“Tomodachi ijou, koibito miman” — more than friends, less than lovers — is a pretty common phrase in Japanese, and a handy way of describing a vague sort of romantic relationship. Most people know what it means: the two of you are past being friends but haven’t quite reached lovers yet.

And of course, once you do reach “lovers,” there’s the same kind of transitional gap before you become an actual married couple, so you’d figure “more than lovers, less than married” ought to exist too.

Which is why SMEE went and used that exact name for their recent fandisc: “Sugar*Style: Koibito Ijou, Fuufu Miman.”

It fits what the fandisc actually is, honestly — most of it is afterstory, so naturally it’s all stuff that happens after they’ve become a couple.

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A while back I wanted to buy some Switch games, but Taobao was too expensive, so I figured I’d check Amazon Japan. Turns out Amazon Japan is even more expensive.

Then I remembered Surugaya.

I’d bought stuff from Surugaya before, but the site was a pain to use, the text was tiny, and shipping took forever…

This time I opened it and the site is still just as unusable, still just as dumb, but it seems they added a site for overseas users. Much cleaner, and hey, it even supports Chinese!

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Generally speaking, putting a tempered glass protector on a laptop is a dumb idea, unless your laptop is a tablet 2-in-1 or has a touchscreen.

After all, the laptop screen doesn’t really come into contact with anything, and closing the lid protects it too, so why would you ever need a protector? Even if it gets dirty, just wipe it off, right?

Well, lately I’ve come to feel that was naive of me.

After more than a year of using mine, I personally strongly recommend putting a tempered glass protector on your laptop, especially if it’s a ThinkPad X1C series.

Don’t laugh, I’m serious.

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Haven’t messed with audiophile mysticism in a while, but lately I got forced into buying some of that stuff again.

First up, a screen protector and case for the Walkman ZX300a. The original set was scratched to hell. The first film I ever put on was the expensive official one — I said it back then, the screen on this stupid ZX300a is “matte,” so protecting it is a pain. Stick on a normal clear film and you get that frosted look, unless you use the official soft film…

So that soft film has been in service for years, about two now? Took a look recently and it was all gouged up, so I decided to swap it.

As for the case, I’ve wanted to replace that thing forever. Not sturdy at all. This time I’m going for something beefier.

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As the Japanese visual novel industry keeps sliding downhill, more and more people have set their sights on Steam, looking to break into overseas markets. The first to take the plunge was probably WillPlus, with If My Heart Had Wings, but that game caught a ton of criticism, because to satisfy Steam’s review requirements and appeal to Western players, it got heavily cut and altered—lots of the porn was removed, and the story itself even ended up different from the original. That move got a ton of pushback and criticism from weeaboos; some people even made “restore the original” patches to make the game look less “sanitized.”

Oh, right—maybe some of you don’t know what a weeaboo is. According to the internet: “Weeaboo is a mostly derogatory slang term for a Western person who is obsessed with Japanese culture.” In Chinese it’s even simpler: weeaboo = the otaku of the Western races.

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その昔、深野市には、外つ国から来た魔法使いが住んでいたという もちろん、それを本気にするものは少ない。 けど、もし旅人がこの地を訪れたなら、きっと平地にはない異郷の香りを嗅ぐことだろう。 ここは、かつてヒトとヒトならざる者が共に暮らしたと伝わる幽玄の地。 四方を山に囲まれ、独自の自然観をはぐくんできた深野の町には どこか、そんなこともあるかもしれないと信じたくなる霊気が漂っている。

They say that long, long ago, a witch from a foreign land lived in Fukano City. Of course, hardly anyone takes that rumor seriously. But any traveler who visits will surely catch a whiff of something foreign, different from the usual. This is a legendary place of mystery, where humans and all sorts of non-human beings live together. In this small town of Fukano, surrounded by mountains on all sides and nurturing its own unique natural scenery, a faint spiritual presence drifts about, and there exist things that may or may not be there—yet you can’t help but believe in them…

This passage isn’t something I wrote — it’s from the game Tamayura Mirai (タマユラミライ). If you’ve played it, the words will be burned into your memory, because the game repeats them at least 20 times. If you haven’t played it and plan to, then once you’re done you’ll probably be able to recite it from memory just like I can…

Before I get into Tamanura Mirai (タマユラミライ), let’s talk about something else first — something game-related, of course. I know none of you want to read those intros that have nothing to do with the game, so I’ll skip them.

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No idea how many years ago, there was a novel-based anime called Humanity Has Declined (人類は衰退しました). The premise: humanity has declined for unknown reasons, the world is overrun by “fairies,” and the female protagonist, a human, observes and interacts with them. Your standard anecdotal setup.

I never read the original, so I can only talk about the anime, and honestly the anime was pretty good. After watching it I was left with three impressions: fun, sci-fi, and what-the-hell-did-I-just-watch. That last one sticks with you the most. You always get the sense the show is “hinting” at or “allegorizing” something, but you can never find the exact parallel, so it’s hard to pin down the author’s stance or viewpoint, what the story is trying to say, blah blah blah. But that’s exactly the appeal of Humanity Has Declined—if it stated its position too clearly, it’d feel like force-feeding you opinions, and it’d be harder to provoke thought. That half-hidden, “still holding the pipa behind the curtain” feeling is just right.

And what’s worth noting: the author of Humanity Has Declined is Tanaka Romeo.

This was the first and only time I’d encountered his work. I had no interest in what he wrote afterward and didn’t follow him much. Then a while back, a game called Waka-sama no Zasu Sekai (和香様の座する世界) came out, and I saw that familiar name in the script credits again: Tanaka Romeo.

And it reminded me of Humanity Has Declined.

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I mentioned before that the third-party module pulseaudio-modules-bt, written by a Chinese developer, can already give Linux APT-X and LDAC support. You can also get the relevant features by updating through the PPA, but that PPA has been a bit overdue lately. The module itself has actually gained a lot of new features since then, including automatic codec selection and the like.

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A few days ago while aimlessly browsing the web, I came across this article:

The highest-sound-quality earphones in history, now only 20 yuan

At the time it felt pretty badass, and also pretty bullshit, so I figured—I may not be as rich as Old Wu the Second, but 20 yuan is something I can grit my teeth and fork over, so I decided to test for myself whether it’s really that magical.

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From what I can dig up, the earliest visual novel goes back to 1982 — roughly 30-odd years of history at this point. Over that long haul, under the core premise of “attract male players with cute girls,” the art and styles have changed again and again, and the elements have piled up, but one thing has never changed: the big-breasted character always shows up. You could say that for today’s eroge, “no CV? Fine. No OP? Fine. No systems? Fine. But no big breasts? Unthinkable.” Big breasts have become the last-resort trump card for plenty of visual novel makers on the verge of going under, as if whipping out the big-breast element alone will bring them back from the dead.

So what exactly is the appeal of big breasts? Why must a visual novel have a big-breasted character? Today let’s grab a recently released game and spend 7-plus-7 minutes figuring out why.

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