These days most galge are locked into a mold — standard school romance, over-the-top bloodbath, or the “playable” kind.

“Playable” means the game has some actual game to it, unlike a traditional visual novel. Maybe lots of choices, maybe combat, maybe investigation.

Right, investigation. The easiest thing to bolt onto an AVG is an investigation and deduction system. Throw together a Danganronpa-style investigation screen, then pile up a bunch of choices during the deduction phase — points for right answers, deductions for wrong ones. Compared to building an RPG with combat, this is as simple as it gets, and it’s the go-to for any studio trying to inject “gameplay” into an AVG.

So this month we got a game called Tantei Seven (タンテイセブン), which is just “Detective Seven” (I’ll call it Detective Seven from here on). The marketing pushed the “mystery detective” angle hard, and the promo art was so over-the-top cool that it instantly reminded us of a certain game called Persona 5. The OP is genuinely hype too — gives off a “there’s something big here” vibe. I happen to like this kind of setup, so I gave it a spin this month.

And after playing it, I was fully satisfied… (on multiple levels)

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Simply put, July wasn’t great for me. At least my mood wasn’t.

First off, I spent way too much money this month on a bunch of stuff, mostly accessories. On the other hand, I burned too much time messing with accessories and work, so I didn’t really have much time left over. I played three eroge and every single one was a landmine. I also lost my Mojo, and when I sold my GPD Win on eBay the buyer tried to haggle me down after receiving it, so I had to get into a fight with them while already in a bad mood. Oh, and no omiai this month either.

Well, not that there weren’t any—someone did introduce me to one. A doctor at a hospital. I added her, and holy shit, her Moments feed was straight-up blocked to me. I tried chatting with her that evening and got zero response. So I got bored and went to play Honor of Kings, and what do you know—the doctor was online…

She was playing ranked! Her skill was decent! And her rank was higher than mine!

The next morning she replied, cold as ice: “Sorry, I fell asleep last night, only saw it this morning.”

Asleep my ass. You were grinding ranked until at least past midnight, you were still online when I went to bed.

And because this doctor rarely replies—or rather, she just doesn’t reply at all, she just plays games all day, won’t let me see her Moments, and there’s nothing to strike up a conversation about—I just let it go.

Then the voice of a certain matchmaker who’s always introducing me to girls came through, saying a lot of them think I’m “immature.”

That’s when I lost it.

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Not mine — I was helping someone else unbox it. Since it was already open, I messed around with it a bit, so here are some quick impressions.

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I’m not really interested in Tongque’s earphones, but I do enjoy watching their founder pick fights with people on X (Twitter).

Honestly, the way he goes after people is pretty on point — some folks really are that dumb and deserve it.

I didn’t want to buy a Tongque earphone, though, because word was the sound was pretty mediocre. Then I saw the founder announce the new EN700 Pro in red and black, 12 months interest-free, and his line “if the sound’s bad, you can hit me.” So I bought one on impulse.

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The OnePlus 5 is an insanely good phone, but it has curved edges, so screen protectors are still a headache.

First off, the OnePlus 5 ships with a film already applied. From what I can tell, that film is probably the best protector you can get for this phone.

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I made Kung Pao Chicken once before, but I didn’t use the standard doubanjiang — the Pixian kind.

This time I used Pixian doubanjiang.

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Saw a guy on Reddit making popcorn chicken out of potato chips, so I gave it a shot too. And, well… it turned into a landmine dish.

First you need some potato chips. I grabbed the cheap ones on sale at the store, and they were all fuckin’ cucumber flavor.

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You can’t play games without a controller.

So I bought this…

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Buying this was kind of an afterthought, honestly—I’m not a Shoji diehard. I just have some inexplicable fondness for the characters he did in Yuzusoft games.

Mostly because the girls he draws split into two styles, “elegant” and “cute,” and he nails both. Neither has that gratuitous horny vibe. It’s all very fresh and clean.

And it wasn’t expensive, so I grabbed it alongside the CDs.

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Haruoto Alice＊Gram, also known as My Daily Life With the Black-Tights, White-Tights, and Blonde Big-Tittied Girls in the Mental Hospital, comes from the Japanese eroge company Nanawind. It assembles star artists Nanao Naru and Takanae Kyourin giving it their all. A luxurious voice cast: the 36-year-old Sendai auntie who can’t find work and begs eroge companies on Twitter to no avail voices a heroine, the nearly-30-still-unmarried Ishihara Mai gets picked as a side heroine, and Ozaki Mami — the professional seiyuu who landed one lead in Girls und Panzer and then never got another anime gig — does a typecast brain-dead foreign ojou-sama performance. After several delays and repeated script polishing, it finally launched with much fanfare this month, with PlayDRM standing guard, leaving countless otaku sighing at the mysterious 300 and unable to play. Two weeks after release, it hit fifth place on ErogameScape’s most controversial games of the month, right behind that bug-ridden mess Tantei Seven.

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