There was a time when I was really into an artist named 白もち桜. Chinese fans render her name as “白餅桜” — I followed her Twitter account almost as soon as she opened it, and the funny thing is, she followed me back. That makes her the second artist to follow me, after 茉宮祈芹. I still think fondly of her characters. The one I liked most was probably ナツイロココロロッグ — the heroine genuinely moved me — and the character she handled in 魔女こいにっき felt like a step up in how the cast was written. Her characters are mostly faces paired with fangs and gorgeous outfits, and they really do feel girlish. The weakness is obvious too, though: same-face syndrome. Whatever she draws, it’s always the same face. She went on to work on some newer titles and drew plenty of illustrations, but honestly, I don’t see any real progress. Her characters always end up in the same handful of poses, always flashing their panties, always wearing that same smile… Gradually I stopped reacting to her characters. 茉宮祈芹, by comparison, spends most of her time drawing high-exposure lewds too, but she can still deliver genuinely appealing characters in actual games — TamaYura Mirai or whatever it was called. And more importantly, 白もち桜 hasn’t done original art for a galgame in ages. She even streamed once, playing Super Mario — and watching that was enough to spike my blood pressure. Then recently, out of nowhere, she came back. Partnered with Whirlpool, no less, on a little throwaway title whose name I literally cannot remember. It was something like… けもの道☆ガーリッシュスクエア

I needed a keyboard, backed by various bullshit excuses. Requirements: Portable, small Bluetooth, multi-device support At least 84 keys; I’ve had enough of life without an F-row and arrow keys Good build quality In the end I settled on the Keychron K3 — which is also the 京造 K3 version. This keyboard stirs up a lot of controversy online: opinions are extremely polarized. Most KOLs give it the usual praise, and looking at it I couldn’t find any obvious problems; the specs are fine too. Sure, it’s low-profile, but I don’t see what’s wrong with low-profile switches. The funny thing is most negative reviews online just call it “garbage” without explaining where the garbage is. The positive reviews, on the other hand, are very detailed. That struck me as bizarre. Is the marketing just too strong, drowning out genuine impressions? Or is this thing really that good?

About two years ago I bought a China-market Fossil Gen 5 smartwatch. I already covered why I bought it and how it felt to use in an earlier post, so I won’t repeat that here. Today I’m just going to talk about my after-sales experience with this watch. First off, less than a year in, I accidentally scraped the bezel on one side, exposing the bare metal underneath the black finish. That bugged me for a while. I even tried some nail polish type stuff to cover it up, but it was no use—just a little mental scab I couldn’t pick off. Also, after a year or so of use, the battery life was nowhere near what it used to be. I remember in the beginning I could leave Always Display on and still get a day and a half. Later, even with Always Display off, it barely lasted a day. Pretty clear the battery health had declined. Then the watch started acting weird. The speaker would intermittently produce distorted sound. Whenever you got a message, the watch would make a sound, but it was this harsh, crackly noise—super annoying. The thing is, it wasn’t easy to reproduce. Sometimes it happened, sometimes not. I couldn’t figure out if it was a software issue or a hardware issue.

Why did I buy the Redmi Watch 2? Mainly because my Fossil watch went in for repair, and they said it’d be at least a month before it came back from the factory. For a month I’d have nothing on my wrist to check the time, so I had a fresh excuse to buy this thing. I got in on the first batch, paid around 299 yuan—retail was supposed to be 399. The packaging is nothing fancy. Open it up and there it is. Gotta say, even though it’s basically an oversized fitness band, the build quality is genuinely nice. From a distance it really looks like an Apple Watch. Up close it still looks like one. As long as you don’t swipe, you can pretend it’s an Apple Watch. I’ve used it for about two weeks now, and I’ve got some thoughts, so I figured I’d write them down.

Honestly, at first I figured HARUKAZE was dead as a studio, that they’d gone full-time into all-ages TokyoToon stuff. Didn’t expect them to come back from the dead with a brand-new title. The game’s called “Monkeys!¡,” and that double inverted exclamation mark at the end is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Combined with the premise, it gave me the feeling they were about to do a crossdressing bit. I haven’t touched many crossdressing VNs. Most of them follow the same playbook, and the ones that actually do something interesting with it are rare. The one that stuck with me was Maria†Holic from back in the day, and even that didn’t have much to do with crossdressing, really. I’ve always appreciated HARUKAZE’s talent for shitposting, so I was looking forward to this one bringing something new. After playing it, though, all I can say is this game brought plenty of “surprises”—and even more disappointment.

I forget when Xiaomi put out these earphones. Launch price was 999, then all of a sudden I noticed they’d been cut in half to 499, and before long you could pick them up on eBay for 299… From 999 down to 299. These things lose value fast. And this is supposedly a kickass “dual dynamic” + “dual balanced armature” setup. Mine came from eBay, listed as brand new. What showed up was a plain box with the earphones, some spare silicone tips, and even a mysterious “Bluetooth adapter” of unknown provenance (turns out that was in the original package too, for phones without a headphone jack). The stock silicone tips are genuinely badly sized — way too big. They leak sound, which is why I kept thinking something was wrong with the sound at first. Switched to one size smaller and the problem went away.

I’ve been out of the audiophile game for years, but I talked to some young folks recently and they told me domestic Chinese “mysticism” products are nothing like they used to be. By “nothing like they used to be” they mean flagship prices have shot through the roof — I have zero interest in that — and the low end has gotten “even stronger.” “Moondrop” is the brand the kids keep bringing up. I’d heard of it, but other than noticing they’re pretty deep in the anime thing, I had no real impression. So by chance I got my hands on a Moondrop “Quarks,” supposedly their honest-to-goodness entry-level model. Say what you will, the packaging is actually decent, and it even comes with a card I have no idea what to do with. Some kind of coupon, I think. The earpieces are genuinely tiny. Tiny and nicely made — the material is plastic, but it doesn’t feel obviously cheap. What confuses me is I can’t tell which of the red and black ones is left and which is right. Conventionally red should be the right, right?

God knows why I played this game. Curiosity, probably. Koumuin Yamete, Ana o Horu Koto ni Shimashita (公務員辞めて、穴を掘ることにしました) The title sounds like a joke, and that’s exactly what it is: a 4399-tier doujin minigame. I don’t know if the old “Chengguang” platform is even still alive, but this is the kind of thing that would only exist on a site like that. The game is short. Our thoroughly goofy-looking protagonist ditches his shut-in wife at home to dig a hole by the front door, and ends up in another world. There are multiple endings—one where you dig down, come back up, and find your wife has run off with someone else; one where you tunnel through time and space. But the whole thing is just snark and shitposting, so you’re not expecting anything actually interesting out of it. And the “jokes” in this game are genuinely hard for me to parse. Maybe it’s because I’m not a young Japanese person, but my face the entire time was the old-man-staring-at-his-phone meme: “What the fuck is this? What’s supposed to be funny here?”

I don’t know when the “YuanDao” meme blew up, but by the time I noticed, it was everywhere. What is “YuanDao”? A flathead earbud that ships for 9.9 with free shipping (sometimes even less). I was already familiar with this kind of product, because back in the day it wasn’t called “YuanDao” but something like “Diving Expert,” so at first I figured it was just a “budget Diving Expert.” Later, as the YuanDao meme took off, my curiosity about it grew a bit: Is this thing really that amazing? Plenty of people, I’m sure, ended up trying YuanDao the same way I did — by accident. I got my hands on YuanDao a month ago. The price was great — 9.9 with free shipping, I think, and they knocked 4 yuan off, so it cost me less than 6. I’ve been listening to these earbuds on and off for about a month. Not that many times, honestly, but not few either. Quick impressions:

Sure, Akane Ikegami-sensei once reported my Twitter account and got it suspended, claiming I “spoiled” things and “leaked the protagonist’s dick length.” But considering how utterly moronic the Galgame industry has been lately, with each new release dumber than the last, by that horizontal comparison, Ikegami-sensei’s game here is still worth a look. Ore no Koi Tenshi ga Ponkotsu Sugite Kowai (俺の恋天使がポンコツすぎてコワ～い。) The こわ〜い here only really works if you drag out the vowel. The title follows the same pattern as that “yabai” series from before, just swapped to “kowai” this time. The meaning is dead simple: My love angel Cupid is way too much of a klutz and it scares me. Honestly, I knew exactly how this game was going to play out just from the title, and the opening had me spitting out my drink: 男主在路边捡到了一个“Love Note”，并且认识了一个自称是“丘比特”的天使，天使说只要在“Love Note”上写下你喜欢的人的名字，很快你就会和这个人产生邂逅。 Ah, wonder if the protagonist still has to hold onto this “Love Note” and become the god of the new world.