Plk_Lesiak

It would have to be like 15 hours long, even without much time space between the h-scenes, right? Especially considering that he had to also produce a few hundred otoutos in the process... Well... At least if that game ever gets created, I'll know how to introduce VNs to certain member of my family. It would really resonate with their life experience and attitudes...

Oh, hey, another lady in our little weeb family! Nice to meet you, hope you'll have fun posting.

Somehow the fact it's not a nukige makes it even more disturbing to me.

Yes, exactly! Much cuter than catgirls when it goes to visuals. Plus all the stroking/brushing potential! Definitely a superior option! -------------- Disclaimer: I've just watched an episode of Konohana Kitan so I might be in a peculiar state of mind. Please don't jugde me...

I wonder if anyone here would have an issue with that happening? I mean, I'm not that into catgirls, I would probably put foxgirls higher on the list and had that as the more desirable option, but I don't see a reason to be against it. ;p Although, I guess the girls on the forums could have a problem with it... ...would they though? Maggie? Anyone?

I've just finished reading the first volume of Nekopara and I'm not sure that anything written in this thread beats being emotionally coerced into having sex with a bunch of two-years-old, anthropomorphic house pets.

Is it Samantha Chan voicing Nefer?

I've once lost around $150 on one of those pay-to-win mobile games, although throughout like 6-7 months, so admittedly it wasn't that more expensive than typical subscription fee on an MMO. For people that have addictive personalities or are otherwise susceptible for this kind of manipulation though, it can have pretty horrible consequences. I don't expect game companies to follow any kind of moral codes as long as we let them get away with it, but I find it strange how little was done so far to regulate this stuff, especially on mobile. BTW, there's an actual pay-to-win, or maybe "pay-to-read" visual novel, Moe! Ninja Girls. TBH, it's actually one of the worst, most predatory mobile games I've seen so far. I was going to write a post about it at some point, might do it sooner as you've already brought up the topic.

I honestly wondered about this part of the story when observing your knowledge and the output of your blog, especially after I've started preparing my own and realized how much it will take from me to keep a weekly schedule. I guess it all have costs, but I've just wanted to say that I find this kind of dedication extremely impressive and have a huge respect for what you've achieved around here. I always had a lot problems with giving my all to anything in my life and honestly VNs are a bit of a therapy to me, something I want to stick with and build upon in creative ways (while in the past I've spend literal years mindlessly playing strategy games and RPGs, really barely getting anything out of it - just wasting time). I hope I can one day get anywhere close to your level of expertise and authority on the topic. Also, with bad/mediocre VNs... That's the everyday reality of every genre, isn't it? Classics are classics, but following new stuff always has this effect. So far, I find lesser stuff entertaining in it's own way and don't really feel regrets about postponing my obligatory kamige experiences. I wonder how I will look at it in a few years...

Is "The Heroines" a working title or something you'll be going through with? The premise, TBH, sounds a bit cliched, but if you do the setting right and use different approach to superpowers than it is typical in Japanese VNs, it might end up being very intriguing/fresh. I really don't like the fact that so many OELVNs are set in Japan and leech on western-otaku perception of Japanese culture for no apparent reason. Just placing everything in a different geographical/cultural context and properly using that fact to the story's advantage can make all the difference in the world.

Indeed, how do you expect people on a VN forums to suffer through something this long? Outrageous! ^^ Welcome to Fuwa! I hope I'll be where you are in two years, actually being able to read anything serious in Japanese. Slow starts are slow... ;]

Rise, Oh Ancient Thread! Rise and serve us again in undeath!!! Ekhm... I actually wanted to bring this one to life, less to share my boring story and more because I'm always curious about other poeple's usernames. But if we're here already... :> I stole this username from my brother (who used it for Counter Strike) like a decade ago and got stuck with it since. I know it's confusing and unpronounceable for anyone who's not Polish and I probably shouldn't use it, but I guess it became a part of my online "brand". Even if it's more annoying than anything else. ^^ What's worse, the actual meaning behind it is a political reference so old that even many people in Poland don't get it nowadays. Colonel (in Polish: pułkownik, Plk. for short) Lesiak was a former communist political police officer, who was at a center of a huge scandal in early 90's. Basically, that time's prime minister hired him to collect dirt on opposition, which he held in a certain closet in a government building - when the whole thing was uncovered, both Lesiak and his closet ("Szafa Lesiaka", that's where my deviantART username came from) became a bit of a popcultural thing. I actually like obscure stuff like that, so I usually can't force myself to not use it for everything.

Well, Erika is the protagonist of the second game, so she's even more than just a romance option. ^^ I'm not sure what's going on with the western release of -Le Volume sur Été-, but I can't wait to play it, Yaegaki as a lead character sounds much more appealing that Suou BTH.

Sounds pretty standard to me. You would just have to add a few episodes of intense anxiety and a an hour of watching some draft paper/article with an empty mind and then apathetically switching to some anime or VN, and you would get a typical day of mine. #emotionalwreck

Some irrational impulse led me to actually watching through all the available episodes of Urahara and... Well, it definitely becomes something quite different around the fifth/sixth episode. Not a great series even after that, but I was actually surprised that it had a somewhat decent, creepy twist in it and wasn't just trying to give the viewer diabetes with every episode. Still, whoever thought that any sane person would suffer through 4-5 episodes of pointless, boring fluff to reach the (somewhat) good parts should never participate in making an anime, or better any piece of media in the future. There's a few good ideas hidden there and I even dig that messy artstyle, but any potential it had was completely squandered with the horrible first impression it gave.

Aaawww, I've wanted to put this one here! But the game itself is not the best part of the story. SakuraGame, a few months back, tried to put this exact title on Steam (!!!) and even hired a freelance translator to localize it, instead of getting it through a machine like they do with most of their games. I think it didn't go up only because people mass-reported it to Valve as child porn. Just what in the actual fuck?

Oh, I didn't remember this actually got funded, congratulations (maybe super-late, but still)! What you're showing so far looks great and I quite enyojed Sounds of Her Love, so I'll be looking forward to this one.

What's with all that good-looking stuff? Isn't mobilizing your MS-paint mastery and creating an unholy abomination the right approach?

Confession: Today I've realized that overdosing on yuri is not without consequences. My girlfriend, during random chatter (we were together at a coffeehouse, so in a public place too), said that while she's not really into women, she wonders how would it be to get hit on/receive a love confession from a lesbian (basically concluding that she would take that as a huge compliment). Obviously, my imagination went directly into picturing that scene. And well, it was kind of adorable. And hot. And apparently I did a very poor job at hiding those thoughts... As if this wasn't bad enough, she soon after said "don't worry, I won't cheat on you with a girl". Somehow, my imagination wasn't appropriately worried when given that idea either.

I still have to get to the sequel. TBH, I hate a problem with reading "serious" VNs lately, I need to have a bit of clear mind for those and my mood was so bad in past few months I mostly ended up reading bad or silly ones just to relax. "Hate+" and "Digital: A Love Story" are high on my list but in reality always lose to a thing like Nekopara or some obscure crap I read just for the fun of mercilessly picking it apart. I'll definitely get to those two around the winter break though, otherwise this whole "western VN appreciation" formula will get a bit hollow. PS Next week's review will be One Thousand Lies, I hope you'll enjoy it.

When I'm writing something like this I'm always a bit afraid that I'm overhyping it and setting people up for disappointment, because how you respond to this kind of story is probably very much a personal matter. But Analogue is definitely much more than it seems at first glance. I still have to play through Love's first VN, Digital: A Love Story, which is pretty much a text game in a retro internet browser stylistics, but also gets a lot of praise. Minimalism seems to be her default style.

Hey hey hey! So, the first entry on my blog, dedicated to Analogue: A Hate Story is now live: I hope you'll all enjoy it (or hate it - strong emotion is always better than indifference ;p). I have two more reviews ready and scheduled for release, on 8th and 15th of December - they will be about titles that are much more fresh, but not completely new either. At this pace, I might never write my PhD, but I should be able to keep up the weekly schedule around here. I'm also probably going to spam this thread every friday or so with announcements, until someone tells me to stop. ;p Considering my time constrains, reviews are going to be the main thing in the coming weeks, but I'm hoping for some interviews to show up in January and February.

Analogue: A Hate Story is not a title that necessarily has to be „discovered” or that wasn’t properly appreciated in the time when it came out – among all the VNs developed in the West, it might as well be the one most highly regarded and popular within “proper” visual novel fandom, at least before the recent appearance of Doki Doki Literature Club. Still, it’s a very important game for me personally and for the idea behind this blog, for two reasons. First, Analogue was the first visual novel I’ve ever played and a piece of media that affected me emotionally and intellectually like few other before it or since. It was not only stuck in my head for a long time, as a vivid and emotionally striking memory, but maybe even left a lasting mark on my way of thinking and my moral stances. Second, it’s a perfect example of the power of VNs as a formula that even a single person, or a tiny team can use to create something remarkable and touching, given enough effort and talent. Before I go into details of the game, I have to mention a very good review by Meru that was already featured on Fuwa frontpage – I agree with most points there and encourage you to check it out, but beware, it’s somewhat spoiler-ish. As the game relies heavily on its plot twists, I myself will try to reveal as little of the story as possible. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

Exactly, it's not really bad in what it tries to do, but I can't imagine taking it seriously as a VN. Or praising it as something more than a curious travel guide/digital trip thingy. Still, a lot of people seemed to love literaly every aspect of it. It's also funny that a lot them say they've heard so many good things about GGN when I only heard that it's embarrassing as hell (that obviously skewed my perspective a bit, but I don't think it made a huge difference). I wonder where the difference in experiencing it lies.

So this week's accidental theme is "domination and sadism". Or is it just everywhere in BL games? :]