Last October in Beijing, when Fengniu Jushi Zhu Niubi treated me to guanchang at the Dongsi Minfang restaurant, he asked me a question: “Your blog’s pretty badass these days, huh?” “Badass my ass. There’s exactly one badass thing about my blog.” “Where?” “Open Google, search for the keyword ‘妹ぱらだいす2’, and see who’s first.” “Search for what? Ichimoto… what?” “It’s Japanese!” So I guided Zhu Niubi through searching “妹ぱらだいす2”, and after seeing the first result, even Zhu Niubi couldn’t help but marvel: “Badass, badass, badass. Truly badass.” “Right? That’s the one badass thing about my blog, though I don’t know how to explain it.”

Clockup is a company that often puts out “very serious” games, even though most of the time that’s not the impression it gives. Because Clockup’s breakout work was euphoria, and I think you can figure out what kind of thing that game is if you look it up yourself. Ever since then, most of the games Clockup has released give off an impression of being “unvarnished.” By “unvarnished” I don’t just mean the “directness” and “brutality” of the game content, but more the way they embody the characteristics of “18+” games. What is “18+” anyway? It’s adult content, right? And what is adult content? It’s not just pornography, it’s also violence. So these two elements get splashed around to the fullest in a lot of Clockup’s games. Clockup has made a lot of nukige that express a lot of “erotic” intent, and at the same time it’s also made a lot of “story-driven” games that tell some very interesting stories. Of course, these stories don’t just have “eroticism”—they also have explicit “violence.” Even more absurdly, Clockup has also put out some baffling comedy nukige with a style completely different from its usual dark style. But all these wildly different games come from the same company brand, rather than doing what other companies do and spinning off a sub-brand to keep things categorized. It always feels so haphazard, which is exactly why I said at the start that Clockup always leaves you with some weird impression. That said, you can’t deny that Clockup still puts out a good game with real depth every now and then. Not just the early Natsu no Kusari, which had a bit of an art-film vibe—Maggot baits from a few years ago was also memorable. It depicts a story of hope being born once again in an utterly hopeless world, yet the game is still packed with very hardcore erotic and violent elements. Those elements aren’t gratuitous; they highlight the game’s themes very well. The game never seems to compromise for the sake of avoiding “extreme” elements—whatever CG is needed, it shows. No beautification at all. Sometimes I feel there’s even a touch of “aesthetics of violence” in there. Another game that reminds me of this style is DOOM. A lot of people have opposed violence. They’re all dead. So the original team behind Maggot Baits got back together at Clockup and brought us Nenurenu Hitsuji to Kodoku na Ookami, still with a slightly dark style, which naturally made me look forward to it.

Every SAGA PLANETS game follows the same formula: individual routes scatter the pieces of the main story, then a GRAND END ties all the threads together and walks you to the true ending. They’ve done this in several of their titles, from Hatsuyuki Sakura to Kisaragi GOLD STAR to Hanasaki Work Spring! and Floral Flowlove. Roughly: the character routes screw around, maybe drop a hint about the main plot at the very end, and only after you’ve cleared every route does the game unlock the entrance to the real story, the TRUE END. Honestly the structure isn’t bad. It’s kind of interesting, it builds suspense. But it doesn’t fit every kind of story, and SAGA PLANETS has tripped over this formula more than once, or at least failed to deliver the payoff it deserves. Those games tend to be slice-of-life stuff with a weak main plot, where it feels like “we made a main plot because we need a main plot.” In other words, the route lock is completely unnecessary. It’s a moe game. You don’t need to force-hide a main story and a so-called “truth” behind it. When you finally see it you don’t go “oh, mind blown” — you go “that’s it?” Reverse effect. In recent years SAGA PLANETS’ choice of premises has gotten less and less interesting. Last year’s Floral Flowlove was themed around “ojousama,” young ladies, which made it look like ENSEMBLE had possessed the company (and of course, in the end the story had nothing to do with ojousama). And when this year’s game was announced I felt the same way: it’s called Kin’iro Loveriche, and the theme is “blonde hair.” Every heroine is blonde. At first glance it looks like it exists to satisfy some specific fetish. I personally don’t like blondes, and I haven’t noticed many people who do (silver hair, I’ve seen people into that). Blond-haired men are never any good either. The whole thing felt kind of nonsensical to me — but based on my prior experience with SAGA PLANETS, this “blonde” had to be a decoy, and there’d be a GRAND END at the end, 99% unrelated to gold hair. After finishing the game, I figure I was half right and half wrong.

Lao Wu, 30 years old, is a total loser. Lao Wu is a high school classmate of mine. His defining trait: horny as hell, but too chicken to do anything about it. In my limited memory of him, what stands out most is him in class flipping through a porn magazine so worn out it was falling apart, gleefully reminiscing about his sexual exploits. Bragging about having a sex life in high school—that’s a hell of a flex. Absolutely goated. High school in China and high school in a Japanese visual novel are two different worlds. Most people don’t even have a girlfriend. Sex? Out of reach. Back then I looked up to Lao Wu, but thinking about it now, I was just too naive. Because the way Lao Wu acted in high school was nothing like someone who was getting laid. How should I put it—aside from flipping through his dirty books, one of his favorite hobbies was lying on the balcony railing checking out girls. A girl transferred into the class next door. Long black hair, liked to dress up, a bit aloof and cold. And this was high school—daring to wear that plaid skirt uniform style, showing off pale thighs and zettai ryouiki. She was ahead of her time. Anyone who saw her couldn’t help but get a little hard just to show their appreciation, right? Ever since Lao Wu spotted that girl from the next class, he thought about her every day, muttered about her constantly, like she was already his girl.

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.

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.