novurdim

I'm absolutely sure that Sol is having some financial difficulties but at the same time "one release in a month" is a fairly normal practice, it's not something extraordinary by itself. That's what MangaGamer is doing (or at least consistently tries to if there are no unexpected troubles) for the last couple of years. Sekai's Majokoi, 9-nine- ep. 2, Nanairo Reincarnation, Baldr Sky and Ley Line 2-3 are all currently set to release in the second half of 2019 While I did say that "one release in a month" is nothing extraordinary by itself, if everyone on the market were to suddenly use this schedule for half a year, it would surely look spectacular. But nah, I'm sure we have nothing to worry about. I'm not an expert on the market but I don't believe it will collapse or anything. Sure, some will titles will probably underperform (they always do) but this market is so niche and passionate that I doubt that they will go deep under the red line plus steam will help to add sales over time, steam sales are often not front-loaded at all. Honestly, western eroge market is very weird, inconsistent and at times almost too random for analysis. You can have a big hit and then fail miserably with its sequel or a similar project. A lot rides on whether you can suddenly get under the spotlight (not even necessarily during the initial release) and saddle that wave to the good sales. Most titles don't and underperform from what I can gather, besides it's almost impossible to amass actually good sales without steam which is, again, not even necessarily a front-loaded platfrorm. I'm not sure if the success rate is going to be any different when we have a few times more VNs than usual, I'd argue that the overall ratio probably won't change much, those crumbs the industry mostly survives on will likely remain the same crumbs. Not to mention that I fully expect half of the releases to peacefully migrate into the 2020 as usual.

Yeah, suddenly lots of Windmill from Sol Press. Can't say that I know what to expect from them but I guess it's a good reason to try out Witch's Garden or HH Genius, whatever releases first. Still literally no info about Mirai Radio Those release dates also put me on guard, would Sol Press (who have never made an impression of a well-ordered company) really be able to release a pretty big VN every month till the end of the year? This AX was very bleak announcement-wise but we got a huge number of release dates/windows, almost all of which belong to the second half of 2019. If everything works out, the second half of 2019 is looking extremely busy. Perhaps even like the busiest half of the year ever for the western market. Buuuuut... knowing our guys, somehow I doubt it will.

Ah, right, forgot to answer. It's true that other than nekonyan all eroge loc. companies seem to be completely inept at time and resource management so for various reasons we have too many bad examples with an amazing Sumaga experience on top, but I wouldn't overgeneralize like that. I feel like little by little the situation is improving and we get most VNs in a more sensible 1-1.5 y. timeframe. Well, in a relatively more sensible timeframe for the industry of great slowpokes with low production capacity in which titles are at times translated for longer than what they were initially developed for. Even NekoNyan mentioned in that blogpost how "So far, we have been announcing games 8-12 months before the planned release since this is how everyone else is doing it as well.", didn't they? So there's a very real chance that we may get Amatsutsumi in 2020, even with Sekai's shaky history. Not being happy over an announcement simply because it may in theory become one of those "limbo" titles and get stuck in a production for 3-5 years seems silly to me.

I know I said that but, oh boy, just how disappointing can you even get I can enjoy AliceSoft games like any other guy, at least I did more or less enjoy Evenicle. It's just too funny how they can't release Sengoku Rance for like 2 years already but keep announcing more, more, more AND MORE of Rance. Did they spend all their eroge budget on Rance so they ended up having nothing else of note to announce for the 2018 and 2019? Well, except Byakko but we know that it was actually acquired ages ago together with SukiSuki. Darn, I miss the times when I could always get excited about a MangaGamer panel, nowadays I feel like even JAST have a better chance of fluking an interesting announcement, especially since they do hold hostage all those Nitro+ licenses. On another note, maybe I'll try Mugen Renkan someday but since I'm one of those people who consider both Kuroinu (well, duh) and Euphoria a nukige fetish fodder with a barely serviceable story, my expectations are set veeeeeery low.

I'm a shallow man so good english reviews, very nice art, fairly interesting premise/heroines with a promise of a decent drama and the fact that Amatsutsumi places high on various japanese popularity polls and rankings make it easy for me to get hyped about it. What's the fun in these announcements if you don't expect something good even if mostly by hearsay? We don't have much to go on from the western shores but literally all the comments I've seen over the years suggest that Amatsutsumi is also considered to be a lot better than Chrono Clock which I didn't come to dislike yet by the time I accidentally on-holded it to the infinity, so there's that too. I should really get back to CC one of these days...

Honestly was expecting it from MG too. Sekai already has a history of announcing stuff I expected from MG, it's probably hard for them to keep up since galge is now only a part of their very diversified catalog and it's not like MG got a boost of manpower lol. Guess now there's a very high chance that MangaGamer will anounce Hapymaher FD on their panel instead. Oh well, Amatsutsumi is a first great VN announcement of the current AX, let's hope it won't get stuck in Sekai limbo. Also, yay, 9 is fun, one more to go. Yeah, no, don't see it happening.

No. No, I don't believe you, JAST.

Saying that they backed out from Hello, Goodbye isn't quite right since NN had to make additional changes to the all-ages version removing the panty shots and lingerie, you can look up Chuee's tweets about it. It's fairly obvious that they don't consider that decision a "mistake" per se. Making additional changes to the all-ages versions to appease Valve isn't even a rarity nowadays, we see it everywhere from Moenovel to EVNs. Just like those are also not the only all-ages games they have banned, from the top of my head I can remember Yotsunoha (even if we did predict it because one of the heroines looks a bit younger than usual but it still clearly wouldn't be banned under the old policy) and I'm sure there are games I'm forgetting about. I can't say that Valve got more "strict" after the implementation of the porn content, you can't get "stricter" when there isn't really anything to compare with, it's just that they are now actually looking over certain types of games, and since Valve's guidelines are completely non-existent even light fanservice can easily get your game banned depending on the reviewer's mood. Everything is arbitrary even with all-ages games, there's no real even relatively consistent logic behind their decisions, in that sense the situation got considerably worse for the industry, nothing is worse for business than unpredictability of your main sales outlet. There are times when you can be more sure in successfully selling your game on switch than in getting it on steam so yeah, I wouldn't try to give them any objective measure as of yet. I also don't agree with these VN STEAM DIE topics we get every few months which highlight random few games that supposedly aren't selling well yet and then make huge sensational blanket statements. Right after people were surprised how well Hitotsuba is doing on steam based on some weird internal numbers when it has the roughly same number of reviews as Trinoline (30-40)...? Or when we literally just had a very succesful launch (if you believe those same people and NN staff) of Sankaku Ren'ai? You guys also do remember the steam's peculiarity in how sales are mostly happening over time and during sales? I think pretty much every person in the industry commented about this. That's why steam is so important to them, it gives a constant stream of revenue. Even Eden didn't start all that well but turned into a real sales monster with time. I remember how I was disappointed that most MG VNs back in 2016 couldn't get even 10 reviews for a very long time but many of them turned into very fine sellers. It just shows that there have always been games with barely any reviews for months, the instant hits do happen but they are few and far in between. Heck, Subarashiki Hibi/Wonderful Everyday started with like 30-40 reviews+absolute gloom on the forum too and is now at 325. And those are all english reviews, SH doesn't have chinese TL. I don't even see any food for discussion in the OP to be honest.

Funnily enough, me too You'll see for yourself but there's not much completely "pointless" SoL content in C&T, stuff constantly kinda happens but it doesn't really help.

Meh, nowadays I'm already more interested in Kinugasa's upcoming Ryuusei World Actor than in Akatsuki no Goei. I wonder if there's a real chance for anyone to partner up with DiGination soon. Also picked Albatross, Asairo, Oretsuba and Muramasa from the list but boy do those sound unlikely in any foreseeable future.

Trite, silly (or often just plain stupid?) in a bad sense, super-safe, mostly tries to be a very unfunny comedy with an uneven pacing and direction. Though it is admittedly very difficult to create an engaging comedy around such bland characters with a few "funny" traits. All the bad elements reach their peak during the pseudocomedic filler episodes about "trying to hit it big", god those are painful to watch. There's also no interesting story to speak of so far, you'll probably predict 95% of the developments during the first episode and the way those are realised is more irritating than endearing. You'll soon notice how C&T is strenuously catering to the progressive mainstream western audience instead of the usual crowd of what you'd usually call "anime fans" which is not a bad thing in itself, but with Watanabe it breaks his usual quirky imaginative style into something very... weirdly sterilized which kind of breaks the whole point. There's a huge amount of on the nose references to the popular western films and events if you like that kind of thing, the production values are high and some songs are good but otherwise I didn't find much to love here and barely suffered through the first six episodes. Alas, maybe it's just me since the overall reception is mainly positive so far among those who do watch it. Maybe it's that new kind of western-influenced netflix anime everyone is looking forward to, I guess...?

Ya, even the things I had relatively high hopes for like new Watanabe and Ikuhara anime (Carole&Tuesday and Sarazanmai) ended up almost disastrously disappointing. Yaiba is decent but nearly not as good as everyone were making it out to be (for now, at least, it can still pick up in the second half). I'm also not a fan of OPM to begin with and the second season is supposedly much worse than the first (didn't try it yet), while everything else is basically different shades of mediocrity at best. The only other title I can highlight is probably the first season of Kono Oto Tomare, it's a surprisingly pleasant watch even if a bit way too conventional at using tropes of genre for my liking.

Actually, in general I'd consider this season to be reasonably better than the previous one. At least potentially so. I will definitely check out Vinland Saga and Cop Craft. The first is based on a highly acclaimed manga, has VIKINGS and is backed by a good team so you probably can't go wrong with it. The second is a bit more iffy. While most novel readers I know consider Cop Craft Gatoh Shoji's (Full Metal Panic, Amaburi) best work and I do quite like the premise, anime is made in a very weird studio by the staff I've never heard of. Trailers look decent enough and Gatoh is personally adapting the script (the last time I remember an original author personally writing the script for anime was SukaSuka and that one turned out great) so I'm staying positive but yeah, there's a number of ways for things to suddenly go south. Otherwise, I may sometime watch

I had learned to never expect much from MangaGamer so it'd be great if they've at least finally announced a decent eroge from the extensive list of their past partners. Evolimit and Asairo are probably a no-go by now but something like SnM Dreamers or Amatsutsumi still seem viable. And yeah, all I want from SP is a release date for Nanairo Reincarnation and Baldr Sky, dang it

Well... yes? According to your previous comment and this pic you said: 1) Adapt the graphics and modify the content to suit the tastes of the people of the other culture. 2) Change the game contents to "make it fit into the American themes prevalent today". That's basically what 4kids were doing... right? Right? You don't just talk about translation and speech adaptation, as I have mentioned, you have found the broadest definition of localization available and mindlessly applied it to the niche industry with quite specific customers and demands. To start with GALA is not even necessarily about creative works of fiction, it's mostly about services which are two extremely different things... I don't think I'm crazy but when I combine modifying the content, adapting the graphics and fitting in the american themes I basically get censorship and 4kids. Apollo and his burgers. If you, erm, got what you are advocating for, you would be the first to be upset. Fureraba is very far from what you are depicting, it only has a somewhat westernised style of dialogue. And according to you, that's not what localization is at all. And I'm not here for cheap jabs, if you ask pretty much any translator, they'd say that preserving the author's original ideas and intent is the most important thing of all, the only discourse is about being literal or more liberal about the wording during the translation. You are basically saying this yourself: "Here in the US, I hear the word "fool" used almost on a daily basis, and it lacks any hint of true contempt for somebody". So it wouldn't hold the same effect intended by the author hence they made her "rougher" to better reflect that idea. This is exactly what a more liberal attempt at preserving the original ideas and an intended impact on the reader is. Some agree with this approach, some advocate for a more literal translation but this is a different debate altogether.

No, the point of the game localization company is to translate it into the target language in a way that preserves the author's original ideas and intent the most while considering the particularities of said language. There are all sorts of localization industries with their own rules so we shouldn't mix them up with the extremely broad definitions. The idea of making something "fit into the american themes prevalent today" honestly horrifies me and provokes nightmarish flashbacks from the days of yore when official anime releases were messed up beyond recognition and the legendary 4kids did their legendary stuff. Not to mention, that americans are not even close to the sole target of such localizations, its target audience is the whole english-speaking world.

No, people got busy and lazy. A very dangerous combination. We are honestly barely making any videos nowadays, and when you consider the fact that VNs and vocaloids require the most effort on the selection front... But maybe TL will make a comeback someday, I'll go kick the guys one more time just in case.

Hey, I can't let this slide. Half of our (Top Lab) last video's top 10 consisted of otome! The last year we covered is 2016 though...

Pretty sure he simply meant the censored nipples which can be considered a part of censoring H-scenes.

It probably varies widely between the VNs as usual and the issue is highly, erm, generalised. Very different people translate them after all. I've only read HGB (fully) and Sanoba Witch (a few hours) from them and, well, I wouldn't say that HGB is any worse than MG's or Sekai's usual level in that regard...? While the VN itself is mostly disappointing, translation has turned out fine enough, at least in my opinion. Sanoba's seemed considerably worse from what I remember but I wouldn't say that westernization is its main problem. Honestly, I've seen people have extreme problems only with Fureraba and that one does look liberal as heck but I doubt it's a rule of a thumb for NekoNyan.

That's the best thing that could ever happen to this thread tbh

RIP Fuwa, we will miss you unless we forget about you.

Feels like you are grasping at straws, to be honest. It sounds like a joke to be the third person in a row who knows a few victims of abuse but it's extremely hard for me to even imagine that these people would care for something as petty as this. Literally every person I have ever seen claiming to be "hurt" by this stuff are people who are like you and just want to push an agenda by hearsay. But you are certainly right that posting in this topic any longer is not something anyone would call a useful or even sane thing to do.

Yes, that's exactly why it's important not to allow minors in here, it doesn't even take anything extreme to influence some of the more... mentally weak kids. There are a whole lot of different absolutely legitimate forums (and movies, for that matter) out there that are considered 18+ because their content can easily traumatize children. But should "think of the children" really be a basis for banning the adult content and discussions? Whose responsibily is it that you, as a kid, wandered into a territory that clearly was never meant for you? You make the same arguments as one of my colleagues who claims that he is a heavy smoker because back in the day he wandered into the wrong StrongDC channel. In the modern society kids are exposed to such a wide range of things on the net but parents rarely take notice of this.

Yeah, in all honesty, at this point I'm just worried for Funya, any other discussion seems already obsolete. He was such a positive fellow Uchikoshi fan (well, until the ZTD and Punchline failures at least) and then a few years later I suddenly see him turn into a politics-obsessed unhinged individual hating on the whole forum because he... doesn't like loli and rape content? Well, I don't like it either (even though I actively advocate against arbitrary censorship of any kind) but it's, like, 5% of the forum content at most? Obviously Lesiak is right, eroge are rated 18+ for a reason, minors shouldn't really be allowed in here, eroge are not exactly an education material. While I believe it's important for the "problematic" content of many kinds to exist, kids should first learn the basic moral guidelines to be ready to engage with it on the right terms. But how can you even control this? You can't just make all forums child-friendly, can you? Did Funya ever say he's a minor? How is it users' responsibility to properly raise other people's children? Besides, it's just as possible that Funya got caught up with wrong people on the waves of the internet who turned him into a hate machine, there's an insane amount of absolutely wild people of this kind out there. But all this is pointless hollow talk, my previous post got deleted as a part of an offtopic-chain, but I guess I'll repeat this. Funya, it's not healthy to engage in this kind of hateful talk for a whole day, if nothing else you definitely look like you need to at least take a break from this forum to relax and improve your mental health. This is not a hill to die on.