Kamigami no Kuni no Mahoutsukai (神の国の魔法使い) Another China-Japan co-produced visual novel, another Nekoneko Soft, another Kataoka Tomo. Nothing about its existence surprised me. Honestly, I half-wondered if Kataoka Tomo and his company had run out of ways to survive in Japan and now had to lean on Chinese money to keep making games. The premise didn’t grab me at all — a Chinese brother and sister go sightseeing in Japan, get swept up in some incident or other. At one point I was convinced this was basically Toshimaen Winter Scenery Mark II. And the weirdest part: the first release wasn’t even the full game. The story got pushed out in episodes. I still can’t understand that decision, and I think it’s one of the reasons the game flopped. Anyway, after half a year of stop-and-start updates the story was finally complete, and reading it straight through, it’s not as low as I expected. Plenty of it is actually pretty creative, and it overturned my fixed impression of Kataoka Tomo as a scenario writer who likes to whine for no reason.