When Onii-chan, Kiss no Junbi wa Mada desu ka came out, it looked hella familiar. First off, the title has the exact same sentence pattern as Onii-chan, Migite no Shiyou o Kinshi Shimasu. Looked it up—same planner, same artist in the mix, plenty of the same voice actors too. Only the company’s different. I remember Galette’s siscon series… oh wait, family series—the next one was supposed to be Onii-chan Teacher, but Onii-chan, Kiss no Junbi wa Mada desu ka is by Tinkle Position. Yeah, say that company name in katakana and you’re dangerously close to “chinbo.” Their mascot is literally a yellow dick with a smiley face. The promo and premise gave me massive déjà vu—it’s basically the head-pat gimmick from Onii-chan Teacher but with kissing. So I played it out of curiosity. Not because of the premise or content. Trust me. So how is it? All I can say is this game made me start reflecting on my life.

The reason ISLAND caught my eye was that the other games releasing around the same time were just too easy to read. I was going to use the word “boring” for the others, but Wagamama doesn’t seem quite that boring — it’s just that most titles, from their introductions alone, clearly aren’t going to pull any surprises. So ISLAND came charging out with tags like “all-ages,” “story-driven,” and “highbrow foreshadowing payoff,” and announced an anime adaptation almost immediately. For someone who enjoys plot developments, this seemed like a can’t-miss. But after a long and painful playthrough, I found it wasn’t quite the kind of game I’d imagined. Not that it’s bad — in fact, its narrative rigor is pushed to an extreme. It’s just not for me. Maybe the kind of people who love EVER17 or Steins;Gate and its time-loop ilk will eat this up. In other words, there aren’t many game types I hate, but one on my hate list is exactly the kind of development ISLAND has. So there’s no helping it — this game gave me zero pleasure and nothing but pain.

The GH60 project is a tutorial and process for letting users assemble their own mechanical keyboard. There’s a decent intro here, and you can dig into foreign sites for the details. For us users, though, all you really need to know is that GH60 is the process of assembling a mechanical keyboard yourself. GH60 itself is just a keyboard PCB. Once you have the PCB, all that’s left is soldering switches, adding a case, and deciding whether to throw in LEDs. At first I stuck to the principle of “if you’re gonna do it, do it big” when picking parts, and by the end I found that an original Cherry switch + aluminum case + steel plate + custom purple-black-orange three-color keycap combo had already shot the price past 900. Damn it, at that price why wouldn’t I just buy a Filco?

It’s been almost two years since the Audio-Technica IM03 arrived… I actually really like these buds. At first I thought they sounded muffled, but later, whether they got burned in or something else happened, they ended up being the most “balanced across all three frequency bands” earphones I own. Treble is clear, mids are dense, and while the bass is a bit light, I personally lean toward a cleaner sound anyway — if I want bass, I’ve got the IE80. So these became my first choice whenever I’m in a bad mood. The IM03 I bought was a Japanese-market unit, no warranty. I used to worry it might suddenly die like my late, lamented TF10 — and that day finally came, though it wasn’t within any so-called warranty period.

First off, my coworkers, friends, and classmates basically have no idea I spend my time like some kind of hopeless wreck bingeing Japanese porn games. If they have to understand it at all, they just figure I’m watching anime and playing Japanese RPGs. Honestly they know squat about Japanese adult games — to them it’s all at the level of things like Tail Strike and Artificial Girl. Of course, there was one adult game whose name they all learned recently… Purely x Cation. Thanks to Ali213, thanks to the diligent reposting by sites like Chunan Beta, the news that “a Japanese adult game maker will use industry-leading Denuvo DRM to fight piracy” became common knowledge. I know AKBsoft president Kei Misumi hates piracy, but this whole putting-the-cart-before-the-horse move is something I really can’t understand. Honestly, when Purely x Cation was first being promoted, I watched the Youtube intro and thought it looked pretty good — the E-mote effects especially were spot-on, way above some things like Maitetsu. But the president always rushes out to flex and beg to get slapped down. Last time that game The Office Worker’s Hookup… oh no, Romance Situation got cracked half a day after release and slapped him in the face, and I felt kind of bad for him, but this time he comes out provoking people again and I really don’t know what to say. Doesn’t he know the way to make real money is to keep your head down? Besides, I had actually considered buying the legit version of this game, because Denuvo isn’t that easy to crack — if it really came out and I couldn’t play it, that’d be a shame. But then I looked at the bonus items on the game’s official site and I was speechless. Apart from one illustration there was basically nothing. I don’t know if the president spent all the money on the DRM. Given the well-known fact that “buying the game = buying the bonuses,” the president is still this stingy — how could this game possibly sell? Even someone like me, dying to play it, lost most of the desire to buy… I figured if there’s no crack, then just leave it, deal with it later. But reality is dramatic: two days after release the game got dumped and cracked. The cracker was quite smug about it too, saying the game didn’t use Denuvo at all, and the crack just bypassed the so-called online authentication. After all, this is a nukige with one of those engines everyone’s seen to death… Anyway, the president got slapped again. I don’t know what the president is thinking now. I just hope it doesn’t affect future games — adding more bonuses is the real way to go. So back to Purely x Cation itself: how is it? I can say it does live up to the promotional expectations — a romance-raising game that lets you experience the beauty of first love.

The Chord Mojo is a DAC/headphone amp combo that’s been getting a lot of buzz lately, mostly because it’s tiny yet supposedly packs a serious punch. According to Digital Multi (数码多), the Mojo’s whole deal is its technical sophistication and advanced build, which is how they got it so small. Science and technology are the primary productive forces, as they say, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to grab one — at the very least it takes up less room in my backpack. Honestly, after getting my hands on it, it feels like a solid deal. The sound is decent, and the tinkering potential is through the roof.

I bought this because after getting the AM2 last time I realized I’d been screwed over. Because right after I bought it, FiiO said: “Every X7 owner gets one chance to buy a module at half price.” So I said: “Well what about me, I already paid full price?” FiiO was very polite about it: “No problem, we’ll have other modules down the road, you can save it for next time.” ……………… So I finally used that chance.

I was feeling down a while back, so I figured I’d play something to lift my mood. That’s when I came across the OP for “Haru Shiki Gentei Poco a Poco!” on YouTube — or more accurately, the OP sounded way too damn familiar, because it was on a music collection CD from some Angle Note thing I bought. I’d listened to it a ton of times without ever knowing it was this game’s OP. The OP is depressingly sad. You can tell the protagonist’s important person died and he can’t move past it. But then I looked up reviews and everyone was going on and on about what a fun, cheerful game it is. Whatever. I needed some comedy anyway, and once I saw the little sister’s CV, I was sold. So how was it… Is this game as sad as the OP, or as fun as the online reviews say? Turns out neither one’s wrong.

Buying this was pure impulse — I was ordering one for someone else, saw the color and really liked it, it’s the purple I like, so I grabbed one for myself too. After ordering on the official site, I found out they also have a Taobao flagship store. And with the official site order, you don’t even know when the hell it’ll arrive, seriously… Later I asked the official staff on Weibo, and they said the official site is the same as Taobao, nothing to worry about. The pen supports engraving, but only in English. I got plumlis engraved on it… because I really couldn’t think of anything else. kiritanihaha is too long, hentai is too short. When it arrived I was struck by how it’s a proper China-market version — the packaging is way better than the blue Alstar I bought on Taobao.

I’m personally a huge fan of horror-mystery stuff. Honestly, it’s exactly this kind of work that got me into reading in the first place. Why? Because horror-mystery always dangles a hook in front of you, pulling you along, making you curious enough to keep going. Compared to other works where you have no idea where the plot or story is headed, this is way better — it completely saved middle-school me, who’d just read a few modern novels and gotten his face caved in by those fantasy-ass books with no discernible main storyline.