Why I bought it: I’ve always used a Surface Pro 4 as my “secondary machine.” The reason is simple: I need Windows, especially for playing Galgame. Unfortunately my Surface Pro 4 later went to my wife, so I no longer had a Windows machine. I started thinking about getting a new one, and that’s when I saw the Chuwi Minibook project on Indiegogo. I was hooked instantly. I compared it against other similar products, including the GPD Pocket 2 MAX and the One-Netbook, and each had its merits, but the Chuwi Minibook had these highlights: Supports Yoga-style tablet flipping Front camera quality better than the GPD Pocket 2 MAX User-replaceable/expandable NVMe SSD The Chuwi Minibook has the biggest keyboard buttons (typing is no problem) Internals are closer to a real laptop, with metal shielding — less of the knockoff feel than GPD and the like Cheap, cheap, cheap! The One-Netbook with the same specs as the Chuwi Minibook costs more, GPD isn’t cheaper than Chuwi, and it doesn’t support Yoga mode either Keyboard backlight, which GPD doesn’t have Pressure-sensitive stylus support, which GPD doesn’t have I figured the Chuwi was the most well-rounded overall and fit my needs well, so I joined the crowdfunding campaign and picked the 16GB RAM / 8100Y version. The campaign ended in August, with a few free spec upgrades along the way, plus a stylus and an EVA hard shell case thrown in. It didn’t arrive until October, though. As everyone knows, Chuwi is a Shenzhen shanzhai factory, so I didn’t have to wait for an international package like the other foreigners on Indiegogo. Mine came by SF Express. But that was only the start of a whole saga.

A package from overseas showed up a few days ago. I was confused — what did I even buy? I haven’t ordered anything from outside Japan recently. Opened it up and it clicked. It was the Dbrand Grip I backed on crowdfunding half a year ago, finally here.

The GPD Pocket is the follow-up to the GPD win. There were a few things I wasn’t happy about with the GPD Win: The screen was awful. After finishing Baldr Heart on it I felt like I was going blind. Bad cooling, which is why so many people modded theirs. I didn’t want to bother. Cheap build. All plastic, and the construction was just passable — usable, nothing more. The keyboard was useless. That thing was on the level of calculator buttons… worse than a Wenquxing electronic dictionary. So I backed the GPD Pocket crowdfunding campaign… and once it arrived, plenty of surprises.

Corona Blossom Vol. 3 finally came out, which means the game that got unceremoniously chopped into three parts has, after Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, finally reached its ending. Looking back, the content distribution across the three volumes is actually pretty regular: Vol. 1 is Arne coming to Earth, Vol. 2 is the villain showing up, and the last volume is the final showdown (probably). Vol. 1 is the protagonist meeting a chunk of metal that falls from the sky. The metal is from outer space, turns into a little loli when it hits him, and he names her Arne (R-Ne). Then a bunch of self-proclaimed space pirates show up, saying Arne is their catch and demanding he hand her over. Vol. 2 is the protagonist befriending the space pirates and discovering they’re not actually that bad. The pirates gradually give up on Arne and become friends with him, and then at the very end the protagonist’s sister suddenly flips, announcing she’s a scientist and that this alien Arne would make great research material. The villain in Vol. 3 is that same sister, Kanade, who wants to ship the alien Arne off to the lab. She tells the protagonist that with Arne’s alien power, humanity could overcome all sorts of incurable diseases—sacrifice one alien loli and you save all of mankind—and asks him to join her. He refuses, and then it’s teaming up with the space pirates to hold off Kanade while building a rocket, choosing to send Arne back to her homeworld. The ending is Arne going home, and the protagonist getting married and having kids in that little town, occasionally recalling the summer he met Arne.

Not long after Corona Blossom wrapped up, Vol.2 got announced. Not really a surprise — the series was billed as three volumes from the start. The funny part is that Corona Blossom launched in Japan a month after Steam, meaning Steam got it first. Same for Vol.2: a galgame with a Japanese release slated for November, and it hits Steam ahead of schedule. Gotta hand it to them. Vol.1 didn’t score well on ErogameScape. Most of the complaints were that the story doesn’t go anywhere, the slice-of-life is boring, splitting it into volumes is shameless, etc. And honestly? Fair. These days if your eroge doesn’t have a shrine maiden with a deep grudge, or an idol restoring a fallen nation, or a cursed katana you can bang, or a train module you can bang, who the hell cares? Standard developments are played out. A lump of metal falls from the sky, goes duang, and turns into a cat-eared girl — light novels were doing that ten years ago. All tropes, bruh.