Installed a VN called Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo. It had pretty cool install application. There was only a tiny window, most of its space taken by a square image of game art (animated during install phase), and below it one line of text and below that line with exactly two buttons on it. The text and buttons changed while going through the installer.

Started playing Sumiwataru. Really intriguing start, what the hell is this setting? :D

It’s so great to have male MC voice acting, wow. I understand the main argument for not voicing the MC is for player immersion, and I think it might sometimes be a sensible reason but I don’t know. It also adds immersion to have more voice I think (even MC’s thoughts are voiced in this game). But the most important reason for me is that it makes playing the game so much easier with more voice acting.

I love the visuals in this game. All those effects used for good purpose.

So good and funny, don’t want to stop playing but time to go sleep for tomorrow’s work day, arggh.

Playing more Sumiwataru. Makes me laugh constantly. All the characters so far are great (just met Waka).

Waka saves my day.

Playing more Sumiwataru. I wonder if it’s not a coincidence that I often play VNs on Sunday evenings. I feel like it takes the two weekend days for me to calm down enough to want to begin playing. It took the whole December of being on vacation until I started watching Bakemonogatari on the 29th. If I didn’t have a job I might enjoy games, manga and such much more readily. Actually I know that to be true from experience.

I always wondered if there is a good reason to why anime/manga male MCs are almost always “dense”. It’s the kind of thing almost every fan says they dislike, yet the trope persists. Maybe they just don’t realize they like it? For example they love the story which in fact depends a lot on MC’s personality to work, but then they get frustrated by “lack of progress” even though it’s kind of the same thing as ending the story as it is. Of course there are good counter-examples, but preserving the status quo is quite fundamental to keeping the setting fixed so that the series can deliver “more of the same good stuff”. I suppose personally I like it better when there’s eventually some progress, so I dislike it when it seems like the author (or editors) doesn’t allow the story to go where it should.

Then on the other hand, if you have had a long-running series where the status quo never changed much, suddenly changing it can come as a shock to audience. They can even feel betrayed if they never considered the possibility. So I think there are the audience’s expectations to consider too — if you are going to have progress in the story, then some of it should happen early. And conversely if nothing is ever going to change, it can be jarring if some big change is teased and then pulled away completely. I remember the manga Hoozuki-san Chi no Aneki for doing that. It was all comedy and suddenly it becomes serious about MC’s relationship with this side character called Mizuno, it changes paneling from 4koma and all, but then nothing happens. I read the rest of the manga expecting for continuation or something similar but nothing happened. Weird. I liked Mizuno though (Mizuki in the project is partly named after her iirc, even though Mizuno is family name).

Had fun playing. At this pace it will probably take weeks to complete the game, not sure if that’s a bad or good thing.

Hunting for VNs to play, even though I’m not sure I want to play one. I should probably continue “Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo,” I just notice Waka is listed as a main character. It’s funny that I don’t even consider playing all-ages VNs, but then I speed through the ero scenes. “Came for sex, stayed for the story and characters” I guess. Well I have pretty strict requirements for any VN I even attempt to play, so they are expected to have interesting stories. Some day I want to play those “very long” fantasy and scifi games that rank at top of vndb — when it won’t take me “very long” to finish them. I feel like the vndb “medium” length games I played were already “very long” for me.

I did not finish the game, don’t remember if I grew bored or just forgot about it.