Fred the Barber

<3 Haibane Renmei. I find it to be a very well-told story. Enjoy! I finally got back to watching Shin Sekai Yori, but I'm still about 4 episodes in. I don't know why, but I find the show very hard to watch. I very much enjoy each episode, but I can only handle watching one episode at a time, whereas normally I can watch 2 or 3 episodes in a row easily. So, it looks like it's going to be a slow process...

But why male models?

Like TD, I love kids. My apartment building has a lot of parents with young kids, and whenever I see little kids doing little kid things, asking little kid questions, etc., I usually have a big goofy grin on my face. However... my apartment building also has a lot of dogs, and that's even better; it's a little less awkward, you know? Like, with a cute kid, I'll smile at their parents, but I worry that if I directly interact with the kid, the parents will be like "Whoa, stranger!". I feel no risk that people will act hyper-protective about their dogs, though, so I can offer the back of my hand for the dog to sniff by way of greeting, and then pet the dog and whatnot. In short: kids, good. Dogs, better!

I already do buy ebook LNs through Amazon. I've bought the whole Haruhi series, and am buying the DanMachi series there as it comes out. I also buy physical ones (really just Spice and Wolf), but I prefer digital. I do most of my reading on my Kindle. I don't give a damn about DRM for ebooks (unlike with music). I have a tendency to read books once, or if I'm going to read them multiple times, the reread usually happens within a year or two, so the possibility that I won't be able to read some book 10 years down the line doesn't really bug me (and, yes, I think that's a reasonable minimum approximate projection for how long DRM on a digital good sold by a mega software house like Amazon, Apple, or Microsoft would last, if bought today). Nosebleed and AM are obviously correct that, for an established publisher of either digital or paper books, the marginal cost of production and distribution of an ebook is almost certainly vastly lower than that of a physical book. I can't say for certain whether the one-off initial cost of preparing the publishable materials is higher or lower in either case, but I doubt that one is much different either way. So, it's not unreasonable to argue that the cost ought to be lower for an ebook than for a physical book, by exactly that marginal production cost difference, based purely on consideration of costs. However, the real consideration that drives the price in either case is actually not production cost: it's the value of a book or ebook to the individual purchaser. For me, buying a random LN, an ebook probably has a higher value than a physical book, because all I want is to read the words one way or another, I like the Kindle form factor, and bookshelf space is a serious concern for me. So, though the way firecat is saying it is controversial, I actually agree that the more important factor to how you think about the cost of a good should be the value of that good to you, not the marginal production cost of that good vs. the marginal production cost of another, comparable good.

Gah, you guys are making me feel like I need to pick up Air again (I stalled out pretty fast and switched to something else). But I need to play WEE episode 2. And then there's Majikoi, and Angel Beats! still unplayed, as well as Fate/HA. And then, and then... sigh. There's just not enough time. But right now, as soon as I finish with reading the forums, I will be trying to make a dent in Ell's route in My Girlfriend Is The President. Hopefully I can knock that all out tonight, and then just have Yukino left to bulldoze through tomorrow.

False, I'm pretty decent, actually. Except at basketball. I am absolute shit at basketball. It's how you find out what happens in the rest of Spice and Wolf. Next person likes inflatable things. Balloons, inner tubes, octopuses, whatever.

By the way, My Girlfriend is the President is gonna be in this VN bundle. I have no excuse, aside from not really caring for Yukino. I wasn't even drunk. Probably.

This is obviously a personal anecdote, and thus doesn't really answer a question like "which has done the most", but I'll throw it out there nonetheless, and if you don't like it you can throw it right back. The only organizations that can be credited with my playing VNs are Fuwanovel and Sekai Project. When I first started down this road, I was specifically looking for the Little Busters! VN because I wanted more Little Busters!, and Fuwanovel (and those good old torrents) were how I wound up actually playing. Even after that, I was still not really pulled into the VN scene (I wasn't on these forums, and although I went on to read Rewrite, I was basically done with the medium at that point) until I heard about the Clannad Kickstarter, which was a big enough deal to appear on AnimeNewsNetwork. That's the point where I actually ended up back here, reading VNs and talking about them. So, for me personally, it's Fuwanovel and Sekai Project, with the real driving force behind that obviously being Key and the excellent anime adaptations of their work (which would seem to not really be what the original question is looking for).

Wrapped up Ran's route tonight (part 3 was short).

False, though there are many repetitive pointless tasks that I find soothing, the same way The Wind-up Bird Chronicle's protagonist does ironing. Next person has never ironed anything in their life.

she was levering me into a vicious judo takedown. I landed faceup, ...

Scrolled through the thread only to find that Zeno already posted my answer...

Best news I've heard in a while! I loved episode 1, so I'm looking forward to finally playing episode 2. This gives me motivation to finish reading My Girlfriend Is The President with the reading club.

Great, now I want to pick up this game again just so I can get that CG. I never could get myself to start another route after finishing my first, Ayaka. Can't believe I had to settle for third-best girl, since best girl and second-best-girl didn't even have routes.

So, I'm curious what other people think about Remi. I wanted to like her based on my first impressions (small, cute, useless girls are, well, cute), but as I was playing through Puchin's route, her voice and mannerisms just started to get more and more on my nerves. The volume issue alluded to earlier (by Zeno, I think?) definitely didn't help. Now I just kind of sigh every time I see her show up. Honestly, if her voice had been a little bit quieter, I probably would've continued to think she was at least a little cute, instead of being just annoying.

I've been playing Suikoden 2 on the bus. I like both the core gameplay (recruit ALL the Stars of Destiny!) and the story quite a bit, but the mini-games can be kind of weird. I was just wandering around my castle, as Suikoden heroes are wont to do, when I was suddenly challenged to a cooking battle. I had no idea that was even a thing until it happened to me! I lost, but the animations for it were hilarious, so I didn't mind.

Finished Ran part 2, on to the finale.

What is the worst anime you've ever watched, and why?

The hail stuff there is a scientific fact, not just your experience. Hail is most common in hot weather (with a variety of other conditions), and gets much more rare as temperature decreases. Go read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail- it's actually pretty interesting! Confession: Despite being a software developer, who kind of by definition produces code, I think about half of my real work gets done when I'm not at my desk. Talking to people about problems and solutions, and just thinking about how to solve problems in the back of my mind while I'm walking around or lying half-asleep in bed, is where I tend to get all the hard problem-solving done. Actually typing up the code (and testing it, and debugging it...) is important, too, of course, but somehow seems less crucial.

Ahh, if you like fighting games, then that's a different story. I'm not a fighting game person at all (except Smash Brothers, which everybody knows is very different from... well, everything else). I'm definitely getting Dancing All Night as well. Time will tell if I regret it, but I expect I'll like it - I love Persona music, and I really enjoy rhythm games, so it'd be hard for them to lose me on this one.

Figured as much, but it really can't be helped; Haruhi is pretty hard to surpass. I guess it's all on the show's shoulders to make me care about Nagato, then, because it's not doing a great job so far (even if the ED does jab at my heart a little bit every time).

Watched a couple more episodes of The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, and Haruhi's appearance starting in episode 3 increased my enjoyment of the show substantially. I'm still on the fence about the way the show looks. In most ways, I think it looks better than the original series, but I do feel like some elements definitely suffered. I don't like the way Kyon looks - he's very bland now. For the dub, it seems Funimation got the whole voice cast from the original series back, which was definitely a good move, since the original had a very solid dub. The most important voices to me were Kyon and Haruhi - if they'd been different, I'm pretty sure it would've bugged me way more than the art style changes. It hardly matters with Nagato, interestingly. Her character is so different that I couldn't even be sure whether it was the same voice actor, whereas with the others I was immediately sure. Episode four had a well-executed, gorgeous scene that really grabbed my attention. I didn't see it coming until the end of episode four, but I guess this show wants me to root for Nagato. My history with the Haruhi series means that Haruhi holds the exclusive keys to my heart, so I'm worried about whether I'll like where the show goes from here. The conflict it's setting up right now really isn't what I'm looking for, but I guess as long as I get to see more of Haruhi being Haruhi, I'll probably still enjoy things.

It was a close race, but the "cutest outfit" award goes to Ell's pajamas. The totally pointless collar with attached equally pointless bowtie was just too strong for any contender to overcome.

But why male models?

Confession: I intended to be playing a VN right now, but every time I sit down at my home computer, I habitually open the browser and go to the forums