その昔、深野市には、外つ国から来た魔法使いが住んでいたという もちろん、それを本気にするものは少ない。 けど、もし旅人がこの地を訪れたなら、きっと平地にはない異郷の香りを嗅ぐことだろう。 ここは、かつてヒトとヒトならざる者が共に暮らしたと伝わる幽玄の地。 四方を山に囲まれ、独自の自然観をはぐくんできた深野の町には どこか、そんなこともあるかもしれないと信じたくなる霊気が漂っている。 They say that long, long ago, a witch from a foreign land lived in Fukano City. Of course, hardly anyone takes that rumor seriously. But any traveler who visits will surely catch a whiff of something foreign, different from the usual. This is a legendary place of mystery, where humans and all sorts of non-human beings live together. In this small town of Fukano, surrounded by mountains on all sides and nurturing its own unique natural scenery, a faint spiritual presence drifts about, and there exist things that may or may not be there—yet you can’t help but believe in them… This passage isn’t something I wrote — it’s from the game Tamayura Mirai (タマユラミライ). If you’ve played it, the words will be burned into your memory, because the game repeats them at least 20 times. If you haven’t played it and plan to, then once you’re done you’ll probably be able to recite it from memory just like I can… Before I get into Tamanura Mirai (タマユラミライ), let’s talk about something else first — something game-related, of course. I know none of you want to read those intros that have nothing to do with the game, so I’ll skip them.

No idea how many years ago, there was a novel-based anime called Humanity Has Declined (人類は衰退しました). The premise: humanity has declined for unknown reasons, the world is overrun by “fairies,” and the female protagonist, a human, observes and interacts with them. Your standard anecdotal setup. I never read the original, so I can only talk about the anime, and honestly the anime was pretty good. After watching it I was left with three impressions: fun, sci-fi, and what-the-hell-did-I-just-watch. That last one sticks with you the most. You always get the sense the show is “hinting” at or “allegorizing” something, but you can never find the exact parallel, so it’s hard to pin down the author’s stance or viewpoint, what the story is trying to say, blah blah blah. But that’s exactly the appeal of Humanity Has Declined—if it stated its position too clearly, it’d feel like force-feeding you opinions, and it’d be harder to provoke thought. That half-hidden, “still holding the pipa behind the curtain” feeling is just right. And what’s worth noting: the author of Humanity Has Declined is Tanaka Romeo. This was the first and only time I’d encountered his work. I had no interest in what he wrote afterward and didn’t follow him much. Then a while back, a game called Waka-sama no Zasu Sekai (和香様の座する世界) came out, and I saw that familiar name in the script credits again: Tanaka Romeo. And it reminded me of Humanity Has Declined.

A few days ago while aimlessly browsing the web, I came across this article: The highest-sound-quality earphones in history, now only 20 yuan At the time it felt pretty badass, and also pretty bullshit, so I figured—I may not be as rich as Old Wu the Second, but 20 yuan is something I can grit my teeth and fork over, so I decided to test for myself whether it’s really that magical.

From what I can dig up, the earliest galgame goes back to 1982 — roughly 30-odd years of history at this point. Over that long haul, under the core premise of “attract male players with cute girls,” the art and styles have changed again and again, and the elements have piled up, but one thing has never changed: the big-breasted character always shows up. You could say that for today’s eroge, “no CV? Fine. No OP? Fine. No systems? Fine. But no big breasts? Unthinkable.” Big breasts have become the last-resort trump card for plenty of galgame makers on the verge of going under, as if whipping out the big-breast element alone will bring them back from the dead. So what exactly is the appeal of big breasts? Why must a galgame have a big-breasted character? Today let’s grab a recently released game and spend 7-plus-7 minutes figuring out why.

I figure plenty of rich folks, Wu Lao Er included, have already moved on to the OnePlus 7 Pro. Me, I’m still on a OnePlus 5. Though my OnePlus 5 is really my backup phone. It’s fine, honestly. Performance holds up, no reason to replace it. Only the protector I’d stuck on it cracked, so I decided to get a new one. The protector I had on the OnePlus 5 before was from Fangshao. The coating on that one felt weird to me, not smooth enough — probably some knockoff coating from a small factory. Since the Nillkin protector on my Pixel 3 XL feels great and the coating is great too, I decided to give the Nillkin one for the OnePlus 5 a shot. Then I used it and cried.

Intel recently released the AX200 series of Wi-Fi cards. A batch showed up on eBay too, and surprisingly cheap — pretty friendly compared to the old 7265 and friends, which used to run close to 200. And after the ThinkPad X250, ThinkPad products no longer have a whitelist. Still, even though by conventional wisdom Intel wireless cards and Linux get along just fine, I have to say this product is an exception.

One When I was little, I knew some friends. All kinds of friends. Since we were young, we inevitably talked about the future, and we’d talk about what kind of dreams we had. Apart from listing various vague professions, I noticed none of us had anything particularly “positive” to say about our dreams. How should I put it—a lot of our dreams were things like “endless money, endless snacks,” really simple, low-tier ideas, plus that kingly aura of “rule the world, rule the universe.” One buddy of mine told me back then: my dream is to “destroy the Earth.” When I asked why, he said: “I just wanna see what happens when the Earth blows up.” Sure, different people have different dreams, but I can confirm not one person’s dream was “to protect world peace.” Everyone wanted to be the hegemon—the one who destroys world peace. When I grew up and saw “man’s nature is good at birth,” I always felt it was self-deception.

A while back there was a thread on Reddit recommending some cheap Chinese e-waste, and it was pushing this Bluetooth speaker: the Jambox mini. I’d honestly never heard of this Jambox mini thing. I just saw the thread hyping it up with “can’t lose at this price” and “beats stuff at the 500 yuan tier,” so since it was cheap I figured I’d buy one and mess around with it. This kind of thing always reminds me of back in the day when I’d read some idiot “poison-pen” post going on about how some earbuds only cost 49 or 99 and you can’t go wrong buying them, and in the end it turns out you really can’t go wrong — they just sit there gathering dust. This time I couldn’t hold back and ordered one. And the seller, who seemed to be some kind of official Foxconn outlet, took nearly a week and a half to ship. But it did eventually arrive. The speaker is bare-bones: just the unit and a charger, that’s it.

A while back I bought a discounted Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 tablet on eBay to replace my Mi Pad 4 and 360 N7. Its job is watching videos and gaming, plus whatever else comes up. The reasons were simple, just three: The Mi Pad 4 has a “screen gets hot and touch stops responding” problem, so it can’t game The 360 phone games fine but the screen is harsh on the eyes, and the system is basically abandoned after launch Neither of them supports stereo sound for videos — both are single-speaker Don’t ask why I didn’t get an iPad. I don’t use Apple, so Samsung was the only option — it’s the highest-performance Android tablet out there right now. Eventually I searched Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 on eBay and found a US V version with a 4G module, model T837V. Got it for just over 3000 yuan. I’ve used it for almost a month now, so I can share my impressions.

I really don’t get what Palette is doing. Why did they have to chop the 9-nine series into pieces like this? And not just chop it up—release the pieces so damn slowly. Two years ago we got 9-nine- Kokonotsu Kokonoka Kokonoiro, last year Sorairo Sorauta Soranooto, and this year Haruiro Harukoi Harunokaze. The Chinese title translates to something like “Spring Colors, Spring Love, Spring Wind.”