perhaps the most notable aspect of science-fantasy is that it combines the flexibility of fantasy with an internal consistency reminiscent of science-fiction in many cases. Fantasy is an infinitely flexible genre with no real limits, whereas science-fiction is usually an extension of our world, seen as a potential future or past. When the two are combined, you get a genre that seems partially like an extension of the world we know and partially a realm of pure fantasy and imagination.

As someone who read a wide variety of high fantasy novels over the years and experienced the golden age of fantasy (1980-2000) novels in the US, I am a lover of adventurer stories. This doesn't change even with switching to Japanese web novels, where 'true' adventurer stories are a solid minority of the isekai and fantasy genres. First, for those who are unfamiliar with the difference between isekai and high fantasy, it is fairly simple. Isekai requires that the protagonist have an origin in one world and be present during the story in another, so it doesn't strictly require the story to be pure fantasy (science-fantasy and certain types of science fiction also work). High fantasy, on the other hand, has no involvement with our own world, often having various rules and powers such as magic or psionics that don't exist here. A 'true' adventurer story - as I define it anyway - is a story where a protagonist becomes an adventurer and travels the world, builds a life as an adventurer, and/or delves dungeons for profit and exploration reasons. However, there is also one last requirement... the protagonist can't be 'overpowered'. The hardships of the story are part of it in general, and an overpowered protagonist - by nature - isn't adventuring, he is vacationing, lol. Not that I don't love overpowered protagonists in isekai and fantasy settings, but for someone who wants to vicariously experience adventures, overpowering the main characters generally isn't a great idea. If the protagonist is overpowered, then his enemies need to be overpowered as well to make the story a true adventurer, and these days, most stories of this sort in Japan tend to nerf the antagonists in general. Annainin wa Isekai no Jukai o Samayou https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054918935123 This particular one is the one I think of the most when I think of 'True Adventurer Stories'. The protagonist of the story gets thrown into an isekai by a random portal and has to struggle to survive in a forest before eventually reaching civilization. He eventually manages to return to Earth, where he ends up becoming a guide for people who want to pass through 'his' portal to the other world. It is a very down to earth story, with a protagonist who is capable but not overpowered. Isekai Ten'i, Jirai Tsuki https://ncode.syosetu.com/n0350em/ This is one of my more recent favorites, as I only finished it up to its current end point a few weeks ago. The protagonist of this story dies - along with his entire class - and gets the option to select skills using points gained based on his capabilities and talents on Earth. As other members of the class request powerful 'cheat' abilities, the evil god (self-proclaimed) tells them there is no such thing as a cheat ability, and he learns when he selects 'Help' as his first skill selection that all the classic cheat skills (Skill Theft, Skill Copy, XP increase, etc) all have massive demerits that far outweigh their benefits. Thus, he avoids the traps and selects a skillset based on surviving in the new world, where he is joined by his childhood friends Touya and Haruka. The early part of the story is them starting out as adventurers and building a life base for themselves in the town they arrived near, while slowly raising their rank and improving themselves through training and fighting monsters. While the protagonist and friends are pretty capable by the end, they are - at best - on the higher end of the average veteran adventurers in capabilities, so you won't see them overpowering everything from the front like a lot of isekai protagonists. Bastard Swordsman https://ncode.syosetu.com/n9619hu/ This one follows a reincarnated protagonist who was born between two people of different ethnic backgrounds (and is thus a target for mild racism) and works as a low-ranking adventurer in town. While he is technically overpowered, he almost never shows this in his regular life, instead mostly working odd jobs and helping out those around him. If he doesn't use his special ability (which is basically a trump card that takes a lot out of him) he is about as strong as the higher-ranking adventurers, but he deliberately spends his life taking on small jobs, occasionally dribbling knowledge from his previous life anonymously to those who can use it, and generally just enjoying life in general. This is pretty much a slow-life story, so don't expect anything grand out of him. The fact that I can only name three such web novels, despite devouring tons of fantasy and isekai over the past five years should tell you just how rare this kind of thing is. If any of you have any suggestions to add to this list, I would be grateful, lol.

Welcome to this week VNTS Review, and as we know our highlight for this week should be Nekonyan's announcements. Other than that, we also have some updates from fan translation, Mangagamer, and Sekai which is good enough to me seeing that we also have one particular big announcement from fan translation. Lastly before I'm continuing the review let me said that at first I think that this week would be a plain one, but thanks to Nekonyan it turn to become an interesting one. Let's see what I can write for this week as well here, and I'll tell the meaning of this week review title at PS later. From fan translation, there's no update from Tsurezure again so I'll just directly assume that either they took some rest or really busy with real life matter (If anything I'll just think that they'll release Mizuha's patch in 2021 at the earliest, but of course if they want to prove me that they can release it at this year then so be it). For the other updates, we have Shin Koihume Musou was at one third (33%) edited, Loverable was at 78.82% edited, and Miotsukushi Omote was at 5% edited. For the biggest update in fan translation, we have Summer Pocket was at 94.37% translated with Alka's route was fully translated. As for their plan to release Alka's patch (ie at 17th later), I admit that it's very interesting so let's see if they can fulfill it later (And obviously it mean that they manage to release it first before the official release). As for why I call it Alka's patch, the reason is because most of the lines for the true routes was in Alka's route, and for more information the last route for Summer Pocket is Pocket's route itself (Summer Pocket true route here did consist of Alka and Pocket routes). That's all for fan translation section at this week. We also have Irotoridori was at 20% edited, and that's all for Sol Press update here. From Sekai currently we have Daybreak was in image editing and more importantly waiting for the review (Which understandably took a long time seeing that it's Valve and all), Hoshimemo retranslation was in QA (Still redundant to me anyway), and Eternal Heart was at 40% translated. The most important update from Sekai is that they lost their Dracu Riot license because it's been revealed that Nekonyan took the license as their first secret project, and currently it's already finished the translation progress (Yes including editing) so we may have near future release. I think I didn't need to introduce it seeing that most people should already know about it, but to me it's still a redundant announcement here (I know that some people did prefer to wait for the edited version, so good for them). With this Sekai was already lost two Yuzusoft VNs license, and I think it's only a matter of time before Nekonyan take over Tenshin Ranman license as well. As we know we have Nekonyan did revealed all of their five secret projects, and one of those projects are Dracu Riot that I talk above. For the rest of the announcements, let me talk about it started from my least interesting announcements to me (Beside Dracu Riot obviously). But before that let me list some of their updates here, in which they already have both of Hello Lady and Makover was fully translated, Aokana Extra 1 translation will start in a few months, and Senren Banka already ready for the release as Nekonyan's Valentine prize (At 14th later). What I can say is that I hope that Nekonyan can release both of Hello Lady and Makeover (Or either one is fine) in this year, and good luck to Nekonyan in regard of that. The first title that I would talk here is IxShe Tell aka their fifth secret project, because from several reviews that I search I did find that apparently it got the least favorable opinion such as it's only a generic moege or something like that. That said, my opinion may change though so I'll keep my eyes on this. The premise is very simple in that it have our MC as the student council president who manage to abolished the rule that banned student to fall in love, and currently he need to deal with five cute girls chase after him. For more info, Nekonyan did offer this as their replacement for Melty Moment which make sense seeing that it's been from the same developer (Hooksoft), and currently it's been at 45% for both of translation and editing progress. Turned out that their second secret project is Riddle Joker (Pretty much already expected, especially if we look at SD CG from Riddle Joker that Nekonyan post at one of their past tweet), in which it's the most recent Yuzusoft VN before Cafe Stella. The premise is we have the MC who is a secret agent who infiltrate the school that nurture the student with special talent, and that his secret was revealed by student council president who hide the secret that her breast is very small and thus she wear pads. While more Yuzusoft VN is always good and looks like their current relationship with Nekonyan is quite good, I think I'm probably neutral with this for now. Anyway with Nekonyan took over both of Senren Banka and Dracu Riot from Sekai along with this and Sanoba, currently we have them hold four Yuzusoft VNs so I'm kind of wonder if they somehow could hold Amairo license in the future later. For the reminder, the progress at Riddle Joker was at 65% translated along with halfway edited. Their third secret project is quite surprising, because turned out that the name of the project is Kin'iro Loveriche aka Kirikoi which as we know it's Saga Planet VN. While currently Saga Planet here is the cursed company that still have none of their VNs are translated, looks like the one who break that curse is Nekonyan. I don't know though if Kirikoi license here could be followed by other Saga Planet license, but let's hope that it'll be especially with some of their well known VNs such as Hatsuyuki Sakura and Hanasaki Love Spring. For the premise, well I think Evangile's premise should be similar enough except the MC caught attention from an European princess and that he got beaten up by the guard before being placed in the high class school. For additional note here, almost all of the heroines are blonde (Because of the 'kin'iro' title, and 'kin'iro' mean golden (Just like Kin'iro Mosaic in that the female MC have an interest to blonde hair)) and currently it's been at 40% translated along with 12% edited. For the 4th secret project, currently it's the most interesting one to me. It's also been fully translated for a while, so perhaps we may have this being released in the near future. The project is Clover Days, which as we know it's one of the project that was in torpor because it became too much for Astro to handle. Out of all five announcements, safe to say that Clover Days here did gather some favorable opinion so I'll be looking forward to the eventual release here. The premise is going like we have a MC who is an adopted son that was taken from London to live in Japan, and that he had two very cute twin sister. Also the MC himself was already established his friendship with several other characters, who somehow are the twins (Apparently Clover Days here really put emphasis on twin sibling). Since we already have Ittaku fully translated this, all that left is the editing progress so good luck to Nekonyan for that. That's all for this week VNTS Review, and happy very belated Chinese New Year. See you next week. PS - For this week title, I use 'Twilight' from Dracu Riot and 'Days' from Clover Days. 'Days' part here is obvious enough, while for 'Twilight' it's because in Dracu Riot we have vampire and the closest vampire story that have romance would be Twilight, so yeah once again I parodied Twilight here. PPS - Forgot to write Mangagamer's updates here, but overall it's been overshadowed by Nekonyan's announcements. For their update, we have both of Macchiato and Matsuribayashi about to be in testing, Rance 01 was fully edited, the image editing for 02 was finished, and Sona-Nyl was at 80% edited. That's all for my belated Mangagamer's updates roundup here.

If by "appropriate" you mean how you acted in this forum in the past I can understand why you trust him so much. Anyway, since Yorhel seems to make this matter personnal there is nothing anyone can do, under the risk to be trashed or banned. The only good side is since "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Gender Nonconforming Individual" doesn't actually mean anything I assume very few people will use it.

... Well at least now I know that the post at least can contain more than 9,000 characters, so thanks to the OP to directly confirm it by posting his incessant rambling.

I think Yorhel is in the top 1-2% of people I'd trust to implement both more Western and Japanese ways of looking at the issue as appropriate to the title. As for the argumentation, well, I think a quote from one of the threads you link says it quite well: I am thoroughly unimpressed by your argumentative performance.