I. A while back, my workplace went through a pretty brutal stretch of overtime. The work itself wasn’t much — just a system upgrade. Once the main system was upgraded, we had to debug the software and interfaces that talk to it. After that, we could go home. Sounds simple, right? The catch: the main system upgrade had to happen in the middle of the night and took several hours. The estimate was that the main system would finish upgrading around 2 a.m., and our auxiliary systems could only start testing after 2. By the time we wrapped up, it’d be 3–4 a.m. The original plan was to upgrade on Saturday, then use Sunday—when fewer people are on the system—to test and fix issues, so everything would be ready for Monday. That plan fell apart fast. Saturday’s upgrade went terribly.

That one Aonatsu Line everyone hyped to hell and back got a spiritual successor a little over a year later: Yukiiro Sign (ユキイロサイン). Why “spiritual successor”? Same writer, same artist, different company — some outfit called wonder fool. I’m all for them ditching the shitshow that is GIGA, but wonder fool isn’t exactly a saint either. Look at the garbage they’ve put out. Feels like they’re just publishing leftovers nobody else wanted. Anyway, I was still hyped, because Aonatsu Line was goated, so this had to be goated too. A bunch of otaku were dying to feel their youth again through this game (even though they never had one). Then it came out and I played it, and I have to say, unfortunately: this game does not deliver what most people wanted.

Rukuru’s first new game in two years, and honestly, from the moment 冥契のルペルカリア’s setting was announced, I felt very… uncomfortable. First off, the title alone looks like people are going to die. Then the character designs straight-up contain elements from 紙の上の魔法使い, which had me suspecting the game was trying to coast on past glories. That said, neither the synopsis nor anything else explicitly states what 冥契のルペルカリア has to do with 紙の上の魔法使い — just a bunch of plausible-sounding edge-balling. Even the CVs don’t line up; I remember the witch being voiced by 小倉結衣, not メイ大姐. I took a look at the plot summary and it turned out to be stage-play focused, which killed my interest even more. But the scenario writer’s skill is still there, and last year had basically nothing with a decent story, so I went ahead and played it on faith in Rukuru. The whole playthrough was a mess — at one point I lost my eroge machine, then it broke down again, and I finally stumbled my way to the end. Hmm… how should I put it. The quality was about what I expected, but there were some disappointing parts too. So let me just run through it briefly.

Kaiko no Okurimono (蚕の贈り物) is something I stumbled on by accident — a tiny indie game… The premise is dead simple: in a fairy forest there’s a moth youkai. It’s a moth, so its lifespan is short, and before it dies it wants to do something to prove it once lived… To stay faithful to the “moths don’t live long” thing, the game actually slaps a time limit on you. Of… one minute. Yep. The game is one minute long.

Preface: I picked up a Pinebook Pro back around 2019. I vaguely remember the other machine I was fiddling with at the time was a Chuwi Minibook. Nearly a year and a half went by and the Pinebook Pro spent most of it collecting dust, until my ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2017 went missing a while back. I really had no computer to use, so I dug it out and used it as my “main machine” for a stretch. And honestly, when the Pinebook Pro first launched, the ecosystem around it was pretty incomplete (though already a big step up from the old Pinebook). Now that I have a new temporary main laptop, I can set the Pinebook Pro aside for the time being. The days of using it were an interesting and painful memory, but it was also a chance to seriously try out this “open-source Arm Linux laptop” and see its strengths and weaknesses. So I figure I’ve earned the right to give it a subjective review here.

Buying this thing was a total accident — I saw it going for absurdly cheap on Xianyu. I’ve got a decent impression of the Xiaomi Piston Pro. I still use it plugged into my tablet or PC for Galgames and videos. The sound isn’t anything high-end, but it’s not bad either — good enough for watching videos or playing games. It has a mic too, so it can pinch-hit for voice chat. So when I saw how cheap this was, I bought the “Xiaomi Dual-Driver Earphones.”

2020 was a rough year for everyone, eroge makers included, so there were way fewer games to play this year and way fewer that actually landed. And I played about as many as always… meaning not fewer. I went through 41 eroge in 2020, which somehow matches 2019 exactly. So I genuinely got worse this year. I’m supposed to be phasing this out gradually… That said, there seemed to be more games worth recommending this year. Though I clearly felt one thing — Galgame music just doesn’t hit anymore. Honestly, I tried to put together a list of “OPs and EDs that sounded good this year” and came up nearly empty. The lesbian game’s OP was decent, but frankly I didn’t even want to collect OSTs this year, so I’m skipping music entirely. Let’s just talk about the games. Here’s what “I personally” thought was good in 2020.

Last year, when I was writing “My Favorite Eroge of 2019”, I gave the number one spot to a work by Tōta-sensei. I think Tōta-sensei sometimes writes preachy plots, and he has this weird obsession with random trivia that makes reading painful, but his storytelling is structurally sound, and most importantly, he always delivers something memorable. Whether it’s the moral encouragement in Floral Flowlove (フローラル・フローラブ), or the exploration of Japanese folklore, the hiyoku bird, and immortality in Tamayura Mirai (タマユラミライ), both are thought-provoking. To borrow the words of that Osaka Black Shark normie who’s always got a JK under his arm: “He can tell a good big-picture story.” But soon enough, Tōta slapped me in the face. That’s what today’s topic is about: Garasu Hime to Kagami no Juusha — Glass Princess and the Mirror Servant.

QUINCESOFT’s big 2021 opener, and it made me spit out my drink. Gohoushi Akuma to Oshioki Tenshi (ごほうしアクマとオシオキてんし), written as ご奉仕悪魔とお仕置き天使 — “the demon who does maid duty and the exiled angel.” This thing hit me hard enough that we should set the game aside for a moment and first go over how this label called QUINCESOFT even came to be.

The eroge market has been shrinking hard these past few years. Plenty of studios can’t be bothered making “story games” anymore and have all pivoted to short, punchy fanservice nukige, dressed up as “the pursuit of sweet romance.” In reality it’s just low-cost nukige to recoup money. Everyone knows these games have no substance — you’re here for the CGs — and the devs know it too, so they stuff more CGs in. And since a budget title needs more than one volume, they draw a bunch of heroines up front and sell them off in pieces. Small margin, high volume. Why not? Today’s subject is Itchokusen (Shojo→) Kanojo to Koi Shitai, from COSMOS, a small label under Windmill. If you ask me, the game has exactly two highlights. One is the artist Tsukimoto Jin — the art is genuinely good, and the heroine is genuinely beautiful. The other is the original concept by Houmori Kei. Because Houmori Kei may be an old pervert, but he’s decent at writing “sweet romance” stuff. His old light novel Ore mo Omae mo Choro Suginai ka was pretty good: the male lead desperately wants a girlfriend but is kind of flippant, confesses to anyone he sees, and then by some mix-up ends up confessing to our heroine, who — get this — earnestly and seriously accepts. And so the two begin a relationship where they put the cart before the horse…