Getsuya

Jeez. Gonzo or Brain Base huh? That's a lot of good series to choose from. Gonzo: Saki (yes there are two other seasons but neither of them are made by Gonzo so 'the Saki that was made by Gonzo' fits under the 26 ep rule.) Brain's Base: Kamichu!/Kurenai Dystopian: Bokurano

Started up the Kino's Journey series again. I was only on volume 2 when I stopped, but that was back when I could just barely read Japanese to the level where I could get through a light novel. Now Kino seems super easy and I'm breezing through it. Love this series so much, even though I've really only ever experienced the brief anime series and the first volume. I can't wait to see all the great adventures are contained in the 20 or so volumes.

Back to Flowers. I'm enjoying it, it has a lot going for it, but I hope the main character makes a lot more progress before the end of the game. As she is she's shy to the point of it almost being annoying hearing her whine to herself about how she keeps failing at basic human interaction. Obviously that's going to be a plot point so I hope it gets resolved and she breaks out of her shell.

http://www.siliconera.com/2015/05/19/nnairo-reincarnation-heads-to-playstation-vita-in-japan-this-september/ The Vita just keeps 'em coming. I'd never heard of this before but apparently it's gotten decent reviews on VNDB.

Just as a note, Suikogaiden draws heavily from references to Suikoden 1 and 2 so it might be hard for someone who doesn't know anything about the series to just pick up and read. If she can play RPGs hook her up with Suikoden 2 and if she plays through that give her Suikogaiden.

Have her play Suikoden 2 and then get her to read Suikogaiden 1 and 2. They're more like fantasy novels than visual novels, and I believe both have full fan translations.

Symphonic Rain

Moot point since it would go on my 'to play' list after all 4 Legend of Heroes games I need to get caught up on on the Vita so whether I purchase it or not I doubt I'll ever end up playing it. I actually hope they just port it to Steam because I'd feel better playing it for... er... less money.

I tried the first game on PS3 and that poisened the series for me for quite a while, but recently I picked up Rebirth 1 for the PC and... man it's really good isn't it. They certainly fixed pretty much everything that was wrong and turned it into a tight and enjoyable game. Kinda miss Gust, but Broccoli takes her place as the adorable one and Falcom is... the best thing ever. As a Falcom fanboy, the concept of a character made by combining Adol and Estelle makes me squee with joy. After how much I'm enjoying Rebirth, I'm thinking of picking up Noire, especially because I absolutely love every single one of the collaboration characters. Ryu ga Gotoku? Sakura Taisen!? Idolm@ster!!!

I... got... Neptunia Rebirth for PC (it's unavailable on PC in my region, Steam won't sell it to people located in Japan) and I'm really surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. I hated the first version of the first game for PS3, it was long, obtuse, grindy, unfunny, confusing and had just about the boringest battles I'd ever seen. Rebirth fixes pretty much everything from the ground up to the point where I don't mind sinking lots of free time into it. I actually can't wait until Rebirth 2 comes out on Steam, especially if it has further improvements. Does anyone know if the gameplay changes much between Rebirth 1 and Rebirth 2? Edit: Ah my only complaint is that Gust is gone, and I really liked her in the original game. I really don't see why they took her out and put in a bunch of random characters from the later games, since they don't even seem to fit into the plot very well. Oh well. Falcom and Broccoli are awesome new additions. Especially Falcom. Adol+Estelle=greatest character ever conceived.

Oh man I forgot about Eluvium. Eluvium is great stuff No vocals, great relaxing bgm for massaging all the stress in your brain away. I haven't listened to all their stuff, but all the stuff I have listened to has been golden.

There are already VNs out for iOS/Android/Google. Actually there are a lot of them. Some are indie rush-job trash, some are classics. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/banshees-last-cry/id740139977?mt=8 This is probably the best translated VN exclusive to iTunes. A mega-classic, and I think this is the only official English release of it.

'Moon shop'. Like... Game-ya is a game shop, Sake-ya is an alcohol shop... 'Getsu-ya' is a moon shop. I haven't decided yet whether I sell moons or whether I represent a shop ON the moon (probably run by moon rabbits... I am born in the year of the hare after all (which in Japanese is referred to as the year of the rabbit because no one in Japan cares about the difference between hares and rabbits (which would probably piss off some Redwall characters)))

I feel weird putting this in among all the anime/VN/game stuff but... greatest cover ever. ... anyway. Did you know Sugar Baby Love from A Little Snow Fairy Sugar was a cover of a cover? Yeah there was a Japanese cover of the original song, then Ishida Yoko sang the cover for the anime. I like all the versions of it, though probably hers the best And finally, this cover just happens to be the first Japanese song I ever heard where I could easily go 'the person singing this isn't a native Japanese speaker'. It's also a great cover of You Raise Me Up, with lyrics that I actually like alot more than the original English version. I'm a sucker for good lyrics.

Confession: I once ruined the romance of two kids I knew in high school. I felt bad for the guy, not for ruining it for him but because he had chosen to date that particular girl. I didn't feel bad for the girl. She was a hypocrite who played with nice boys' hearts. Anyway it was actually pretty funny how it happened. The conversation went like this. A few of us Mormon guys were hanging around after class discussing Mormon girls: Guy A: Man all Mormon girls are hypocrites. They get up on Sunday and cry and talk about how pure and faithful they are but then they're total sluts around school. Guy B: Yeah, but not (girl). She's totally not like that at all Me: Wait, (girl)? Are you kidding? She was on the bus the other day flashing her panties to the kid she was sitting with Guy B: WHO!? Who was she showing her panties to!? Me: I dunno, whoever she was sitting with. Some guy on our bus. Her boyfriend I guess. Guy B: I'M HER BOYFRIEND!! Me: *long pause* Oh. Well that sucks. Needless to say Guy B was NOT the fellow she was flashing on the bus.

Definitely this. I think this club is more about sharing the experience of a game rather than being completionist or forcing people to put in more time than they want to. I enjoyed the heck out of all that I played of this game, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to it to 100% it.

I randomly caught Falcom Fever and grabbed all the PC Ys games. I've played most of them but I never did get around to playing Ark of Napishtim on the PS2 so this is my first time going through that one. I decided to play on Hard right from the start because I'm a huge Ys fan and I figured I could take it. ... que me spending probably 3 hours today on a single boss. I could not for the life of me figure out how to kill him and even when I read a guide I couldn't kill him until I went out and ground up a few levels and upgrades. I guess it's kind of sad that Hard is less about skill and more about being a high enough level to tank hits and do enough damage to finish battles in a sane amount of time. I think as a continuation of Falcom Fever I'm going to go out and grab the remakes of Legend of Heroes Trails of Zero/Trails of Blue for the Vita. I freaking love the Trails in/of X series and I have no idea why I've waited so long to get caught up in the series. I'm 4 games behind now!

Let's get some old classics in here Best synching ever... also hilarious Big mash-up of a bunch of anime most people don't recognize anymore and a bunch of in-jokes and references that have all long since died out Hey looks it's every (old) shounen show! All singing together! Yay! And some more old anime! Yay! This is actually one of my favorite dance AMVs.

This is probably more like a rant than a confession but I'm too feverish to care. Japanese doctors are horrible. I went in today because I have a fever, sore throat and runny nose. After looking at my throat the guy took a cotton swab, dipped it in this horrible-looking ichor stuff, and then jammed it into my throat and swabbed it down with what I assume was some kind of sticky iodine solution. Then, to check me for flu, he jammed flexible sticks down each nostril all the way into my throat. Then they had me blow my nose on a piece of plastic wrap. Whee.

Hey. I really like Ambient Music. Sometimes normal Ambient, sometimes Dark Ambient. I use it to sleep on long trips and for times when I really want to relax and contemplate things. It's good for long walks when I don't want normal music blasting in my ears and altering my thoughts. Unfortunately about all I know about either genre comes from Youtube playlists/remixes of it so I'm curious if people here know any good groups/creators that I can go to for consistent good stuff. One thing though is that I don't want/like anything with vocals/voice samples. They tend to break my concentration and also interrupt when I'm trying to fall asleep. Only instruments/silence/drones etc. The best guy on Youtube for remixes and stuff is SpaceMind Who has a metric ton of these things with a lot of great selections. Please provide lots of links to bands/groups/remixes/playlists of good ambient/dark ambient music.

I dropped the snorefest that was & and instead started playing Flowers on my Vita. So much better! It's such a great game right off the bat, with amazing piano music that feels like gentle fingers massaging my brain, and an instantly interesting love triangle. Not a huge fan of the character designs, and it has the shoujo-ai cliche of the main character looking normal but every other girl in the game being totally blown away by her amazing beauty... but those are small nitpicks next to how enjoyable this game is.

I'm not sure when the last time I really enjoyed a game that I wasn't playing with friends was. My cycle of gaming (until I quit cold turkey recently) went something like this: 1. I have too much money and am stressed because of my job so I will go out and binge-buy a ton of video games for all the random systems I have 2. Oh my gosh I spent so much money on these huge piles of games I should totally play them 3. Grr why is this game taking so long to complete, I have all these other games to play! 4. Grrrrrr why can I never finish a game? It seems I'm always switching from one to the other without finishing any! 5. Grrrrrrrrrr I'm so stressed again I'm going to go out and binge-buy a bunch more games! 6. Repeat Games just don't appeal to me anymore now that I've sold all the ones I used to have. I don't have fun playing games by myself. All I end up thinking is 'if this was a book I would have finished the story already, why does all this gameplay get in the way of the story?' I used to love all RPGs but now I can't play them at all since I feel like random battles and crap just get in the way of me enjoying their story. So, yeah, I'd say I don't really like games anymore. Back when I was in high school or college and had no money I enjoyed games because I got them very rarely, one at a time, so I took the time to enjoy the games I bought and I made the most with what I have. Now that I have a big income and emulators exist for pretty much every system I could possibly want it's impossible to just sit down and enjoy one game. About all I can do is play some random games with the retro game club on Fuwa but beyond that I just really don't feel like playing anything.

I'm a lot more forgiving of this kind of thing when it's in English, but when I'm reading in Japanese I feel like they're wasting my time when I finally get done unscrambling the kanji and grammar and realize I just wasted my concentration reading purple prose.

Maybe the deeper messages come out more in the LN/VN than the anime. I'll play the VN and let you know.