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Got my hands on a copy of Muv Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse and have been working my way through. Currently just at the beginning of the terrorist attack arc that was the last one in the anime. I know the VN version goes on after that, but I don't know how far I have left to go. Overall the art is really well done, even for Age, which already was pretty decent. Compared to the low budget stuff the anime got, it's just a whole different beast. A couple of the characters I hated in the anime have turned into some of my favorites just by having really good sprites and some extra scenes to fill their parts out. (Talisa in particular, and Yui to a lesser extent) Something's kind of up with the direction, though. A lot of the characters seem kind of...stiff, somehow? I can't quite put my finger on what it is. I wonder if it's just that some of the characters have less poses than the ones in the main Muv Luv trilogy (which I just replayed so it's fresh in my mind), but despite the great animation system Age has been using in recent games, there's more of a feeling of boring talking heads. The same goes for the action. They seem to have changed the angles they tend to show TSFs in, from a 3/4 side view to Front/Back shots moving around the screen. They also, for whatever reason, changed a lot of their BETA sprites to the 3D models of the grappler class they had in the anime. The result is that even if it's more technically challenging than the moving sprites of MLA, it falls into a sort of weird uncanny valley that's sort of disappointing. They also cut away a lot into animation or stills of the CG TSF action taken straight from the anime. How well that works mostly depends on how well you thought the TE anime captured the feel of TSF combat. They seem to have cut a lot of the HUD graphic stuff that worked well in MLA, too. The whole Russian operation was explained without just a BG image of a blank white screen rather than giving a map display, leaving less of a sense of where things were happening. They did an astounding job conferring that sort of information with the TSF HUD and similar displays in Alternative, and I'm wondering why there wasn't more of an effort put in here. They cut to Yuuya's HUD on occasion, but it doesn't confer near as much info as they frequently did with Takeru's. Story wise it's not leaps and bounds better than the anime was, but there are improvements. My gripes are really that some of the side characters are one sided, featureless, or overlapping (Vincent and VG could really have basically been one character). Whereas Takeru sometimes felt like a child struggling to grow up and catch up to a cast of rational actors with legitimate motivations, the majority of TE's cast of characters seems to react a lot more irrationally and childishly than those in Alt ever did. The Americans were portrayed as the crazy ones in Alt for thinking of strategic military advantages in a post-BETA world, but so far in TE the Soviets seem even more preoccupied with it than the US, and even the Japanese government gets in on it. Way too many pilots seem preoccupied with competing with each other, even the ones who are supposed to be seasoned front line veterans. And Yuuya is easily the least interesting protagonist of all the assorted Muv Luv titles and spinoffs. I might even rank him near the same level as Extra-Takeru. That being said, it's not all bad. The slower pace of a VN let them explain some things better than the anime and add in more characterization, while other scenes have been substantially streamlined or had confusing parts cleared up somewhat. Throw in what I said earlier about some characters being a lot more likable. They also increased some of the tie-ins to Alternative. I made a little squee noise when Mikoto's dad showed up, and there are a fair number more references to Yokohama and the like that give a better sense of where Project Prominence and the XFJ plan stand in the bigger stage. I'm looking forward a lot to what lies past where the anime cut off. I know it goes on until Operation Ouka, but how much content is there in the meantime? Will there be references to XM3, the 12-5 incident, Sadogashima, etc? The end of Chronicles: Resurrection hinted at Silvio heading to the Yukon base around the time of the terrorist attack, will they follow up on that? There's still plenty of time to turn some of my negative opinions around. Bakanogami fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 08:54
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That is fairly interesting at least. Does it use the catchy intro theme from the anime or does it have its own score?
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Jan 10, 2014 09:06
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Mordaedil posted:That is fairly interesting at least. Here's the game OP. It's not either of the anime OPs, but I feel like I've heard it somewhere and can't quite place where it was. The rest of the OST seems to be mostly tracks from the anime instead of the same tracks they've used in most Muv Luv stuff. That's good in that I've heard those ten thousand times at this point, and bad in that the anime's OST was pretty forgettable outside of the OP.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:18
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That is weird, because it feels like I've heard it before as well, but no idea from where. I still have no idea why this exists. It just makes me sad that this is what got an anime and not even Extra.
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Jan 10, 2014 09:26
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Mordaedil posted:I still have no idea why this exists. It just makes me sad that this is what got an anime and not even Extra. Has that ever worked out the intended way? Like, the best case scenarios seems to be that the trojan horse actually turns out to be more popular than the original intended product (e.g Etrian Odyssey was meant to be a test-bed for a DS SMT, ended up being more popular than the actual SMT game that was made later). And the more common scenario is just a giant bomb that kills what it was supposed to lead into because it alienates both old fans and yet doesn't attract any new audience. (e.g Sprung)
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Jan 10, 2014 11:08
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Chapter 2 of Kikokugai - The Cyber Slayer complete. I'm really liking this. It's a nice break from the usual kind of visual novels I've played. Feels like something Tarantino might have written if someone made him write a +18 visual novel. Solid fight scenes and the music sets the mood very well.
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Jan 10, 2014 12:05
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I've been reading Yume Miru Kusuri - The Drug That Makes You Dream. It's a bit weird. It jumps between sort of funny scenes and heavy stuff pretty abruptly. Not bad, though. I just finished Kirimiya's route and it was pretty good. Kirimiya herself was an interesting take on old archetypes and their relationship turned some old traditions upside down (like how the famous upper class girl being told to stay away from the everyman by his protective father) Definitely not quite what I expected, much like the other parts of the VN: The main character's family, for instance, is funny and likable. That being said, there's a fuckton of sex scenes here. Also, random nudity. Should I be expecting the same from the other routes as well?
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Jan 10, 2014 21:59
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Suleman posted:That being said, there's a fuckton of sex scenes here. Also, random nudity. Should I be expecting the same from the other routes as well? Yes. IIRC the Aeka is tamer while the Nekoko route has less H scenes but not by much, and some of them are really really silly.  (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 10, 2014 22:09
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Her route has waaaaay more sex than the others, but its still a fairly porn heavy game. I think the bullied girl has 4 sex scenes, and the other girl was something like 6.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:09
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Mordaedil posted:That is weird, because it feels like I've heard it before as well, but no idea from where. I highly suspect that Age didn't want to risk doing an Extra anime without some sort of assurance that they could do Unlimited/Alternative later, since there would be a decent chance of it being even more of a flop than Total Eclipse was. That and I'd assume they wanted to better monetize the franchise, and getting an anime for a more current property (with the LNs already out and the VN coming shortly thereafter) was appealing for cross-promotion. Plus, like I said, they seem to have used a fairly large chunk of the anime's assets in the production of the VN, which saved them time and money on that end.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:31
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jonjonaug posted:Yes. IIRC the Aeka is tamer while the Nekoko route has less H scenes but not by much, and some of them are really really silly. Is this horribly translated Chinglish. Or is it purposefully being like that to be silly?
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Jan 10, 2014 22:34
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The latter.
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Jan 10, 2014 22:38
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Bakanogami posted:That and I'd assume they wanted to better monetize the franchise, and getting an anime for a more current property (with the LNs already out and the VN coming shortly thereafter) was appealing for cross-promotion. Plus, like I said, they seem to have used a fairly large chunk of the anime's assets in the production of the VN, which saved them time and money on that end. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.
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Jan 10, 2014 23:15
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Kikokugai status: Still pretty drat great Wonder how many CGs in total there are in this VN. Gone through a high number of them already.
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Jan 12, 2014 11:02
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Stall_19 posted:Kikokugai status: Still pretty drat great 137 total. About 110 or so if you remove ones that are copies with slight modifications.
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Jan 12, 2014 11:04
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Too bad it never received the attention Saya no Uta got, it's a really good nitroplus vn.
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Jan 13, 2014 04:50
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ADullMin posted:Too bad it never received the attention Saya no Uta got, it's a really good nitroplus vn. If you're talking about the English speaking fanbase that's true, but it got a full remake with updated art and voice acting not too long ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSg2B4C43LA
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Jan 13, 2014 05:13
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Finished Total Eclipse. On the whole I enjoyed the second part (past where the anime ended), possibly even more than the first part, though looking at other opinions it sounds like a lot of people were substantially less favorable. They almost had me with Yui getting shot out of nowhere and then the credits playing. I did laugh my head off at "Christopher", the terrorist guy who was randomly the big final boss in the anime just walking into the russian hangar and getting his head snapped from behind. I thought the Cryska storyline was very well handled, though I was a bit disappointed with the conclusion. It really seemed like something could be arranged that would allow her to not die, be it striking a deal with the UN and publicly announcing Sandek's experiments, returning her to Sandek with some sort of leverage to force him into continuing her treatments, finding someone else in the USSR with the ability to keep her alive (like they completely randomly did with Inia), choosing to trust the word of the US that they could keep her alive, or even defecting to Japan (who would presumably have the same equipment at Yokohama in order to keep Kasumi alive). As it is, while it was very sad, it felt a bit pointless. As for the rest, I'd known that the VN would end with an attack on the Evensk hive, but I didn't realize there would be such a large timeskip to it. I'd been looking forward to seeing how Total Eclipse could interact with Alternative during its timeline of events (the creation of XM3, the 12-5 incident, and the Sadogashima hive attack could all interact with the XMJ plan in interesting ways), but in the end it looked like Cryska died on October 22, so the two VNs barely overlap at all. It was a bit unclear, too, how Yuuya and Inia defected to a frontline base without word of it reaching her superiors, without the Shiranui Second being taken away, etc. It almost felt like they had intended to make it a multi-route VN, but never got around to making routes for anyone other than Cryska. Especially with the half-assed three choices that have no effect whatsoever. That being said, I'm glad that the Evensk hive fight didn't feel like it was hamfistedly tacked on to the end like I was worried it would be. It was one of the better action sequences in the novel and tied in to the lasers that hit A-04 during re-entry. Unfortunately it brought back the dumb glowy psychic thing on the russian TSFs that I'd thought had been an anime original, showed that Yuuya had been completely ineffective in stopping the Russian research, and was overall very Zeta gundam. Also, the only closing it gave to any of the other characters was a brief flash showing them fighting in their respective national TSFs, which doesn't do much in the way of closure. And the only closure the Shiranui Second (arguably the driving force of the entire novel) gets is over in TSFIA. Overall, I'd say it's probably the weakest of the main Muv-Luv stories, but the VN does give it a heck of a better treatment than the anime did, and it's probably worth the sticker price, if maaaybe not the added cost to import it.
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Jan 13, 2014 06:26
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Finished Kikokugai. That was quite the ride. The ending sequence has fittingly dark. Overall it's a great experience. Awesome music, great writing with some of the best action scene you'll find in one of these novels. Wish there were more of these types of VNs made.
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Jan 13, 2014 12:03
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JAST has, to the surprise of no one at all, pushed the release of Steins;Gate back one month.
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Jan 15, 2014 08:53
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I just finished reading Fate/Hollow Ataraxia in Japanese. It's a shame that apparently the translation is going to be poo poo, because it was really good. The way the writing/narration style changed for the fight scenes was really interesting, and I can see why people say Nasu's stuff is hard to read and translate. I still think it's worth looking forward to, even if it won't be a quality translation; it was that good (I may be a bit biased because I'm a big fan of Type-moon stuff, though). I know I'll be looking forward to having people to talk to about it - I don't have any Japanese friends that read VNs, and the game's a bit old to find forum topics or whatever about it. I've read F/SN, F/HA, and both read and seen Fate/Zero. What other Fate/ series stuff am I missing? I know there's a fighting game and some PSP games. Spoiler talk about F/HA: Like I mentioned just above, I love the fight scenes in Type-moon stuff. My favorite parts of the VN were without a doubt the Saber v Archer fight and where Saber used Excalibur at the base of the one building. Second would be all of the scenes about the origins of the servants. Knowing more about their pasts was great, and there's just something about the writing in those parts that really gets me absorbed into reading. Rider had some good character development in her recollection scenes, helping explain why she's so loyal to Sakura. Kuzuki's past (is that how his name is pronounced? The game isn't voiced and I can't read name kanji  ) was good for the same reasons, but also because there was basically nothing about him or why he made a contract with Caster in F/SN. I also noticed quite a few references to other Type-moon works. The most surprising ones were the references to Fate/Zero, though. It wasn't just the joke movie: there were several places where Saber or other characters mentioned things that happened in F/Z, like fighting Caster's monster, or Kiritsugu making Saber wear a suit. I suppose Nasu had a lot of stuff in F/Z already thought out before writing F/SN and F/HA.I went in without even reading any summary, so it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize who Bazett (is that how her name's spelled in romaji?) was. It was a nice  moment when I finally realized that she was Lancer's master from the 5th war. It also took me a long time (I think I finally realized at the 4th church visit to Karen) to realize that Avenger was possessing Shirou. The thing that finally made me realize was that the narration was written using オレ, not 俺; Shirou always "spoke" with the latter. That was a really, really nice touch, and I don't know how it'd be possible at all to translate.As for negative parts, I think my biggest gripe would be that it felt kind of short. I think that might be a product of the non-standard format and the fact that my computer broke halfway through reading, and I had to wait almost two months before I could get the save data off of my old hard drive. It felt like it was relatively long while reading it, but looking back at everything after reading it, and it just felt disappointingly short. I was also a little unhappy with how they mixed some of the comedy and serious scenes together. The parts about Rider's past are a good example of this. It just kind of took me out of concentration mode entirely when the switches happened.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:00
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Spoggerific posted:I've read F/SN, F/HA, and both read and seen Fate/Zero. What other Fate/ series stuff am I missing? I know there's a fighting game and some PSP games. Fate/Extra's an alright JRPG for the PSP, but it's only really good in my opinion for the servant vs servant boss battles. It's licensed in English and you can either download it from the PSN store I believe or find physical copies of it. Apparently Fate/Extra CCC, the "heaven's feel" type route game for the F/E universe, is better but not available in English. But if you can read Japanese well enough you should be able to play it. Fate/Prisma Ilya is awful and should be avoided. Dunno about the rest because I haven't looked at them. Carnival Phantasm is a fun gag series but its better to watch it if you know both F/SN and Tsukihime/Melty Blood, which I assume you probably are because you mention being a fan of Type Moon.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:15
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Fate/Extra has some fun servants and the protagonist is actually kind of likable in their bland straightman VN protagonist way, but gameplay-wise it's basically glorified rock paper scissors. It's atl east speedy but it loses its luster pretty fast, with only the bosses really requiring you to actually strategize - - the rest boils down to a guessing game and rote memorization. That said, it's not necessarily painful to slog through, just a bit uninteresting. There's a sequel, Fate/Extra CCC, but it hasn't been released in English. Fate/Unlimited Codes is a fate fighting game. There's literally no plot, it's just a cliffnotes version of F/SN, but if you have any interest in fighting games it can be kind of fun to mess around with due to the recognizable characters and the ridiculous combos you can pull off. Fate/Apocrypha is a series of light novels. They're being fan-translated on some forum, I think, but I don't know if they're any good. Some of the servant designs/concepts are neat, at least, like Shakespeare as a caster. Fate/Tiger Colosseum also hasn't been released in English. It's a random arena fighter (think Power Stone) with a cutesy art style and a focus on sight gags. If the concept of Saber in a lion costume fighting with a huge chunk of meat on a bone appeals to you, then you'll probably find it hilarious. Carnival Phantasm is a series of gag OVAs that focus on both Fate and Tsukihime (with a brief nod to Kara no Kyoukai, as well.) Even if you've never played Tsukihime, it's worth watching the Holy Grail Grand Prix episode, which is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. Fate/Prototype is a brief OVA (like 12 minutes) that has random scenes from the early concepts for F/SN, where the protagonist was female and Saber was, well, not, in addition to other noticeable changes. Also features different designs for Gilgamesh and Lancer, and Perseus as Rider instead of Medusa. It's so brief and disjointed that it can't really stand on its own, but it's interesting from a 'what if they'd stuck with these designs and concepts' perspective.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:32
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Spoggerific posted:I've read F/SN, F/HA, and both read and seen Fate/Zero. What other Fate/ series stuff am I missing? I know there's a fighting game and some PSP games. There's the ongoing Fate/Apocrypha light novel and Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA (manga and anime of the first part). The first is a drastically changed *what if* scenario involving a 4th grail war in different circumstances, and the second isn't set in the Fate setting, just borrows characters. There's two fighting games, one is just a comedy and neither really add anything new besides I guess a couple scenes in Fate/unlimited Codes story mode. Fate/Extra and CCC have Nasu himself as scenario writer and are very worthwhile.
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Jan 15, 2014 10:45
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Prisma Ilya, much like the original Fate anime, is largely meh with one good fight scene involving Archer that you can be linked to and not have to watch the rest of the series. Aside from what's mentioned, the remainder is other Type/Moon stuff. The Tsukihime series and Mahou Tsukai no Yoru. There's also another anime adaptation of F/SN being worked on by Ufotable now. Still no word on whether it's going to be a HF adaptation or if they're just going to do the Fate route again. EDIT: I suppose there's also Battle Moon Wars. It's a fairly well made SRW knockoff with Type-moon characters. I think there might even be a half completed LP somewhere back in the archives. Bakanogami fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 12:10
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Battle Moon Wars isn't official, mind. The game design has some issues but the animations and sheer amount of effort put into it are both pretty amazing for a doujin project, but it's not official.
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Jan 15, 2014 12:26
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F/HA has a lot of F/Z references in it because Nasu and Urobuchi were already planning F/Z at the time F/HA was being written. IIRC the first volume was mostly done before F/HA even came out.
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Jan 15, 2014 14:40
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Endorph posted:Carnival Phantasm is a series of gag OVAs that focus on both Fate and Tsukihime (with a brief nod to Kara no Kyoukai, as well.) Even if you've never played Tsukihime, it's worth watching the Holy Grail Grand Prix episode, which is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. Holy poo poo why have I never watched this before. That was amazing. I completely lost it when Assassin came in with a truck with his temple gate in the back.
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Jan 15, 2014 17:33
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Endorph posted:Carnival Phantasm is a series of gag OVAs that focus on both Fate and Tsukihime (with a brief nod to Kara no Kyoukai, as well.) Even if you've never played Tsukihime, it's worth watching the Holy Grail Grand Prix episode, which is one of the most hilarious things I've ever seen. I hadn't laughed so hard since FMP? Fumoffu.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:05
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There were a few clunkers but on the whole Carnival Phantasm was a marvelous distraction while Fate/Zero was airing.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:29
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Thanks for the suggestions. I can read Japanese well enough that I'd have no problem getting through anything untranslated. In fact, I'd rather read things in Japanese than in English. I thought about putting that in my post, but I didn't want to sound like I was bragging.  I haven't read Tsukihime yet, so I suppose describing myself as a Type-Moon fan was a little inaccurate. I guess it'd be more accurate to say I'm a Fate/series fan at the moment, though I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy Tsukihime when I do get around to reading it. I just don't want to read two unvoiced visual novels in a row, so I'm looking for something else. I want to wait on Carnival Phantasm until I've read Tsukihime, and I don't have a PSP, so... I think I'll read Fate/Apocrypha next. I've heard about it before, but forgot about it, and it seems right up my alley from the little I have heard.
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Jan 15, 2014 20:31
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Going beyond VNs, Kara no Kyoukai and DDD are Nasu's other big works. For KnK both the novels and anime are solid, so the call probably comes down to how much you enjoy reading Nasu's writing. DDD only has novels, and no-one really talks about it; I've only read the first chapter, and I wasn't really gripped by it. There's also Fate/Strange Fake, a tie-in novel by Narita Ryougo (who's really good). I believe it's very short, though? I've never seen a copy, so I'm not sure.
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Jan 15, 2014 20:58
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NRVNQSR posted:Going beyond VNs, Kara no Kyoukai and DDD are Nasu's other big works. For KnK both the novels and anime are solid, so the call probably comes down to how much you enjoy reading Nasu's writing. DDD only has novels, and no-one really talks about it; I've only read the first chapter, and I wasn't really gripped by it. Wasn't strange fake that April Fool's joke that's just a prologue to a non-existent story?
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Jan 15, 2014 21:16
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Nephilm posted:Wasn't strange fake that April Fool's joke that's just a prologue to a non-existent story? It's the set-up for a nonexistent text adventure game. While it's irrelevant to Spoggerific, I should probably note that it's been translated by someone on Beast's Lair. One interesting point that's often missed: the main character is "A" from the beginning of Hollow Ataraxia.
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Jan 15, 2014 21:20
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Nephilm posted:Wasn't strange fake that April Fool's joke that's just a prologue to a non-existent story? As I understand it it was released in a "proper" novel form later, but I don't know how much material the second release actually added, if any.
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Jan 15, 2014 21:24
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I finished Yume Miru Kusuri - The Drug That Makes You Dream. It was alright. The routes were unfortunately pretty monotonous until the end drama came into play. E.g. Searching for the fairies' home in Nekoko's route was not nearly as entertaining as the VN seems to think. I appreciated that it handled real issues like alienation, depression, drugs, bullying and teen pregnancy. Hamhandedly at times, but still. Of the routes, Nekoko's was probably the worst, but I find ranking the other two a bit hard. Random notes: The ending of Aeka's route was pretty  What the hell was up with that woman in the dream train, was that some kind of reference? Also, the VN got a bit creepy about the 12-year-old (?) sister. Speaking of his family, though, they were funny, cool and very reasonable, which is a nice change of pace. Suleman fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 22:06
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I don't remember any woman on the dream train, its been a while since I read it, but my understanding was the imaginary train he kept hearing was supposed to be representative of life passing him by as he just lived disinterestedly like he was. That's why he stops hearing it once he gets strongly involved with one of the heroines, and I think the bad ending had some imagery of it becoming overwhelmingly loud or something.
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Jan 15, 2014 22:11
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I never played a bad ending in that game, but if that's the case that's pretty loving sweet.
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Jan 15, 2014 22:14
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Blhue posted:I don't remember any woman on the dream train, its been a while since I read it, but my understanding was the imaginary train he kept hearing was supposed to be representative of life passing him by as he just lived disinterestedly like he was. That's why he stops hearing it once he gets strongly involved with one of the heroines, and I think the bad ending had some imagery of it becoming overwhelmingly loud or something. This lady.  Then she yells in Engrish and punches him. It's completely random, comes up a few times and is never explained.
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Jan 15, 2014 22:20
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Hmm. I guess that didn't stick in my mind at all, but given her clothes/hair color and the fact that she's associated with a train, I think she's a Galaxy Express 999 reference. I've never actually watched that so I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean to the reader though. Edit: http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=character&charid=2493 this character, I think. Blhue fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 22:26
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