For something like visual novels, I’ve seen plenty of people claim they’re all about the story and don’t care about the art style. Yet 99% of the time, their avatars in ACG circles are still cute girls. This isn’t surprising, really — everyone appreciates a pretty face. And for something like visual novels, which in the mouths of Sendai aunties sits not far from Adult Video, judging by looks is about as normal as it gets. In other words, for a visual novel trying to boost sales and expand its reach, the first thing you need is good-looking characters. It’s rare to see a game with ugly-as-hell character art still sell like hotcakes — maybe Gakuen Handsome (学園ハンサム) counts as the exception? So if a game’s characters aren’t drawn well, you can basically declare it dead on arrival. Unless the character has some long history and a massive fanbase behind her—but even then, you’re only fooling the diehard fans, and only a fraction of them at that. You won’t reach the “silent majority” of users, and what good is that? Definitely not gonna work. So the first time I laid eyes on Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常), I was dead sure this thing had to be trash.

Tsukikage no Simulacre was last year’s supposedly “free” “visual light novel”—and oddly enough, it’s rare for Japanese developers to label their own work that way. They usually just call it an eroge. And just like that “free” game said at the end, it only told an incomplete story. There were a ton of loose ends, and the devs themselves said the free version wasn’t the point—the real deal was the project coming after it. So what was that project? Well, look, the January eroge release schedule has a new entry called Tsukikage no Simulacre -Kaihou no Hane-, doesn’t it? Right—that free version was literally just a “trial edition.” A demo, basically. The final version is this game. Honestly, when you think about it, they just released a demo early, then put out the full game later. Dressing it up as “first we give you the free part, then the follow-up project” is the same old playbook.

Majo Koi Nikki (魔女こいにっき) left a hell of an impression on me last year, for two reasons: the story itself, and the way it’s told. The structure is pretty intricate. First, there’s a timeline spanning hundreds of years inside the game. Then there’s a story-within-a-story setup—and the kicker is that the whole centuries-long timeline is itself a story inside a story. In reality, all those tales are just phantoms. The ending made me want to curse someone out. The protagonist goes through hell to achieve a genuinely moving HAPPY END, and then the TRUE END drops a few lines telling you it was all fake, all just a story, and the real protagonist is trapped forever in the witch’s curse with no escape. A lot of people promptly turned on the scenario writer Shinima Yuu, calling him a bastard who’s out to screw players over again, blah blah blah… Then, not long after the game’s release, a PSV port was announced: Majo Koi Nikki Dragon×Caravan. Along with the port came news of two new scenarios—one upgrading a heroine to a romanceable route, and a new chapter called “The Passionate Prince and the Little Dragon” (灼熱の王子と小さな竜). I didn’t pay much attention at first, because for most PSV ports the extra content is irrelevant cash-grab filler. Upgrading a heroine? Seen it a million times—they just cobble together some story to force a route. So I ignored it. Until I saw a Japanese player’s review on ErogameScape that changed my mind. This person said the new PSV chapter wasn’t just random fluff—it was a completion of the original story. The Passionate Prince and the Black Dragon chapter apparently depicts what happens after the original ending, reaching the true conclusion. That was both expected and surprising. Expected, because Majo Koi Nikki’s story clearly wasn’t finished—the protagonist was still trapped in the diary, so of course there had to be more. Surprising, because they actually finished the story in the PSV version. So I started figuring out how to get my hands on it. First I waited for a crack, but unlike the PSV version of Shepherd’s Library, nobody dumped it. So I had to camp out on Surugaya for a used copy. Eventually I snagged one in good condition for a relatively cheap price. Not bad. Back home, I dug out my long-neglected PSV, inserted the game card, hit the power button, and the game started again.

I watched the Spring Festival Gala over Chinese New Year. Actually I’ve always watched it. I don’t know if it’s genuinely getting worse every year, but from where I’m sitting it’s definitely gotten less interesting — I can’t remember a damn thing from it anyway. A few days later I went back and watched a couple of the performances on YouTube, and they seemed… fine? At least there was something to them. And today I’ve already forgotten those too. Why? Setting aside the political bits and the self-congratulatory propaganda, some of the song-and-dance numbers, skits, and crosstalk are decent enough. While you’re watching you might catch a joke and think “oh, that’s clever,” or “that’s pretty funny.” Then it ends, and there’s nothing “gripping” about it, and you forget the whole thing. Basically: not terrible, not great, no real highlights, and not much heart in it either. You watch it, you laugh, you forget it. Some games are like that too. Like this one — Kimi no Hitomi ni Hit Me (キミの瞳にヒットミー).

A crowdfunding product I stupidly backed last year. The JD crowdfunding page probably has a fairly detailed writeup. And as I said a while back, the company had no real intention of crowdfunding — they were just using it as a presale. Plenty of KOLs had already reviewed the thing before the campaign even finished. The box was actually pretty decent when it arrived.

I’ve bought plenty of cheap earphones — the Edifier H293P, the Amazon Fire Phone stock earbuds, the QianShui 39, the QianShui 25 — and they all broke. Yeah, all of them. Some cracked, some snapped, some got mysteriously eaten away by liquid. Not sturdy at all. My main use for them is leaving a pair by the bed plugged into my tablet. I don’t listen to music, I just game with them, so you could call them sleep earphones. But these things just don’t hold up. The only two that survived any abuse were Apple’s EarPods and the Xiaomi Hybrid. That said, the EarPods sound kind of muddy and don’t seal that well, so the ones I actually used most were the Xiaomi Hybrids. Right, the original Hybrid that sold for 99 yuan. My verdict back then was it’s not as bad as people say — it’s at least a proper hybrid driver, and the sound is passable for games. Then my dad asked me for a phone — he had a Redmi Note 4 — so I ended up giving him the Hybrids. But out with the old, in with the new. I happened to see Xiaomi had released a Pro version, so I just bought it. That was back in November last year.

Waiting, waiting, and at last Spring Festival arrived — and with it, the long-awaited release of the Astraea no Shiroki Towa FD! Astraea no Shiroki Towa was probably one of the first untranslated games I ever played, and it left a hell of an impression on me. Three things stood out above all: The music! The effects! And Nitta Emi! Then Yoshizumi Hina retired, which left any follow-up to Astraea no Shiroki Towa stuck in limbo forever. But FAVORITE isn’t about to pass up a chance to milk a sequel, so pretty soon we got an FD for Astraea no Shiroki Towa with a recast VA — namely Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume-.

Sometimes I think about this: so many scenario writers in Japan do original drafts for anime and games — are they just mass-producing the same thing over and over? …………I mean, whatever a given writer puts out, doesn’t it always follow one pattern no matter how you look at it? Code Geass, Guilty Crown, Valvrave, and the latest one — what was it called? Kabaneri? I’m not saying Ichiro Okouchi is bad; the man won a best screenplay award, didn’t he? I’m talking about visual novels — whether some writers end up reusing the same套路 across multiple games. I noticed this pretty early on. For example, the Shiiba route in Yuzusoft’s Sanoba Witch overlaps heavily with the Riru route in Kujira Kami no Tiastila, which came out not long after. I don’t know if that’s Tota’s doing or just coincidence. But a “competent scenario” shouldn’t have the problem of “can’t adapt, only ever writes one path” — otherwise you’re just showing how tapped out you are. But man… for Hoshi Koi * Twinkle… I don’t even know what to say anymore…

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.

Honestly, I never paid much attention to Kure Ichiro before. It was last year’s Sakuranomori†Dreamers that got me interested in him. So in under a year, Kure put out another game: Kuraki Toki no Hate Yori (From the End of the Dark Hours), and judging by the promo art, it’s another horror route. For someone who loves ghost stories, that’s a thrill. And last time Kure started strong and fizzled out, but it was still passable in the end — he had to have learned something this time, right? So I started playing. Playing a horror game in the middle of New Year’s atmosphere — I gotta say, I felt pretty badass. Finished it. How do I put this… If Sakuranomori†Dreamers was a strong start with a weak finish, this one is… the late-game developments are just too explosive.