As a half-loyal ThinkPad fan, my love for the TrackPoint is second only to my love for Ms. Atsumi Tanezaki. So whether it’s on the X230 or the X250, the TrackPoint has become my go-to input method—sometimes even with a Bluetooth mouse connected, I’ll end up using it for a while and then toss the mouse aside and go back to the TrackPoint.

Anyway, what I want to say is that my X230 has been in use for nearly two years now, and its TrackPoint is already battered, no longer bright, seems a bit shiny/smooth, so I thought I’d find a new one to swap in. I know Taobao has them… but I didn’t know there were actually three kinds of TrackPoint:

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Looking at the intro or whatever for Izayoi no Fortuna, you won’t find any standout points. But successful people always tell us: if there’s no highlight, you should go find one yourself…

For example, in the game’s planning credits, we see a familiar name: Satoshi Yaginuma

Who the hell is that? Right, he’s the guy from fripSide—the one who plays piano while shaking his ass in MVs and lives, always looking like he’s desperately holding in a piss.

Times really have changed. Music people are getting into visual novel planning now. According to a detailed exposé on visual novel production I saw on Douban, the planner determines the basic story and outline, and the scriptwriter has to follow that outline when writing the script.

So the story of this game was conceived by Satoshi Yaginuma… Curious to see what kind of plot a music guy could come up with, I played it…

Though I forgot to check if he was in the planning for those fripSide MVs…

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They say spring is when everything comes back to life—and also the season for romance.

In this season of revival, I shed the filth and dirt I’d accumulated over winter, crawled out of my hole, rubbed my eyes that had been in darkness for ages, and steadied myself, hoping to see the outside world clearly again. At the very least, in this season of spring breezes, I ought to follow the trend and do what I’m supposed to do.

The sunlight above was blinding, the wind hitting my face carried the breath of life. Once my vision stabilized, I saw the source of the huge radiance—besides the sun in the sky, there was another glittering golden thing on the ground. It was a book. On its clean cover were just two lines: a large title, SPPL, and below it a subtitle: alice the magical conductor. Nothing else.

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fortissimo EXS//Akkord:nächsten Phase is a visual novel developed by la’cryma…

I’ve played la’cryma’s early games! I even own a legit copy! I’m talking about this one!

But then this company called la’cryma apparently took something, because they suddenly cranked out a game oozing with so much chuuni energy it was bursting at the seams, and they’ve been milking that same game for years.

I looked it up and this company has ties to Circus… figures they’d inherit the fine tradition…

First there was the all-ages fortissimo//Akkord:Bsusvier Then came fortissimoEXA//Akkord:Bsusvier with two extra routes and a final boss fight Then fortissimo EXS//Akkord:nächsten Phase, which added 18+ content on top of the previous version And recently there’s the PSV version Kadenz fermata//Akkord：fortissimo, which adds artificial science-magic lore and what might be new story content

One big pit after another. I’ve said before that I’m the type who gets suckered in by game OPs. If an OP looks good to me, it’s like love at first sight with a girl. So when I saw fortissimo’s absolutely killer OP, I jumped right into this pit.

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Two problems, roughly:

1. Multi-monitor output when docked
2. TrackPoint and middle-button scrolling

I wrote up some quick fixes last time, but these are better.

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This game is a pain in the ass…

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A sea breeze blows. This is a remote little island.

Mr. Iori arrives alone, and meets a girl.

“Sir, this isn’t the sort of place ordinary people come to. So tell me… what brings you here?”

Mr. Iori flashes the long sword in his hand. It’s still in its sheath, but it gives off a chill anyway.

“Could you be… a swordsman, sir?”

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What is a nukige?

Simply put, nuki = fap, and a nukige is a thing whose entire existence is there to make you fap. If other story-driven 18X galge at least keep up the flimsy pretense of “you’re playing it for the plot,” a nukige exists to stimulate your little buddy directly, crudely, and without ceremony.

Sei ○ Jo ~ ○ ○ Ikusei Gakuen ~ is exactly that kind of nukige. As the title suggests, the whole goal is to drag the girls at school down into becoming RBQs.

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Mashiroiro Symphony’s tagline was: what color are boys? What color are girls? And when a boy and a girl fall in love, what color is love? Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki’s tagline: a girl who can’t fall in love, a boy who has no interest in it — if those two fell in love, what would happen to the world?

Right, so Palette + Tsubasu Izumi-sensei teaming up again, and the title intro still goes for that high-minded, slightly green, pure yearning-for-love vibe. That’s what I figured going in — Koi ga Saku Koro Sakura Doki is just a simple… school… protagonist slowly conquers heroines thing, a little sweeter than usual maybe, kind of like Asari Ai and Uryuu Sakuno’s routes. Worst case, what, you drag it out like Inui Sana’s route?

Yeah, no, it’s nothing like that.

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The infamous deal-hunting site SMZDM has a handful of legendary earphone picks: the Creative IE3, the Creative Air, the Creative Live2, the AKG Q450, and whatever else I’ve forgotten. Basically, every time a JD.com audio coupon rolls around, these get trotted out for recommendation again, to the point where everyone and their dog owns a pair. It’s practically a recurring segment.

As for how these actually sound, not many people bother to seriously say. From my own impressions, I can only say some of them don’t suit the masses — the Creative IE3 being the classic example. Its sound is way too treble-heavy, the bass is just sad, and plenty of folks who buy it hoping to bump some boom-boom-thump are gonna be disappointed. The other Creative product, the Air, got tagged with the “female vocal poison” label. Oh great, female vocal poison again. After last time with the Phonak I figured there was nothing left to poison me, but people keep making the same mistakes — this time I got another 400-minus-100 coupon and my hand slipped and I bought the Creative Air, since the IE3 had already been taken away by someone else to listen to.

Gotta give JD.com a shoutout here — they deliver even during Spring Festival, and efficiently too, though the delivery guy told me right after dropping this off that if I ordered again today it’d have to wait until after the holiday.

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