One regret of mine: the game Mahoutsukai no Yoru never got an OST release. Sure, you can extract the OGG files from the game, but those aren’t lossless—I actually ripped a set myself, just couldn’t be bothered to type in the names for the tags. I kept thinking an OST would come out eventually, and, well, you know how it goes. Years pass, the next game is about to launch, and the previous game’s OST is still nowhere. The composer is Meto. This isn’t the first time he’s worked with the writer Rukuru, if I remember right—Unmei Yohou wo Oshirase Shimasu had BGM by him too, so did Mahoutsukai no Yoru, and the composer for Suisou Ginka no Istoria, out next month, is him again. I don’t know if they’re doing it on purpose or what, but none of the games Rukuru and his crew work on ever get an OST release. Even Unmei Yohou wo Oshirase Shimasu was originally supposed to include an OST with the special edition, and then right before release they just… cut it. And Suisou Ginka no Istoria is only getting the theme song Azurite no Hitsugi as a bonus. So I poked around Meto’s personal site out of curiosity and found he’s been composing music on his own all along, and he sells CDs of his own work right there. So I picked up the package versions to show some support. (A few CDs in there are just gate-crashing, please ignore them.)

Xuebi’s surname is Wang, and he’s the only son in the family. By “only son” I don’t mean anything special—it’s just that he’s the only boy in this household. Wang Xuebi’s mom runs an antique knick-knack shop, but she’s scary fertile. After popping out Wang Xuebi, she went on to have four girls in a row: Wang Asahi, Wang Sayo, Wang Mahiru, and Wang Yayoi. The four girls have completely different personalities, but they’ve got one thing in common—they inherited their mom’s genes, and each one is prettier than the last. Of course, as the only boy, i.e. the only big brother in the family, Wang Xuebi looks… a little unfortunate. Probably because his mother spoiled him rotten, Wang Xuebi’s waistline has gotten another ring around it lately, and he’s about to need a custom belt. His classmates all call him “fatty,” but Wang Xuebi doesn’t mind at all. He’s the eldest son, the only male—and more importantly, he has four pretty sisters. Even more importantly, all four of those pretty sisters are crazy about him. Wang Xuebi has never interacted with other women. He’s got four knockout girls right at home—why go out and get stuck in traffic? So whenever his female classmates give him a look of disgust, Wang Xuebi fires back a look of contempt. “Fatty, you’re so fat you’re dripping grease, it’s gross.” “I hear he’s a siscon too, always tangled up with his sisters.” “Last time Lin Xian, the guy next door to the fatty’s house, said he saw the fatso taking turns kissing his sisters! I almost threw up just thinking about it.” “Holy shit, for real?!” The chattering girls can’t hold back this explosive rumor any longer, and their shrill voices get even more piercing.

Whirlpool — I used to have a pretty good impression of them. Stuff like the old whale-fucking, the robot-fucking, and the early dragon princess-fucking, etc. etc. Feels like Whirlpool just loves playing with human-beast… oh wait, I mean human and mixed-blood. Maybe that’s just their style. And so Whirlpool’s new game this year just popped out of nowhere, then out of nowhere it was out and on sale… I’d been thinking it wasn’t coming out until May… The new title is Nekonin Exheart (猫忍えくすはーと), and the premise is dead simple: two cat-eared ninjas show up at the protagonist’s ancestral home, claiming they’ve come to serve as his bodyguards and retainers. That’s the setup everything else hangs on. So I made a point of hammering these facts: the game itself only costs 2000 yen, and it’s only the first-press edition that comes with a hug pillow that runs 13000 yen. See? Remind you of anything? Sound like the XXX no Seiiki series? Yep — this game is basically following that series’ playbook. The appeal here is pretty clear-cut: short story, simple plot, good art.

Everyone knows I’m not a moe-otaku. Even so, I still look up to moe-otaku. Years ago — probably five or six by now — I was dead set on becoming one. Back then I was still watching anime, and when it comes to the stuff that was big around then, it’s gotta be K-On, right? At the time the Bilibili homepage was still wall-to-wall muscle bro memes, so if you wanted to watch shows you had to go to Acfun. But Acfun’s shitpost section was full of K-On MADs — the Cagayake!GIRLS MADs alone were everywhere, completely out of hand lol… I listened to it so much I could sing it. So sometimes when I saw that crowd spamming “My great Kon!” over the song, I couldn’t help feeling a little like I didn’t get it… There’s a reason I can’t wrap my head around it — I watched K-On! for real, seriously, but I just couldn’t keep going.

For something like visual novels, I’ve seen plenty of people claim they’re all about the story and don’t care about the art style. Yet 99% of the time, their avatars in ACG circles are still cute girls. This isn’t surprising, really — everyone appreciates a pretty face. And for something like visual novels, which in the mouths of Sendai aunties sits not far from Adult Video, judging by looks is about as normal as it gets. In other words, for a visual novel trying to boost sales and expand its reach, the first thing you need is good-looking characters. It’s rare to see a game with ugly-as-hell character art still sell like hotcakes — maybe Gakuen Handsome (学園ハンサム) counts as the exception? So if a game’s characters aren’t drawn well, you can basically declare it dead on arrival. Unless the character has some long history and a massive fanbase behind her—but even then, you’re only fooling the diehard fans, and only a fraction of them at that. You won’t reach the “silent majority” of users, and what good is that? Definitely not gonna work. So the first time I laid eyes on Kanojo to Ore no Renai Nichijou (彼女と俺の恋愛日常), I was dead sure this thing had to be trash.

Tsukikage no Simulacre was last year’s supposedly “free” “visual light novel”—and oddly enough, it’s rare for Japanese developers to label their own work that way. They usually just call it an eroge. And just like that “free” game said at the end, it only told an incomplete story. There were a ton of loose ends, and the devs themselves said the free version wasn’t the point—the real deal was the project coming after it. So what was that project? Well, look, the January eroge release schedule has a new entry called Tsukikage no Simulacre -Kaihou no Hane-, doesn’t it? Right—that free version was literally just a “trial edition.” A demo, basically. The final version is this game. Honestly, when you think about it, they just released a demo early, then put out the full game later. Dressing it up as “first we give you the free part, then the follow-up project” is the same old playbook.

Majo Koi Nikki (魔女こいにっき) left a hell of an impression on me last year, for two reasons: the story itself, and the way it’s told. The structure is pretty intricate. First, there’s a timeline spanning hundreds of years inside the game. Then there’s a story-within-a-story setup—and the kicker is that the whole centuries-long timeline is itself a story inside a story. In reality, all those tales are just phantoms. The ending made me want to curse someone out. The protagonist goes through hell to achieve a genuinely moving HAPPY END, and then the TRUE END drops a few lines telling you it was all fake, all just a story, and the real protagonist is trapped forever in the witch’s curse with no escape. A lot of people promptly turned on the scenario writer Shinima Yuu, calling him a bastard who’s out to screw players over again, blah blah blah… Then, not long after the game’s release, a PSV port was announced: Majo Koi Nikki Dragon×Caravan. Along with the port came news of two new scenarios—one upgrading a heroine to a romanceable route, and a new chapter called “The Passionate Prince and the Little Dragon” (灼熱の王子と小さな竜). I didn’t pay much attention at first, because for most PSV ports the extra content is irrelevant cash-grab filler. Upgrading a heroine? Seen it a million times—they just cobble together some story to force a route. So I ignored it. Until I saw a Japanese player’s review on ErogameScape that changed my mind. This person said the new PSV chapter wasn’t just random fluff—it was a completion of the original story. The Passionate Prince and the Black Dragon chapter apparently depicts what happens after the original ending, reaching the true conclusion. That was both expected and surprising. Expected, because Majo Koi Nikki’s story clearly wasn’t finished—the protagonist was still trapped in the diary, so of course there had to be more. Surprising, because they actually finished the story in the PSV version. So I started figuring out how to get my hands on it. First I waited for a crack, but unlike the PSV version of Shepherd’s Library, nobody dumped it. So I had to camp out on Surugaya for a used copy. Eventually I snagged one in good condition for a relatively cheap price. Not bad. Back home, I dug out my long-neglected PSV, inserted the game card, hit the power button, and the game started again.

I watched the Spring Festival Gala over Chinese New Year. Actually I’ve always watched it. I don’t know if it’s genuinely getting worse every year, but from where I’m sitting it’s definitely gotten less interesting — I can’t remember a damn thing from it anyway. A few days later I went back and watched a couple of the performances on YouTube, and they seemed… fine? At least there was something to them. And today I’ve already forgotten those too. Why? Setting aside the political bits and the self-congratulatory propaganda, some of the song-and-dance numbers, skits, and crosstalk are decent enough. While you’re watching you might catch a joke and think “oh, that’s clever,” or “that’s pretty funny.” Then it ends, and there’s nothing “gripping” about it, and you forget the whole thing. Basically: not terrible, not great, no real highlights, and not much heart in it either. You watch it, you laugh, you forget it. Some games are like that too. Like this one — Kimi no Hitomi ni Hit Me (キミの瞳にヒットミー).

Waiting, waiting, and at last Spring Festival arrived — and with it, the long-awaited release of the Astraea no Shiroki Towa FD! Astraea no Shiroki Towa was probably one of the first untranslated games I ever played, and it left a hell of an impression on me. Three things stood out above all: The music! The effects! And Nitta Emi! Then Yoshizumi Hina retired, which left any follow-up to Astraea no Shiroki Towa stuck in limbo forever. But FAVORITE isn’t about to pass up a chance to milk a sequel, so pretty soon we got an FD for Astraea no Shiroki Towa with a recast VA — namely Astraea no Shiroki Towa Finale -Shiroki Hoshi no Yume-.

Sometimes I think about this: so many scenario writers in Japan do original drafts for anime and games — are they just mass-producing the same thing over and over? …………I mean, whatever a given writer puts out, doesn’t it always follow one pattern no matter how you look at it? Code Geass, Guilty Crown, Valvrave, and the latest one — what was it called? Kabaneri? I’m not saying Ichiro Okouchi is bad; the man won a best screenplay award, didn’t he? I’m talking about visual novels — whether some writers end up reusing the same套路 across multiple games. I noticed this pretty early on. For example, the Shiiba route in Yuzusoft’s Sanoba Witch overlaps heavily with the Riru route in Kujira Kami no Tiastila, which came out not long after. I don’t know if that’s Tota’s doing or just coincidence. But a “competent scenario” shouldn’t have the problem of “can’t adapt, only ever writes one path” — otherwise you’re just showing how tapped out you are. But man… for Hoshi Koi * Twinkle… I don’t even know what to say anymore…