I’d had my eye on Sakuranomori†Dreamers (サクラノモリ†ドリーマーズ) ever since before its release — the premise was dark as hell, the OP absolutely slapped, and going by the description it looked like it was going the horror route. Unfortunately the release got delayed, so I had to push it back on the list. I can’t say playing it felt bad, but it definitely wasn’t pleasant either — though half of that “not pleasant” is in the good direction. If I could get enjoyment out of a horror game, I’d probably be one step away from a jail cell… This game’s hard to rate. I lean positive, but I honestly can’t point to anything that absolutely backs that up. Maybe it’s just that I personally like this style of game, and it falls “just a hair short” in every direction…

I bought a 9-yuan VR headset.

I’ve bought plenty of cheap car mounts before, and they all died on me… So after a friend’s recommendation, I figured I’d buy something a bit nicer. He suggested the Logitech IS40. The Logitech IS40 mount looks pretty decent, but it still uses the same magnetic approach I’d tried before, so you need to pair it with a metal plate. Fortunately I mostly use it with a Nexus 5X, so a metal plate is fine, whatever. As for magnets messing with phones, the Pixel C and Apple iPad line both have magnets built in and nothing goes wrong, and Logitech’s manual says it’s fine too, so I’ll just take their word for it.

I’ve always figured I don’t really go for that whole “character design” thing. Which is to say, whether a character is cute doesn’t hinge solely on her looks, or on the artist—building the actual person still takes a CV and a story with some meat on it. So I’m generally not the type to see a girl in a picture and start shouting “I’d bang that” like some kind of animal. And I’ve never really gotten the “moe-otaku” crowd, for the reasons above—whether a girl in a game is cute isn’t just about appearance; it’s her experiences, her way of talking, all of it added up that makes her feel like a real flesh-and-blood girl. It’s a shallow world, but looks alone won’t cut it… That’s what I thought.

We’ve had an HP all-in-one printer at home forever, but it was bought around 2008 and has been used on and off since then—honestly, not that many times. Recently I tried to use it and it just wouldn’t work: the paper feed roller is fucked, and the thing isn’t worth repairing anyway. Might as well buy a new one. When buying, I had a few hard requirements: Good Linux support. Wireless connectivity—I don’t want cables, and there are several computers at home that all need to use it. Color printing, and the consumables issue needs to be solved. Buying ink cartridges for the old one was a massive pain in the ass. Budget around 1000. After thinking it over, I bought the HP DeskJet GT 5820. It comes with a built-in continuous ink supply system and meets all of the above. I also considered Epson and Canon—why HP? Because its Linux support is the best.

Every month there’s a visual novel that gets pushed hard. Neko-Nin exHeart (ノラと皇女と野良猫ハート) a while back, last month’s Wagamama High Spec—that whole “buy the sales numbers with money” school of release. Except Noratoto was actually good, and Wagamama rode a full-court marketing blitz to outsell ISLAND and Chaos;Child last month. So apparently in the visual novel market, if you’re willing to push, you can still move a respectable number of copies. This month’s most-promoted title is probably Seiken Tsukai no Meidai (聖鍵遣いの命題). I kept seeing news and updates about it in Dengeki Hime every time I turned around, but oddly enough, very few Japanese readers had anything nice to say after the demo dropped… I got curious and looked at the setting, and it’s kind of RPG-ish, but it doesn’t really reek of landmine either. The OP is genuinely great—there’s even proper animation—so clearly they spent real money on this thing. By all logic, a game made with real money shouldn’t get torn apart too badly unless the story pulls some spectacular self-destruct maneuver. So I decided to trust in the quality and went and played it.

A while back I was reading some anecdotes on a blog by someone claiming to be an eroge industry insider, and I came across this line: つまりシナリオとは発売後に作品を支える要素であり、昔から初動の売り上げにおいてはイラストの方が重要であった。 (A game’s opening sales mostly come down to the character designs and art style; the scenario is just one element that keeps a game going after release.) And then an even better one: だから打ち合わせでは「キャラとイチャイチャしていれば話の中身なんてなくていい」と本当に言われるし、「○○先生に原画を担当してもらえる時点で売り上げは確保できているから、シナリオなんてクソにならない限りどうでもいい」とさえ言われてしまったりする。 (So at planning meetings people really do say things like “as long as the characters are flirting with each other, it doesn’t matter if the story has any substance,” and even “the moment you’ve got Sensei XX doing the original art, sales are guaranteed, so the scenario can be whatever as long as it doesn’t turn to shit.”) Of course, none of that beats this one: ゲームの傾向も変わってきていて、２００４年頃は「エロなんかいらねぇシナリオの質が重要」なんて一部で言われていたりもしたが、今企画会議でそんなことを言おうものなら袋叩きにされる。 理由は簡単で、シナリオを重視した作品よりもキャラクター性を重視した作品の方がグッズの売り上げがいいからである。 (The direction of games has shifted too. Around 2004 some people were saying “who needs the ero, what matters is the quality of the scenario,” but if you said that in a planning meeting today you’d get the shit beaten out of you. The reason is simple: character-driven works sell more merch than scenario-driven ones.) Man… what can you say? That’s just how it is, I guess?

I keep asking myself one question: when is Lashi-sha gonna croak. Then last time they shoved out some half-assed cobbled-together nukige, and instead of dying they went and opened a new label. Lass Pixy, dedicated to putting out Lashi-sha’s pure-love stuff. Like this new one, Pure Marriage Akai Ito Monogatari, all about pure love and brides. Completely different from that ninja training thing they did before. Then I looked closer. The game has three heroines, and the first release is titled “Pure Marriage ~Akai Ito Monogatari Madoka-hen.” They’re selling it split by heroine? Price is cheap at least, a bit over 1,400 yen. Cheaper than some singles. What does that remind me of? Isn’t there some X no Seiiki? Probably eroge just don’t sell anymore, and eroge companies are having a rough time of it, so everyone’s trying the low-budget, sell-in-pieces approach. Not just Feng—Frontwing is doing the Neko-para thing on Steam, and there’s light’s Four Seasons lie series. But do the math on Lashi-sha’s plan: three heroines, and the whole game still ends up cheaper than the usual 9,000 yen for an eroge. I know Lashi-sha is dying and flailing. At that price, can you even break even? Make any money? So out of curiosity I played it. And after playing it, I understood. I can tell you responsibly: this piece of crap from Lashi-sha really would recoup its costs with more sales. It’s cheap as hell to make.

There was this weird new show in the April anime lineup called Wagamama High Spec. The Chinese title got rendered as something like “Wagamama High-Spec” — the thing has almost no content, runs incredibly short, and makes absolutely no sense to watch. Turns out it’s an eroge adaptation, and the game hadn’t even come out yet when the anime started airing, so it’s basically a promo ad for the game. Whether it’s a short-form anime or not doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, what this thing is worth comes down to the game. A while back I saw someone saying DOOM was going for a retro route. I don’t buy that. DOOM just went back to the essence of games — that’s not retro, that’s what games should be in the first place. Speaking of retro, I’d say Wagamama High Spec is closer to a kind of retro — a retro of eroge.

Picked up another Chromebook recently, off Taobao. Probably some factory leak or whatever. An Asus Chromebook Flip, the ARM CPU version. The upside is obvious: IPS screen, 1280x800, convertible, touch, long battery life. The last Chromebook I bought got sold off. Reason being I never actually used Chrome OS — I wiped it and installed Ubuntu the moment it arrived. It felt exactly like a ThinkPad, and a worse ThinkPad at that, so what was even the point. This time I decided to actually give Chrome OS a fair shake. Problem is, I’m in mainland China. For certain reasons this thing is obviously not going to be as smooth as in the US, there’ll be plenty of hurdles — though that was the story around 2014. How is it now? Answer: not bad.