AMUSE CRAFT seems like a pretty based company — at least they’ve got several pretty goated game brands under their belt, and a few pretty goated artists willing to work with them, plus they can pull in a lot of famous industry names, Shinjima Yū included. Oh right, this company also loves to open new brand aliases for no reason. Weren’t both of Shinjima Yū’s works released under new aliases that got thrown away after one use? So this time they’ve opened another new alias called CRYSTALiA, and very pretentiously announced that the codename for this new game is: Katana, which means “sword” in Japanese. So the full name of this game codenamed “Katana” is this painfully cringe “Kizuna Kirameku Koi Iroha.” I don’t even know how to translate it into Chinese properly — something like “shining bonds sprouting love,” I guess.

A while back I was mulling something over: Which visual novel actually delivers a romance experience closest to the real thing? If I’m forced to answer, the first thing that pops into my head is a game from a company called SMEE. Yeah, SMEE and HOOKSOFT are basically the same outfit. They bill themselves as focusing on “romance by stages” — the whole hero-meets-heroine, gets to know her, falls for her, and then, uh, conspires with her… wait, no, marries her kind of flow. That’s what they say on the tin, but the games themselves don’t always look that way. How to put it — a lot of SMEE games feel like gag routines strung together through everyday life. Early on, Fureraba Friend to Lover wasn’t that blatant about it. But later stuff like Pure×Connect and Step Kanojo started leaning harder into comedy, using exaggerated presentation to sell the heroines’ quirks and the protagonist’s snark. Sometimes the protagonist himself turns into a total creep just so you have something to roast. SMEE’s comedy path keeps veering further off course, though. Last game, that “country love” one, was basically a joke collection — the heroines had no personality, the art was unsettling, and I had a genuinely painful time playing it. Listening to Honda-san’s country ojou-sama rattle off scatological jokes one after another, plus bits about a bunch of people observing sperm… I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The confession at the end was cookie-cutter and half-hearted, and it wrapped up out of nowhere. Personally, I prefer the style of early SMEE like Fureraba. There the conversations center on “getting to know the girl,” most choices are about communicating with her, and many of the women feel close to real romance — especially Mochizuki Rina and the vegetable-selling senpai Sawatari Misaki. That’s why I say SMEE’s games are closer to real love. And now SMEE is back with a new title: Making＊Lovers. Still about the player searching for a partner, still that witty, chatty style. They even put out a super simple preview version first — a few minutes of dialogue per heroine, nothing you could really judge. A trial version came later, but I couldn’t be bothered since the game was about to launch. After finishing the retail version, I have to say this is probably SMEE’s second-best game in recent years, after Fureraba.

Qie Ting Qin Yu (且听琴语), also known as Pure Hearts in the Catfight Music Scene (juan), tells the story of an artsy but uncultured vagrant of unclear sexuality who successfully infiltrates a music school in a seaside city — a city that has Chinese chengguan and American gay bars, yet everyone speaks Japanese, so who the hell knows which country it’s in; probably some no-name island in the middle of the East China Sea. There he proceeds to chase girls and act unhinged.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A few days ago I saw someone on Reddit (r/visualnovels) recommending this game. It’s a visual novel on Steam called Doki Doki Literature Club!. Of course, when it was recommended I noticed the tag: Psychological Horror. I could sort of guess what that meant. This game, made by non-Japanese gaijin imitating a Japanese-style visual novel, looks all harmonious and beautiful on the Steam page, but inside it’s probably a scam. There might be some “depressing” elements in there. “Depressing” — how depressing can you get? The heroine suddenly dies, suddenly loses her head, suddenly goes yandere, suddenly chops you up. That’s about the limit. At most it’s blood splattering all over the screen. What haven’t I seen? So curiosity made me download this free game and click “Start.” After a thrilling adventure, I repeatedly confirmed that the game had really, truly “End"ed, and only then did my heart settle back down. I let out a long sigh… Let me shamelessly brag for a moment. As a forever-alone otaku who’s been single since 2013, who’s too old to find a partner and keeps failing at arranged dates, I’ve played nearly several hundred visual novels over these four years and written over a hundred impression posts. For a while I was playing visual novels almost indiscriminately. Among them were plenty with crazy plot twists and horror content, but I was immune to almost all of them. Even that Sakura no Mori † Dreamers with evil spirits all over the screen, Honoakari no Toki no Hate Yori with blood-spraying zombies everywhere, the sudden hanging in Midori no Umi, the dismembered limbs in Hakoniwa Logic — all small stuff. Games like Clockup’s are even more whatever. I just smirk, completely unfazed. Out of all the games I’ve played, only two actually scared me. One was the sudden decapitated-head CG that pops up in 3days. The other… is this game. Doki Doki Literature Club!. There’s only one reason it scared me: it was sudden, way too sudden, no preparation whatsoever. Looking back after finishing it, I can say clearly: overall, Doki Doki Literature Club! is not a romance sim. It’s more like a horror game. Yeah, don’t be fooled by all the promotional material or the people in the comments saying how interesting it is. This really is a horror game. At the start it repeatedly emphasizes: if you have a weak mental constitution, don’t play; if you’re a kid, don’t play; if you’re a scaredy-cat, don’t play. That sentence is serious, not a joke! I know a lot of young folks can’t handle even a little “cruelty” in a visual novel. I’ve seen people get spooked by the music in Hatsuyuki Sakura, people devastated because the little sister dies in Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai, people who can’t take how tragic the mermaid princess is in Suisou Ginka no Istoria, and people who want to mail razor blades to Niijima Yuu because the heroine in a story-within-a-story doesn’t get a happy ending in Majo Koi Nikki. For those people, stay the hell away from this game. It is not a romance game. It’s a horror game, a horror metagame in the same style as Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

Honestly? I’m a fan of Nanaroba Hana. Yeah, she’s got some black marks in her history, but I’m still a fan. I’ve always felt that when a female artist draws girls, there’s a kind of charm that male artists just can’t replicate—a sort of “cuteness” that only a girl can understand. So Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro. was naturally on my radar. It got delayed a bunch of times, a trial version came out, I played it, and I felt… weird about it. How should I put this—Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro. is put out by QUINCE SOFT, a subsidiary of Lump of Sugar. Quince is a fruit, a very peculiar one with a complicated “don’t just bite into it” nature. The reason the sub-brand is called QUINCE SOFT is probably that Lump of Sugar wanted to spin off that whole line of “somewhat playable, complex games” into its own label. What do I mean by “somewhat playable, complex games”? I mean stuff like Unmei Senjou no Phi, Magical Charming, Rensou Relation. Games that aren’t just simple branches but have a ton of complex choices. Honestly, I like these kinds of games. But for Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro., it’s a bit too complex.