Dergonu

Maho Roba is the latest release from Akabei Soft 3, the subsidiary made by conglomerating staff and resources from a number of Akabei Soft 2's other subsidiaries.  Now, this game is in a different vein from the games previously released... in the sense that this company has done pretty much everything but a fantasy charage since it was formed. 
... I'll be straight with you.  My first thought upon finishing this game was that it is exactly like another half-dozen 'average quality' fantasy charage I've played in the past.  The protagonist, despite being an adult member of society with an interesting job, somehow ends up working as a volunteer at a girls' magic school.  He is a natural magician... who can only use one spell effectively.  Moreover, for some reason the role archetype chosen for him in relation to the girls at the dorm is 'lucky sukebe who is the target of constant abuse from the heroines'.  I don't think you can get any more cliche than that.  Considering how the way the story is set up makes his job and previous experience and maturity irrelevant and constantly reduces him to just another 'sort of perverted protagonist making excuses', I found a lot of reason for irritation throughout this game.
The heroines aren't much better... Shizuru is a standard straight-laced tsundere with an inferiority complex toward her more capable older sister (seen this over seventy times), Konatsu is the 'deredere heroine reunited with the protagonist' archetype, Kuon is the childish but brilliant loli who is afraid of strangers (yet another 'classic' archetype), and Teru is your standard 'Love?  Can you eat that?' innocent genki heroine...
The two heroines unlocked by completing one of those four are a bit more interesting (the ancient principal and the lonely genius magician), but their paths don't really show anything more interesting than those of the previous four heroines.  By the time I finished this game, I was so immensely bored with the dull cast of characters and pathetic attempts at humor that I was falling asleep in the middle of my day.  About the only thing that was consistently funny was the borderline yandere moments Konatsu showed sometimes (always momentary)... and I felt the protagonist only grew less interesting with time, as he regresses to a hormone-driven teenager during the paths.
In short, while this might be a decent choice for someone looking for a really average fantasy charage, it contains every flaw the charage genre tends to inflict on itself in spades, except excessive ichaicha (that was actually decently balanced in most of the paths) and a lack of decent epilogues (though why they went through the trouble to give a solid epilogue to each of these heroines, I have no idea). 

The VN reading community likes to argue over the relative merits of so-called "literal" and "liberal" translation, with most people tending to perceive everyone else as being a hardline supporter of one or the other. While I'm sure everybody who knows my views would classify me as a proponent of liberal translation, I tend to think I'm more a proponent of being accurate to the intent of the original text. This blog post is going to outline a couple of specific uses of language which I believe show some of the weaknesses of attempting "literal translation." This isn't going to be anything like an attempt to provide an exhaustive argument against literal translation, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at least trying to be a little bit convincing. Still, regardless of your position on that particular argument, you might at least find the examples enlightening. Broadly, I'm going to be talking about figurative language. That's a fancy phrase encompassing a lot of common expressions and classes of expression which exist in every natural human language, as far as I know, and certainly in both Japanese and English. Idioms, similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, symbolism: all of these are classes of figurative language.
For starters, let's talk about idioms. The relevant definition of "idiom", per wiktionary, is, "An expression peculiar to or characteristic of a particular language, especially when the meaning is illogical or separate from the meanings of its component words." The argument pretty much writes itself, right? By definition, if you try to literally translate the words in an idiom, you're going to end up with something at best inaccurate, and at worst completely illogical. Just googling "Japanese idioms" and reading what you see is going to find you dozens of examples of cases where you have to either avoid literal translation or end up with a translation that doesn't make sense. For instance, translating 十人十色 as "ten men, ten colors" isn't going to be comprehensible to an English reader, but the venerable English idiom "different strokes for different folks," which is equivalent in meaning if not exactly in tone, is probably going to fit the bill. Idioms offer pretty much a slam dunk argument in favor of liberal translation*. That said, idioms are not that common an occurrence. However, there are also lesser examples: cases where literal translation yields something meaningful and accurate, but still less accurate than a liberal translation could manage.
My personal favorite example of a Japanese expression which is not an idiom, but which still benefits massively from a "liberal" translation, is the combination of the noun 背中 (back) and the adjective 大きい (large, big). These two words are often put together in Japanese when praising men, as a way to say a man has a certain, protoypically masculine, attractive physical characteristic. The phrase also carries a subtextual metaphor of reliability: a big back can bear a lot of weight, presumably. Once you start looking for "big backs", you'll see them popping up in literal JP->EN translations all over the place, from Little Busters! to HoshiMemo. The problem is, there's a common English expression which means exactly the same thing as that Japanese expression: "broad shoulders." Now, no dictionary is going to tell you that you can correctly translate 背中, in isolation, as "shoulders." But what's amazing about this pair of Japanese and English expressions is that they not only have the same denotation, but also the same connotation. Both expressions describe the same physical trait, and they both also imply the same personality trait of reliability: a broad pair of shoulders, also, can be trusted to carry your burden.
The expression "broad shoulders", like its Japanese cousin, sits somewhere between simple non-figurative use of language and an idiom: just knowing the definition of the individual words gets you to the correct meaning of the expression, and even the connotation of implied reliability, when present, is usually obvious. So, by definition, they aren't idioms. But even so, if translated literally in either direction, the original phrase will end up as a pale shadow of what it should be. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be described as broad-shouldered than as big-backed.
 
*Unless you believe the purpose of a translation is to teach you Japanese idioms, in which case there isn't enough common ground to even have an argument. I personally like to read translated fiction for the same reason I like to read fiction originally written in English: to enjoy a well-crafted story.

As we all know from experience, the formula of visual novel offers various possibilities when it goes to storytelling techniques, making especially the high-budget, Japanese games in the genre much more than just interactive, illustrated books. Still, for most VNs text is unquestionably the core method of delivering the story. This is true especially for the western-developed ones, which rarely can afford high-quality voice acting or animated segments which could occasionally replace written dialogues and descriptions. Even CGs, in a project with a very limited budget and manpower, often end up being few and far between. All this makes the literary quality absolutely crucial for the success of such projects. But, great writing is not something you would expect to find in a free game on Steam, is it?
            While Doki Doki Literature Club proved that a free-to-play, western-made VNs can from time to time surpass everyone’s expectations, in many ways it wasn’t the first project of its kind. One Thousand Lies, developed by Keinart Lobre and released for free in March 2016, both on Steam and mobile platforms, is another example of an interesting and well-developed non-JP visual novel that doesn't charge even a cent for the possibility of reading it. In my opinion, it’s also one of the more intriguing and creatively written western VNs to date, that can offer a lot of depth and artistic qualities to any reader patient enough to uncover them. Still, it never gathered attention and recognition similar to that of DDLC.
Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

Yes, I played this.  On the surface, this game looks like a straight-out thematic nukige... but in reality it is a comedy VN that just happens to have a lot of sexual humor and h-scenes, lol. 
Basically, the protagonist Shotarou receives a fatal wound protecting a pretty girl, who proceeds to kiss him, fusing her body with his, covering him in an armor suit and granting him incredible physical abilities while also healing his wounds... and then immediately asks for sex once he is finished beating up her attackers.  He ends up in a '-rangers' type hero vs monster villains type situation where he faces off against plant monsters controlled by a scantily-dressed girl wielding a bow.  This leads to a lot of wacky situations that are generally amusing from beginning to end.
What surprised me was that they actually made an effort to tell a story in this game.  Sure, it wasn't a GREAT story, but it was a decent one, far better than you usually expect from a game so reliant on sex and sex humor.  I spent most of my time laughing, but I was also able to get into the story emotionally to an extent, despite the half-assed nature of the setting. 
While this isn't good enough to be a VN of the Month candidate, if you just want to play a VN with shotgun-fast humor and carefree h-scenes, this is a decent choice.
PS: I know I didn't bother explaining about this VN in detail... but literally ninety-percent of this game is endless conversations that turn into jokes, halfway decent fight scenes, and h-scenes.  The remaining ten percent is the halfway decent story they somehow managed to combine with this.

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH.
Enjoy:
Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed.
Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.)
The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube.
I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag.
After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage.
Derg 1 Roach 0
- Fin -

Shuffle Essence! + is the definitive version of Shuffle, which was originally released in 2004.  Shuffle was also the first game where Agobarrier, the now-deceased writer of the Tiny Dungeon series, made a claim to fame. 
First, I should note that I originally played Shuffle in English and was not in any way satisfied with the results.  My primary reasons were the low quality of the localization (though it was better than what MG had done up to that point) and certain differences with the anime involving Kaede.  To be blunt, the Kaede portrayed in the anime is a solid yandere, so I was kind of disappointed that she was only mildly yandere in the game, lol.
Anyway, now to the obvious differences between the two versions of Shuffle... Well, the biggest one is the doubling of the number of heroines.  Kareha, her sister Tsubomi, Mayumi, Sakura, the teacher Nadeshiko, and the new divine race girl, Daisy are the new heroines.  In realistic terms, they actually consist four separate arcs... Tsubomi, Kareha, and Nadeshiko are connected loosely, with the remaining three routes standing on their own with extensive amounts of new text.  This is in addition, to adding a second ending onto Shia's path and extensively re-writing it in the particulars.  All in all, the length of the game is more than doubled, since the three heroine arcs are very long.
Anyway, the new routes show off something that was only touched on lightly in the anime and the original version of the game... Agobarrier's obsession with harems.  Basically, the result of each of the paths is that the 'main wife' of the harem gets picked, and the girls basically make the decision to create a harem without seriously consulting Rin, since he isn't good at refusing them in the first place.  If you hate harem situations, this game is pure poison, but if you like your harems, this is good stuff.
Now, to the difference between the English and Japanese versions... it does make a difference, obviously.  Actually, there is a glaring difference in style between the new routes and the ones made for the original game.  While the original routes were decent and tear-jerking, it seems like the popularity of Shuffle in Japan essentially gave Agobarrier license to do what he wanted with the new routes.  More detail is given (including in the original heroine routes) and more loose ends are closed up.  Each of the routes has a number of non-ero CGs unthinkable in a modern charage, and they are all of about as good of quality as could be produced ten years ago, lol. 
Overall, the end result of this is a vastly-improved game with a much more solid cast of characters.  The holdovers from the original version (abandoned stylistic issues like random cameo scenes) are sometimes jarring because of the remade aspects, but the game doesn't suffer too much from that.  Daisy's route, which comes across as a 'true' route (since all the might-have-been-fatal heroine issues are resolved) seems to have been specifically designed to satisfy fans of the original who didn't like the feeling that you were 'abandoning' certain of the heroines (such as Primula or Shia) to their fates by picking another.  Agobarrier loved his happy harems, lol.  May he rest in peace.

Hey folks! So, for those of you who don't know, I am currently studying abroad in Japan, and will be here for the next 5 months. It's something I have been looking forward to for a while, though moving to a foreign country, especially one as different as Japan, is quite a tough transition. I'll be writing some stuff about my trip here in my blog now and then, talking about how things are going, what I have been up to and stuff like that. Today I'll be writing a bit about the first few weeks here, and the things that has been tough to deal with for me.
(I have currently lived in Japan for about 2 weeks)
So, I have heard people talk about "culture shock" when coming to a country like Japan. I figured I wouldn't really experience that, because I knew so much about the culture beforehand. Well, I was wrong. That didn't help.
Japan is... different. I mean, I love it here, but man... everything is so different from what I'm used to, it has gotten to me for sure.
People here honestly look like robots to me. In Japan it isn't really normal to speak much in public at all. You are meant to be quiet to respect those around you. They also stand in nearly flawless lines on the subway/ train platforms, at restaurants, stores and so on. They stay at work and school until late at night, and you mostly see students studying, even at lunch time. They are incredibly diligent, almost to a scary degree tbh. Everyone picks up their own trash, and you won't find a single shred of garbage lying around anywhere. There is no noise like loud music or anything of the sort anywhere, (except for actual clubs and stuff like that, of course.) The buses and trains runs like clockwork, leaving and arriving exactly when they are supposed to, and the trains are filled with people sleeping, worn-out from long days at work/ school/ club practice.
It's like this country is literally run by robot overlords or something.
Honestly, it's a bit overwhelming. There are so many things you need to keep in mind. Don't do this, don't do that, make sure you remember this, never forget that, bla bla. From where to stand in an escalator to your body language when speaking to people, what forms to use when speaking to others in different social standings... My head hurts from trying to remember half of it.
Another thing that really hit me hard is the food. I love Japanese food, but eating it 4 times a day 7 days a week has taken a toll on me. I honestly just can't get the food down even if it tastes good, especially in the mornings. So, I have started looking for western styled restaurants and shops, and found a few, luckily. It's strange, but there is a certain... joint taste to all food in Japan. It's hard to explain it, but there is just a certain "something" to all of it. Without mixing a bit of western food here and there, I just don't have an appetite. It has been surprisingly difficult to adjust my body to eating Japanese food all the time. It will probably be a few more weeks, possibly even a month + before I get completely used to the food here. Until then I'll make some pretty frequent stops at western restaurants, to stop myself from starving, lol.
Ugh, and the climate. Holy crap, the humidity... please help, lol. The humidity here is constantly around 85-90%+, and with heat around 30 degrees C, it literally feels like you are walking around in an oven 24/7. You can't move an inch without getting sweaty. Go home and shower, then walk around outside for a mintue and you are already completely soaked. Not just sweaty, actually like, wet all over. You skin feels clammy from just being outside for a second.
And the bugs. They are some weird mutated monsters summoned from hell. Like, holy crap. Some of the wasps/ bees here are bigger than my finger, and the Cicadas and other bugs of that size look like they could literally eat me. There is also one huge ass spider living outside our apartments, and I am personally convinced he will some day grow large enough to take over Japan and rule as the new emperor. Luckily winter should be coming soon-ish, (heh,) so they should all die soon. As someone who is completely terrified of bugs, and who can't take too hot temperatures, I cannot wait for the winter. Please winter-san, just get here already!
 
Lastly, the university schedule really did a number on me. Today we were at school from 10:00 AM to 19:00 PM. In addition, each period is 90 minutes long, without breaks, and the classrooms are either way too hot or air conditioned too much, making them freezing. We will also have classes on saturdays, apparently. The club recruitment day is on Friday, and a lot of people are super excited about joining clubs, but all I can personally think about is: How on earth are you going to balance all this school work, and several hours of club practice each week? I'd die, lol. So yeah, I'll skip on the clubs, personally. They do have a few really fun looking clubs here though, like the TCG club, the cosplay club, the boardgame club, the English conversation club and so on.
The school festival is in a couple months. That will be awesome. Can't wait for that.
 
Anyways, this update has just been mostly about the stuff that overwhelmed me during my first 2 weeks here. I am getting used to them little by little, and there is of course tons and tons of good stuff that outweighs the bad. The next blog post I write will be much more positive

Hey folks! So, for those of you who don't know, I am currently studying abroad in Japan, and will be here for the next 5 months. It's something I have been looking forward to for a while, though moving to a foreign country, especially one as different as Japan, is quite a tough transition. I'll be writing some stuff about my trip here in my blog now and then, talking about how things are going, what I have been up to and stuff like that. Today I'll be writing a bit about the first few weeks here, and the things that has been tough to deal with for me.
(I have currently lived in Japan for about 2 weeks)
So, I have heard people talk about "culture shock" when coming to a country like Japan. I figured I wouldn't really experience that, because I knew so much about the culture beforehand. Well, I was wrong. That didn't help.
Japan is... different. I mean, I love it here, but man... everything is so different from what I'm used to, it has gotten to me for sure.
People here honestly look like robots to me. In Japan it isn't really normal to speak much in public at all. You are meant to be quiet to respect those around you. They also stand in nearly flawless lines on the subway/ train platforms, at restaurants, stores and so on. They stay at work and school until late at night, and you mostly see students studying, even at lunch time. They are incredibly diligent, almost to a scary degree tbh. Everyone picks up their own trash, and you won't find a single shred of garbage lying around anywhere. There is no noise like loud music or anything of the sort anywhere, (except for actual clubs and stuff like that, of course.) The buses and trains runs like clockwork, leaving and arriving exactly when they are supposed to, and the trains are filled with people sleeping, worn-out from long days at work/ school/ club practice.
It's like this country is literally run by robot overlords or something.
Honestly, it's a bit overwhelming. There are so many things you need to keep in mind. Don't do this, don't do that, make sure you remember this, never forget that, bla bla. From where to stand in an escalator to your body language when speaking to people, what forms to use when speaking to others in different social standings... My head hurts from trying to remember half of it.
Another thing that really hit me hard is the food. I love Japanese food, but eating it 4 times a day 7 days a week has taken a toll on me. I honestly just can't get the food down even if it tastes good, especially in the mornings. So, I have started looking for western styled restaurants and shops, and found a few, luckily. It's strange, but there is a certain... joint taste to all food in Japan. It's hard to explain it, but there is just a certain "something" to all of it. Without mixing a bit of western food here and there, I just don't have an appetite. It has been surprisingly difficult to adjust my body to eating Japanese food all the time. It will probably be a few more weeks, possibly even a month + before I get completely used to the food here. Until then I'll make some pretty frequent stops at western restaurants, to stop myself from starving, lol.
Ugh, and the climate. Holy crap, the humidity... please help, lol. The humidity here is constantly around 85-90%+, and with heat around 30 degrees C, it literally feels like you are walking around in an oven 24/7. You can't move an inch without getting sweaty. Go home and shower, then walk around outside for a mintue and you are already completely soaked. Not just sweaty, actually like, wet all over. You skin feels clammy from just being outside for a second.
And the bugs. They are some weird mutated monsters summoned from hell. Like, holy crap. Some of the wasps/ bees here are bigger than my finger, and the Cicadas and other bugs of that size look like they could literally eat me. There is also one huge ass spider living outside our apartments, and I am personally convinced he will some day grow large enough to take over Japan and rule as the new emperor. Luckily winter should be coming soon-ish, (heh,) so they should all die soon. As someone who is completely terrified of bugs, and who can't take too hot temperatures, I cannot wait for the winter. Please winter-san, just get here already!
 
Lastly, the university schedule really did a number on me. Today we were at school from 10:00 AM to 19:00 PM. In addition, each period is 90 minutes long, without breaks, and the classrooms are either way too hot or air conditioned too much, making them freezing. We will also have classes on saturdays, apparently. The club recruitment day is on Friday, and a lot of people are super excited about joining clubs, but all I can personally think about is: How on earth are you going to balance all this school work, and several hours of club practice each week? I'd die, lol. So yeah, I'll skip on the clubs, personally. They do have a few really fun looking clubs here though, like the TCG club, the cosplay club, the boardgame club, the English conversation club and so on.
The school festival is in a couple months. That will be awesome. Can't wait for that.
 
Anyways, this update has just been mostly about the stuff that overwhelmed me during my first 2 weeks here. I am getting used to them little by little, and there is of course tons and tons of good stuff that outweighs the bad. The next blog post I write will be much more positive

Bethly seems to be up to something...
The next day
The next day
This blog is way overdue as it is because of RL so I'm just going to stop here for now

Yukito almost oversleeps and Yuzuki ends up having to wake him up
On the weekend they go on a pool date
 

LET THE PEOPLE WRITE SHORTER REVIEWS, YOU TYRANTS.

Skip to February and it's time for Bethly to go back to Canada
And now it's literally a year later, Valentine's day the next year.
A few days later everyone's preparing for a party but nobody tells Yukito what it's about
A few weeks later
 

After much deliberation, we get Bethly's answer!
Later that day Yukito talks to his dad and step-mom
Skip to the end of the year
This seems like a pretty good stopping point for now :^)

This post is from all the reading I've done over the weekend, so there's a lot of stuff here
Not much else happens over the summer, Bethly goes back to Canada for a while and she and Yukito send each other snail mail. Once summer break is over, they go back to doing their "one-room classroom" thing.
Eventually everyone ends up looking at Bethly's sketchbook and Hina notices something
A few time skips later, without a ton of particularly notable events, and it's winter again. Time to plan an activity for the winter break and it looks like it's going to be skiing
They ended up going there, the absolute madmen.
Later that day
Pretty much immediately after that we skip to april when the next school year is starting.
After school the next day, Yukito and Bethly get pancakes at his mom's cafe.
A few days later after school, Yukito and Bethly go back to the mountain because that's the only place where there's any snow left and they want to make a snowman.
As of writing this I've read 50 hours of Ginharu... at this rate I might get to the end of a route before 5000 hours!

Shirogane no Soleil is the very first Soleil game, and it begins with Ryuuhei - the protagonist - encountering Soul Valkyrie in the ruins of the Ship of Time in Iceland (fictional).  There, he contracts with her in order to save his sister and her fellow archaeologists.  However, as a result, she constantly drains his lifespan (literally the time he has to live) away in order to use magic, fight, and even just to exist on the mortal plane of existence.   Unfortunately, at the same time he discovers that she is really immature as a Valkyrie... when she is barely able to fend off a mere Berserk (a fallen Einherjar from the world of Asgard, which perished long ago), showing off her immaturity and ineptness.
In addition, within Soul exists Hagalle, an older-seeming Valkyrie who is rather obsessed with Ryuuhei and pretty aggressive... which makes for some interesting clashes with his childhood friend and fiance Miori (who is your typical drill-hair tsundere ojousama with a side of impulsive violent behavior).  Ryuuhei is... a natural philanderer.  I really can't defend him there.  He is the type who gets into relationships with women without really thinking about it and doesn't really think there is anything wrong with it... but hates the resulting jealousy and catfighting that results like the plague.  He also lies like a rug and makes excuses when lies don't work to distract the girls from his faults.
That said, he is also brave, insanely protective of those he loves (though he can perhaps be said to love too many women romantically, hahaha), and is a disciplined warrior with a good sense of situational awareness. 
This series, typical of the Soleil series as a whole, is twisty, full of character corruption, fallen deities, hope followed by despair followed by hope, and plot twists that make even experienced chuuni-lovers blink in surprise at times.  It also is deeply steeped in Nordic mythology, though with its own fantasy twists. 
The character relationships are surprisingly deep, considering the kind of situation the characters are in, and there is essentially only two endings, one of which is shorter and somewhat truncated/incomplete (Soul's), and one that is immensely satisfying for those who fell in love with the characters and setting (Hagalle's).  Really, there are no separate heroine endings, but the walkthrough calls them the Soul and Hagalle endings. 
Did I enjoy this game?  Yes, I did so immensely.  It also helped me make sense of a lot of the background in Shin Shirogane no Soleil, and I'll probably end up re-rating that one after I replay it as a result.  For those who like the darker side of chuuni, this is a good game to look into, and it is also attractive for people who like Norse Mythology based stories. 

So since I'm finally reading again and actually made a post, might as well keep doing this. I'm probably not going to be as detailed as before because lazy and because I read a bit faster now than I did 8 months ago.
So it's now summer, and someone needs to clean the pool. Our valiant protag-kun volunteers, but all the other students cleaning the pool are there as punishment for being late... or at least they would have been had they not all managed to escape, leaving poor MC to do all the work himself. Thankfully one person comes to help
So after cleaning the pool and getting all dirty and sweaty they take a shower.
The next day, as thanks for helping him out, Yukito shows Bethly around town.
I guess that's it for now, more when I read more

I wasn't really going to keep doing this blog, I got super busy with school last year so I barely read any Ginharu since, and finding the right moment to screenshot can be annoying... but I just had to capture poor Momiji getting fucking rekt.
Thankfully everyone reconsiders after hearing Momiji's super dramatic reading. Later Hina addresses something that's been bugging me as well.
And finally...
 

This will actually be far too brief to make a blog post around, but alas...
What is "overrated"? Many things, apparently, but so far as I can tell the word itself is used to describe something that too many people like, or that is well liked for little reason.
This is an inherently subjective word. Infuriatingly so. At its most basic, it means "too many people have a different opinion than mine", which if phrased that way means nothing. Yet so many people employ the word. There is no such thing as "other people like X too much". It is precisely because people have different opinions that some thing's are successes and others are not, and if something is a success, then it is, for that very reason, not overrated -- if people like something, that something must've done something to deserve it, whether you understand what that is or not, because thousands of people don't like something "just because". And I suppose that's just where the issue lies. Once again, people have different opinions. It's that simple.
Such a shame it doesn't stop me from hating the word. It has no purpose. It's obvious and always implied whenever anyone has an opinion, and it only serves to bring a bad connotation and disagree with other peoples' opinions. "Underrated" at least has a purpose (in this context. Other contexts, more similar to "underestimate" are a different, unrelated, story); not to say people don't "like something enough" or people "dislike something too much", which is also another way to spell "too many people have a different opinion from mine", but to say that not enough people know of a particular thing. "Not enough people know about X", or "Not enough people gave X a chance".
You can use "overrated" properly. "The importance of X is overrated" can be used to describe situations where misinformation is popularly spread. But therein lies the key. Using it in "subjective" matters, in matters of opinion, means little. It's a way of complaining that other people have different opinions. And I dislike that, so I complain about it on forums online.
 
This post was sponsored by that thread asking if CLANNAD deserves its popularity or if it's overrated. I'd say when something makes you ask if it is "overrated", that's because it is popular to a point where it must have done some things the proletariat likes, and therefore can't be overrated.
Of course, that doesn't remove the merit of discussing what is "well done" or "badly done" according to other people.
 

While the principal job of a good VN editor is line editing (making sure that a line reads well and that a script flows), copy editing is vital as well, and copy editing should follow a style which is consistent both internally and with other comparable texts. That said, most VN editors (myself included) are way too lazy to sit and read the MLA, Chicago, or AP style guide cover to cover and actually internalize it, let alone to extrapolate from them what, if any, changes need to be considered for styling a VN, which, being a different medium, may require different stylistic choices than the media covered by traditional style guides.
As is abundantly obvious if you read older officially-localized VNs, VN style has grown somewhat organically over the past decade and, if you compare against works published in only the last year, you'll find that the predominant style has become fairly consistent across the major localization companies. However, fan translations often miss the mark and make many styling mistakes and deviations from this standard, resulting in irritatingly inconsistent texts.
To help solve that, I put together this brief VN style guide a couple months ago and shared it around a number of people, and I've subsequently refined it a bit in preparation for posting it publicly today.
This is not a full prose style guide by any means, but it covers every interesting and potentially divisive topic I've seen come up in styling VNs; it is, I believe, pretty complete, especially given how concise it is. I've tried to avoid topics of grammar and of style that are not generally deviated from in VNs. Basically, I only tried to tackle areas where people actually have issues. This style guide, I believe, more or less represents the state of the art in officially localized VNs. I haven't read a recent official localization which I noticed to be following different rules than the ones I lay out here.
All that said, take this with a grain of salt: I'm not a professional, and I haven't actually read any official MLA/Chicago/AP style guide cover to cover, though I have dabbled in each of them. At the end of the day, this is more a summary of what I've empirically discovered than anything else. But when you're a fan translation editor, you've got to start somewhere; this is a better option than any other that I know of.
https://github.com/FredTheBarber/EditingPublic/blob/master/style guide.md
Feedback is most welcome, whether to offer corrections or to ask questions for areas which I have not covered.
Edit: By popular demand, I've made a markdown version of the document so it doesn't display like shit on github. The link has been updated accordingly.
Edit2: who will edit for the editors?

Nutaku has been caught censoring dialogues implying non-consensual sex in free-to-play ero-RPG Kamihime Project R, reneging on earlier promises.
Rape scenes censored in Nutaku's Kamihime Project R