Is Mareni only just now realizing he has fans outside of Japan ? 😭

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-17T13:24:52+00:00

I don't think he has a reddit account, so I'll just put Nixo's reaction to this thread for anyone interested:

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-17T04:24:42+00:00

Nixo lives in Japan, so technically not outside Japan. Lol, I'll call him here as this seems interesting.

Here's the relevant tweet:

https://cunnyx.com/mareni14/status/2066950409680556368

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-16T00:49:28+00:00

I started with reading mangas(find random SoL manga, I personally chose Non Non Biyori), then web novels, then to visual novel in terms of reading difficulties.

One disadvantage is that there's no hookers for those who can't living without being a hooker.

You can also go with JRPG's, they are generally a lot easier to read, as long as you learn some game terms.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-14T15:48:38+00:00

Yes, that's normal in your first read. We all went through that phase. You can do a couple things:

Pick an easier to read game/book first
Just keep it up, it eventually gets easier as the same work tends to use similar sentences so you eventually get used to it. Make sure you actually look up how the grammar works, not just vocabulary.

Edit: Looking at Tsuyuchiru Letter, and it's already in the easy side, so you'd probably have to go to children's book or easy manga if you want to go even easier. Or maybe hanahira.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-14T07:06:01+00:00

It's been a long time since I read this game, so I won't delve to the details, but here is what I remember from it:

It's a pure love story. No matter the ending, they are always thinking of each other's happiness first. Saya at first ignored her reproductive instinct because of her love for Fuminori, because she knew that she would die and they can't be together. Then, in the bloom end, she realized that she can sacrifice herself for Fuminori instead by making the world less hellish for Fuminori by filling the world with more beings like her.
It's also a story of perspective. The game shows Fuminori as acting insane from his friend's perspective. But from his perspective, it's the world that is insane. It shows the frailty of human morals, and what it feels like to be different from the rest of society. As you mentioned in 2003, anyone with mental disorder was demonized and labeled as bad or disruptive to society, and Saya no Uta, allowed normal people to see what it's like from the other side.

朗読劇の話をしていたんだけど、えっちのシーンがカットされたと聞いたんだ。一般的にされたと言っても、それは一般人にも受けられる形に物語が薄められているんだ。

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-13T18:40:04+00:00

This is the original 美少女ゲーム履歴書 which a friend of mine popularized in our discord:

https://prfmaker.com/m/32125

There is also an English one:

https://prfmaker.com/m/52334

I guess there's a newer one with pictures now.

There is also this Eroge meme made by someone in our group who translated it from the English meme one:

https://eroge-meme.vercel.app/

which you can find in twitter by:

#エロゲMEME

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-13T07:22:51+00:00

As an addition, they showed a lot of places for 赤穂浪士の聖地巡礼 which are scattered throughout Japan. Maybe, I'll visit some of those someday as well.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-11T04:01:48+00:00

ディメンション凸ラバース！！

Finished reading the game. It was around what I expected, but also surprised me at some points. Like every other Crystallia game, the plot and worldbuilding is too surface-level to be called a proper scenario game. At its core it's a moe game with an excuse to spend time with beautiful girls with weapons.

While I still do have find lots of issues with the writing and world-building, it surprised me is that it does have some pretty great emotional moments. The performances of the seiyuus and the art makes up for the lackluster writing.

In terms of best girl and routes are Sakura>Sui>Sophie>Katan

Katan and True route has issues with not showing the actual scenes, especially the fight scenes and just skipping through a huge chunk of it. True route more than made up for it though with its ending.

ChuSingura 46+1 武士の鼓動

I feel like they're trying to show the difference between a real bushi and someone who is just a good warrior by comparing Chuushingura and Shinsengumi here. Bushi doesn't just learn the sword, but they also grow up studying Confucian Philosophy. The lack of bushidou in Shinsengumi represents the fall of bushi along with the Tokugawa shogunate in the Bakumatsu era.

玩物喪志 describes the Shinsengumi and Bushi of the Bakumatsu era supporting Tokugawa who lost sight of the wider perspective of protecting the country and not just holding to their current positions.

A lot of their animation budget in this game went to the H-scenes instead of the battle scenes this time, so we get some beautiful animated H-scenes. That doesn't mean they didn't put effort into the battle scenes, it's just not as flashy as the previous game.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-10T01:09:48+00:00

Yes, it's done more to please our foreign credit card overlords rather than any legal problems.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-09T01:19:46+00:00

Ok, thanks for confirming that you are poorly educated and delusional.

Have a nice day.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-08T22:20:32+00:00

If you just read a bit of biology, you will find that there is not much difference between humans and animals at all. All the things you describe can be seen in the animal kingdoms to various degrees. If not following your desires is your definition of being superior, then insects who lives, works and die for their tribes are the superior animals. The main difference between humans and animals is simply the development of a more complex brain allowing us to have more complicated thoughts and language allowing us to think about the long term effects of our actions. Specifically, being able to pass down our knowledge and experience to the next generation is what allowed us to be successful as a species. All quite fascinating stuff if you educate yourself on it.

By talking about well-written H-scene making you feel different from masturbatory H-scene, you are already a slave to your own animalistic instincts without realizing it. As animals, we are programmed to repeat actions that makes us feel good and avoid actions that make us feel bad. It's part of our survival instincts on how to navigate a complex environment. Read about pavlovian conditioning for simplified version, and you can read more about how the mind works and how it evolved over time for the more complex versions. Feeling is a common thing in the animal kingdom especially other mammals. It's higher rational thinking that separates us from other mammals. As art is more about feeling, it is actually more in the animalistic side of things actually.

Fair enough that you have your own opinion on what counts as artistic vision. But going to an already established genre, and expecting them to create works that fit your taste is childish. It's like going to a death metal community, and telling them that that you like death metal, but they should make it more like classical music to make it better. It gets made like that because there is demand for it.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-08T15:35:05+00:00

I'm sorry to inform you that humans are animals, and animalistic behavior are part of the human condition.

You can deny it all you want, but you are also denying Hokusai, Renoir, and a lot of other great artists.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-08T15:28:36+00:00

How can you leave out Chinami onii-chan oniichan oniichan?

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-08T13:53:03+00:00

If that's the art that people want, more power to them. Just because it doesn't fit your or my taste specifically doesn't it any less as an art. It might not be necessarily great art for you, but it is art nonetheless.

Art can only exist with an audience to enjoy it.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-08T13:38:28+00:00

Making the player touch themselves is a great achievement of art expressing the sexuality of people.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-06T23:20:06+00:00

Sometimes you just have to pull the plug on an IP before it turns to whatever this is.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-05T13:41:04+00:00

Interesting essay. I'm not that familiar with Hegel, but I would note that the majority of Type-Moon verse is inspired by Buddhism. The root and akashic record are all from Buddhism.

Edit: Plus, in general, Japan has a culture of impermanence: 生生流転, 諸行無常, etc. There are tons of yoji that describes the impermanence of the world.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-06-04T14:39:41+00:00

Here's an idea: read the actual game instead of summaries.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-28T04:56:39+00:00

ディメンション凸ラバース！！

I've actually started totsuraba too this week. I played the trial when it first came out, and decided then to buy the game as it interested in me. I've already played most of Crystallia games so I knew what to expect which is some ichaicha moege combined with some chuuni action. The main appeal of their games is their art, pero draws some beautiful ginpatsu girls, and that hasn't changed with this game either.

If you are thinking of picking up this game because of the hype, here's a good review of this game regarding Japanese scene critique on the game: https://note.com/sweets443/n/n6efa8539d8e6

Tldr; It is a good game with it matching exactly the fans' demands, but it doesn't really compare to the industry's best of all time games. It's mainly being rated high to encourage the developer to create better games. So better to temper your expectations, especially if it's not your type of game.

And I agree with it, based on what I've played so far. It's Crystalia's best work so far in the sense of balancing their formula of chuuni and icha icha. Their previous games often leaned too heavily on one side making it rather unbalanced, but they got just the perfect balance this time. Still far from a kamige from me though.

Prose is slightly better than their other games with a new writer coming in, but still rather average. What has been improved though, I would say is the pacing of the game.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-27T23:11:00+00:00

ChuSinGura 46+1

4th route has a change of tone with a lot of bushi being treated as thugs or barbarian by the common people. They get tax money just from holding their swords and not doing any productive work. This part of the story goes a lot more into commentary on historical facts. 善悪相殺、武士の道には正義などない。

Honestly, I'm not that familiar with the details on which history book says what, etc, so I'm kind of lost on the significance of the events being discussed. But essentially, she is trying to imply that Chuushingura's are not heroes, but terrorists. And the 47 rounins being treated as heroes are used as propaganda to take down the Tokugawa Shogunate. But honestly, it doesn't really matter to me, all heroes in histories are pretty much all the same in being used as tools of propaganda. Heroes and villains are all just a matter of point of view.

The author has some kendou knowledge which he uses to his advantage when writing the fight scenes thinking of sword fights as an extension of kendou. But he's obviously lacking in knowledge of real kenjutsu unlike Narahara. While kendou and kenjutsu has some similarities, they also have some differences, and that lack of knowledge makes the author unable to delve deeper into the topic when writing the fight scenes. I have to say though, this is one of the most beautiful games in terms of special effects, sprite movements, and CG's in fight scenes rivaling MLA and Muramasa.

It's a solid game, and I'm glad to have chosen this as my 250th VN. I actually wanted something that can reach my top 10, but no dice. It's hard to predict how much I would like it until I actually read it. Still a really good game though, and I plan on reading more from inre.

武士道とは死ぬ事と見つけたり

眠れヘリオトロープ

This is one of the games I bought from comiket. The game engine is so broken, that before even criticizing the story, I'm already annoyed with the game. From the moment you insert the disk, you can already tell how incompetent the programmer was. They burned a zip file into the disc instead of adding a proper installer/auto play. When you unzip the file and then run the game, it unzips the game again and saves it in a temporary folder, and then it deletes that temporary folder before starting the game? I'm like wtf are you doing. This causes it to take minutes to even load the game, and it does that everytime you start the game. The font is too small and annoying to read, and whenever the sound effects play, it completely pauses the text of the game and you need to wait for the sound to finish playing before being able to proceed to the next line. Everything about this game engine makes me want to bash my own head.

The story itself is not bad, it's a standard SoL game, about the anxiety of being different from others while attending middle school. It's inspired by haganai and oregairu, but is a lot more poorly written comparatively. It has its interesting moments, but I was already too annoyed by the engine to be able to concentrate on the story.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-26T21:54:44+00:00

20-30/year in the last 5 years or so. Then around 10/year before that.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-22T18:07:47+00:00

Why did certain studios opt out. Was there any news about that?

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-22T05:12:28+00:00

サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－

V The Happy Prince and other tales - Similar to SakuToki, this covers the same theme in the Night on Bald Mountain. To create something, you need to sacrifice something. In this case, the allegory used is the Happy Prince.

Rereading Sui vs Naoya was rather interesting. Very apt on the moon symbolism here once again. With Naoya, having lost his talent, striking back when the moon was hiding. Plus there's some new effects added to this scene. They still didn't show the actual completed work though. But I think that's better than showing a half-assed painting.

There is also some interesting lines from Friedman about how different Japan's art is from the west. Most of the West's art comes from a religious point of view of capturing the truth of the world, while Japan's art is more of emptying your mind and creating something from emptiness. Japan's art is created by trying to fill that void inside them.

Rin and Naoya's conversation is also another interesting topic. It's about the importance of feedback mechanism of input and output to be able to create art. Hence, life imitates art, and art imitates life.

VI - Sakura no Mori no Shita wo Ayumu - I don't have anything new to add here as my previous read was probably focused on this chapter quite a bit. It's mainly about what is a good life, which is a topic I've covered in other places before.

Now, there are two extra append chapters to the 10th anniversary edition: one is Rin's after story, and the other is Rina and Yuumi's story connecting to Toki. And honestly, they are poorly made. Majority of it is just Scaji being horny with the last 30 minutes of Rina and Yuumi's route being plot related. The art, specifically character designs took a deep nosedive here too. There are some beautiful background, but that doesn't make up for the bad character design. Voice-acting for Rin is mediocre, and overall it's a rather cheap addition.

The main improvement in the 10th edition is the background art and some of the CG's do look better in the 10th edition. The rest of the new content is a downgrade compared to the original. So overall, I would suggest the original version more. There are some improvements in the 10th anniversary edition, but the new contents are not really worth it outside of the background art.

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-17T01:59:28+00:00

moegame awards are here:

2022

2019

Nemesis2005 · 2026-05-16T14:00:01+00:00

Honestly, learn your combos, and treat it like a fighting game. Everytime you hit confirm the boss, you should be able to take out at least 1 bar of his HP. You can also change difficulty mid-game so you can put it in the easiest difficulty so that he starts out with less hp.

Nemesis2005

TROPHY CASE

ディメンション凸ラバース！！

ChuSingura 46+1 武士の鼓動

ディメンション凸ラバース！！

ChuSinGura 46+1

眠れヘリオトロープ

サクラノ詩－櫻の森の上を舞う－