Plk_Lesiak

Wow, this isn't just a greeting, this is a full on biography. Welcome to Fuwa! I've just realised that the first anime I've been watching in, I think, my preschool years was also technically a mecha one - Yatterman. ;p

Welcome to Fuwa! And well, I hope you'll enjoy the massive choice of things to read, having too many quality titles to choose from is a problem VN fans of the past wanted to have.

Yeah, I kind of wanted to say the same. While I think the gameplay part is a bit confusing and I had no patience to deal with it without a guide, it's very thematic and in-line with the overall mode of storytelling (that is, OS simulator). It's one of the few methods of really integrating the UI/gameplay elements and story in a believable fashion. I generally think that majority of VN devs only include choices because they think they need to or that it's the best way of introducing route variety, but without really thinking what they want to say with those mechanics. It's not only the massive choice mazes that are cursed, I've also played enough VNs with just a couple of them that still manage to confuse the reader on what they should do to get the desired outcome. I guess I can't blame the devs too much, because I've seen idiots complaining about the kinetic novels they've stumbled upon and how they "aren't even games" all the time, but still, choices shouldn't be mandatory. They don't even help immersion if they aren't about something meaningful. I think there are ways of telling the story through gameplay, without sacrificing one for the other. Total Biscuit liked to point to Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons as a game where the two are perfectly linked together, which made it one of his favourite games of all times. I like to point out to Freespace 2, a space combat sim. While it had occasional cutscenes, its story was in 90% told through what was happening in the missions (often with very cinematic moments, but ones that didn't take control away from you or unreasonably slowed down the pacing) and very thematic briefing screens. There was very, very little dissonance between the narrative and gameplay and pretty much every mission added something interesting to the story. The problems with VNs is... They're interactive novels. When you arbitrally couple them with another video game genre, you can hardly achieve this level of cohesion. BTW, I think most RPGs suck at this (and maybe JRPGs in particular), as the gamey mechanics barely ever go in line with the world the game tries to portray. Venus Blood -Frontier- lately reminded me of that pretty heavily when after my OP army steamrolled a major opponent it transitioned into a cutscene showing a desperate struggle that Loki only survived thanks to his schemes... There's just so little connection between what you do in the gameplay parts and what you read about.

Nah, it's more that I liked it, but nothing in it grasped me that much... It was thoroughly "ok", which only surprised me due to how highly rated the source material is. I'm still interested in how the second season is going to shake things up... When I feel like I'm ready for some extra stress. Anyway, I think I could do another summary of the stuff I've seen recently. I've been pretty busy with work, so my pace definitely slowed down, but I've continued the Initial D watching with my gf and finished the whole series a week ago. Fourth Stage was quite a treat, more focused on racing than drama and offering less character development for Takumi, but really satisfying when it goes to the challenges. It also expanded decently on the Takahashi brothers and while some people didn't like it, I actually enjoyed the focus sometimes shifting to Keisuke and his growth. Of course, the time between the production of the first seasons and this one made tons of difference when it goes to CGI – it's hard to even compare the visual quality of racing sections. I'll only give it an 8/10 because some arcs were definitely weaker/too contrived. Fifth Stage and Final Stage though (they're basically one extended season, so I'll count them together)... What a shitshow. A series that was all about the technique and science of racing suddenly started introducing layers upon layers of esoteric bullshit ("Fujiwara zone", WTF?), claiming how Takumi's or other racer's performance was "impossible to explain", including a literal ghost in Ryousuke's story... Also, cars suddenly started teleporting, ruining even the visual spectacle of the racing (which was never super-consistent, but at least pretended to have some rules)... There were still some cool parts to the overall story and intense moments, but overall, it was so obvious that the series run out of fuel by this point and started going against its established principles to force a continuation. How so few people rioted over this is beyond me... But maybe I just care too much about consistency? Anyway, these two earn a 6/10, and barely. Also, as I've mentioned earlier, I continued my adventure with Strike the Blood and while the second season frustrated me a bit with its repetitiveness and much of the harem still pointlessly being in the dark about what was happening, the ending finally resolved that and season 3 could shake things up a little... Not very much though. It's kind of amazing how by-the-numbers this show manages to be... If it stands through anything by this point, is the amount of nudity – like seriously, in III bathing seems to be half of the things the female characters ever do. But hey, amusing trash is still somewhat amusing... 6,5/10 Still, I'm not sure how much the enjoyment factor is going to be maintained in IV – the new arc feels pretty dumb and the new heroine is just another tsundere with no actual personality, and even fewer reasons to fall for the protagonist... Oh, and I've just finished Dance in the Vampire Bund... Holy crap, what an utter failure. It's a series produced by Shaft, so occasionally you can feel traced of Monogatari in it, but if it takes anything from that franchise it's all the gross and obnoxious part – the uncomfortable fanservice with child and child-like characters and grotesque violence. To this it adds weird villains with absurd motivations, vampire lore that neither ominous nor satisfying, a protagonist with no personality... It was an interesting trainwreck due to its messy story and gory visuals, but still, 5.5/10. And with my gf, after being done with Initial D and taking a short break, we went on a very strange nostalgia trip – watching General Daimos, a mecha anime from the late 70s, exactly the same was it was broadcasted in Poland in the 90s. That is, with Polish narrator reading a really bad translation of already questionable Italian dubbing. It's kind of incredible watching it after all those years and realizing all the layers of weirdness this double-layered game of Chinese whispers created – and even comparing it to the English dubbing is astonishing. Although, even in its best form, it's a great showcase of just how far writing in anime (and probably cartoons in general) have progressed from that era. The show is very mature in some of its themes, as there are people dying all over the place and a literal genocide perpetrated on Earth by alien invaders, but at the same time there's so much dumb shit and contrivance happening in every episode... It's definitely not a show for little children, so I guess its creators had very little faith in the intelligence of teens... :s Still, my gf enjoys it through sheer nostalgia and I enjoy poking fun at it, so we'll probably finish the whole series (we're at ep 20 of 44 now).

Anyone observing the EVN scene should know well that yuri, besides being my personal obsession, is one of the most vibrant niches for non-JP visual novels, with many studios and creators dedicated to this theme and a very active fanbase. This seems to be particularly clear nowadays, as even companies like Winged Cloud, the infamous producers of low-effort VN smut, capitalized majorly on the trend, producing mostly GxG games for the past few years. On the other side of the spectrum, Studio Elan recently pushed the standard of quality for EVNs in general with their modern fairy tale, Heart of the Woods. As a result, yuri fans have a lot to choose from, both when it goes to quality work and amusing trash. The game I’ll be writing about today, Aikawa Collective’s Mizuchi 白蛇心傳, definitely aimed for the “quality” side of the spectrum and seemed like something that could rival Studio Elan’s hit with its climate and visual spectacle. This yuri-themed retelling of the famous Chinese folk tale, the Legend of the White Serpent, looked spectacular in its promotional material and easily reached its Kickstarter goal of $8500 in September 2018. While the development cycle for it proved long, going 9 months beyond its initial target of August 2019, it never lost its place as a promising and highly-anticipated yuri EVN. Releasing on Steam and Itch.io in mid-April 2020, it gathered overwhelmingly positive feedback – but, did it truly live up to the hype? Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot. com

I find time by blatantly ignoring my actual responsibilities and maintaining social bonds. The sad part is, I don't even feel bad about it at this point...

Well, I see where you're coming from, but consider that in Japan most VNs are eroge for which the main selling point is the combination of compelling stories and sexual content... And they sell well enough through those two features. VNs with significant gameplay are kind of their own, much more mainstream market and that's fine. That is, if we're talking about adventure game-style gameplay. There's a shitton of VNs that implement RPG and Strategy game mechanics – fairly few get translated to English, but Rance games, Eiyuu Senki, Evenicle and Venus Blood -Frontier- are notable examples of gameplay eroge. You also have a decent number VNs with raising sim and dating sim elements, like Littlewitch Romanesque or Gaokao.Love.100Days. Obviously, there was in the past a huge market for heavily gameplay oriented dating/raising sims in Japan – I honestly have no idea how much alive it is nowadays. To be honest, though, I went into VNs exactly to escape from gameplay, which in narrative games can often just become pointless padding distracting from the parts I actually care about. Of course, that doesn't have to be the case if the gameplay is well implemented and I'm sure it can make stuff more appealing to an average gamer, but I'd hate for gameplay elements to be shoved everywhere just for that reason. And if that means VNs are cursed to stay obscure forever? I can live with that.

All Best Wishes to lately disturbingly quiet @Ranzo!

Right, I guess I also see that with Western fans of Japanese artists, to some degree? Particularly with Daoko, who started with these pretty weird electronic sounds and then released a much more "mainstream-sounding" Thank You Blue album (it's excellent BTW), which English speaking fans apparently see as selling out for money. God, how I hate those snobbish attitudes. Bonus pleasantness (in the melody at least, the lyrics this band do seem to be a lot more sombre than the sound would suggest):

Maybe she'll make a big label debut one day and get this stuff made in mass, let's have hope. I won't comment on your multi-instrumentalist cover cause that makes me aware of my lack of musical talent too much. In other news, I'm recently getting more and more enamoured with the Japanese alt. rock scene. There's such an awesome chill factor to this music, they really work well as ambient music when I'm working of doing random stuff on the net. I kind of feel that Western rock rarely goes for this kind of harmonious feel.

Maybe I've seen too many android/AI stories recently but one thing that is pretty unclear for me from your description is what the stakes are in the story? I think one of the main reasons I don't find the concept interesting at this point is that you say next to nothing about the AI running the show and that's central to the whole intrigue. Giving it interesting patterns of behaviour and motivations will be crucial, so without seeing any of that I can't say whether you're making a Blade Runner or a Beatless. Also, the fake university full of puppet androids sounds like a massive overkill as a plot device and something that in no reality could remain hidden, unless you set it in some kind of post-apocalyptic, fractured world. Also, why use HS grads to create your ultimate AI? And someone lured in by sports scholarship? Wouldn't you want, like, accomplished (young) scientists and set the whole thing in a research laboratory? That would also make the puppet idea a lot more manageable – maybe have like one or two android helpers to the main AI with different ideas about their mission and the humans helping the process. A great source of conflict and confusion for the protagonists, who might misinterpret where the actual threat is coming from. I kind of like the prologue stories idea, but @Dreamysyu is right that it sets the project for a pretty massive scale. Also, it only makes sense if you want these backstories to play heavily into the main plot, otherwise a few conversations about the character's motivation to come to the place and their backgrounds will do the same. Also, revealing how they were lured in over time might add to the mystery, with characters exchanging that information with each other and starting to feel something is off. That's just what came to my mind after reading your summary, I hope it'll be helpful.

Welcome to Fuwanovel!

I don't think shitting on SAO is controversial at this point. I'm not sure it's that bad as mindless entertainment though. Stupid AF, obviously, but still has more personality than 90% of the isekai crap that came after it. Plus it has actual romance instead of never-ending harem shit, that still makes it stand out... That is, at least outside of the Fairy Dance arc. That story is some of the worst shit ever animated.

It's really up to one's taste, but I don't think many people have problems reading VNs in Switch's portable mode or on a tablet, so a 13 inch laptop should also be absolutely fine. I know it would be for me (I had a loptop of this size, but it died tragically, drowned in tea by my mother), you usually sit a bit closer to the screen with a laptop than with a desktop PC and not many VNs even have the art resolution to make use of a really large screen without looking a bit iffy. IMO 2D art can often look sharper and more pleasing on a smaller device, but maybe it's just me...

The main one would probably be not liking Re:Zero very much. I respect what it was going for and the general quality of the writing, but I hate Subaru with a burning passion and don't want to see him ever again. I'm borderline surprised I made it to the end of the first season, but that "I love Emilia" line at the end genuinely broke me. I don't even think he's that good of a character storytelling-wise, being either a complete idiot or really ingenious depending on what the plot demands of him. Probably will never watch the second season. The smaller ones... First would be not really liking the Kizumonogatari movies, particularly the first two ones. They combine everything I dislike about the series as a whole: obnoxious fanservice, grotesque violence and characters acting like complete morons. There are some cool visual elements and memorable scenes there, and the third movie got genuinely good, but they absolutely do not live up to the hype. Another one would be liking School Days anime. I won't say it's good, but I like most of the things it does: it's just a story of a bunch of awful people, harem tropes gone wrong and everyone getting punished for how horrible they were. What's not to like in this?

Edit: I don't even feel justified making another post in this thread considering how much I spammed it for the past months, but can't help but share this one. My inner fanboy told me so. :3

There's this EVN all about alternative WW1 that might be interesting to you. Also if Aselia counts, maybe Venus Blood -Frontier- also fits? It's all about managing an invasion, at least in the opening chapters.

Hehe, well... You can check my Episicava review (linked it in the post) to learn why I found it infuriating. I have to say I find them bad in that bewildering way that makes them interesting for a connoisseur of crap such as myself, but I'd not seriously recommend reading them.

No idea, but you could try asking at the /otomeisekai subreddit, I'm sure they know everything about it. :3

That's interesting, the score of the source manga on MAL is atrocious and the descriptions sound even worse, but if they do the impossible and make it watchable it would be cool. And well, as a connoisenour of garbage, I win either way. I feel that's an appropriate response no matter what one's stance on this show might be.

Epic Works is a pretty unique phenomenon in the EVN scene: an African studio, developing games openly inspired by the Type-Moon visual novels and other classic chuunige. Their first release, Episicava, was something of a glorious trainwreck, launching with multiple technical problems and borderline-unbearable, edgy storytelling replicating most of the worst tropes of the chuuni game subgenre. The follow-ups included an unholy abomination of a nukige known as Analistica Academy, and a clunky and inconsistently written, but occasionally appealing RPG VN The Adventurer’s Tale. None of them proved genuinely impressive, but each showed some forms of progress, particularly in the visual department, which by the time of The Adventurer’s Tale’s release got both appealing and consistent in style and quality. As unhealthy curiosity is one of the driving forces behind my blogging endeavours, I couldn’t stop myself from being attracted by the studio’s second Kickstarter campaign, aimed at creating another chuunige-style VN in the Episicava universe (although with no direct connection to the latter’s main plot). Despite my disappointment with their debut titles, I was very interested whether this new project, Rainbow Dreams, would represent an improvement for the studio and correct the massive issues with tone and writing quality those earlier games suffered from. And despite apparent development issues and heavy delays, resulting in a January 2020 Steam release, I’m happy to say that while not all problems were remedied to an appropriate degree, when it comes to the sheer entertainment factor, Rainbow Dreams is a major step in the right direction. Read the full article at evnchronicles.blogspot.com

So, as the Spring season is very much live, what are your guys' plans for it? I'm definitely watching Kaguya-Sama S2 and Fruits Basket S2, and of course the Otome Villainess Isekai, but I'm not sure about the whole rest. Gleipnir looks absolutely awful and might make for a cool hate-watch (and of course, every edgy piece of crap needs to have Kana Hanazawa in it :D), but I haven't seen the first episode yet, so I can't say for sure. Also, I think the first episode of the Strike the Blood IV OVA is available and I'm catching up on this series, despite its utter trashiness. I think I just can't resist vampire stories even in their lowest forms... We'll see whether my interest doesn't completely die when I'm done with the third season.

I just randomly reminded myself that Kana Hanazawa is a proper singer outside of her Seiyuu work and discovered most of her stuff is on Spotify... With like 0 replays, so probably uploaded recently. Pretty cool songs, if you can get over her cutesy style of singing. :3

Yeah, I've since read that the second season is a lot stronger, but the way people describe it make me hesitate to watch it right now. It sounds like it'll make me miserable... Which probably will make me rate it much higher, as my main problem with the first one is exactly that it didn't make me feel enough, neither through humour nor through drama. Still, not necessarily an optimal choice for a time like this... Maybe, in the end, it's the fact that I completely ignored the school social dynamics in my childhood that makes it not resonate with me much...? Now even clever descriptions of those feel pretty trivial/pointless to me and the first season seemed super-focused on that kind of stuff. I'm curious to what extent the second one will change my mind. I'd love to see the actual characters explored more than primary school clique dynamics.

So, I'm done with the first season of SNAFU and its OVA and I... Don't really get it? I mean, the general idea sound fun – I've called it reverse Monogatari in my mind, because while that series is about Koyomi solving supernatural problems by being absurdly nice (and self-sacrificing), this is about the protagonist solving everyday problems by being a relentless asshole and misanthrope (and self-sacrificing). The main cast feels well thought out and there's definitely depth in there somewhere, but that first season... It was boring, even by my highly-tolerant standards. Also, I only vaguely care about any of the characters by this point, which is hardly acceptable for a slice-of-life series that definitely tries to be somewhat profound and emotionally engaging despite the generally comedic formula. Also, the supporting cast is very much a mixed bag – the fujoshi jokes weren't very funny in the first place, but stopped being even amusing pretty fast. I'm often bad at picking up on subtleties of the characters' motivations and relationships in fiction, but even when I try to dig for meaning, I can't find anything particularly compelling about what I've seen. There's some social commentary for sure, but portayed in a rather bland way and with unconvincing solutions. Apart from that, everything is competent, but in no way striking or memorable. So, can't find a reason to give it anything above 7/10. So, considering how insanely hyped up the light novels are, can anyone help me with understanding it? Is this a poor adaptation? Slow opening chapters? Am I missing something crucial? Edit: What makes it even weirder is that Hachiman should feel relatable for me, as a cynical loner. Some of his neurotic reactions in the flashbacks definitely resonated with me, but I can't say the same about the core story.