Two Pieces of Galgame Gossip

I’ve been playing some visual novels lately, but I keep getting sidetracked… ended up digging around for gossip about them instead.

Did find some good stuff though. Two stories, both pretty interesting — one from other people’s discussions, one from the developer’s own leak. Writing them down here for anyone who cares.

Nanaroba Hana and Karory: Love, Hate, and Everything In Between

If you play eroge regularly or read doujinshi, you probably know that the illustrator Nanaroba Hana has a style extremely similar to someone called Karory.

Both have been around for ages, actually. Nanaroba Hana’s been doing doujin work for years, and Karory seems to have been at it even longer. If you’ve followed Nanaroba Hana for a while, you’ll notice her earlier art didn’t look like this at all — it gradually drifted toward Karory’s current style. Karory’s art and coloring, meanwhile, have been consistent from the start.

So naturally people started saying Nanaroba Hana copied Karory:

Did Nanaroba Hana plagiarize Karory? How do you explain the high similarity between their styles?

So did she actually copy? I think imitation is definitely there. Aside from that Quora link above, if you look closely at Nanaroba Hana’s early work — the illustrations for Tomohiro Matsu’s light novel Otome 3 Gensoku! — the style is completely different.

Current style:

And now it’s basically indistinguishable from Karory… At first I figured it was just imitation — like how Kiriha once imitated Izumi Tsubasu. New illustrators always start by copying the big names. But soon I realized it wasn’t that simple…

Because I found something interesting in the Quora comments too:

So I went and poked around 2ch, and found a lot of interesting discussion. Rough summary:

Starting around 2014, Nanaroba Hana’s style got closer and closer to Karory’s. Karory tweeted a passive-aggressive remark about being imitated — and the imitator, Nanaroba Hana, was actually selling better than Karory.

So why did the styles start converging so fast? Someone brought up a person called “Yasuda.”

This “Yasuda” is probably this guy:

https://twitter.com/ysd321

He was Karory’s ex-boyfriend, and used to help sell stuff at Karory’s booth. Then he and Karory broke up — and at the next doujin event, this “Yasuda” showed up at Nanaroba Hana’s booth…

In other words, Nanaroba Hana got together with this “Yasuda.”

And here’s the kicker: someone dug up that Nanaroba Hana’s old personal site listed her date of birth. By that math, in 2017 she’d be 34 — and at the time she was involved with “Yasuda,” she was already married.

So the picture’s pretty clear: “Yasuda” was Karory’s ex. After the breakup he went to the married Nanaroba Hana (whether they were actually dating is unclear). After that, Nanaroba Hana’s style started converging on Karory’s at an insane speed. Some suspect “Yasuda” leaked Karory’s coloring techniques to her. I think it’s plausible.

After that, Karory tweeted passive-aggressive remarks about being imitated, about being targeted, about bad money driving out good — and then Nanaroba Hana and Karory never interacted again. They’ve been in a cold war since, though it looks more like Nanaroba Hana is drawing like a madwoman trying to crush Karory. In terms of sales and output, Karory can’t keep up with the frenzied Nanaroba Hana…

Even though that coloring technique was Karory’s original creation…

Personally I don’t know much about Karory. I’d say I actually like Nanaroba Hana’s art — it’s cute. But after all this, I mostly feel sorry for Karory. Nanaroba Hana may work hard, but a lot of evidence suggests she’s a ruthless person. Or maybe… a scheming bitch?

Karory also seems to be developing a new style to guard against copying — though it’s a bit…

But gossip is gossip. Hope the clouds clear someday. At least they were both innocent once — it’s just that the way they used to greet each other is never coming back.

They’ve probably blocked each other on Twitter too.

The Recording Studio Leak in Onii-chan, Migite no Shiyou o Kinshi Shimasu! 2

I mentioned Onii-chan, Migite no Shiyou o Kinshi Shimasu! 2 yesterday, but today while browsing ErogameScape I found an interesting review.

Apparently one voice line in the game is nearly half an hour long, and the content of that half hour is actually the raw recording session for the game’s voice work — the whole session, recorded.

I dug around and found the HCG that contains this voice line. It plays in this CG on the common route.

You can hear page turns, script pages rustling, the voice actress Kasuga An listening to the sound director explain how to deliver the lines, apologizing, and so on…

This is incredibly rare material — it lets you understand exactly how voice recording for a game works.

Obviously this should never have ended up in the game. It’s a serious mistake on the developer’s part.

Still, thanks Galette — this new game wasn’t a waste. Hearing the session is honestly more exciting. Wonder if Kiritani Hana records like this too.

If you’re interested, you can listen here: