Fred the Barber

Yeah, WTF. Guy writes two 10/10 anime and people start talking about what a good writer he is. Quick, let's find some bad shit he's written and make fun of him for it, since if he were actually any good, he'd only have produced perfection. That said, I do actually have a reason for posting again aside from trolling, which is to say: I did really enjoy Gargantea, but it might not be to your tastes (though it's also pretty short, so maybe watch it anyway?), and I've wanted to watch Planetes for years, and that this was a good reminder that I should really just give up on it ever being available for streaming legally or the license being picked up again and buy a copy on eBay (and hope it arrives and works...).

I haven't watched it in well over ten years, but The Big O is a classic and probably worth your time. I've been meaning to watch it again, actually.

True, I guess? Not especially often, though. I do use Excel fairly frequently, though. Next person doesn't want to grow up.

ME2's core gameplay was much less RPG-like and more FPS-like. I'm comfortable with both, and the latter is indescribably faster-paced and more rewarding for me personally, so I vastly preferred ME2 over ME1 in terms of gameplay. For whatever reason, I couldn't get into ME3 and have only logged a couple hours on it, versus 100% completion of ME2's achievements, and some very high completion of ME1's (definitely not 100%, because it takes freaking forever to get those per-ally achievements). ME2 was certainly a lot weaker on the overarching plot compared to ME, no denying that. I can actually remember all the key points of ME's plot, and still find it pretty cool in retrospect, whereas ME2 was more filled with reactions of "meh" and "that makes literally zero sense". There is a certain fanservicey appeal to the loyalty missions in ME2, though, for people who didn't get to see enough of the characters they liked in ME1. Or in other words, Tali is best girl and needs maximal screen time. Less shallowly, I thought Legion was a really interesting addition to the team, in terms of how he changed my perception of the game universe.

Comyu does indeed have a maid, though I wouldn't even have remembered it until Clephas mentioned it. Really a false maid, if you ask the protagonist, but someone who works at a maid cafe, wears a maid outfit all the time, and refers to the main character as "goshujin-sama" in bed probably meets your requirements nicely. It's also actually a good VN (as are many, but certainly not all, of the others mentioned above, of course).

Everybody knows Kaguya's actually a girl pretending to be a boy using an anime grill avatar.

0/10 literally hitler

Even though I've been unable to get into the games, I still think Nepnep's pretty damn cute. 9/10. @Arcadeotic please post in this thread so I can rate your new avatar "0/10 literally hitler" kthx

Lately, a number of Kickstarters have happened for decent-looking independent VNs, many of which have been funded well enough to afford English voice actors. Of these, I recall being cautiously optimistic about Bloody Chronicles and Caramel Mokaccino, though I don't think either will be out for quite a while. From the VNDB link that littleshogun provided, I seem to recall Lucid9 being fairly well-received.

Confession: Every fall, when the fog rolls in to Seattle, I think to myself: "I must enter the TV world and save them!"

I'm also watching Bakemonogatari at the moment, and had the exact opposite reaction: Senjougahara may be best girl of all time, and why haven't I ever heard anybody say that before (well, probably because I've never looked around for Monogatari discussion). I suspect it's something to do with her being really dominant, which does indeed happen to be a quality I appreciate. Mayoi is pretty cute, though, including the constant butchering of "Aragi-san"'s name. Also, shit this show is great, why didn't I watch it sooner.

But what about that legendary lacrosse VN, Muv Luv.

To be completely honest, I've ended up finding that I usually prefer the linear story structure of a kinetic novel over a visual novel, or for choices to impact more the order in which you see things than the things you see. That's because what I'm mostly looking for in a visual novel, is a long, involved story told with visuals and music (and preferably voice acting), and having branching usually means that I'm getting shorter, less-involved stories. Similarly, if a VN has a "true route", I'll usually prefer that over a similar-quality VN which has routes of fairly equal weight, since then, as others already have said, the other routes are usually providing various viewpoints and different angles, and usually some unanswered questions, which the true route will take to completion, which I personally find satisfying. So, most of that preference falls out of my not being into VNs for a particular route or a particular heroine, so much as for a (hoped-for) bigger story arc. This is one of probably dozens of reasons I didn't especially care for Princess Evangile...

It's National Poetry Day. Read some. Or listen to me read some, that's cool, too. Apologies for the minor screwup at 0:40; I did it in one take and didn't have the energy to do it over.

Teams are always looking for translators. Go post over here with your skills, qualifications, and what you're interested in, and you can probably find something you're interested in working on and a team to work with: That said... be serious before you do. Committing to TL a game is a huge endeavor that will take, at least, months of time. Translation projects get abandoned a lot. I'd encourage you to sign up only if you're really ready to commit to that, and suggest you make certain your team is equally serious about showing results.

Demonbane, being Lovecraft-inspired, has a fair amount of tentacles, though I definitely wouldn't call it the "theme".

Disclaimer: I did not hear the stream, and I don't actually know anything. But I will nonetheless venture a guess based on what they've been doing recently: I expect they're doing the same thing they did for Chrono Clock, where they do a modest Kickstarter specifically to sell physical goods, to make sure there's enough money out there to make physical goods worthwhile. The game will get a digital release regardless, based on previous announcements, but I don't recall them announcing anything about physical goods for WagaHigh previously, and the Chrono Clock physical goods Kickstarter went well enough, so I expect they'll keep doing that.

Burnsss us, it does.

Well, Flowers was a high-profile recent release in this territory as well, and one of JAST USA's tiny number of announcements this year was localizing the updated Katahane release. Two games don't make a trend, of course, but JAST's sample size is tiny to begin with, so it's hard to really draw any conclusions there.

False. I don't know that I've ordered one in like five years. Next person cooks regularly.

I don't like it when people change their name.

Don't know anything about the other two, but I'm both unsurprised and excited to see they're picking up the new Spicy Tails project.

The Kanon 2006 anime is by KyoAni and looks fantastic, if you like moetacular things. It's also a much better-told story than the VN. I actually was confused about what happened in the VN while reading it, but everything makes perfect sense in the KyoAni adapation, despite (or perhaps because of) their adapting the VN routes into one single storyline. That said, you should probably take my opinions with a grain of salt, since I also love the English dub and always watch that version, though it does have one flaw: Sayuri's VA is pretty bad. Anyway, as for me: currently playing Harmonia, though I haven't played any since last weekend. So far it's fine, but unremarkable. I need to read the rest of it, really; I'm only through the first few chapters, while they're still establishing characters. On major comment so far is that, at a micro scale, I hate the writing, which I'm pretty sure is mostly the translation's fault.

False, we get along fine now, but that definitely wasn't always the case. Next person generally prefers lime over lemon.

But I thought Airy made for a great mascot