Back in the kitchen after a long break. Today’s project: fish-fragrant puffy omelet.
The proper high-end version comes out fluffy and legit impressive.
But the pantry’s limited… so a stripped-down version first. Eggs are the main event, fish-fragrant sauce is the supporting act.
Let’s take them separately. Eggs first:
Some eroge studios, to make their games’ themes clear, put together projects tied to the seasons.
But sometimes those projects get a little ambitious, and they do a “four seasons series”… meaning four games, each set in a different season, each telling a different story.
Wake up. Put away that kitchen knife and those razor blades you were about to mail to Japan—they didn’t even make it through customs. I’m not talking about Shinji Nii, I’m not talking about Natsuyume Nagisa, and I’m not talking about Hatsuyuki Sakura. I’m talking about the “Season Kana ABB” series put together by Watanabe Ryoichi and Kio Nachi.
At the end of last year, JD had the Phicomm K2 router on special — coupons stacked, so the lowest price came out to 359 yuan.
But don’t forget, the cashback was still calculated on the 399 yuan sticker price. Broke and unable to afford gas, I spotted a way to make money and placed the order.
For a lot of people whose entire knowledge of Japan stops at the Second Sino-Japanese War and at the level of Aoi Sora and Matsushima Kaede, the impression they have of the country is basically this: “perverted,” “off-the-wall,” “all kinds of fetishes,” “twisted,” and so on and so forth.
It’s not hard to see why. At least in mainland China, the Japanese social news you come across is nothing but some foot fetishist sipping a Coke while licking a stranger’s feet for 30 minutes, some ear-cleaning massage parlor, all sorts of weird services, those utterly pointless but deeply disgusting otaku fleshlight things, people who eat a girl’s shit, people who drink her holy water, and on and on…
By any reasonable standard Japan should be a country with very strict moral restraints, but that’s exactly why people cut loose harder when they do…
Then again, is anywhere else any less twisted? I flipped through mainland social news and there’s no shortage of twisted stories. I know a girl I went to middle school with — she posted on social media that she ran into a purebred “foot fetishist” on the streets of Zhengzhou, who politely asked to photograph her feet specifically… and to kiss them… and she said yes.
Hard to say whether that’s real “twisted” or “perverted,” but my point is that these people who clash so hard with social norms exist everywhere in the world. Japan just likes to drag them out under the spotlight.
“Otaku” and “ACG” culture have seemed stuck in the swamp of “pornography” from the very start. Most of the content is about sex, even though most of the people consuming it have never had any… so the impression they give others isn’t great either. Which is why when a classmate introduced me to someone, they’d add helpfully, “Don’t worry about him, he’s a 2D person, he’s not interested in you.” and I’d sit there dying inside.
Thanks to the bigger imagination that ACG culture spawned, Japan has a fun hobby: “moe-fication” and “girl-ification.” Can’t find a girl? Just turn the stuff around you into girls. Trains become girls — when you ride the train, it’s like you’ve entered the girl’s body. Pens become girls — when you grip the pen, it’s like you’re stroking the girl’s slender fingers… Cola becomes a girl — when you squeeze the bottle, it’s like you’re caressing black tights. Pocari Sweat becomes a girl — when you… okay, never mind.
So whether it’s Anime, Comic, or Game (though the term ACG probably wasn’t coined by the Japanese — they say マンガ, not Comic), there’s always a game where some object gets turned into a girl and becomes the protagonist. Especially in visual novels. I’ve seen an alpaca turned into a girl, a whale turned into a girl, a robot turned into a girl, a camcorder turned into a girl, a train turned into a girl, a cursed sword turned into a girl, not to mention all the non-human ghosts and gods… and animals and whatever else. So at this point, if you told me there’s a game where a girl is a smartphone turned human, I wouldn’t even be surprised.
Honestly, it feels less like surprise and more like “well, obviously.” I stroke my phone for half an hour every day. Was I subconsciously treating it as a girl all along?
A few days ago I saw this thing on sale on SMZDM.
So I bought it, and I dragged along Ginio, who holds 99% of the global ass-selling market monopoly, to buy one too.
Didn’t expect it to arrive so fast—it landed on the last day of 2016, and three mice plus a CD somehow dodged customs. Probably used up all my luck for 2016.
So I played a shitload of Japanese adult games again this year, but compared to last year there’s actually some progress.
Last year I think I played 80. This year I counted… 77.
See, fewer than last year. That proves I’m one step closer to becoming a normie, right??
I was already suspicious of Hatsukoi Sankai-me from the moment I saw the promo material. The title literally means “third-time first love.”
First love is supposed to emphasize the first, right? Once you’re past the first time, the second one can’t be called a first love anymore. So how the hell do you get three of them?
I wasn’t interested in the game to begin with. The promo looked whatever, the lead heroine was voiced by Sendai-baasan, and I didn’t recognize anyone else in the cast. The only reason I wanted to play it was the little sister voiced by Uehara Aoi…
And no, I’m not a siscon. I need to make that clear.
What I didn’t expect was that after playing it, it actually exceeded my expectations. Hell, it might be the first game this year I’ve seen that “gets its story completely straightened out.” At the very least it’s at the level of a good title, right?
The only real mystery for me was why the protagonist’s romance is called a “third first love.” Honestly, I went in expecting the game to give me a proper explanation.
I do have a soft spot for LASS — probably obvious from how much I shit on it.
11eyes was probably the first game I ever really grinded through back in the day. Honestly, a great experience. The part where 劫の眼 kicks in at the end still gets me hyped, and the protagonist’s cheat abilities are pretty damn sick — it blows away all the gloom from earlier and just feels good. Also, the 1v1 between Kusakabe-senpai and Kusakabe Misao — wait, I mean the Kusa… anyway, that was written really well. At least, I’d put it up there with the best battle writing I’ve played.
And so, as you probably know, LASS fell straight into a slump after 11eyes. They put out Shoujo Shin’iki, which was way too far up its own ass, then came Mayoi no Futari, which was pretty badly written, and after that they started cranking out short nukige this year — one about getting married, one about ninja training… I figured the company was doomed, and then out of nowhere they announced Liber_7.
Liber_7 was originally supposed to come out as a follow-up to the 11eyes series, but Shoujo Shin’iki bombed so hard that LASS ran out of money, so it got delayed, and delayed, and delayed again — and only now have they finally squeezed this thing out.
The president of LASS (I think that’s who he is): the freshly married fatass Kenji Mana said, “Liber_7 shares the same worldview as 11eyes and 3days, and it will surpass them.”
Of course nobody’s buying that bragging, right? Given what LASS can actually do these days, just telling one story properly would already be an achievement…
And so Liber_7 got delayed, delayed, and delayed again. All of which was exactly what I expected, so it finally came out on the last game release day of 2016.
Honestly, by the time I got to it I wasn’t really expecting this thing to surpass 11eyes anymore — I’d already played the trial version, and some of it was pretty cringe.
So after playing the full release… it just felt even more awkward.
Scribes is an editor, though it seems to have been dead for a long time.
It’s billed as an editor, but I mostly use it to write drafts. Mainly because it looks nice, the font can be made huge, it autosaves, and it just looks impressive, so I use it.
After installing Ubuntu 16.04, this thing vanished from the repos.
A lot of things in life come out of nowhere. You can’t sort them out by sheer personal effort — mostly it comes down to the course of history.
Plenty of things happen out of the blue. Say you’re a shut-in otaku, and suddenly someone tells you they’ve got a new match lined up for you.