Play enough galgames, step in enough pitfalls, eat enough shit, and looking back you start to notice a lot of interesting things. Most galgame fans got their start with fan-translated versions. First it’s anime and manga, then they hear some games have lewd stuff in them, so they go try those out. A few end up stumbling into plot-heavy galgames that way, but the majority just permanently equate galgame with porn. Even today, if you ask someone what a galgame is, probably 80% will say “Nekopara”… another 18% might say Steins;Gate, and only that remaining 2% might actually bring up Memories Off. Yes, I’m saying right here that Nekopara is trash. It’s a pure porn game with zero substance and nothing worth discussing, and personally I don’t even like the art style—can’t even jerk off to it, which is why I’ve played maybe 2 minutes total. What’s more depressing is how many newbies get drawn in by Nekopara and straight-up equate it with galgame as a whole. Makes me sigh just thinking about it. Sure, plenty of galgames have porn elements, but a galgame with nothing but H has no legs to stand on. If you want to understand galgames, you need some more interesting works to break you in. The Memories Off series is a solid entry point. It’s also the most honest, unpretentious example of what makes galgame its own genre—the music is fine, the story’s actually decent, not exactly massive waves but plenty of ups and downs, and it genuinely suits most people’s first exposure. If someone gets interested in galgames because of it and goes looking for “more games like that,” that’s when the problems start piling up.

A few days ago someone online was asking which eroge scenario writers people would recommend, and the usual crowd started rattling off the usual names. Urobuchi, Nasu, Maruto, and so on and so forth. Honestly, I’m not especially fond of any of those guys’ scenario work. Some of those names actively make me feel sick when I see them. And besides, a few of them aren’t even eroge writers anymore — plenty of them have moved into anime, where their skill level is, frankly, also trash. In my book they rank below even Mari Okada. Ah, no — the truth is Mari Okada is already a genuinely excellent anime screenwriter. I’ve always had one firm opinion about “screenwriters” and “scenario writers”: if you’re the person telling a story to other people, the first thing you need is to actually know how to tell a story. What does “know how to tell a story” mean? It means that whether or not the story itself is interesting, you should at least do everything in your power to make people able to sit through it — to keep listening, to keep watching. That skill is real. It’s the foundation. It’s the most fundamental thing there is. Unfortunately, a few of the scenario writers that so-called ACG fans hype to the skies simply can’t tell a story. They either wallow in boring lore dumps, or they’re too busy jerking themselves off, or… they only know how to tell one formulaic story. After consuming enough Japanese media, I started noticing something strange. A lot of Japanese works are always the same formula, and the creators themselves know it’s an old formula — but the audience just keeps eating it up. The eternal demon king and hero. The eternal prince and princess. The eternal Kamen Rider. The eternal ally of justice. The eternal childhood friend. The eternal bread-at-the-corner-on-the-way-to-school. The eternal transfer student. The eternal isekai. The eternal magical girl. The eternal idol. And the eternal cute boy. That’s already a decent pile of ingredients. I figure you could grab a few at random, combine them, and get at least a small innovation out of it. But no — Japanese audiences don’t buy it. They prefer formulaic plots. Even when the premise is genuinely novel, the execution stays the same, and eventually it always circles back to the formula, as if that’s the only way the audience can feel “safe.” It feels incredibly stuck in its ways. I don’t know if it’s tied to Japanese national character, but it’s like how Sony has great materials across multiple divisions and still can’t make a good phone. On the scenario level, I’ve never personally liked the “already made it” types. A lot of those successful guys’ follow-up works are complete shit, but because they’re famous, people still read them, and afterward the fans will over-interpret everything just to praise their favorite writer. Yes, I’m fucking talking about that idiot Maruto Fumiaki.