その昔、深野市には、外つ国から来た魔法使いが住んでいたという もちろん、それを本気にするものは少ない。 けど、もし旅人がこの地を訪れたなら、きっと平地にはない異郷の香りを嗅ぐことだろう。 ここは、かつてヒトとヒトならざる者が共に暮らしたと伝わる幽玄の地。 四方を山に囲まれ、独自の自然観をはぐくんできた深野の町には どこか、そんなこともあるかもしれないと信じたくなる霊気が漂っている。 They say that long, long ago, a witch from a foreign land lived in Fukano City. Of course, hardly anyone takes that rumor seriously. But any traveler who visits will surely catch a whiff of something foreign, different from the usual. This is a legendary place of mystery, where humans and all sorts of non-human beings live together. In this small town of Fukano, surrounded by mountains on all sides and nurturing its own unique natural scenery, a faint spiritual presence drifts about, and there exist things that may or may not be there—yet you can’t help but believe in them… This passage isn’t something I wrote — it’s from the game Tamayura Mirai (タマユラミライ). If you’ve played it, the words will be burned into your memory, because the game repeats them at least 20 times. If you haven’t played it and plan to, then once you’re done you’ll probably be able to recite it from memory just like I can… Before I get into Tamanura Mirai (タマユラミライ), let’s talk about something else first — something game-related, of course. I know none of you want to read those intros that have nothing to do with the game, so I’ll skip them.

No idea how many years ago, there was a novel-based anime called Humanity Has Declined (人類は衰退しました). The premise: humanity has declined for unknown reasons, the world is overrun by “fairies,” and the female protagonist, a human, observes and interacts with them. Your standard anecdotal setup. I never read the original, so I can only talk about the anime, and honestly the anime was pretty good. After watching it I was left with three impressions: fun, sci-fi, and what-the-hell-did-I-just-watch. That last one sticks with you the most. You always get the sense the show is “hinting” at or “allegorizing” something, but you can never find the exact parallel, so it’s hard to pin down the author’s stance or viewpoint, what the story is trying to say, blah blah blah. But that’s exactly the appeal of Humanity Has Declined—if it stated its position too clearly, it’d feel like force-feeding you opinions, and it’d be harder to provoke thought. That half-hidden, “still holding the pipa behind the curtain” feeling is just right. And what’s worth noting: the author of Humanity Has Declined is Tanaka Romeo. This was the first and only time I’d encountered his work. I had no interest in what he wrote afterward and didn’t follow him much. Then a while back, a game called Waka-sama no Zasu Sekai (和香様の座する世界) came out, and I saw that familiar name in the script credits again: Tanaka Romeo. And it reminded me of Humanity Has Declined.

From what I can dig up, the earliest visual novel goes back to 1982 — roughly 30-odd years of history at this point. Over that long haul, under the core premise of “attract male players with cute girls,” the art and styles have changed again and again, and the elements have piled up, but one thing has never changed: the big-breasted character always shows up. You could say that for today’s eroge, “no CV? Fine. No OP? Fine. No systems? Fine. But no big breasts? Unthinkable.” Big breasts have become the last-resort trump card for plenty of visual novel makers on the verge of going under, as if whipping out the big-breast element alone will bring them back from the dead. So what exactly is the appeal of big breasts? Why must a visual novel have a big-breasted character? Today let’s grab a recently released game and spend 7-plus-7 minutes figuring out why.

One When I was little, I knew some friends. All kinds of friends. Since we were young, we inevitably talked about the future, and we’d talk about what kind of dreams we had. Apart from listing various vague professions, I noticed none of us had anything particularly “positive” to say about our dreams. How should I put it—a lot of our dreams were things like “endless money, endless snacks,” really simple, low-tier ideas, plus that kingly aura of “rule the world, rule the universe.” One buddy of mine told me back then: my dream is to “destroy the Earth.” When I asked why, he said: “I just wanna see what happens when the Earth blows up.” Sure, different people have different dreams, but I can confirm not one person’s dream was “to protect world peace.” Everyone wanted to be the hegemon—the one who destroys world peace. When I grew up and saw “man’s nature is good at birth,” I always felt it was self-deception.

I really don’t get what Palette is doing. Why did they have to chop the 9-nine series into pieces like this? And not just chop it up—release the pieces so damn slowly. Two years ago we got 9-nine- Kokonotsu Kokonoka Kokonoiro, last year Sorairo Sorauta Soranooto, and this year Haruiro Harukoi Harunokaze. The Chinese title translates to something like “Spring Colors, Spring Love, Spring Wind.”

Last year there was one insanely good game I recommended hard: Haruoto Alice＊Gram. This year it got a sequel, Hakuai Sakura＊Gram. After finishing it I looked up at the stars and felt a whole lot of ripples in my chest. People always call Japan the “Warring States period of eroge” — every company dives into the fray, blood and guts everywhere, trying every trick in the book to survive and sell copies, and still taking heavy casualties. While every other studio was racking its brains over how to make otaku open their wallets, the great Nanawind did not let me down. Hakuai Sakura＊Gram is a satisfying answer sheet. An eroge has to sell to survive, and Hakuai Sakura＊Gram is a runaway commercial success. Hell, it’s a textbook success.

Lately a lot of eroge makers give off the vibe that they’re about to go under… Alcot, for instance. Aside from peddling expired pillows and illustrations on Twitter every day, you barely see them do anything. I remember last year they put out what they called a proper game, 将軍様はお年頃, and then basically nothing for almost a year. Just when we figured they were about to croak… Alcot announced a new release! And then I look closer and holy shit, the new release is a fandisc. Honestly I’m so sick of fandiscs filling my screen I could puke, but it seems like a lot of studios can’t manage new titles anymore and just repackage old stuff to scrape by. Whatever. If Alcot’s done for, might as well see them off. Alcot’s new release is called 将軍様はお年頃 ふぁんでぃすく -御三家だヨ！ 全員集合. Long as hell and contains zero information… the name itself looks cheap, like a little flyer ad. Fine, fine. Don’t speak ill of the dying. Let’s just look at the game.

Maybe everyone gets this illusion — that when you meet someone, or hit some particular moment, your brain flashes “wait, have I seen this scene／this person in a dream before?” Plenty of people have researched and argued this phenomenon, and most land on a few possibilities: memory misplacement, an illusion of similarity between scenes, or some blurry subconscious memory of a scene. One of the Steins;Gate games even explains it as “déjà vu across worldlines.” And then there’s the one factor that’s never certain but can’t be ruled out: dreams. Which is to say, it’s entirely possible that the familiar thing you just ran into really was something you saw in a dream. Dreams are funny like that. Humans can never control their dreams, yet the dream is something the person themselves created. So when we go adventuring in a dream, the dream is something we wrote ourselves. There’s a bit of “playing with yourself” to it. Some say a normal person creates one to three dreams every night, and over the course of growing up, all those assorted dreams pile up to a terrifying number. Among them, one or two scenes are bound to resemble something you run into in reality, and that produces the so-called “déjà vu.” This is probably the most reliable explanation for the “I keep seeing it in dreams” feeling — but compared to that cold reality, we’d rather accept the romantic explanation: “You and I are connected by something heaven ordained, so we met in a dream long ago, and that dream scene guided us to meet in reality…” Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? uh?

Another day like any other. My little sister comes to wake me up, same as always. “Big sis, breakfast is ready. Time to get up.” I’m a guy, but my sister has always called me “big sis.” “Hey, is it really okay to keep calling you that?” Just as my sister leaves, a figure slips out from beside me — a girl with black hair, asking me that. Actually, this “girl” is a cat. And not just a cat — a cat god. A cat god who also happens to be my savior. It all started two weeks ago.

Heard the industry’s own tumor, minori, is finally closing up shop and quitting games. I was so happy I didn’t write a damn thing all day. Plenty of people think minori made “masterpieces” like Ef and Eden, that it was a big-name studio worth mentioning, and that its sudden “collapse” (just quitting games, mind you) is somehow sad. But I still say the reason the visual novel industry is in this mess has a lot to do with these so-called “old studios, old stubborn farts” who refuse to die. Go back to the ancient days, before the concept of visual novels even existed — there was only what they called eroge, porn games, literally. Everything in them existed to deliver porn. Later, as some older studios joined in, the porn ratio in these porn games kept shrinking and the “story” kept growing. As the industry developed, “30% story, 70% porn” gradually turned into “70% story, 30% porn,” and some games even went “100% story, no porn,” becoming true visual novels. The hordes of otaku who’d been secretly playing porn games could finally straighten their backs and announce they weren’t in it for the dirty pictures, purely for the story — and some elite specimens among them even elevated “playing porn games” into an “artistic pursuit.” So we see a lot of companies wanting to put out all-ages games, to finally operate in the clean light of day, goods out, people in, no longer forced to spend every day side by side with AV, becoming real game development companies. Sounds like the birth and sprouting of some new art form… except the audience for visual novels was never the general public. It’s otaku who want to see tits and pussy. Which is why KID, who went all-ages, died. 5pb., who inherited the mantle and wanted to go all-ages, is still desperately clinging to the accidentally successful Steins;Gate. Key puts out all-ages games too, but its output feels like it’s stopped running entirely. minori tried all-ages as well, took a massive loss, and afterward started frantically selling tits and ass to survive. People always criticize otaku as disgusting — on one hand elevating themselves by saying they play for the story, on the other saying they won’t buy a game without 18+ content. In the end they just want to see dirty pictures. I thought that way years ago too, but now I’ve got a new take: