Cross

Great game, I agree. I wrote a bit about the relationship between Fuminori and Saya - if anybody is interested: https://erogegames.com/eroge-visual-novels/eroge-general-talk/1259-three-remarkable-protagonists-%96-part-2-a/ THX for the review btw...^^

When you face death other humans become disposable. If you could choose between being killed or kill other humans im sure the vast majority would prefer to kill. And thats exactly what Fuminori chose. Btw. why was the layout changed? I think I prefered the old one...

You can see a user's posts and threads on the profile pages I don't know what you mean by aggression (it's a while I played Chaos;Head). I don't remember the stuff behind the froggies either, I only remember a scene where the detective intentionally misspronounces the name to troll a rude clerk^^. I recommend everyone to play it: just watch this scene as a teaser: I never played a MuvLuv game, because the first one didn't work on my pc (and Alternative is a direct sequal right?). Maybe I try it on my laptop. btw thanks for reading and replying

Three Remarkable Protagonists – Final Part by Cross As you may have noticed my last article is from nearly 3 months ago, so let me tell you briefly what happened: first my pc died. If you spend as much time with your computer as I do this is not a mere nuisance, it's more like the death of a beloved friend. After I put him six feet under I ordered a new one – but it was not working properly. Now I use an old laptop from my family with Windows XP... Shortly after I became sick and wasn't able to read VNs for some weeks and then my new semester started – to make it short I lost my connection to Visal Novels. Now I'm feeling better and started to read again (Fortune Arterial, seems promising) and remembered that my series on protagonists was still not finished – so I decided to end at least this little project of mine. So before you post „Cool story, bro.“ I'll begin with the last part. Sorry for the delay, it's good to be back home again. (As allways: Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler) Nishijou Takumi (Chaos;Head) – One of our kind http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/4052/otaku1aye6.jpg Chaos,Head is a murder-mystery story about a serial killer in Tokyo. Later it becomes even apocalyptical with the world being nearly destroyed, but what got me wasn't the story, it wasn't the girls and it wasn't Moe. No, the strongest point of this VN is it's hero: Takumi. If you played it you may wonder why I appreciate him. In fact, Takumi is the exact opposite of a hero. He's a weak-whiny hardcore-Otaku living in his own world of dreams and illusions. But let's start from the beginning: Takumi is a high school student, but here the typical features already stop. He lives alone in a metal box (don't know the word, it's about as large as a room) on the top of a construction site. He has a bed, a pc and a fridge – he doesn't need more to live. Takumi collects figurines of Eroge and Anime girls (I spotted Saber and Arcueid, but there are more) and spends his time with 3 things: an online-rpg, playing Eroges and chatting with his only friend (he only knows his nickname though). To minimize the time he must waste in school he made a minimum-attendance table. In school Takumi tries to be as unrecognizable as possible, because he always fears to be bullied, but actually his classmates only ignore him. Chaos;Head has an unique decission system: instead of typical choices you can decide if Takumi has a positive or negative illusion (like daydreams) at certain points. If you press the button he starts to imagibe the craziest things instead of listening to his dialogue-partners. Want an example? He has a sister (pretty snappy, but she cares a lot for her useless brother). When she visits him he can't play games, so usually Takumi is very rude to her. Once you can decide if Takumi has a daydream and those are the results: positive illusion: his sister becomes horny, opens her shirt and tries to seduce him (wincest!! but sadly all ages...) negative illusion: his sister drinks poisened cola, vomits blood and dies right in front of him Of course nothing of this really happens, but it's very intriguing to share the fucked-up mind of a crazy freak like Takumi. I love this choice system, because it gives us the freedom to decide whether we like the story to become more strange and crazy or not. Chaos;Head features severeal good looking girls, but our hero is already in a relationship with his imaginary girlfriend. Yup, that's right, his imagination is so strong that he's able to project the heroine of an anime into his reality. This girl named Seira is sometimes the only thing that prevents him from going crazy in dangerous situations. Those are the most importand facts about him, but why is he such a great character to me? Because Takumi is an evil caricature of us, the Otakus. The author created a mirror showing us an exaggerated distorted image of ourselves. We like gaming and Eroge, Takumi is addicted to it like to a drug. We enjoy to explore fictional relationships, Takumi doesn't even have any others. We fantasize about 2D-girls, Takumi despises the real girls. We like to escape from reality from time to time, Takumi already lives in his daydreams. Everything he does and likes is a cynical parody of Otaku-lifestyle. The way we see Takumi, a weak, disturbingly strange loser, is the way society sees us. Would you tell other people that you like japanese stories of underage girls having sex on screen? Incest? Or the strange stuff like Nekomimi, Maidos or Guro? Probably you won't, because you don't want to end like Takumi. The author doesn't only underline the negative images. Because of his strong fantasy Takumi is able to save people and later even the world, but Chaos;Head is still the only VN I played where this whole Moe-industry and the digital culture in general is examined critically. Imouto incest, Otaku-girls, Tunderes, emotionless girls; Chaos;Head introduces those archetypes to Takumi only to ridicule him. Nothing is real. The girl who pretends to want to buy Anime-figurines with him only wants to investigate the murders, his sister seduces him only in his dreams, the Tsundere is not secretly in love with him, no, she really dislikes Takumi. All those destroyed archetypes and tropes show us how dull most of the writing in the media actually is. Sadly the latter half of Chaos;Head turns into your typical shounen fight stuff we all know well enough, but I still won't forget the fascinating beginning of it. Takumi's catch-phrase, when he feels observed, „Whose eyes are those eyes?“ constantly mocks us readers, showing us that we try to read another convenient story, but the author won't let us from the hook this easily. Takumi really gets observed, by us. We get thrown onto the meta-level, whether we like it or not. This subtle deepness is unusual in VN. Chaos;Head uses the typical japanese cliches only to invert them later Chaos;Head's special twist is that the story expands out of the screen, playing with the readers. When you look at the screen you see Takumi's screen. It's like we are sitting behind him, but this time the fictional character knows it. He knows that somebody is there watching him. We are. Whose eyes are thoses eyes? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That's it. I just finished my magnus opus, the thrilling analysis of the most fascinating protagnonists. I guess most of you didn't expect Takumi, some even seem to hate him and his voice actor (who is in fact really fantastic, don't you agree?). Some mentioned guys like the hero of Sharin no Kuni or Majikoi, but, while being cool in their own rights, those are your typical badass-heroes. I will always prefer the flawed protagonists, the ones with weaknesses and problems. Thanks for reading. I don't know if I'll continue with my written explorations of Visual Novels but I'm glad that I could at least finish this series. Straight outta XP your Cross PS: All hail to the Gero Froggy!!!

Youtube translations have disadvantages for the reader: - because it's a video you have to live with slow text-speed - no 18+ titles (or censorship, which is even worse) My suggestion: If you are really willing to translate such a huge amount of text, you could do it in a cool way (eng-patch) right from the start. Of course, this is just my selfish wish, so whatever you do good luck^^

Have you heard of Sinkha? Sinkha: Hyleyn Seems like some kind of western 3D VNs. Sadly, I only found some dead links on the web. Does anybody know how to find it? Thanks in advance^^

The first comment there is: And that's exactly what I thought. The website is not important, but the translations is. Hopefully they get back on track.

When I hear a cool song in a VN I try to get it and put it in this folder (and out of the hundreds of tracks in all VNs I played those are my favorites).

Right now on the spot 3 scenes come to mind: 1. Kana - Little Sister 2. Tsukihime 3. Family Project

this is my collection

I'm convinced that the medium Visual Novel is much better in transporting emotions, relationships and thoughts than movies or anime. Because it is basically a book you can explore your characters so much deeper. Till now I only found 1 VN that would be better as an anime: Hanachirasu. Battles and descriptions of sword techniques don't make sense in a novel...

If anybody wonders were that pic is from: it's from a wonderful incest ero-anime called "Suki de, Suki de, Suki de - The Animation". It features two funny and heartwarming scenes where brother and sister find together (epic wincest). Watch it! You won't regret it^^ edit: Why is the pic here in the first place??? On topic: Why are two games fully translated, but edited over such a long period - my guess: the translator stumbled upon problems and doesn't want to admit it...

I perfectly understand if somebody doesn't like Saya no Uta (as I wrote I quit it in the beginning, too), but personally I believe that Urobochi Gen (the author) will never be able to top this story. Oh, thanks for reading btw.^^

I'm always happy when I succeed to spread the love^^

Three Remarkable Protagonists - Part 2 By Cross This is the second part of a three-part series dealing with my favorite protagonists in Visual Novels. As always: SPOILERS ( for Saya no Uta this time). Sakisaka Fuminori (Saya no Uta) – Two against the World (literally…) When I started with Visual Novels I stumbled upon a VN with a Loli dressed in white on the cover. What a promising title, I thought. After two minutes I quit playing. It was the most awful beginning I ever encountered. You only get to see some horrible, twisted flesh-monsters screaming like in your worst nightmares with some spooky BGM on top. I deleted the game files and started some fluffy Bishoujo game to calm my nerves. I read in several threads that other players were discouraged by the first minutes, too, so I decided that I won’t appreciate it anyway. After some months I checked the best ranking VNs on VNDB and among them was Saya no Uta. How could so many people rate an awful game like that so highly? I had to start it again to see if it was a mistake to quit it. It was. The Story Fuminori is a medical student with a promising future and three reliable friends at his side. One girl of the group is even in love with him, everything seems perfect, until Fuminori nearly dies in a traffic accident that kills his parents. He gets an emergency operation, including his brain. After some weeks he awakes and realizes that something is not right. The hospital stinks like a slaughterhouse, everywhere is blood and rotten flesh. There are no humans, only twisted abominations speaking in terrifying voices to him, asking him how he feels. He realized that they are actually humans, but the operation changed his perception of reality. Fuminori perceives the world as a living hell, every human is a beast, everything is covered in bloody flesh and the food tastes like raw meat. After one week he is on the verge of madness, thinking about suicide to escape his never-ending nightmare. That’s when Saya appears. One night, when Fuminori lies awake in his blood-covered bed, a little girl enters the room. She is the first person looking like a human to him. She introduces herself as Saya and is quiet surprised that he doesn’t panic at her sight (you’ll understand this at the end of the story). When he leaves the hospital he asks Saya if she wants to live with him. She accepts. Why Fuminori rocks Fuminori starts as a victim. His life was turned to hell and without Saya he would have killed himself. Later in the story he turns into a villain protagonist engaging in cannibalism, rape and murder. Fuminori becomes a male Yandere. He would do anything to protect his life with Saya, no crime is too low for him. And I could understand him completely. Most villains were written as somebody the audience can hate. The natural enemy of the hero that gets defeated in the end. Guys being evil for evil’s sake, without a basis for identification for the reader. Fuminori is different. All his doings have a simply justification. For him it’s a matter of life and death. Saya is not just his girlfriend, but a personification of hope and life as a whole. Without her he is doomed to crawl through an eternal nightmare without humans (at least his perception runs that way). With this fact in mind all his crimes are understandable. His only options are killing and violence or a cruel death in madness. Can we really judge him that he chooses life? How far would you go to protect your life? Would you kill, rape and eat human flesh? How much are ethics and moral worth when the most important thing is on the line? That’s what makes Saya no Uta such a great story. Fuminori is a deep, compelling protagonist because he challenges our views on human society. Good and bad persons, altruism and caring for your fellow men? All of that is far away when you fight for survival. He and Saya are no longer part of society, having only each other. All the time I rooted for Fuminori and his desperate love for Saya. Even after all he has done (including the apocalyptic end of humanity as we know it…) I understood that he never had a choice. Fuminori and Saya doom the world for their own sake and I cannot even condemn them. I would have done the same and so would you. Their love is not lust or convenience, it is life itself. Without each other they cannot exist. That’s why Saya no Uta is the most romantic Visual Novel I ever read and Fuminori belongs to the best protagonists ever written. --------------------------------------------------- Two revealed, one to go. Who will be the final remarkable protagonist? Please return next weekend to read the big finale of my three-part article. Until then, best regards from your Cross Ps.: Thanks to all, who tried to guess the protagonists two weeks ago^^ Ps. 2: If you never understood the story here’s an accurate abstract: Link

- Arcueid (Tsukihime, a lovable airhead and a powerful vampire at the same time) - Hanako (Katawa Shoujo, HNNNNNNNNG) - Kana (Kana - Little Sister, this VN will crush your soul, but from the shattered ruins of your heart you will rise again with new strength:eek:)

I said I would write the next part next week. That was 1 week ago... sry for that, but I wasn't in the mood for writing. This weekend part 2 will go on, I promise:o

The Arcueid H-scene was one of the most touching moments of all times in my playthroughs of VNs. It was the first time that I realized that porn (as you call it) and art can coexist. Instead of making wussy all-ages bullshit the authors should start creating more meaningful H-content.

Hanako is really popular: but Ilya is even better!

I'm playing my third route of Kanon atm. What a great classic! Everyone should play it...

Doctor West from Demonbane That guy freaked the shit out of me. I like his loli-companion though....

Gabezhul (a very active mod and writer on vndb) wrote: link I agree, Katawa Shoujo could be a turning point for VNs. I wouldn't speak about "mainstream", but at least VNs could be less freaky in some time.

Imouto 'cause you can't spell wincest without incest...

His only special skill is turning energy into sweets. That's almost as useless as my personal special skill (turning food into shit...). I hate Da Capo, because it features a boring Imouto-Incest-route and that's unforgivable (that it's boring, not the incest^^)

Good guesses, but a good protagonist doesn't necessarily be super strong or clever. A really impressing protag needs some sort of twist or surprise for the reader. As for Shirou, I hated his "Don't fight, Saber, because you are a girl. I fight for you with this magically strengthened poster of Hardo Gay..." (Fate/stay Night is still great)