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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.