My old laptop was gone, so I decided to buy a new one. And since I was buying new, I figured I’d stick with the X1 Carbon line—especially since around Chinese New Year there were rumors that this generation would bring a ton of great changes. Sure enough, right around the holiday, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9th was officially announced: a brand-new 4K screen, a new 16:10 aspect ratio, better speakers, a bigger battery, a beefier Iris integrated GPU, and a shorter key travel. Overall it still looked way better than the old versions—at the very least, that screen alone was worth bragging about. So I decided to go for it.

A lot of visual novels try to stir up buzz by making themselves “contrasty,” though this kind of contrast isn’t the same as what an Osaka black shark otaku sees on Twitter — close enough, though. Basically: some games look like moe-bait on the surface but are secretly pitch black inside, while others look like an empty nukige but end up preaching some profound truth… This game isn’t just superficially “contrasty,” but it’s contrasty enough. I’m talking about Amairo Chocolata 2 (あまいろショコラータ 2). The previous game even got a Chinese release on Steam under the name 巧克甜恋 — so the Chinese name for this one should probably be 巧克甜恋 2, right? But I haven’t seen any news about a Chinese localization for this one.

Lately Key seems to have lost its mind, suddenly dropping a bunch of projects, mostly short and quick little pieces. And the weird thing is, Jun Maeda — Key’s star player — is nowhere to be seen. After his latest anime blew up in his face, maybe his ass really did split in half and he retired for good. Either way, this is a good thing for Key. I’ve been sick of Maeda for a while now. Every story he writes follows the exact same pattern: set up something super compelling, some really interesting premise, then once the premise is laid out he starts padding the daily-life scenes, and finally he realizes he’s running out of time and can’t hold it together, so he slams the accelerator on a roller-coaster super-twist, wraps it up in a hurry, and leaves the Key fans who watched it shit the bed screaming impotently into the void. Anyone who’s seen Angel Beats and Charlotte knows exactly what I’m talking about. Good news is, none of Key’s recent projects have that dumbass Maeda in them～ Fantastic. This month they even released the first one, and I was instantly hyped. It’s called Loopers, and the scenario is by Ryukishi07. I don’t particularly like Ryukishi either, but hey, better than that dumbass Maeda! Plus the artist for this game is seriously good, so I dove right in. And then… after playing it, I’ve got a bone stuck in my throat. I have to talk about this.

Seeing this title, let’s first define what counts as a “failure” according to the usual forum argument rules. Everyone knows a visual novel goes through a process from “planning” to “production.” You could say the “planning” is the game’s goal and determines its direction. Following that logic, if the game’s production completely runs counter to the “planning,” or if the game itself never even fulfills the planning’s original goal, then the game can be considered a “failure.” So today, let’s talk about one such “failed” game.

Galgame blurbs have gotten seriously dishonest in recent years. Like, if a game claims it’s “pure love,” watch out. 90% chance it isn’t. If a game tells you it’s “a very quiet, uneventful story,” be suspicious. It won’t be uneventful. If a game tells you it’s yuri, there’s a good chance it’ll inform you the heroines are a bunch of guys’ cum dumpsters. If a game says “Now on sale to great reviews,” it already got shredded. Today I’m talking about a game that’s honest in every conceivable way. Seriously, in all my years of playing these things, I’ve never seen a game this honest. Umi to Yuki no Cyan Blue (海と雪のシアンブルー), from CUBE.

The Japanese love telling stories, and they especially love telling legends. Unlike Chinese legends, which mostly “stick to a certain framework,” a lot of Japanese legends go completely off the rails. This has to do with the Japanese idea of “eight million gods” — everything is a deity, so who isn’t a little kami? On top of that, many Japanese myths have a certain “Buddhist” flavor, mostly built on the idea of reincarnation. They love telling a legend about a god, and the legend also involves reincarnation — no matter how things develop, it always becomes a circle connected end to end, all to create some kind of thought-provoking effect. But play that trick too many times and it numbs you. At least it numbed me. I usually call this kind of plot “Japanese-style melodrama that refuses to speak like a human being.”

For the whole of last year my eroge machine was the Chuwi Minibook. It’s got plenty of small problems, but I thought it was fine — good enough for playing games. Then at the start of this year I lost my laptop bag, and the Chuwi Minibook went with it, so I started thinking about getting a new machine. My requirements were pretty clear by then: A good screen. The Chuwi Minibook uses PWM dimming, which is a pain over long sessions. Good battery life. A galgame machine doesn’t need much power, but the battery has to be biiiig. Enough cooling. The Chuwi Minibook got scorching hot when I ran it, and the fan sounded like a plane taking off. Expandable storage, at least NVMe. 16GB of RAM. I like leaving a ton of stuff open in the background. USB-C for docks and charging. After shopping around, the only thing that fit was the GPD P2 MAX, so I grabbed one on Taobao.

Everyone knows I like games that pull shitposts. Of course, “I” don’t represent the whole world, so from what I understand, most people who play games — especially visual novels — don’t really like shitpost-y works. You can see this in the little details. For example, I often see people on some forum, when a new release drops, asking: “Does this game have any landmines?” “Is this game pure love?” Both of these can basically be translated as: “Is this game just a plain romance routine?” What I genuinely can’t understand is the “plain romance routine” thing. Ever since the visual novel genre was born, it’s been fixed — at least 20 years now. Is it really necessary to repeat the same story over and over and over again for 20 years? Recently a game pulled a shitpost again, and a big one at that — so big that even the publisher distanced themselves, and players worldwide were cursing it out… That game is the Chinese-first, Steam-exclusive yuri work: Suteki na Kanojo no Tsukurikata (素敵な彼女の作り方)

Bought these at the end of last year, when Amazon Global had them on sale for a little over 1200 — the lowest price they’d ever hit, and way cheaper than buying domestically. I already had a long-serving ER4P, but I still went for these. The biggest reason: the detachable cable. I’m always worried the cable on my ER4P will give out, and as the upgraded model, the ER4SR’s replaceable-cable design is obviously a lot safer. Surprisingly, the overseas order didn’t get hit with customs, and it arrived safe and sound. The only downside was the long wait for shipping from the US.

Everyone knows my main machine used to be an X1 Carbon 2017. Unfortunately, I lost it earlier this year. After that, my wife was actually on board with me buying a new one, but the X1 Carbon 2021 was about to launch and the rumors said it was a big upgrade — new 16:10 screen, better GPU and CPU performance. So I decided to wait. But while waiting, I still needed a laptop to get work done. So I started looking: Performance has to be passable Keyboard has to at least be usable Screen at least 1080p, color gamut can’t be terrible Strong battery life Build quality as good as possible