Katawa Shoujo

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#61

Sigh¬Öwhere do I even begin with this. No, I’m not here to deny your personal attachment to Katawa Shoujo. In fact, I’m not going to deny anyone’s personal attachment to Katawa Shoujo. Because that was one of the biggest things Katawa Shoujo was trying to do: make you feel empathetic to each character they were trying to create. But that’s also the biggest problem that I had with it. I didn’t hate every character, but I got annoyed and frustrated with every single one. Yes, you could say it was because that’s what they were going for, but for me, the problem is more core. NONE OF THEM are real, and none of them are realistic. But then people would say, that doesn’t matter, Katawa Shoujo is a fictional story with more realistic, authentic elements than any visual novel out there. Well there’s my problem, IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A STORY. If I wanted to feel empathetic for something, I would rather do it for something that is real, not something that “feels” real. Then why would I read fiction in the first place, you say? I love fiction because what’s “real” in fiction is the author’s attempt to get his STORY across, to get his IDEAS across, or just to let the reader have fun. It doesn’t matter to me if they tried to make it as authentic as possible or if somebody “actually” had sex. What mattered to me is a beginning, middle, end. What matters to me are conflict, rising action and climax. What I had a problem with Katawa Shoujo is that it “seems” to have a story. It “seems” to have a conflict. It “seems” to have a climax. But in the end, when everything is said and done, nothing feels resolved. Nothing feels built up and nothing is paid off. The only thing that “paid off” is what you WANT to see in the story, not what is actually in Katawa Shoujo. The whole “story” comes across as a list of things that happen which show how “normal” every girl is before finally going to the sudden confusing ending where they go on to explain everything that you should felt and understood about the girl in the first place. What does the main character do “help” each heroine other than just being there? Where is the turning point? When do I realize that the “disability” is just a small part of the bigger picture of a character? What is the mood and tone of the story? Everything is just a mess of “authenticity” that is eventually tied up into a big messy knot called an ending.

This is why I feel people have been tricked. This is why I feel Katawa Shoujo is so manipulative. GO TALK TO A REAL PERSON AND THEY WOULD BE A MILLION TIMES MORE REAL, MORE AUTHENTIC THAN KATAWA SHOUJO IS. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now. Talking to you TDOMMX is more interesting that Katawa Shoujo will ever be. What’s that you say? What’s more important is that it is a “clumsy attempt to tell a simple message”? Big friggin whoop. TONS of people have made that clumsy attempt to tell a simple message. None of those people get the attention that Katawa Shoujo gets. Why is that? Because all the disabilities in Katawa Shoujo makes it seem bigger than it really is. This is what frustrates me the most. Because if we took out every single disability in Katawa Shoujo, almost nothing about the plot would change. But then you wouldn’t see Katawa Shoujo getting all this attention it would be getting. You wouldn’t see all these posts about “I want to like it but, blah blah blah”. You would just see people going “Yeah, I see where they were going but it really didn’t work”. Don’t get me wrong here. People have said that and that’s what I’m trying to emphasize: IT DIDN’T WORK. Sure, the characters have problems but how does it affect their development? How does it affect the plot? What’s the bigger picture? I don’t ever get that feeling of a “bigger picture” from Katawa Shoujo other than what the main character randomly realizes and TELLS you and people ridiculous attempts to defend it. This is why I feel so insulted to see Katawa Shoujo called a visual novel. Never do I get the feeling of Katawa Shoujo as a visual novel. All I see is five separate poorly written short stories with pictures and choice elements that have nothing to do with each other put down a set path where nothing is really set up well or fully resolved. The “sex” is pointless. The characters are pointless. Even the so called conflict is pointless. All the authenticity in the world doesn’t make a difference if I don’t feel connected TO THE STORY AND THE MESSAGE in the first place.

Authenticity doesn’t make a visual novel good any more than special effects make a movie interesting. What matters is their context and how they play a part in the overall story they are trying to tell. I will never say that Katawa Shoujo is beautiful because it’s not. What IS beautiful is people like you trying to put every effort into inserting your own life into something that is so manipulatively fictional because that is the magic of visual novels. That is why visual novels work. But that’s what I find frustrating. Sure Katawa Shoujo was a “refreshing” experience. Sure it has everything in the world that makes you want it to be good. But by the end of the day I was so bored and disconnected to everything that happened that I couldn’t take it anymore. Real stories should be about GIVING you a reason for caring, not listing things you should care about.

Finally, if I wanted an authentic experience, I would talk to each and every one of you on this forum before I would consider reading Katawa Shoujo again. REAL people are interesting. They’re filled with conflict. They’re filled with stories more interesting than the so called “stories” in Katawa Shoujo. They’re even more relatable because THEY’RE REAL. Stop trying to tell me how you had gone through the same thing. That’s what’s interesting about YOU not about Katawa Shoujo. Stop trying to tell me that it was a “clumsy attempt to tell a simple message”. That’s what’s interesting about about the WRITER, not about the actual story. The truth is EVERY (okay, almost every) visual novel writer deserves the kind of respect and sympathy that Katawa Shoujo deserves, if not more BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY CREATED SOMETHING GOOD. STOP GIVING REASONS WHY KATAWA SHOUJO IS GOOD BECAUSE OF YOUR PERSONAL EXPECTATIONS AS OPPOSED TO WHAT’S THERE. Jeez, is that too hard to understand? lol

PS. Sorry TDOMMX if you took my earlier post personally. That post was more frustrated rant directed towards people that didn’t read and understand visual novels and the comment about pretentiousness was more about people kept mischaracterizing visual novels. Clearly you’re not one of those people. You’re clearly much smarter than that and you’ve actually read a lot of visual novels lol. Sorry if I seem so condescending sometimes. That’s just a tool I use to make a point :D. I’m not actually mad at you, I really enjoy your posts and your patience with me, I’m sorry if I don’t seem to have that same patience lol. Where I don’t agree with you is that I feel it is YOUR personal connection that makes you defend it that much, not what’s written in the story. In that case it would make YOU more interesting and relatable, not Katawa Shoujo lol. Don’t sell yourself short for something like Katawa Shoujo :stuck_out_tongue:

#62

I haven’t even bothered playing the full game because I’m not that interested, but I’m weirded out by your huge spiel against it. Real people are more interesting than fictional characters who are written to make a point? Sure, but, um, the characters in every other video game, book, or movie are also fictional and written to make a point.

If your argument was that the drama seemed poorly paced and didn’t really ‘sell’ to you effectively, you can just say that. It would make a lot more sense. It didn’t work for you, you didn’t like it, you think it’s overrated because people feel obligated to big it up. Fine.

The irony is that you’re using too many words to say too little, which is exactly what many people who aren’t Katawa SHoujo fans think about it as well. :slight_smile:

Trim down to a shorter, sharper message and people will get it better!

#63

I thought the fight between Unit 2 and the mass produced Evas was cool. Though I admit I keep mixing up everything that happened after that with the last episode of the TV series. BTW, how long until the third Rebuild movie comes out?

#64

Lol the reason it was long was that there were more points than just the drama didn’t work in there. Besides, I didn’t say that real people are more interesting than fictional characters make a point, I was saying that if I wanted authenticity, I would just talk to a real person before I would look at a character for authenticity. Characters have a role in the idea and the story, they’re not supposed to be sympathy fests. And it wasn’t just because it “just didn’t work for me”. It was because people kept applying their own lives to things that wasn’t real and if people really wanted to do that, they should do if for something that’s good and makes sense, not something boring and confusing like Katawa Shoujo. Besides, TDOMMX had given me a long post explaining everything about why he liked Katawa Shoujo so I felt that I should give him that same amount of respect. Also long posts are fun! :smiley:

Plus I don’t think anybody who hasn’t read Katawa Shoujo is qualified to critique what I can and can’t say about it. :shock: Next time I would like to see you make a post about something you’re equally enthusiastic about. :stuck_out_tongue:

#65

I knew I had you pegged right, KamikazeDurrrp. Don’t worry, I’m not taking what you say personally; I’m just a little put off by the conspiracy-theorist, “I see what’s really going on here, so why can’t anyone else?!” attitude that seems to accompany your post. That, and your tendency to present subjective reactions as objective fact. If you can polish your weaknesses in those departments, I’d love to have you around as a verbal sparring partner. :slight_smile:

Papillon is right about you and I both going a little overboard with the length of our posts. I was smiling ear-to-ear when I read what you said about responding to my posts in kind in deference to the amount of thought I put in, so I thank you for that. And, yes, long posts are fun. 8)

In the interest of getting to the point, though, I will avoid using blanket statements - I’ll illustrated exactly what I mean and why. You’re welcome to argue anything I bring up, but make sure you address the why specifically or I’ll likely get the impression that we’re just talking past each other. Pretend it’s a term paper and I’m a hard-ass teacher prodding you to quote your sources. Use the game’s own testimony against it, if you will (the developer’s blog counts, too :wink:) - don’t use your own interpretation (most arguments are caused by erroneous interpretations, not by what actually transpired).

Not to toot my own horn here, but I hold a university minor in Human Relations, so I’m pretty good at figuring out how people (real or fictional) think as I get to know them based on the cues they present. If my tone sounds a little too academic for your tastes, that’s probably where it comes from. And that’s where I learned that “most arguments” factoid.

Here are the conflicts spelled out from each major character’s perspective:

Hisao has suddenly becomes aware of a heart disease he was born with and becomes depressed and detached from the world because of it, causing him and his first love to drift apart. As he comes to know people who were born with or who were burdened with physical disabilities over the course of their lives, he learns to accept that is not the end of the world for him - his condition will always be a part of him, but it does not define him unless he lets it do so. This is an internal conflict present throughout all five routes - a personal journey that he completes in all five endings. Exactly when and how this happens varies, but it’s almost always before the respective heroines’ conflicts are resolved.

Hanako lost her parents in a house fire when she was still a child, In addition to the burns she received, she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident, survivor’s guilt from her mother shielding her from the flames with her own body, and crippling social anxiety from the cruel and unsympathetic treatment she was subject to after being placed in an orphanage. She never had anyone who was simply there for her until she met Lilly, and, while she appreciates her company and support, she resents being protected and coddled. By simply being there for her, Hisao and Lilly help Hanako come out of her shell on her own. “What does the main character do ‘help’ each heroine other than just being there?” Nothing, and that’s the point - Hanako is perfectly capable of overcoming her problems at her own pace, and, by offering her pity and treating her as a fragile, broken person, Hisao backs her into a mental corner. Her sex scene, which you allege is pointless, is her attempt to try and have Hisao see her as something more than a burn victim or even a friend, and the subsequent awkwardness is what finally prompts them to disclose exactly what they are thinking - that they love each other, but that they didn’t know how to convey it either other way (communication is critical to a healthy relationship, and the lack of it is why the two misunderstand each other so much). It’s the characters are awkward in this case, not the writers. Also, I said before that assuming you know how another person feels is insulting, and this route underscores it (as does Emi’s and Rin’s).

Lilly is a deconstruction of the prim-and-proper lady ideal. She has been blind since birth, so she has never “seen” the world any other way and her blindness is a non-issue for her (but not for others, as the blindfold scene clearly illustrates). However, her ingrained need to be kind and personable at all times denies her the right to simply being herself - a flirty, fun-loving teenager with her own set will (compare with Mina from Sharin no Kuni, Yukyu no Shonenshojo). This is what leads her to follow along with her parents’ wishes to return to Scotland and what backs her into a mental corner (as shown by her sudden burst of rage when Kenji accidentally trips her). Only after Hisao’s third heart attack does she realize that she is deluding herself into doing what other people want. I personally did not like this story, but I still recognize it as a story worth telling.

Emi dearly loved her father and going jogging with him. When she lost both him and her legs in an accident, she became deathly afraid of losing anyone else. To minimize what she sees as an inevitable separation, she just doesn’t get close to anyone beyond a superficial level. She becomes addicted to Runner’s High and indulging in hedonistic pursuits (eating, sex) since it allows her to forget about her reliving the events of that night in her nightmares - to the point of endangering her own health. The emotional distance and Emi’s disregard for her own well-being are the conflict that drove Emi apart from her ex-boyfriend, and what Hisao must overcome. After an intense argument and subsequent heart-to-heart, Emi recognizes her faults and decides to finally open up to someone - and shows Hisao why she does what she does (she never got over losing her father, and she never wanted anyone to know). There is an internal conflict within Emi and an interpersonal conflict between Emi and Hisao that fortunately doesn’t quite reach the level of melodrama as so many poorly-written soap operas (though, as you said, the drama was a little too forced for you; I agree and wish that Hisao had at least admitted he was an idiot for not figuring out something so obvious).

Rin [spoiler]was born without arms, so adjusting to living with limbs she never had is a non-issue for her (not unlike Lilly’s lack of eyesight). She has great deal of difficulty expressing herself (her thought processes can easily be described as autistic) and she does not really have any friends (there is unbridgeable emotional gap between her and Emi, as described above). She hopes that others will be able to understand her through her art, but, because of the abstract nature of her art, her wish is never fulfilled. She begins starving herself and experimenting with smoking, drugs (codeine overdose), and sex to somehow gain inspiration, and that only further mentally corners her and encourages Hisao to worry about her well-being. In the end, the two come to the bittersweet realization that she can never be fully communicate how she feels the way she wants to, and that Hisao will never be able to connect to her the way he wants to, but that their relationship doesn’t necessarily need anything more. Her final line in the dandelion field clumsily illustrates her epiphany:

“Hisao? What’s the word for when, inside your heart, absolutely everything is alright?”

Rin shows throughout her story that she has trouble finding the right words for anything. Here, though, her message is clear: “Even if I don’t know how to say it, I am happy”. All because Hisao is there to support her (note that you do not get this ending if you pretend to understand her instead of merely supporting her).[/spoiler] I’m not happy that uou did not understand the meaning of this line, or even try to analyze it when I specifically asked you to, and mistakenly assumed that my comment was referring to the authors instead of the characters. I hope you can see why I find this frustrating and why I am further convinced that you did not understand Rin’s or any of the other character’s conflicts. Dismissing what I meant with a “big friggin’ whoop” shows that you are being insensitive and thoughtless and only serves to add insult to injury where neither is warranted.

Lastly, Shizune. She is forceful and competitive and lampshades that the enjoys making her life interesting by dragging other people into it. Her personality shares many similarities with, say, Haruhi Suzumiya. Her deafness and inability to speak illustrate a very real communication barrier between herself and others. Together, this disability and her personality demand that the people in her life meet her halfway on everything if they wish to be a part of her life (her father mistakenly believes that she doesn’t want to talk to him when he’s the one who is unwilling to learn sign language). Because of how neat and organized her thoughts are, she is able to keep past and present events separate. However, not many people have this skill, and her relationship with Misha is strained because Misha isn’t able to do the same. Misha’s romantic feelings for Shizune and the lingering pain from being shot down caused her to dye her hair and adopt a fake, overly cheerful attitude in hopes of preserving her former relationship with Shizune. Their relationship eventually cracks from the strain, and it isn’t until Hisao clumsily tries to show her that she and Shizune are still good people despite their burdens that she is able to have a proper (off-screen) heart-to-heart with her best friend / crush. Like Lilly’s, I did not personally like this route very much, but I still recognize the conflicts (internal for Shizune and Misha, and interpersonal between the two) in this route as worth telling.

All of the conflicts in Katawa Shoujo are internal (Character vs. Self) or interpersonal (Character vs. Character) conflicts. I take it that internal conflicts aren’t your thing, and that’s fine. But you keep insisting that the conflicts I just described never occurred, that they somehow aren’t proper narrative conflicts, or that they aren’t realistic. I hope you realize that this is the biggest reason why I object to your posts and why others might regard your opinions as dismissive or poorly thought-out.

None of them are realistic? That is your own opinion, not an objective fact. I feel that the characters are realistic enough to deserve my sympathy, and you did not. Simple as that.

The arrogance of this statement is lampshaded in Hanako’s and Emi’s routes. Hisao is not some White Knight who can “fix” the mental problems of “broken people”. Especially in Hanako’s and Rin’s routes - often times, just being there for someone and not doing anything is all they need to figure things out on their own or come to terms with who they themselves are.

That’s the point. What you think to be an elephant in the room is only an elephant if you make it one. This message is repeated throughout the story many, many times. People with disabilities are just people; nothing more, and nothing less. People are not defined by their disabilities, and taking them away does not change who they are. This is the core message of Katawa Shoujo. If you’ll pardon me for channeling you for a second: “that’s the friggin’ point, and you definitely missed it, so don’t try to convince me you ‘got it’ when you didn’t!”.

Hanako’s, Emi’s, and Rin’s stories gave me a reason to care. Lilly’s and Shizune’s did not. Plenty of room for improvement, sure, but your comment is both a subjective judgement and an overgeneralization. Said another way, just because part of the story sucked doesn’t mean the whole thing did. Also, how do you distinguish “real stories” from “fake stories”? Fiction is fiction, even when it’s based on actual events.

Tell me exactly what I said in my plot summaries that wasn’t in the story itself; if you accuse me or anyone else of projecting something that isn’t there, you should know that have to back this up - the burden of proof is on you. Be specific with your examples; don’t use blanket statements or generalizations.

I appreciate the compliment (even if it comes as a 2-for-1 with a cheap-shot). I send the “sell yourself short” part right back at you; you’re obviously quite intelligent and analytical, but the yelling, the laughing, the contradictions, and the seemingly unsound logic behind many of your points don’t exactly present you in a positive light. :oops: I enjoy discussions that aren’t with simple yes-men (though it’s tough debating with someone who doesn’t acknowledge their own stubbornness; I’m speaking of an in-real-life friend of mine who insists that a controversial ending is an objectively bad one even though “controversial” by definition means it goes both ways).

…Wow, this is my longest post yet, and it’s still not done. So much for brevity. Well, at least I’m comprehensive…

Yeah. This is why the No Name Loser’s release of Wind -a breath of heart- was 25% shorter than the Japanese release (the translation removed the heavy-handed redundancy and tightened the writing, but those that don’t know better insist that the game was censored and that content was cut). Also, there’s a review of Evangelion 1.0 that is as long as, if not longer, than the film itself… :o

In any event, Katawa Shoujo isn’t terribly long (you can finish it in about three days - I took five because I was pacing myself), it’s free, and it’s quite thought-provoking despite its many flaws. If you finish Act 1 and you still don’t care for it, just uninstall it; the only thing you’ll have lost is some time and an uninformed opinion. Sound good to you?

Agreed. Rebirth was supposed to be the real episode 25, but executive meddling at TV Tokyo prevented Gainax from airing it (the series was too violent and mature to be what the network originally thought was a kid’s show). Mixing up what happens after that is the proper reaction; Anno himself says that both endings are alternate perspectives on the same events.

To answer your question: Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo. [Evangelion - Shin Gekijoban: Q] is due out Autumn 2012. Expect at least a year after that until Funimation’s English release.

#66

I have read Wind and while it certainly merits the label of ‘overwritten’ (actually being one of the worst examples of this in eroge, since the writing is not actually any good at all) I have to suspect this claim. Given that a typical English translation usually involves expansion of 150% or more (despite SJIS naturally taking up 2x per character than ISO/IEC 8859-1,) an overall 25% reduction in script could not, in my view, fail to drop information (taking the standard expansion into account, that is half the script dropped.) Mind, the translator was gp32 so I can only hope he was out of his habit of reworking the meaning of the source text during translation at the time he worked on it =P

Nonetheless, I doubt it was ‘censored’, although a bit of ‘censorship’ might have actually improved it. Dropping the inane and often inaccurate ‘trivia’, dropping half the stupid conversations between characters, dropping Wakaba’s entire miserable excuse for a route, dropping all of the ‘comedy’ moments (my memory is fuzzy, but I don’t think even one of them was actually funny), dropping most of the protagonist’s monologues (he is a narcissist, which can sometimes make for entertaining stories, but the writers are so boring he just makes reading the eroge feel like pulling teeth without anesthetic.) and those entire study session parts would result in a much more streamlined eroge that, while still not all that interesting, would at least be less agonising to read.

That said, the biggest problem with Wind is not the writing. It is the fatally flawed story which does not make sense and does not excuse the motivations of the characters. It has many of the same problems as Da Capo did but is even worse.

The movies were pretty nice though!

[size=85]EDIT: oops, forgot that this thread was about bashing katawa shoujo, not wind. but I haven’t finished katawa shoujo yet. i’ll get back to it eventually! probably after white album 2[/size]

#67

I didn’t think Wind was that bad, but, yes, I can totally agree with you that it needed a lot of improvement (obvious understatement is obvious). I liked the characters for the most part (I wasn’t really fond of Hinata, and I agree that Wakaba wasn’t worth including). I don’t agree that Makoto is a narcissist (he doesn’t have the confidence of one), but I do believe that he thinks he understands a lot of stuff that he really doesn’t (his inner monologue after Minamo lashes out at him proves that he is beyond stupid when it comes to emotional cues).

Wind was one of the first VNs I imported. I gave it more credit that I should have back when I first played through it and attempted to review it back when the English patch was released. I thought it was pretty decent considering my tastes back then, but, now that my standards have been appropriately recalibrated by bigger and better things, it’s not something I could recommend to people now (curiously, a VN-newcomer friend of mine preferred the Wind demo to the ef one when he tried them back-to-back – not by much, though). This begs the question: if NNL knew the game wasn’t that great, why did they spend years of their lives translating it?

Well, I have to give Wind credit for lampshading how strange Kazune City and its residents are in the exposition. The characters see its strangeness as a matter of course since they were born there and don’t realize that something about how Kazune works is seriously messed up; I thought having the city itself as an antagonist was pretty novel at the time.

Since we’re on the subject, did you figure out what Tsutomu’s ability was? It’s glaringly obvious, yet I’ve seen so many people insist that he doesn’t have one… Come to think of it, that’s not unlike Makoto’s saying that he doesn’t know how Minamo has felt about him for the past ten years when literally everyone and their mom (and dad) can see it (and rightly think he’s an idiot for not noticing).

Veering somewhat back on topic: KamikazeDurrrp, given what you’ve said about Katawa Shoujo, I think it’s safe to assume that you probably wouldn’t like minori or Circus titles much (Wind, Haru no Ashioto, ef, eden*, Da Capo, and Suika, to name a few) and there’s a chance that you might not like Kana, Crescendo, Yume Miru Kusuri, or Cross Channel. I have no idea what to say to you about Family Project or Heart de Roommate since I didn’t like them (your reaction to Katawa Shoujo mirrored by thoughts on both); it’d be interesting to see what you think about the two. I personally wouldn’t recommend them; quite a few people seem to love them for reasons I consider bullshit. Family Project is entertaining and has some worthwhile messages in it, don’t get me wrong, but the people who insist it’s “The Greatest Visual Novel of All Time” (actual quote on the official website) really are kidding themselves (the four titles I said you might not like are decidedly superior, and three of them are from the same author as Family Project).

#68

A narcissist doesn’t strictly need that kind of confidence, just the awful outlook he has on things that mostly manifests in his monologues. He’s not in the top 10 or even top 100 of the Awful Eroge Protagonist List* but he still dragged the game down with him.

*this list doesn’t exist, don’t ask me for it =P

Very hazy, but I always assumed his power was his photographic memory. Not spoiler alerting that because it’s not really a spoiler and I don’t want to encourage people to play Wind anyway. Since he’s not a heroine and his power isn’t that important to the story, there was no real drama about it going away, unlike in say DC2(PC).

For the latter part of your post, though, I think it takes a huge amount of projection to assume that he wouldn’t like harushioto, ef, eden* or a.s+ from his reaction to KS- for a start, those titles are mostly from very different genres, they take very different approaches to storytelling (harushioto is a very ‘pure’ and relatively naive love story, he’d probably enjoy it more than KS because of the far more natural pacing and execution. ef is probably the closest to KS as both are designed to be human stories, but ef certainly managed to drag me in better than (what I’ve read of) KS did, though that’s a YMMV thing so who knows. eden* is a hyper contrived story pretty blatant in drawing out the emotional responses it does and the title he’s most likely to dislike, but it takes most things in a non-standard direction, has a very non-standard setting and is generally disarming enough that the result may be different. a.s+ is mostly undiluted Kure magic and doesn’t belong anywhere near the other games - I don’t see how you could possibly ever draw a line between it and KS anyway. Wish MangaGamer would get MOON STONE on board and localise Ashita Deatta Shoujo and Doko e Iku no, ano Hi but fat chance of that =p

I tend to hope most people won’t like Wind or D.C on playing them, even if they are new to eroge, but this isn’t always the case. Plenty of people like stuff I think is crap and I like stuff plenty of people think is crap.

Not so sure about Kana, Crescendo or Yumemiru Kusuri, but I certainly agree Cross Channel is better. If I had to rank Romeo Tanaka eroges, it would probably go something like:
#1: Cross Channel
#2: Saihate no IMA
#3: Kazoku Keikaku
#4: Rewrite
#5: Kana Imouto
[size=85]#6: Otaku Masshigure
#7: Daughter Maker
#8: Piano, oh god don’t play this don’t play this don’t play this, Tanaka Romeo wasn’t the only writer and the story is aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa[/size]
I still love Kana, but look, it’s old, it’s incredibly short, Tanaka wasn’t quite the writer he is now etc.

#69

Best eroge writer of all time?

Who could it possibly be?

#70

kanno yukihiro

cries

Seriously, though, I’m not even going to name one. Romeo Tanaka is responsible for more 90%+ (to me) titles than any other writer, but I wouldn’t use that alone. There’s a bunch of good writers and I’d love to see more works from any of them- in fact, I’d like to see a new Looseboy or Sca-ji work more precisely because they haven’t written as many. Romeo was, by comparison, quite a prolific writer- the 8 titles I listed were just a portion. There’s things like Chanter, Shinjyu no Yakata (good but I forgot to include it), Hoshizora Planet (same*) and a bunch of other things I haven’t read. That’s just before you get into titles he’s supervised/planned but didn’t write like Yumemiru Kusuri, Setsuei and I/O.

*actually, the thing about Hoshizora Planet is that it has portions of one route that really spoke to me and was of a level of genius I feel is extremely uncommon in all literature. It’s not the only eroge that gets dragged up by one route that had a strong effect on me (another is Kanon) but it was the most startling in an eroge I found otherwise unremarkable.

#71

Hey guys, I just wanted to say that I’m really, really, REALLY sorry about my posts earlier. What had happened was that I was originally going to post my first post on the JAST forums about what I found wrong about Katawa Shoujo (in where I attributed it to three main faults), and I was going to say that we have to draw the line at Katawa Shoujo and tell people about real visual novels and what real visual novels are about. What happened was that when I had written everything down and I pushed the button to submit, every refreshed and it turned out nothing was saved. I got so mad at that point I just used my anger to put whatever rushed to my head and just submitted what was there. When I had return and found out somebody actually had taken the time to respond to what I said the anger kept rushing back and I just wrote whatever kept coming to my head in blind rage. Yes, I know it’s really silly and childish and I feel so bad that TDOMMX actually took the time to look and analyze everything that I said in those posts. If you have to know why I’m writing this post now it’s because that when I was writing my true honest feelings and my real analysis with comparing to what TDOMMX said on Katawa Shoujo, I accidentally realized something that completely destroyed all credibility I had in Katawa Shoujo. I really don’t want to put another negative post on this forum, so I’ve decided to ask you guys to forgive me for putting such childish posts and having you read and analyze through the entire thing T.T. If you still want to know what it was that I was going to talk about you guys can PM me a way to contact you guys where I can attach my MS word file (I have to warn you, it’s still in its raw and unfinished form), but just thinking about my analysis has depressed me to a point where I don’t want it in my mind anymore. Also, like Lancer-X, I couldn’t finish Katawa Shoujo, but the reason why is also in my analysis if you want it.

Anyway, about your questions of my likes and dislikes, all of the VNs that you have mentioned have parts that I REALLY liked and REALLY disliked, some more than others lol. For me it really depended on the routes sometimes, especially for Wind. It’s been so long since I’ve played Wind and my mind is really fuzzy, but I remember finding some of the routes boring and then being slapped in the face for the route of the character I really liked (Wakaba :P) and then really enjoying Hikari’s route when everything was tied together. I’ve never read Kana, harushioto, and eden* and I’ve only read the beginning of AS+ and I was halfway through ef before I stopped (I liked the parts I read but it took waaaaaaaaaay too long). Heart de Roomate was boring as hell, and I thought that Family Project was ahead of it’s time for what was in it, but it would probably need an editor now if you wanted to digest it lol. If you want to know, I think Romeo Tanaka is somewhat overrated for what he writes (I think he understands how to write visual novels but has bad stories). Cross Channel was really fun at first and it got me thinking about what a visual novel could be, but towards the end it kinda fell apart and I thought it got stupid in some parts. As for Yume Miru Kusuri, I hated the stories but I loved the storytelling lol. As for D.C. I liked MOST of the routes (FUUUUU NEMUUUU) and there are two routes in there that I get sentimental over (Miharu and Yoriko). What I do miss the most about D.C. though is a lot of the music (I wish they kept the piano pieces for DC2) and I LOVED the beginning and middle of DC2 but as for the routes in there there are only two I feel are really good (Anzu and Minatsu). BTW I still refer to Minatsu’s route sometimes as what I call a perfect route in terms of presentation but that’s for another day :P.

If you want some of my favorite visual novels, off the top of my head there are two that stand out, Snow Sakura (which also has a lot of stuff I miss in visual novels nowadays) and Tsukihime (which was the first visual novel I read and I still enjoy to this day, although it also needs an editor now if you want to digest it lol). There is a lot of stuff that I haven’t read and I probably should (Planetarian, finishing ef, etc. etc.) but as for all the stuff that’s coming out now I’ve kept pretty current with. I also can’t read Japanese (though I really really really wish I could T.T) but if you guys have any recommendations for translated visual novels I’m all ears :D.

That’s it for me. As I said earlier, I feel really bad that you took my earlier posts so earnestly and with so much seriousness and I really feel like I owe you guys a lot for your patience with me. As for my analysis of Katawa Shoujo, although I don’t want to talk about what it was I realized that got me so depressed, I can give the three obvious faults that I thought it had:

  1. Katawa Shoujo failed to establish conflict
  2. Katawa Shoujo failed to establish characters
  3. Katawa Shoujo lacked the cohesiveness that you find in most visual novels
#72

i am going to finish it!

one day

#73

Hey, the board’s the most active it’s been in - weeks? Months?

We really only have a few regulars around here holding up much conversation, and at least one of them got sucked into SWTOR.

#74

Subahibi still your favorite? Oh…You should play Exodus Guilty.

#75

You don’t need to worry, KamikazeDurrrp. You said yourself that you were venting in your very first post, so I kept that in mind whenever I responded, making sure to note where you were about to go overboard. I still don’t agree with many of the points you’ve raised (we’re of opposite minds with the three summary points you listed, though I do see elements of truth in each of them). In any event, I have no qualms agreeing to disagree here if you’d like to drop the subject.

Unless someone starts pushing my buttons, I try and think through what others have said and why they’ve said it before tearing into them. I typically give level-headed responses to everything unless I see or hear something ridiculous (which may prompt either a humorous or angry reply, depending on the mood it puts me in). If someone treats an entirely reasonable decision (ie: not including Japanese honorifics in the English localization of a visual novel set in America) as if it was some kind of mortal sin and spouts nonsense as if righteous indignation is on their side, my reaction will be far more scathing than if the person tells me they’re angry that something didn’t meet their expectations from the get-go.

You probably noticed from my cheery mood that I really was enjoying the chat. These past two weeks, I’ve read through a lot of visual novels that were either underwhelming or just plain bad, and this little debate helped give my brain a much-needed workout. If you’re curious, those titles were Sugar’s Delight; The Dandelion Girl; Ori, Ochi, Onoe; Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, But This Just Ain’t Your Story; My Girlfriend is the President; The Answer, pXt, and the first entry in the Monster Girl Quest series. Ironically, Monster Girl Quest was the best of the bunch despite being a reverse-rape fest with art inconsistencies fujifruit might hang himself over and having a “combat skills” that repeatedly induced groans and facepalms.

Tsukihime, I enjoyed, but I thought the writing quality could have been a lot better (it’s not a good sign if I nod off repeatedly during what should be an intimate sex scene); I much preferred Fate / Stay Night (Nasu is undeniably a big Gen Urobuchi fan, and Urobuchi’s influence definitely shows itself here). Like Family Project, I enjoyed Snow Sakura, but thought it got a lot more credit than it deserved. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it; it just means that it didn’t meet my expectations. It’s nice to see that my attempt to pick your brain was so close to the mark; I can now safely say that you will not get the same enjoyment out of Kana or Planetarian as the majority of their fans.

Hmmm… I thought Exodus Guilty was decent, but could have been a lot better. Strangely, I thought the past chapter was the best of the bunch when nearly everyone else prefers the present-day chapter (I’d credit that to the characters). Also, the one sex scene in the game really did strike me as forced since the atmosphere surrounding it just didn’t segue into it naturally, and I can’t really tell if that’s by design or if it’s just bad writing. Hirameki shouldn’t have split the game into three “independent” releases. Well, at least I ended up paying a reasonable amount in the end since I bought each one direct from Hirameki for about $10 a pop.

Fair enough. I kinda empathized with his lack of emotional intelligence (I was once like that), but I didn’t see any of his actions as arrogant or self-indulgent. His namesake in School Days, on the other hand, is decidedly a narcissist, and I’m glad he gets what he deserves in the anime (though I really wish Taisuke and Natsumi shared his fate).

Bingo! A carefree hedonist does not effortlessly best his studious lifelong friend / one-sided rival without having an unnatural gift of some kind. You’d be surprised at how many people insist that he simply doesn’t have an ability, even when he demonstrates it in every other scene. He’s an idiot and a poseur (Makoto notes that his Osakan accent is fake), but he’s always goes into such ludicrous detail about things that happened ages ago that you’d swear he was talking about something that happened five minutes ago.

Notice that I never said anything definite; I said that he “probably wouldn’t like” or that there was “a chance he might not like” the titles I listed based on my understanding of his preference (as far as I can tell, he doesn’t seem to be a big fan of stories with slow, deliberate development, character- or narrative-wise, especially in works with mundane slice-of-life settings). I could be wrong, but that’s the impression I get from him. On the flip side, Phantom of Inferno would probably be right up his alley.

Pretty much everyone’s mileage varies on different titles. Even I’ve found redeeming moments in titles that, based on premise alone, I figured I would have hated (ie: Hitomi, Milk Pot, Monster Girl Quest). Recommendations are just that: recommendations - they’re not prescriptions or prohibitions of any kind. And, if it turns out that Kamikaze dislikes something I figured he’d like or vice-versa, I learn a bit more about him each time and can make a better recommendation next time around. That’s not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, I see what you’re getting at. Just keep in mind that I’m mentioning titles that I think he may or may not like. I’m trying to deduce his tastes from the nature and intensity of his reactions, not insist that I know exactly how he thinks or feels without some kind of factual basis. I’d be a hypocrite if I attempted anything of the sort, to say the least.

#76

It indeed makes sense, and if you have to give him a power then that would be it; but there ARE people in real life with ridiculous memory, without having need of magical powers, so it’s not like it’s just impossible for that to be just something natural.

#77

While true, people with photographic memories to that degree are rare enough that, given an eroge based in a town where many people have these unique powers, it is far more likely that the latter is what is going on here. The situation would be different if the game provided enough information to confirm or deny this but IIRC it doesn’t. So it seems likely that this is what the writer intended.

#78

playing it right now slowly

#79

Made through Shizune route, will go through Emis’ next.
Saving Lily and Hanako route for later. Rin is also interesting.
Its a pretty well made game.

#80

I should have noticed this earlier, but it turns out that KamikazeDurrp and I were responding to two very different articles, both written by Leigh Alexander. I was referring to her original Kotaku article posted in February 2010; Kamikaze was commenting on her January 2012 Rock, Paper, Shotgun impressions, which I hadn’t read prior to our earlier exchange. This would explain the incongruity between what we were trying to say to each other.

I brought up the subject because a games researcher best known for her studies on sexuality in gaming was awed and impressed by what Katawa Shoujo was aspiring to be. Upon reading her impressions on the finished product, it’s quite clear that she wanted to be able to understand the game and defend it against its critics, but reasonably feels she can’t do so. She spends a lot of time criticizing the title for not being an escapist fantasy, then backpedals and notes that she doesn’t know what the story is trying to accomplish or what genre it fits into. She even admits that she has no idea who KS’s intended audience might be. As much as this might grate a few people’s nerves, Alexander essentially admits that she didn’t “get” it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that other intelligent people had the same reaction, present company included.

Many of us “got” it. Many of us didn’t. That’s the reception to Katawa Shoujo in a nutshell – the same reaction we’ve seen in response to Neon Genesis Evangelion and other personal, internalizing works. Does that make it great? Debatable. Does that make it controversial? Absolutely. Does that mean the guys in the other camp are crazy? Hell no, and if you feel this way, you should try to understand why you had a different reaction instead of criticizing others.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: I love a touching story that makes me think. And Katawa Shoujo undeniably fits that description.

Okay, that’s enough on that subject.

I’ve just completed Swan Song with both true endings, and I’m quite surprised by the similarities between my reactions to Lilly Satou and Yuka Sasaki. In both cases, I could tell early on that something was amiss with these characters (specifically, that the images they presented felt “too perfect”, deliberate, and artificial). I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when it turned out my hunch was right on the money.

Interestingly, during some of Swan Song’s sex scenes, Yuka is probably the only character I can recall who seemed like she was faking her moans; she later reveals that it wasn’t just her responses - she was faking every facet of her admittedly shallow personality. The intentional lack of depth to her character reminded me a lot of Mina Saika from Sharin no Kuni, Yukyu no Shonenshojo…