Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语) is a game that Steam’s front page recommended to me while I was in a mood, telling me it was only 6 yuan.

Not that I haven’t seen my share of 6-yuan Chinese-made visual novels. I just never had much interest, because with a lot of them you can tell the route they’re taking at a glance, or you can tell they’re ripping off some Japanese game. I personally have high hopes for Chinese visual novels. It’s just that most of them fundamentally struggle to give off the impression that “we’re seriously making this,” and instead seem to be thinking of nothing more than making a quick buck, stirring up some buzz, and cashing in big. That’s all.

So Qie Ting Qin Yu still felt a bit fresh to me. First, the art style was decent. Second, the setting and the CVs. Never mind the art—the CVs really surprised me. A Chinese-made game, yet almost all the characters are Japanese by setting, and the CVs are genuine Japanese people too. A lot of people probably find it weird for Chinese developers to make a game with a Japanese setting and hire Japanese voice actors. I personally don’t. Look at Japan—they’ve had Germans and French people speaking Japanese for years, and I haven’t seen anyone in Europe protesting, right? Everyone’s still shouting “banzai” at Nordic big-breasted armored knights. Besides, Chinese-made games with a Japanese flavor have actually been pretty good these past few years; some have even been exported back to Japan. Haven’t you seen how many Japanese otaku have learned to say “thanks, eggplant” while yelling “shoot it”? So as long as the game is good, I think either a Japanese or Chinese setting is acceptable.

Plus the art looked decent, the CVs were bound to be better than the cringe-inducing domestic chatter level, and the music seemed to have Japanese outside help too. Even if the scenario was only at the level of a Guo Jingming, I figured it’d still be the peak of Chinese-made stuff…

Of course, after playing the game, I felt… I was still too naive.

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Both my phone cases kicked the bucket recently, so skins are the stopgap.

For the OnePlus 5 the obvious pick was dBrand. Buy one and they throw in a second, on the theory that you’ll need it after you fuck up the first application…

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Previously I was using Linksys repeaters, the RE7000 and the RE4000. Then the RE4000 died, and the RE7000 wasn’t performing well either, so I figured it was time to swap them out.

Well, the RE4000 didn’t exactly die — it just had a buzzing/electrical noise coming from inside. And apparently only I could hear it; everyone else said they couldn’t hear a thing…

So to stop hearing that godawful buzzing, I had no choice but to go buy something.

Budget was tight, so I went on eBay for some e-waste and picked up Netgear’s EX6200 and EX7000.

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Back when I ordered takeout at noon, I always got chicken cutlet rice. But the meat never felt like enough, and it wasn’t even good meat. The cucumber inside was limp and soggy too. Worst of all was the sauce — literally a蜻蜓点水 dab, absolutely no flavor at all.

Then the scummy vendors, to save money on meat, would drizzle a little sauce over the rice so it tastes like something when you eat it. I posted a photo of my takeout on Twitter and got roasted hard. Everyone said it was garbage meat, garbage veggies, that cheap stuff is cooked in gutter oil, no question it’s junk food…

I know it’s junk food, but it’s cheap, and more importantly…

I actually think it tastes great!

So to avoid eating garbage, looks like I’ll have to make a bowl myself. Not just make it myself — I’ll also make up for the takeout’s shortchanged portions and customize the flavor to my own taste.

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Parasol has put out another new game. Honestly I don’t expect much from Parasol anymore — their games have lost any real identity or selling point. The last one with actual buzz was Hare nochi Kitto Nanohana Biyori, a.k.a. “Haru na Hana.” That game had serious problems with its narrative logic; calling it a landmine isn’t unfair. After that Parasol felt like it never recovered. Everything since has been a minor throwaway title, made half-heartedly, with painfully generic premises and nothing that stands out. Take last time’s “swimming club” thing, or that one from the start of the year, “My Everyday Romance With My Girlfriend” or whatever — they just slap together a school setting, add a harem with every girl type imaginable, you pick whoever you want, fuck her once, and it’s over.

How do I put this… it doesn’t feel like romance. It feels like hiring a prostitute.

So this time Parasol is back with Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou (桜ひとひら恋もよう). No idea how to translate the title well. A single cherry petal has the shape of love? Sakura Hitohira Koi Moyou? Whatever, you get the idea. But the premise of this new one didn’t interest me at first glance either… except I noticed there’s a nine-year-old loli elementary schooler in the game, and you can’t even get on her route.

The setup is that the protagonist is going to school as usual when suddenly the school is going to be merged into another one, due to enrollment rates or bad management or whatever. He refuses to accept it and leads a bunch of classmates in protest. That’s the story.

Japan’s declining birthrate is getting worse, so school mergers are a dime a dozen. This premise is just taking the old “a girls’ school gets merged in” setup and flipping it to “we refuse the merger, and it’s not a girls’ school.” What’s the difference? Same soup, different bowl…

That’s what I thought at first. Then I found out the game has a lot more going on inside.

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I rate Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart very highly. Even the anime adaptation.

I’ve never doubted scenario writer Hato’s sense of pacing, and I’ve always thought Hato was pretty smart—especially what they pulled off with the anime, getting maximum effect out of a minimal budget.

So before long, Nora to Oujo to Noraneko Heart 2 arrived. Same team, same flavor, and by all appearances it could stand on the shoulders of the first game and recapture its glory. No need for any wild new developments—just replicate the formula of the first one and it should be a safe bet!

But was it a safe bet? I don’t think so.

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I know the manufacturer Songri (Matsunichi) — back in school I was really into Pocket PCs, and there was a company with that name at the time, they made Pocket PCs. The specs were nothing special but the price was cheap, so it stuck with me.

I never actually bought anything from them in the end. Years later, the next time I hear the name, it’s these pack-in earbuds.

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Honestly, the visual novel market this year has been pretty boring. From the start of the year up to now, every time I see the new releases for the month, my face just does the slow head-shake. At first I figured it was just me — played too many, tastes burned out — but then I looked again and nope, that wasn’t it. The content of these games has been getting more and more… bland. Actually, “bland” is generous. Let’s go with “boring.”

A lot of studios went with romance stories that aren’t really plot-driven, and most of those revolve around making desserts. If they’re written well, that kind of thing works fine as a sitcom. Other titles started experimenting with the game systems themselves.

What do I mean by “the game systems”? Basically, on top of being an “audiobook,” they started probing how “playable” the thing could be. So we got a bunch of games that look interesting. But what actually fits the AVG format best is “deduction” and question-and-answer “detective” games.

Early in the year there was Ouka Tameshi. That game is genuinely hard, and the story has plenty of twists and turns. It’s just that I’m not a big fan of pre-Meiji Restoration Japan — the setting and culture — so I had a bit of resistance to it.

Then another similar title got announced: original art by Yukie, producer 中澤工, from a new studio called miti. They billed it as something like “Ace Attorney”: Hoshifuru Yoru no Farnese.

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I was using the FiiO X7 along with the Sony Walkman A35, but juggling two devices was a hassle, and the Sony WM1A was out of my budget. Then the ZX300 came along at a middle price point, with the China model being the ZX300A. I put in a pre-order, and after attending Sony’s listening event I felt it was acceptable, so I didn’t cancel. It finally arrived a while back, and I’ve been listening for two weeks now—mostly satisfied.

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I’ve made mousse twice now, and honestly the first two weren’t exactly a success. This time I finally got the one I’m happiest with.

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