This is an archived old post, originally written on 2011/07/12

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Old post, reposted for the archive. Written 2011/07/20

Preface

Uncle Zhao Benshan said it: do the math on a human life and you get thirty-six thousand days. In that time, gone like a white horse through a gap, what are we really chasing? That’s right — becoming a celebrity with an absolutely maxed-out presence! What’s the most expensive thing in the 21st century? Fame, obviously. Only fame can fill your life with sunshine; only fame can make your love life flourish; only fame can make you the topic of conversation on every street corner; only fame can keep you from being lonely during your wow sessions.

Jealous of Master Lu, who left the scene long ago and is still talked about? Jealous of Hana Sama’s exploding popularity? Jealous of the hordes of followers behind Jerusalem Snow? Jealous of the warm greetings in every yaoniming3000 thread? You look at your own no-name ID, you stare at the single-digit reply count on your thread, and you want to blow up in this little Reddit society? Well, that’s no longer a dream!

“Why do you dance? Because I love Michael!” “Why are you on Reddit? Because I want to get famous!”

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I only played this because my hands slipped. I found it in some eroge guy’s cloud drive, and the title was too pretty for me to look away, so I couldn’t stop myself and hands-slipped a download. Finding the unzip password took some effort too, and the real kicker was discovering after extraction that the thing had no CD crack, so I had to download a 3 GB+ original disc and mount it as a virtual drive just to run it. While everyone else was pushing Your Diary, I sat alone with my tablet playing this game, and after finishing it I had a lot of feelings, so I’ll just ramble. Spoilers ahead as always, look away if you don’t want them. (Though honestly I think the game spoils itself well enough.)

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Nobita Nobi is a loser in life and a hopeless student at school, but he’s close with his childhood friend Shizuka, and he gets along with the goofy Suneo who studies abroad and the teasing, sharp-tongued Gian who’s also good with a flying kick. Together they start a club at school dedicated to researching weird stuff. One day Nobita meets a naked cat-shaped robot who calls itself Doraemon and claims to come from the future to change Nobita’s miserable past. If things stay as they are, Shizuka, the girl Nobita loves, will be confessed to by Dekisugi in a few days and taken away, and Nobita will suffer a brutal NTR and grow up into a complete waste of a human being. To save himself, the future Nobita sent Doraemon back to help his past self reach the future where he can marry Shizuka.

But as time goes on, Nobita realizes he’s fallen in love with Doraemon, and Doraemon notices Nobita’s feelings too. Their love isn’t allowed, though, because Doraemon comes from Nobita’s miserable future, and once Nobita’s present is changed, Doraemon will disappear. Before Doraemon vanishes, an emotionally overwhelmed Nobita and Doraemon do all sorts of things together, try all sorts of positions, and Nobita teaches Doraemon what making love means. Even so, Doraemon completes its mission and disappears anyway. A lost and empty Nobita preserves Doraemon’s memories, and twenty years later, together with a grown-up Shizuka, Suneo, and Gian, he recreates Doraemon and imports the vanished Doraemon’s memories into the new one. When Doraemon wakes up carrying its precious bond with Nobita, Nobita proudly names the lover he created Doraemon, and the two live out a shamelessly happy life together.

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On the matter of a protagonist and heroine going outside, here’s how 3 visual novels do it:

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Recently I got stranded out of town — no internet, no supermarket, no Oriental Leaf tea, no grassy field, no stick-man, no bros. All I could do was thank myself for bringing the Win8 tablet along, so I started playing a visual novel: Himawari no Kyoukai to Nagai Natsuyasumi (向日葵の教会と長い夏休み). Three days, main route cleared. What can I say — some things in my chest got moved, and some things I really need to get off said or I’ll be uncomfortable.

《向日葵的教会与长长的暑假》 is about a summer—a summer break that belongs to the protagonist who’s come back to his hometown. Playing a game like this right now, in this season, feels pretty fitting. According to what the game’s writer said on Twitter, Yui and Hina’s routes are the main ones, so I went through those two first. Only after finishing did I realize the story is way more… complicated than the blurb makes it sound. Rather than “a story that happens during summer break,” it’s more like what the game’s OP says: “a story about change, and about things that don’t.”

To preserve what little dignity this blog has left — and to save myself the effort — no spoilers this time.

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DO NOT PLAY A GALGAME CALLED CHO SHOKU! Don’t play a visual novel called Asairo!

If you’re thinking about hunting down a fan-translated visual novel to play, here’s my advice: don’t. Don’t get all excited just because this one got translated, or because a few articles on some well-known VN site recommended it to hell and back. Whether you’re the story-focused type or the fap-focused type, take it from me — stay away from this game, before it ruins your life the way it ruined mine! For a whole month, every single time I opened it, I felt waves of nausea. The tangled mess of its plot gave me the feeling of having drunk raw sewage, whether I skipped or not — the kind of nausea you can’t throw up. Since I played it, visual novels stopped being a way to unwind and became a form of torture. For a long time I was tormented by this game like having my dick and balls tied into a bow, and yet I couldn’t stop playing it! Only after a week of grueling effort, after I finally cleared it, was the curse lifted from my body.

If you read all that and you still haven’t given up on wanting to know about this game — if you’re still here, shamelessly wearing a Santa hat and clinging to people like an idiot shouting “I’m just curious!” — then maybe consider carefully reading the details below about how this game ruined my life.

(Brutal spoilers below)

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![Selection_186.png][1] Meat-Stick and Yamanko-hou met on the single-log bridge. “I won’t let you pass!” Meat-Stick-kun struck a fighting pose, glaring at Yamanko-hou with open hostility. “Why must humans always fight?” Yamanko-hou shrugged. “If we just worked together, we could finish all of this.” “Because I hate you!” Meat-Stick-kun roared. “On a log bridge, it’s kill or be killed! Take this!” Meat-Stick-kun, flushed red with rage from head to toe, charged at Yamanko-hou. The nimble Yamanko-hou sidestepped, then reached back and caught Meat-Stick-kun in an embrace. “Wha—what are you doing?” Meat-Stick-kun couldn’t move. “Heh. You say you hate me with your mouth, but your body’s honest.” Yamanko-hou’s calm yet faintly provoking tone sounded right by Meat-Stick-kun’s ear. “Then… I’ll take it slow…” Meat-Stick-kun couldn’t resist—could only stay frozen and let Yamanko-hou do as they pleased. Yamanko-hou gently yet a little forcefully lifted Meat-Stick-kun, until Meat-Stick-kun had completely lost the will to resist. Deprived of the ground, spinning in the air. Meat-Stick-kun knew they had lost, closed their eyes, feet already off the ground, awaiting an unknown fate. Suddenly… Meat-Stick-kun touched down again. Impossible! Meat-Stick-kun opened their eyes and saw only that Yamanko-hou had swapped positions with them. “Why must humans always fight? When we could solve things so gently.” Yamanko-hou gave a wistful smile. That smile moved Meat-Stick-kun. …

“Hey, hey, teacher… does this count?” asked the classmate holding the scorebook, turning to the female judge-slash-teacher beside them. The judge just stared silently at the two embracing on the log bridge. “Hey, hey~ teacher, what’s wrong, teacher! Teacher, are you okay, teacher, why is your nose bleeding! Hey, call the school nurse! Somebody call the school nurse!”

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My reading history goes back to elementary school. When my dad was ordering magazines, he subscribed to one called Children’s Comics — probably the earliest Chinese magazine of its kind, and the channel through which some early Japanese manga got introduced to China, Doraemon among them. But the climate was different back then. It was a domestic magazine after all, and 90% of the content was Chinese comics — plenty of them drawn by elementary and middle schoolers themselves.

I was too young to understand any of it. I read comics just for the noise, and I had pretty gross taste: if a comic had shit-and-piss gags or other vulgar nonsense, I’d be delighted and drag my parents or friends over to look at it with me… thinking back on it, I was a terrible kid.

Apparently Children’s Comics is somehow still alive, though several of its old editors-in-chief are probably dead by now. Honestly I liked those old geezers’ art — the stories were a hundred times better than today’s domestic animation, and a lot of them came with their own snark, a sort of middle-aged-man teasing style that fit the times. One more thing worth mentioning: Children’s Comics seems to have planted a flag for me. I happened to find out one of the top students in my class read it too, and I used that as an excuse to talk to her a few times. And then… nothing ever came of it…

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The people of Japan love their premises, love their weird kinks — and no, I don’t mean porn, though there’s plenty of that too. It’s more about what shows up in ACG works. That wild imagination keeps handing you something fresh, satisfying everyone’s fantasies and all those “what if” hypotheticals.

Which is exactly it: the world is full of “what ifs,” and a lot of novel stories come straight out of them. What if the protagonist is the last man on earth… What if the protagonist is a guy who dies if he tells a lie… What if… the protagonist is a crossdresser who sneaks into an all-girls school… Ah. Now that’s a good one. And that’s the “what if” behind Me, You, and the Apple of Eden (你与我与伊甸园的苹果)…

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