Years ago, The Fruit of Grisaia blew up as Frontwing’s anniversary title, and it’s not hard to see why. The game itself is rock solid, and it nails the mix of “daily-life comedy” and “plot-driven drama” — the 30-hour common route is all slice-of-life gags, while the other 30 hours of heroine routes lean hard into wild plot twists. A game that goes “grab both handles and grip them both tight” like that was never going to escape glowing reviews. The Fruit of Grisaia: possibly a masterpiece After that, Frontwing struck while the iron was hot and put out sequels in the series, including The Labyrinth of Grisaia and The Eden of Grisaia, plus several DLCs for the game. By the time the last DLC, The Melody of Grisaia, came out, the whole Grisaia series was complete, and the game series even got an anime adaptation. Looks like Frontwing put a period at the end of the Grisaia saga and moved on to making new anti-American propaganda spectacles…

Confucius, Jesus, Guang Liang and Shinjou Yuu all said it: “first love is infinitely beautiful.” Especially in Japan, a country with an especially deep complex about “初めて” (the first time), “first love” means a sweeter, more awkward, even slightly painful memory you can’t stop chewing on. “First love” is the first time someone’s heart stirs, the first time they taste what romance is, the first time they start to mature emotionally and learn the playbook. After going through it, a person might turn into a smooth operator or a cynical old hand who no longer gets moved by the simple stuff. Seen that way, first love really is precious.

Back in high school I read web novels every day. A lot of them were… okay, I guess. Some were way too terminally online, but at least they told a coherent story with a distinct flavor. If it was entertaining I didn’t nitpick the literary quality, and if it was actually serious I wouldn’t treat it like a power fantasy. Man, though, seriously written web novels are rare. Most are drowning in internet slang and come with their own snark. A little self-aware snark in a literary work isn’t necessarily bad—it can add flavor—but overdo it and it gets ugly. I remember two web novels I read: one called Sanguo Houhei Zhuan and another called How I Picked Up the Campus Belle. The latter is actually decent—I’d recommend it, it’s solid for a school romance. The former just made me shake my head… I bring them up because they share a trait: both love their own snark.

Back in high school I used to frequent a site called “Huanhuan Wenyuan”—basically the text-only version of a porn site, with dirty stories updated on the regular. That site kept going until I graduated college, then it vanished. Never came back. There were some genuinely good pieces on there, well-written enough to get your imagination going. The one I remember most was about a female teacher who promised her class that if the slackers all ranked near the top of the grade, she’d let them have their way with her. The writing was actually pretty interesting—the teacher goes through all these psychological hurdles, and when faced with the principal’s coercion she ends up choosing to give herself to the students instead. The ending was a bit unexpected, almost had a Happy Ending vibe. Anyway, I’m getting off track. But some formulas really do deliver results you wouldn’t expect—like this game, PacoMane: Watashi, Kyou kara Meimon Yakyuubu no Seishori Gakari ni Narimasu… (パコマネ わたし、今日から名門野球部の性処理係になります…).

I haven’t played that many eroge, but I’ve played some. A few of them I’d call genuinely worthwhile, and plenty I’d call garbage. Even in the garbage there’s usually a pattern. Most of it comes from a planner or a writer trying to make a big splash, or forcing some baffling twist that ends up as a botched imitation of something better. The stuff that’s honestly made to cater to a specific taste rarely has these landmines. Siscon games, for instance. Siscon games are pure in their positioning and simple in their pacing. The protagonist is the older brother, the heroine is the little sister, or “little sisters.” Some flirting, and that’s about it. The occasional darker entry still doesn’t betray the core idea: showing “the little sister’s love for her brother.” However twisted it gets, it’s still love, right? Chopping off your brother’s head, dissecting him—that’s love too, isn’t it? Yandere is still a kind of dere. So for a long time I figured “playing a siscon game” could never go wrong. At worst it’d be dumb, or look silly, but it wouldn’t disgust you, right? Even if the system is boneheaded and the plot is idiotic, the little sister is innocent. The creator’s intention to give you a cute sister is not wrong, right? I’m not a siscon, but I can still find some comfort and warmth in these games. Say what you will, they’re honestly handing out sugar. Between siscon fans there’s nothing but resistance to social norms and mutual understanding—nothing like those otaku who spend all day hurting each other. It’s so full of love. To borrow a line from the famous internet personality “Crazy Bull Hermit”: “Siscon brothers are all friends.” Of course, there are no eternal friends—until I ran into Chitchana Hanayome.

I read a lot of forums, and there’s this pattern I keep noticing. Women-dominated forums are mostly people dunking on scumbag boyfriends. Men-dominated forums, porn boards aside, are mostly people tearing each other apart and crying about getting cuckolded. Getting cuckolded is a weird phenomenon, yet apparently a really common one. Are that many people actually getting cheated on? Are that many people actually choosing to forgive him or her? Either way, several forums I frequent have picked up new nicknames that don’t even match anymore. Greenery Street. Thunder Bluff. Some people don’t even bother being subtle and just rename the whole forum “Cuckold Forum.” So lately my browsing is nothing but green everywhere. Halal green, betrayed green, green this way and green that way. At first I found it gross, then I got used to it. I can’t even get someone to take me on as a rebound, so what do I care about cuckolding? This “getting cuckolded” setup is common in Japanese eroge too. The Japanese call it 寝取る, NTR. Basically your wife gets slept with, which means you got cuckolded. NTR games have their fans, but most of them are the same: you get a girlfriend, she gets screwed behind your back, and in the end you either forgive her or leave her. But think about it, why is NTR always by convention the woman betraying the man? What about the man betraying the woman? We call that cheating too, but it still can’t compare to the whole green-this-green-that internet culture, can it.

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…

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.

If you’ve seen what games I play, you’ve probably noticed I’m into “swords and sorcery,” and not so much “mecha and high tech.” So Baldr Heart, along with its earlier predecessors, never really interested me. But there’s this pervert who’s about to end up in a police cell who constantly hypes the game up, tongue hanging out, pushing it on everyone he meets. And he’s screwed me over twice before, so I had no intention of taking his recommendation. Except I’ve got a big mouth, and I said, “If Baldr Heart ever gets fan-translated by Moxing, I’ll play it.” And so, as they say, if you don’t do stupid things you won’t die. I soon saw this… and it was shoved right in my face. You all know I’m a man of my word, so I had no choice but to play it.

Ever since I cooled off on audio gear, I switched to buying CDs. Buying CDs is actually pretty nice too—you focus on the music itself instead of using earbuds to listen to the same few crappy songs on repeat. I picked up a bunch of CDs recently, so here are some quick thoughts.