Liking niche stuff makes you feel superior. Same goes for visual novels. That’s why I’ve always figured that compared to the tight, length-constrained assembly line of TV anime, visual novels have way more freedom when it comes to storytelling, and they just do it better. Plus, original anime is pretty rare—most adaptations come from light novels, manga, or visual novels. So at least in terms of originality, VNs should have a slight edge over TV anime… But there’s always an exception… I never thought a visual novel would actually choose to go the light novel route… And a knockoff light novel route at that…

The keyboard critics on Quora once debated a question: Is a galgame literature? The question is itself a problem. Asking whether a game is literature is like asking whether “humans” are “perverts.” Sure, there are humans who can’t get through a day without licking something, and there are also normal people like me who have zero interest in that stuff. A galgame is still a game. Games have plots, and most non-nukige galgames lean heavily on theirs. There may be some “literary” elements in there, but on the strength of those elements alone you can’t begin to put it on the same level as literature. So as a game genre that carries “literary elements,” plenty of galgames try to break new ground in their plots. These days, if you don’t have foreshadowing and a shocking twist, people will call you boring. Which has led many to believe that only “suffering,” “dying,” “flying off the rails” and the like deserve to be called a god-tier scenario, while anything focused on the everyday gets sneered at. On this point I’m fond of the 2007 Chinese college entrance exam essay prompt: unexpected, yet inevitable. What it means is that no matter how your plot unfolds, no matter how high it flies or how wild the ideas get, as long as you can justify it and give people that “unexpected yet inevitable” feeling, your story is a success. Even slice-of-life, if written vividly and every character’s personality also lands as “unexpected yet inevitable,” is a success too. At the very least the story keeps you in suspense, is easy to follow, and doesn’t feel too far-fetched. Put more bluntly: write it however you want, but at minimum it has to be logical. That’s the baseline. Without logic, the whole story looks nonsensical — exactly like Haru nochi Kitto Nanohana Biyori (晴のちきっと菜の花びより).

Blue Ever Blue, BEB for short — I’d never heard of this company’s earphones. I was just curious and bored, saw they were running a demo listening program on Hi-PDA, so I grabbed a pair to check out. The model I got is the BEB X1001. The packaging feels a bit cheap — just a carrying case and the earphones inside, with spare rubber tips in the case. Honestly, for earphones, packaging doesn’t tell you much. I’ve seen worse. What matters is the sound, so I couldn’t wait to plug the BEB into a Sony D100 and start listening. Two minutes later I put them down and shook my head. How to put it. Muddy, muffled, boomy. Those are the three words I can use for these earphones. I’ve never bought into the whole earphone burn-in thing, but considering these were sent out for demo purposes, surely they wouldn’t be this bad out of the box, so I figured I’d do what people say and plugged them into the D100 to burn in… After nearly 48 hours, I listened again…

The reason I paid attention to Hana no Aruji (花の野に咲くうたかたの) is first, because of the scenario writer Kirizuki, and second, because of the coloring style. 桐月 wrote Tasogare no Sinsemilla (黄昏のシンセミア — the forbidden medicine at dusk, or dusk’s weed, call it whatever you like), and the game’s coloring style reminds me of [Clover Day’s] 1. Same artist as dusk’s weed, sure, but the coloring is way better than the old work — the girls are cuter and fresher. Honestly, I didn’t even want to play this one at first. I never played Tasogare no Sinsemilla either—people just hype it up to the heavens, and I figured a writer who’d produced at least one readable work couldn’t be all that bad. Then I took one look at the art style, fell in love with it, and played the thing. If I had to sum up this game in one sentence, it’s like a cup of gongfu tea carefully brewed by a soft-spoken girl — mild in flavor, nothing like the instant jolt of coffee or hard liquor, but it won’t leave you feeling bad, and if you sip it slowly you’ll find something uniquely its own.

The Fruit of Grisaia has sequels — two of them, actually. One is The Labyrinth of Grisaia, and the other is the finale, The Eden of Grisaia. The Fruit of Grisaia already got a TV anime adaptation, and since the Labyrinth and Eden anime are both airing on the 12th of this month, skip this if you’re worried about spoilers.

While I was playing Yuzusoft’s Sanoba Witch, I was already aware of HanaSaki Work Spring!, the new release from SAGA PLANETS. Turns out I’ve somehow played two games from this studio already — Hatsuyuki Sakura and Kisaragi Gold Star. The former was pretty good, the latter was a total trap. And it’s worth noting that Hatsuyuki Sakura was good partly thanks to the music and the way the story was arranged; Kisaragi Gold Star is closer to the studio’s actual average. So I hesitated for a moment about whether to play this game that reeked of moege from a mile away — maybe 30 seconds of hesitation — then I saw Sawasawa Sawa in the CV list and jumped right in…

11月のアルカディア was one of March’s new releases. I’d figured there was nothing worth playing that month, then I saw the OP — looked like a mystery/plot-driven thing — so I tried the demo. And surprise, the protagonist actually has a CV. No idea who it is, but he sounds a bit like Yuuichi Nakamura. Going on the principle that “if an eroge bothers to voice its male lead, the story probably isn’t a total trainwreck,” I dove in without hesitation. And sure enough, it didn’t let me down. This is the first thing since Paper no Ue no Mahoutsukai that I can praise without a single reservation.

At first I had zero intention of playing Kujira-gami no TearStilla (鯨神のティアスティラ), because the premise sounded dull. Even using my shoulder blades to think, I could tell it was just a heroine with a whale skin slapped on. But then one day, while my nuts were aching (idle), I listened to the game’s OST, and both EDs—Kamisama Itsuka Kono Omoi and Ruriiro—were absurdly good. Then at some other moment of aching boredom at night, a time when I Can’t help myself touching my body, I dragged the game down and started playing. Conclusion first: this game is pretty good on every front except the story…

These days there’s a standard term for the bag you carry around every day — EDC, short for Every Day Carry or whatever. Point is, it’s the stuff you haul around daily. By that definition I’ve got an EDC bag too, usually with a work ThinkPad and some accessories inside, plus a portable pair of headphones so I can plug into the laptop. The first pick was the AKG K420, until a family member took it. Then I switched to the JVC SR500. Honestly the JVC isn’t as good as the K420 — portability alone is a problem. Folded up it feels loose and floppy, and the sound has no real highlight; the highs aren’t transparent enough. So after a year and a half of service, the JVC SR500 finally broke! (Why do I say “finally”?) Thus the hunt for a successor began. Requirements: 1) portable; 2) decent sound; 3) comfortable; 4) under 200 yuan; 5) closed-back. So I bought the Edifier H690.

Boku no Hitori Sensou (ぼくの一人戦争) is AB2’s new title, and the reason it caught my eye is simple: the writer and the artist had previously teamed up on two classics, Sharin no Kuni and G-senjou no Maou. I found both of those endings a bit of a stretch, but the good parts in between were genuinely excellent — the way the Higher Education exam fleshed out each heroine’s personality, the psychological showdowns in G-senjou no Maou. They still influence me today. So when Boku no Hitori Sensou was announced, I couldn’t hide my excitement. I expected new scenes on that level… No such luck. Let me say this up front: today I’m going to criticize this game, carefully. Carefully because I only understood about half the Japanese — I got the gist, I followed the plot, but whether there are details and implications I’m missing, I can’t say. Still, in the parts I did fully understand, the game has plenty of flaws. All it gave me was confusion and endless disappointment.