In my whole life I’ve read exactly two power-fantasy web novels. The first one I finished: Rice Wu’s I’m a Hooligan, which I followed all the way to its finale, I’m a Hooligan: Dragon War Starfield. The other one, also fairly famous, is How the Bad Guy Was Forged—and I didn’t finish that one. To put it in terms the ACG crowd will get: the former is SAO, the latter is Log Horizon. I’m a guy who likes things punchy, so I finished I’m a Hooligan and dropped the other.

I used to be a kichiku fan too, way back… Don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t mean the Japanese kichiku, I’m a normal person, not a pervert. I mean the Chinese-internet redefined “kichiku,” basically those videos where people take footage and make it twitch and spasm. Around 2008 ACFUN was full of kichiku works, plenty of good stuff too, and I watched them happily. Then with the popularity of things like Yori and Chinese dubs, more and more “snark” comedy videos started popping up… Of course I enjoyed it at first, until… that kind of video filled the entire internet. Sorry, I’m the type who gets sick of infinitely repeated content easily. I got sick of this stuff too, I even started finding it boring. I started hating all those messing-around, no-seriousness things, started feeling they were pointless, like current domestic crosstalk, which lost its backbone and left only endless bickering.

I’ve always liked the girls that soft girls draw. Miyasaka Miyu (宮坂みゆ) is a soft girl, so I really like the girls she draws. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that logic. Only a girl knows what expressions and poses a real girl would actually have. Only a girl drawing girls can really capture their essence. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying that. So half a year ago, Izayoi no Fortuna (十六夜のフォルトゥーナ) already had me completely floored by Miyasaka Miyu’s art. Those soft, delicate girls hit my strike zone dead-on. You have to understand, I love small, slender girls the most—I just want to hold them and squish them…… So, hand on heart, I played Areas ～空に映すキミとのセカイ～ purely for the art. I’d already seen the reviews on Chuuni Space saying “good opening,” “the ending makes no sense,” and that it barely scraped a passing grade. But who cares? What kind of shit haven’t I eaten by now? However bad your story is, how bad can it really get? Can you do all-in insta-love? Can you do split personalities? Can you do forced harem? Can you do forced flexing? Can you do knockoff light novel? Can you do reincarnated saint? Can you do TowerDefense? Can you do Guo Jingming imitation? Can you do total meltdown? Or can you trick me into screwing boys? No way! I figured I’d already played through every possible way to eat shit — there’s no reason I’d find a brand-new way to eat shit! Shennong tastes a hundred shits, and I no longer fear death. Game Start！

Twin Paradox (双子座のパラドクス) is another Cotton Software title. Why’d I play it? Mostly because its predecessor, Sekai ga Owaru Basho to Birthday, left such a strong impression on me. So even though the character designs are still shit as always, I was willing to give it a go. No other reason — I just wanted to see a story that could stand shoulder to shoulder with Birthday. That’s all. But before I get into the game, I want to talk about something else: the science and pseudoscience elements in stories.

Only after learning Japanese did I realize how many Chinese words actually come from Japan. Setting aside stuff like 暴走 and 违和, 箱庭 is probably one of them. I run into 箱庭 all the time in anime lyrics — はこにわのせかい (箱庭の世界), that kind of thing. It’s not a hard word to figure out: a garden in a box, or a box garden. Describe it with a Western term and you get sandbox or sand table. There’s even a more Chinese-flavored word for it, like 盆景 (bonsai/penjing). The concept itself actually originated in the West; Japan just imported it and called it 箱庭. And honestly, I’m deeply grateful to whoever did that — that they didn’t write it as サンドボックス or some other mess already has me weeping tears of joy. Of course, the thing most closely tied to the word 箱庭 is 箱庭療法 (sandplay therapy). It’s a form of therapy related to psychological diagnosis: you give the patient a “box garden” and let them build their ideal little world, then infer their mental state from the elements in that world. Basically a fancy psychological test. So the first time I saw 箱庭ロジック (Hakoniwa Logic) and its detective/suspense branding, I figured there had to be more going on under the surface.

できない私が、くり返す。 left a decent impression on me, and not because of the art or anything like that — mostly it was a bunch of people saying it’s a “tearjerker” and “the best.” Generally a game that most people approve of can’t be that bad, so I played it during June when there was nothing else out. The title is weird. Going by my Japanese level of a one-year-old infant, I think it’s trying to say that no matter how many times I go back, I can’t change a damn thing. Early on, the protagonist gets a pocket watch from a big-sister type named Ren, who tells him it can travel through time and return to the past. “But there’s no point in going back, because the future can’t be changed.” A time leap that can’t change the future is basically useless, and Ren hammers it in every time she talks about the watch: 未来は変えられない So the story begins five years after big sis Ren dies, at the moment the watch-holding protagonist meets a girl named Shino.

I haven’t played many Alcot games, but most of them follow the same path: fairly lowbrow (no offense) snark and slice-of-life, cute moe character designs, and music that’s better than it has any right to be. I’d say it wasn’t like this back in Clover Heart, but by the time Clover Days rolled around it had quietly become this way, so my feelings about Clover Days carry over: no matter how you look at it, this stuff is “not especially clever,” but it’s also “not bad.” The plot beats are a bit clichéd, but it never force-feeds you shit. When LoveRec. was being promoted I took a look at the character designs… “Oh fuck, isn’t this just Anzu?” Yes, the heroine named Hitomi looks almost identical to Takakura Anzu from Clover Days, just with a different hair color and eye color. You could chalk it up to Jinmura Yuji’s art style, but the feeling that they “literally just took an old character, tweaked her, and put her on sale” is a weird one. Incidentally, the other two heroines weren’t drawn by Jinmura Yuji, but they’re also a bit off, and overall not as cute as Clover Days. Given Alcot’s usual style, I assumed this game was at most a moe showcase, and from the designs and the rough blurb that’s exactly what it looked like. But after finishing it, I came away feeling something different.

Secret Game is a galgame series by FLAT with a battle-royale-ish plot. I played its predecessor’s enhanced version, Killer Queen (杀手皇后), a long time ago, and it left a strong impression on me. I call it deep not because it’s brilliant or anything, just because… it’s so goddamn infuriating. Because the protagonist is a total bleeding heart — the kind who won’t lift a finger no matter how badly people screw him over, and who goes around spreading love and peace to everyone. A pushover like that in real life would’ve been picked clean by now. Unfortunately, he’s a game protagonist, so not only does he survive without spilling a drop of blood, he also gets to bang the girl. This is also the game that made me remember the scenario writer’s name, and now whenever I see him I can already tell roughly where a work is headed. So that Secret Game did get a sequel. The first one was just called Secret Game 2, then got the name Secret Game: Code Revise, and later it was ported to the PSP with the story and visuals fully overhauled and renamed Secret Game: Code Revise 2nd Stage. Then that beefed-up PSP version had 18+ content added and was ported back to PC in reverse, under the full title Secret Game: Code Revise 2nd Stage Boosted Edition. Alright, whatever the hell the full title is, my point is just that despite this being the sequel, the setup is the same as the first game.

The first time I heard of a dating sim was in elementary school, when I found something called Tokimeki Memorial from a pirate-game dealer. Not a CD version, of course — it was in a folder on a disc with a “Cangjinge” label. After installing it, I saw the name written as “Jun’ai Shuzha” (I even misread it as “Jun’ai Shouli”), and somehow, following the GameZ88 install wizard, I put a shortcut for the thing on my Windows 98 desktop. I played it for a while and found it pretty baffling. Bear in mind I was an elementary schooler then — I was dying to grab a gun and blast monsters, not sit down and hit on girls. The whole business of getting entangled with several women every day made no sense to me. “Why isn’t he fighting?” “When does the fighting start?” were the biggest questions in my head.

There’s a saying floating around the internet: “You can’t wake someone who’s only pretending to sleep.” It gets quoted a lot by people I can’t stand, but the saying itself isn’t wrong. Sleep is just how a person rests. Strictly speaking, nobody can pinpoint the exact hour, minute, second they drifted off, because it isn’t something you control. Wake someone out of that uncontrolled sleep and of course their eyes open. But a person pretending to sleep doesn’t actually want to sleep—they just want everyone else to think they’re asleep. Why would someone who’s awake want people to believe they’re asleep? Simple: to look the other way, to dodge whatever they’ll have to face once they’re up. Easy example. Someone you hate comes looking for you. You don’t want to deal with them, don’t know how to deal with them, don’t want to turn them down, definitely don’t want to talk to them… So you flop onto the desk and fake a deep sleep. A friend tries to wake you, but you were awake the whole time, so naturally you keep yourself from looking awake. That’s exactly what “you can’t wake someone who’s pretending to sleep” means. The pretender chose to pretend because they never wanted to wake up in the first place. You can’t wake them. NekoNeko Soft’s 15th anniversary title Sumire (Violet) picks precisely this “pretend sleep” theme. Just like its OP, “Sleeping Pretend,” it’s the story of three girls who each pretend to sleep to get away from the various things in their lives.