Oh Thank You, Frontwing

A package from Japan showed up recently. I opened it and damn near spat out my drink.

It’s Corona Blossom merch from Frontwing. Why am I even getting this? And Corona Blossom is almost two years old at this point, isn’t it…

Then it hit me, and I slapped my own forehead:

“Oh. Right. I bought Corona Blossom merch two years ago…”

I’d completely forgotten. They shipped it two years later.

I dug through my inbox out of curiosity and lost it:

Read through it and the whole story made sense:

• Two years ago Corona Blossom hit Steam, and merch went on sale alongside it
• I bought the merch with the game and waited for shipping
• The game could hand out CD keys fine, but shipping the merch ran into trouble
• The shipping company Frontwing hired bailed on them or something and stopped taking the goods
• Frontwing started contacting new shipping companies, none of them would take it
• Eventually Frontwing found a logistics outfit willing to ship, and started moving the goods over
• The goods arrived, and shipping finally began

And that whole mess dragged on for two years. Honestly, kind of impressive. I wonder how the overseas folks who bought the physical edition felt getting their game two years later… couldn’t you just take a trip to Japan and buy it yourself?

Not that Frontwing did anything wrong, really. They kept posting weekly updates the whole time. Mostly bullshit, sure, but at least it meant “we haven’t run off.”

Frontwing, how would you even run off? You want to keep existing on Steam, don’t you?

Anyway, it arrived in the end. I’m just not sure whether I should be thanking Frontwing or not…

Makes me sigh, though — Corona Blossom is two years old now, and one of its voice actresses has already retired. Time flies. Then I pulled out the merch from another game and spat out my drink again.

The two games even share some voice actresses, the main heroine especially. Made me look like a total Akino Hana devotee…