Not gonna lie, my X account and 茉宮祈芹 mutually follow each other. I think I followed her back when she wasn’t that well known, sent her a greeting message, and got a reply. Occasionally she’ll like some lewd art I retweet, and I’ve written a paid piece hyping her up too. I used to think the stuff she draws was too explicit, but then I figured, as a freelance illustrator, drawing it a bit more H for sales is pretty understandable. When I reviewed Ninja Girl and the Mysterious Army of Urban Legend Monsters! Hunt of the Headless Horseman, I said that 茉宮祈芹 is an illustrator who can raise the quality of an entire visual novel single-handedly. One reason is that her drawing and coloring style leans toward flat, digital-game visuals, which means the character art in any visual novel she works on stays consistent — no awkward art shift from a different colorist stepping in. No matter which other artists she’s paired with, her characters always stand out. And even when she isn’t drawing characters with heavy exposure, she still nails the heroine’s cuteness. So here’s a new game: FLIP＊FLOP 〜INNOCENCE OVERCLOCK〜, put out by a DMM Game shadow brand, with 茉宮祈芹 on art, Houmori Kei on planning and scenario, and Kitakoji Yuki voicing the lead heroine. With a lineup like that, there’s no reason not to give it a shot.

LAMUNATION! came out last year. I honestly didn’t know much about it — watched the OP, looked flashy, music was solid, skimmed the premise and it seemed to be some fictional world. But the setting never explains itself, there’s no visible main plot, so I just dropped it. Plenty of people were actually optimistic about this one, aside from some guy called “Azirayt” — the other being Miss Wang. But Chinese people liking it doesn’t mean shit. The game’s reputation rides on what the Japanese think. So how did the Japanese rate LAMUNATION!? According to Chuuni Space’s scores… 45 points. Basically a landmine. So I’d always assumed it was a landmine too. I’ve seen this type too many times — big budget, stacked staff, flashy OP, massive marketing, and then the scenario writer goes full late-stage psychosis and nobody can follow the story, so the game becomes a landmine. Examples everywhere. But recently, for a certain reason, I got interested in LAMUNATION! again. I think it might not actually be a “landmine.” It’s just that people don’t understand it for a certain reason. That’s a bit of a stretch. Normally, no matter how badly a game’s story is written, no matter how dogshit the author’s storytelling is, if you’re willing to meet the author halfway, you’ll usually find the story is “not bad.” But with LAMUNATION!’s writer, it might be a different situation. Ah… how do I put this? Cultural incompatibility? Something like that. Which means we have to go back to an earlier work by LAMUNATION!’s writer, Kepposhi…