Cross

Sekien no Inganock. The art is great and Ati and Kia are very Moe, but it had some serious flaws. - repetitive as fck - a cold, unrelatable protagonist - an annoying mini-game in every shapter - open ending and aborted romance It's between 6 and 7 /10

That's a shame, because she is an awesome imouto-character. As for the game: the Aeka route is still in the top 5 of the best routes ever! (At least imho)

I read the Elis route and was rather disappointed. Even with the incest-vibe it was still boring....meh

What the heck is the translator of Fate/Hollow Ataraxia doing? I know, respect the contributors and so on, but he needs like a month for 100 lines. Furthermore he doesn't seem to have an editor, because over 12.000 lines are translated, but not edited. Maybe Mirror Moon returns with an epic Whooooom!! and translates F/HA in 2 weeks...

I realized that the term Loli is indeed a bit overused. To keep them special I will now use "semi-Loli" for the ages 12-16. I still refuse to read LB without Ero...

Visual Novels live through their use of words and sometimes a line that is really worth sharing. If you find such a line please note it and post it here! I'm sure many would appreciate it. When you surf regularly on vndb (like I do) you may have noticed the quotes on the bottom of each page. These are a good starting point. Rules: 1. the line should be understandable and enjoyable without knowing the context (too much VNs to know them all...) 2. both funny and impressive (whatever this means to you) quotes are valid 3. please mention the source (name of VN) Examples: "I'm so pissed off, i'm gonna take a shit!" (Edelweiss) "Yes. I'm the girl you killed yesterday. I'm glad you remember." (Tsukihime) "I'm not gay! I'm bi..." (Family Project) Cross' Favorites ( Here i'll post the best (imho) quotes from this thread and new ones) "I am pretty dog! Are you pretty dog, too? It's miracle!" (Clannad)

I learned that fiction is the better reality.

I played 4 routes (sorry, Shizune...) and Hanako tops the rest with no effort. She's not only the most appealing girl (subjective), her route also had the deepest moments. Remember her H-Scene? It was beautiful, sad and tragic at the same time, both of them agreeing into sex for the wrong reasons, the emotional fallout after that messed up night and their final reunion. Her author knew exactly what he was doing, creating a really impressive character. I bet that many Eroge-newbies got hooked on VNs because of this particular route.

I just realized I never introduced myself here... I'm Cross, student and videogames/VN-Otaku. I love to explore exiting new fiction and like to write annoyingly long walls of text in bad English. Well, see you on the forum:o

For me the term Loli is a bit broader, not only 8-year olds. Key always makes their girls look very young.

I refuse to play a game full of Lolis without any Ero-Ero. Come on TLWiki, make it happen!

I played my first VN without a walkthrough, messed up along the way and got a bad ending. You know the Fuuuuuuuuck-Guy? That day I looked exactly the same. Now it goes like this: search the character pages of vndb for the most impressive girl -> search and copy a walkthrough =winning

Well, I always upload the pics from my hd, so that won't work. It's not that important, though. As for YMK: for real? Aeka is the personification of Moe. She has everything you could ever ask from a girl: white hair, old-fashioned clothes, serious problems in life and an almost Yandere-like obsession with the protagonist! Wait a sec...that doesn't really sound right...

The Five Phases of Manly Romance by Cross Chick Flicks Romance is for women, right? Whenever I hear „love story“ I instantly think of gay vampires and Fabio. George Clooney, Hugh Jackman and Robert Pattinson bring a smile to girls’ faces all over the world, while the boys frown like they drank a glass of piss. In the western hemisphere love in art is only targeted at women. Over the years the people accepted that fact, claiming that men are just too rough for emotions and only care for violence and porn, while the girls cry in front of the television, just because the movie is sooo romantic. But what if I tell you that this is not the whole truth and men can enjoy romantic content as well? That boys of all countries can deeply care for fictional characters and even cry for tragic events in art (google “Manly Tears”)? Well I just did, so let me get to the point. Nippon Love Just take a look at our favorite country when it comes to entertainment. Hands down, love is the most important topic in Anime, Manga and Visual Novels. The emotional buildup between two characters is more important than the story in general. A matching couple and their development from strangers to friends to lovers impresses more than clever plot twists or mecha fights. Even in works that are targeted at boys you will find love as the dominant topic. This is (sadly) the exactly opposite of Western art. Imagine an unshaved, muscular badass in the train reading “Twilight”. A ridiculous thought? Only in the Western world. I’m always happy when I read a well-written route in a Visual Novel. It’s not even that hard to delight the fans. Romance in VNs mostly follows a fixed pattern that boys can understand and appreciate. I call it “The Five Phases of Manly Romance”. Phase 1 - The Introduction Our hero just lives his boring daily life. Nothing exciting happens between school, free time and sleep, but one day he meets a cute girl. Maybe he bumps into her in the school corridor or they work at the same part-time job, but that’s not important. They talk to each other and (with the right choices from the mysterious puppet player in front of the screen) become closer eventually. Usually a boy in Japan meets at least five good-looking girls during his day, so he has to choose! When Protagonist-kun has decided the next phase applies. Phase 2 – The Dato Our future couple got closer and according to Japanese laws they have to proceed with the proper order of romance, the next step: the “Dato”. It’s not really the same as the English term “date”. A Dato is a fixed ritual, dating back to ancient times when Ameterasu and the first Yamato-Emperor ate rice balls and sang Karaoke together. Since then aspiring couples had to spent the afternoon in the shopping district with eating, buying souvenirs and visit the cinema, otherwise the “Pink Kami of Flower Odor” would turn the boy gay (at least this is stated in the ancient legend 偉大なゲイのゲイ•ボーイ). A successful Dato leads to the next phase. Phase 3 – The Hug The boy has to be a clever tactician to reach the requirements of phase 3, because it can only proceed in a very limited number of locations. Actually only the roof of a school, a beach at night or the room of a girl are possible areas. When the couple has reached one of those holy places they become quite, smooth violin music sets in and the boy, usually with a stern face, does the unthinkable: he puts his arms around the girl. This is the turning point of his relationship-quest! Of course the poor thing is shocked and can’t react at all. The only thing she can mutter in such a situation is the name of the cruel violator (but still with a polite “–kun” attached). Often the next phase begins right after. Phase 4 – The Kisu When the hero has gone this far he shouldn’t stop. Increasing the strength of his grip (so the girl can’t escape) he lowers his head und puts his lips on hers! Now the only sounds that can be heard are smacks and whimpers (I always imagine the voice-actress chewing bubblegum and sucking on her fingers to imitate the sounds while the rest of the crew laughs their asses off). Having almost reached the final goal the hero continues to phase 5. Phase 5 – The Unification of Two Souls (a.k.a. the H-Scene) At his point the time for silly girly-bullshit is over. Now the hero has to prove his unlimited manliness by… well, having sex. This final phase could also be explained in steps, but for the sake of simplicity I will shorten it for you: kissing – undressing – kissing the breasts – (opt.) blowjob – sticking it in – (opt.) virgin blood slaughterfest – ramming like it’s 1968 – ejaculating 5 liters of sperm – (opt.) getting interrupted by a cute Imouto - sleeping. Of course one orgasm is only for pussies (no pun intended). A real man can do it 5 times in a row! Having reached this 5th Phase of Manly Romance everything that happens after is just a useless bonus. This pattern can be applied to nearly all Bishoujo-VNs and even to some drama-heavy ones. This universal recipe for satisfying love resonates well with Otakus all over the world and never fails to succeed. When will the Western World adapt this miraculous way of developing relationships? Until then the word “romance” will always have the bad aftertaste of topless male vampires and Fabio. Isn’t it sad, Aeka? In manly love, your Cross Ps 1: Having re-read my text I realize that the humor is rather silly. My deepest apologies… Ps 2: Have I mentioned that I love the Aeka-route of Yume Miru Kusuri? Ps 3: Do you know how to post pictures a bit bigger? With the "insert image" button they always get thumbnailed...

I second that request. Visual Novels are not 100-metre dashs, where it is important to be as fast and efficient as possible. Do you really enjoy to play a route like 2 hours after the start just because you can save some time in the beginning? For me, that breaks immersion. So a big bucket of thanks for everyone that compiles a walkthrough for every route without savestates^^

Well, at least the Internet seems to be tolerant (more or less). You know the Pedobear meme? As long as people can still make jokes about such a delicate matter, I'm hopefull that censorship movements have to expect a serious opposition.

Nah, I appreciate every contribution to the discussion, whether its approval or not. I can perfectly understand when you despise Lolicon. I just wanted to write about stuff I enjoy and that moves me. Sharing the compassion you feel when you spend time with things you love is always great.

In German it's written Tokio (Tokio (Stadt)), but it's Tokyo in English. Both is just a romanization, so who cares. BTW did you really read my post? It's NOT about fucking children, it's an unrealistic, but basically innocent ideal of girls. When you look at Anime and VNs nearly all girls could be considered underage (I'm looking at you, KEY!). I guess you still enjoy it (otherwise you wouldn't be here), does this make you and us child abusers? You know what really is pedo? Child beauty pageants; real little girls dancing and singing in miniskirts. That stuff is wrong. Art must be free, otherwise it's worthless propaganda. Keep reaching for the Lolis, my friends^^.

The Little Things in Life - On Lolicon By Cross C.P.? In 2005 a 26-year old Canadian was arrested for “importing child porn”. He pleaded guilty and was therefore spared jail, but next to some minor punishments (community service, forced counseling and a fine) his name was put on the sex-offender registry. Why I’ m telling you this, you ask? Because the “child porn” he imported was Manga. Lolicon Manga. When a man is sentenced for looking at some drawings something is wrong in the world. Globalization and Internet allow us to get entertainment from all over the world, but unfortunately the cultural borders are still there. Child abuse is as old as humanity and I’m fairly sure that soon after the invention of photography some bastards used it to exploit children for their twisted needs, but when the Internet-age began everything exploded. The Internet offered places for pedophiles to share their material fast and in masses. During the last decade the whole topic was picked up by the public and politicians and the laws were tightened to stop the unhealthy development. This is not bad in itself, but as usual when people talk about things they don’t understand (as politicians do with a look on their approval ratings) things tend to get fucked up, which brings us straight to today’s issue. Lolita Complex Japan has a huge obsession with youth. All girls in Manga, Anime and VNs appear pretty young, even grown up women don’t have wrinkles and are always slim and attractive. I remember that Matsumi from “Family Project” has a trauma of feeling too old, despite being only 30 and she is no exception. From my European perspective it seems that female maturity is despised and older women are considered worthless and ugly in Japan. Whether this is correct or just a prejudice, the facts in Otaku-media can’t be denied. When being young is a virtue it is only consequent that being a kid is even better… Lolicon is the term for pictures and movies involving drawn females with child-like appearances. The actual age of the character is secondary, what matters is a small body (including breasts) and usually, but not always a matching personality (innocent, pure, childish). It is a popular archetype in Japanese media since the 80s and as long as it stayed there everything seemed to be fine… East and West Japan’s laws separate clearly between drawn materials and actual child porn. Western laws are mostly different, prohibiting EVERYTHING featuring child-like characters. This conflict gets more severe when you think about the masses of Lolicon material on the Internet, which could be considered as child porn in the western world. When MangaGamer censored Matsuri in “Family Project” and the translator of “Hoshizora no Memoria” replaced Loli H-Scenes with pictures of dolphins (!) the community raged, but from a judicial point of view I can understand it. I wouldn’t want to be persecuted for distributing child porn either. In the recent years things changed a little, but unfortunately for the worse. In 2010 a bill was proposed in Tokyo, which would prohibit every “harmful manga” (referring to Loli). This incident is known as the “Tokyo Loli Ban” and fortunately it was rejected later, but the whole affair shows that Japan seems to be negatively influenced by the Western politics, which rejects to even consider Lolicon as art. Someone in some forum called it an “attempt to appease the American Overlords” and I agree. Out of fear that the “American friends” could be upset those politicians tried to deny their own culture and this is really sad, because Japanese culture is awesome! How will this problem continue? I don’t know. Basically there are two possibilities: Either the laws become more rigid or the tension decreases and Lolis will be tolerated. Let’s hope for the best. From a Certain Point of View I wrote about laws and culture, but let me tell you about my personal feelings regarding this topic. I first came in contact with Lolicon when I was in 8th grade. A friend gave me a DVD with stuff we called “Manga porn” back then. Basically it was Hentai material with some Lolis in it. I remember that I was more or less bored (I still find it very difficult to fap to Hentai). Things changed when I played “Family Project”. One of the heroines is a 14-year old girl named Matsuri. She is your typical token Loli: she is innocent to an almost ridiculous degree (she faints when she sees the protagonist’s dick), she blushes a lot and is generally very clingy and yearning for affection. I don’t know what you think of girls like her, but I fell in love instantly. Matsuri showed me what makes Lolis appealing. Pure Love Who enjoys Lolicon the most? I could be wrong, but I would bet 100€ that it’s the group which is often called Freaks/Geeks/Weirdos/Loners/Otakus. Their characteristics: limited social skills, affinity for PCs and being sexually inexperienced. I don’t mean this deprecatory in any way, I count myself to this group and virginity is nothing to be ashamed of compared to all the suffering caused by having sex too early and unprepared. Back to topic, it may surprise you, but I strongly believe that the erotic aspect is not the most important one when it comes to Lolis, instead Lolicon is driven by an almost innocent, naïve sense of romance (yep, you read that right). I often perceive the modern Western world as a corrupt, greedy place of decay: everything is fake; plastic only designed to rip money out of you. True feelings are gone, instead we got superficial relationships, fucks without love. Nobody cares anymore, aggressive gangs beat seniors and homeless to death, but we just shrug our shoulders while the anchorman in the TV switches from murder and war to sport, celebrity gossip and advertisements. Standing inside this maelstrom of madness many have escaped to the realms of their fantasy. This is where Lolicon comes into the picture. It may sound crazy, but Lolis are our ideal, imaginary first girlfriends. Pure, innocent girls, free of filth and corruption, like little kitten stranded in the merciless wilds. We reach out to protect them, to save them from the dangers of humanity (psychological concepts: Moe and White Knighting). Whether they have childish personalities or belong to the common archetypes (Tsundere…) doesn’t matter, their child-like shortness is a strong symbol of purity, easily understandable all over the world. In its core Lolicon is not about sexual attraction to little girls, but the search for pure, uncorrupted love and affirmation, something we only expect to find with young girls, which are equally unsure of themselves and inexperienced as many Otakus are. Sure, like every form of escapism this is only a delusion, a temporary relief from reality, but as long as fiction gives us positive impacts and we don’t lose our sense for the real live I can’t find anything wrong with that. This is highly subjective, but for me Lolicon has nothing to do with child porn. Instead it is the unrealistic, but understandable strive for pure love, something that seems to got lost on the way of humanity. So whenever you, my fellow Loli fans, hear someone comparing us to pedophiles and child abusers feel free to ignore those ignorant bastards and enjoy your daily dose of Loli-Loli with Ero-Ero. ----------------------- This was a very long post and surely some of you disagree with me. I thank you for reading it and would be very glad if you write me some comments of what you think of my text and this topic in general. Best wishes, your Cross Ps: My favorite Loli of all times is Ilyasviel von Einzbern (Fate/Stay Night). She’s a homicidal maniac, but ultra-kawaii and moe at the same time! (Mikan from Wanko to Kurasou comes 2nd) Ps 2: Last week I wrote about how I came to like Visual Novels. If you want to read it, here's the link: https://erogegames.com/eroge-visual-novels/eroge-general-talk/857-why-i-read-visual-novels/

Thanx for your comments^^ Actually it's a bit sad that the most common entry to this scene is through cheap Nukiges and not the story-driven VNs, but this way the masterpieces are even better. Anyway, I guess I will write some more about the stuff I read and enjoy, expect my next post at the weekend.

Why I read Visual Novels By Cross “I've just finished a game whose story left me changed. At times viscerally uncomfortable, at others touching, it was a story of filial love, coming-of-age, the fragility of childhood and the bleakness of mortality. It's called Kana: Little Sister, and it's an incest-themed sex game.” (Leigh Alexander on The Escapist) (Attention: This article contains 2 spoilers for Tsukihime and Kana, Little Sister. Please don’t read if you can’t handle those^^). It was like four months ago when I stumbled on a thread named “The best Hentai Games” on some Warez-forum. Next to stupid rape simulators and 3D porn animations where some smaller files, almost hidden. I only chose to download them, because I needed some fap-material and couldn’t be bothered to wait for a 3 GB file to finish. I came for the porn, but got something different… The game was called “Tokimeki Check-in!” and it was my first Visual Novel (of course I didn’t know at that time). Strangely, it started quite calm. There weren’t any sexy-naked-dangerously-young-Anime girls, no tentacle rape, not even the slightest hint of sexy time. Instead I got a first-person narrative of some bum, who didn’t want to get up in the morning. What a massive disappointment. Despite that, I decided to continue, maybe the good stuff lies just beyond the introduction. To make it short, I only reached a normal end and nothing happened. I didn’t get any porn, but the experience changed my perspective on art, literature and entertainment. I was fascinated how such a cheap, slice-of-life story, written in bad English with tons of typos and quirky grammar, could affect me so deeply. How could this happen? It all starts with the first person narrator. I was not only a spectator, I was in the story. That lazy bastard, surrounded by attractive girls, was I. Western literature creates characters, Visual Novels make you a character. With this simple psychological trick everything in the story becomes more direct and vivid. When the protagonist enters a hot spring full of naked girls, or “accidently” gropes some tits, you, as the reader, are not merely watching from a grandstand behind him. No, you are directly in his head. It’s like it’s your arm that touches all the naughty bits and more. (When I read this paragraph it sounds a bit creepy, but I believe that these are the psychological foundations of a Visual Novel…) Later, when I read more stuff, it became clear that the second foundation of VNs is the emotional binding to the characters. It sounds cheap, but I will never forget the stinging pain in my heart, when Arcueid (of Tsukihime) left Shiki or the joy when Kana (from Kana, Little Sister) survived her critical surgery in the best ending. Those characters weren’t only tropes or metaphors from some crazy author. As long as I was with them, they were my friends, my family and my lovers. I shared their joy and their pain, and not always was everything happy in the end. But so is life and mostly it was worth it. Four months later I had finished a decent amount of VNs. Big ones and small ones, tragic or funny, I liked most of them and I’m not going to stop. Sure, many topics and characters were copied and repeated, but I was still able to find something valuable in the stories, the characters or the setting. Steven Erikson once said that art is about transporting emotions to the consumers and I agree. Love, hate, sadness, despair, friendship and fun – I never found an art-form, which is capable of delivering those emotions so deeply. And this is why I read and love Visual Novels. This is my story. Maybe some of you have similar experiences or completely different ones. Some of you came here from watching Anime or learning Japanese, but in the end it only matters that we as a group can enjoy this awesome medium. And I, for myself, am really looking forward to the VNs to come and I bet most of you do, too. Best wishes from your Cross Ps: I really would like to use this opportunity to thank the Admin of this wonderful site, Ivan, for bringing us so many English-translated VNs. You are one of the heroes of the digital age. Instead of bunkering your treasures in a safe like Scrooge McDuck you invest money and work for sharing them with a bunch of perverted strangers (^^) on the Internet. This is really great. Thanks. Ps 2: Please write a comment if you liked or disliked this article. I’m thinking of writing about more about topics related to Visual Novels, but don’t want to bother the community if you hate my goofy writing. Ps 3: English is not my native language (that’s German:cool:).