I haven’t played that many eroge, but I’ve played some. A few of them I’d call genuinely worthwhile, and plenty I’d call garbage. Even in the garbage there’s usually a pattern. Most of it comes from a planner or a writer trying to make a big splash, or forcing some baffling twist that ends up as a botched imitation of something better. The stuff that’s honestly made to cater to a specific taste rarely has these landmines. Siscon games, for instance. Siscon games are pure in their positioning and simple in their pacing. The protagonist is the older brother, the heroine is the little sister, or “little sisters.” Some flirting, and that’s about it. The occasional darker entry still doesn’t betray the core idea: showing “the little sister’s love for her brother.” However twisted it gets, it’s still love, right? Chopping off your brother’s head, dissecting him—that’s love too, isn’t it? Yandere is still a kind of dere. So for a long time I figured “playing a siscon game” could never go wrong. At worst it’d be dumb, or look silly, but it wouldn’t disgust you, right? Even if the system is boneheaded and the plot is idiotic, the little sister is innocent. The creator’s intention to give you a cute sister is not wrong, right? I’m not a siscon, but I can still find some comfort and warmth in these games. Say what you will, they’re honestly handing out sugar. Between siscon fans there’s nothing but resistance to social norms and mutual understanding—nothing like those otaku who spend all day hurting each other. It’s so full of love. To borrow a line from the famous internet personality “Crazy Bull Hermit”: “Siscon brothers are all friends.” Of course, there are no eternal friends—until I ran into Chitchana Hanayome.

I read a lot of forums, and there’s this pattern I keep noticing. Women-dominated forums are mostly people dunking on scumbag boyfriends. Men-dominated forums, porn boards aside, are mostly people tearing each other apart and crying about getting cuckolded. Getting cuckolded is a weird phenomenon, yet apparently a really common one. Are that many people actually getting cheated on? Are that many people actually choosing to forgive him or her? Either way, several forums I frequent have picked up new nicknames that don’t even match anymore. Greenery Street. Thunder Bluff. Some people don’t even bother being subtle and just rename the whole forum “Cuckold Forum.” So lately my browsing is nothing but green everywhere. Halal green, betrayed green, green this way and green that way. At first I found it gross, then I got used to it. I can’t even get someone to take me on as a rebound, so what do I care about cuckolding? This “getting cuckolded” setup is common in Japanese eroge too. The Japanese call it 寝取る, NTR. Basically your wife gets slept with, which means you got cuckolded. NTR games have their fans, but most of them are the same: you get a girlfriend, she gets screwed behind your back, and in the end you either forgive her or leave her. But think about it, why is NTR always by convention the woman betraying the man? What about the man betraying the woman? We call that cheating too, but it still can’t compare to the whole green-this-green-that internet culture, can it.

LAMUNATION! came out last year. I honestly didn’t know much about it — watched the OP, looked flashy, music was solid, skimmed the premise and it seemed to be some fictional world. But the setting never explains itself, there’s no visible main plot, so I just dropped it. Plenty of people were actually optimistic about this one, aside from some guy called “Azirayt” — the other being Miss Wang. But Chinese people liking it doesn’t mean shit. The game’s reputation rides on what the Japanese think. So how did the Japanese rate LAMUNATION!? According to Chuuni Space’s scores… 45 points. Basically a landmine. So I’d always assumed it was a landmine too. I’ve seen this type too many times — big budget, stacked staff, flashy OP, massive marketing, and then the scenario writer goes full late-stage psychosis and nobody can follow the story, so the game becomes a landmine. Examples everywhere. But recently, for a certain reason, I got interested in LAMUNATION! again. I think it might not actually be a “landmine.” It’s just that people don’t understand it for a certain reason. That’s a bit of a stretch. Normally, no matter how badly a game’s story is written, no matter how dogshit the author’s storytelling is, if you’re willing to meet the author halfway, you’ll usually find the story is “not bad.” But with LAMUNATION!’s writer, it might be a different situation. Ah… how do I put this? Cultural incompatibility? Something like that. Which means we have to go back to an earlier work by LAMUNATION!’s writer, Kepposhi…

A few days ago someone online was asking which eroge scenario writers people would recommend, and the usual crowd started rattling off the usual names. Urobuchi, Nasu, Maruto, and so on and so forth. Honestly, I’m not especially fond of any of those guys’ scenario work. Some of those names actively make me feel sick when I see them. And besides, a few of them aren’t even eroge writers anymore — plenty of them have moved into anime, where their skill level is, frankly, also trash. In my book they rank below even Mari Okada. Ah, no — the truth is Mari Okada is already a genuinely excellent anime screenwriter. I’ve always had one firm opinion about “screenwriters” and “scenario writers”: if you’re the person telling a story to other people, the first thing you need is to actually know how to tell a story. What does “know how to tell a story” mean? It means that whether or not the story itself is interesting, you should at least do everything in your power to make people able to sit through it — to keep listening, to keep watching. That skill is real. It’s the foundation. It’s the most fundamental thing there is. Unfortunately, a few of the scenario writers that so-called ACG fans hype to the skies simply can’t tell a story. They either wallow in boring lore dumps, or they’re too busy jerking themselves off, or… they only know how to tell one formulaic story. After consuming enough Japanese media, I started noticing something strange. A lot of Japanese works are always the same formula, and the creators themselves know it’s an old formula — but the audience just keeps eating it up. The eternal demon king and hero. The eternal prince and princess. The eternal Kamen Rider. The eternal ally of justice. The eternal childhood friend. The eternal bread-at-the-corner-on-the-way-to-school. The eternal transfer student. The eternal isekai. The eternal magical girl. The eternal idol. And the eternal cute boy. That’s already a decent pile of ingredients. I figure you could grab a few at random, combine them, and get at least a small innovation out of it. But no — Japanese audiences don’t buy it. They prefer formulaic plots. Even when the premise is genuinely novel, the execution stays the same, and eventually it always circles back to the formula, as if that’s the only way the audience can feel “safe.” It feels incredibly stuck in its ways. I don’t know if it’s tied to Japanese national character, but it’s like how Sony has great materials across multiple divisions and still can’t make a good phone. On the scenario level, I’ve never personally liked the “already made it” types. A lot of those successful guys’ follow-up works are complete shit, but because they’re famous, people still read them, and afterward the fans will over-interpret everything just to praise their favorite writer. Yes, I’m fucking talking about that idiot Maruto Fumiaki.

Probably thanks to the massive reaction to that little fidget cube thing, more and more toys that “look useless but keep your hands busy” are hitting the market. The most typical recent example is this thing: the fidget spinner. Fidget spinner, as the name suggests, is a top you spin between your fingers. Simple construction, clean look. Hold the center pad, find a way to get it going, and that’s it. It really does spin more easily than your average metal disc—feels super smooth. If you get the force right, you can keep it going for several minutes without stopping. Right now fidget spinners come in two main shapes: two-armed and three-armed. Shape doesn’t change the game, though…

I’ve had the Moto 360 v2 for almost two years now, and Android Wear 2.0 has been out for nearly a year too, yet the update only showed up today. It’s not that I hadn’t thought about switching watches—there just wasn’t anything suitable. So since the update rolled out today, I might as well use it for now.

If you’ve seen what games I play, you’ve probably noticed I’m into “swords and sorcery,” and not so much “mecha and high tech.” So Baldr Heart, along with its earlier predecessors, never really interested me. But there’s this pervert who’s about to end up in a police cell who constantly hypes the game up, tongue hanging out, pushing it on everyone he meets. And he’s screwed me over twice before, so I had no intention of taking his recommendation. Except I’ve got a big mouth, and I said, “If Baldr Heart ever gets fan-translated by Moxing, I’ll play it.” And so, as they say, if you don’t do stupid things you won’t die. I soon saw this… and it was shoved right in my face. You all know I’m a man of my word, so I had no choice but to play it.

Ever since I cooled off on audio gear, I switched to buying CDs. Buying CDs is actually pretty nice too—you focus on the music itself instead of using earbuds to listen to the same few crappy songs on repeat. I picked up a bunch of CDs recently, so here are some quick thoughts.

Tayutama 2 -you’re the only one- (タユタマ2 -you’re the only one-) came out last year, and honestly I think it’s pretty good. Why? Because it’s not toxic. Yeah, the bar is low, but almost nobody clears it. Look around—not just games, even anime—barely anything out there doesn’t try to piss you off. Out of nowhere a love triangle to give you heartburn, or they’ll torture some poor girl to make you feel bad, or pull a time loop or isekai twist that makes you spit your drink. Compared to all that, Tayutama 2—a game so positive it’s practically a PSA about humans and Tayutai living in harmony—is a breath of fresh air. Sure, it didn’t sell great on Steam, and the price is a quarter of what you’d pay for 2B after the price hike. But that’s reality: bland positive content isn’t stimulating enough to attract the twisted otaku crowd. Only ass sells.

Let’s play a guessing game first… The protagonist is an ordinary, unremarkable high schooler. One day strange phenomena start popping up around his town. Eventually he runs into a girl and discovers she has superpowers — and she’s fighting for something too. At the same time he meets a mysterious talking creature. The creature tells him he has immense potential and power, but for the life of it can’t figure out what his ability actually is. Led along by this creature, the protagonist teams up with the superpowered girl to investigate the weirdness in town, and soon discovers plenty of his classmates are hidden espers too… and he clashes with them. As the investigation goes deeper, more and more of the shadowy conspiracy comes to light… Figured out what it is yet? Oh, or rather… Have you figured out which works I’m talking about?