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Catgirls (and anthropomorphic humans in general) are a big fetish in the otaku media. The cat ears have become a staple of moe culture, a status symbol of what defines cuteness. Yet, whenever I play an eroge featuring such creatures, I often times find myself not enjoying a lot of the cutesy physical attributes of these specimen. Why is that? As I delved into my thoughts, I finally pieced together the reason for these feelings: catgirl discrimination What do I mean by this? It's simple. Catgirl discrimination is a common phenomenom in eroge (and even non-erotic titles) whereby catgirls are introduced as being an important part of a fictional setting, yet they are treated as less than humans throughout the story. Through my hours of research, I found that often times, animal girls in eroge are introduced as mere plot devices for sexual activity rather than fleshed out characters you can emphasize and form bonds with. Now this by itself isn't too surprising. After all, even when there's no catgirls involved, a lot of these games tend to focus on achieving a relationship status with another female human character. However, the difference between the latter and the former is that when humans are involved, they are treated as beings with intelligence. They are equal to the protagonist who wants to romance them. Yes, one can argue about the inherent misogyny in a lot of these titles, but that's beyond the point I'm making. The fact is, human girls are treated, well, like humans (as they should). But when it comes to catgirls, they are typically treated as less than human. They are dehumanized and turned into a creature akin to a pet. "What's the problem with that? They aren't humans, so of course they're not treated as such" you say. Ah yes, a fair point my dear reader, but let me ask you this then: Would you have sexsual intercourse with your cat or your dog? The answer is most likely "no" (if it is yes, please seek counceling. I heard PETA fines aren't anything to scoff at.) Therein lies the issue I have. Catgirls have primary human features, and yet they're often times treated as pets in most games. Why would you date someone who you treat like a pet? It makes little sense to me. Now you might say "it's just a porn game, it's for fetishistic purposes". And of course I can 100% concede to that. In fact, I myself find it to be a nice fetish to have somebody submissive to you act like a pet. There's nothing wrong with that. However, humans are more than their genitals, and their personalities go beyond the confines of the bedroom. In real life, even when we're talking about people who are into things like BDSM, there is still a human connection beyond their sexual life. No human *literally* becomes slave to another human, they mutually agree to have this type of relationship, and they ultimately see each other as equal in the relationship. Yet with catgirls, they are introduced as nothing more than instruments for sex 90% of the time, and even beyond the bedroom they're still just a pet that will obey anything and everything their owner tells them to. I can not concede that this is a healthy form for a relationship at all. Think about it. What is the point of dating somebody that always sees themselves and acts as inferior to you? Where is the happiness in dating someone with no consciousness, who's joy comes from eating food and sexually pleasing you? That is why I can not get behind most games featuring catgirls. To me, a relationship partner must be equal to me in status. I don't want to treat my significant other as a pet, but as a human being. I don't want to take them out on walks with a leash, I want to go on dates holding hands with them and eat a giant parfait together, and then pass out on a bench because the parfait was too big and we now feel like throwing up. I want script writers to write visual novels about worlds where catgirls are just like other humans. They just so happen to have cat ears and a tail and sometimes say "nya". I want them to be more than things you own that can't live by themselves without you taking care of them. That's what babies and dogs are for, not girlfriends. This is not to say I want the end of all games featuring submissive cat girls, that's still a very valid fetish, but I believe it's unfair to treat them like that in almost every single game, especially games where the focus is supposed to be the story and the characters. How can you say you have a game with great characters when those characters are seen as less than human? Games like nekopara thrive even though every single catgirl in it is portrayed as a brainless creature that goes into heat at random times and can only survive if the protagonist "relieves" them. Why must they act like animals this much? Why can't they just be regular human beings who you form a real bond with instead of an "owner x pet" relationship? In conclusion, I believe catgirls are heavily discriminated against when it comes to visual novels. They are beings that need to be given a conscioussness and a will to act on their own, not to become mere cheap tools for one's sexual pleasure. They have a lot of love to offer to the world, and we should start appreciating them for that, because who knows when they'll go extinct. Let's make the world a better place and stop catgirl discrimination. Every catgirl deserves to be portrayed as a being with a brain and a heart.

Oh wow, is that Parfait from the Little Witch Parfait series in the middle (to the right of Yuna/behind Roll)? Didn't know there were actually any figures for those games. I'm not a big figure collector but I might have to track that down. Also guess I might as well show-off my collection while I'm here: Games: PC games on the top of the left shelf, with portable games in the middle and various game books on the bottom. Right shelf is all of my console games (except for the Megadrive games which got arbitrarily placed on the PC shelf for now because... well I'm out of space) Manga/LNs: Anime: Game and anime related CDs + Seiyuu CDs/DVDs/Blurays (mainly Mizuki Nana) + game adaption LNs and manga

Visual Novel Translation Status (08/09/2020) Foreword - Looks like we finally have VNTS again even though the format is different, so I'll link it like back in the past. I hope that Zakamutt can keep it up. Welcome to this week VNTS Review and since I recently see some Jojo meme (And check some of the anime along with the manga), I decided to parodied the franchise in question by changing 'Jojo' into 'Kozue'. For the info Kozue here is the MC of Kozue's Strange Journey that was released by Kagura Games, and for the reminder strange is the synonym of bizarre while journey is the synonym of adventure. As for this week, what I can say is that after some active weeks this time it's quite calm in that there's only several updates along with one release, so yeah it's more or less just average week here although at least we have IxShe Tell exact release date announcement. Let's see what I can write for this week as well. As for Room No. 9 that Mangagamer just released, it's more or less a BL VN with the premise that Daichi was trapped in a hotel together with his male lover and in order to escape he must do several tasks that was assigned to him in that the choices are pretty much telling them to hurt each other. No much to say other than at least it should be good if we look that the writer is also wrote well-received BL VN No Thank You (I know that the name is a punny one), so get the VN if you interested and have fun. Of course with this Mangagamer announced their next release, and in this case it's WanNyan in that it's doggirl and catgirl nukige. Except that it turned out that the heroines are turned out to be just normal human who cosplayed to work at the cafe, and it's also the case back at Macchiato. As for the release date, it'll be at September 3rd later so feel free to note the date if you want to get it. I'll try WanNyan later, if only for the sexy alternative costumes that the heroines wear lol. Sekai have some updates, in that they have Slobbish Princess was fully translated, Kimagure was at 65% translated, and currently Nine 3 was waiting for the build approval. No much to say other than I hope that it mean they already prepared the release build for Nine Episode 3, and that hopefully they'll be able to release it at this year if possible seeing that Valve can be quite random in their approval. Speaking of Valve, they allowed Bokuten to be sold on Steam again after Mangagamer did some modification to the game file by changing the hidden 18+ CGs into blank files, so perhaps the hidden 18+ CGs in the game file of Steam version is really the problem. This week we have Trip being busy with his move, so unfortunately there's no Ginharu progress at this week. For other updates, we have Miotsukushi Ura was at 83% translated, Shin Koihime Musou was at 35% edited, Loverable was at 89.66% edited, Harugi was at 60% translated with Branch route was past halfway (64%) translated, Eustia was at 93.70% translated with side stories was at 59.10% translated, and Reflection Blue was at 60.6% translated with Miki's route was past three quarter (77.2%) translated along with Shiki's route (The longest new route of Summer Pocket for the info) was at almost a quarter (24.1%) translated. Forgot to inform that Alka decided to hold Kud Wafter translation in order to be focused on Reflection Blue, so we must wait if you looking forward to Kud Wafter. Turned out that Nekonyan decided to have IxShe Tell as their next release instead of Hello Lady. While granted that I didn't have problem with the release, I did think that Hello Lady would be Nekonyan's next release seeing that it's almost close to the completion back then. Well perhaps we'll going to have Hello Lady as their next release after IxShe Tell, so let's wait and hope that we'll see it at this year. As for the release date of IxShe Tell, it'll be at 28th later so obviously note the date if you've been waiting for it. What I can say is that at least the art is quite good if anything else, and just expect this as pure moege. Almost forget to say that we have the Steam store for this as well, so you can get IxShe Tell from Steam in case you using Steam. That's all for this week VNTS Review, and see you next week.