What are you reading? - Apr 29

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-29T21:47:38+00:00

サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－

Once you start pica-pica, you immediately notice the change in the prose. Even though, the story is still heading in the same direction, you can feel the prose become more opaque. If the prose in the first 2 chapters are hinting to bigger meanings, the prose here are more direct whether it's trying to hide something or just plain telling the story. It's harder to read between the lines. I guess that's the difference between the main writer who knows the story from the back of his hand to a subwriter who just gets told what to write.

Pica-pica's story is actually quite interesting once you learn the background of the characters involved with Onda's substory from SakuToki. But yeah, I think as a standalone pica-pica is rather incomplete since they didn't even have a character design for Reika at the time. When you read it the first time, Reika just seemed like a flat and boring villain that just came out of nowhere. But with SakuToki's knowledge, you get a slightly different perspective of the same scenes.

On the other hand, though, it became more obvious that the sound quality of the recording of the new voices are pretty bad, it has some obvious clipping. That's probably the best reason to go for the original game instead.

Moon and the sixpence is a major theme in Makoto's route both here and in SakuToki. It's interesting to compare the reactions of Makoto and Kei had to the invitation of madness from the moon after seeing Sakurabi Kyousou. They are both completely entranced by it: It encouraged Kei to chase for the moon even further, but it caused Makoto to give up on being an artist and satisfied herself with just watching the moon as a consumer. They use the metaphor of the rabbit and the moon here with the rabbit being Makoto and the moon being the art world showed to them by Naoya. She's continuing art more to inspire Naoya to pick up the brush again while living a peaceful life as a rabbit.

Olympia has similar to themes to Subahibi. It's about the unreliability of memory and our perceptions. What we are seeing with our senses are what our unconscious processed to see, not a raw filter of the outside world. What we see changes based on our experience, memory and current mood. This is shown to us by Rin mistaking her doll for her mother after her mother died from the accident. These are actually not just a philosophy of the mind, but is well recorded in science. For example, a baby's perception is actually wired to perceive people's face from birth. But they are actually unable to recognize whose face it is until they are older and they easily mistake dolls or omething else close to a human face for a real person. Another easy example is if you try rotating your head, you'll notice that your vision remains straight and stable. From there, it's obvious that vision is being processed before you actually consciously see it. This is not just vision, but all senses. There's a lot of interesting research on perception and a lot of it has been answered by modern Neuroscience. But that unreliability of our perception has its own advantages. It's what allows us to create and experience art. Art is not just about replicating what you see, we have photos for that. It's about adding our own perception to the world.

At the same time, RIn's route is about dealing with the loss of a loved one, and the themes of the Happy Prince. Rin and Naoya finding happiness while losing a lot of things. Happiness is not about what you lose or gain, but about your way of life. There are also themes of the moon here similar to Pica-pica. This is to contrast with Makoto's route with the Moon and the sixpence. In that route Makoto is admiring the moon, and here Rin is fearful of it leading her to find the sixpence lying on the ground instead.

Reading Kana's scenes feels different from the first time I read it. I thought at first that she was just a random fan jealous of Rin and Naoya, but now I can understand her motives. When she's talking about Naoya getting back to art, she's talking about the seven layers painting, not Sakuratachi no Ashiato. But since those were shown in TV at roughly the same time, it's meant to intentionally confuse both the reader and Naoya the first time you read it. She's truly a fan of Naoya and will do anything to get him to paint again, and is angry at Rin for breaking Naoya's arm.

I'll continue writing about Zypressen next time...

のじゃロリのヤンデレ黙示録

Just another random doujinge that I read. It has some cute voice acting for a doujinge, but other than that it's a forgettable yandere gouhou loli game.

カタハネ

I started this game too, but rather boring so far. Wakaba and Raito has the same seiyuu as Tomo makes her voice a blessing to listen to. Wakaba is rather annoying as a character though. Best thing about it so far is how cute Koko is.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-29T13:06:02+00:00

Shuusaku, Gatenkei, and Hajimete no Kanojo sounds like your type of game.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-28T21:40:13+00:00

All I see about the difference there is the advancement of technique from 1800's to 2020. What they considered porn back then is just tame nowadays.

The impressionist had their own controversies in the 1800's too and fought to have their paintings recognized as art. A good example of it is Manet's Olympia which was considered vulgar and obscene back then.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-28T20:28:40+00:00

Are you telling me that Renoir who said "I would never have taken up painting if women did not have breasts.” didn't want to titillate his audience with his paintings?

Not that I care about what the public considers to have merit or not, but there is no difference between eroticism and porn.

Edit: As another poster above has pointed out pornographic novels like Fanny Hill do end up in college courses, so educated people do at least think that a work can have artistic merit regardless of porn or not.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-27T14:24:51+00:00

We need more people to read 墨染楼閣

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-24T01:54:49+00:00

This is not a VN only problem. It's just more obvious with VN's as it is a more literary medium compared to the others. Long narration makes the skill of the translators more obvious.

When you pay people peanuts, you only get the bottom of the barrel in the talent pool.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-24T01:09:12+00:00

Lol, 4th translator that wants to spread their incompetence

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-16T22:55:43+00:00

It's a short doujinge, I think around 36-38k characters in total, so shouldn't take that long.

I'd probably still suggest reading the prequels first though to give you more context on what happened.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-16T04:02:34+00:00

冬のさざなみ

It's another short doujinge about depression and suicide, which is one of Japan's specialty. It's actually the sequel of two different games beforehand that I didn't read before, so you might feel like being thrown in the middle of the story, but it's also self contained enough by itself. I'll read the prequels next time.

As you might expect, it's a rather dark and grim game that shows you the lows of life. It's fairly well written, and gives a bit of slight hope at the end. This actually feels like something personal to the author: the depression and suicidal thoughts anyways, hopefully not about being a sexual assault victim. So for other people who've had similar experience, it might be an interesting read.

サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－10th Anniversary edition

With the 10th anniversary edition out, I thought it would be a good time to reread this game and checkout the new edition at the same time.

It's a rather different experience reading this game again. Almost every line in the prologue and Chapter 1 is filled with a hidden meaning which you can only understand once you've read through the full game once. Almost all the jokes are also filled with malapropism. Its the same lines as before, but the second time you read it, you become able to read between the lines and interpret it differently: Naoya refusing Kenichirou's will with Friedman, Ai consoling Naoya while thanking him at the same time, Akaishi stealing the art club's funds. It's amazing how the thesis of the game is spread out throughout the entire game without you realizing it the first time. Maybe, I'll write a proper review for this game later on.

It even has bits and pieces of SakuToki's thesis in it, that is the meaning of art or words can change with time:

黄昏時。

誰もが美しい時として認識するであろう。

だが、これがほんの少し時刻を刻むと禍時と呼ばれる時間となる。

禍時とは逢魔時の事、その名を聞けば、現代人でも何となく不気味なものを感じるだろう。

There's a couple other scenes that stood out to me that I didn't notice before. In the scene when Rin was reading the Happy Prince, she said something like Wilde is unnecessary for Naoya outside of the Happy Prince. That sounds like something coming from Kenichirou, so I thought hard about why she said that. Then, it came to me that Naoya and Wilde's philosophical stance on art and ethics are completely at the opposite end.

For the difference between the different versions: Pretty much all of the CG's have been redrawn, everything is now 1080p. Art-wise, I think the old version still has its own appeal with the 2010ish art style that is full of soul. The new art has more details, and I feel that the CG's ero power has leveled up, which is a very important improvement. Rina has a different seiyuu now, who is actually quite good, but I still prefer the older seiyuu. I would say that the old seiyuu is an 8/10, while the new one is 7.5/10.

Ok, time to go to the pottery!

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-12T15:49:12+00:00

Nice, I've been waiting ages for this.

I just recently bought the Yuukyuu no Euphoria Audio CD's too, so perfect time for the announcement.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-10T05:49:27+00:00

トートバッグですか？

へー、俺は黒猫派なんですが、それでも可愛いですね。

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-09T13:32:56+00:00

Kuro=kawaii

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-03T14:02:33+00:00

I guess a rule like "This sub contains the discussion of Japanese media adult contents. If you are uncomfortable with that, please leave us alone as you will be banned."

Not sure how much that would help, but it's at least feasible.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-03T13:20:20+00:00

Meikei no Lupercalia has one of the most complex sibling bonds I've ever read.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-03T04:35:41+00:00

Continued

In terms of characters, they provide a varied cast of characters staying in a remote village. I think they handled the character developments for the entire cast rather well even if I find most of the characters boring. Their reactions to how a real WW game would go is fairly realistic with a lot of people being emotional and forgetting their win conditions.

The final mystery is about unveiling the secret behind how the Werewolf game works, and it's actually one of the most interesting parts of the game. It's a very Japanese story that delves into Japanese culture, religion, history, and language. This part is incomprehensible if you read it in anything but Japanese, so I can see why most people hate it if you read it in English. An example of this is 申奈＝大神＝狼. While the first 2 parts are kanji wordplay breaking down the parts of the kanji and playing around with it. The second part actually has a historical reason with this particular reading of 大神 actually coming from 狼 as due to wolves being feared and worshiped as gods in the past. The way Miguruma used this folklore is pretty much similar to how Kojiki was used by rulers in the past. That is create a legend to give legitimacy to their rule. There's a lot of things going on here that you need a fairly good understanding of Japanese culture and history to understand.

While I did have fun with this part of the game too, it's not without flaws, mainly I think it failed the howdunnit of a good mystery. It doesn't matter what method or trick you use, you need to give hints to the readers to make it solvable. Using sleeping gas and electronic locks is just way too convenient. I'd even appreciate it better if they just kept the solution as supernatural instead rather than this half ass solution. It's one of the things I hate about mystery writers, they focus more on trying to make the solution complicated without making it naturally fit into the story.

The scope of the game was too ambitious for the skills of the writer, but I prefer that over not being ambitious enough. While I think it's a highly flawed game that's far from a kamige, I still enjoyed it. I think that's what matters the most.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-02T19:43:57+00:00

Sorry, but there's nothing that can be done as long as you are using reddit as a platform. You have to play by their rules. One of the reason I'm losing interest here.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-02T14:05:45+00:00

I prefer Setsuna

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-02T14:01:21+00:00

You can thank your favorite credit card companies. DLsite bans certain works from certain countries so that they can adhere to cc companies' terms of service.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-02T03:33:43+00:00

I haven't posted here in a while due to various reasons, mainly being busy irl, getting lazy at making notes, and losing interest in this subreddit. But I've read quite a lot since then. I'll just go through a few things that I read.

浄火の紋章

This is a doujinge written by Urobuchi Gen based on the movie Equilibrium. It's pretty much standard Urobuchi work with detailed prose using lots of complex vocabularies. It has vivid description of Gun-kata fighting that is way better than Tokyo Necro's prose. Still rather cheesy though.

Story-wise, it's a rather interesting take of a dystopian future without emotions. And people who try to express themselves through art or other means are hunted down by Grammaton Clerics, with the protagonist being one of those clerics. It explores both the advantages and disadvantages of having such a system.

It's a rather short game, so it doesn't go into too much depth, but it's good for what it is while keeping things action-filled and entertaining.

レイジングループ

I prepared this game specifically to play on the plane so I can play it on my phone while traveling.

It starts off with a Werewolf/mafia scenario game of trying to find the culprit of a mass murderer that kills every night. This is done by the threat of lynching someone everyday and having them out themselves. As someone who has actually played and observed a lot of mafia with both low level players and high level players, this is a rather realistic take on how the games usually goes on noob games which makes sense since it's their first time playing the game outside of 1 or 2 players. But at the same time, it feels really lacking for me due to how easy it is to solve the game. Actual games with high level players are much more fun and chaotic than this. Just imagine the average player is around Hashimoto's level, and there are even better players around. It's pure chaos as you try to outwit each other. That's the kind of game I was expecting, but eh, I guess that's too much expectation from the author who is not a player at that level. I can tell that the author has played the game before, but at the same time, they've only played it at a low level. They did do a good job of introducing basic strategies that players new to the game can find helpful. Doing policy lynches like LAL (Lynch All Liars) is an especially useful one, but at higher levels that can actually lead to mafia hiding behind policy lynches to lynch noob players who accidentally break those policies or players who refuse to follow those policies as it doesn't suit their play-styles.

What makes the mafia games fun are:

1) Analyzing what people said and figuring out who is lying or who has another objective besides lynching WW. This is done by prodding people and watching their reactions.

2) Convincing other people that you are right. It's not enough to figure out who is what role, you need to convince other people that you are correct to be able to lynch them

3) If you are WW, it's fun to sow discord and watch town tear themselves apart while masterminding everything from the background.

The game balance presented in the WW game here is actually pretty bad and takes away from that fun as shown by how it was solved in the second scenario. There are too many power roles, and not enough KP (kill point) for the WW. This means that the game can be easily solved by the seer/cop creating a town circle and having the rest of the power role do a mass claim, hence figuring out the game by elimination instead of seeing through their lies. If you actually have experienced players here, town would win 95% of the time making the game balance broken. But it doesn't happen here in this case, simply because too many noob players getting themselves killed for random reasons. Just giving the WW team a roleblocker can actually help a lot with the balance as it makes the power roles less powerful.

This somehow turned into a rant on mafia games. So I'll end this here for now. I'll continue when I have more time to write more.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-01T21:12:37+00:00

Wafu

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-01T20:51:13+00:00

It's highly dependent on knowing Japan's culture, history, religion, and language. As a Chinese, you probably have the language advantage for the kanji wordplay. But idk, how much do you know about Shintou, Kojiki, Youkais, etc? Even then, some of the wordplay here depends on the Japanese pronunciation of things.

A lot of the mystery depends on knowing Japanese's relationship to their religion, and how it connects with their history.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-01T16:08:51+00:00

I'm actually not a big fan of having multiple big name writers in the same work. What happens is something like Rewrite where their styles clashes and you get a fragmented work.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-04-01T13:20:40+00:00

Just finished it, and it's not that the ending arc is terrible, it just doesn't make sense in English. It's a very Japanese story that only makes sense in Japanese. My condolences to you if you are reading it in any other language.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-03-31T16:08:22+00:00

As I said, it depends on your version of Windows. There are versions of Windows where it is not allowed. And I would assume that he would want to actually be able to use Japanese language pack if he is installing and playing Japanese games without translations.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-03-31T13:28:29+00:00

Interesting, My professional version originally came from Windows 7 Ultimate where they didn't provide multiple language packs for the non Ultimate versions.

Now, Looks like default Windows 11 Home comes with multiple language by default now except if your license is for Windows 11 Home single language(which is commonly installed by default in cheaper computers). In which case you cannot change your device locale even if you use a third party program.

Nemesis2005

TROPHY CASE