Why did I even buy this thing… probably because I had such a good time with my last-gen Pixel Buds. I was actually pretty happy with the Pixel Buds, except the fit was beyond words. That dangling cord was just stupid. I mostly wore them running, and that damn cord kept swinging around, teaching me what “occlusion effect” really means. Now the Google Pixel Buds 2 finally exist, and the stupid cord is gone. But this thing Google built to pair with Pixel phones and fight Apple’s AirPods is still as unreliable as ever: No AptX support Only white at launch Various problems and complaints shortly after release But Google products are American-made after all, and plenty of American tech media started hyping it from day one, the same way they hype the Pixel line. If it’s Google, it can’t be too bad. And after the hype, they go home and keep using their iPhones…

Back when I first became an otaku, I had this weird sense of superiority. I don’t know where it came from, but I just felt one step above everyone else. It was like 2D culture was the ultimate goal of life, and all those people around me who didn’t get it were just aimless walking corpses. In a world of black and white, only 2D culture made me colorful. So I boldly changed my profile picture to a moe girl, set my desktop wallpaper to a big-breasted girl, and wore the strange looks from others like a badge. The whispered gossip behind my back actually made me prouder. “Anyone who loves 2D culture is a friend.” At the time I thought I was insanely cool, like the one sober person in a room full of drunks.

The “caged bird” that got delayed for over a year Cabbit, a brand under Skyfish, is a company I find genuinely interesting. They’ve put out a whole series of “mystery-flavored” games — starting with Midori no Umi, then Sora no Hana, then Hakoniwa Logic, and so on. The premises are always fun, dripping with suspense from the very first scene, and they usually land on a decent ending. But Cabbit’s real signature isn’t the “mystery” — it’s the way they serve up the fear lurking behind it with zero restraint. Their earlier games had bloody scenes, heroines getting broken in every sense, and combined with the fog-of-war plotting, it always hit hard. My guess is that the man behind Cabbit is Mikuri Mikuri (御厨みくり). He’s not officially attached to the brand, but he’s been involved in every single one of their games, often as “planner.” I don’t really know his style — he’s worked with bigger companies too, and nothing about those credits stands out — but compared to what Cabbit was doing before, you can at least infer the guy has some chops. So after nearly two years of silence, Cabbit announced a new title last year: Kagi wo Kakushita Kago no Tori (鍵を隠したカゴのトリ), set for release on August 30, 2019. And then, surprise — this damn game got delayed for a whole year. Various reasons along the way. At first it was probably just not finished, then at the end of the year COVID hit, and there were rumors the producer was hospitalized. Anyway: push after push, delay after delay… Aug 30, 2019 ⇒ Oct 25 ⇒ Dec 20 ⇒ Feb 28, 2020 ⇒ Apr 24 ⇒ Jun 26 ⇒ Aug 28 Finally, a year later on September 25, 2020, the game actually came out!

Pulltop probably got paid off by some local government somewhere, because they’ve started pumping out a whole series of “tourism promo” games. The story is light, sweet, and most importantly, all-ages… Last year they had Sora to Umi ga, Fureau Kanata, and this year they went and made a sequel called Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai. As expected, it shares the same world, the same staff, and even the same characters. Before release, this game had zero presence. I just remember Pulltop putting out a statement one day saying something like “Due to the pandemic, Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai has been delayed.” Everyone was dumbfounded when they saw that. Not because of the delay itself, but because of something else: Since when was Pulltop releasing this game? We didn’t even know it existed! And when they announced the delay, the game didn’t even have a proper website yet. Later on, the scenario writer plugged it while doing promo for ATRI, otherwise literally nobody would’ve cared. Anyway, the game did come out. The previous title’s “Ogasawara Islands diving” story was actually pretty good, so how does this new one hold up?

2020 was a rough year for the whole world. COVID hit a lot of industries hard, and that includes the Japanese visual novel business. I say “even” because visual novels theoretically shouldn’t be affected by the pandemic. Selling software, collaborating online, selling through online stores, and the customer base is all otaku who can’t be bothered to go outside—by all rights, the industry should’ve been totally fine. Unfortunately, the actual visual novel market doesn’t work that way. Because visual novels live and die by first-week sales, and first-week sales don’t depend on game quality at all—they depend entirely on the bonus merch driving purchases. And bonuses are tied to specific retail stores, which means, surprise, you’re back to physical storefronts. It’s 2020 and software sales still rely on brick-and-mortar. Only in Japan, I swear. Saga Planets, though, doesn’t seem worried about money. Their previous title Kinkoi was a huge success and clearly raked in a mountain of cash. Rumor has it Saga Planets split from Visual Arts (Key’s parent company) and went independent. They’re really flying high now. My guess is they’ve gone back to the “money is no object” phase. Remember what happened last time Saga Planets had money to burn? Yeah, you know where this is going. Last time it was Karumaruka. This time, probably because Kinkoi did so well, they made Kakenuke★Seishun Sparking!

Originally I wanted to write something poking fun at the straight-guy Twitter guy, Awen, but then I figured he’s already pitiful enough and I shouldn’t pile on, so I deleted that and went back to the original format. That said, this game is incredibly practical. I don’t mean that kind of practical. I mean the “teaches you how to fall in love” kind. HOOKSOFT and SMEE have always been solid at this, but unfortunately most otaku just use their games as joke-dispensers for rom-com sketches. Genuinely a shame. In recent years HOOKSOFT and SMEE seem to have pulled off a weird identity swap: the former started doing SMEE’s “love simulation” thing, while the latter leaned into fantasy settings. Most people don’t care, since both brands come from the same daddy and their art styles are converging at a frankly alarming rate anyway. Nobody cares about brand purity — honestly they could merge into one label someday. This time HOOKSOFT’s offering is Houkago Cinderella (放課後シンデレラ) — literally “After School Cinderella” — built on the premise of “romance through chance encounters depending on which route you pick on the way home after school.”

Years ago, back when I was still hanging around online, I met this so-called “big shot” who completely overturned a lot of my views on the world. It was the first time I’d ever met someone that impressive on the internet. At least, he claimed he was impressive. The “big shot” said he was living in Canada, young and successful, just taking classes now and then, occasionally doing some work for Microsoft, with access to the latest Windows Vista beta builds. He also had the money to mess around with all kinds of new “UMPCs.” At the time I thought this guy was absolutely amazing—being in the same group chat as him felt like a real honor. But then I started to find it a bit odd. If he was really such a “big name,” why did his Discord name still have all that “Martian language” and scene-kid vocabulary? And if he was such a huge deal, why was he online basically 24/7? So one night, while we were private messaging, the “big shot” said he wanted to show me something “nice.” He sent a video. I clicked on it and saw a huge white guy violating two very small people. Looking closer, those “small people” seemed to be kids—a little girl and a little boy. That video made me extremely uncomfortable, but the “big shot” was still asking me if I “Want Some More.”

Girls Book Maker announced a series of cash-grab DLCs half a year after the base game shipped. Cash-grab, sure, but honestly this is standard practice by now. We’ve seen too much of this over the years. This DLC is called ガールズ・ブック・メイカー ～グリムと三人のお姫さま～, which translates to Girls Book Maker: Grimm and the Three Princesses, so naturally it’s about the world-famous Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Since Grimm’s Fairy Tales is itself an anthology, you can’t really sum it up with one character, so they just carved out the princesses and split them into three volumes sold separately. Sound familiar? Yeah, classic milking scheme. The three princesses are Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.

The game this time is called God Sisters.

A female teacher I know once said something: “In a romance it looks like the man is chasing the woman, but the initiative is always on the woman’s side. All she has to do is pick from a menu of things the man does.” I think her version is incomplete, though. There’s a precondition: the woman has to be good-looking. If you look like Shonan’s walking dick, no man is coming over to hand you a menu. You can also read that line the other way. In a normal man-chases-woman romance, it looks like the guy grinds it out with persistence and wins his goddess, but really the woman was just giving him chances, one after another. Think about it. If she genuinely has zero interest in you, she won’t give you a single chance to make contact, and she won’t listen to a word you say. You think you’re conquering her. Really you’re just being allowed to conquer her.