Plk_Lesiak

It's hard to point to anything with the same feel as Seven Days with a Ghost, but if you don't mind cutesy stuff, Lilium x Triangle and SonoHana games (you have Maidens of Michael and New Gen! on MangaGamer and a few other fan-translated) are there to grab, with a lot of porn. If you can stand mediocre writing, Sakura Dungeon actually has an amazing variety of yuri hentai, along with decent game mechanics and an awesome soundtrack. Pretty much the only Winged Cloud game that is actually worth playing.

It's been a while since I've ranted in this thread, right? I'm still listening to Japanese music incessantly and have two new obsessions. First, in the category of old Japanese pop, it's Miki Matsubara: unique vocals and some absolutely wonderful songs with strong jazz vibe to them. Sadly, she's another proof to the rule that Japanese popstars either live to their 90s or die of cancer way too early. This is actually one of the most depressing ones, as she seemed like a really great artist and not just a product of the idol industry. But well, at least there's all that awesome music to listen to... On the brighter note, I also fell in love with Leo Ieiri's songs, which kind of weirds me out. She's a very by-the-numbers, maybe even generic pop-rock singer, which should normally bore me to no end. But there's just... Something in her music. She even reminds me of a polish pop singer Kasia Kowalska in that her style is extremely unremarkable at first glance, but the songs somehow stick with you nonetheless. Only that Leo's songs are better and so is her singing. Listening through her Spotify catalogue I actually had a problem finding one that wasn't catchy and pleasant to listen to. Few of them really stand out, but the general quality of her music is still kind of awesome. It temporarily dethroned Mako Ichino as my go-to relaxation playlist.

Welcome to Fuwanovel!

I thought it's more about half the membership of Fuwa being old people at heart.

Idea Factory is fairly interested in the Western market, so there's a bigger chance for them to issue a C&D than many other Japanese companies. Hopefully won't happen though, cool to see this kind of initiative for otomege.

Happy Birthday to @Mr Poltroon! Man, how are you older than me? When did that happen?

Maybe they reintroduced it. All I really know that they market it as something new and the marketing push is REAL.

All Best Wishes to @littleshogun! Hope you'll have a good year ahead here.

I've watched the first episode of the Azur Lane anime as, while I'm a bit ashamed to admit that, I've been grinding my way through the game for the last two weeks. It's surprisingly not scummy for a gacha game and has some serious strategic depth when it goes to fleet and gear combinations. The premise and levels of fanservice though... It's a poor rip-off of shows like KanColle or Arpeggio of Blue Steel, but somehow way more dumb and way more moe (which wasn't something I would consider possible just a little while ago). I was wondering if the anime is going to modify the game's implementation of shipgirls to make it at least slightly less idiotic, but it didn't. The levels of cringe this produces is unbelievable, but it's this kind of magnetic cringe that is hard to take your eyes away from. I'm also kind of impressed just how much of the game's roster they decided to include, there's like dozens of characters there and they tease including even more in future episodes. So it's kind of awful and kind of a top-tier piece of shameless fanservice for the fans of the game. And I just want to see how much weirder it can get after the bizarre introduction. ^^

As it’s probably very clear by this point, I like visual novels. Like, a lot. I also happen to like KFC, which definitely places in my top 3 of fast food chains available here in Poland, occasionally coming very close to claiming that number 1 spot. The only thing stopping me from enjoying its antibiotic-filled, industrial chicken goodness every other day is the lack of convenient locales (in stark contrast to McDonald’s, as the closest one is in a very cosy corner just 10-minutes’ walk away from my place, just beckoning me to claim those coupons for cheap coffee). Thus, there should be nothing preventing me from enjoying a parody/advertisement VN aimed at stroking that unsatisfied urge for greasy, over-salted chicken treats. I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, released on Steam two weeks ago and developed by a niche studio under the name Psyop, had the potential to not only be a whacky marketing tool for KFC, but also a fun joke VN – with the backing of a giant corporation and a team of not-completely-clueless people working on it, it could've easily exceeded everyone’s expectations. However, it really, really didn’t… Whatever you might think about this game, it’s hard to argue with the extreme, masculine charm of its iteration of Colonel Sanders. Quite a… FILF? No… DILF? Ugh, nevermind… I Love You, Colonel Sanders! was created with a very clear agenda in mind – it’s a device to promote KFC’s new mac and cheese dish and, more broadly, make you think about its blood-vessel-clogging menu for much of your reading experience. In this regard, it seems to be extremely successful on both macro and micro scale. It was the talk of the day on social media and even gaming sites for quite a while, achieving that for what was probably a tiny fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign. It also really made me want to go to KFC, although that feeling was deeply bitter-sweet (bitter-salty?), as nearly none of the menu items featured in the game are a thing in the Eastern-European shithole I live in. We actually have some crappy “California” seasonal menu with pineapple in everything – a major turnoff, if you ask me. But, if I actually was in US, I’d be rising my cholesterol levels with that disgustingly-fatty pasta dish until I got sick of it – thus, I think the advert part works well enough. When it goes to the visual novel itself, it’s exactly the wacky collection of memes, caricatural characters and paper-thin plot you would expect it to be. Some say it’s just another pseudo-parody VN making fun of anime tropes, but those are really less prevalent than pure randomness. Also, all those absurd "gags" probably sounded way more fun in the script than they actually are after being brought to life. You start as a genderless student enrolled in a crash-course cooking academy, having to navigate your way through a number of “funny” choices in order to achieve two goals: show your fellow student, Colonel Sanders, that you’re a person worth his affection, and a chef good enough to become his business partner (both parts are connected to different choices and getting the cooking part right is actually a bit tricky). In all of it, there's a pretty clear message about simple cooking being supreme over snobbish culinary experiments, and Colonel Sander’s chicken dishes being exquisite, so I guess it conveys something akin to KFC’s driving philosophy. The ending you get mostly depends on whether you follow these "ideals" in your choices. There’s also a tiny bit of charisma to Sanders himself and the protagonist’s best friend, Miriam, and a few jokes connected to those two were actually amusing. The whole rest of the cast and the “main plot” itself are garbage. The exaggerated, wacky characters and abundance of memes would not be a major issue if they were employed in witty, genuinely funny ways – they are not… There are also other elements in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! that you would expect from this kind of meme game, like random game-overs (you can thankfully go back to the choice just by clicking “try again”) and over-the-top music. The latter might actually be the worst part of the whole experience – it gravitates between utterly generic and seriously obnoxious, with the loud cacophony that kicks in during all more intense moments (like the cook-off sections) being simply unbearable. Interestingly enough, the game also isn’t a dating sim by any definition – while you have to deal with a few timed choices (pretty annoying and unintuitive when it goes to which answers are the correct ones), there are no gameplay mechanics to speak of. From the technical viewpoint, it’s extremely limited even for a visual novel, with no manual save (this is thankfully not so problematic with just how short it is), no backlog and dreadfully bare-bones options menu – basically just sound sliders and two pre-set graphical levels. This probably stems from the fact that it wasn’t made in a dedicated visual novel engine (I assume it was done in Unity), but it’s still an embarrassment for a semi-experienced studio to ignore quality-of-life features to this degree. Options like textbox opacity (hope you like white text on white background), text speed or skip-read options are in every modern VN for a reason, and I find ignoring them unacceptable even in a game this short. …I mean, your teacher is a talking Corgi! Sitting on a pedestal! That’s funny, right? Right??? If I can find something good about this VN, it would probably be visuals – most character designs are fun and assets are all-around solid. The variety of expressions on sprites is very satisfactory, and there are even some surprising traces of actual effort, like the alternative clothing made pretty much exclusively for the short ending sequence of the game. The opening animation could be described as pretty awesome and I’d be genuinely impressed if the VN itself was this vibrant. The fact it isn’t, and how messy its script is, makes me think that the production was rushed, without much time for devs to get really creative – which is a shame, but on the other hand, it's hard to argue with the memetic spread of this game and the generally-positive response it got. People were definitely amused by it, and that’s what the whole project was about. We can complain about how uninspired it is or how it lacks substance (unless you count chicken grease, there's a lot of that), but that doesn’t change the fact it was effective. And, as the last issue, there’s the immortal question of “what does it mean for VNs”? Unlike with the cases of DDLC or Devgru-p’s Hitler waifu game, I Love You, Colonel Sanders! enforces the image of visual novels as those whacky, shallow anime games not only through its outer appearance, but all of its content. It also, as mentioned before, mixes up what a dating sim and visual novel are, playing into popular assumptions. I’ll still ask all those crying about the damage to VNs image to calm down – I assure you, 99% of those that discount VNs as just waifu games for weebs wouldn’t be interested in them anyway. And, in the long run, the formula being used in all kinds of ways might be better than it being dead beyond our hermetic niche. I just hope that the next game of this kind will be just slightly more competent, showing at least a bit of the technical functionality and storytelling potential of modern VNs. It only takes a bit more effort to achieve that. Final Score: 2/5 Pros: + Works as an advertisement + Good visuals Cons: - Mediocre humour - Story? What Story? - Music that will make your ears bleed - Embarrassing lack of quality-of-life features VNDB Page Play I Love You, Colonel Sanders! for free on Steam

Just a reminder that the survey will close on Sunday. Thank you for all the responses so far and if you didn't fill it out yet, it seems like for most people it takes only around 3 minutes to finish it - not much work at all.

Welcome to Fuwa!

I'm completely lost with this one TBH. So many sequels of stuff I didn't watch or things that are hard to assess at first glance. Will probably just have to wait for first reviews and observe what's trending on CR...

Welcome to Fuwa! Hope you'll like it in our little community.

Right, changed it to "proficient" as it's apparently the most common-used word for top-level language certificates. I mostly added the explanation so people not familiar with JPLT at least can know in which direction the scale goes without googling it – those are probably not in N1 category anyways. ;p

Hey there everyone! As some of you might know, I'm a PhD student in sociology and for a long time I've been doing projects about fan communities and fan productivity of different kinds. This survey is an element of my current one, focused on the history of visual novel fan translation and the ties between the fan translation scene and the development of the professional VN localization market. It's directed to people that participated in FTL projects in various roles, asking them about general details of their involvement and other kinds of localisation/translation work they might've been involved in. If that's you, please consider filling out the survey – it's mostly simple single-choice or multi-choice questions that'll take you very little time to answer. If not, you can help by spreading the message, especially if you know places connected to the fan translation community that I might not know of or have no access to. The survey will be open at least until Sunday 6th – it might be prolonged depending on the number of responses. Here is the link to the survey The results I get will be shared back with the community within a month and a half after closing the survey (it'll take me some time to process it all, as I have a conference I need the data for in the meantime). If you have any questions, please ask them here or contact me directly at [email protected]. I'll do my best to respond ASAP. Thank you for your time!

17, eh? I'm still not fully comfortable with the idea of minors on a site that is primarily about porn, but as no rule was ever implemented... Welcome to Fuwa! I hope we won't leave you mentally scarred. ;]

I've closed the test survey, the real one will go live tomorrow. Thank you for all the feedback, I'll make a separate thread for the real thing and I hope I'll once more have your cooperation.

Hej, witaj na Fuwie! ^^ Hope you'll find the site to your liking. It's a bit quiet here lately, but the are spikes of life too.

Yeah, I don't even mean Clock Up games are bad, but I still think the hype around is a bit out of proportions. Like, the clash between the over-the-top praise euphoria get and its reality was pretty drastic to me, even though I generally liked the game. I'm also quite hopeful for Maggot Baits, but I find both the levels of hype around it and Narcosis "you scrubs are too weak for it" doomsaying somewhat funny. Maybe MB will indeed be a few leagues above Euphoria and prove me wrong, but I'll keep my cynical detachment for the time being. And I also don't think it'll sell badly, it's a very rare offering for the Western audience and you should never underestimate the number of fetishists and unhealthily-curious people out there.

Like every Clock Up game basically? Doesn't mean a whole bunch of people won't buy it out of curiousity (I probably will) or buy it and later regret it. Readers actually enjoying the VN is kind of secondary to its sale margins, there's a lot of other factors involved. Plus, I feel it's more like Kouryuu's pet project and less something MG is hoping to earn major cash from?

Welcome to Fuwanovel!

Yes, I didn't setup the right skip logic for this one. Thank you for pointing it out. I hope you'll find the strength in you to repeat this feat when the real one kicks in a few days from now.

When the proper version of the survey goes live I'll share it everywhere I can, so it'll be hard to trace the answers to anyone in the full mass of it (hopefully). Plus only I will have the access to the database and will only share summary results, so there's little to worry about in this regard.

How do you think I should include it? Simply as "Doujinshi" or...? Yup, rephrased that and added a separate question about EVNs. As this is explicitly about JPVN fan translation, they kind of barely factor into this. I was on the line whether to include them at all, so the question was purposefully just about Japanese ones. Anyways, thank you for feedback. I'll get to rephrasing those two other questions tomorrow. Believe it or not, they sounded even more awkward a few edits earlier...