Some guy with a screw loose once laid out the whole “old school” vs. “new school” thing. Of course, a guy with a screw loose doesn’t talk like a human being, so what he meant was Old School and New School. Put bluntly: “new type” and “retro type.” You see this pattern in other games, you see it in music genres, so naturally you also see it in the eroge space. Remember what the earliest eroge were like? You’d have a male lead meet a pretty girl, and after about two lines they’d start fucking, and then it was over. Same as what Carmack the Great said about FPS games: “The game is the porn, the story is superfluous.” The subtext: games exist to make you feel good, so why the hell bother with plot and authorship? If it doesn’t get you off, why the hell are you playing it? Normal games are already pigeonholed that clearly, so what about eroge? What’s an eroge for? So you can watch it like porn! So why the hell go through all that asinine setup and payoff? Just drop the pants and get to it!

Personally, I really like ClockUp’s games, because I always feel they’re very “real.” Yes, real — the kind of game that’s genuinely 18+ for adults, not one of those “it’s 18+ only because they bolted on some sex scenes” games. Honestly, if you stripped the optional HCGs out of a lot of 18+ games, the age rating would suit thirteen-year-olds better. ClockUp’s games are the opposite: even if you deleted every HCG, they still wouldn’t be okay for anyone under eighteen. It comes down to the content and the emotions the game expresses — stuff that’s hard for minors to stomach. Most of it delivers shocking gore and violence, and through those shocking images, thoughts about life and human nature. I always praise ClockUp’s games as insane, but not every ClockUp game is like that — it mostly depends on the scenario writer. Some bring in Light’s lead writer, like Nemurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami and Maggot baits. Others are the series of small, deep works by Asa Ei, like Natsu no Kusari and euphoria. And this time Asa Ei took the pen again, teaming up with ClockUP on a new title: Erewhon.

Honestly, my life before high school was nothing like the cushy existence kids have now. I had zero pocket money. Not “very little” — literally none. Picture my elementary and middle school years. My parents weren’t completely against giving me money, but occasionally handing me one or five yuan was already the biggest concession. Going out to buy a shaobing or a youtiao egg pancake counted as a fancy purchase. I had no money of my own to buy what I wanted. I used to envy friends who had their own wallets and allowances, who could just buy stuff. Me? Anything I wanted had to go through parental approval. Sure, I only wanted things like Mini 4WD cars, but obviously my parents weren’t going to buy them on a whim. Back then a pirated “Auldey” car cost 10 yuan, and I only had 1-2 yuan in coins. Out of reach. “Man, if only I had ten yuan.” That was my wish. Simple, direct, pure.

Butterfly Seeker came out early this year, so naturally in the back half of the year they put out Butterfly Seeker: Chaos Nightmare, billed as its fan disc. Usually a game that sells well gets an FD, and sometimes a game that sells like shit gets one too — making a visual novel isn’t expensive, the worst that happens is the voice actors get tired, everything else is copy-paste. Why not squeeze some money out? Going by the other titles from this brand… (yes, I’m looking at you, Kage no Umi no Apeiria), the FD should just be a little slice-of-life sideshow with no real connection to the main plot, lower quality than the main story, maybe giving a route to a heroine who didn’t get one, maybe just shooting the shit. In short, a cash-grab riding on nostalgia. No reason to expect much. But Butterfly Seeker: Chaos Nightmare genuinely brings a lot of surprises.

Everybody has some contradictions in them… Some people love spicy food, but hate the fiery ring of death the next morning. Some people are scared of yokai, but can’t stop themselves from reading ghost stories anyway. Some people love games, yet spend every day watching someone else play on video and shouting “insane” along with the crowd. Some people love eroge, yet never actually play them—they just hang around 5ch and forums while other people argue about the plot, nodding along to things they don’t understand. Like me: I love mystery and exploration stories, but I absolutely hate detective novels…

Butterfly Seeker (バタフライシーカー) came out back in March, and I only just finished it recently. The main reason I didn’t want to touch it at first was the scenario writer: Nozomu Kaihara (海原望). Kaihara is, I believe, a Liar-soft person. I’ve played a few things he worked on. I wouldn’t call them bad — it’s just that they always leave me with this strong sense of discomfort. Not from the art or the setting, more from the way the script and dialogue are written. So when I saw his name on Butterfly Seeker, I immediately didn’t want anything to do with it. But I had literally nothing to play. I don’t like moege, I don’t like the stuff everyone else hypes to the heavens, and what I actually want is traditional mystery / puzzle-solving / story. Looking around, the only thing left from the first half of the year was Butterfly Seeker. So I played it. And since there was nothing else I wanted to play, I played it pretty seriously. After clearing everything, my impression was: actually pretty good. This might be the first Kaihara game I’ve been able to get through? Some people say Kaihara is a pen name of Meteo Hoshizora… but I’m not familiar with Meteo Hoshizora so whatever, lol.

Japanese works love to bring up “four-leaf clovers” all the time. Most of the time it’s the hero and heroine finding one in the grass—the kind that supposedly symbolizes “luck.” One use of that trope would’ve been plenty, but unfortunately it’s everywhere now, played out to death. It goes back to games like Clover Hearts in 2003, and from then until now the four-leaf clover legend just keeps multiplying. Sometimes I honestly wonder if Japan is covered in the damn things. Four-leaf clovers are supposed to mean luck because they’re rare, so why can the protagonist and heroine always, without fail, stumble onto one? I wrote a post complaining about this a long time ago too: if four-leaf clovers stand for luck, then what does the ordinary three-leaf clover stand for? Does that mean three-leaf clovers are unlucky compared to four-leaf ones? Of course, a three-leaf clover isn’t unlucky. But if you actually use three-leaf and four-leaf clovers as a metaphor for people, the happiness a four-leaf clover gets really isn’t something everyone has. For me, I read it as “the three-leaf clover stands for the ordinary and the mediocre.” Last year More launched a sub-brand, DOLCE, and put out its first game, “カサブランカの蕾” — that is, “The Buds of Casablanca.” I rated that one pretty highly, because it gave me a lot to chew on: its take on desire and true love is “realist,” and the ending, paired with an old song redone as something new, really shines. DOLCE put out a new one again this year. Given how More has a habit of spinning up brands for no real reason, this label’s whole deal seems to be cranking out the same type of game over and over. The new one’s called Shamrock no Hanakotoba — “the language of flowers, shamrock edition,” basically. My guess is it follows the same route as Casablanca no Tsubomi before it: grounded, leaning dark. At least that’s what I figured when I stumbled onto one of the promo CGs — a big ol’ 3P shot staring me in the face… Before I got into this game, I didn’t even know there was a word “Shamrock” that specifically means “clover” — I’d always thought it was just Clover. Naturally I also looked up the language of flowers for clover, and after reading up on it, I get why everyone says the four-leaf one stands for luck. The language of the shamrock: one leaf stands for prayer, one leaf stands for hope, one leaf stands for love, and the last leaf stands for happiness. If you can find a four-leaf clover, you will find happiness. And of course, if you didn’t find that fourth leaf… you have everything, except happiness. Yes, this game is the story of four girls who had everything except happiness.

A long time ago there was this game that blew up because the title was so ridiculous: Onii-chan, You Are Forbidden from Using Your Right Hand (お兄ちゃん 右手の使用を禁止します) It’s a pure siscon game. The protagonist has a name, but his presence is pathetically low. Several sisters orbit around him, and the OP is an absolute earworm. The game sold because it had a gimmick. That’s it.

《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o (見上げてごらん、夜空の星を)》— I’ve already forgotten what year it originally came out. Still, that game left a pretty strong impression on me. I remember it was winter, deep winter, around December. I was curled up under the covers and blasted through the game from the prologue to the OP in one sitting. Watching the protagonist finish building the telescope and do that first stargazing session together, with that hype OP playing — man, it hit me. The thing I remember most is the soundtrack and the staging. Most scenes are at night, mostly quiet music, all kinds of shot compositions arranged like a film. The main story is excellent too — it’s nominally about “astronomical observation,” but what it actually is is a love triangle, and the real heroine is Amanokawa Saya with her heterochromia. The game intercuts memories and the present, and lays it all out on a detailed timeline. You can tell they cared. But… when the main game of 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 was selling well, they put out a fandisc, and that one felt like it was missing something. First the timeline was gone. Then the cinematic music and staging were gone… and finally the stargazing was pretty much gone too. They call it a fandisc, but none of the strengths of the main game made it over. It’s just an ordinary vehicle for HCGs. Depressing. Fine, whatever, it’s an FD, you can’t ask for too much. But I never expected… that after all this time, 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o》 would get another FD. The full title is 《Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o Interstellar Focus》. The “Interstellar Focus” part sounds like it means “starlight focus,” but with a hint from Bob I finally saw it — the words are just there to spell out “IF.” IF meaning this game depicts “another story, what if.” And what’s the “if”… When faced with the love triangle between Hikari and Saya, the protagonist says…

Everyone knows game companies these days basically have no shame… The most obvious sign of that shamelessness is they never “wait until the game is finished” before putting it on sale. They get it to roughly-done and immediately start selling. As for the rest—sell the base game first, deal with everything else later. When it’s done, they bolt it on and call it “Downloadable Content,” i.e. what we call DLC. Some of that DLC you have to pay extra for. So you pay for a half-finished game, then keep paying for the extra content bolted on afterward. Only after you’ve coughed up several times does the content count as fully there and the game count as complete… Think about it and that’s pretty fucked, isn’t it. Fortunately this dumbass habit is mostly a Western publisher thing; Japanese companies still have some shame… probably. Why “probably”? Because Japanese companies have learned bad habits too. Make half a game, then put out an expansion pack—it’s become the new normal. Once the engine and framework are in place, adding a few stages is just opening the map editor… And that goes double for visual novels, sitting at the very bottom of the game food chain, which don’t even need a map editor! SMEE, a sub-brand of the real estate company HOOKSOFT, is exactly this kind of shameless entity. They love putting out Minifandisks—the really short kind of fandisk, where the content length barely qualifies as DLC. Oh, and it’s not just SMEE being shameless. HOOKSOFT has no shame either; their games get Minifandisks too. If you want to say Asa Project, the other HOOKSOFT sub-brand, is relatively honorable and doesn’t do Minifandisks, you’d be dead wrong—they’ll add new characters and sell a PSV version, charge more, make more money… shame all over the floor. Is the Japanese real estate business just not turning a profit anymore? Is that why HOOKSOFT is shamelessly grifting every which way? Anyway, this time SMEE put out DLC for last year’s well-received Making＊Lovers—the so-called Mini Fandisk Volume 1. The full title: “Making＊Lovers Geki-Icha After Story Volume.01 Ako, Karen, Saki” Holy shit that name is dumb as hell. They’re one step away from tacking on a Deluxe Package Complete Edition suffix once all the volumes are out.