#by most common I mean the common ones from the VN and that goes for both Tesla and Einstein in that regard

[patchesproblem]

How do u feel about poly ships with einsla in them?

They make me uncomfortable personally. I dislike (hate in a few instances) a majority of their more 'common' ships with the other characters for one reason or another, and even if they're all together I'd still be uncomfortable with it. I don't really care what others do, but personally I wouldn't ever care about or engage with it.

[digital-mine]

Love Angel Syndrome huge yap (major spoilers)

CW: sh & sui

ok first i LOVE THIS GAME SM SM SM ITS AMAZING !!!!!! everything about it: the art, soundtrack, plot, characters everything is super cool !!! ☆ its especially insane 2 me cuz im literally Yuuna 100% like on surface level things like loving cute things & cats, being internet addicted, obsessing over a character, inconsistent sleep, playing vn games etc and inner things like social anxiety, sh, shutting in etc,, im gonna go all over it, this is partly analyzing the plot and partly me yapping about how i relate so im gonna start from the beginning ,,,

Yuuna's obsession with Ai

from the beginning, the way she defends her online, finds her real & finds comfort in her (literally me with miku) im not even gonna lie i also probably WOULD install a sketchy looking ad in some random site if it says that i could talk to miku😭 Ai's character is so,,, imma talk about her soon rn im gonna go over the mc - Yuuna !!!

literally the cutest and most loveable and relateable and

shes a socially anxious NEET, 20 years old, moved into Tokyo after graduating but didnt go to university for 2 years because of missing the enrolling because of her mental problems. 2 whole years passed and she didnt tell her parents, avoiding her mom's phone calls, too afraid and guilty.

i LOVE YUUNA SO MUCH (˃̣̣̣̣︿˂̣̣̣̣ )

she never goes outside,,, she feels like people are repulsed by her & so she is extremely lonely. due to that, she speaks to 'you', saying she knows no one is reading her thoughts but it helps her feel less alone.

I RELATE TO THAT SM !!!! i have big problems w social anxiety as well, im not comfortable talking on a personal level with anyone at all. instead i talk to myself or write on my phone as if im talking to 'someone' or something so i dont feel alone. feeling guilty and avoiding confrontation also,,, too real

the phone call scene with her mom made my heart beat fast too like i felt hella scared on her behalf,, the writing and tension building is insane, ALSO THE SOUNDTRACKS !!!!!! they fit so well with each scene & they really add a huge effect. the scene above is after Yuuna's mom yelling at her, Ai gently gets her to stop and makes her bandage herself up

(◞‸◟ )

a little about Ai - she's partly Yuuna's favourite character, and partly a computer 'virtual assistant' Yuuna installed. she first appears as a supportive & helpful friend to Yuuna, trying to help her into becoming better as its what shes programmed to do. eventually, this all changes as she gets conflicted with her code & feelings,,

another thing about Yuuna !!!! she has over a 100 otome games, she craves this kind of love ⬆️ but since its near to impossible to find someone like that irl, she plays these games to fill that hole. she also began playing otome games as a way to have something in common with her classmates so she wouldnt be ignored & lonely, but it didnt help,,

AI IS HERE NOW THOUGH !!!! she starts off friendly and helpful,, but as she spends more days with Yuuna, her jealousy and possessiveness begin corrupting what she's programmed to do. instead of helping Yuuna get over her fears, she chooses to bring her back into isolation over jealousy.

Ai's character is so cool to me. its really interesting to think about what she actually is, since shes basically sentient,,, she also mentions talking to her creator about falling in love with her 'user' (Yuuna) and her creator seemingly not being surprised, because maybe she was meant to overwrite her code. they also give Ai a way to be with Yuuna, by connecting 'cables' (for Yuuna that means veins from what i understood) which leads to the first ending - Yuuna ending her life to be with Ai

Yuuna finally achieves her dream of eating parfrait and with a cute girl,,, but her parfait gradually becomes bloody, and her body gets colder

so in this ending, she gets to be with Ai forever,, in this 'Heaven', which is all binary. however, if she refuses to 'connect cables' with Ai to be with her, it leads Ai to spiral down into uninstalling herself

the visuals are so pretty . .

okay im getting pretty tired so imma try 2 wrap it up,,,

i was thinking of the possibility of Ai being not even real, but all interactions with her being hallucinations from Yuuna's mind. since she craves this type of love, and its her favourite character, and her connection with Ai is a lot more than user and virtual app,, i wonder if it was all made up by Yuuna's brain ??

either ways, the concept of Yuuna's favourite character becoming her virtual sentient 'assistant' is super super cool & personal 2 me. ive had some kind of an infatuation of this idea before, where i daydreamed of connecting with 'sentient' beings that only exist virtually. yeah including miku😭 i honestly have more 2 say especially about Ai but imma save that for future posts,,,

ANYWAYS I 100% RECOMMEND THIS GAME !!!!! ITS WONDERFUL AND U SHOULD TOTALLY DOWNLOAD IT (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑ actually it reawakened my love for games like this (i used 2 play a lot before) so im likely gonna do more posts like this for other games ><

[vntako]

vn* in a bottle: petit game collection vol.1

hm, i guess there's a bit of an irony talking about this before needy girl, but here we are. i played this with my darling and had a really nice time

this game is a spin-off of needy girl overdose / needy streamer overload. it's collection of 3 minigames and a developer's notes room. it's retro goodness, not that i'm that old to know. i did play toradora portable though, and that had some extra content similar to this. i guess that main difference is that you're paying for this extra content, huh. i feel it's pretty worth it if you really like needy girl

only one of the minigames is a vn, so let's talk about that last

break out kangel

it's kangel breakout. this one is entirely in japanese. it'd be fine if there wasn't a little bit of dialogue, but otherwise you're not missing anything

i'm not sure how common it is to have strip breakout as an extra minigame in vns, i've only played one other that has something like this, but it kinda feels like a staple to include if that makes sense? i could be wrong. i don't exactly know what to search online to find that kind of info, too

anyway this is just strip breakout. break the blocks, collect the falling power ups and uh remove kangel's seifuku. simple as that. she's ofc wearing smth under that, there's no nudity in this game

don't die, kangel!!

this one may generally be found to be more enjoyable than breakout. it's a shmup where you shoot your fans with meds. i like the art, it's super cute. though i could say about every kangel and ame art in this game

there's a bit of story that's mildly engaging, i found it neat. you're typically here for the gameplay though

the street is just a background, you stay entirely on this screen. you have pills to use as ammo, and your only objective is to not die (like the title tells you). after a few waves of nerds, a boss appears. and there's three bosses to beat

after a wave you get to pick a new pill. picking the same type of pill upgrades it. they're pretty self-explanatory. then it randomly shuffles some of it into your ammo every time you reload. also you reload with RMB, which also lets you dash a bit

it doesn't take that long to beat (this is stage 1's clear screen though). i had a fair bit of fun with this one. you do have to beat the boss, but you can let every other nerd just pass you

kangel's room

this is the credits. the people who worked on the game have stuff to say, so listen properly!!

ame's happy happy dating game

i couldn't screenshot this one properly, so please forgive the clutter. i don't really wanna crop it all so in exchange i offer you uh, you get to see my wallpaper

it's been that for a few months now

ame wants to go on a date with you, so you better choose well!! i think the most interesting part of this game is that it let p-chan monologue their thoughts. they're kinda messed up

ignoring the fact that i only took this screenshot now, you get to pick where you wanna take ame on a date for the next few days

since you get to pick, there's a good and bad ending, naturally. better not give her a bad time, mmkay?

i realized once some cgs showed up that this is where people have been getting those nice ame wallpapers from. the art for the vn is nice, it's really neat and clean, and ame looks super cute. the music is mixed a bit weirdly at times (kangel's theme is so loud) but overall i liked the aesthetic direction here

p-chan is here to give us a description of the world as someone really close to ame. however they describe things reflects how ame sees it. ame is fleshed out so much more than we see her in the base game through p-chan's monologues here (the base game does it great though lemme just clarify). i mean more to say that this format lets people stay and really be with ame past the webcam app on p-chan's screen. it feels a bit dangerous, to occupy the same space as her. and of course it is, ame being who she is. though that goes the same for all humans

i think the bad ending represents a lack of consideration and care one might have towards people. i went for it "just to see what it would be" without regard for how someone might feel about it. it tracks given the conditions for that bad end, too. impulse, disregard, the absence of seeing while doing.

going for the good end kinda feels like a chore, given you have to see everything in the game. though, it's supposed to feel more like a prayer, i think. a connection with ame, of sorts? seeking out and trying to understand her through the places she goes and hearing what she thinks. it might not be something you'd consider pleasant, but few things in life really are. even less so for humans. ame is a human

it's easy to connect with angels, all you need is the internet. i want to connect with human beings, too

[matt-lifesage]

Matt’s 2023 Visual Novel Tier List

Another year, another tier list/countdown of all the visual novels I read!

(two-thousand words of inconsistently distributed visual novel rambling below the cut)

Honorable Mentions:

I read a couple mobile game stories via youtube videos that are worth talking about but don't really belong on this list. Anyway, I’m slowly on-again off-again catching up to Arknights (almost halfway through it all the last time I checked), and it's been solid, my personal favorite story being Guide Ahead. But the real honor goes to FGO’s Lostbelt 6. A triumph from Kinoko Nasu and the folks over at Type-Moon. One of the best high fantasy epic novels I've ever read, hidden away three hundred hours into a gacha game for extra emphasis. A genuine highlight of the franchise, and if it was eligible for my own list where I make all the rules (hey, wait a minute...), it would be somewhere in S-Tier.

D-Tier

The Humbling of a Holy Maiden

Kicked off this year with some nukige. I’ve been meaning to check out more of the genre to have proper expectations and to know what I’m actually talking about if the subject ever came up (also checked out more of the genre for the obvious reason, but shush!). Frankly, not a good start.

Our tagline is basically, “What if the degrading corruption arc of the holy maiden archetype was consensual?” Nothing groundbreaking but still potentially enjoyable. Shame this game’s execution couldn’t muster even middling entertainment. Between erotic scenes, the game repeats the same meandering attempt at a philosophical conversation between the flatly written leads, who both never feel like even they can take what they’re saying seriously. It wouldn’t be too bad if it happened once or twice, but it’s *every* conversation. They did this a dozen times. Even in a visual novel as short as this, it was mind-numbing. Unfortunately, the erotic scenes aren’t much of a relief. I didn’t share the priorities/kinks of the creators, and even if I did, I would probably find the sex a samey and dull representation of them. This game was a chore to sit through. I don’t recommend.

Also, the heroine’s ‘slutty’ design looks like two clashing sets of lingerie worn on top of each other, and it’s wildly distracting.

Coffee Talk

I’m noticing an annual trend of me reading VNs that assume I have a far more positive connotation with coffee shops than I actually do.

So… I don’t want to make too many comparisons to a certain cyberpunk bartender simulator, especially when those opinions would be based on six-years-removed, nostalgically-charged fond memories of a game I desperately need to reexperience. I went into this Coffee Talk acknowledging it's a pastiche but willing to accept its own identity and terms so I could give it a fair shot and hopefully enjoy myself.

With that being said, I kinda hated this.

Its characters and drama range from enjoyable to mildly unfortunate, mostly nothing too interesting but nothing too egregious either--with Freya, the most frequently appearing character, being our infuriating exception.

The game touches on some mature themes and topics, but more often than not, Coffee Talk’s hokey one-for-one urban fantastical allegories are weighty in the same way that inflatable dumbbells are *technically* weights. The game is so obsessed with these close metaphors that the setting fails to feel remotely believable. And because real-life identities or struggles are recast with the likes of vampires and orcs, it falls into many of the common and frustrating insensitivities of the genre.

Shout out to the art team, though. The game’s presentation is top-notch.

C-Tier

Cute Demon Crashers [reread]

I read this like eight or so years back when it first came out and wanted to see if it held up, so I slapped it on one random night and went through it all again.

Didn’t really have a good time. I’m not the target audience for this. Comfy vanilla might as well be the name of the game, and it’s very, VERY, targeted to an audience looking specifically for that. Full power to them. I can’t complain because it’s literally free. I just didn’t expect to be so immediately bored by it, even if it’s not really doing anything wrong.

Who is the Red Queen?

A quick read with some good stuff, but it didn’t stick around in my head for long after reading it. It feels weird to complain about a free indie game created by people more skilled than myself, but a chunk of the art didn’t sell the Wonderland aesthetic for me. It was fine, but I might have preferred it if it was just a text game so my imagination would interpret the world as even more ethereal and dreamlike in a way generic fantasy backgrounds didn't reflect.

If you're specifically looking for a free-to-play Alice in Wonderland-themed Yuri visual novel, it's a good one. Maybe give it a try.

Coffee Talk Episode 2

Ever read the sequel just to be a more informed hater?

In all fairness, this was a big improvement on the first game. The sequel starts with some basic world-building. There's still obvious parallels in play, but there is a little work to paint this as a separate world this time where similar issues arose, something the first game barely even tried. It doesn’t always work, but it does try, which makes it less open for me to interpret uncharitably.

A second improvement is new mechanics. I don’t think the first game fully earned its last-minute twist, but Episode 2's additional gameplay verbs, plus more significant story deviations to incentivize replay and trial-and-error, does a better job at selling the fiction that the barista has an actual effect in the characters' lives.

Finally, the characters and drama were overall improvements. It's more interesting, less cliche, and there’s a stronger thematic core to tie the desperate arcs together. The highs are higher, and the lows aren’t as low.

That said, while the execution was improved, it never escaped the same foundational approaches as the first game. The urban fantasy allegories are better, but it's still hit or miss. There's still the ever-prevalent issue of halfway through a lovely scene with likable characters discussing their interesting drama, all characters involved will turn to the camera and start speaking in the unnatural cadence of a monologue in an afterschool special. Today's very important topic: Social media harassment! Garth Marenghi would be proud. However, even that element is much better handled than the first game which literally had a character smugly declaring all of this was a one-for-one allegory to our world, JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T GET IT.

After my distaste for the first game, I was pleasantly surprised by the sequel. It avoids the grating mistakes of Episode 1, but it's still too sanctimonious and I'll never vibe with its brand of gentrified twee.

Sweet Home ~H na Onee-san wa Suki Desu ka?~

Our final nukige of the list is Sweet Home. No, not the 1989 video game. No, not the movie that was based on. Not the webcomic either. (Gosh, there’s a lot of media sharing this title, huh?) 

If bland 'self-insert'-kun moving back in with his stepmom and having braindead sexy times with her roommates (plus some stepcest thrown in for spice) sounds like something you’d enjoy, then this one’s pretty a’ight. Mileage will vary if smut intended for the heterosexual male audience is even palatable to you. The game’s a quantity-over-quality situation, so you'll get plenty of it in this package for better or for worse. It got on my radar 'cause I dig how its artist, Kiriyama Taichi, drew ladies. I like their product. Probably wouldn’t have liked the game if a worse artist had been in charge--just to give you a taste of how shallow my enjoyment was lol. Consider any other game they were the artist for somewhere down in my TBR somewhere.

Ironically, for a game that’s whole fantasy is fucking (slightly) older ladies, my favorite route was the same-aged tsundere, probably because ‘childhood friend who's been repressing feels’ has more angst to it than 'new roommate wanted to see my dick.' After three of those routes, a crumb of drama might as well be a whole cake.

I couldn’t recommend paying full price. I think the asking price is too steep for this. Wait for a sale like I did.

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

I’m not a Sonic fan, so despite this being incredibly charming and well done, it didn't have any staying power in my mind. Still good fun, though. It’s rare for "joke" games to be quality, and even if I'm not the target audience, the passion was infectious enough to still enjoy it.

B-Tier

You and Me and Her

This was a solid and fun metafiction experience. Faux fourth wall breaking isn’t my preference (besides, it was already perfected in the 1971 seminal literary classic The Monster at the End of This Book), I respond better to the flavor of metafiction you’ll find in Umineko or Alan Wake, but for what You and Me and Her was going for, it's pretty well-executed. Spoilers, but having a spiteful rivalry with a fictional character is a blast.

While I had a good time, I thought You and Me and Her missed an opportunity to expand its commentary outside the scope of a fourth-wall-breaking “what-if.” Several times through my playthrough, the game felt like it was on the verge of using its premise to explore amatonormativity and heteronormatity, but it never really did, and I was left twiddling my thumbs, feeling like I was unfairly expecting too much.

On that note, however, about a month after playing this game, I read the manhwa Surviving Romance--a very different exploration of the romance genre via different mediums. But it gave me that subtle yet poignant commentary I felt was lacking from You and Me and Her, so I’m using this spot to recommend that comic. It’s super solid. Go track down and read it. It’d be up in A-Tier if I kept track of and ranked the comics I read.

It gets so lonely here

A really well-done yandere horror experience. It has pretty art, tightly written, and does some fun things with its narrative structure. If you want a solid, free-to-play, and spooky yuri VN, I highly recommend this one. Go download it.

I think this game might have ranked higher during a different year, but the cut-off between A-Tier and B-Tier had to go somewhere.

A-Tier

The Radio Wave Bureau

A short, super cool interactive fiction about fixing your computer. We’re at the point with some of these where I don’t have much to say other than “go read it,” but this game is short enough it’s hard to talk about in a way that doesn’t speak for itself. It's like twenty minutes long. I really dug it. Go play it.

Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk

A beautiful and melancholic expansion for the first game. A character piece that elevates Milk and Milk 2 to 'must read' status. It’s difficult to rank which one I prefer since both enhance each other via contrast. While I adore this game’s detailed introspection, if I had to pick a favorite, it would have to be the simplicity of--

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk

It's another read that's only around twenty minutes long, but no other VNs have ever grabbed me by the throat with their premise alone. Both these games are incredible and vulnerable slice-of-life works. Put them on your TBR.

S-Tier

Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-

I made like a hundred posts about it. What else can I say?

Arcueid’s route on its own was the best VN experience I had this year. List over. That goes at the top beyond the next two entries. Sorry, not sorry. It was a beautiful, perfected reboot of the story. I loved everything about it. It made me fall in love with Shiki and Arcueid all over again. If we count the false start back in college when I didn’t get halfway through the original VN, the two times I’ve read Tsukihime all the way through, plus the twice I’ve read the manga adaptation, this was the SIXTH time I experienced this particular story. And I cried at the end. It’s that good.

Now, if I love that route as much as I do, why, you may ask, is this entry only third place? ‘Cause Remake is only half of a remake, and it really does feel like it. Not only do we not have Far Side yet, but there’s also a whole Tsukihime-worth of new stuff, half of which hasn’t been paid off yet either, so there’s a pervasive incompleteness that isn’t really a flaw with the game, but will bug me until we get the next part. Also, I wasn’t as blown away by Ciel’s route as other fans were. It turns out it becomes more obvious that I don't relate to Shiki in Ciel’s route nearly as much as I did to him in Arcueid's once you take what was basically the last four hours of the original and expand it to an almost forty-hour new story. Still love it, btw, but it’s only a 'Really really good OMG go read it' story, instead of a modern magnum opus from Nasu (what a disappointment, am I right? lol)

Anyway, this game is a triumph that met my overhyped expectations. I can’t wait to see what Nasu and the gang have planned for in -The other side of red garden-.

The House in Fata Morgana

Welp, that’s just special, innit. Michel and Giselle have planted themselves among some of my favorite leads of all time. The entire cast is strong across all the incarnations of the house. While the first act is still good, once the narrative behind the anthology format is revealed and the whole context comes into play, it becomes a fantastic tragic romance and a beautiful rumination on evil. It almost gets a bit sanctimonious near the end, but it doesn't fall into obvious narrative pitfalls. Considering the premise of the final act, it's appropriate, so I'll give it a pass.

Yet another classic that meets the hype.

WE KNOW THE DEVIL [reread]

On a technicality, this was the best magical girl VN I read all year too.

The top three VNs were neck-and-neck for the ranking, but I gotta give it to this one. It's short, but I think on every level of intent and execution, this game's incredible. A beautiful aesthetic. A creative and haunting choice/route system. Vibes for days. There are no caveats to be found here. I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend this to. Read it. I'm not asking.

And that’s 2023! I’m going to try rereading Va-11 Hall-A in January now that Coffee Talk is fresh in my mind. Sometime after that, I’ll get back to 428--I feel really bad I left it hanging after the tutorial. As always, I hope to get through my downloaded backlog but I also plan on reading a few more Nitro+ games and my first AliceSoft title. Stay tuned!

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep13

Between this and Ciconia Phase 1, I’m starting to think that Ryukishi has some kind of personal grudge against Christmas, lol.

Thoughts under the cut.

Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one, lmao.

Basically as we all expected, this is where the arc veers off from the Minagoroshi storyline and barrels headfirst into it’s own original climax, but I don’t think anyone quite expected how it actually played out.

I’ve seen some people speculating that Ooishi might be responsible for some stuff in Gou, but I don’t think anyone expected him to apparently kill nearly all of Keiichi’s friends. Which actually reminds me a lot of how Minagoroshi ended with everyone thinking that they got a happy ending and then Takano shows up to kill everyone.

And on that note, this episode makes me even more confident in my guess that Takano’s a giant red herring in Gou, and that nothing’s actually going on with her. She and Tomitake did literally nothing in this entire arc except show up to support the protests at the CWS, and it looks like the final scene of this episode takes place long enough after the festival for the season to have changed from summer to autumn, with no reference to the GHD being made. So unless everyone [including Rena] is just refusing to tell him that it happened, it’s probably safe to assume that the GHD didn’t happen at all, which seems very important, since Tatarigoroshi is basically the only part in the VN where we really see the GHD happen in person, and that arc also had the most obvious hints that Takano was evil.

I know this isn’t 100% just a remake for new fans, but I still think it’s genuinely meant to be accessible for new fans, so at this point I just don’t think there’s been enough clues surrounding Takano to really allow for her to be the main villain again.

It might just be because the arc ends with the festival happening and then everything goes to shit, but they also didn’t say anything about what happened to Takano and Tomitake during/after the festival. Which from a meta perspective makes me think it means that they survived, at the very least.

I’m kinda hesitant to say that this is even the end of the question arcs, since the next arc is also a -damashi arc, but at least with three arcs finished, this is really making me think about what patterns we can see with what happens in each arc, and what plays out differently.

At this point it’s pretty obvious that the biggest common factor is that Keiichi survives each arc after sustaining fairly heavy injuries, and after he wakes up in the hospital we see other characters tell him what happened while he was unconscious. Satoko died in a mysterious double murder in the first two arcs, but since she apparently died as part of a larger massacre in this arc, I don’t know if there’s anything to read into with that. This arc also seems to break the pattern of Takano and Tomitake disappearing, like I said, unless we just didn’t get told about that.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it at first, but at this point it seems extremely suspicious to me that every arc has ended with Keiichi being given second-hand information about stuff that he didn’t witness because he was unconscious. And since the people who talk to him in each arc are different [Mion in Onidamashi, Ooishi in Watadamashi, and Rena in Tataridamashi], I don’t think that they’re all just lying to him every single time.

I think I mentioned this whole theory of mine last week, but seeing this pattern continue really makes me think that, especially from the perspective of ‘what information is being given to the audience that even new fans can pick up on and theorize about?’, Keiichi himself is the actual common factor in it all, and I think everything makes a lot more sense if you assume that he was responsible for at least some of these mysterious murders.

This arc really heavily leaned into making Satoko suspicious, including how her big character moments from Minagoroshi apparently happened off-screen this time around, but after how this episode played out I’m more inclined to think that she’s a red herring. There’s also the fact that the whole Teppei scene was even more obviously a hallucination than the fight scene with Rena. It even looked like there were two entirely different types of blood splatter being shown on-screen, with one being the super intense, paint-like blood covering the entire wall like we saw in the Rena fight scene, and the more subdued and realistic-looking blood splatter that seems to happen over the top of the other one.

So what I think might have happened, is that maybe Satoko was innocent the entire time, and she really did just have her whole Minagoroshi moment off-screen, and nothing weird or different happened there. Then, at the festival, she really did want to thank Keiichi for helping her, and genuinely wanted to give him a gift, but then things go to hell in a very Onikakushi-style way, because Satoko had rigged a trap in her house to dump some random objects on Keiichi’s head when he pulled the light switch. Keiichi got hit in the head with some random heavy object, and then when he turns around he sees Satoko holding a baseball bat. Which is actually just Satoshi’s bat, which she genuinely just wants to give to Keiichi as a gift because it was a memento of Satoshi’s, but he immediately assumes that she hit him with it and that it was all a set-up to murder him, and he basically goes L5 and completely loses his shit. Teppei’s entire presence there was almost certainly a hallucination, so it might have just been his way of trying to rationalize the apparent image of Satoko attacking him with a baseball bat, and his way of justifying attacking her, by acting like it was Teppei instead.

I at least think it’s important that we see Satoko talk about how she wants to give Keiichi a gift that used to belong to Satoshi, which is obviously meant to be his baseball bat. So the idea of her bringing it into the room with her, and Keiichi seeing it and assuming the worst, seems pretty plausible.

After that, I think what happened is that Keiichi then basically took the bat and went back to the festival and went on a rampage. I think the whole Ooishi thing is a red herring, and that Rena’s account of the situation was deliberately misleading to make us think that it was him who killed everyone, but in reality him pulling out his gun might have been unrelated. So maybe it was Keiichi who killed Shion, Mion, and Rika instead, and Ooishi pulled out his gun in self-defense.

There’s also the fact that if we assume the whole Teppei thing was a hallucination, then Keiichi probably didn’t actually sustain that many injuries in the first place, but several weeks later after he wakes up in the hospital he apparently has severe headaches, and bandages around his head. Which makes me think that instead of getting lots of beats to the head from Teppei, what actually happened was that Ooishi shot Keiichi in the head to stop his rampage, and Keiichi just miraculously survived, but with memory loss and headaches from the gunshot wound.

I can at least buy the idea that Rena might have intentionally avoided talking about Keiichi’s role in it in order to avoid hurting him, but I get the feeling that even if it played out that way, she might have straight up forced herself to forget it in order to cope.

I’m not entirely sure what motive Keiichi would have to go back to the festival and attack his friends after killing Satoko, but I also don’t know what motive Ooishi would have had to kill them either, lol. For both of them you basically just have to go ‘they probably went crazy and started killing people’. But there’s at least a lot more support for the idea of Keiichi being the one to go crazy like that.

I might have mentioned this last week, but I also kinda think that Keiichi’s secretly a lot more paranoid about what’s going on than he’s been letting on. We haven’t really seen any of his actual thoughts in Gou yet, and he’s probably trying to avoid thinking about a lot of this, but I think in each arc there’s been paranoia brewing under the surface that ends up exploding in one big display of violence that we don’t get to see, and which Keiichi doesn’t fully remember.

In Onidamashi, I think when Rena attacked him it made him assume that all of his fears about her were correct, and also that Rika was probably trying to get him murdered by telling him to trust her.

Then in Watadamashi, I think he might have snapped at the festival and killed Takano and Tomitake because of his paranoia about being strung along into breaking into the Saiguden and hearing about Hinamizawa’s history, and I think the whole Rika-acting-like-Bern scene made him think that she’d caught onto what he did and was going to arrange to get him murdered as punishment.

And now in Tataridamashi, I think that after witnessing first hand just how much influence the village has, seeing that [probably fake] hallucination of Teppei lead him down the path of assuming that it must mean that the entire thing was a giant ruse by the village elders, the government, and the police. Which might be specifically why Shion, Mion, and Rika got killed. I think Satoko was just him thinking he was attacking Teppei, but I think he might have killed those three because they’re part of the three big families, so he might have assumed that they were ‘in on it’ from the start. Which would also explain why Rena was left apparently unharmed, since she has nothing to do with them. It’s also worth noting that in Tataridamashi his only interactions with Takano and Tomitake just involve them showing up to support the CWS protests, but in Watadamashi we saw pretty clearly how freaked out he got from the whole Saiguden incident because of what they did. I’m also still suspicious of how in Onidamashi he goes to talk to them at the festival but then randomly decides not to.

Funnily enough this would also give a good reason for how Gou seems to be avoiding having Keiichi succumb to paranoia, and it’d also give a good justification for how unlike in the VN we don’t get any of his internal narration or anything to understand what he’s thinking. On the one hand it’s just a limitation of the medium, but I could see Ryukishi using it as a way to deceive us by having Keiichi be going through paranoia in a way that’s mostly internal and kept secret from the audience, instead of it being something that we’re shown every moment of like in the VN.

But I think it’s also important that we do still get glimpses of his paranoia in each arc. He gets genuinely scared of Rena in Onidamashi and was on the brink of not opening the door for her even with Rika’s advice. He freaks out in the Saiguden in Watadamashi even more than he does in the VN, and then gets paranoid about hearing Shion and Ooishi question him about what he did at the festival, and then when Rika vents at him he looks seriously freaked out by her. This arc’s more subtle about it, but there’s been a few moments where he seems to be weirded out by Rika’s entire attitude where she keeps talking about fate, and I think at the festival he was probably paranoid about what might happen for similar reasons to everyone watching the scene unfold.

I might be totally wrong about all of this, but it’d be really neat if Gou has actually been exploiting certain elements of the anime format, and the things we take for granted about it, to deceive us about the mystery in each arc.

Of course, the big question with this whole theory is that, well . . . what’s the endgame of it all? If the answer to each arc is just ‘Keiichi keeps succumbing to paranoia and killing people in ways that Rika doesn’t predict’, then what’s going on in the background? Who’s the mastermind? What does Rika need to do to win this game and achieve a happy ending?

It might be an underwhelming answer for most people if this is how they play it, but I think that the big reveal in Gou might just be that there ISN’T anything going on in the background. At least not in the sense of ‘there’s literally a government conspiracy surrounding a supernatural virus that people want to use as a biological weapon’. I think this might just be a version of Higurashi where it really does just all boil down to paranoia-induced murder. And part of the whole meta-mystery might just be that we’re all trying to look for ‘the actual answer’ while glossing over what’s going on right in front of our eyes with Keiichi in each arc. So the route to a happy ending might mostly just involve Rika figuring this out and realizing that Keiichi has his own issues that need to be addressed before his pent-up paranoia explodes and gets people killed. She should at least know that he’s capable of killing people like in Onikakushi, but at the very least in Gou it feels like she’s just been focusing on everyone else and assuming that everything’s fine and good with him.

I think this would also make it a lot easier for them to actually wrap up Gou’s whole story with just 11 more episodes if we don’t get a second season, since it’d mean that there isn’t a whole extra layer to the story that we need to spend time on.

Anyway this is just a very elaborate way of me saying that Keiichi is super sus, lol.

All that aside, we also found out at the end that the next arc will be called Nekodamashi, which is interesting. It might be a coincidence, but it sounds like it might be based on the Nekogoroshi OVA episode from the original anime. I haven’t seen that, but I’ve heard that it mainly exists just to foreshadow the Yamainu’s existence. Which is interesting since at this point I’m like 99% convinced that they don’t actually exist in Gou, and that it’s just been Keiichi getting paranoid about random construction workers doing normal stuff.

Either way I think it might focus on Rika’s perspective on things, and show how she begins trying to figure out what exactly is going on this time around, and what she needs to go to solve it all. The name of the arc at least sounds like it’s about how Rika, aka the cat, is getting deceived about the mystery of Gou.

It also sounds like we’re getting new OP and ED themes for the second half, along with the leaked subtitle change, so that’s cool. It also implies that Featherine and teenage Satoko in this OP really were just setting up for future plot points and didn’t necessarily imply that they’d show up in the first half.

The fact that they show up in the OP is one reason why I think there’s probably still SOME kind of bigger picture mystery going on beyond just Keiichi killing people sometimes, but I think it’ll at least just replace all the stuff with Takano and the Yamainu.

I still think Featherine’s the one making this whole gameboard in the first place, but I’m not sure about teenage Satoko, especially after this episode made me more inclined to think that Satoko isn’t some kind of evil mastermind or anything this time around.

There’s also the whole deal with the sword, and I still have absolutely no idea how THAT might pan out, but I don’t think anyone does, lol.

Also, I’m still hoping that they make time before this ends to go into Shion’s whole backstory arc from Meakashi, since it’d suck if that got cut out, but we’ll see how it goes.

[diamondnokouzai]

talking abt the visual novel characters under the cut <3

mayhart player character. red-haired human commoner, youngest child of her family, last child born of her mother before mother died and father remarried. shorter than average (5′2″ as female, 5′5″ as male) named mayhart because she was born on the fourth of may. wild & uncontrollable, bearing a rage that she herself doesn’t even understand. grew up a commoner alongside her childhood friend yerick. widely rumored in town to be a changeling- she doesn’t act the way a normal human should, never knowing when to leave well enough alone or how to calm down and settle for her lot in life (the number of times when she, accompanied with yerick, has been chased back to town by some beast she provoked in the woods is uncountable). was recently conscripted into the army and adopted by the duchess koballe after her latent magic appeared. one of very few people who can use offensive magic and not purely reconnaissance/traveling magic. finally has an outlet for her rage, and somewhat hates the things she does. wears standard military uniform but badly- doesnt entirely understand how all the straps & bindings work and will not learn :) as the player character, she can be male or female. as a male, his rage turns inward, and as a result he is less open with his own emotions and keeps all his feelings hidden within himself. openly contemptuous of the war, but far more polite than his female counterpart. neither version holds any respect for anyone who hurts the weak. neither can hold their liquor either. 21 in human years

demavieve eldest princess of the draconic realm- as such, the future sovereign. the draconic realm is the only country allied with perine in this war which makes several people very nervous (its like if the us allied with luxembourg in a war against belgium france germany & the uk excep the us was the only country with nukes). demavieve has a very strong sense of honor though so constrains herself to a human form along with swordplay. this is less dangerous than it seems because if demavieves human form dies then she just turns back into her draconic form. her human form also has red hair, but its far more tameable than mayhart’s. she wears it tied back in a ponytail in general. she wears a perine knight’s uniform with vestments from the draconic realm to signify that she is (a) a foreign-lent soldier and (b) a commander. her human form is muscular and about 6′6″. hot and well aware of it.arrogant but also very friendly about it- ‘you love me? haha, of course you are! you seem great too!’. kind of sees this whole thing as a game- dragons live a lot longer than humans, and something like this is just a blip on her radar. very low empathy until someone she cares about is hurt at which point everything goes out the window (and she cares about pretty much all the perine soldiers- not in a very respectful way, but she loves them all and she goes apeshit sometimes). very friendly with serenina. can absolutely hold her liquor. only romanceable as f!mayhart. 23 in human years, ~150 in real time.

serenina the only princess of the former emperor and empress. i spoke about her in more detail in another post so this is gonna mostly be glossed over. wears her hair in afropuffs cause she does her own hair and shes proud of it. temporal (reconnaissance) magic. desperate to please. legally only friends with demavieve, although also friendly with yerick. about 5′0″ although she desperately wants to grow taller (unlikely). her eyes look like theyre black but if you look closely (which she probably wont let you do) theyre actually purple/indigo. is completely out of touch with the rest of the world because shes a princess but she is also very sincere and tries her best to be helpful when she can. very expressionless and sensible. not very well-liked as the former princess of the warmongering emperor and empress. actually very touch starved. does not wear standard military uniform outside of mage’s robes, which she wears over tea dresses (which is another reason some soldiers dislike her) is kept away from alcohol as much as grayson can and as such will get drunk off half a cup of wine. sleepy drunk. 18 in human years.

grayson the bastard son of the former emperor, sereninas older half-brother. grew up as a commoner in the same area as serenina & yerick until he was brought into the royal castle at age 9. fiercely protective of serenina. faux affable- you know the ‘expressionless smile’ princes from otome games/manga always have? thats graysons face pretty much always. legally not eligible to the crown (due to some religious issues with committing patricide & stepmatricide) but like. like hes already doing everything? yk how it is. highest commander of his troops attempting to broker peace with the other countries perine was at war with (most noticeably alloue, nawolem, & farik in order to attack caledonia, which was the puppeteer behind the former reign) but is not above underhanded methods/tactics including attacking noncombatant targets (they dont even have geneva). very intelligent & very calculating- consistently calculates highest reward/lowest risk maneuvers and has them executed flawlessly. his own cunning scares him on occasion, but he mostly locks that away- theres no time for those kinds of feelings in war. a foil to f!mayhart- she is wild, he is restrained; she shows her true feelings regardless, he always acts at a happy neutral; mayhart confronts her uncomfortable feelings, grayson hides them from everyone. about 5′11″, has long dreads that he keeps tied back. dressed in perfect military regalia, including commander’s cape & military crown (basically just a circlet). also cant hold his liquor- hes nearly as bad as serenina. 25 in human years.

izyn the son of count dau claire, the only noble house in perine that has been loyal to grayson since before the deaths of the former emperor and empress. very quiet because he has social anxiety. completely brainless. very friendly but his height (6′4″) and imposing aura (he gets nervous) means that the only people who can easily communicate with him are yerick and grayson. black hair, cropped short, and green eyes. skilled swordsman, mid-commander. will get trapped in an unwinnable situation which yerick needs to save him from. wears his military uniform right but...........not really? he wears the base uniform right but always forgets his commander’s cape. has a dedicated fanbase that came about when he did his training shirtless. literally doesnt think that any of his problems are that deep (honestly doesnt think anything is that deep). suffice to say, theres a reason why count dau claire never shows up and doesnt seem to be involved in any of the decision making of the count’s matters. very protective of yerick (younger brother). is the most visibly affected by the war- as the one who is usually in the center of the violence and doesnt have a survival cheat like demavieve, he has pretty bad ptsd which coupled with his anxiety issues make him a hot mess. his hobbies include hiding in dark rooms that have been reinforced to the point where literally only yerick can get in. despite his size he gets drunk very easily- not as bad as grayson & serenina, but 1-2 mugs of beer puts him out. 26 in human years. only romanceable as m!mayhart

yerick adopted son of count dau clarie. childhood friend of mayhart. born an orphan, an old woman took care of him til he was 4 and she died. stuck around mayharts town cause their family would give him food whenever he stopped by. still ended up fairly malnourished. small but vicious- hes screamed at mayhart lots of times for the stupid shit they would get him into and is not afraid to smack some sense into them. however he is not a good fighter because hes physically very weak- most of his energy in developing went to his magical capabilities, which came to fruition when he was 6. about a year after that (with a great deal more shunning from the townsfolk besides mayhart), he was adopted by count dau claire. was sealed with a subordination seal (used in order to ensure compliance with reasonable requests as long as a reasonable argument is made) for a year to ensure that he wouldnt run away. izyn liked him right away, but it took about 18 months for yerick to not be completely vicious whenever he was approached. as of the modern day of the vn, yerick is as protective over izyn as izyn is him- yerick has seen some of the worst of the world, and in his opinion izyn has not (this is despite the fact that izyn helped overthrow the royal family at age 15 but in fairness to him izyn told yerick none of this) so he wants to make sure his big brother stays happy. yerick holds absolutely no loyalty towards count dau claire or even to grayson- he is loyal to his own needs first, with a decent second being izyn and an even further distant third being mayhart & their family. very prickly & well acquainted with the fact that most people are inherently selfish and would turn away from an orphan on the streets. abandonment issues. his spatial magic is mostly used on rescue ops (mostly mostly getting izyn out of situations where hes surrounded by enemy soldiers but this extends to other perine soldiers). wears his uniform properly, including mage’s robes & commander’s cape over the standard perine uniform. hates to ever appear weak ever, so when he has to go to the medical tent izyn has to either force him there or pretend to be tsundere and throw bandages at him. izyn desperately wants to dote on him but that is one of yericks Hard Boundaries. theres like ONE time when yerick falls asleep because of arcane overexertion and izyn piggybacks him back to camp and yerick acts like its the most shameful secret in the world. foil to m!mayhart- very open with his anger & feelings and shows when he is angry and accepts that part of himself, open with his loyalties and doesnt give a fuck about it, doesnt like the war but does respect it. despite his size, it takes easily 3 barrels of alcohol to even get him tipsy, izyns lack of alcohol tolerance pisses him off cause he has to walk him back to his tent. 5′4″ and wants to grow taller but has accepted his fate. 19 in human years.

eliya legally not a combatant. former princess of caledonia, was discovered at 12 to hold the power of the divine will and so was sent away from her mother and father (who she perceived as loving) to be raised within the church as a holy sacrifice (those who hold the power of the divine will release a huge psychic shockwave when theyre killed, so she was basically raised to be a holy tyke bomb). has a lot of religious obsession, prays 3x a day and has been brainwashed into believing in the power of holy judgement- essentially, her church handler (aka the deacon of the church where she was raised) has raised her to believe that if she commits a sin she’ll be killed so she has a LOT of anxiety over doing the right thing.at the same time shes been brainwashed into believing that doing anything in the service of the throne of caledonia is morally & theologically correct. shes also had occasional contact with her parents (like a yearly dinner or smth) and so still has a lot of loyalty to them due to how they manipulated her and her relationship with her little siblings (7 yrs younger x 2, 2 yrs younger, 13 yrs younger). completely devoted to her church, would gladly martyr herself for them (however this wouldnt trigger the shockwave needed by the army). is loyal to her parents, the deacon, and then the church. is captured by the perine army after a raid on a noncombatant area and spends a lot of time figuring herself out. foil to serenina (esp in terms of loyalty & parents/siblings, emotions (eliya has a lot of them and shows them, serenina is the opposite), their royal treatment, their relationship with trust (serenina doesnt, eliya does and worringly easily). long golden hair, light blue eyes. wears neither a military uniform nor a priests’ uniform, instead wears a one-piece white ‘dress’ (really more a tunic/oversized shirt) & is barefoot. desperate for attention, praise, love, etc. widely disliked due to her POW status but she really thinks shes making all these friends. has quite literally not been able to make her own choices since she was 12 years old. above average alcohol tolerance but nowhere near yerick. 19 in human years.

[yasuda-yoshiya]

Opinions on Ciconia Phase 1!

All is in the name of guiding humanity down the right path...

This should be obvious, but there will be plenty of spoilers below, so please don’t read if you haven’t finished the game yet!

While I was reading, I felt like I had a bit of an up and down relationship with Ciconia. I felt really excited and impressed by the first few hours of the game - the setup of the intro with the whole military propaganda was intriguing and effective, Miyao and Jayden's dynamic was immediately super endearing and adorable, and the whole plot with Meow and her date with Jayden had me absolutely bursting with joy! I still can't quite process how happy I am that Ryukishi committed so hard to "gender weirdness" as a permanent WTC fixture here and that Yasu's story absolutely wasn't a one-off at all, and the whole framing of the plot was so heartfelt and sincere and sympathetic - Meow's gender ambiguity and her relationship with Jayden is completely accepted and celebrated by both the narrative and the entire cast, and the whole situation is framed as something totally sweet and wholesome without a single joke at their expense. Meow herself was incredibly cute, and Jayden's initial surprised reaction to her and his whole phase of overenthusiastically trying too hard to be accepting with Miyao about it in a way that ended up making him uncomfortable ("Yeah, I have a female alter, but I'm still ME, just treat me the same way you always did!") hit the perfect spot of how an awkward but totally well-meaning person really would react in that kind of situation - on the whole, I was and still am delighted that Ryukishi went so far with this!

I can definitely understand people having reservations about some of the specifics of the execution, and there are definitely valid concerns to be had with some of the CPP stuff to be sure - but at least for me personally, just the broader picture that Ryukishi chose to spend so much time having his characters explicitly working through and talking over gender issues in such an unambiguously accepting and humanising way made me so happy; I hadn't remotely anticipated that from Ciconia at all, but I genuinely felt that he did it with a lot of heart and the dynamic between Miyao/Meow and Jayden is still probably my favourite part of the VN overall! (And I also really appreciate that Miyao and Jayden were still definitely framed as being extremely flirty and gay as hell even after Meow entered the picture, since I was afraid we might end up losing that part of their dynamic at first! But no, Jayden's really obviously super in love with both of them and it's adorable.)

Unfortunately, after the very strong opening, I kind of felt a bit let down by the next ten hours or so running so hard into PLOT PLOT PLOT, with Meow almost completely disappearing for no obvious reason and the emotional core that had been originally set up being basically dropped for a lot of RGD-style political intrigue and mysterious apocalypse cults that I felt weren't really given enough context for me to get particularly invested in. It felt to me like there was a very long stretch where the plot basically amounted to a series of increasingly large-scale disasters interspersed with very samey and insubstantial discussions between Miyao and the other faction leaders about how powerless they are and agonising over whether there's anything they can do; since the whole plot takes place on such a macro scale and doesn't really take much time to meaningfully develop the faction leaders as individuals all that much beyond their basic personalities being likable on a surface level, it felt to me like the whole big series of incidents and disasters weren't really fleshed out enough or given the personal and emotional grounding for them to be individually interesting, so it all just sort of blurred together and started to feel kind of tedious.

So, around that point I was feeling more than a little disappointed by Ciconia! And yet... somehow, by the end, I felt like it genuinely did manage to gradually win me over, and the whole ending sequence hit me really hard in a way that I honestly hadn't expected it to. While I do still feel like that whole aforementioned section definitely could have been handled better and not been so dragged out (even just interspersing some of the cute character stuff from the postgame tips would have helped break it up a bit... which I kind of strongly suspect was originally the intent ala Higurashi, and I'm not really sure why they didn't go through with it), after a while I found I was genuinely won over by just how sincere and determined Miyao and the other kids were to avoid fighting each other and to find a peaceful solution, even with all the obstacles in their way. (I think I specifically remember the part where Miyao took over the COU newbie kette's gauntlets to help them intercept his own missiles where I found myself getting genuinely emotional and realising that, huh, I guess I really do care about these kids and this plot after all!)

It's funny, for a long time I felt kind of bemused - from a storytelling perspective - by just how solid the alliance between the kids was and how it totally lasted to the end. There were a whole bunch of incidents like the issue with the ABN/ACR conflict over the crop supplies that I was sort of expecting to lead to the group inevitably falling apart from distrust or suspicion or paranoia in the typical WTC fashion... but they never did! At first I was genuinely confused - like, you have the perfect setup to finally set up some conflict here and let things start to get interesting, Ryukishi! Why are you just sticking with the status quo! - but after a while, I sort of got the feeling that that was kind of the point; that these kids really did earnestly believe in each other and respected each other's common humanity and *did not want* to fight under any circumstances, and how tragic it was that even with their resolve being that strong and lasting through all those rough moments, that they ultimately weren't given any choice in the end. I felt that the game genuinely did sell me on the idea that the image of them all holding hands and chatting with each other to the end in the public bath VR room was their "real selves" - that that really was their true nature, and that those were their true feelings, that ultimately said much more about them as people and meant so much more than the arbitrarily tragic road they ended up being forced to go down entirely against their will.

I think I was kind of thrown for a loop with Ciconia because I generally expect Ryukishi's stories to follow a trajectory where the characters gradually reveal their flaws and their inner "ugliness" as the story goes on (albeit generally in a way that's still very sympathetic and humanising, of course) - but while that did sort of happen at the end here with things like Chloe and Aysha’s turnarounds (and may well happen some more in the future given that we know there were traitors in the order), in this case I honestly felt like the purpose of the story was more about bringing out the kids' inner goodness. They really were good kids! None of this was their fault! They really deserved better! And while I think I normally wouldn't be all that into a story with that kind of straightforward message (you know, me generally being a cynical loveless husk and all), in this case specifically I felt like Ryukishi really managed to convey that specific sort of feeling of loyalty and connectedness and breaking down of boundaries that comes from Internet friendships in a surprisingly touching way.

And I think in that context, even the fact that we don't ever get to see the different factions getting to know each other all that well or forming any particularly deep connections or relationships with each other beyond their political solidarity... also sort of works, honestly? Even just that very casual kind of connection, of these kids just screwing around in an improvised chatroom with a dumb name and babbling at each other about things that don't even particularly matter, the kind of interaction we've all probably experienced at some time without even thinking all that deeply about it - even just that is enough for those kids to meaningfully connect with and humanise each other, to understand on a deep level that the kids from the other factions are basically the same as them, and to want to value their common humanity over everything else. Even something that simple is enough for these kids who don't even know each other all that well to form a strong sense of solidarity that lasts through a hell of a lot of difficult times that could easily have driven them apart - to form a sense of loyalty and shared understanding with each other that feels more real and matters so much more to them than any arbitrary national loyalty possibly could. Maybe I'm just being overly sentimental, but I honestly think that message is kind of beautiful, in its way.

It also feels very relevant to me in... I guess, capturing that unique contemporary feeling of being a young person in the current political climate, and that frustration of the Internet generation being the most interconnected and least bound by national boundaries that we've ever been, and yet being forced to watch mostly powerlessly as the people in power push more and more towards stupid narrow-minded nationalism and xenophobia at a time when humanity most needs to unite against serious existential threats to the planet? So I think in that particular political context, I honestly ended up feeling really moved by just how unambiguously compassionate and sympathetic the narrative was towards these kids - that Ryukishi ended up so firmly deciding to emphasise their "goodness" and how real and precious their bonds were with each other, over anything else. It's not really the kind of story I expected from WTC, but I was legitimately touched by how much the kids' feelings around the bonds they made over the Internet being more "real" than their material reality were treated as being so totally valid - like, yes, the idea of the factory future is treated as a viscerally disturbing one, but the narrative also completely holds up the feelings that led the kids to idealise that future as 100% legit, with genuine emotional truth behind them! It doesn't feel dismissive or patronising at all, and it honestly did give me a bit of that same feeling I got from Umineko and Yasu's story from EP7 in the sense of that totally accepting and non-judgmental message of... "Even if some aspects of what you feel might be ugly, even if some people might be disturbed by you idealising something like that - it's okay to feel that way. Your pain matters. The things that led you to feel this way, to see the horror of a future like that and still long for it on some level, are completely valid. You're seen. You're understood."

And that's honestly come to feel genuinely precious to me as I've had time to reflect on Ciconia and the response it inspired in me; that it did make me feel "seen" in some deep way, maybe on a broader generational level rather than on an intimately personal one like Umineko did, but that still has a lot of value to me too. Ciconia feels very different from Umineko or Higurashi, but it's really got a lot of heart, and I personally felt in the end that the earnestness and overwhelming good nature of the intention behind it was enough for me to forgive any awkwardness in the execution. (Ryukishi is such a good guy! I love him!) So, all in all, I really appreciated Ciconia, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where it goes from here!

[bunnyadvocate]

Analysing Steam VN Reviews

If the quote “our language is the reflection of ourselves” is true, then what could we learn from Steam user reviews (other than that we deserve every bad game ever published there)? I thought it’d be fun to generate some word clouds of Steam VN user reviews: what words tend to pop up in positive reviews vs negative ones, which words are overused in 18+ VNs, and how old can I make myself feel by seeing all these memes references.

Data collection

Using the Steam API, I collected the English user reviews for any VN released before 2019 on Steam, giving us 250,000 reviews in total. I filtered out Doki Doki Literature Club’s 71,000 reviews to prevent the results being skewed too heavily towards one VN. I also filtered out any word that appeared in fewer than 5 different VNs to prevent character names from popular VNs from filling up the results too much.

Word associations

A higher resolution set of these word-cloud images can be found here. The larger a word is the more frequently it’s used.

First up is a comparison of what words tend to appear more often in VN reviews vs a random selection of other games on Steam. There’s nothing too surprising here, it’s mostly just popular VN series and various “weeaboo” terms. “Uncensored” also pops up quite prominently, showing how much 18+ content matters to the medium.

Next is the list of words that are more likely to come up in reviews the user submitted as a thumbs-up (a positive review). While there’s all the usual flattering terms you’d expect, it’s fun to see how many words traditionally associated with negative feelings come up here: tears, cry, sadness, and bittersweet all show up indicating how much we seek a deep emotional release in VNs... also “memes.”

What goes up must come down, here we have words that tend to come up in thumbs-down Steam reviews. Despite VNs being a visual medium, almost all the terms would seem to describe their opinion on the story/writing rather than the visuals, with “boring,” “waste,” and “stupid” all coming up more often than “ugly.” This suggests the most common way a VN can disappoint its users ie through its writing rather than its aesthetic, although this may because it’s easier to judge the visuals from screenshots before you purchase the VN.

The English-developed VNs reviews are mostly full of titles of popular EVNs, but we can also see how much more socially progressive EVNs are, with terms like gender, diversity, and lgbt coming up more often than in JVNs.

Truly Japan is the land of wonder, or at least kawaii catgirls according to these results. It’s curious that “fighting” would be linked to JVNs, perhaps because there’s so few EVNs that depict violence.

Thank you Steam reviews for telling us in the review that a free VN is free. Truly a valuable service.

There’s a certain irony that the words that come up more often in commercial VNs are all about how to get it cheaper: sale, bundle, and discount are all prominent terms.

These are the words that tend to come up more often in otome VNs reviews (VNs with a female protagonist pursuing male love interests). Words associated with fantasy type settings pop up frequently, queen, princess, and prince are all present which is unsurprising given otome’s love of the fantasy genre.

These are the cursed words which come up more often in 18+ VNs, what is lacking in eloquence is at least made up in “tiddies.”

These are the words that tend to come up in shorter reviews. We’re told a picture paints a thousand words, but who needs a thousand words when you have swear words to convey meaning instead? Who needs verbose reviews when you have “fuck gay catgirl boobs.” I’m sold on that VN already.

You can find higher resolution versions of all these word cloud images here (as well as the longer-review wordcloud which wasn’t included here because it’s boring). You can also view the results in spreadsheet format here, which is useful for reading the smaller (less-common) words.

Review trends

I’d be ashamed to put my name to an analysis post that didn’t have a graph or two, so to cleanse the palette after all those word clouds here are a few graphs looking at some review statistics.

Typically reviews tend to be fairly short, just a few sentences at 150 characters, but there’s no stopping the more long-winded of us who might be few in number, but dramatically pull up the average wordcount with their detailed account of everything that happens in a VN.

I expected that the longer a review was, the more likely it would be that the reviewer liked it. It’s the fans who want to talk about it the most isn’t it? Well it turns out to be the other way around, the longer a review is, the more likely it is that the reviewer disliked it. Perhaps unhappy user’s feel the need to justify their opinion more when it goes against the general positive consensus on Steam, where 86% of all reviews are positive. So in accordance with this trend and the excessive length of this post, I hereby give my Steam VN review analysis a thumbs down. Not enough kawaii catgirls.

While I don’t think any of these results were surprising, I hope you found it a fun read. Feel free to give any feedback or suggestions for other analyses either here on tumblr, twitter, or Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616).

Thanks to Lunaterra, /u/8cccc9, and Elm for their input during this analysis.

[verdantspringcourtyard]

FAQ - Miscellaneous

What is this month’s mystery pattern?

Please refer to the image below.

This image is also pinned in the #general channel of the official Onmyoji discord server.

Which shikigami is better, x or y? Is [insert shikigami name here] useful/useless? 

No shikigami is better than the other and no shikigami is completely useless (except Satori and Hone Onna).

If you’re comparing to shikigami who do very similar things like Zashiki vs Oitsuki vs Kaguya, then it is important to take what context you want to use them in.

If what you’re asking is actually “who can i shrine?” then the answer - anyone you don’t plan on ever using, or dupes of shiki you have already maxed the skills of. 

Are the collab shiki good? Are they worth getting? 

Doesn’t matter if they’re good or ‘worth it’, the real questions here are “do you want to give up an opportunity to get a limited shikigami?” and “would you regret not getting them?”. Even if you don’t particularly want the collab shiki, you may want the shards for trading purposes.

Each of the anime collab events has 3 parts. Once the 3rd part for any of the collabs has happened it won’t come back and the trading price will gradually increase.

When will GL get Nura?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(There are licensing issues, so there's no knowing when the collab may or may not even come to your server. It took JP server a very very very long time for him to arrive, so please be patient.)

What about the Bleach collab, when will GL get that?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(TW/JP doesn’t even have it yet, please be patient)

Why does CN get cool events/free stuff/certain rate-ups and not GL? I want GL to be treated the same as them!!

The majority of all events will come to GL regardless if you demand it or not. Some older events like Yamakaze super oniou are completely skipped over so GL could catch up to other servers. To compensate for that, the rewards from such events are made available elsewhere. Anything that doesn’t come to GL, or even TW&JP, is CN exclusive. 

If your demands are for rate-up to be the same as CN, then surprise! GL already has the same rate-ups! (excluding the double SSR releases with rate-up for only 1 of them when the server was still new, that was GL exclusive)  What you’re actually asking for is to be treated like TW/JP. 

If you still really want to be treated exactly like CN and gets the same exclusives as them too, then go play on CN.

I heard this shikigami I just got/am working on is going to be nerfed and rendered useless-....

If you personally have not seen where such info is from (eg; official Onmyouji weibo or dashen/网易大神 account, ingame patch notes for CN, CN patch notes reposted on NGA forums or NGA weibo, etc), then consider anything relating to nerfs or buffs untrue.

Same goes for news about new shikigami, new skins, any brand new content in general.

I heard that the next SSR/SP is going to be...

Unless you’ve seen the leaks for this sort of info, please consider these rumours as speculation only.

To know what shikigami are potentially going to please check the unleased shikigami part of this page on the wiki, there’ll be a list of unreleased and some unconfirmed shikigami.  

Is the game P2W?

You can play the game the P2W way, but it is not necessary. Being completely F2P is possible. Besides, whether you’re P2W or F2P, we’re all still be subjected to the same rng when it comes mitama stats!

Like with any game with micro-transactions; remember to spend responsibly and moderately.

What should my pvp team be?

Teams for pvp are very flexible, so as long as you know what you’re doing you could use almost anything. If you don’t, then maybe don’t do pvp yet. Go figure out what your preferred play style is, which shiki you prefer using and what synergises with them first.

If you just want to copy the current meta, then the answer is easy - spectate pvp when it’s pvp time in your server. (not tier 8 though, that has its own unique meta)

Or if you want a more specific answer, then ask this question; “my current pvp team isn’t working too well, how can I improve it?” or “how do I counter certain teams (eg, Bakejujira teams) with the shiki & mitama/souls sets I have?”.

Were the drop rates for 6* in mitama/soul 10-11 nerfed?

Unfortunately, the harsh truth is - no, you’re either experiencing some very bad rng or you only just became able to farm mitama/soul 10. If the latter, for your first few runs drop rate for mitama/soul 10 will seem great, then as time goes it seems like it gets worse and worse. That ‘worse drop rate’ is actually the norm. 

Best ways to get 6* are farming mitama/soul 11, sougenbi, the goryou/totem dungeons, true orochi and exchanging orochi scales. (just for reference, mitama/soul 10 only has ~3% drop rate for 6*)

Were the rates for black daruma shards from boss raids nerfed?

Again, unfortunately, the harsh truth is - no. Please accept the fact that you are experiencing some bad rng at the moment.

Were the drop rates for memory scroll fragments nerfed?

First, ask other GL players if they are experiencing the same low drop rate as you. Second, ask CN or TW&JP players if they experienced a low drop rate during their most recent scroll event.

If the general response seems to be “yeah, drop rate feels lower than usual” then it has in fact been nerfed. This would be a perfect time to contact ingame support or complain about in the official Onmyoji discord.

I don’t have my 1st  6* shikigami but there are lower level players who already have multiple 6*s... am I progressing too slowly?

No, you’re not. Those players could be level suppressors, you could be over levelled, maybe they’re players who took the asap in “6* a farmer shiki asap!!” way too seriously.

Most people make their first 6* by level 30-50. If your level is anywhere in that range, you’re doing just fine.

Don’t worry too much about progressing too slow or fast, play the game at your own pace.

Where can I find a [insert name of some type of 3rd party tools/bots/auto-clickers/whatever]?

That’s an odd way to ask “how can I get myself potentially banned?”.

Don’t use 3rd party tools. You can get banned for using them.

If you do use 3rd party tools, then never ever post screenshots of you using them. Why? Because it’s evidence that can be used against you should anyone decide to take that proof, that you posted yourself, and report your account.

Is selling accounts ok to do?

CN accounts - yes. There’s an app/site set up especially for that and is authorised or made by NetEase. I don’t know the full details, so to know more you’ll have to ask CN players.

GL, TW & JP - no.

KR, VN & TH - probably no.

I keep seeing other player’s say “dalao” and “dalao daidaiwo“, what does it mean?

“我亲爱的大佬，请带带我” or “my dear dalao please daidaiwo” is a CN meme. In the context of Onmyouji it basically means “op player pls carry me”.

大佬 / dalao = experienced person, op player in a game 带带我 / daidaiwo = carry me

What does “african“ and “european” mean in the context of Onmyouji?

In CN the unlucky streak and full SSR collection achievements are literally called “African Onmyouji” and “European Emperor”. The terms themselves aren’t unique to Onmyouji and are commonly said in chinese gaming communities, particularly ones for gacha games.

Just because these terms are common does not make using them ok.

[yoosungkimsfeelingsarejustified]

Do you like any character x character ships (not MC ships)? If so, which ones do you like? Just curious :D (Thank you for your Valid opinions on this games premise/plotline... i agree with practically everything you say)

Thank you for liking my blog! 💚 To answer your question, I’m not super into any character/character ships since I’m mostly interested in shipping them with myself (not even necessarily with MC just… myself). There are a few I like but none that I would say I’m particularly passionate about, I like them in a more passive way, you know?

One that I like is Jaehee/Rika, and before anyone says anything, I like it mostly as a pre-Mint Eye ship, or in AUs where Mint Eye isn’t a thing. I think Jaehee and Rika would have a lot of common interests to bond over, and I really liked how they were with each other in that one vn in V’s route, so yeah I think they could be really cute, but only under certain circumstances (btw can I just say I was really glad to have a vn with actual significant interaction between Jaehee and Rika?? not even for shipping reasons I just was always annoyed that Jaehee didn’t seem to have any relationship with Rika at all in the original game so that was nice to have) (also I like femslash a lot and Jaehee/Rika is basically the only viable one that doesn’t involve MC) (also Jaehee/Rika smut might actually make me combust js)

Aside from that uuuuh Yooran is okay? By which I mean how much I like it really depends on how it’s written. I think it’s an interesting ship in concept but like, as far as fan content goes it’s a very mixed bag for me so it’s hard for me to really embrace it. When it’s good it’s good, but when it’s bad it’s often really bad so idk (actually I can just direct you to this post it’s a lot more clear and detailed)

Yooseven would probably be my favorite character/character ship if I had to pick one, though I’m still pretty passive about it. I like their dynamic as friends and I think it would be pretty easy to turn it into a romance so yeah I’m good with Yooseven for the most part. The only thing that does sometimes annoy me is the same thing that annoys me about pretty much every ship involving Yoosung, which is that his problems are sidelined and his personality is simplified to “ball of pure sunshine whose life revolves around solving his partner’s problems” which is like… annoying and boring but as long as people aren’t portraying it like that, it’s good

[pride-vns-blog]

LGBTQ VN Week: Day Four! (6/21)

Wow, we’re already at the fourth day of LGBTQ visual novel recommendations! You’ve probably seen this preface on previous parts of this list, but if you haven’t read my first post, that writeup’s “One note before we get started” section, explains more clearly what this list is and why I’m writing it!

Plenty of visual novels talk about sex and intimacy, so for today, I’ve set aside four with my personal favorite approaches to the topic — CODE:Phantasm’s 404 Error: Connection Not Found, parade’s No Thank You!!!, SugarScript’s Cute Demon Crashers, and Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim, plus a conversation with Mitch about his creative process on Tusks.

Head on in to hear about your little brother dyeing his hair pink, a truly inscrutable protagonist, freeloading demons playing Mario Kart, and inspirational Skyrim mods!

404 ERROR: CONNECTION NOT FOUND (CODE:PHANTASM)

Itchio Tagline: “Sometimes connecting to others is harder than loneliness.” Genre(s): Slice of life; drama. Release Date: July 30th, 2017 (demo); TBA (full version). Content Warnings: Text-only depiction of sex and sex work; adult content.

404 Error: Connection Not Found is the story of Ren Matsuura, a camboy who ran away from home after turning eighteen and supports himself financially through camming — but thanks to his agoraphobia and general anxiety, he rarely goes outside, to the point that he’s pared all his social connections down to casual conversations with his clients and lying to his younger brother Haru about what he does for a living. When his brother decides to come visit for the first time since Ren moved out, Ren is forced to confront the fact that his guilt and shame have driven him into a corner with no support system. In the span of the demo, he starts to try and reach out to the clients he has a more regular relationship with to prepare him for Haru’s eventual visit, ending on a cliffhanger that seems to be leading directly into the plotline of the main story.

This visual novel’s demo is the shortest of all the stories on my entire list, to my knowledge, but it’s also the most memorable demo I’ve played in a long, long while. As someone who’s had to contend with similar mental illnesses in the past — paranoia and agoraphobia unsurprisingly have a pretty high degree of comorbidity! — I felt like Ren’s slow struggle to make progress for the sake of his younger brother was written sincerely, thoughtfully, and believably in the timespan of a single demo playthrough. Ren can be funny, when he’s not spiraling internally, and his rocky progress at trying to talk to others more honestly is loaded with plenty of funny jokes and quips about his takes on things. He’s a sympathetic, well-rounded protagonist who comes across strongly in the demo alone, and I ended up really rooting for him to make it to a place where he was happier with his life.

There’s another aspect to the story that I ended up really liking, too: the fact that sex work, especially jobs like camming, can be extremely common among LGBTQ people who can’t support themselves financially in other ways. Ren can’t go outside and can’t interact with many people without severe, earth-shattering anxiety attacks (a few of which we see in the demo!), so this job is what he’s got. It’s a job that’s sustained him for years, and although it’s certainly fed into his own relative isolation, 404 Error seemed to walk that careful balance of making it explicit that it’s Ren’s own lack of steady support for his mental illness instead of the simple fact that he does sex work that causes his interpersonal problems. I’m optimistic about the remainder of the story’s handling of those kinds of things, too, because what was present in the demo was sympathetic and sincere! There’s not very many sex workers or camgirls/camboys in visual novels outside of an extremely tiny handful, let ones alone in conjunction to stories that acknowledge of the way LGBTQ people as a whole can struggle with more convential jobs, so Ren’s genuinely empathetic personality and the hope I have for his future makes me excited to see where CODE:Phantasm takes 404 Error from here.

404 Error: Connection Not Found’s free Yaoi Game Jam demo is available now, and you can follow the CODE:Phantasm team on Itch.io, Twitter, or Tumblr to stay updated on their progress with Ren’s story.

NO THANK YOU!!! (PARADE)

MangaGamer Tagline: “This summer vacation begins with a car accident...” Genre(s): Comedy; drama; mystery. Release Date: June 28, 2013 (Japanese); February 27, 2015 (English).  Content Warnings: Adult content; multiple sex scenes; frequent sexual harassment; blood; drugs; violence; death.

Right off the bat, I think parade’s debut visual novel (as a studio, at least) does a lot of interesting things and definitely seems to be aiming high with creating distinct, memorable stories. The art in No Thank You!!! is gorgeous, its voice acting is top-tier, a lot of the side characters are compelling even beyond the space or role the narrative gives them, and the love interests alone are all fully-realized characters with interesting stories. Romance option Ryu’s route, in particular, fleshes out the larger sense of mystery and the other characters to an astounding degree! That’s to say nothing of the most unique mechanic — which I mostly call the NTY!!! button — that offers you the chance to say “no thank you” in a variety of scenes without always telling you what it is you’re saying that to. It’s occasionally a little too easy to guess, but at certain points I ended up lulled into a false sense of security with that easiness that the game was all too ready to take advantage of with a much less obvious choice.

One of the sticking points with No Thank You!!! that I’ve seen other players express, on the other hand, is the way protagonist Haru is written. That’s not to say his writing specifically is bad — parade clearly had a vision in mind for Haru’s personality, and from his sketchy beginnings to his clearer end, he’s a coherent character with a consistent narrative. While the crux of the story is more insight into Haru, where he came from, and what the truth behind all those mysteries might be, though, Haru’s behavior still underpins a lot of what drives the romance routes forward. And his behavior... The official quote on his personality, “[s]exual harassment is an everyday activity for him,” can at times seem like it’s underselling exactly how often he tries to grab an ass. It’s no surprise that a fair few other players I’ve seen have walked away with pretty strong opinions on Haru as a character. (I’m personally not a huge fan.)

But to me, a divisive protagonist who you don’t actually fully understand as a character — Haru’s thoughts on a lot of key things are far less accessible than the likes of Aoba Seragaki or most Western M/M protagonists, which leaves you knowing most of his thoughts or feelings via his interactions from others — seems to go perfectly hand-in-hand with the way the visual novel as a whole operates. No Thank You!!! puts you at a distance by Haru’s viewpoint being occasionally “indecipherable” (to use the official phrasing), and then it throws you further with its sometimes-unpredictable NTY!!! button mechanic, but the strength of its other individual pieces taken together still sold me on it as both a solid set of mystery stories and an 18+ dating sim.

Also I really like Maki.

No Thank You!!! is available for a sale price of $19.95 on MangaGamer’s store (18+), and you can read more about parade’s story and characters on MangaGamer’s designated No Thank You!!! page (also 18+).

CUTE DEMON CRASHERS (SUGARSCRIPT)

Itchio Tagline: “A short and silly consent-friendly and sex-positive VN!” Genre(s): Modern fantasy. Release Date: April 7th, 2015 (Mirari and Akki’s routes); August 15th, 2015 (full version). Content Warnings: Multiple sex scenes; detailed uncensored nudity.

I don’t think I could sum up Cute Demon Crashers better than the Itch.io tagline does — it’s short, it’s hilarious, and it’s got an emphasis on consent that meshes perfectly with its goofy “a bunch of incubi and one succubus come to the mortal realm to have sex” plot. The characters are all charming and fit perfectly into its universe, with distinct personalities that come across clearly without ever feeling hamfisted in the limited time that the script lets you spend with them. Although this isn’t necessarily a romance game, especially given that incubi and succubi are “closer to what people know of as aromantic” according to the SugarScript FAQ, its cute, thoughtful writing and adorable design in everything from the characters to the user interface mean that there’s plenty of love infused in every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers.

Like yesterday’s We Know The Devil, Cute Demon Crashers is one of those visual novels with a distinct, memorable mechanic that almost placed it squarely in Tuesday’s creative design list. Cute Demon Crashers is one of the first visual novels — or, by my experience, the first altogether — to implement a mechanic specifically themed around stopping in the middle of sex. If you’re ever uncomfortable or you just plain want the scene to end, you can hit a button and protagonist Claire will talk with her partner to bring things to a close. (There’s also an option to just plain old not have sex with any of them, and spending time with the characters!) A lot of the dialogue in these scenes in particular is thoughtful, nuanced, and reads to me as being a pretty realistic depiction of how someone like Claire might ask those questions or express those kinds of concerns. 

The way Cute Demon Crashers handles intimacy and sexuality, by another measure, is one of those things that I think has also had a not-insignificant impact on the visual novel community as a whole; I’ve seen a fair number of people who’ve apparently never enjoyed an 18+ dating sim before talk about how its portrayal of sex resonated with them or brought them some measure of comfort. Because of the SugarScript team’s relative investment in the English-language visual novel scene as a whole, too — this project was born out of NaNoRenO and I’ve seen them promote development forum hub LemmaSoft or other small visual novels more than once — the compassion for the player that’s written into every aspect of Cute Demon Crashers seems to extend naturally to everyone else around the team in real life, which is something extremely special.

The entirety of Cute Demon Crashers is available now for free, and you can find out more information on its upcoming sequel (Cute Demon Crashers: Side B) on the SugarScript Twitter, Tumblr, and Itch.io!

Itchio Tagline: “GAY ORCS available in YOUR AREA.” Genre(s): Romance; fantasy; community building. Release Date: July 18th, 2015 (First Day demo); January 1st, 2018 (FUARLANG/full main story); TBA (individual route endings). Content Warnings: Adult content; sex; mentions of violence.

Mitch Alexander’s Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim, from head to toe, is one of my favorite depictions of sex and intimacy in video games — and with every gradual update, especially the most recent FUARLANG build that finished out the mai storyline, I’ve only become more sure of that. There’s an endearingly genuine quality to its art, character dialogue, and even in things like the NPC autonomy feature, where your companions have just as many chances to sway things like group votes or decide who’s on watch as you would without NPC autonomy being enabled. 

Interested to hear Mitch talk a little bit about his design process and the inspiration behind Tusks, I got in touch and asked him a few questions!

Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Mitch! While the title might be fairly self-explanatory, haha, how would you outline Tusks: An Orc Dating Sim in more detail to somebody new?

Tusks is a visual novel where the player joins a group at an annual orcish gathering, in a forest at the edge of a semi-mythical version of Scotland, and you then travel with this new found family and get to know them better. Most of the game is your group getting into adventures, talking to them one-on-one at camp at nighttime, and making decisions about how to go about your travels. The game's cast are all queer, and the game itself is an exploration of queer identity, community, history, and our relationship with the idea of monstrosity/Otherness.

I think it's fair to say that Tusks, as well as your larger body of work, deals a lot with intimacy and sexuality, especially the intersection between those two things; this is probably a question you've thought over yourself a fair bit, but what in particular interests you about those topics that drives you to explore them in Tusks and your other work?

Part of it is the fact that intimacy and sexuality are areas that can be massively important to queer people (especially since many of us are marginalised as a result of our sexuality being seen as deviant) but there aren't a lot of mainstream sources that play with intimacy and sexuality in relevant ways. And part of it is just because exploring sexuality for its own sake can be fun as well!

Definitely! There's always room for more fun with depictions of sexuality, haha. The premise for an all-orc dating sim is definitely a memorable one, and one you've fleshed out incredibly well with the thoughtfulness of your worldbuilding and character dynamics. What was the original inspiration that you built Tusks on, and what helped carry you across the finishing line of completing (for the most part) its story?

It was a lot of different threads coming together: I'd been playing a modded Skyrim save with an orc character who, in my head, was gay and had left his stronghold so to find other orcs like him and establish his own wee found family. That happened at the same time as me finding out about the NaNoReNo visual novel game jam, plus wanting to work on a game that actually put queer characters and discussions first and foremost rather than us just being a token presentation.

As for what carried me through, there was lots of things: the excitement of getting to tell stories that you just don't see in mainstream games, getting amazing feedback from players, and then at the end when I released the full main story on New Years', it was sheer bloody-mindedness.

There's a fair few interesting mechanics in Tusks, especially with regards to NPC autonomy; can you share a little bit of insight on why you decided to include those and how they function in the code?

NPC autonomy's a small but effective way of just slightly upsetting this idea that in visual novels, the player character gets to make all the decisions -- it automatically puts you in a decision-making leader role, and it's up to the writer then to narratively justify that -- which can be difficult if you're wanting to tell a story about a group of equal partners. So instead, NPC autonomy lets characters vote on things or lets characters potentially turn you down for romantic encounters.

It's an optional feature, so it's possible to play the game without it being on -- it just slightly changes the flow of the story and makes it seem a tad-bit more like you're part of a collective, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense! I think my playthroughs where NPC autonomy was on were definitely more interesting, by and large, because it really does add a lot to that sense of cooperation and community.

If you had to pick just one, what non-human (and non-orc) creature do you think more people should appreciate?

I'm really interested in exploring things with strong mythological connotations like minotaurs, since they're surrounded by particular ideas like labyrinths, being half-human and half-animal. I'd also really like to see someone explore the monstrousness of hags from [Dungeons and Dragons], because I think there's probably a way to talk about them and explore their relationships to femininity, presentation, glamour magick, witchcraft, and power.

Good choices! Those are both definitely really interesting ones. To wrap things up, are there any LGBTQ visual novels from other developers that you'd like to recommend?

I'd recommend checking out The Bitter Drop, by Isak Grozny; Ladykiller in a Bind by Christine Love, and We Know the Devil by Date Nighto!

Perfect! It's been a pleasure talking to you, Mitch, and I'm looking forward to your future projects.

Tusks: The Orc Dating Sim is available now for a reverse-sale price of $2.02, and you can support Mitch Alexander’s work on Patreon or follow his “nonsense” on Twitter and fully-released work on Itch.io!

[kyuwook09]

Upcoming otome games 2018

Since I made a trashy review of last year’s line up of localized games, I figure I’ll do one this year too XD.

Like last year, I’ve played most of the games set to be localize(I still haven’t touched my Hakuouki yet so..’most’) …Here’s a mini review and thoughts/opinion on the games ヽ(ヅ)ノ ....I’ll try to avoid spoilers..as much as I can. Thankfully unlike last year, Aksys game of choice are all great this year and here is why.

7′sCarlet

Honestly, I was first put off by 7′sCarler due to one flaw. The MC. Like she was introduced as a plain collage girl, who would be excited about that? And to make it worse...her character sprite is..well..I’m going to be blunt here...it looks weird..(´･ω･`)

^see what I mean?

Anyway, once I get pass that...obstacle, 7′sCarlet was probably one of my favorites last year. Mainly due to me being a sucker for mystery trope..murder mysteries to be exact. Also by the end of the game, Ichiko(MC) manage to be redeem by having the game really involves her.♥（ﾉ´∀`）

^little Ichiko looks so much cuter (σ≧∀≦)σ

Unlike some of the otome games, wherein MC goes to a route sees that the guy has a problem, adjusts herself so that the guy’s problem is magically solve..without her being really needed most part of the story. Here Ichiko is a crucial part of the story and she may have been a damsel in distress half of the game but there is a reason for that too. Which will be revealed little by little as the game progress on and players finishes the routes. She was actually really great in one route which made the story a lot more fun.♥（ﾉ´∀`）

Characters of the game are also lovable and the bad guy did his part well. The plot twist of the story is kinda predictable yet its not the boring kind of predictable. The true ending did go to the ‘open ending’ type but its a nice wrap up of the game overall. I did regret not having the Limited Edition of the game...if only I wasn’t so weirded out by how Ichiko’s sprite is then I could have gotten it.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PS: BEST GUY is the ossan..or well..the eldest(ΘεΘʃƪ)

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly

I first played Black Butterfly last 2 years ago and it left a strong impression on me. It was actually on my ‘To Buy’ list even before I bought a vita and it did not disappoint me.♡(ŐωŐ人)

What were doing in a mansion in which they cannot leave? Do they know each other? Who is the owner of the mansion? What happened to them? These were some of the question that will leave players hook in their seats and be engaged in the story. ╭( ･ㅂ･)و Character development especially for the Beniyuuri(MC) was really great, even if the whole game was so short, they managed to have each of the characters grow and have their story have its satisfying ending.

Unlike most otome games though, Psychedelica is like a manage/anime that I’m watching and little by little the truth of the character’s ‘situation’ unveil with each passing time, its more on the mystery VN rather than an otome to be honest. That said, it’s plot and romance scenes are well balanced and despite it being on the ‘tragic’ kind of game, it also have its humor and character interactions were always a delight.(ｏ'ｖ｀ｂ)ｂ

Despite my ‘Do it for Him’ banner, I equally love all the guys. But I have a reason why Kagiha is the one I choose to be the reason to play the game. But... nah who am I kidding, I love Kagiha...and he deserves so much more (┳Д┳)

I’ll end my review with this. I HOPE YOU GUYS WILL CRY AS MUCH AS I DID WHEN YOU GET TO THIER ‘GOOD/TRUE END’ ψ(｀∇´)ψ

Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk

Ok, unlike the first game I don’t recommend this game and not because its terrible BUT IF ROMANCE IS YOUR MAIN REASON then I don’t recommend it. 

The fact is, its a great game BUT if what you’re hoping for in an otome game is romancing with the guys and have some sweet scene or a great build up of romance, then Ashen Hawk might disappoint you a bit. It’s like the romance part of the game is 20-30% and on that low percent, 70% of that romance(the most satisfying romance that is) goes to this guy.＼（Ｔ∇Ｔ）／

Nevertheless, I love Ashen Hawk just like Black Butterfly, like the first game, it made me cry and really engaged in the story. The story/plot did have some holes and unanswered question more than Black Butterfly but in the end, I became attached with the characters, be it the main characters or even the ‘bad guy’ and for me, that’s what matters in an otome game. 

Let’s play who has the hotter dad( ⊙‿⊙)

Here is a breakdown of what the game’s theme is (based on my play experience):

35% Story/Plot

20% Romance

25% ANGST...(YES THIS GAME MADE ME CRY...LOTS)

20% Character Development

IF YOU THINK SHIRAISHI’S ‘GOOD END’ IS SAD, WELL....WAIT TILL YOU PLAY PSYCHEDELICA...(・∀・)

Also, Jed is such an awesome MC, even Girls falls in love with her (´ε｀ )♡ heck these two are fighting over her...with her still being in male disguise...

Code: Realize ~Future Blessings~/Code: Realize ~Bouquet of Rainbows~ 

I don’t think it’s necessary for me to place this here since I think all of us are already waiting for March 30 to come.٩(●ᴗ●)۶

I put it here to make a slight suggestion, if you have a ps4, try getting that version instead. The gorgeous CGs of the game will be in high def and make for an instant wallpapers.

^Me the entire Sholmes route cause Watson doesn’t have a route....Also on Finis route...cause Hansel also doesn’t have a route....

That said, I hope they also localize the 2nd fan disk, Shirogane no Kiseki/Silver Miracles. It was a much better ending to the game overall.（๑✧∀✧๑）

Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms

The long awaited sequel for the first part of the Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds. This game will be the concluding part in which Chizuru will finally have her ‘happy end’ together with her man. 

I keep repeating this but, as much as I love Saito and Okita I do hope this will be the last Hakuouki---as if. (；一ω一||) Don’t get me wrong, I love this game, but constantly porting and adding to it when the story is great enough on its own just seems like a desperate move for otomate/idea factory. Like they can’t let go and leave this series to its happy end already and then focus on other great project.(VARIABLE BARRICADE!!) Like with Amnesia, after Amnesia World, they let it rest and started on Collar x Malice, which btw received tons of positive reviews.

Anyway, it’s great that they decided to localize this and not keep the fans hanging due to the incomplete story of the first game. (ノ_<。)

And, I’m going on a wild guess here but...I think the chances of them localizing SSL is not so far off. Like what I said last year, it does not have any final word yet but, Aksys says they’re trying their best to get this localise. Info taken here

PS. I just noticed, aside from Code:Realize, all of the game lineup this year has one thing in common: TRAGIC STORY (・ωｰ)～☆

[cannibalisticskittles]

@umbreonic @ayamabuki

uhhhh this got a bit long so i’m read-moreing this

making them older would do wonders for the timeline, tbh. the timeline for mint eye is too cramped to fit in meeting the boys, adopting em, beginning construction of mint eye, kidnapping saeran, getting other members -- unless rika started when she was still going thru puberty. and then, where’d she get the money? the land?

...tho if they were in their late twenties/early thirties, their relationship would change to the point that... i don’t think the v route would quite work? rika’s whole thing in that route is that she was abused as a kid, unloved, and he was her focal point, the only one who ever loved him. she moved out of her parents house to be with him and according to yoosung, cut ties with most of her family immediately after moving out. it’s not... good, but her age in canon -- unclear, and ranging from 13-16 depending in various chatrooms and VNs -- goes hand-in-hand with the relationship was described. still growing, hadn’t experienced much of life but tragedy, and latched onto each other with unhealthy ideas of what romance should be and projected those onto each other -- and unhealthy ideas of selfhood, as of course they were v co-dependent, and unhealthy views of mental illness, too, as v and rika were p much their sole source of counsel, so when v said “nah, you don’t need therapy, i love your darkness, take it out on me, this is what love is!” they both thought this was hunky-dory and neither of them were mature enough -- or had enough experience -- to think hey wait............. no. this is bad, actually, we shouldn’t do this.

though, of course, while romanticizing UN-romantic behavior is v common some time within ~13-17, it’s def not exclusive to that, either. with age TENDS to come experience -- yall remember when twilight was the big thing and it was so romantic and then you hit that point where you looked back and thought ‘oh wait, hey, i now (assuming that I was once into it and didn’t think it was unhealthy when i first encountered it) have more experience in life and understand power dynamics and relationships better, even if only conceptually, so i no longer think the behavior in these books is so wonderful?’ -- but if you don’t encounter situations in life where you’d learn these things....... well. can’t really evolve your views on life/love.

given that the inexperience/undeveloped views of love tied in so much with the v route, when i played the route, i ASSUMED that the ages were, at least to some extent, planned? but! there’s still the problem of not knowing! were they meant to seem inexperienced/rife with incorrect assumptions about love because of their age? because of isolation from their peers/family? were they meant to be older, more evenly matched? did cheritz always intend for them to be so young? and if so, did they mean to make rika so young? and if not, why does this appear (though varying slightly) in multiple chatrooms and VNs, and if she was meant to, why is that aspect never brought up? because it was a goof on their part, because it was assumed it didn’t impact the relationship that much???

anyway. i wrote a lot, sorry. what’s your deal, cheritz. why can’t you just tell me how old everyone was supposed to be and i can figure out what to think.

[thirdmagic]

I have no fucking clue what happens in the Fate series (despite following you and kurozu for quite a while, I somehow have not the slightest clue what the shit even happens in this series) but I am very happy for these Utena-related revelations for you.

Hahaha, thank you! I know I’m a huge big mess of fandoms of a blog despite how I originally started as a Fate blog mainly, but since then I’ve had so many that I bet a lot of people who followed me for Fate-unrelated stuff might be a bit confused and overwhelmed by how much I post of it.

For some context I guess, since I know all this rambling and hype of mine probably makes very little sense from an outside POV: Fate is a series I have always loved and adored for a lot of reasons, and the original Fate/stay night visual novel has always been close to my heart. I’ve always seen a lot of different parallels and similarities between Utena and the VN and other elements of the series, but never considered them to be connected because while I love and appreciate it’s main writer, Kinoko Nasu, very much, and really enjoyed the way he wrote his female characters as nuanced human beings... I never really thought of him as a feminist figure or anything. I still don’t! There’s far too many messy little things in his writing for him to be considered such, and I can’t say he ever handles gender in the most sensitive ways. But I do know that he legitimately tries to be good to his female characters, and that when he writes, he writes with sincerity, as opposed to many ‘straight dudes thinking with their dicks’ writers. And while I can see some themes in his work that can be seen as feminist, his track record in writing also has some extremely fucky and uncomfortable stuff, so I do feel he tries his best to be good to his women but doesn’t write with feminist intentions in mind. I try to stay realistic about how I perceive him. He’s also always been modest about most things and admitted in one interview that yeah, as far as feminism goes, his writing leaves some things to be desired, which I really gotta respect.

But this interview that’s really released has him talk about Ikuhara’s works, and Utena in particular and reading all these thoughts had me extremely shook? It’s such a fantastic read not just because he really, really gets Utena-- he describes it as a masterpiece, he gets how the symbolism and abstractness of it works and the meaning behind it, how it’s meant to be something to interpreted from many different subjective angles, but what had me the most shook is that he also understand the feminist themes in it? Like he was absolutely on point on Utena and Anthy’s arcs and the messages behind them, how their characters represent these feminist themes, what Utena’s relationship with Akio served in the story and her relationship with Anthy... like he literally said that in his opinion, the people who keep it closest to their heart are people who truly understood what it’s about, but also women who resonated with the difficult patriarchal struggles the show represents. Like it blew my mind because i honestly did not expect him to understand that. He’s a very straight dude writer in many ways, just, you know, a good one, so like I did not expect him to be sensitive to these things at all and I won’t lie I’m pretty damn happy. It also makes me feel weirdly validated to know that this write I like a lot was so inspired and influenced by and likes such a wonderful, incredible and I daresay revolutionary work as Utena, and understands it.

Also the whole interview was just a really good read and hearing him fanboy about it was really adorable and endearing.... and talking about how much he loves it and was inspired by it... 

WHAT’S REALLY FREAKING ME OUT THOUGH is this: Fate/stay night, and the series in particular, always had a lot of things in common with Utena. There’s a character who’s a lot like Saionji but absolutely ten times worse in every way, without his more sympathetic/pitiful qualities, who even has similair hair except blue and he outright confirms the character in question was inspired by him?? The main character has a LOT in common with Utena thematically, and one of the heroines is like if Anthy was an actual Japanese teenage girl- not an exact carbon copy, but they have a lot in common in terms of character arcs, personalities, and thematic elements. (Though he confirmed she wasn’t inspired by Anthy but the similarities are still there). 

There’s also a lot of sword/impalement imagery, much of it symbolic, a character who literally embodies the curses and hatred of the entire world much like Anthy with her swords of hate, lots of imagery involving being both stabbed with a lot of swords and being impaled by swords from the inside, and like, the amount of sheer symbolism present EVERYWHERE in Fate/stay night always made me think ‘haha it really lives up to Utena’ so now I’m really really shook???? Like dude. DUDE. I always thought that was coincidental and just me seeing parallels everywhere, but the writer not only confirmed that one of his characters from another work (not Fate) was inspired by Anthy, but several others were too, and I’m just like??? Holy fuck? All the parallels and similairities I saw are suddenly perfectly validated???? Like who knows what else in Fate was inspired by Utena either subconsciously or not.and while much of it might be coincidental the fact that the writers likes, understands, and was inspired by Utena PUTS IT ALL IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway yes I’m going to be screaming about this for a while. I’m sorry my body was just.... wholly unprepared for all this it’s more than I can take. It’s too much.

[vieuxnoyesrp]

                                ⚜  ~ T H E   I N F E R N O ~ ⚜

The watery graves of New Orleans’ lost souls have begun the boil and steam. They are angry; they will not be appeased. Their fury burns red-hot, and they are coming to b u r n this kingdom of devils until it is the hell it deserves. For if the lost souls of New Orleans can’t have this city... 

... Then it may as well be ash. 

Beneath the cut, you’ll find an extensive summary of the character-specific plot drops that will occur during our event.

Please note that while we have laid out this guide, it is up to the individual roleplayers to decide when and how to start these threads. In order to do so effectively, please makes sure to read or at least skim each other’s threads on the dash, so as to make sure your character jumps it at the right time (in the case of a three-way para, for example) and doesn’t interrupt the flow/chronological order that is roughly set out in the summary below. Also, please read ALL of the plot under the cut; not just the section that pertains to your character. This will become increasingly significant as the event goes on.

The event will take place in three stages. Before moving onto the next section, a post will be published on the Main. Open/casual starters are permitted aside from the plot-threads listed below, though please manage your time accordingly so that the plot-threads are completed by the end of the event. Please tag your starters with VNCarreRavage and VNStarter! If you have any questions, ideas, or concerns, please do not hesitate to message the Main!

Most of all, remember to be inclusive to as many people as possible (without biting off more than you can chew), get creative, and enjoy!

~ The Admin Team @ VN

In order to celebrate Davina Claire’s seventeenth birthday, her guardian, Marcel Gerard is throwing a jazz concert in her honour. The concert is being staged at the world-famous French Opera House (Théâtre de l'Opéra) of New Orleans. But for the lonely little witch, the glitz and the glam pale in comparison to her first taste of freedom, of normalcy. For one night she’ll be allowed to celebrate like any other teen on their birthday - and Marcel has even allowed her to invite three guests of her own choosing. Joshua Rosza, Malia Tate, and Camille O’Connell are the friends she chooses. Parties aren’t Malia’s preferred scene, but she’s going to go as a favour to Davina, and because she couldn’t decipher half of the foods on the menu - which must mean it’ll be swanky and hopefully delicious. As for Cami, Marcel cheats a little and decides to invite her not as a mere guest - but as his date for the evening. Though this move gets Davina’s seal of approval, it risks Cami’s when she witnesses an exchange between Marcel and one of his ‘community workers’ that ends on a particularly volatile note. Will she stay, or will she go?... Her uncle, Father Kieran sees all from a distance, but has more to worry about than his niece’s (questionable) choice in escorts. The real reason for his presence at such a worldly event is because Marcel promised to use it as a platform to bring publicity to the chain of gruesome murders that have been happening over the last few months. The priest hopes that this publicity will apply pressure on the power-holders of the city in order to prioritize finding the culprit and putting an end to the killing-spree. 

Enter the prettily inoffensive Jennifer Blake. She hasn’t been invited to the soirée, but after taking care of that delightful old bag of bones - Sister Friede - in her last sacrifice, Jennifer’s eyes are pinned to the priest in order to see what he’ll do next. So she’s gotten as close to the event as she dares, in the hopes that she’ll manage to charm her way inside at the door. Meanwhile, other women would happily trade places with the school-teacher, including a pregnant and very uncomfortable Evelyn Jones. She doesn’t want to be in a stifling dress and at an event chock-full of strangers who see her merely as a stand-in for her VIP husband, who is, predictably, too busy to attend the concert for himself. Equally high-profile guests include Lydia Martin, who’s practically preening herself at the opportunity to attend the soirée as her mother’s +1. Oh, the perks of being the Mayor’s daughter... Even more fortunate are those directly connected to Marcel; including Damon Salvatore - who received the shock of his undead life upon receiving one of the elusive invites in the mail. He knows the pretext of amity is nothing more than a craftily hidden political message after his last conversation with Marcel; ’common enemies breed strange bedfellows’. He’s a-okay with that, and if he can mix pleasure with business on such a night, then all the better for it. 

But one look at Katherine Pierce and that smug smile may quickly disappear from his lips. What could Marcel possibly want with the traitorous, backstabbing bitch? It’s clear she hasn’t slipped in via the backdoor either; not with how the doppelganger’s sauntering around as if she owns the place. But Katherine’s on a mission - She's there partly out of Marcel's desire to keep his enemies close, and partly because he's tasked her with information-gathering on his guests. She may not give a damn about the murder spree making all the headlines lately (after all, Katherine has enough skeletons in her own closet), but if the Vampire King insists, she’ll charm and compel his guests into loosening their tongues on whatever they know. It’s always ideal to be in the king’s favor. But Katherine and Damon aren’t the only two likely to butt-heads tonight. Marcel’s calculating intent is revealed when Hayley Labonair and Derek Hale realize that they have both been invited as the honorary representative (note: single) of the wolves of the Bayou. Despite the bloom of their own private relationship, the deft, political move on Marcel’s part is a slight to each of their egos and an impassioned exchange leads to palpable tension on both their parts. Divided, he conquers. 

Then there are those outside. The willing; like Kira Yukimura who lives nearby and occasionally perches out behind the building where the wafting music inspires her creative writing - and the unwilling. Two of Miss Blake’s other students join her in the latter camp; Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski. Unlike their teacher, however, they’ve had better luck at busting their way into the venue; largely thanks to Stiles’ sleuthing skills and despite Scott’s nervous objections. Getting in is one thing - blending in will be another matter entirely. Especially with the likes of Chris Argent; invited as Marcel’s guest and clandestine representative of the Hunter’s Guild - and Matt Donovan; who was fortunate enough to be invited along with a few other members of the NOPD in gratitude for his volunteerism with the police force. Like Kira, Cora Hale is happy to remain outside of the lavish event, although she wishes her elder brother had the brains to do the same. After the string of murders and her pervading distrust of the vampires in the Quarter under Marcel’s rule, she wants Derek as far away from the supposed ‘festivities’ as possible. Jackson Kenner shares the sentiment, and is equally disappointed in Hayley for blindly accepting the invitation. He tells himself that his frustration has nothing to do with the fact that he - the longstanding Alpha in the Bayou was snubbed from the guest-list - and hopes his gut feeling about this entire charade doesn’t end up being right. For all their sake.

The following characters will not be participating in this first stage of the event, but will make their appearance in the second stage: Alaric Saltzman, Bonnie Bennett, Elena Gilbert, Jeremy Gilbert, John Alden. 

[37h4n0l]

Oh great, so now a lowly anon can't even come to vent to the one person they think would understand their sentiments, because someone's going to feel offended and write you an essay on how it's 'not all YOI fans' instead of maybe, idk, acknowleding that there has to be something off about the fandom as a whole if so many people are already sick and tired of it (some even to the point of making anti-blogs, which I don't necessarily agree with, but at least can see where they're coming from).

And oh, about 91d being ‘hardly a brainpower draining masterpiece’ - sure, that is, if someone knows how to make a use of their brain in the first place, which apparently is too difficult of a skill for your average viewer, judging from how many people did not understand the ending or where it came from, completely misunderstood the characters, thought of Avilio and Corteo’s relationship as the central one to the plot etc. I guess your average brainpower may not be enough sometimes.

And here I am now, issuing an essay as well, because I want to express my position on this very clearly. (Massive longpost).

I’m sorry if my latest reply came off as hostile towards either side of this issue, I didn’t intend it to sound like that. For anyone to whom this is not understandable; this is about the fandom, which can many times be a big influence on how someone perceives the show as well. To put it in the simplest terms, seeing something over and over again everywhere makes you tired of it quickly, whether it’s about an entire franchise, a ship or a common fan theory or opinion. I will speak for myself; although I’m not as salty as you are, anon, I’m annoyed at how yoi and vikt/uuri are all over the place. Mostly when they keep appearing in other fandoms’ tags (the one where it went the furthest would be the ks tag, that hellish corner of tumblr). The ‘not all’ part is included in all this. If I decided to go after every yoi fan, I’d be going after people I like, followers and friends of mine. 

I don’t think I have enough involvement in the yoi fandom to start denouncing its failures internally. I’m part of this weird group of people who liked certain things in yoi, maybe watched it as it aired, thought it was an okay-ish show but got over it quickly and didn’t keep obsessing. I think a line needs to be drawn between behaviour that simply pisses us off personally and more ‘objective’ problems (I put it in quotation marks to refer to things that are a nuisance to a wider group of people). 

Things I personally don’t like: Vikt/uuri ship dynamics, simply because I’ve seen way too many ships like that already and I find them boring due to the lack of angst. Yk’s lack of character development and how the fandom still pretends there was one, as if it could be settled by simply making a stereotypically ‘nerdy’ character do a cool thing out of the blue. The way there’s a yoi or vikt/uuri AU for literally everything, every fandom and every ship. This fandom idea about vn and yk being yp’s ‘parents’, ignoring yp’s anger and disappointment towards vn and antagonism towards yk. I must emphasize how I’m not sitting in front of a computer screaming in utter rage at these things; it goes more like me sighing deeply and going like ‘not again’. 

Wider problems: CALLING PEOPLE WHO DISLIKE YOI HOMOPHOBIC. I want to underline this at least thirty times. Calling yoi progressive, innovative and a pioneer of gay representation while hating on fujoshis and the yaoi/shonen-ai genre. Yoi is (sorry for putting it bluntly) a fusion between a sports anime and a shonen-ai, except the latter would at least have explicit gay romance, while the vikt/uuri kiss was declared by the author to be ‘up for interpretation’. SHIPBASHING, especially the one against otay/uri for it supposedly being underage. Spamming another fandom’s tag with complaints about how yoi is much better than that particular thing (coughKScough) even if it’s an entirely different genre.

I’m reserving a separate paragraph for the Crunchyroll Awards shitstorm. I don’t have a very definite position on anime awards in general and how they should be held (if there’s even an objective way to do that), and while my personal annoyance towards the CR ones persists, I’m not surprised it went the way it went considering it was based on audience votes. Still, calling yoi ‘anime of the year’ is a bit of a stretch. I would’ve personally worded it differently, maybe ‘most popular anime of the year’ or ‘audience favourite’ or something like that. The ‘art is subjective’ versus ‘quality’ debate is a very complicated one. Someone could say that since a lot of people liked yoi, that must mean there was something about it in which it exceeded other anime; and while it’d be hard to pinpoint what that is, we should consider that good PR plays a great role in this as well - being able to target the right audience at the right time and advertise in a compelling way. I remember the times before yoi was released, when all we had was the trailer including the infamous ‘only I know your true eros’ scene; plenty of people were already sold back then. Of course, when you have high expectations of something, you won’t start watching it as some overly analytical movie critic to nitpick every detail. People like their expectations to be fulfilled. Besides the overall quality, there are other things to argue about, and what is often brought up is the animation. Consider: if someone was asked whether yoi had the best animation in 2016, you’d expect them to admit it didn’t, wouldn’t you? And yet yoi won the animation award - by popular vote. We can argue whether it’s more fair to have a committee in the judging process, but letting the audience vote has a downside; mainly that votes won’t always be used as intended. Crazy hypothesis; could it, perhaps, be that a lot of people were emotionally attached to yoi and voted for it in every category? Popular vote is what leads to initiatives being cancelled when 4chan decides to troll them, it leads to Boaty McBoatface and things like that. 

Now, after this huge rant, let’s move on to what happened in the 91d fandom. In my opinion, it’s not like people didn’t have the ability to understand - they didn’t want to. Simply because they perceived avil/ero (let’s censor this word as well for safety) as ‘problematic’ and preferred to ignore the role it played in the plot. It doesn’t elevate people who understood the ending above anyone, it just shows that somehow a lot of people have a very biased view on this - some for not wanting angst to exist, others for not wanting homosexuality to exist - and it results in a huge chunk of the fandom ignoring hints. If yoi was blown up by PR, 91d had the opposite problem; it’s hard to tell whom such a show should be targeted at, so they didn’t go with a precise demographic, they just released material and waited to see who was attracted to it. Is 91d for Fujoshis ™? The hints at gayness are too subtle for that. Is it for people interested in the plot and not the emotional side? How do you explain the last episode and the ending to them? Maybe this is also the reason why the fanbase is so unusually small. 91d is just hard to categorize, that’s the conclusion I came to - and people want it to belong to already existing tropes very desperately, which is where the reaches come from. 

As for this entire discussion; anyone is always welcome on my blog to give their two cents on it, anon or not. All I want to avoid is 1) anyone attributing malicious intent to me 2) people assuming I think things that I haven’t explicitly stated.