sanahtlig

Let’s not mince words here. The ellipsis is a blight upon English translations of visual novels. It must be uprooted and killed with fire.
Before the slaughter begins, however, let’s review some basics. As the name suggests, the ellipsis represents an elision — that is to say, omitted content. It functions as the “yadda yadda” of the English language. It is the “Step 2: ???” before the all-important “Step 3: Profit!” A writer deploys those three little dots to indicate either the intentional removal of something that once was there, or the pointed absence of something that should have been there.
That’s it. That’s what the ellipsis is supposed to do. You wouldn’t know this, however, by reading nearly any English translation of a Japanese visual novel. Ellipses are scattered across the text like so many rhinestones on the sweatshirt of a Midwestern mom. They’re at the beginning of sentences, the ends, stuck randomly in the middle — sometimes even chained end to end like a writhing Human Centipede of punctuation, each little dot in the chain crying, “Kill me now!” into the anus of the next.
It’s an absolute abattoir in there.
This particular road to hell is paved with good intentions, however. You see, all those ellipses are also present in the original Japanese and, in an attempt at faithful translation, the TL teams have left them all sitting there for you to enjoy. The original writer had a reason for putting them in, the reasoning goes, and it’s our job to offer the purest translation of his/her vision possible.
This, of course, is bollocks. Punctuation operates differently in different languages. Japanese ellipses are used much more liberally than their Western forbearers, particularly in popular culture (e.g., manga. light novels, etc.) Want to indicate a pause? Ellipsis. Silence? Ellipsis. Passage of time? Ellipsis. Need to fill some empty space? Ellipsis. Is it Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday? Ellipsis, ellipsis, ellipsis. When ported over to English, most of these usages look less like carefully crafted sentences and more like a transcript of a particularly drunken Snapchat session.
Put simply, what works in one language doesn’t always work in another. When I’m translating a Line of Text from German, for Example, I don’t capitalize all the Nouns because that’s how it was in the Original. I normalize it for English. The same needs to be done in any VN translation.
My current rule of thumb while editing — I’ll bold it for you in red here — is as follows: Remove/replace all ellipses in a line of Japanese text unless doing so irreparably breaks the sentence or significantly changes its meaning.
Luckily for us, English has a toolbox full of punctuation to get the job done. Commas, semicolons, periods, dashes — they’re all your friends. So let’s discuss some common situations in VNs and how we might handle them.

The trailing ellipsis
You’ll see lots of these littering the ends of sentences and lines, mostly to little effect. More often than not, they indicate a thought closing on anything other than a 100% full and decisive stop. Since they don’t hold the place of omitted text, we can almost always replace these ellipses with periods.
There are a handful of situations, however, where keeping a trailing ellipsis makes sense. These include:
The Pregnant Pause: 
When something’s strongly implied at the end of a sentence/line, but left unsaid for dramatic effect.
The ellipsis fills the place of the implied content, so it gets to stay. (Fun bonus fact: pauses are the only things that can get pregnant in VNs.)
The “And So On”:
When a statement is implied to continue for an unspecified length beyond the end of the sentence/line.
The ellipsis here indicates there may have been a few more beers after Michelob, but the writer has decided to spare us and jump straight to Bob’s objection. Had this been more interruptive in nature, with Bob cutting Joe off immediately after “Michelob,” the ellipses would have replaced with an em-dash (—).
The Trail-Off: 
Similar to the “And So On,” but with the character choosing to let a statement taper off into nothingness, rather than the author.
The opening ellipsis
You’ll see these slightly less often, but they’re by no means infrequent. Typically, they indicate some slight hesitation at the beginning of a line of dialogue. But again, the nuance ends up being so slight and the impact so watered down through overuse that you’re almost always better off removing these ungainly beasts. An exception can be made for:
The Reverse Pregnant Pause: 
Just like the original Pregnant Pause, but it appears at the beginning of a sentence. Often holds the place of something a character doesn’t want to say.
Rather than just pausing in passing, Joe is actively not admitting he thinks Joe is a jackass. That makes this line a strong candidate for an ellipsis.
The mid-sentence ellipsis
So, so many of these. You’ll close your eyes at night and they’ll haunt you. They’re almost always meant to indicate a slight pause in speech or thought, but trying to the read the resulting text is an exercise in frustration. There are... just so... many unnecessary... gaps. (Full disclosure: When writing scripts for TV, I’ll use ellipses like this a lot. But that’s for a very specific purpose: helping to communicate the particular rhythm of a line to the actor(s). I always avoid this in audience-facing text.)
In almost all cases, unless there’s a marked pivot in thought, a comma will suffice.
If the ellipsis is holding together two complete yet interwoven thoughts, a semicolon will do nicely.
If the ellipsis is holding together two complete and independent thoughts, a period should be used.
If ellipses are used to indicate an interruptive thought, one that breaks the main flow of the sentence, em-dashes can be used.
Again, there are a couple situations where these mid-sentence ellipses can remain:
The Ta-Da:
When a pause is used for obvious dramatic effect, the ellipsis should be kept.
The Shatner:
When halting or stilted speech is intended for dramatic/comedic effect, ellipses may be retained.

The empty line ellipsis
You’ll see a lot of these. Holdovers from manga and light novels, they are explicit indicators of silence, being at a loss for words, holding one’s tongue, etc.
In English prose, these silences would normally be held with narration — e.g., “Baconator just sat there, dripping ketchup.” You’d never see a sentence such as: ‘Harry Potter said, “...” and continued looking out the window.’ That’s because, unlike most VNs, traditional novels don’t have the crutch of character sprites and name cards appearing alongside dialogue. Due to such VN conventions, along with the technical limitations of translation — it’s frequently impossible to replace character dialogue with unvoiced narration — you should almost always leave these ellipses in place. Based on your best judgement, you can also choose to leave such variants as the questioning silence ("...?") and the excited/alarmed silence ("...!").
It should be noted that such empty line ellipses can also be used outside of dialogue. Often, these will just indicate time passing. There’s also a long tradition in Japanese art of the “pillow” — a held moment of contemplative emptiness. It’s the bit of formal textual throat-clearing at the start of a poem. It’s the 10-second cutaway to a babbling brook that connects two scenes in a movie. In a VN, this pillow can evidence itself as a single line of narration, empty save for an ellipsis. There’s no good English alternative for this, so it should be kept wherever you encounter it.
Extra credit: The multi-line ellipsis
I saved this one for last, because it’s a bit of a special case. Against all my better instincts, it involves adding ellipses in places where the original text has none. It’s painful but it’s for a good cause.
Sometimes, when editing or translating a VN, you’ll run across sentences that spill over onto two or more lines.
Unlike in poetry, which uses line breaks to very deliberate effect, these multi-line monsters are almost always the result of the VN writer just running out of highway and choosing to keep on driving. Whenever possible, you should attempt to restructure such sentences so they don’t break across lines. Often, splitting an overly long sentence into two smaller ones will do the trick. If it resists your best efforts, however, maintain the break and indicate it with ellipses — one at the end of the first line, the other at the beginning of the second.
How many dots? ALL THE DOTS!
Another peculiarity of ellipses in Japanese VNs is that they don’t always have three dots. Depending on context and the arbitrary whims of the writer, you’ll typically see anywhere from two to six dots at a time. I’ve even seen 27 in a row once. I think it was a sex scene. Or a fight scene. Maybe both.
Don’t let this worry you. If you’ve been following my advice, you’ve already purged most of the ellipses from the text. Of those that remain, almost all can be reduced down to familiar three-dot English ellipses. But as always, there’s at least one exception.
Content-bearing pauses: In most cases, it’s of little concern to us whether an ellipsis consists of three, four, five, or even six dots. They’re all slight variations on the standard pause, but since English punctuation doesn’t make any such distinction, neither will we. An exception comes when the length of a pause not only adds flavor, but provides content. Consider the case of an ever-lengthening silence:
The lengthening of the line suggests the passing of increasing amounts of time; the scene isn’t the same without it. Or consider an explosive outburst after a deafening silence:
If you opt to stretch out an ellipsis like this, only do so in increments of three. If you’re musically inclined, think of three dots as a quarter note, six dots as a half note, etc., each one holding the silence just a bit longer than the last. Following the rule of threes keeps the text visually streamlined and helps if you ever need to convert a bunch of soft ellipses ( “...”) to hard ellipses (“…”) late in the translation process.
A quick note about spacing
I opt to keep things simple. If an ellipsis is at the start of a sentence or line, put one space between it and the first word. If it’s anywhere else, use no space before the ellipsis and one space after. If it’s a string of ellipses, it should be an uninterrupted series of dots with no spaces in between.
There are also differing schools of thought as to whether an ellipsis at the end of a sentence should also be followed by a period, resulting in four dots total. Again, I opt for simplicity here and advise three dots in all cases.
The mark of the beast
It’s easy to tell professional translations from fan projects, it’s said; just count the number of dots. While not always true – plenty of slapdash commercial releases exist in the wild — there’s definitely something to this. More often than not, fewer ellipses are a sign that someone has taken the time to not just translate a text word for word, but thoughtfully localize it.
Seriously, just dump the dots, folks. Your readers will thank you for it.

Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon

Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon

Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon

Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon

Winged Cloud's girls-love focused dungeon crawler Sakura Dungeon packs in solid gameplay, decent characterization, and ample ero into a 20+ hr experience.
[In-Depth Review] Sakura Dungeon

Nutaku comments on the difficulties of marketing and distributing adult games. But is their upcoming adult gaming store the silver bullet they say it is?
Perspective: Nutaku and the difficulties of marketing adult games

Nutaku comments on the difficulties of marketing and distributing adult games. But is their upcoming adult gaming store the silver bullet they say it is?
Perspective: Nutaku and the difficulties of marketing adult games

Some people here already know that I hurt my knee falling down the stairs a while ago... what most of you don't know is that the stuff they have me on (non-narcotic pain drugs, sleep pills, and antibiotics) in combination make me a zombie for most of the day... I sleep around twelve hours a day, am fuzzy for two to three hours more, have to do rehab exercises for another two hours, and I spend around four hours of what is remaining working. 
Needless to say, this doesn't leave much time for anything else... which is why VN of the Month is so far behind.  Normally, by this point I would have played through at least four or five of the month's VNs, and I would probably be considering which one - if any - was worth the VN of the month rating... as it is, it has taken me a little over seventeen days to finish just two VNs from April's releases. 
I'm basically venting my frustration right now... since I lose money with every day I can't work at full capacity and I go a little more stir crazy with every day I can't go out and get some fresh air without using crutches.  For the first time in almost nine years, I actually had to use up my entire pay for a month for bills and food  (the medical bills being the highest, obviously). 
Needless to say, I'm in a sour mood.
If I seem harsh toward the remaining VNs this month, please forgive me.  It is really, really hard to concentrate outside of work right now... and I'm actually having to reconsider a lot of my plans for the rest of the year based on the costs I project for the rest of the next few months.  Nothing pisses me off more than being unable to rectify everyday money problems (which is why I work so much normally)....
Anyway, that's enough moaning from me for now.  The two key points are that the above are the reasons VN of the Month is so far behind and I so rarely post, despite the fact that I'm technically 'online' (I rarely if ever shut down the fuwanovel tab, lol) all the time.  If I'm slow to respond, it is because I'm not myself, not because I'm not interested in doing so.

None of my incarnations has ever been very good at pretending to be nice. 
Yes, that is an understatement, from a purely objective perspective.  However, when you are a sentient universe-eating monster that used to be a fat, bald otaku from a frontier planet in a rather pathetic galaxy in an even more pathetic universe, it is kind of hard to understand how to be ‘nice’. 
Understand, I was just out to have a few drinks, perhaps eat some of the more nasty criminals that infested the city of Neo Lovenia, and maybe find a few people worth loving… I had no intention of getting involved in something so utterly boring as a slum-dwellers’ riot when I left the sewer-level apartment I’d chosen more out of memories of a certain child’s cartoon back ‘home’ than any practical reasons.  Unfortunately, as with most matters involving mortals, I wasn’t exactly given a choice whether to get involved or not.
Especially when a really pretty girl hidden under the rags of a filthy slum-dwelling piece of mortal trash was tossed off a bridge, straight into my arms…
That, in and of itself, would not have been much of a problem.  On any other day, I would have simply eaten the girl, made her into one of my trillions of immortal servants, then gone on about the business of getting myself debauched in the biggest city on one of the most degenerate planets in all of that particular universe.
Unfortunately, the men in the silly blue robes with the magic staffs had the bad taste to try to blast me with lightning bolts, probably thinking I was one of the girl’s allies.  Since this verged on that most terrible of all sins, incivility, I decided to retaliate in kind.
It wasn’t my fault that the fragile matter of that particular space-time continuum wasn’t up to the task of withstanding the equivalent of a sigh of exasperation from me.
The bridge, the rioting slum-dwellers in their filthy rags, and the entire unit of what passed for police on that particular sorry excuse for a civilized world, were suddenly wiped from existence, along with a large portion of the surrounding streets and buildings… and a perfect half-sphere of the water running through the reservoir below. 
Needless to say, I was somewhat dismayed.  While I tended to devour all sorts of nasty things in my true form, I generally refrained from drinking the water on planets like that one… one could never tell just what was in it, after all.  The oily taste of rotten fish and the bits of effluvia that tended to infest the waters on backward worlds like this one filled my mouth, reminding me of why I generally refrained from such activities when in mortal form.
The girl in my arms was quite unconscious, and I was briefly tempted to just toss her in the river and be done with it… but she was also unreasonably pretty underneath all that grime.  So pretty, in fact, that she reminded me of my own mortal days, when I spent most of every day staring at a computer screen at animated beauty because the world around me was so ugly.  As such, I believe that it is only reasonable that I should be forgiven for deciding to refrain from eating her before I got to know her.
Once an erogamer, always an erogamer, after all. 
Having returned to my home, such as it was, I found myself at a loss.  Being a sensible creature, I’d long-since arranged for my own pocket dimension full of all the creature comforts to follow me wherever I went, and there was no chance of trouble from the outside entering without my permission.  Unfortunately, I had seemingly lost my wits, deciding to bring a mere mortal child, however pretty, to my sanctum, full of walls of eroge, anime blu-rays, and video games from every era of my pox-infested homeworld’s technological age.
As such, I was quite well-aware that my home wasn’t exactly suitable for the inhabitance of beings of the female persuasion.  The nightmare of many otakus yet to obtain the power of true enlightenment, of taking a girlfriend home only for her to find out about his hidden passions and reject him furiously, briefly raised its head. 
I shook my head, smiling somewhat wryly at my rather prosaic worry.  After all, if all else failed I could always eat the girl anyway.  Pretty as she was, she would be even prettier with glowing orange eyes and a bear-trap smile full of endless hunger.  However, now that I had refrained from eating her once, I found it difficult to consider doing so anyway.   I am nothing if not stubborn, as a particularly bone-headed (literally) Neanderthal discovered when we got into a headbutting contest during one of my many pleasure trips to my homeworld’s distant past.
So it was that I found myself transforming the girl’s rags into a simple kimono (again, once a weaboo, always a weaboo), cleaning her body by the simple expedient of turning all non-living matter on the surface of her skin into quick-evaporating anti-bacterial soap. 
Why did I have to inherit the original’s otaku-obsessions?  I wondered, feeling a bit exasperated.  All of the avatars made by the original have their own quirks and individual leanings, though the essential nature of the being we represent is unchangeable.  However, I am one of the few unfortunates to have inherited the original’s ‘hobby’ and tastes. 
The one thing all of us inherit is ‘hunger’.  It takes different forms, depending on the individual, but all of us eat people.  If it is the simple fondness one might have for their favorite meal, the result tends to be what most mortal races would call a ‘monster’.  The individual’s basic personality survives being eaten… but their body and their desires are changed drastically.  In the billions of years since my maker had eaten this particular universe, I’d come to understand just how differently our emotions toward those we eat effect various species.
If we happened to actually know and like the person in question, the result that came out the other side was generally superficially unchanged… after all, the more we know and like someone, the less likely we are to want to turn them into a duplicate of ourselves. 
But I digress.  I was speaking of our ‘hunger’.  In some cases it manifests as lust, in others it manifests as greed, in some it manifests as sadism, and yet in others it can manifest as a desire to kill.  It isn’t always negative… if it was, very few universes would have managed to survive our presence. 
In my case, it is pride, the desire for recognition given free reign.  Need I state how paradoxical my otaku hobbies and my ‘hunger’ are?  I’ve not quite gone so far down that path as the original went… so I’m not about to proudly state that I love eroge to the world.  Unfortunately, that meant that I was generally forced to hide my hobbies on whatever world I chose to use as a foothold at a given time.
As such, I vanished the various otaku paraphernalia in the room, transforming the walls into something resembling the inside of a castle lord’s room from the Middle Ages (imagined by me), with a four-poster canopied bed, deep purple silk sheets, covering the walls with bookshelves filled old-fashioned hand-written, hand-bound books in the local language (translated in an instant).  As a bow to my ever-present weabooism, I left the katana and wakizashi hanging sheathed on nails driven into the wall and the set of samurai armor I’d created in one of my all-too-common fits of obsessive madness on its stand in the corner of the room closest to the heavy varnished-wood door. 
I took another look at the girl and sighed deeply.  Her fuzzy black cat ears and silky black tail attracted my otaku-obsessions like a fly to honey, and the fact that she was a Japanese-style bishoujo only made it worse (considering the whole reason this universe had been devoured was because the original found out there were naturally-occurring cat-people there). 
The urge to eat her was briefly overwhelming, but it soon receded, tamed by certain… other feelings.  Unlike the original, I have some restraint, after all. 
I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and carried her over to the bed, where I dropped her, covering her with a down-filled quilt I materialized out of thin air.  Her white, oh-so-white skin which contrasted so wonderfully with her midnight-black hair once again invited me to dine upon my guest, but I had little difficulty suppressing the urge this time.
That done, I picked a random book off of the shelves and began reading, Hmm… Waylander by Gemmel… my original’s tastes are a bit predictable.  I reflected as I waited for her to wake.
The story was about a kingslayer assassin, and it was written by one of the original’s childhood favorite authors.  While the story started as a straightforward revenge story, describing the rapid collapse of the man who became Waylander into the worst pits of human nature, it was still an enjoyable read… very much like cheap fantasy junk food.
A few hours later, I sensed her stirring in the bed, her ears twitching and her breathing becoming shallower.  An instant later, she shot upright, screaming. 
Irritated, I created a sound barrier around her head and waited for her to stop.  The cat-like ears of the native form I was using were highly sensitive, and her screaming could have awakened the dead.
I observed her closely, seeing that her wide, unfocused eyes were a large, brilliant emerald in color and her teeth had the prominent canines that distinguished her visually from humankind, together with her ears and tail. 
Eventually, her eyes focused, and her screaming stopped, and I released the sound barrier, waiting for her to speak. 
“…w…wh…who are you?”  She asked in obvious confusion, her voice hoarse, most likely from the screaming.
“My name is Clephas.” I replied, giving her what I thought was a gentle, reassuring smile.

I won't lie, I enjoyed HuniePop. It was a fun little Bejeweled clone + vestigial eroge + cynical message about base human nature. It was fun to play, fun to replay and even fun to try and 100%-complete. Fun, fun, fun.
The developer's second game is, in many ways, an entirely different animal, at least as far as gameplay and graphics are concerned. Sex scenes are gone, the art style is markedly different, and the genre is probably best-described as a real-time click-happy time management game. In HunieCam Studio, the player takes control of a camwhore operation and has to keep it running by recruiting and managing up to 18 different girls (including the entire "basic" cast of HuniePop, complete with shamelessly reused voice assets).
After employing girls, you can have them perform various activities, the most important of which are (obviously) camming, which earns you money, and posing for dirty photoshoots, which earns you fans. More fans = more money earned from subsequent cam sessions. Fans themselves are attracted to particular fetishes (teen, latina, etc etc), and when a girl performs a photoshoot, she earns new fans based on fetishes she satisfies. Similarly, only fans attracted to a particular fetish will watch the cam session. Each girl starts with two distinct fetishes (distributed in such way that no two girls share both) and can acquire more by means of accessories that you can procure from the adult shop. Each girl also has two skill attributes that can be trained. Talent increases money earned from camming, while Style gets her more fans from the photoshoots. It's all rather straightforward.
Other activities girls can perform include shopping for alcohol or cigarettes (some girls drink and/or smoke, and you have to keep the supply up or they'll get stressed), performing at the strip club (which increases Talent), shopping for clothes (which increases Style), recruiting new girls at the model agency, browsing the adult shop (which lets you pick up one of six random accessories upon completion), relaxing at the spa in order to remove stress, and... visiting a hotel for some "private time" with rich clients. Yes, you can actually be a pimp in this game. I wonder if Steam folks are even aware of that.
All of this happens in nigh-unpausable real time. I mean, sure, you can pause easily by bringing up various management screens, but it's not the kind of game that lends itself to tinkering with things at your leisure. Virtually every resource you earn (money, fans, booze, even friggin' skill points) must also be manually extracted from corresponding buildings by rapidly clicking them (or, mercifully, by clicking and holding LMB). The process can be automated via upgrades, but even then resources trickle very slowly when you're not actively extracting them, and since you can't manually extract them from multiple buildings simultaneously, you're forced to prioritize. Furthermore, you can speed up any current activity using the same method, but ain't nobody got time for that when you're busy gathering the money. All in all, I more or less hated the gameplay in HunieCam Studio. It's simultaneously stressful and boring (I didn't even know that was possible), and all novelty wears off within half an hour, leaving nothing but grind to look forward to. Once you get to 4-5 employed girls, the game turns into the proverbial equivalent of herding cats.
Moreover, some elements of the gameplay system are a bit... illogical. For example, since fans are attracted to a fetish (and NOT to a particular girl), you can have a girl with maxed-out Style do all the photoshoots, and have another girl with maxed-out Talent (and same fetish) do all cam sessions. I'm not an expert at this sort of thing ((c) Kazami Yuuji), but wouldn't at least some of those imaginary people want to see a cam show starring the girl they've actually seen in photos, rather than some other girl who also happens to have Huge Tits or Thick Ass? Not to mention that the above approach is actually more efficient for the player, in terms of both income and time management. Girls' salaries increase exponentially with each skill point earned, and it makes very little sense to level one girl in both Style and Talent. After all, she can't be in two places at the same time, and two girls trained in Talent or Style, respectively, will earn you the same amount of money or fans (and their combined salaries will be lower), with the added bonus of, y'know, being able to do two things instead of one. The game makes specialization in a narrow range of fetishes much more appealing than diversification, but purposefully inhibits your initial ability to specialize. This is solved by hiring girls with matching fetishes (as I said above, no two girls have two identical fetishes, so there is some recruiting strategy involved) and equipping them with identical accessories, thus giving them more matching fetishes. So yes, specialization in both skills and fetishes is the best way to play...
But why would you do that to yourself? Once you get the message, check out all the bios (some of them are admittedly funny), listen to girls' soundbites the first few times and click on things for a while, HunieCam Studio has nothing more to offer you. Now, I hear you can unlock outfits and hairstyles in a similar vein to HuniePop, but I couldn't even get that far. At some point it became clear to me that I'm wasting my fucking time, which is a minor miracle considering how much of said time I generally waste on games without stumbling upon the above realization.
Maybe I'm just not the kind of person that gets hooked on a game like HunieCam Studio, that is a definite possibility. So, you know, I wouldn't advise against buying it. Hell, I had my share of mild chuckles over the course of 2 hours I spent in it. Maybe I'll even go back and resume managing my collection of DFCs (it's one of the easier fetishes to build around, what with two girls who don't demand a lot of money and can be specialized... I wanted to build around fiery latinas at first (cause, you know, thatsmyfetish.gif), but the goddamn Brazilian chick with pre-maxed skills drove me to bankruptcy, so there's that). But the bottom line is, the gameplay is just not very fun unless you're a grind monkey addicted to floating numbers. 'Tis a shame.

I see many frequently encountered issues in the visual novel community.  I've taken some time to address them, with a focus on pragmatic solutions rather than long-winded explanations.
Issue: I really like <insert type of VN>, but I can't find others like it, or I've already played through all the suggested titles.
Answer: There's over 17k VNs in VNDB's database.  2356 are available in English.  The sorts of VNs you're looking for are almost certainly there.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST USA is really slow, and it licenses nearly finished fan translations and sits on them for years before releasing them.
Answer: Time to learn Japanese.  You'll probably finish before JAST does.
Issue: Companies keep licensing eroge and releasing them censored on Steam.
Answer: They're doing this because few people buy eroge, whereas Steam users are more than happy to overpay for softcore porn.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST/Nukaku is censoring my lolis / guro / scat / all the content I'm interested in.  It's really ticking me off.
Answer: Distribution of offensive pornographic content is restricted in much of the English-speaking world.  Time to learn Japanese.  Also, best not to import the stuff, or you could end up like this guy.
Issue: Original English VNs are terrible.  Help!
Answer: Yes, the English VN market has thus far failed to attract professional game developers, especially when it comes to sexual content.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: The game I'm interested in has a fan translation or a fan translation in progress, but the translation is terrible or the project is stalled.
Answer: Fan translators cannot be relied upon to provide high-quality translations quickly and reliably.  They have real jobs / studies that take precedence.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: Localization companies pick mediocre or short titles I have no interest in.  Why can't they release something I want like <insert title from Type-Moon, Eushully, or other famous developer here>?
Answer: Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies.  They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: I tried text hooking with machine translation so I could play Japanese VNs, but I can't understand it or it's too frustrating to use.
Answer: Understanding machine translation requires practice and exposure.  It's a bit like learning a new language.  If you'd rather not learn machine translation, you could learn Japanese instead.
Issue: Learning Japanese is hard.  Like, really hard.
Answer: Yes, it's one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn.  The US government estimates that 2200 hours of intensive study is required to gain basic proficiency in Japanese.  To add insult to injury, Japanese has a special asterisk next to it reading, "Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category".  That means they lied; it actually takes significantly more than 2200 hours to learn the language.  Good luck.
So there you go: practical solutions to frequently encountered issues.  I hope everyone finds this guide helpful.

After three long months the (un)official restore patch for Shiny Days has been released, finally giving fans the full uncensored experience.
Shiny Days restore patch released + Installation guide

After three long months the (un)official restore patch for Shiny Days has been released, finally giving fans the full uncensored experience.
Shiny Days restore patch released + Installation guide

Mmm... first of all, this is by Onamatope, a company previously known only for its harem-ge from the Mecha-con series.  The Mecha-con series fell somewhere into that thin area between a nukige and a moege, and it was actually pretty decent for something in that area of the VN universe.  So, keeping that experience in mind, I went into this VN with a more open mind than some people probably would have.  Fortunately, this VN wasn't a disappointment, precisely because I wasn't looking for it to be something out of this world.
Ok, first... this is a chuunige, in the sense that it follows a format I think most people will be familiar with... this young guy is transformed and forced into a world where he has to fight to survive, with many pretty girls around him... sound familiar?  It should.  That right there is the basis for about ninety-percent of the entire 'gakuen battle' type chuunige sub-genre.  In a few ways, this VN definitely borrows from Draculius, which I still think is the best non-superviolent vampire VN.  There are a lot of differences between the two... but they share the commonality of allowing for a coexistence of slice-of-life and comedy with a more serious background story. 
I'll say it straight out though... there should have been an Iris path.  I don't say this because I'm a lolicon (though the protagonist and his ancestors all were, apparently) - as I'm not - but because Iris was, at first, second and third glance, the most interesting female character in the VN.  All the heroines had their moments... in fact, I was really, really surprised at the degree to which they managed to balance all the paths and gave the heroines an equal amount of story.  Due to the fact that the first half of their paths are the same, you might think Aoi and Lycoris got a bit screwed over, but their events after the split are distinct enough - and long enough - that I can't really say either got screwed over by the scenario designer's choices.  In that sense, this VN is something of a triumph of the art of scenario design, which was one of the areas in which Onamatope generally shined in its near-nukige Mecha-con series as well (one of the reasons my impressions of those games were positive). 
In terms of raw writing... the battle writing is actually some of the better non-Light and non-Propeller I've seen.  That isn't to say it is first class, because it isn't.  The protagonist is way too much of a hetare when it comes to dealing with his vampirism, and the fact that they chose to make all the heroines, sub-heroines, and the protagonist a bit 'baka' was a bit of an odd choice that had moments where it fell flat.  The regular narrative writing is better than you generally see in a nakige (which generally get favored with the best moege-variant writers), and I can honestly say that the pacing didn't throw me off very often, though there were some shaky moments midway and early on.
In terms of visuals... this VN definitely needed more combat CGs.  I knew they would cut corners on this, as Onamatope is not a company that can afford the kind of budgets for visuals that monsters like Will and Light can.  There was a bit too much reuse of the same tachie poses to simulate combat, and the best I can say is that they gave the protagonist a face and a tachie for once, which was a huge plus.
... unfortunately they didn't give him a voice.  Perhaps one of the biggest no-nos with a modern chuunige is to fail to give the protagonist a voice.  The simple reason for this?  Because the protagonist in a chuunige is always intended to be an actual person, rather than a simple self-insert.  As such, it is rather ridiculous to give into that particular convention when even using a random staff member would probably satisfy most people. 
Generally speaking, the music in this game is... generic-sounding in the sense that chuunige music can ever be generic-sounding.  That means that the tunes are ones I suspect get sold to every company intending to make this type of VN, with a few twists and changes in the rhythm to make them sound different to the ears of someone who doesn't listen.   On the positive side, there is no point in this VN where I felt like the music was misused, which is a far bigger flaw that simply reusing music tracks from other games.
Overall, what can those of you looking forward to the localization look forward to?  I'd say that if you want some slice-of-life with vampires merged with a low-level chuunige story, this will definitely be something to look forward to.  On the other hand, fans of more serious chuunige will not be satisfied by this, as the game is just to light in the slice-of-life scenes and the protagonist is a bit too much of a near-hetare when it comes to the vampire issues. 

Due to work and school, I haven't been able to progress as much as I would have liked with this VN, but I have gotten moderately far, so I'll give you a bit of an update on my experiences.
Gameplay Comments
First, the gameplay... this is a straight strategy rpg in format, but it does have a few twists.  First, the characters known as 'mech-people' and 'sword-people' can become what their name is... literally becoming a mech or a sword, through their pact with a particular character.  In the case of the mech-people, this not only creates a more powerful unit to stand on the field, it also extends their attack range, making them more effective on the battlefield, both offensively and defensively (though at the cost of skills the mech can use being lower level and fewer in number than the characters in question).  In opposition, the sword-people directly enhance the stats of their partner, giving them wider movement range, more powerful attacks, stronger defenses, etc.  When joined with someone, both sides gain a precise fraction of the experience they would have otherwise gained (in the case of the Kai/Alfaria/Beldadia combo It gets split three ways, for instance).  This has some advantages and more disadvantages.  The advantage is both characters can get experience from killing enemies... but this advantage is weakened significantly by the fact that characters that join in a group combo generally get more experience than the two joined characters, making it a trade-off for grinding. 
Speaking of grinding... this game's experience-gaining is a huge pain in the butt, not the least of which because the enemies do massive level jumps (think two to five levels per battle), which makes it a serious pain to keep up, since your levels don't gain fast enough to make leveling anything other than a grind (you can replay any battle at any time on the world map).  Another huge downside of this game... Alfaria is pathetically weak when not transformed, but Kai is actually more powerful on foot, at least midway through the game.  This makes using the mechform usually not worth it for these two, except for the enhanced hp, but it does make it necessary, because Alfaria dying is usually a game over.
Story and Characters
So far, I'm still on Kai's side of the story, so I think it is going to be a while before I switch over to Shizuma.
I'm going to be blunt... Alfaria feels a lot like a weaker, more naive version of Corona from Corona.  She's basically a little kid in an adult's body, with a little kid's thought patterns.  This is understandable in the context of the story, but it can be pretty annoying.  Kai is pretty much your typical rpg protagonist... right down to the naivete and impulsiveness.  To be honest, that irritated the hell out of me at first, though it has subsided somewhat as the story goes on (though he still has bursts of insanity where he does something unbelievably stupid).  I chose Beldadia as my first playthrough heroine, and she is fairly interesting, not to mention she is a returning character from Yumina and Corona, a heroine for the first time in this one.  I thought about spoiling her here, but lets just say that this VN puts her more in the spotlight this time around and let it go at that.
The story in this VN is actually pretty good, in typical VN fashion... why do I say typical?  Because in many ways, this story reminds me of why I generally go to VN hybrids more than actual srpgs and rpgs nowadays.  Why?  It is pretty simple... no taboo subjects.  The story is dark, it is violent, and the characters make mistakes that actually get people killed in large numbers.  Today's jrpgs tend to avoid things like death, except in the abstract, and as a result, their stories tend to... suck.  Yes, I said it.  Modern jrpgs suck donkey tits.  The rare exceptions just prove the rule, rather than proving it wrong. 
That said, I don't know if I approve of them putting multiple protagonists in this story, especially considering the number of times the two protagonists end up clashing (it kind of  feels like they are ruining the plot, to me).  I'll have to see what it is like when I get to Shizuma's part before I decide if I can forgive them for committing the cardinal sin of a serious VN. 
Well, that's it for now... cheers!

The Ikusa Megami series is easily one of the best rpg series out there, as far as plot goes, including the more than two hundred jrpgs I played during my younger years.  I'm saying this right off the bat, simply because it needs to be said.  Ikusa Megami Zero is an example of the best of what can be done when a visual novel is fused with a traditional turn-based jrpg, and Verita is a nice sequel to it.  I frankly consider Ikusa Megami Zero to be right up there with Star Ocean 2, Final Fantasy VI, Xenogears, and Suikoden 2 as a member of that rarefied group in terms of plot, and that is coming from someone jaded by more than twenty years playing such games.
Sadly, it is unlikely most people over here will even give it a chance if it does come over here... and the reason is fairly simple... sex.  Now, there are always people who defend or attack sexual content based on morality or the lack of it... but to be honest, I'm not interested in rehashing that idiotic argument once again here.  One of the ironic factors of this series is that sex is so vital to the story (whereas it is a hindrance in any number of VNs I can name).  The Tantric magic many of the non-human characters use to sustain their existence is vital to the story, and it is also vital to the understanding of the setting.  It can't be avoided and it can't be cut out without effectively neutering one of the ongoing conflicts of the overarching story of the series in general.  So, for those who dream of Sekai Project cutting out the sexual content and localizing this game... please don't do that to us, since it would be criminal... and this is from someone who generally skips H-scenes while doing something else.
Perhaps the most powerful element of the series - other than Serika's legendary life - is the setting.  From what I've read, it seems that Eushully originally intended the setting to only cover a single game... the first Ikusa Megami.  However, while Ikusa Megami itself was considered only average as a game, the world-building the setting was widely praised by those who played  it, and as a result, Ikusa Megami 2 got released, becoming even more popular.  However, it was the release of Zero that basically converted the Japanese-playing Western community to the cause of seeing these games come over here.  Going back into the distant (700 years or more distant) past of the world, it covers the formative years of Serika's lonely journey, as his life was destroyed, changed beyond all recognition to eventually result in the creation of the person he became.  All along the way, through various characters and events, the gaps in the setting were further filled in, bringing the series even more to life. 
The setting of the series is a world that was basically created when a high-technological world (pretty much Earth) discovered a fantasy world with elves, dwarves, and other non-human races... and decided to merge the two worlds together (the details are pretty much deliberately wiped out by the gods long before the story's beginning, so don't expect everything to be told).  This was quite naturally disastrous for both sides... but especially for the high technological civilization.  That high technological civilization (humans) found itself at war with magic-wielding races with a strong faith in their gods, which granted those gods the power they needed to defeat the technological advantage the humans had... while also defeating the humans' gods, who were already weakened by the poor faith of the humans who worshiped them and further weakened when the gods of the invaded world began to convert the humans to their faiths.  This eventually resulted in the death, sealing, or conversion of most of the gods of humanity, renamed 'the old gods' in the new world.  Humanity had its memory of the past civilization reduced to a few ruins and distant legends, and most of humanity settled into a worship of the gods of the new, merged world.  This in itself would have made for a pretty rich setting... but they take it to insane degrees of complexity when you throw demons, magic-technology, fights between darkness and light (followers and gods), neutral gods, and the rapid growth of humanity's sphere of influence into account. 
The constantly shifting moral perspectives, as well as the innumerable factions and nations that make up this setting, make for some really fascinating lore.  That in and of itself would make it worth playing these games, but the inclusion of side-stories (such as Meishoku no Reiki and Madou Koukaku) and direct links to the main series (the Genrin no Kishougun games) adds even more depth to the physical world and its history, as you come to know various historical figures and other parts of the world.
Now that I've waxed poetic (sort of) on the virtues of the story and setting... I should probably state that the series itself is pretty standard, gameplay wise.  It uses your basic turn-based combat, for the most part, and this is generally a benefit, as it makes actually learning the basics of battle rather simple, outside of a few details.  Since battles generally start and end quickly (outside of boss battles) if you know what you are doing, Zero, Verita, and Tenbin feel like less of a grind than they really should, based on the game type.  The biggest difference between Zero and the other two games is that Zero is primarily telling a story, whereas the other two also have Star Ocean style EX dungeons that can serve as a huge challenge in comparison to the rest of the game, even if you have your characters maxed. 
Generally, the benefits of the series can be summed up like this: gameplay accessibility, good plot, and a deep setting.  For those looking for a true hybrid of the best of jrpgs and visual novels, this series is an excellent choice.

I'm guessing some of those that follow my blog are wondering why I haven't started up any random VNs this month... there are a number of reasons.
1) I'm busy.  I have my work, with an addition of university, which takes up about 80% of my time, save for a few days like today when I have time to rest and relax.
2) I simply don't have an appreciation for anything in my backlog right now.  I cleared out most of the most interesting stuff over the last two years, and I'm keeping what little is left for a truly rainy day, when I'm not busy and I don't have anything better to do.
3)  This has been a very dry quarter.  July, August, and September were mostly dry of interesting releases, and I'm saving up energy for Kenseiki Alpha Ride, which I promised certain people I would play early on, rather than waiting until a later date as I commonly do with most gameplay-VNs.
4) This has been a particularly bad month irl.  I've been helping my brother get ready to move his family into our place for a few months while their old place is on the market and they are closing on their new place, I've been applying for a graduate program, and I got several major commissions that have kept me locked down a lot more than I would have liked.
5) I promised myself I wouldn't play any more moege/charage until I've played Kenseiki or the new Fortissimo. 
Now for my thoughts...  Today's post is going to be focused on what makes a good chuunige.
I should probably define the origins of chuuni as opposed to what a chuunige is.  First of all, if any of you have seen Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai, you have at least a vague idea of what chuunibyou is like.  Basically, take your average D&D nut or cosplayer and add some delusions of glory to him, and you have a chuunibyou patient.  That's simplifying matters somewhat, but it is also fairly accurate for a good portion of them, though.
Chuuni, on the other hand, is literature, games, anime, etc. that feels like it comes out of the mind of a chuunibyou patient.  Drama on a large scale, often in somewhat familiar settings, is probably the easiest and most obvious way to tell if something is chuuni.  In addition, in a good chuuni-anything, the protagonist is never a self-insert carbon copy of your average harem-building protagonist.  I say this because it is the easiest way to tell when something isn't a chuunige, as chuuni protagonists are supposed to experience and/or be something that is beyond what you can experience in your life, whether it is psychologically or physically. 
Most chuunige have action of some sort, but not all of them do.  A famous chuunige that isn't mostly action - that a lot of you will have played - is G-senjou no Maou.  In a way, Sharin no Kuni can also be considered a chuunige, for a similar reason. 
The more 'standard' type of chuunige is the 'gakuen battle' type.  The most obvious translated examples of this are Tsukihime, FSN, and Comyu.  In this type, a schoolkid somehow gets mixed up in a horrible situation that should kill him right off the bat, but he somehow survives to become central to 'the conflict'. 
A rarer type is the 'mature protagonist taking on the world' type.  This is easily my favorite type, as protagonists in these VNs tend to have more solid philosophies and are less... idiotic.  I think most people will agree that Shirou from FSN is a bit immature, though he had mature aspects.  However, protagonists in these are adults, whether they are grown up fully or not.  An example of this type that is translated would be Sharin no Kuni's protagonist.  For untranslated, Hello, Lady and Vermillion Bind of Blood (Toshiro from Vermillion reminds me of Auron from FF X, hahaha)  come to mind.  Generally speaking, the themes of these VNs will be a lot larger in scale than you usually see in the gakuen battle types.  This is because the themes are generally written to keep pace with the protagonists, lol. 
The last type is the 'poetic' type, where a writer is obviously masturbating with his keyboard.  Masada's works are the most obvious examples of this (Dies Irae, Paradise Lost, Kajiri Kamui Kagura), though Light's 'other' chuuni-crew also writes similar VNs, and Devils Devel Concept and Bradyon Veda by Akatsuki Works both fall into this category.  In this type of chuunige, the action, the story, and the visuals all exist as an excuse for the writer to try to blow you away.  Currently, the only one of this type in translation is Tokyo Babel, whose release is sometime off... though I'm tempted to include Sekien no Inganock in this crew.  For someone who loves complex, deep prose, these VNs are pure crack... but in exchange, they are also incredibly difficult to read for someone not native to the language.
Overall, reading chuunige is all about having fun.  It isn't about being moe-ed to death or being awed by the pretty pastel colors... it is about enjoying the part of you that never quite gave up that desire to be or see something more...

I see many frequently encountered issues in the visual novel community.  I've taken some time to address them, with a focus on pragmatic solutions rather than long-winded explanations.
Issue: I really like <insert type of VN>, but I can't find others like it, or I've already played through all the suggested titles.
Answer: There's over 17k VNs in VNDB's database.  2356 are available in English.  The sorts of VNs you're looking for are almost certainly there.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST USA is really slow, and it licenses nearly finished fan translations and sits on them for years before releasing them.
Answer: Time to learn Japanese.  You'll probably finish before JAST does.
Issue: Companies keep licensing eroge and releasing them censored on Steam.
Answer: They're doing this because few people buy eroge, whereas Steam users are more than happy to overpay for softcore porn.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST/Nukaku is censoring my lolis / guro / scat / all the content I'm interested in.  It's really ticking me off.
Answer: Distribution of offensive pornographic content is restricted in much of the English-speaking world.  Time to learn Japanese.  Also, best not to import the stuff, or you could end up like this guy.
Issue: Original English VNs are terrible.  Help!
Answer: Yes, the English VN market has thus far failed to attract professional game developers, especially when it comes to sexual content.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: The game I'm interested in has a fan translation or a fan translation in progress, but the translation is terrible or the project is stalled.
Answer: Fan translators cannot be relied upon to provide high-quality translations quickly and reliably.  They have real jobs / studies that take precedence.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: Localization companies pick mediocre or short titles I have no interest in.  Why can't they release something I want like <insert title from Type-Moon, Eushully, or other famous developer here>?
Answer: Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies.  They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: I tried text hooking with machine translation so I could play Japanese VNs, but I can't understand it or it's too frustrating to use.
Answer: Understanding machine translation requires practice and exposure.  It's a bit like learning a new language.  If you'd rather not learn machine translation, you could learn Japanese instead.
Issue: Learning Japanese is hard.  Like, really hard.
Answer: Yes, it's one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn.  The US government estimates that 2200 hours of intensive study is required to gain basic proficiency in Japanese.  To add insult to injury, Japanese has a special asterisk next to it reading, "Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category".  That means they lied; it actually takes significantly more than 2200 hours to learn the language.  Good luck.
So there you go: practical solutions to frequently encountered issues.  I hope everyone finds this guide helpful.

Hello, my name is Clephas, and I am/was a weaboo.  *snickers at the AA reference*  I'm mostly posting on this matter to give those otakus who aren't necessarily weaboos an idea of what it is like to be a weaboo (ignoring social problems, for the moment, haha) and just why we exist in the first place. 
First, to correct a common misconception... not all weaboos are solely obsessed with Japanese culture/history/etc.  In fact, most Western ones are or eventually become interested in all Asian cultures.  There are a number of reasons for it usually starting with an obsession with Japan, and I'll try to cover them all for you. 
The most obvious reason is that Japan's culture is so obviously different from anything in the average Westerner's personal experience (extracting those that come from first-generation Asian immigrant families).  To be blunt, the average American can at least guess at European sensibilities and the average European can do the same, with some mental effort.  We share a basic religious background, our social contracts are based on the same basic philosophy (with differences in preferences), and we tend to have similar cultural ancestors if we look back into history.  Heck, even most of Latin American can say the same.  So, for the average white-on-white Westerner (or Hispanic as the case may be), there might be numerous personal differences, but the actual cultural differences are in the details rather than the base elements. 
On the other hand, there is literally no common base between us and most Asian cultures, save that which we forcibly transplanted during the colonial days of the past two centuries.  Whereas we experienced various types of paganism and polytheism followed by Christianity, they experienced Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shinto... the list goes on.  Not only that, the way we developed our cultures was essentially different.  Confucianism in China (and the symbol of the Emperor in Japan) provided a sense of structure and continuity for centuries that altered greatly the way Chinese see the world even today, though most of its precepts have been altered almost beyond recognition in the millennia since their development.  This sense of continuity (in aspects other than philosophical) over such a vast period of time is perhaps one of the biggest causes of differences between Chinese culture in particular and Asian culture in general.  To be blunt, when the Chinese were already an Empire, our ancestors were mostly banging on drums in small settlements across the face of Europe, begging the elements not to starve our children or flood us out.  The 'weight' of culture is so much greater in Japan in China that Westerners in general and Americans in particular can't help but be impressed (or offended/frightened as the case may be) on first encounter with it. 
That said, whether that first impression turns to fascination or apathy is entirely based on the individual.  People that are more curious are more likely to get sucked into it, whereas those who prefer what they already have are more likely to simply set aside that first impression and move on. 
Another reason is that Japan is really really good at 'advertising' its culture... without really trying.  How many of you watched Pokemon, DBZ, or even Voltron or Robotech as kids without even knowing what it was?  I think you'd be surprised at how many otakus received an early baptism of Japanese ideas that planted the seeds for an eventual otaku and/or weaboo transformation.   For that matter, how many of you saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (new or old) or one of the more modern Batman movies?  Perhaps because of the intimate role we played in rebuilding post-war Japan, as well as the stream of Japanese who immigrated after the war, Japanese influence touches lightly on a great deal of our urban society (less so on the rural, though). 
The 'second baptism' that most Americans experience is negative... it is history class when you hit WWII.  The ferocity and apparent insanity (in the average Westerner's eyes) of the Japanese during the war causes an almost involuntary fascination in those who read about it, that frequently leads to a search for answers as to just why they acted the way they did during the war.  This inevitably leads to the samurai culture (both popular and historical), thus frequently creating new weaboos in droves, despite the fact that the WWII history is pretty horrifying the way it is presented (and even worse in reality).
No one is more mouthy and annoying than a new convert of any sort... and those weaboos that most annoy people are generally this type... the ones who haven't yet realized that their obsession can annoy others and thus can't stop themselves from chattering endlessly about some new aspect they discovered along the way, as if they were the first to find that particular fact out. 
Tips for tempering your obsession
If you are a weaboo, it is almost inevitable you will say too much to someone who isn't interested at some point.  In that way, it is a lot like standard otakuism.  However, if you want to at least limit your annoyance factors, here are a few tips.
1- Don't beautify every single aspect of Japanese culture you find.  Samurai culture led to the insane nationalism and mass suicides of WWII.  Geisha were glorified prostitutes (albeit artistically beautiful ones).  Ninja were spies descended from thieves and common murderers.  (etc. etc.)
2- Be aware that Japanese culture can take some seriously ugly turns in the modern era (the fact that police don't get involved in domestic affairs, the weak rape laws and enforcement of those laws, bullying in schools and at work, hikikomori, karoushi). 
3- Be aware that the excessive pride of some Japanese has led to a resurrection of the same nationalism that caused their involvement in WWII (modern historical revisionism focused on WWII and the events immediately preceding it is a prime example of this).
4- The Japanese really did do most of the horrible things their neighbors said they did... not to mention the POW camps where they held the Philippines US troops during the war.
5- Japanese gun control only works because they have no history of regular people possessing personal arms.
Well, that ends my lecture for the day. 

NOTE: This isn't what I would call a review. More like nitpicking useless stuffs hence the title. I'm hoping that you people are intelligent enough to not take my work too seriously as I proceed. Also, massive spoilers.
Shingeki no Bahamut: Genesis is an anime adaptation of a mobile game with the same name. The anime was produced by studio MAPPA who are mostly known for working on titles like Zankyou no Terror and Garo: The Animation.
 
The anime opens with an epic battle scene happening between a dragon and some omnipotent beings just to show you exactly what to expect from it in the future. While it succeeded in capturing many with gasp and awe, it wasn’t exactly what I would call a ‘good opening scene’ per se. The scene left me mostly in confusion rather than working as an establishment of a fictional world. I couldn’t figure out or even get a general idea of who was supposed to be whom and what was going on. Only on the later episodes it was revealed that Zeus and Satan apparently worked together to seal Bahamut.
Zeus and Satan? They aren’t even of the same mythology. It would had made more sense if it was Hades instead of Satan. Well, the mixing of pantheons isn’t exactly a con in terms of storytelling so….yeah, I’m just nitpicking.
 
The show evokes the feels and tones of a 17th century Spain with its arts, settings and music. A fantasy swashbuckler anime that draws inspirations heavily from other fantasy swashbuckler western movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean series. The big wheel scene in episode 1, the zombies, the pirates, the entangled ships, the fight on top of the mast, sea monster and tentacle all in episode 4 are some of the homage it delivers sweetly.
The orchestrated scores are just perfect for the tone. They don’t stand out much but, as a certain someone pointed out, it’s for the best since it immerses you to the story well without fail and that’s definitely a plus for me. The OP and the ED were the ones that I completely skipped. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that they were bad or even mediocre at best. It’s just that it failed to grab my attention for the first few minutes or I simply didn’t gave it a second chance.
 
It felt weird to see Amira’s personality change in episode 2. In the first episode, she was shown to be less talkative and gave an aura of a stoic person plus the badassery when fighting with the summoned demon (the cinematography used in this fight scene was excellent compared to all the later unimaginative fight scenes). But in the middle of episode 2, her personality changes to a childish one. A dojikko trait.
It’s not a matter of Amira opening up to the main protagonist Favaro because she acts childish and vulnerable even in front of strangers and mere acquaintance when staying in the Anatae city. It felt like the change to her dojikko personality was just there to appeal the otaku fans. Also, what’s with her imprisonment? The angels ordered the king to keep Amira under heavy guard (can’t they just send their own infinite supply of angels to protect her?) and the King swore to guard her with his life but where are is the heavy guard? Her room is kept on watch with only two generic guards with distorted facial features. Why does she roam freely around the castle for whole three episodes without anyone even noticing or objecting?
 
There were some little issues with the pacing like how quickly things were resolved when in episode 5, the demon Azazel manipulated Kaisar (other protagonist) into fighting Favaro.
The Anatae arc slowed things down distracting us away from the main plot. I think it was done so that they have enough material to reach the twelve episode mark in other words, fillers. But these things not only slowed down the pace, it also added new conflicts that only complicated the overall plot unnecessarily. Like the king being poisoned by paranoia or Jeanne D'Arc (the badass) transforming into a demon.
Also, the clichéd ‘most trusted guy is the one behind everything’ plot twist. Lavalley falls victim of this trope. This plot twist fails for me as it felt unnecessary and didn’t really shocked me at all and it also created unintentional plot holes which I’ll get into later.
 
Kaisar (other protagonist) also had some character inconsistency like how much is his vengeance important? At first, it seems like a running gag for him to chase and fight Favaro but later it is revealed that it’s much more serious than that and Kaisar (other protagonist) would never forgive him. But then again, he suddenly becomes very cooperative with Favaro for little to no reason.
When falling down, Kaisar (other protagonist) can slow down time and talk at lengths in mid-air. In the last episode he gets his hand (the one where he wears the bounty hunter bracelet) cut off by Favaro to trick Lavalley and seal him off. Couldn’t they just pretend to fight and get close to him in acceptable range and simply seal him off there? Damaging Kaisar (other protagonist) seemed like an unnecessary attempt to make him look like a badass.
Jeanne D'Arc (the badass) was just cast off as a minor side character even though she had huge potentials and was shown to be someone really important to the main plot in the early episodes.
 
The CGI effects were surprisingly good when I expected them to be awkward except for the green dragon. That was awful enough. And let’s not forget the great Bahamut himself (or itself). CGI Bahamut stuck out like a sore thumb too.
They could have used more tweening for smooth animation flow but it was above good nonetheless. I would have expected more from studio MAPPA since they did some fantastic animation in Zankyou no Terror but I guess they were running out of money and manpower in addition to the dead line.
 
Plot holes left unanswered:
If Lavalley was the one behind everything, then why did he left the childish Amira all by herself to find Helheim? How in the world could he predict that some random afro would help Amira to get to Helheim at all cost? Couldn’t he just kidnap Amira by his own when she was roaming freely around the castle for whole 3 episodes? It seems like a much more logical and easy solution than trying to trick her with all the pendent stuff.
It was revealed that Amira’s memories were fabricated by Beelzebub and he recreated Amira from Nicole (Amira’s supposedly mother) as an imitation vessel to release Bahamut. It was showed clearly that Amira was a full grown adult when she was being separated from Nicole. Now the cocoon excuse falls flat. If she was an adult from the beginning then how come her personality be childish? She wasn’t grown inside a cocoon from childhood to adulthood so where did this clumsy personality come from? And keeping her inside the cocoon even when she was an adult (also making her a child when she was already an adult) would just seem like a waste of time and not logical. Her acting childish throughout the show felt like they underutilized her potential as a character just like they did with Jeanne D'Arc (the badass).
When Amira hugs Nicole, she calls out Amira’s name and dies in peace. How did Nicole know that her supposedly daughter’s (more accurately, her clone’s) name was Amira? And why did she lovingly call out her name if she knew that Beelzebub created the clone by force? Wouldn’t Nicole just hate Amira more for that?
Beelzebub and Lavalley released Bahamut by using Amira as the key. Then the Bahamut fatally wounds Beelzebub. Why was Beelzebub so sure that he could control Bahamut if he releases the dragon? Even if Lavalley lied to him that he could control Bahamut, wouldn’t he at least be suspicious because Bahamut was so powerful that even Zeus and Satan could barely seal him off let alone control him? Looks like Beelzebub trusts and gets tricked by people easily despite him being the devil.
Also:

I think the show would have turned out great if the plot twist never happened. If Lavalley really was the virtuous human who protected Nicole and Amira from the demons, if Martinet (Lavalley’s disguise or his other personality?) never even existed, if Nicole really did gave birth to Amira instead of cloning, all of the above plot holes could’ve been avoided and made this journey more emotional and satisfying than it currently is.
 
Despite me cherry picking all that stuff, I still enjoyed the show. It undoubtedly is in the leagues of one of the best animes of 2014 if not ‘the best’. Quality animation, great slapstick comedy that doesn’t gets old, an emotionally invested epic journey, almost no pacing issues, fillers (subplots) that tied to the overarching plot, good action scenes, Favaro, and the Dragon are just some of the many things that this anime has to offer.
I’m definitely hyped for when the next season comes out. And by that time, I hope that they had learned from their mistakes.
 
Q: Where are the review scores?
A: It's against my policy to give generalized metric values to a piece of art or literature or any kind of entertainment medium....actually, I just suck at math...I'll start rating things with numbers when I get a PhD in Mathematics or something.

I see many frequently encountered issues in the visual novel community.  I've taken some time to address them, with a focus on pragmatic solutions rather than long-winded explanations.
Issue: I really like <insert type of VN>, but I can't find others like it, or I've already played through all the suggested titles.
Answer: There's over 17k VNs in VNDB's database.  2356 are available in English.  The sorts of VNs you're looking for are almost certainly there.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST USA is really slow, and it licenses nearly finished fan translations and sits on them for years before releasing them.
Answer: Time to learn Japanese.  You'll probably finish before JAST does.
Issue: Companies keep licensing eroge and releasing them censored on Steam.
Answer: They're doing this because few people buy eroge, whereas Steam users are more than happy to overpay for softcore porn.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST/Nukaku is censoring my lolis / guro / scat / all the content I'm interested in.  It's really ticking me off.
Answer: Distribution of offensive pornographic content is restricted in much of the English-speaking world.  Time to learn Japanese.  Also, best not to import the stuff, or you could end up like this guy.
Issue: Original English VNs are terrible.  Help!
Answer: Yes, the English VN market has thus far failed to attract professional game developers, especially when it comes to sexual content.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: The game I'm interested in has a fan translation or a fan translation in progress, but the translation is terrible or the project is stalled.
Answer: Fan translators cannot be relied upon to provide high-quality translations quickly and reliably.  They have real jobs / studies that take precedence.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: Localization companies pick mediocre or short titles I have no interest in.  Why can't they release something I want like <insert title from Type-Moon, Eushully, or other famous developer here>?
Answer: Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies.  They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: I tried text hooking with machine translation so I could play Japanese VNs, but I can't understand it or it's too frustrating to use.
Answer: Understanding machine translation requires practice and exposure.  It's a bit like learning a new language.  If you'd rather not learn machine translation, you could learn Japanese instead.
Issue: Learning Japanese is hard.  Like, really hard.
Answer: Yes, it's one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn.  The US government estimates that 2200 hours of intensive study is required to gain basic proficiency in Japanese.  To add insult to injury, Japanese has a special asterisk next to it reading, "Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category".  That means they lied; it actually takes significantly more than 2200 hours to learn the language.  Good luck.
So there you go: practical solutions to frequently encountered issues.  I hope everyone finds this guide helpful.

I see many frequently encountered issues in the visual novel community.  I've taken some time to address them, with a focus on pragmatic solutions rather than long-winded explanations.
Issue: I really like <insert type of VN>, but I can't find others like it, or I've already played through all the suggested titles.
Answer: There's over 17k VNs in VNDB's database.  2356 are available in English.  The sorts of VNs you're looking for are almost certainly there.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST USA is really slow, and it licenses nearly finished fan translations and sits on them for years before releasing them.
Answer: Time to learn Japanese.  You'll probably finish before JAST does.
Issue: Companies keep licensing eroge and releasing them censored on Steam.
Answer: They're doing this because few people buy eroge, whereas Steam users are more than happy to overpay for softcore porn.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST/Nukaku is censoring my lolis / guro / scat / all the content I'm interested in.  It's really ticking me off.
Answer: Distribution of offensive pornographic content is restricted in much of the English-speaking world.  Time to learn Japanese.  Also, best not to import the stuff, or you could end up like this guy.
Issue: Original English VNs are terrible.  Help!
Answer: Yes, the English VN market has thus far failed to attract professional game developers, especially when it comes to sexual content.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: The game I'm interested in has a fan translation or a fan translation in progress, but the translation is terrible or the project is stalled.
Answer: Fan translators cannot be relied upon to provide high-quality translations quickly and reliably.  They have real jobs / studies that take precedence.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: Localization companies pick mediocre or short titles I have no interest in.  Why can't they release something I want like <insert title from Type-Moon, Eushully, or other famous developer here>?
Answer: Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies.  They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: I tried text hooking with machine translation so I could play Japanese VNs, but I can't understand it or it's too frustrating to use.
Answer: Understanding machine translation requires practice and exposure.  It's a bit like learning a new language.  If you'd rather not learn machine translation, you could learn Japanese instead.
Issue: Learning Japanese is hard.  Like, really hard.
Answer: Yes, it's one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn.  The US government estimates that 2200 hours of intensive study is required to gain basic proficiency in Japanese.  To add insult to injury, Japanese has a special asterisk next to it reading, "Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category".  That means they lied; it actually takes significantly more than 2200 hours to learn the language.  Good luck.
So there you go: practical solutions to frequently encountered issues.  I hope everyone finds this guide helpful.

I see many frequently encountered issues in the visual novel community.  I've taken some time to address them, with a focus on pragmatic solutions rather than long-winded explanations.
Issue: I really like <insert type of VN>, but I can't find others like it, or I've already played through all the suggested titles.
Answer: There's over 17k VNs in VNDB's database.  2356 are available in English.  The sorts of VNs you're looking for are almost certainly there.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST USA is really slow, and it licenses nearly finished fan translations and sits on them for years before releasing them.
Answer: Time to learn Japanese.  You'll probably finish before JAST does.
Issue: Companies keep licensing eroge and releasing them censored on Steam.
Answer: They're doing this because few people buy eroge, whereas Steam users are more than happy to overpay for softcore porn.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: JAST/Nukaku is censoring my lolis / guro / scat / all the content I'm interested in.  It's really ticking me off.
Answer: Distribution of offensive pornographic content is restricted in much of the English-speaking world.  Time to learn Japanese.  Also, best not to import the stuff, or you could end up like this guy.
Issue: Original English VNs are terrible.  Help!
Answer: Yes, the English VN market has thus far failed to attract professional game developers, especially when it comes to sexual content.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: The game I'm interested in has a fan translation or a fan translation in progress, but the translation is terrible or the project is stalled.
Answer: Fan translators cannot be relied upon to provide high-quality translations quickly and reliably.  They have real jobs / studies that take precedence.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: Localization companies pick mediocre or short titles I have no interest in.  Why can't they release something I want like <insert title from Type-Moon, Eushully, or other famous developer here>?
Answer: Japanese companies don't care what you want, and neither do localization companies.  They want profits, and releasing titles people want is often unfeasible or unprofitable.  Time to learn Japanese.
Issue: I tried text hooking with machine translation so I could play Japanese VNs, but I can't understand it or it's too frustrating to use.
Answer: Understanding machine translation requires practice and exposure.  It's a bit like learning a new language.  If you'd rather not learn machine translation, you could learn Japanese instead.
Issue: Learning Japanese is hard.  Like, really hard.
Answer: Yes, it's one of the most difficult languages for a native English speaker to learn.  The US government estimates that 2200 hours of intensive study is required to gain basic proficiency in Japanese.  To add insult to injury, Japanese has a special asterisk next to it reading, "Languages preceded by asterisks are usually more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category".  That means they lied; it actually takes significantly more than 2200 hours to learn the language.  Good luck.
So there you go: practical solutions to frequently encountered issues.  I hope everyone finds this guide helpful.

This rant stemmed from a conversation on Twitter. I'm posting this here purely because posting this line by line on Twitter seemed retarded, and I'd disable the forum notifications for this post if I could. You can dig through my recent Twitter replies if you want to see the context. Have fun.
***
The problem is a bit more complicated than "some people don't like what I have to say". Sure, there's that, but the majority of detractors don't like how I raise my voice to be heard through the din. The majority of eroge fans are content to stay within their walled communities and gossip amongst each other. A few bloggers have appeared, but again they keep to themselves and expect their audience to come to them.
I've challenged this status quo. I've decided to be the black sheep that actually promotes his content: after all, why would anyone devote any amount of effort to writing for the smallest audience possible? I write to make a difference. I write to be recognized as a community leader. I'm not content with just being heard by a single insular community of hardcore fans. I can't accomplish anything like that.
I consider myself an industry activist. I do what the industry refuses to do: market and promote itself. In a community where freeloading is the norm, active promotion is very much frowned upon. Yet spurring people to buy stuff is incredibly important if eroge fans want to have a say in English localization. I want to be the facilitator that bridges the gap between eroge companies and the VN community. I want to be the voice for eroge fans when companies cross the line, thinking that sales are more important than the wishes of the fanbase. I can't do all of this by just whining in threads on Fuwanovel about the success of the Sakura series while games like Seinarukana remain in obscurity.
Mainstream activists make a living off what they do. I do what I do almost entirely for free, with the simple request that people click my affiliate links when they buy a game because of the content I provide. I would say that criticism of me is hypocritical, yet I realize that only a year ago I'd probably have said that what I do is distasteful. If things would get done without me, I'd be willing to pass the baton and go back to an online life of obscurity. If good content promoted itself, I wouldn't need to try to so hard to get the word out. But well, life isn't fair, honest effort isn't necessarily rewarded, and mediocrity is the formula for success. If I don't promote my content, no one else will. That's just how it is.
Long rant. I'm not going to post this on Twitter line by line.
Note: This is meant to be a conversation between me and my followers. If you say something unconstructive or just piss me off, I'll start deleting comments without warning. You have been warned.