Clephas

https://vndb.org/v9205

https://vndb.org/v1308

In this thread, you list your favorite five male VN characters, giving as full a list of their personality traits, skills, abilities, and powers as you can, as well as a short history of them. 1. Name: Shigure Sora VN: Devils Devel Concept Powers/abilities/skills/talents: Infinite Branching (the ability, or affliction, to see all the potential paths of your own future, waking or sleeping, and pick one which then becomes absolute fate for the current timeline), Invasion/Corruption/Violation (The basic ability of all Enja and Demons, which allows them to corrupt reality in various ways, molding it to suit their unique abilities and skills based on the Devils Organs they possess. Demons often use this ability to strip normal humans of their humanity and make them into cannibalistic Dolls), Tracing (A Devils Organ that allows the user to 'trace' the organs and fighting styles of an opponent. In its un-corrupt form, it is capable of allowing the user to mimic a physical form. All gained abilities and Organs are permanent, and the only Organs that cannot be copied are the Ro). High Intelligence (Sora is, at the very least, at genius-level intelligence). Invulnerability to poisons, diseases, and toxins (at some point in the past, Sora copied an Organ that gives him invulnerability to all poisons, diseases, and toxins, allowing him to expel them from his mouth in masses of foreign material). Martial Arts Skill (Sora was given instruction in martial arts by his uncle on his mother's side, and he has enough skill to dismember a human being even without using his powers). Extremely High Pain Tolerance (Sora is not invulnerable to pain, but beyond a certain point it merely stimulates his battle instincts, transforming into a brutal, aggressive sort of pleasure). Soukoku (a term for compatibility between various Enja. This compatibility tends to be extreme, with incompatible individuals trying to kill one another on sight and compatible ones tending to fall into bed or become friends on a moment's notice. In Sora's case, his changes upon his personal attitude toward the individual in question, and those he likes inevitably love or like him, and those he dislikes inevitably are terrified of him) Personality Traits: Indifferent, lustful, sadistic, masochistic, cruel, kind, cold, philosophical, intelligent, battle-loving, bloodlust, obsession. History: The sole survivor of the 'Genryuu' bloodline of the Enja (Demon Hunters). At a young age, he witnessed the assassination of his parents at the hands of a masked attacker and was taken in by his mother's sister and brother-in-law. Like most Enja, he is emotionally distant and fundamentally amoral, and unlike most Enja, he is quite literally incapable of a number of human emotions (romantic love, sympathy or empathy for those he isn't already attached to). He is also capable of a sort of roundabout (and cruel) kindness, that is usually framed with a philosophical lecture on why the individual in question is worrying about the wrong thing. He is bound by a 'contract' to kill all Demons he finds on sight, regardless of the possibility of victory or what he is doing at the time. He takes the concept of a 'contract' seriously, to the point of defining all his actions and interactions with others on the basis of that term. He has had sexual relations with numerous women, whom he (falsely) believes he raped... and who are all in love with him/obsessed with him. His only human friend is Shinnosuke, a normal kid with a normal kid's problems who sticks with him regardless of how he is seen by others. In the past, he 'disassembled' and resurrected all of his school's delinquents for reasons he doesn't care to mention, and as a result, the older ones and those of the same age are terrified of him. He is unaware of/disinterested in the way the other Enja alternately want him under their influence, want him dead, or want him in bed (though that last one seems to change person to person). He lives alone in his family's home, occasionally visited by a nameless white cat, smoking the leftover cigarettes left in the house. 2. Name: Narita Shinri (Mikado Shunsui) VN: Hello, Lady Powers/Abilities/Skills/Talents: High intelligence (while many dislike Narita on sight, it is undeniable that few can match his brilliance and mental agility), Combat training (Whether it is martial arts, the use of the gun, or Parkour, there is little in the way of combat-related fields that he hasn't mastered), Hamlet (the name for his Halo's type. His Halo allows him to verbally imprint instructions into the brain of an individual whose eyes he has met. These instructions are impossible to distinguish from the individual's own thoughts and tendencies, and the ability can only be dispelled by his act of will, lingering even beyond his death). Scheming (He is very skilled at using his high intelligence to draw people into traps of their own making, and he has no qualms whatsoever about destroying his enemies in this manner). Facade (he is highly skilled at concealing his emotions, though he tends to deliberately not do so at times with those he admires). Charismatic (while many dislike him on first meeting, people of vision tend to fall for him easily). Meditation (He is capable through specialized breathing methodologies and mental disciplines of reducing his need for sleep and evening out spikes of emotion). Personality: Vindictive to the extreme, kind-hearted, compassionate, wise, independent, intelligent, scheming, pragmatic, ruthless, deliberately emotional, openly perverted, arrogant with cause. History: As a young man, his family was massacred by members of the same clan. As a result, he was forced to discard his original name (Shunsui) and was picked up by an aging mercenary who was infamous in the underworld of spy games and proxy wars of the Cold War era, who then taught him his combat skills and left him the money he decided to use for his revenge. He enters the Tenkawa Noble School for the sole purpose of avenging himself on the individuals responsible for the deaths of those he loved. 3. Name: Shiranui Yoshikazu VN: Evolimit Abilities/Talents/Powers/Skills: Astronaut Training (He is fully trained as an astronaut, terraforming colonist, and generalized researcher, though he has no degree). Martial Arts (He was trained in martial arts by Shannon Wordsworth and actually became quite skilled in it, though he cannot be said to be a true master). Kokoro (He can converse with the disembodied spirit of the girl whose heart beats in his chest. She often serves as a - far wiser - sounding board for him, and her concern for him is often a lifeline in various situations. She is able to exist inside him at the cost of his ability to feel sorrow). Patch (A mysterious stone that grants immense physical abilities, the ability to survive in the harsh conditions on Mars, and allows access to a unique ability. In times of extremity, it also allows the individual it is implanted in to evolve, altering even his fundamental physical nature). Flame Control/Creation (the ability he gained by implanting his Patch). Personality: Kind-hearted, loving, compassionate, brave, openly perverted, persistent, self-sacrificing, cannot understand sorrow (and thus can't feel real empathy for the emotion), passionate. History: As a young child, he suffered from heart disease, which would have normally condemned him to an early death. However, a sudden donor saved his life, leaving him at loose ends. He then encountered Kokoro in his dreams and gave over his ability to feel sorrow in order to allow her to live within him. Having no dream of his own, he saw it as his duty to fulfill Kokoro's dream of going to Mars and worked hard, pushing himself beyond most normal limits to gain a spot on the Japanese part of the crew, along with Shizuku. He and Shizuku formed a close bond of friendship and camaraderie during the testing and training periods, and together they were found in cold sleep capsules a century after the collapse of the first colonization effort, whereupon they agreed to join the new society (born from the second effort). While he is often ebullient and outgoing, his natural tendency is to accommodate his partners and friends where matters don't infringe on his personal boundaries. Despite his apparently foolish behavior at times, he is actually quite intelligent (he had to be, to pass the tests to get on the colonization project). 4. Name: Zephyr Colerain VN: Silverio Vendetta Skills/Abilities/Talents/Powers: Personality gap (While his normally lazy, cowardly, hedonistic, and generally pessimistic, when he is cornered he transforms into a murderous killer who will use any means at his disposal - ranging from his powers as an Esperanto to insults and emotional manipulation - to kill his enemy, ruthlessly and without remorse). Esperanto (He is an enhanced soldier, capable of incredible feats of strength and agility, and he regenerates far more quickly than the average man.). Vibration Control (His unique Esperanto ability allows him to manipulate vibrations - ranging from resonance with physical matter to microwaves). Unmatched Assassin (There is literally no more skilled assassin within the setting. His cowardly nature and ruthlessness when cornered ironically made him an ideal silent killer once trained. His willingness to use the dirtiest of tactics without hesitation further enhanced this ability.) Personality: Cowardly, loving, normal, vicious, pragmatic, self-centered, hates and admires glory-seekers, hedonistic, procrastinator, likes to destroy those more capable than himself (think male version of Rusalka from Dies Irae in some ways). History: Born in the violent slums of Adler, when his sister vanished he joined the army and was found to be compatible with the Esperanto enhancement surgery. As he proved to be a perfect spy, assassin, and saboteur, he ended up assigned as an adjunct to Chitose (the head of Libra, the internal affairs part of Adler's army), where he became known as Lucallion (apparently meaning silver wolf in one of the local dialects). Just before the Disaster, he was assigned as a bodyguard to Millia's family, and during the disaster he deserted the army, taking Millia with him and destroying Chitose's eye. Since then, he has stayed hidden in the capital, carrying out odd jobs for the Oligarchy's representative and the Red Light District's Madame Eve. 5. Name: Kashima Toshirou VN: Vermilion Bind of Blood Powers/Abilities/Skills/Talents: Vampirism (As one of the undead, Toshirou can only be reliably killed by destroying his heart, and as long as he has drunk blood recently he will regenerate from just about any wound. He is also many times stronger, faster, and more agile than any human.). Lack of Arrogance (there isn't a scrap of arrogance or overconfidence in Toshirou's nature. He is seemingly invulnerable to the instincts that drive most vampires to disregard humans and believe older vampires will automatically defeat younger ones). Master of the Sword (Even in life, Toshirou was a skilled swordsman, but he continued to train himself both in battle and otherwise after discarding his humanity - once again distinguishing himself from other vampires - becoming an unmatched master of combat with the blade.). Midnight Blue (Toshirou's unique ability as a vampire, allowing him to control magnetism through his blood, enhancing the cutting edge and protecting his sword from damage while accelerating or slowing his own body relative to magnetic metals present). Craftiness (Toshirou is unique amongst vampires for using a Hunter-like method against his enemies, using feints and tricks to support his raw power). Patience (Toshirou has no lack of patience, and this quality sometimes allows him to defeat enemies that would normally be beyond him). Personality: Patient, cold, pragmatic, crafty, cunning, ruthless, compassionate, self-aware, stoic. History: As a human, he served under a daimyo just before the collapse of the Tokugawa. He was engaged to marry his lord's daughter, Mikage, but when Mikage was instead about to be given to another man, he decapitated his own lord and eloped with Mikage. Unfortunately, when he tried to stow away on a ship bound for Europe, Mikage was turned by a powerful master vampire and they were tossed back on shore. For a time, he was able to protect Mikage as a human, but when it became apparent that he would age and die before her, he asked to be turned and she assented. For a time, he and Mikage survived, fending off offers from other vampires of alliance and membership within a nebulous, half-formed Japanese Diaspora, but that ended when White Pile (Ariya's teacher and predecessor) attacked them, killing Mikage and shooting him in the heart with a silver bullet. He then eventually made his way to Foggy Bottom, where he helped Nina overcome her opponents and consolidate the Diaspora, eventually becoming the Diaspora's Guardian of the Law.

My review pretty much says everything about how I felt about this VN...

On this list, FMP probably is the closest to what you want. The others might be a bit too morally ambiguous for you, though LOGTH's dual main protagonists are both trying to do good in their own way, and the main characters of Gundam Wing and Gundam 00 are both trying to better the world (unfortunately, no real bureaucracy in those two). Full Metal Panic Youjo Senki Gundam Wing Gundam 00 08th MS Team (this is probably the most nitty-gritty Gundam... regular soldiers fighting it out on a jungle battlefield, as opposed to all-powerful newtypes) Code Geass Legend of the Galactic Heroes

If you look at the list of the votes on vndb, you'll see that there are a number of votes that occurred on or before the release date of any charage/moege made by a major company in the last ten years. Those voters will usually vote for a half dozen or more VNs in an unnaturally short period of time (two days or so).

First, yes I decided to write about another nukige... a nukige with story. Now, the reason I decided to play this one is because of my fondness for kitsune heroines (my fetish is everlasting), and I thought, going into this, that it was going to be a sex fest from day one... but the actual amount of h-content in this game is quite a bit lower proportionally to the story than is the norm in a nukige. In fact, this game actually has solid heroine paths that impressed me with their quality. This game focuses on a young wannabe potter who goes to a small country town to study as an apprentice under a skilled potter named Haruakira (incidentally, this was the first name of Abe no Seimei, the famous onmyouji from the Heian era that makes his way into so many fantasy anime). This game's unique approach to the story is that, for one thing, there is no pre-marital sex (unheard of in any eroge I've read up until now), and most of the VN's content is about the married life with each of the heroines, as their bonds strengthen and they get to know one another on a deeper level. This was also what impressed me most about this game... because it focuses on married life rather than a relationship between unmarried lovers. In addition, the actual time consumed for the formation of the relationships to proposals tends to be a year to several years, and the married life generally lasts a year or more before the ending roll. Now, while I liked the other paths, my favorite one in this game was the one for the kitsune, Kuzunoha. Kuzunoha is a mischievous fox youkai/kitsune who is more like a buddy to the protagonist when they first meet, though their relationship turns into love relatively quickly. Kuzunoha has her hangups, like any ancient heroine you see in one of these games (past losses and general loneliness being the major ones). However, all in all she is a somewhat odd blend between the ideal Japanese wife functionally (by the way, the ideal Japanese wife thing is extremely sexist, lol) while never losing that tendency to tease the protagonist every chance she gets. There are a lot of points in this VN that are emotionally touching, and I actually never felt like skipping the non-H text (which tends to happen in nukige most of the time, since the non-H scenes usually read like they were written by the village idiot). Honestly, on occasion it really is worth following your fetishes, lol.

It looks like you absolutely have to see the Common Route ends 1 through 4 before you can move onto the heroine routes. At least, that is what it says on the walkthrough.

To Heart 2... that's nostalgic. I remember watching the anime when it first came out, lol.

The review below was done by fun2novel and edited by me. One word about the title that might be interesting to you is that 'Mono no Aware' is a term for the 'awareness of impermanence', and it is one of the fundamental concepts underlying the traditional Japanese views on life and death and mortality. In essence Mono no Aware wa Sai no Koro is a Japanese take on the film Jumanji staring the late Robin Williams (Clephas: I cried when he died for a week straight...). However, this is doesn’t give you a solid idea as to what kind of a game this is. In Jumanji people who played the a game were experiencing strange things as the game manifested in their own world. In Mono no Aware wa Sai no Koro (MonoAware from now on), on the other hand, the characters are the ones who get transferred into the world of the game and must travel between different squares on the game board by tossing dice. This new world of the game board brings its own set of problems and mysteries. The main mystery is why are these characters are there and who brought them into the game. The mystery is further complicated by the fact that they all lost their memories and remember nothing of what happened before they started playing strange game. The characters physically disappear and reappear on different squares of the game board as they move after throwing a dice. Each square has a certain objective that the players might or might not do. The board is also non linear in some places and allows the players to move in different directions, and thus some (in game) players will advance towards completely different locations on the board or even reach an ending. All this doesn’t matter to the reader of MonoAware, because this is a multiple route mystery, and you are forced to get every ending in a certain order. There isn’t any kind of gameplay here, you don’t get to toss the dice yourself, and it is all taken care of for you by the story. When you get to throw the dice you’ll move a certain number of spaces, this will lead you to an ending, which after watching it, will unlock a different result of the dice. You then reload, toss the dice again, and get a new number and the story moves in a different direction from there. The lack of interactivity doesn’t leave a negative impression, because the reason to play MonoAware is the story, and the only thing that a real dice game would have brought is a lot of randomness and frustration for players. It would have been too distracting. The story is very appealing and has a great mystery hook. On the other hand, the longer you read it the more problems that will come to the surface. The focus of certain scenes is a complete miss in terms of tone and how it connects to a previous scene, the next scene, or even to something that was said just a moment ago. This drags the story quite a bit, since these moments don’t have any real involvement in the story and mostly serve as wannabe comedic interactions between the main cast. Speaking of which, the cast is not that great either, which might have been fine if the writers had handled the plot effectively. However, since it doesn’t and the slice of life scenes aren’t really that interesting the story feels like it is all over the place. This is not to say that the game is boring. It’s simply not tightly focused on what it wants to do. The presentation overall is average. The art is nice but not exactly eye popping, and the same can be said for the music and the voices. It’s all so average. The game uses an eye blink and lip-syncing system that is absolutely terrible. Character designs are good. That’s about all I can say about the presentation. I am purposefully trying to avoid saying anything else about the plot, narrative, and characters. Everything you need to know about the game and whether you’ll find it appealing to you or not has already been said in the summary on vndb. It’s an accurate description of MonoAware and if it makes you want to play this game then you don’t need to know much more than that.

Yet another great VN ruined by machine translation... blech.

Mmm... all I can say is that the various Tenchi series are ones you either like or hate. I honestly enjoyed it at the time, but I thought the setting really only began to blossom with GXP, ironically when the series switched onto an entirely new protagonist. Tenchi Universe was kind of fun because of the echoes of Star Wars in the later plot... but I find that I don't enjoy it as much now, with my later experiences with other series with similar echoes. A lot of the later series were made for the benefit of readers of the manga, rather than fans of the anime, so they ignored the fact that you were missing large portions of the backstory if you went straight from the original OVA to Ryo-ohki, for instance.

Anime, if you limit it to Japanese animation (the actual word in Japanese refers to all animated shows, but I'm limiting the definition to J-animation), has been around since 1917, but anime as we know it, in its earliest distinct form, was born in the 1960's. My personal experience with anime (where I understood it to be anime, as opposed to my Voltron experience in the mid eighties as a kid) began in 1992, with Record of Lodoss War (the OVA series, not the TV series), drawing me in and making me a fan instantly. At the time, certain anime were considered to be 'icons' of the medium... Astro Boy, Dragonball, Ranma, Mobile Suit Gundam, etc. After becoming a fan of anime, I was introduced to them, and by the time I moved to Austin in 1998, I'd already seen three of my old favorites achieve 'icon' status (The Slayers, Tenchi Muyo, and Yuyu Hakusho). Now, it is really, really weird to see something you watched almost as it came out being referred to as 'iconic'. Moreover, seeing something you liked become referred to as genre-defining (Noir, Love Hina, Ai Yori Aoshi) can leave you with complicated feelings... it tends for me to be an odd mix of pride and embarrassment. Now, most of the time in the US, TV shows are generally only considered iconic when they've run for many seasons or won a number of academy awards... but most of the time, anime that are considered iconic are made so by fan acclaim, and the line where famous ends and iconic begins tends to be rather murky. I doubt many with a strong knowledge of the last forty years of anime would fail to consider Legend of the Galactic Heroes or Tenchi Muyo to be iconic. However, if you were to ask one who had lived through those times at what point they became so, you would probably just get a helpless shrug in return. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is considered by many to be the peak of the now-deceased anime space opera sub-genre (since only a few have been made since and none even came close to it in scale or quality). The fact that it manages to maintain a massive fanbase amongst sci-fi anime fans despite its dated visuals says everything that needs to be said about the artistic value of the series. Tenchi Muyo, on the other hand, is considered a genre-definer. It combined one old and time-honored anime genre - science fantasy - with at home slice-of-life antics with a spice of romance, essentially pioneering the idea that action science-fantasy series could also have a strong basis in daily life comedy and romance (If you can't figure out how that has effected things to this day, then you aren't looking hard enough at the trends in otaku media over the last twenty years). These are just two examples... even in the last ten years, I've seen anime that I watched out of boredom suddenly become idolized a few years after their release as genre pioneers or an example of what is best in a genre... In other words, this whole post is just a ramble about how I'm starting to feel old when I look back at how long my otaku live has been, hahaha. Edit: To be clear, anime was my first entryway into the otaku life as I knew it. I love anime to this day, and while I'm sad at how the medium has stagnated (like most otaku media have stagnated in the last ten years or so) I have faith it will eventually recover. After all, I find at least one new anime worth adoring with each year that passes. Edit2: A few more things... I've also seen treatment of anime fans by society change dramatically since I was a kid. I don't remember the last time I heard the question 'Are you watching cartoons?' and if you shake three people in an urban area, at least one of them regularly watches the newest stuff on crunchyroll. It is odd not to be an extreme minority in an extremely niche community, considered to be childish or strange for watching a gory fantasy anime rather than a sitcom, lol.

This is just a small warning... very few decent VNs have no H. In fact, all the VNs on my top 50 have H, despite me being a story addict first and last. If you don't want to see the H, just skip the scenes. I suppose you could go off and check out the non-H otomege, if you can stand otomege (most are crap), but about 98% of the male-oriented stuff has H-content. Anything romantic is pretty much guaranteed to either be H or only on portable consoles (Vita or PSP in most cases, with some appearing on 3DS). Exceptions like the Science Series (Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head) are exceptions to the rule on 'good VNs mostly being H'.

Pick a few trusted reviewers of VNs (not pros, but bloggers), then give them a free copy. If your VN is good, that's advertising right there.

Gothic Delusion, maybe? I remember it being short and interesting, even if it doesn't really go anywhere. Phenomeno (oh, I forgot this was translated, oops) This is on my desperation list of recommendations from others (for when I run out of everything): https://vndb.org/v8436 Both Ren'ai Jijou games (Hataraku Otona and Hataraku Otaku) Hotel. (if you just do the true ending) https://vndb.org/v16584 To be blunt, Psychologic Love Comedy definitely picks its readers...

For those who are interested, this VN is the latest production by Parasol, a company rather infamous for its incest charage (most of which are middling in quality). This is one of the few companies where I've actually dropped most of the VNs they made simply because they were boring, rather than because of some inevitable mismatch between my tastes and some aspect of the game's setting, characters or story. To put this in perspective, I rarely drop charage merely because they are boring... most charage get boring once the romance starts. It is almost a default feature that charage romance be trite and predictable, with pointless ichaicha and h-scenes that make very little sense in the context. Romance in charage just isn't that interesting *Clephas states this flatly*. I'm going to be blunt... there isn't a whole lot to recommend about this VN as a whole. That's not to say that this VN is bad... it is just so... poorly handled that I honestly felt gypped after I finished the first path. First, this game begins with the protagonist moping about the fact that he was forced to split up with his girlfriend, Saya, who turned out to be his sister by a rather nasty man who immediately splits them up after finding out by bribing the police to see Haruta as a stalker. After that bit of moping (healed somewhat by his yurufuwa osananajimi) he somehow ends up helping the self-proclaimed child director of his school to fight against the school being absorbed by the school owned by his father... with the help of his little sister and his female friends. Naturally, this means it is harem time. All the girls are in love with him to various extents *pauses for sighs of exasperation* and he is utterly unaware of all of them except the yurufuwa osananajimi. This VN, despite its trope-filled setting, actually had some potential to be interesting as a story... but the inability of the writer to decide whether he wants to be serious or light and comedic (or rather, to balance both aspects well) ruined it for me. Worse, once the actual heroine paths start... I honestly can say I lost interest in record time, even for a charage. Saya's path was funny. Her weird rationalization of her sexual adoration for Haruta (a quality that has become standard to most VN imoutos nowadays) is fairly hilarious, and her chats with other imoutos in similar situations across the nation are even funnier. However... that doesn't make up for how... weak the story became the moment I got to the midpoint on each heroine path. In other words... this was a game with some real potential that was squandered due to an inability on the part of the writer to escape the limitations of the charage genre. Edit: A lot of the problem with this game, in retrospect, is in the pacing... given a bit more time with the characters before the heroine split, I probably would have been a bit more sanguine about the progression of the heroine paths. However, I hadn't really developed any affection for the characters by the end of the common route, and that is always a fatal blow for any hopes of enjoying a charage.

I've actually posted on this before... but I'll give you a summary of my thoughts on the matter. First, the question you have to ask is if the questions actually have meaning. To be honest, most charage only really need one choice (the choice of which heroine to follow), but they include numerous choices in order to give you the illusion of player agency... which is fairly meaningless in a medium where player agency is nonexistent save in picking which heroine to go after in most cases. More story-focused VNs are often different, though. For example, Tasogare no Sinsemilla has numerous choices, but this is because the main story changes dramatically on how you approach the game's mysteries and your interactions with the characters, to the point where there are actually three independent paths through the games with multiple heroines branching off from each and several bad endings. With this kind of story complexity, it actually makes sense to have a lot of choices. There are, however, numerous games out there where only one choice will actually have meaning to the story, but, despite this, there are nine or ten choices included, none of which have any effect whatsoever on the story progression. All this does is break up the progression of the story and weaken the presentation as a whole, in my opinion. Edit: Incidentally, this wasn't the case in the past, but nowadays most VNs with more than four choices that aren't story-focused are kusoge.

First, I should mention that this VN, despite having a different writer, is in a style that is very similar to that of Oni Uta, a VN made by 130cm using the same artist back in 2009. I say 'the same style', because the character dynamics are eerily similar. First, there is the ponkotsu oneechan who is open about her desire to reverse-rape the protagonist (though she prefers it the other way around). Second, there is the stalker osananajimi, who casually steals his underwear, toothbrushes, and chopsticks. Third, there is the little oni-goddess who appears and serves as the game's true heroine. Now, first I should say that this artist has a style that is greatly differentiated from the current industry standard... mainly because he has nothing against chubby faces, heroines who make unattractive expressions, and old art cliches like heart-mark eyes, lol. Story-wise, this game moves back and forth between emotional scenes and old-fashioned cat-fight filled slice-of-life (the osananajimi and the oneechan are constantly at each other's throats), and the protagonist is about as dense as they get (though part of that is that he is simply numb to anything more subtle than Haruko's blatant attempts to get him into bed with her). Though the game's title proclaims that this game is about his sister's disease, the reality is that, once it goes onto the heroine paths, it generally ends up being about his personal hangups when it comes to matters of affection and family. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. His parents rank up with the ten worst monster parents I've encountered in a VN (currently the twin tops are the father of Kaito from Akatsuki no Goei and the father of Suu Sasamaru from Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo ), and his past experiences definitely explain why he and Haruko are so interdependent (it is actually as bad as the twins from Yosuga no Sora that way... almost worse, really). Kohime's path is the exception to the rule... by her very nature, Kohime is a free spirit, and she easily overcomes his relationship limitations... but in exchange, the conflict in her path is definitely a tear-jerker. Of course, it is also a familiar one to those who have played numerous VNs with Shinto kami heroines. Koihime's path falls into one of the classic tropes of such heroines, but it is executed pretty much perfectly. I honestly spent the last hour crying almost constantly... which is a good thing, because that is what I wanted. Overall, this VN was highly emotionally satisfying, even if some aspects (such as Haruko's apathy toward anyone and everyone outside her small circle of people she met through Haruto and her insane jealousy... not to mention Haruto's denseness) were annoying as hell. At times, this game feels really 'old' to someone who has played most of the good VNs made in the last ten years (because it uses tropes like the constant catfights), but it was generally an enjoyable read.

You proceed along the common route, you get a choice at the end of an arc between proceeding down one heroine's path or continuing with the main story. If you pick the heroine, you end up on that heroine's path, cutting the main story short. This continues until all that is left is to go down the main path to the last ending. G-Senjou no Maou, Aiyoku no Eustia, Leyline, Amatsutsumi, and Sen no Hatou all use this type of structure. Edit: the reason it is called 'ladder-style' is because you can consider choosing the non-true heroine paths along the way to be 'getting off the ladder' and staying on the main route as going to the top. Edit2: This is probably the most flawed true-route structure, because it essentially screws all the heroines except the true one over. This is particularly bad in the case of Eustia, where all the paths except the true one (Eustia's) are essentially impossible within the setting. Sen no Hatou was just as bad, that way... but then, August has always sucked at true routes anyway.

There are a lot of different approaches to 'true' routes. I generally split them into four types. 1- The 'all other heroines are irrelevant so lets fuck their path over' type seen in Eustia and G-senjou no Maou. While the true paths of these VNs are often quite excellent, for some reason the side-heroines are always better than the 'true' ones, lol. The premier sign of this type of VN is a 'ladder-style' story structure. 2- The 'all routes are true because it is a loop' structure. There are many examples of this one, but I'm going to avoid naming names, because it is always a spoiler to do so. 3- The 'we randomly decided one of the heroines was the true heroine, so we made her path only unlockable after playing all the others'. This one is perhaps the most common true-route VN. It is also the one that probably causes all this controversy, since the heroines are generally treated equally in all ways except that one of the heroines has slightly more emphasis on her path. Sometimes, this type of VN works out just fine, when the 'true' heroine in question is just that much better as a true heroine than the others would be (Bullet Butlers, Ayakashibito, Evolimit, Hapymaher etc), other times it is frighteningly bad... 4- The 'Grand Route' VN, where the true route is not stuck to a particular heroine but actually encompasses all of them, regardless of sexual relations or romantic issues. Most of the best 'true path' VNs are of this type. Some rather obvious examples are Vermilion Bind of Blood, Bradyon Veda, Silverio Trinity, Komorebi no Nostalgica. However, one thing that should be noted, in light of my personal experiences... about 75% of all the best VNs I've read are true path VNs. A lot of this is because of the passion of the writers, artists, and producers put behind such paths (which is why they probably ended up as true paths in the first place), but at least some of this is because, by picking a canon path, they often actually succeed in bringing a conclusion to the story as a whole, as opposed to merely resolving a single heroine's personal difficulties.

After watching the episode, I actually wanted to smash something... the first episode basically covers one of the spoiler-filled after-episodes and a really truncated prologue... there is no intro from the point of view of a common soldier, no horrifying betrayal... basically none of the stuff that made the 1945-based prologue such a great intro to the VN. Worse, the first part of the episode spoils stuff you aren't even supposed to know until the middle of Marie's route and the beginning of Rea's. The simple reason is that Dies Irae is supposed to be told primarily from Ren's point of view, and his lack of knowledge of certain aspects of what is going on is supposed to match your own until those specific points of the story.

"The plot of my opera might be trite, but the actors are good." ~Mercurius

Seriously... anyone who really wants to make a spectacular fantasy action anime with dramatic characters and a complex setting goes to ufotable... The second I heard who was doing the anime, I felt incredulous, then exasperated. The PV just proved my point... and the first episode emphasizes it.