adamstan

Okay, so I finally finished Making * Lovers. It was really fun - very lighthearted, and making me feeling good and smiling most of the time While Karen's route was definitely the best (and I'm glad I kept it for last), my personal best girl is Saki (whose route I've read first). Karen would be the second in that ranking, but a close second. And then Mashiro I guess. Reina gets special prize for the most heartwarming epilogue. On the contrary, Ako's ending was one of the most unsatisfying things I saw recently - felt almost like a "normal end". Art looks nice, music and voices sound good, and I liked the translation. If I had to nitpick, then attempted drama in some routes fell flat - it didn't have the emotional impact needed for it to work. But still it was very enjoyable piece of moege. I'd say, a notch better than Fureraba - and I'm really glad they left the dating sim mechanics out this time - so that means 8/10.

But then they would have to prepare separate european-only release. And that also costs money. Perhaps they think that for an English version America alone will provide enough sales

I found path for ATRI save files. In my system it's under AppData/Roaming/Aniplex/ATRI-MyDearMoments- (not Frontwing or Makura). Ok, cross that out, I see now that you tried it in the beginning.

Yeah, this explains why the game isn't released for EU. But then, ATRI got European release, and yet it's homepage is geo-blocked the same way as other aniplex' pages.

It gets even weirder since it isn't just translation, but the only, worldwide (well, minus Europe...) release of Adabana. So I cannot even go to DLsite or wherever, to buy another version - because there's none*. *On VNDB pages for both ATRI and Adabana there are links to DMM, but they're dead, giving the 404 error message.

The save files can also be located in "My Documents" folder for some games.

I just finished Ako's route in Making Lovers. The route wasn't bad, although when it comes to the stepsister routes, Sakuno's route from Mashiroiro Symphony remeains unrivalled in my book. But then, the ending was so lackluster and disappointing... meh, meh and once again meh Now there's Karen's route left, which is supposed to be good, or even the best, so I have some expectations here

Today and tomorrow I'm planning to finish Making Lovers, and then I'll start ATRI on saturday I think.

Yup, and the price for ATRI is great - instabuy. But Adabana is still region-locked, unavailable for EU. And then they'll be whining about piracy...

Well, that's Sony California for you...

Indeed It sounds very good with this natural-sounding singing. What was with the album version - did they overuse the vocal processing? (extreme tuning etc?) BTW recently I tried to do kind-of "live" cover of one of abovementioned Yoko Matsuura's songs. Here's the result - officially approved by the author herself, despite my terrible singing Also, this time I also put English translation of lyrics in the subtitles.

Today I read Reina's route in Making Lovers. The route itself was okay. Not exceptional, but fine, and it was pretty funny. But then, that epilogue, OMG Now there's Ako and Karen left.

Luckily ATRI isn't region-locked.

Well, in this case, even putting the matter of translation aside, we don't seem to have much choice, as ANIPLEX seems to be the only publisher for ATRI - it looks like there won't be separate JP-only release from devs directly. Actually, it is all a bit weird, since Frontwing also publishes by their own on Steam.

ATRI -My Dear Moments- , a VN developed by Frontwing and Makura is going to be released on Steam in a few days by ANIPLEX.EXE (whose site seems to be still inaccesible from EU ) Steam page I'm really looking forward to it - it is written by Konno Asta, and directed by Yow, both of which were in charge of Konosora (If My Heart Had Wings). And there's a cute robot girl there Also, it looks very nice, and the screenshots suggest that it will have multi-language feature, so if translation turns out to be wonky, there will be original text available The VN is all-ages originally, so at least there should be no bitching about censorship

Yesterday I finished Mashiro's route in Making Lovers. It was very nice. That stunt near the end was stretching things a bit, but it wasn't totally out of character, so I'll let it slip After two routes read (Saki and Mashiro) I'm really enjoying this VN - despite the month long break due to lack of time or strength. I'm looking forward to the remaining three routes

Nice Truly generic, but nevertheless nice

Today I got back to the reading after almost a month-long break (my previous save from Making Lovers was dated 2020-05-08...), and I'm continuing Mashiro's route in Making Lovers.

Yesterday instead of usual 30 minute facebook stream, Youko did full-fledged 90 minute concert - transmitted on YT from studio, with proper sound, lighting etc. It can be viewed as a video now, and I think it's really worth listening to.

As for my favourite routes and heroines - definitely Hanako and Lily. I also loved the atmosphere created by soundtrack.

Recently I have trouble either reading VNs or translating (I'm awfully sleepy most of the time, probably due to the weather changes and the fact that now my job starts on 6 instead of 7, so I have to get up at 4:40), but I'm still going little by little. Today I finished Chapter 10 (New Year onsen trip), reaching 82% mark.

And today the package with Youko Matsuura's CDs (and live DVD) has arrived She even signed two of them for me (Maybe should have posted it in "JP things you have bought", but I actually am listening to them right now )

@Plk_Lesiak - some really good stuff there Yesterday I heard Mariya Takeuchi's "Let's Get Married" again, and it reminded me about the thing we talked about earlier - how some of that '70s/'80s Jpop feels similar to our pop scene from that time. I mean, I instantly remembered this Anna Jantar's song: And well, just have a look at that music video - you could easily swap Anna with Seiko Matsuda there, and nobody would notice (if not for the language difference )

Nice, very chilled out And so today CDJapan sent them to me At first Youko offered to send me the discs directly, but it turned out to be nearly impossible, since international postal services are currently suspended, and DHL, who still operates, is really horribly expensive for individuals - they quoted her 9600円 for this So we decided to wait until postal services resume. But then, I got reply from CDJapan, saying they can get those discs for me. They also use DHL, but they have some kind of partnership, so DHL shipping at CDJ is just 2600円 . So even after adding their proxy service fee, it still was reasonable. Now let's just keep fingers crossed, that they arrive safely. Also, next saturday (30.05) Youko will be doing special live performance on YT - from the studio, with HQ sound etc Here's the announcement: And finally, let me spam with another one of my recordings Yesterday I uploaded my cover of Ai Kawashima's "Garasu no kokoro":

But seriously, when it comes to the translation bit, all MTLs are still horrible if you want to just read and enjoy the story and (more importantly) dialogues. DeepL is better than Google at using (or guessing) the context if you give it some - but it still isn't reliable enough to be used as a VN translation tool for someone who doesn't know Japanese at all. It can only be sometimes a little useful to double-check your own translation ideas. Or to translate simple, "neutral" texts, like informations/announcements from web pages etc - basically things that are following grammar rules But it will fail with distorted casual speech and short, incomplete sentences often found in VN dialogues. So text hookers (AGTH, Textractor etc) are useful as dictionaries (the option "display original text" in Chiitrans, when it shows you dictionary entries for the words as you hover over them), so they make reading untranslated VNs easier if you already know some basic Japanese, but relying solely on MTL is still bad idea.