Fred the Barber

TBH, I feel like the fanservice kind of always feels that way, throughout the whole series. Probably not just a Kizu thing. Attempt at an explanation: one of the best ways I can think of to describe Monogatari is "surreal", and the incessant, over-the-top horniness is another expression of its surreality. Maybe? Maybe. Either way, doesn't really make it better or worse. It's just a fact of Monogatari life.

God, I feel you. Sora is a phenomenal character. Good news is, she's up next in volume 2.

Watching Monogatari out of order is a huge mistake, IMO, and is definitely going to kill the experience. Now, you can argue that Kizumonogatari is the right starting place, but the anime airing order is probably better? That said, from personal experience, even if you start at Bakemonogatari, it's a little iffy at times and can feel slow and patchy, until you get used to the way the show works (which takes some time, because I don't know of anything else even remotely like it). But judging by what I've seen of Kizu, it's gonna be a rough intro to the show, where Bake is pretty gentle. It'll still feel like you don't know what's going on a lot of the time (or, it would, if you didn't watch Kizu), but I assume that's kind of the intent, and it's at least a great deal tamer. Beyond that, you really have to be into the fanservice to get into the show, because the show is never not horny. If you can't stomach fanservice, then you shouldn't force yourself to watch Monogatari, because you're not going to be able to enjoy it. I honestly don't know if it's actually important to the show (it might be? I'd have to refresh and think about it...), but it is definitely just, constantly there. If you're tentative about it, or maybe tentatively okay with fanservice in general but not so much with the specifics of how it was handled in what you watched, then maybe give the show a shot from the start, following the anime airing order—the characters will grow on you. I didn't really warm up to the series until Nisemonogatari, but once I did, man... At this point, I think it's a phenomenal and utterly unique show, and I get engrossed in it every time I pick up another chunk to watch. Which reminds me that I really need to resume watching it, since I last left off after Hana...

Yeah... But loath though I am to admit it, the animated H is unfortunately a weak spot in this game. I like my animated H too, but honestly, you're probably better off turning it off on this one. At least the art is glorious. I can't get enough of the characters' beautiful eyes In general, though, the production values on this game are super high. The music is spot-on, and it even has a fully voiced protag (even during H scenes, though they're turned off by default) with a sprite that shows up now and then.

Whee, a game I worked on is being released! 9-nine- is a pretty fun series, with a little bit of everything: mystery, chuuni action, and romance. The heroine for volume 1 is super sweet and super cute, too. Check it out on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/976390/9nineEpisode_1/. 18+ is gonna be on Denpasoft (probably up soon?) VNDB page is here: https://vndb.org/v19829 Give it a shot!

The guide also mentions gyutto, but I've never tried that one myself. Sucks that DMM doesn't work for you... Have you tried hitting a game's page directly? You can usually find links to places to purchase from games' official sites. E.g., (incidentally, would not recommend getting this one, since it's been announced for an English release soon, but...) this for DMM (NSFW), or (similiarly, upcoming English release) this for DLSite (NSFW).

This reddit post is still the best reference on buying VNs I know of: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/wiki/buy Personally, I tend to buy Japanese VNs in downloadable form on DMM or DLSite. In the rare case where that's not an option, you can use a reshipper (personally, I've used Tenso a number of times, but just because it was the first one I learned about; dunno if maybe others are better/cheaper in some way). If you use DMM, watch out for the DMM Game Player; not all releases use it, but it's particularly shitty DRM and I suggest avoiding it if at all possible. Other games on DMM are fine, and I think it says somewhere on the page if a given game uses the DMM Game Player. Edit: Just noticed the thing about DMM denying service. Are you using some other version of site than the Japanese version? I don't think I've ever had problems when using the Japanese site, and I'd be a little surprised if they deny service to Russia but not the US... but I dunno.

One people tend to leave out but which I really like is Shadows of Pygmalion.

Finished Hataraki Man. It kinda tapered off and didn't really give me a satisfying conclusion; I'd say it kinda feels like one of those anime that's intended to drive readership to the source material, except that apparently the source material also went on infinite hiatus, so... yeah. A little disappointing. Still, it did end with a solid promise of what was to come, and it still did a lovely job of doing character stories for a lot of the office. No regrets about watching this short but very solid show. Next up, I'm planning to watch Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars, since they're long-standing recommendations to me from @Nandemonai. More retro anime with a recent re-release, here I come!

soon...

The Made in Abyss subs were apparently bad enough to kill any desire for me to watch anime for a few months, but I finally revived them by picking up the recent blu ray release of Hataraki Man, and boy am I glad I did. The show is a delight and satisfies my hunger for shows about ordinary working stiffs. The characters are super relatable for me, though they may be less so for the rest of this forum... but whatever. I think I'm five episodes in, and they're at a point where they're going around focusing on individual characters for each episode, and each character so far has gotten solid growth out of their single episode. So if that's your thing, it's a particularly enjoyable watch. Worth mentioning that the subs are great. I get so used to seeing subs that read like crap nowadays (which I'm sure is at least in part due to the natural result of our race to the bottom on quality: simulcasts) that it's always surprising when I watch something with actually enjoyable subs. They even subbed all the (rather nice) background music lyrics, and you can tell the people responsible really cared about making the song lyrics sound all right. Props to the folks who worked on this one.

DMM game player, yes. It's evil.

Yeah, gotta love that hyper-invasive DRM that somehow managed to bluescreen my computer once But, uhh. Steam is the easiest to buy things on and to play things from, so I guess that's my answer. They all have their obvious drawbacks, not least of which is the fact that there is no one-stop shop...

At the time of the release they hadn't yet loosened up, IIRC, though I could be wrong about the timing... At any rate, worth mentioning that Steam has since apparently tightened up way further than things ever were before, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

+1 for Tropical Liquor in the "worst of 2018" bucket (I didn't play the other Sayori one being mentioned, Monmusu). Even Frontwing's blatant Huniepop clone from back in 2016 had less awful gameplay than Tropical Liquor. And next up would definitely be Magical Marriage Lunatics. Literally everything about it was bad. First off, the art is bad—have you seen those sprite poses? Second off, the story is bad—because there isn't one. Third, the characters are neither likeable nor memorable. Like, I probably spent 10 hours playing this game and it's a major struggle to even dredge up their faces, let alone names. Sorry dude, but I couldn't disagree more. MML is genuinely bad. If you want a game with the same general flavor but which does literally everything right, while MML does literally everything wrong, Ponkotsu Akuma is where it's at.

I guess the "only two releases in 2018" thing came from looking at their Wikipedia article? It's not even remotely accurate, fwiw. I'm seeing more than 20 actual new releases in 2018 according to VNDB: https://vndb.org/p162. Plus, there's at least one release which doesn't appear there and only appears on their Denpasoft VNDB page (I Walk Among Zombies); probably more, but I just happen to have been involved with Zombies: https://vndb.org/p162 Still, I agree they didn't have a ton of big-name releases in 2018, but then again, who did? For me, Ditzy Demons, Re;lord, and I Walk Among Zombies were all solid releases, though I am, again, obviously biased on that last one. I also keep meaning to play Fatal Twelve, since I hear good things. And of course some people cared a lot about Maitetsu in theory, though said people probably also complained bitterly when they got it. All that said, they do still seem to have a pretty substantial backlog that I guess they're working through.

Just to chip in my thoughts on a couple of those points, since some I strongly agree with, and some I disagree with, and I think I have a somewhat balanced view having been on both the fan and pro side of VN loc... Strongly agree with this one. You will see companies pick up things simply because of staff enthusiasm at times, but it's the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, fan translation is probably the best shot for localizations for much older, "classic" titles. Official TLs are actually in worse shape here than fan TLs. It's far more common for fan TLs to have someone in a "translation checker"-type capacity than it is for official TLs, since fan TLs have the luxury of time and (oddly enough) resources. There's barely enough money in professional VN loc to pay a (not very good) rate for TL, edit, and QC; unless you're looking at a truly exceptional scenario (Muv Luv and Clannad come to mind as probably having had more resources available than most official loc projects), there's no money at all to pay for extra hands beyond that. These are generally very light-handed, and ultimately more like guidelines than rules. Except in really superficial, stylistic ways, all the releases even from a single given company will vary wildly in their approach to various localization decisions, due to the influence of the many freelance translators and editors employed by each company. Same. Though I'll caution by adding that, at least in my case, I only feel that way as long as the TL in question is delivered with care and quality, just like I'd want from an official TL. If it's a poorly edited google translate job, then it's worse than nothing, since it puts the nail in the coffin for any chance of a quality translation, and I wouldn't want that for any game I cared about. But that can obviously happen with either a fan TL or an official TL, as the recent Tenkiame release for example shows... Neither fan nor official TL has either a monopoly on or a guarantee of quality.

Actually, the dudes are exactly the reason Little Busters is a good game. The girls are just window dressing and a way to get you to spend some time with the characters and learn to like them all. In the end, it's all about the bromance.

Yeah, I hear you. I sometimes wonder if setting up for a big announcement and then doing the release at the time of the announcement wouldn't actually be more effective than the current state, lack of publicity be damned... or at least maybe announcing just a week in advance of release or something. By the time anything comes out these days, from anyone, it's always like "oh yeah, that thing".

The Steam release is out now too, so go pick up your high-quality zombie giblets in all their glory on Steam or Denpasoft, whatever floats your boat. Can confirm, the porn is pretty damn impactful. Also, it's just a good game and almost bizarrely different from every other localized VN I've ever seen. Go check it out!

Quite often the giblets are drawn, but drawn kind of badly. It's just not the passion (or common practice) of a lot of artists, understandably. If you want to see a demosaiced game that probably would've been better off with the mosaics, check out Evenicle. Well. Really do check out Evenicle anyway, because it's awesome, but, yeah, not the greatest schlongs you've ever seen. There are some real headscratchers in those porn scenes. In contrast, if you want to see some truly impressive demosaiced porn CGs, check out the just-released decensored version of I Walk Among Zombies... It's really just all dependent on the artist. Anyway, I'm glad to hear both of these announcements! Here's to hoping everything goes smoothly and we see another couple of cool games released this coming year by NekoNyan.

Years ago, for a month straight I had tons of fruit flies in my place (it took us a while to find the source). I was killing like 5-10 fruit flies a day. After we got rid of the source and cleared out the fruit flies, I was still seeing phantom fruit flies out of the corner of my eye for months.

I excluded MoeNovel because they're not an independent VN loc company—they're a shell company for WillPlus. They're just too far removed from the English-speaking audience to know or care what the audience wants. And yeah, SakuraGame is an anomaly—a genuine bad actor who I expect (or man, at least I hope) will get weeded out before too long.

Actually, this isn't true either. Take a look at their initial lineup announcement at https://nekonyansoft.com/blog/2018-announcements and see if you can spot the odd one out which has no announced progress. TBH, all the people I know at the independent VN loc companies, from the bottom to the top, are simultaneously: passionate about the medium doing the best they can for the games and for the fans constantly running into difficulties, sometimes of their own making, but just as often from external sources occasionally fucking up, as is normal for people constantly scrambling to deal with said fuckups, because they don't have the benefit of a lot of financial resources to solve the problems they create NekoNyan is going to have their share of fuckups, just like Sol Press is. Just like Sekai Project has since before them. Just like MangaGamer before them. And just like JAST before all the rest. If you're putting any of these companies on a pedestal, you're in for disappointment. But also, if you've somehow deluded yourself into believing any of them is in this industry just for the sweet sweet cash, rather than out of love for the content, you're bonkers.

Steam gave a reason... it's just a bad one. And judging by the letter some other dev posted when they got hit in this wave of bans, they not only gave a reason, they said "don't even try to resubmit this game" in the rejection notice, so it's almost expected that they wouldn't get a response? So, I dunno. I feel like they covered their asses, at least, on the "professional" side. That said, the decision is still bat-shit crazy. Banning a game because it's got anime art and is set in a school is galaxy brain-level thinking.