Next Season

The show goes on even if it weren't what it was meant to be.

First of all and about two four weeks late, but Happy New Year to everyone who frequents or happens upon this quiet corner of the internet. I hope you all find some ways to take it easy in these rather troubled times.

Anyway, a little update on my misadventure in Gun Blood Days. I actually managed to gain the top spot in the Boss Raid and got a Diamond Mitsuki Naruse as my reward. It was a short-lived victory however, as I turned Mitsuki into a much stronger Lunette Gien, but failed limit breaking her and ended up with a mediocre Silver Kyouko Oribe. Others probably thought I was a bit crazy. On the bright side, I did complete collecting the Witch Girls, with the last two, the one-eyed Ozu Karuma (the only one with a very odd name, probably a reference to the Wizard of Oz) and the blue-haired Ao Mizuki coming in after a streak of good draws. Now with the witches and Hisumi who came about when I least expected, as well as a Royal Bronze Himeko all in the bag, I have more or less collected all the cards I wanted. Time to quit. Other than that, an unlikely alliance formed between us and Saber, both in and outside the actual storyline, was an amusing recent development. I was worried that the already dominant Japanese Liberation Front, commonly referred to as 'Crows' due to their logo, might take that chance away from us. But the deal went through for us quite smoothly in the end. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" indeed.

Dat everything

Phenomeno should seriously have been a little longer, it ended right where I was hoping it wouldn't. I quite enjoy urban legends and ghost stories so it was right up my alley. Personally I thought it wasn't scary at all for a horror/supernatural story, and I did play it around midnight with my headphones on and the lights out. The mood was excellent thanks to a combination of atmospheric soundtrack and fitting visuals, though. I can only dream that Nitro+ may adapt it as a full-length visual novel in the future.

Speaking of which, this year already looks much better than the last in terms of upcoming visual novel releases. Every month has at least two worthwhile titles to look forward to. Well, for the first half of the year anyway.

DAT EVERYTHING

It's a shame that only Haishera remains fairly active in newer Eushully games. A case of prequels being more important than the sequels. Some would probably consider Ikusa Megami 2, chronologically the last game in the series, to be somewhat a black history anyway due to certain, unavoidable story events that put the heroine(s) through a great deal of pain and suffering. Ekria's had a tough life, not that Celica's had it any easier. If suffering was integral to character development, then it worked well for Ekria (in VERITA at least), who came off as a very, pardon the pun, well-rounded character in spite of the fact that the writing quality of Eushully has often been lacking. Much like my own.

DAT, uhh too many things

After what's been almost 6 months or so, I finally decided to salvage my laptop hard drive, which thankfully still spins just fine. The laptop itself is definitely a goner though. Broken graphics chipset, which I figured was most likely the problem since the visuals were terribly corrupted even when I connected the laptop to my projector. Digging through the drive just reminds me of the time when I was busy doing SoPM summaries, all the while looking for excuses not trying to deal with my project. It's been quite some time hasn't it? Hopefully this year we will be getting something good else besides Hopeless Masquerade.

Well, that was sure longer than what I had not planned.