Back in middle school I read all kinds of web novels, so naturally I ran into power fantasy and harem stuff. Power fantasy needs no explanation—the protagonist shows up, is insanely OP, plays the pig to eat the tiger, and sometimes doesn’t even bother playing the pig and just instakills heaven, earth, and the entire world. As for harem novels, I stumbled on those later; I’ve always thought Chinese web novel romance is pretty terrible, but the “harem” tag in Chinese web fiction really does mean a true harem. The protagonist has several girls around him, and every single one of them is totally fine with him having other women, and they all coexist harmoniously… That’s not weird at all, though—you’ve read The Deer and the Cauldron, right… After that I got into the Japanese “light novel” thing. Japanese light novels also have power fantasy and harem stuff… it just feels completely different from the Chinese version.

When I was a kid, my father would rigorously review my homework—essays above all. By “review” I mean I had to show him my essays first, he’d give suggestions for revision, and only once he was satisfied and I’d done enough editing could I hand it in. Pretty unreasonable, right? A very paternalistic approach, right? But every coin has two sides—luckily my father happened to be a decent writer himself, so a lot of his feedback was actually useful. The thing I remember most is what he said about narrative essays. Sometimes he’d flat-out call my writing “boring”—meaning it gave you no desire to keep reading. “You should give your story ups and downs, maybe even suspense, so people will want to keep going.” “But the thing I’m writing about was just boring.” I think it was about giving up my seat to an old lady—“A Meaningful Event.” “You can arrange the story a bit—like, you give up your seat but she flat-out refuses to sit at first, and only later explains she thinks she’s not that old yet, or something…” “But that’s just making stuff up…” “And giving up your seat isn’t making stuff up? Have you ever actually given up your seat?” “…………”

Voice actress Matsunaga Rika (Yomogi Kasumi) must be thanking her lucky stars she got cast in Natsuiro Kokoro Log. Why? Because on her Twitter page, the only character she can actually show off is the main heroine from this game. Every other role she’s done is either some jobber or a boss — and if it’s a lead, it’s guaranteed to be the busty heroine of some nukige getting violated, the kind of thing you’d be embarrassed to use as an avatar. Actually, the heroine of Natsuiro Kokoro Log, Tokiwa Kuon, is genuinely adorable. Thanks to artist Shirakawa Mochizuki’s moe one-hit-kill, this game is a breath of fresh air among “moe-nukige” titles. Story? Music? Voice acting? None of it matters here — as long as it clears the bar, the art style alone is enough to make moe pigs cry out banzai. But as you all know, I’m not some moe-obsessed fanboy, and I’m not a little-sister complex guy either, so while playing Natsuiro Kokoro Log (ナツイロココロログ), all I really felt was that this game’s protagonist is a total fucking idiot. I said it in a previous post too: this guy is wishy-washy, has zero opinions of his own, and the moment things look bad he immediately tucks tail and runs. When the girl wants nothing from him and all she needs is for him to nod, he instead turns around and goes home. In real life, that’s the kind of scumbag who has a great time banging a girl, then vanishes the second she’s pregnant. And somehow that scumbag is the protagonist of a harem-flavored moe game. I can’t accept it.

Last week in Zhengzhou I met up with a friend from Beijing who works at a well-known internet company with business all over the country. He’s fairly famous on G+ as a road-bike inner-thigh chafing specialist and senior programmer critic, “Neo Slixurd.” Since his name is Neo and he’s gay, I usually call him “Genio,” or just “Genniao” for short. Chatting with Genniao is always a good time. We started by discussing whether “Princess Xiaozhu is actually an idiot,” and quickly reached a consensus. The conversation later drifted to the fact that I play galgames. What Genniao was most curious about was how I learned Japanese so fast. It wasn’t fast at all, honestly — play porn games every day and you’ll learn fast too. My experience with that is documented here. His second question was how many games I actually play. By my own count, I got through about 80 last year. That number isn’t exactly accurate, since I personally treat galgames as novels — meaning I only read “the main ending the game anoints as canon.” Every other ending is just a “possibility” to me. If you’re in love with a heroine you can fantasize about it, but it’s not the real story. So for most games, unless it’s something like Hatsuyuki Sakura that splits the whole story apart, I just take the main route and skim the rest. A single game isn’t that long either — if you clear every route, according to ErogameScape most Japanese players need about 19 hours. That’s not so bad, but who plays this stuff every single day? Finally we got onto where galgame stories are headed. Genniao said the games he’s played are all older ones or the more famous ones, and he has no idea what the newest stuff is like. I explained that most of the newest games are still clichéd as hell — a notch above the current mainstream seasonal anime in overall quality, sure, but that’s just a product of the audience. ErogameScape stats show most eroge players are in the 25–30 age bracket, not the under-20 elementary-schooler tier you get watching anime on Bilibili in this country. “Honestly most eroge plots are pretty stupid. Like the one I’ve been playing recently.” And that’s how I brought up Hataraku Otaku no Renai Jijou.

I’ve made no secret of how much I love Hihou no Mahoutsukai (紙の上の魔法使い), or of how much I praise its writer, Rukuru. Same goes for Unmei Yohou wo Oshirase Shimasu, the game Rukuru put out before it. What makes this writer so strong is that he genuinely knows how to tell a story — the pacing, the dialogue, the word choice and the overall style all give off this elegant, gripping feel. Other visual novel writers, by comparison, read like high schoolers in the middle of a chuuni phase. That gap hits you hard: play a Rukuru game, then go pick up some mainstream VN, and the latter’s dialogue feels stupid and half-witted next to it, while the former actually reads like a story, one with images in it. I guess that’s what you’d call raw skill in a scenario writer. After Hihou no Mahoutsukai, the studio Ugui Sugura went quiet for way too long. A little over a year before, they tweeted that yes, they were properly working on a new game; then at the end of 2016 Suisou Ginkka no Istoria got announced, an early 2017 trial came out, and in March it launched with zero delays. Happiness arrived too fast, and I started playing the moment I got it. (I’d love to buy a legit copy, but I have no idea if standard forwarding will get me a friendly invitation from customs — any veterans with a reliable route, please enlighten me.)

This post shouldn’t exist. I originally wanted to make a video to trash this game—I even had the style mapped out, something like AVGN or Ao Changzhang doing lighthearted snark. I had shots and camera angles in my head and everything. But then I thought about it and couldn’t decide whether to make my YouTube debut, so I shelved the video. Plus it’s a hassle. Typing is easier. The game I’m trashing today is called “Timepiece Ensemble.” And honestly, I didn’t play it because of Kiritani Hana, nor because I had a good impression of the studio Glace from before—I played it because of the artist, Sesenaau. Sesenaau is a female artist, and her characters always have this element of feminine “cuteness” that male artists just can’t capture. I’ve always thought that’s a big advantage of female artists: male artists can only draw girls that are super erotic, while female artists can draw cuteness on a spiritual level. It’s not that male artists can’t draw cute things—it’s just that it always feels fake, like it has no soul. So I saw this game called Timepiece Ensemble, and it was announced it’d be ported to PSV soon, so I skimmed the intro. It’s simple: the protagonist is preparing for the school culture festival and stumbles upon a mysterious shop. The shopkeeper says she can sell him “time”—the ability to rewind time. He doesn’t know what use that ability has, but that’s how the story begins.

I’m not an NTR fan and I honestly can’t wrap my head around how NTR fans think. Still, Japanese eroge are packed with NTR subject matter, for better or worse. NTR here doesn’t mean what grade-schoolers mean by “the girl you like doesn’t like you, she likes someone else.” It’s 寝取る — and the meaning is simple: your wife, your spouse, your lover, your girlfriend got slept with by someone else. Put plainly, you got cuckolded. Even if you’ve spent years lurking Reddit, ACFUN, the greening street, and the Thunder Bluff of 5ch, I’ve never once seen a guy discover he’s been cuckolded and feel happy about it. So yeah, the NTR fan mindset is hard to get. And yet NTR games keep coming out. Plenty of companies make them, some even set up a dedicated brand just for NTR titles to chase that specialist credibility. Like this one, Houkago ni Midareru Ane Kyoushi to Tonari no Heya de Aegu Imouto (放課後に乱れる姉教師と隣の部屋で喘ぐ妹 ～恋人になった女の子が、知り合いの嫌な男に寝取られる～), which bills itself as a standard NTR game.

Almost nothing worth playing came out in the second month of 2017 in the adult game space—except for one title called Ouka Saki (桜花裁き). Strictly speaking, Ouka Saki isn’t a pure “eroge.” It’s a “bugyō mystery” game. Plenty of games wave the mystery flag. The famous early one is Ace Attorney, and later there’s Danganronpa. Lump of Sugar also put out a mystery-ish game, though its story was more of a comedy. But come on—was Danganronpa’s story not a comedy either? Word is Danganronpa 3’s plot has gone so dumb it can’t even help itself, the final twist like tossing a grenade into a squat toilet and spraying shit everywhere, leaving players in a fury like burning-sea mad maggots. So I wisely didn’t play it. I couldn’t even be bothered to buy it. Even for Danganronpa 2, my verdict back then was: stop caring about that dumbass main plot and just enjoy the minigames. So for Ouka Saki, at first I figured it’d be some Danganronpa-imitating goofball game—claims to be mystery but is really just bullshitting, and in the end it’s a forced verdict. But after playing the trial version, it was actually surprisingly good. At least its case descriptions have something like a real mystery core. I can’t vouch for anything else, but compared to Danganronpa’s goofball motives, Ouka Saki is way better.

One regret of mine: the game Mahoutsukai no Yoru never got an OST release. Sure, you can extract the OGG files from the game, but those aren’t lossless—I actually ripped a set myself, just couldn’t be bothered to type in the names for the tags. I kept thinking an OST would come out eventually, and, well, you know how it goes. Years pass, the next game is about to launch, and the previous game’s OST is still nowhere. The composer is Meto. This isn’t the first time he’s worked with the writer Rukuru, if I remember right—Unmei Yohou wo Oshirase Shimasu had BGM by him too, so did Mahoutsukai no Yoru, and the composer for Suisou Ginka no Istoria, out next month, is him again. I don’t know if they’re doing it on purpose or what, but none of the games Rukuru and his crew work on ever get an OST release. Even Unmei Yohou wo Oshirase Shimasu was originally supposed to include an OST with the special edition, and then right before release they just… cut it. And Suisou Ginka no Istoria is only getting the theme song Azurite no Hitsugi as a bonus. So I poked around Meto’s personal site out of curiosity and found he’s been composing music on his own all along, and he sells CDs of his own work right there. So I picked up the package versions to show some support. (A few CDs in there are just gate-crashing, please ignore them.)

Xuebi’s surname is Wang, and he’s the only son in the family. By “only son” I don’t mean anything special—it’s just that he’s the only boy in this household. Wang Xuebi’s mom runs an antique knick-knack shop, but she’s scary fertile. After popping out Wang Xuebi, she went on to have four girls in a row: Wang Asahi, Wang Sayo, Wang Mahiru, and Wang Yayoi. The four girls have completely different personalities, but they’ve got one thing in common—they inherited their mom’s genes, and each one is prettier than the last. Of course, as the only boy, i.e. the only big brother in the family, Wang Xuebi looks… a little unfortunate. Probably because his mother spoiled him rotten, Wang Xuebi’s waistline has gotten another ring around it lately, and he’s about to need a custom belt. His classmates all call him “fatty,” but Wang Xuebi doesn’t mind at all. He’s the eldest son, the only male—and more importantly, he has four pretty sisters. Even more importantly, all four of those pretty sisters are crazy about him. Wang Xuebi has never interacted with other women. He’s got four knockout girls right at home—why go out and get stuck in traffic? So whenever his female classmates give him a look of disgust, Wang Xuebi fires back a look of contempt. “Fatty, you’re so fat you’re dripping grease, it’s gross.” “I hear he’s a siscon too, always tangled up with his sisters.” “Last time Lin Xian, the guy next door to the fatty’s house, said he saw the fatso taking turns kissing his sisters! I almost threw up just thinking about it.” “Holy shit, for real?!” The chattering girls can’t hold back this explosive rumor any longer, and their shrill voices get even more piercing.