Sonora is a brand from the infamous cash-grab factory CUFFS. I’ve said before that CUFFS games, despite the pile of aliases, are all basically the same style—but this Sonora alias actually does something a little different. They built a shared universe across the games under the Sonora label. What that means: the three games released under Sonora all take place in the same world, so you get characters from different games making cameos, which gives everything a familiar feel. Gotta admit, the trick works. Sometimes you play an earlier game, then in a later one you get to see the previous heroine show up and get involved, and there’s this weird sense of closeness—like “oh, the developer actually cares about the players.” Of course, the more important part is that the background art doesn’t need to be redrawn. Reuse, baby. Save that money! So this time we’re talking about Sonora’s new game: Hirono-san Chi wa Eroge-ya-san! (The Hirono Family Runs an Eroge Shop!)

A while back my main eroge machine, the Chuwi Minibook, broke — the power light wouldn’t come on anymore. Since the warranty on that thing was almost up, I contacted the support lady to see if I could get it repaired. But nobody bothered to answer me for about two months, right up until I’d given up. Then the email came! She said it could be repaired, and explained the part I’d been worried about. I’d heard Chuwi’s after-sales was garbage — basically they just reinstall the OS and ship it back — but it seems crowdfunded products aren’t treated that way. Of course, I also found out why there’d been no reply for two months: the lady who’d been answering had quit, and they hadn’t hired anyone in those two months… Fine. In the end the machine got sent off, and I had no Windows machine on hand. That’s when I spotted what looked like a Lenovo Windows tablet in my wife’s inventory. The model was Lenovo MIIX 2 10, and it even came with a keyboard. So I asked if I could borrow it. “Sure, whatever. That’s your mother-in-law’s computer, seems like it’s been abandoned for ages.” So I picked up this Lenovo MIIX 2 10 and kept playing Gal.

Asa Project’s title from last year was probably their best game in recent years, and the main reason is that they gave up on their usual “dumbass romance setup” and turned the content straight into close-quarters, hand-to-hand catfighting. You can actually see the rare scenario where the protagonist picks one heroine, and another heroine who’s clearly already lost keeps showing up to try and steal him away. In a normal visual novel, once the protagonist enters a route, all the other heroines instantly vanish… That rare brand of infighting actually gave last year’s Asa Project a bit of a “pure love” feel. The love-hate drama between the girls and the protagonist, all that Mary Sue-flavored content, let a lot of otaku find that long-lost “romantic comedy” feel, so plenty of praise naturally followed. So Asa Project probably figured out a new formula that suits them—at least it’s way more solid than the dumbass nonsense they used to pull, like “indirect romance,” “swapped romance,” “long-distance romance,” “love triangles,” and whatever else. And with that, the ugly nature of Japanese capitalists revealed itself: Asa Project announced this year’s new game, Renai X Royale (恋愛Ｘロウイアル). What’s it mean? It’s just Love X Royale. Personally I’m convinced the “Royale” here is totally short for “Battle Royale,” so I’d translate it straight as Love Battle Royale. Battle royale—you know how it goes. Played PUBG? Everyone fights to the death, only one winner. This is blatantly a game where the heroines tear each other apart to the bitter end.

The reason I picked these up is pretty simple: I wanted a pair of TWS earbuds I could use at work. I’d been using over-ear headphones before, but they felt way too conspicuous. I didn’t like being noticed all the time, so I figured I’d get something a bit more low-key. Requirements: Type-C charging port Long battery life Sound that’s good enough Latency as low as possible The higher the quality of the supported codec, the better The cheaper the better I happened to see QCY was taking pre-orders for a new model, the T10, with a bunch of random new features. It basically fit the bill, so I got on board. Price was 120 yuan with free shipping, so I hopped on.

I had my eye on Sakura no Kumo * Scarlet no Koi (さくらの雲＊スカアレットの恋) well before release, mostly because that “Cabbage” game from before was so unbelievably stupid. The scenario is by Fuyu Akane (冬茜トム), who’s done story-driven work for several SugarPot and Cabbage titles, and this wasn’t his first time teaming up with Korie Riko either. The premise when it was first announced kind of baffled me: our protagonist gets sent back 100 years into Japan’s past and has to find a way home. That’s literally the level of a Chinese web novel. One of the bad ones. Trusting the writer, I still opened it up and it took me a good while to finish. Partly because things were busy at home, partly because the early-to-mid game is just so damn boring. The good news is the final chapter is genuinely fun, and it’s tightly paced — it blows through all that long-winded buildup and explains what was actually going on. In Japan they call this “paying off the foreshadowing.” Sure, if you say so. Anyway, let’s get into the game.

I used to run junk routers from overseas as APs at home. Nothing really wrong with that, but recently I noticed the AP at one of my places started losing signal—my guess is one of the antennas died. So with that, and the Double 11 sales landing at the same time, I decided to swap them out. My main router is a software router, so these were bought to be pure APs anyway; all they needed was good wireless specs. That’s how I ended up looking at two new Redmi models. So I bought both, one AX5 and one AX6, to replace the two junk ones.

Maitetsu came out back in early 2016, so it’s been almost five years now. Hard to believe this game is already over 4 years old. Back then my reaction was “eh, it’s fine” — the production values looked pretty solid, but the story left me with a lot of conflicted feelings. How do I put this… the game is set in a “fictional world,” but it uses a ton of homophones and pictographs to stand in for the real world. And on top of that, everything is bent toward steam train nostalgia. So what’s this “nostalgia” about? I remember the game sets up a “new energy company” and makes it the villain — says the new energy company clearly has pollution problems, and it’s “evil” enough to want to abolish the current “steam trains.” In the end, the game’s story has the “steam trains” receiving protection from a local deity, proving they can still hold their own in the tourism department, and the town’s “new energy project” just gets shelved. Honestly, I’m pretty confused. Replacing old energy sources with new ones is just the natural order of things, so how did it turn into such a tragic, grand issue? It even gets elevated to a political level somehow? And you say new energy has water pollution problems — so steam locomotives have no air pollution or environmental pollution problems either? And to really drive home how evil the “new energy” side is, the game throws in a hilariously goofy mayor route and a little-sister route, which try to stand up to the new-energy faction and make it sound like the entire town’s residents would rather pick the slower steam trains and reject new energy outright — I was laughing and crying at the same time. It’s kind of like that “I’d rather have a blackout than tolerate a nuclear plant” mindset.

Niijima Yuu has a new game out. Out of nowhere in the back half of the year, he announced a new brand under Key called Glovety, teaming up with his old partners from Koi x Shin Ai Kanojo (恋×シンアイ彼女), Kimishima Ao and Shimizu Masatoshi, to put out the brand’s first new title (and I figure it’ll also be its last): Einstein yori Ai wo Komete (アインシュタインより愛を込めて). アインシュタインより愛を込めて — what does that mean? It means From Einstein With Love. Except the game’s actual English subtitle isn’t that at all. It’s The only source of knowledge is experience. Sort of a “theory comes from practice” vibe, and that line also feels like a follow-up to Einstein’s famous quip: Information is not knowledge. Anyway, Niijima Yuu is back, and this time he’s brought Kimishima Ao, the otaku favorite, along with a title so artsy it hurts. A whole bunch of otaku collectively lost their minds. The game wasn’t even out in trial form yet and people were already rushing off on “sacred site pilgrimages,” dissecting every element of the single poster that had been released and guessing what kind of story Niijima Yuu might tell. Coupled with the heroine’s “genius-level intellect” setting, everyone started speculating about the plot: would it be about a super-smart but emotionally clueless person slowly discovering love? Would it end with a science-minded boy and girl falling for each other and trying to prove it? The game hadn’t even shipped, and people were already working themselves into tears. Honestly, outside of Yuzusoft fans, I’ve never seen such a powerful capacity for self-induced emotion, and it made me a little less hyped for the game.

The iPhone 12 is out. Sure, plenty of people are grumbling about the lack of a high refresh rate and the smaller battery, but given that the design went back to the sharp-edged look of the iPhone 4s era, it’s still worth a look. I picked up the iPhone 12 in green, 128G, and traded in an iPhone 8 64G for cash. When the iPhone 12 first launched you actually couldn’t reserve one — aside from the first batch of online orders, if you wanted a physical unit from a brick-and-mortar store you had to keep waiting. I went to the Apple Store at Zhengzhou MixC and found nothing but iPhone 11s inside. I asked the sales girl — one who looked like Inori Minase — and she said there were no units in store right now, and she couldn’t say when stock would arrive.

I’d been using the Sony Walkman ZX300a China version the whole time before this, and honestly I was pretty happy with it. In theory, two years later Sony puts out its upgraded Walkman ZX505, and I should be excited and upgrade ASAP. But I wasn’t. The upgrade points were too few: The system switched to Android (but it’s just a player — Android is useless here) The port switched to Type-C (a good thing, but not enough to drive an upgrade; I already have way too many Walkman cables) A bigger non-matte screen with higher resolution (who was it that hyped matte screens back then?) Some features that look nostalgic (who actually uses that Walkman cassette playback mode? Besides buying it to show off) More for the same price (slightly cheaper than the ZX300 preorder, but still not as good as the FiiO you’d compare it against)