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.

A few days ago I saw someone on Reddit (r/visualnovels) recommending this game. It’s a visual novel on Steam called Doki Doki Literature Club!. Of course, when it was recommended I noticed the tag: Psychological Horror. I could sort of guess what that meant. This game, made by non-Japanese gaijin imitating a Japanese-style visual novel, looks all harmonious and beautiful on the Steam page, but inside it’s probably a scam. There might be some “depressing” elements in there. “Depressing” — how depressing can you get? The heroine suddenly dies, suddenly loses her head, suddenly goes yandere, suddenly chops you up. That’s about the limit. At most it’s blood splattering all over the screen. What haven’t I seen? So curiosity made me download this free game and click “Start.” After a thrilling adventure, I repeatedly confirmed that the game had really, truly “End"ed, and only then did my heart settle back down. I let out a long sigh… Let me shamelessly brag for a moment. As a forever-alone otaku who’s been single since 2013, who’s too old to find a partner and keeps failing at arranged dates, I’ve played nearly several hundred visual novels over these four years and written over a hundred impression posts. For a while I was playing visual novels almost indiscriminately. Among them were plenty with crazy plot twists and horror content, but I was immune to almost all of them. Even that Sakura no Mori † Dreamers with evil spirits all over the screen, Honoakari no Toki no Hate Yori with blood-spraying zombies everywhere, the sudden hanging in Midori no Umi, the dismembered limbs in Hakoniwa Logic — all small stuff. Games like Clockup’s are even more whatever. I just smirk, completely unfazed. Out of all the games I’ve played, only two actually scared me. One was the sudden decapitated-head CG that pops up in 3days. The other… is this game. Doki Doki Literature Club!. There’s only one reason it scared me: it was sudden, way too sudden, no preparation whatsoever. Looking back after finishing it, I can say clearly: overall, Doki Doki Literature Club! is not a romance sim. It’s more like a horror game. Yeah, don’t be fooled by all the promotional material or the people in the comments saying how interesting it is. This really is a horror game. At the start it repeatedly emphasizes: if you have a weak mental constitution, don’t play; if you’re a kid, don’t play; if you’re a scaredy-cat, don’t play. That sentence is serious, not a joke! I know a lot of young folks can’t handle even a little “cruelty” in a visual novel. I’ve seen people get spooked by the music in Hatsuyuki Sakura, people devastated because the little sister dies in Kami no Ue no Mahoutsukai, people who can’t take how tragic the mermaid princess is in Suisou Ginka no Istoria, and people who want to mail razor blades to Niijima Yuu because the heroine in a story-within-a-story doesn’t get a happy ending in Majo Koi Nikki. For those people, stay the hell away from this game. It is not a romance game. It’s a horror game, a horror metagame in the same style as Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi.

Honestly? I’m a fan of Nanaroba Hana. Yeah, she’s got some black marks in her history, but I’m still a fan. I’ve always felt that when a female artist draws girls, there’s a kind of charm that male artists just can’t replicate—a sort of “cuteness” that only a girl can understand. So Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro. was naturally on my radar. It got delayed a bunch of times, a trial version came out, I played it, and I felt… weird about it. How should I put this—Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro. is put out by QUINCE SOFT, a subsidiary of Lump of Sugar. Quince is a fruit, a very peculiar one with a complicated “don’t just bite into it” nature. The reason the sub-brand is called QUINCE SOFT is probably that Lump of Sugar wanted to spin off that whole line of “somewhat playable, complex games” into its own label. What do I mean by “somewhat playable, complex games”? I mean stuff like Unmei Senjou no Phi, Magical Charming, Rensou Relation. Games that aren’t just simple branches but have a ton of complex choices. Honestly, I like these kinds of games. But for Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro., it’s a bit too complex.

It’s CD show-off time again. I bought quite a lot this time, and it’s been a while.

There was once a god-tier game called Onii-chan, Migi-te no Shiyou o Kinshi Shimasu (お兄ちゃん　右手の使用を禁止します). The gimmick, the marketing, the selling points, the story and art — all of it had real punch. Even people who can’t read Japanese see that title and their imagination runs wild. Combined with that cursed OP, the game hit a height that year, even though it looks like a nukige on the surface… Honestly I don’t think it’s a nukige at all — it’s a pure love game. It even gives every heroine her own route and ending theme. Nukige don’t get that treatment… The company behind Onii-chan, Migi-te no Shiyou o Kinshi Shimasu is Galette, a sub-brand built specifically for siscon games. But this company is… how do I put it. Unlucky. First, two brands to keep straight: Galette and GLace. Galette exists to put out siscon games, GLace exists to put out story-driven ones. Going by the lineup, the company’s real focus is clearly the latter — making nukige is just a desperate cash grab to stay afloat. Who wouldn’t rather be highbrow… But the games GLace puts out are kind of tragic… I never played that Koikami thing they released earlier, no idea. I did play Timepiece Ensemble, and in short: a pile of shit. Later GLace hyped up their new title Amanosora Retrospect (天ノ空レトロスペクト), and after playing it I thought… it’s okay. The setup up front is interesting, but the entire second half has plenty of problems. Worse, even though I thought it was passable, the Japanese didn’t agree — ErogameScape tore it apart and panned it into a landmine. After that the brand was basically poison, so they put on a disguise and kept releasing, putting out Amanatsu Adolescence (甘夏アドゥレセンス). That game has… some redeeming qualities, but overall it’s still pretty garbage… So GLace, the brand supposedly dedicated to building a reputation with story games, has had every release panned into a landmine from day one, even under a new name. Zero reputation to speak of. Did GLace ever put out anything good? Yes! 1/2 summer! But unfortunately 1/2 summer was filed under the Alcot label, and although it later came back to GLace, nobody remembers it as a GLace game anymore. So in most of the industry’s memory, GLace games = landmines…

Ever run into someone like this in real life? Their mouth is vicious, every word dripping with nitpicking. But they also read the room, and the moment they sense you’re about to blow up they shut it down fast. Sensitive and perceptive enough to know if you’re genuinely pissed or just in a bad mood. They care what you think of them, adjust their talk based on your mood, yet they never actually back down—still keeping up that sharp-tongued high ground. They cut themselves off from others, from every little circle, from socializing altogether. But they’re scared of being alone, scared of being misunderstood, they want friends, yet they can’t let go of whatever’s stuck in their craw………… They want to get close to people, but they’re afraid of being gotten close to too easily. Contradictory creatures, through and through………… Japanese has a word for this: porcupine syndrome (ヤマアラシ症候群). Because they’re afraid of getting hurt, they hurt others. Their inherent kindness makes them not want to hurt anyone, but they can’t stop hurting people anyway. So they sink into self-blame and contradiction, sometimes doing ridiculous, absurd things that cause even more damage. That’s the so-called bad side of porcupine syndrome. In modern society there are actually quite a lot of these people. But they’re pitiful too, because deep down most of them aren’t bad at all—they’re kind. It’s just that fear of being hurt turned them into the “vicious loudmouth villain” on the surface, carrying a reputation they don’t deserve. Like a porcupine: afraid of getting hurt, so it stabs others, curls up and refuses to show itself, leaving nothing but spines for everyone else. Actually, these people can be saved. They can shed others’ preconceptions—all they need is someone willing to pull them out. And that person needs the capacity to withstand the “porcupine’s” attacks. Put bluntly: they have to get hurt, and not be afraid of getting hurt. So Zannen na Ore-tachi no Seishun Jijou. (残念な俺達の青春事情。) is, roughly, that kind of story.

More isn’t really a studio that specializes in galge, honestly. It looks more like… “A bunch of music people who make galge on the side so they have an excuse to put out albums.” The company name is MME — MORE MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT. Which is my whole point: their center of gravity is clearly music. Making galge, a cheap kind of game dev, probably isn’t the day job for them. More like a hobby? Hobby or not, they’ve put out a decent number of games, and they don’t look like they’re doing a “one and done” bit. If anything they keep branching out, spawning more and more sub-brands… Sometimes I wonder if registering a new brand in Japan is just free. Why else does every eroge company change its skin every other year… This time the new More brand is called Niko, and their game is Golden Hour (ゴールデンアワー). I mean, More already had two brands running fine — More for pure-love stuff, Pure More for nukige — and now there’s a pile of sub-labels: Chelseasoft, which looks like it’s going for moege, DOLCE, which put out the little flower of Casablanca, and now Niko. God knows what style this one is supposed to be.