(//_-) ← emo bang

From Twitter @/SugoiLITE

@/SugoiLITE
Kyoko Hikawa's 90s Shoujo Fantasy Manga "FROM FAR AWAY" (Kanata Kara) will be receiving an ANIME ADAPTATION

There is hope for ANYTHING. NEVER kill yourself. I don't have an icon for how ecstatic I am so I chose violence instead. NEVER KILL YOURSELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit from 2 hours later: Oh, there's no release date because it's from a leak account. So it may or may not be real, but they said it with such confidence... 50% chance of peak dropping soon.

Challenge #10: Big Mood (Board)



じゃじゃーん！
Angelique is very much a pink game, but the moodboard is blue (and green. 青い?) because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it ended up that way somehow. Rosalia representation I guess! I hope it gives a good impression of the games :)

Explanation

I was specifically thinking of the first game. There are pretty space pics because it's about becoming Queen of the Cosmos, hearts because it's a dating sim unless you have other priorities, Cupid because the act of saving your game is represented by an angel baby recording what's happened for you, columns because of the borrowed Greco-Roman aesthetics popular in shoujo manga at the time, a white feather because the people of your continent see you as an angel (guy who can't shut up voice: in fact, the child you first meet and acts as your oracle says that [y/n, the default being Angelique] in their language means "angel," so he calls you Angel/Tenshi-sama ^__^), and the lake and park because those are 2 of the 3 possible date locations in that game. The third is your bedroom (sounds crazier than it is), but I could find no pictures that look like the player's room.

Credits

The middle image was drawn by Yura Kairi (who is the character designer and usual illustrator for the original games) and depicts Angelique herself. The full image is super cute, iirc the bottom third is my header on Discord (but I don't have Nitro right now soooooo I can't be sure). Our beloved rival Rosalia is the girl floating next to Angelique, by the way.

All the other pictures I got from Unsplash: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, and x.

This whole thing was made using CollaGen. Let me know what you use to make moodboards? I've actually never made one before today.

So Voltage (of even if TEMPEST fame) is releasing a new game in December called Neon Clash - Echoes of the Lost -. This is the bilingual site, so be sure to change the language to English if you need that. I really like the MC design, and the love interest with light gray-blue hair is pretty cute, but the others look sooooo whatever. I believe their last game was The Red Bell's Lament, and when I heard about that I thought the concept sounded interesting but all the love interests looked boring, so it was kiiiind of nice that they at least got one for me this time. Come to think of it, I think only one love interest in even if TEMPEST is cute too... (If you can guess who it is you will win $0 :D!)

Anyways, I sent the characters page of Neon Clash to a friend so someone else can hate on the boys too, but I accidentally scrolled down too far and saw the side characters. What the hell. They're much, much more interesting looking than the love interests!? Are they kidding me? And I remember feeling this exact same way about The Red Bell's Lament too. But this time it's tenfold. They can't be serious making the other characters look like that and then seriously expecting me to give a flip about these fools in the forefront (besides the MC, who is lowkey kinda *bites lip*).

I don't think they even make fandiscs that make those characters romanceable. What the hell, Voltage? ?? ???? !!!?!?!?
( Read more... )

Watch on YouTube

(Watch on Inviduous?)

It's called Harukanaru Toki no Naka de: Ryuuguu no Miko, or Beyond the Stream of Time: Priestess of the Dragon Palace. (That's how I'd translate the title first try if I was in charge of localization, at least.)

This was livestreamed... there was a countdown and everything... all just for one singular trailer. For a mobile game. Before the stream the chat was mostly looking forward to ports of old games, including Kiniro no Corda Star Orchestra (their previous mobile game that EOS'd), so when the livestream ended it was a bunch of "おわり？" ("That's it?") LMAO. Some people were asking for a new Haruka game though, and I don't think anyone is mad about there being a new game, but this being All They Wanted To Say is... ...........

A few days ago Konami announced remasters of two Prince of Tennis otome games. They're trilingual releases (Japanese, English, Chinese), and they'll be on Steam, Switch, and Switch 2. Doesn't Koei feel stupid announcing 3 days later a single monolingual mobile game? I genuinely think they hate money. (Or they hate Ruby Party??) I do wonder how popular The Prince of Tennis is in the anglosphere... My high school library had it, so I'll guess it's the kind of thing that was pretty popular among otaku women here but fell off badly. Like Yami no Matsuei. Or Weiß Kreuz.

Disappointment over things I was/we were never promised aside... The game looks beautiful. There's a new artist, but unlike how I felt about Angelique Luminarise, this person's art style is cute and handsome and stylish and cool and I like it. It's a card battle game with skinship, sleeping together, the usual Haruka emphasis on the four seasons by means of interactions that change depending on the time and season (unsure if real time but presumably yes), and the ability to choose between staying friends or becoming lovers. However, they don't mention period tracking, so clearly this game is unplayable. (/joking!!)
( Character Info )
We'll get more info during the Tokyo Game Show this Friday at 17:25 (5:25 P.M. Japan Time), so look forward to that!

In the meantime, here's the official site, which has other links for more information. English articles about the game can be found here and here. The release date is a vaguely-stated "this winter" -- very soon, at least! On the app store the release date says December 15, but I'm assuming that's a placeholder date.

This was originally going to be a short post with links to other things going on in the joseimuke world too... But I've been at this for four hours, believe it or not. That's all from me for today!

I watched episodes 127-143 of Shippuden recently. I thought... a lot of stuff about it. But it's also the start of August, and I have been thinking of doing media check-ins or something since I'm not the best at liveblogging stuff on DW (and I refuse to use Bluesky or Fedi for it). I'm going to call them art check-ins though, because I'm enjoying art, not consuming media. I'm also pretentious, probably. If I try to remember to do these at the middle and end/start of each month, that's probably good enough.

I'd liveblog more too, but it seems I always watch the best Shippuden episodes with Mikki, and I don't want to liveblog both with my mouth AND fingers on the keyboard... well, she knows what episodes are best, so rather than it being a coincidence it's more likely she asks to join me when cool stuff happens and leaves me alone during the boring parts. ANYWays,

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 2

... I dropped that shit xD I feel bad for it, but I'll come back for it later. I won't allow myself to play the third game (allegedly the best game) without beating one route of the second. It's just that...

Okay, one, the character designs are too similar to the ones in the first game, as if they were too scared to make them look different. But like. Why? I don't understand where this fear would come from.


Maybe you can't tell without me drawing lines connecting who is related to who, but yea. Every guardian looks pretty much just like whoever had his role in the previous game, except the purple/navy blue guy. Their personalites aren't all that different either. Their lives are different (ex. The teal guy was a nobleman but here he's a pirate, which is actually an interesting change tbh but the game sucked too much ass for me to want to find out how this affects things.), but that's about it. Shit's lame.

And then, the game has a LOT of yapping. There's only one fight a bit after the start of the game, and then no more for at least the entire first chapter. I played the game for over 3 hours, right? Only one trial battle with only 2 party members. That's ridiculous. I had just started The Actual Chapter One and I'm sure battle was coming... eventually... but I still didn't have all the dudes collected and I had still spent a few days just listening to people talk and playing mini games in exchange for items... I couldn't take it anymore. The game does not spark joy. I will be putting it off for a while.

And from what I saw, battles aren't even POV anymore. What the fuck. That was my favorite part.

I don't mind putting it off because it also gives me more time to improve my Japanese before I reach the third Haruka. Since it's allegedly so good, I want to make sure I understand the plot and dialogue (near-)perfectly so I can bask in its glory. I also don't hold having a rocky start against Haruka 2, because you know how being the second game in a series is. They have a reputation for being... strange.

New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt

Peak is back babeyyyyyyy

We're four episodes into it now... The first episode was a very strong start, I like how it made you wonder when the censorship laws should take effect, and how ridiculous they can seem in a cartoon context.

Now the next few episodes have jokes like they were written during the 15 year gap and collecting dust in a drawer until this sequel got greenlit. Aged jokes and references, you know? But I never thought it was bad. It's a comedy series, sometimes the comedy will miss, you know how it is. When they squeeze 3 episodes into 25 minutes, I feel like some jokes don't land because they don't give room for certain jokes to land, but do I know Trigger to really give room to things? They tend towards making as many jokes as they can in short amounts of time. Cocomelon for horny otaku????? Possibly.

The last episode was episode 4, and I liked the Fantastic Four(?) reference. Or it's maybe a more general reference to Golden Age comics. I don't actually care much about USAmerican superheroes so I'm not an expert on this, but I'm USAmerican so I can obviously recognize the aesthetic when I see it. (Why was Kneesocks Big Challenges?) Even if it wasn't the fuuuuuuuunniest thing, it was a visual treat to me. I love visuals and animation and images and pictures, if you haven't noticed! I also think that was a crazy ass episode to make episode 4. What more could they have in store??

And when will the Blowjob Brothers appear???

Naruto Fucking Shippuden

For those who care about Naruto spoilers: You probably shouldn't read this! I ain't censoring shit. All of it would have to be censored if I had to. This long-ass section probably ain't even interesting to read if you haven't seen/read Naruto anyways.

I don't think I've said anything about Shippuden here until now...? Well, in the past few days I've seen Jiraiya's final battle and the "Madara" truth nuke. (I know it's you Obito.)
( this shit is long as fuck )

Procrastinating homework by enacting a post idea I had weeks ago: image dumps. Like link dumps... but images. Also videos! Although videos may be included in link dumps too sometimes. Depends on the vibe, you know how it is. Click on the picture for its source.



This is the first thing I put on my "list of pictures to share on DW" folder a month and a half ago. I could easily find a screenshot of this CG in better quality, but nahh. At the time I probably had something disproportionately wild to say about this picture in contrast to how tame/simple/chaste/??? it is, but I'm normal now.

( FE4, 遙かなる時空の中で, Angelique, Fatamoru, original characters, FE16, Naruto )

Something for the 90s-loving yume, fu, and himejoshi!
(Even if you're not a joshi you can join in on the fun too, just as I do ❤)

Because why read Wikipedia or something when you could read a post on a blog, right? I highly recommend reading this on a webpage where you can open and close the cut tags.

Thank you for your attention! For the sake of my mutuals who watch me reshare illustrations of lanky, godlike men in confusion, for the sake of those who see my art and wonder who these strange people are, and for the sake of those curious about video game or joseimuke history, I have written this. I will mainly focus on the first game Angelique (1994) and its rereleases, but I'll be sure to mention characters and such from the other games too.

The Basics

Angelique is a series of video games along with a media franchise encompassing anime, manga, novels, drama and music CDs, and much more. It's a series of simulation games - with one JRPG aberration and two digital board games - that forms part of the otome umbrella. In fact, it's the first otome game in history! (What is an otome game?) It's made by Ruby Party, who had to fight to prove making a game aimed just at women would work out. It's also part of their Neoromance series, a franchise of dating simulation games for girls. (Others include Harukanaru Toki no Naka de/Beyond the Stream of Time, Kiniro no Corda/La Corda d'Oro, and Neo Angelique. Maybe you've heard of them!)

The first game released in 1994 and centers around an exam to choose a new Queen for the universe. As the current one loses her power, her aide Dia leads the exam to choose a new one. Two girls from Smolney Girls' Academy on the Main Planet, Angelique and Rosalia, are chosen and whisked away to compete for the throne. To win they must properly harness the powers of the all-male guardians to nurture their own continents. Whoever fully cultivates their continent first gets to be Queen. Obviously it will go better for you if you're in the guardians' good favor, but be careful -- the Queen must be entirely devoted to her work in supporting the Universe. Or, put into other words, girls with boyfriends can't be queen.

( Do NOT underestimate how long this post is. )

She's so pretty... I miss her bad.........

A few days ago, I finally finished the manga for Fushigi Yuugi. For some reason, I got to the second-to-last volume and dropped it about a year~ish ago? So I started over from where the anime ends and tried part 2 again.
( Read more... )

Obviously this is all just my opinion, before I start.

If you're going to make a romantic visual novel and you want to give the player character a developed backstory or preexisting friend group with set dynamics and everything and stuff, you might as well draw them a face too. It's irritating when a game only asks for a name (and maybe pronouns), so I think "oh, this game is going to be real self-inserty," and then the self-insert isn't anything close to a blank slate.

And what's more annoying than that is when these self-insert-wannabe games say that I'm blushing or my heart is skipping a beat or whatever when it isn't. I'm not doing that. I wouldn't do that in this situation. If you want me to do that, you should just write something that makes me do it, not command me to do so. If you want strong control of how the MC acts and reacts without irking me, give them a look and default name. Then I can cheer them on from the sidelines and maybe even start to see what they see myself, instead of feeling like I'm being forced to fall in love.

Examples: I am not much like Ceres from Virche Evermore*, but I enjoyed watching her love stories and took a liking to all the guys myself via how she moves in the world and how they treat her. Unexpected, since I wasn't expecting to like them all. And maybe this isn't a fair comparison because it isn't a VN, but the Angeliques from Angelique don't talk much in their games. The love interests talk to her, and often her reaction isn't shown, neither with dialogue nor a portrait. It doesn't need to be shown because she is me, and I know how I reacted to what I just read/heard in real life. The game doesn't need to say that my heart skipped multiple beats and I'm red as a tomato, because it gives me little moments to reveal and lets them speak for themselves.

*Unrelated to this entry, but related to the last one: this game is a good example of what I was talking about in my last entry, because I saw a LOT of people say the game is too depressing for too long, while I didn't think it was quite depressing enough.

every time i look at this edmond (from the love pop フェア? trying to think of what to call it that will make it easy for people 5, 10, even 40 years from now to look up) i feel actually.... i don't know how i feel. this is crazy