Category: Bishoujo

Bishoujo

Kakyuusei 2

Kakyuusei 2

No pics. It doesn’t deserve pics.

I don’t know what to think of this. Maybe someone hasn’t learned their lessons from ONE, that 4-episode OVA that inserted a clueless mystery story into a bishoujo game to anime conversion. Kakyuusei 2 is somewhat like ONE. It has so many mysteries that non-gamers wouldn’t understand. But unlike ONE, whose game would try to explain the events in the anime, Kakyuusei 2 is reportedly an entire original scenario that is different from the game! First off, this is not a sequel to, say, Kakyuusei 1. You don’t need to play the Kakyuusei 1 game, nor watch the Kakyuusei 1 animes (some are H). Furthermore, it doesn’t even follow the original game storyline. It just has the same characters, then adding new ones.

So, what makes this anime so controversial? As I said, this anime is confusing. One of the characters seems to be some sort of ‘mystery man’. He overlooks almost anything that happens with the girls. What’s weirder is that he can travel through time! And he has this glittering eye, that attracts ALL the girl characters in Kakyuusei 2! Who the heck is he? He’s not even the main male character, but he seems to be. The actual main character is a typical boring male lead in bishoujo animes. But enough about him. The mystery man drives all my confusion in the entire series. I’ve looked through anime forums and I see many people are confused as well. They try to deduce and make sense of everything but to no avail, they have already moved on to other anime.

I watched episode 1-4… and then stopped watching. That’s how bad it is, considering I rarely drop anime series. Even without the mystery, the bishoujo anime stuff isn’t even interesting. While the girls are cute, there’s too many of them (11) to make me even care about one. It doesn’t entertain, it isn’t interesting, and it’s very confusing. What a shame, really. I bet there were a LOT of Kakyuusei fans all over the world, this being part of the most important games of the bishoujo industry. Elf, before making the hugely popular Kakyuusei game series, did Dokyusei. It was not only huge, Dokyusei was the pioneer of the ren’ai game genre. That’s how big it is (positively)… as big (negatively) as my disappointment over Kakyuusei 2.

This is history in the making. Possibly the worst bishoujo game to anime conversion I have ever seen. Sorry to say.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Hirameki International

Hirameki International

Slowly but surely, this company is getting my attention.

Last year, it caught my attention by releasing an English game called Hourglass of Summer, which we would know to be [Natsuiro no Sunadokei->]. While not as big-name as other visual novels of its kind, it had its share of popularity as a game and anime OVA. But more importantly, releasing this game (which is actually an interactive DVD played on DVD players) is a rather unprecedented move. Why? Almost ALL of the bishoujo games released in English are of the hentai/ero variety. This is probably one of the rare few non-hentai bishoujo game being released in English. And a moderately popular one at that. It was amazing, although I didn’t know of the company’s fate after that. Did they sell well with Hourglass, among with their other Anime Play DVD games? Seeing their lineup, it’s actually rather stellar.

Now, the company is back with a vengeance, and is seemingly doing rather good but risky business again. They are now launching big-name titles in their Anime Play PC division (this time games that can be played on computers). The highlight is Ai Yori Aoshi. The anime community definitely knows of the anime series, and so they would probably take notice of this. But the game that has caught me stunned was their upcoming release of Ever17! As they described, yes, Ever17 could be seen as on-par with the big ones. Demo downloads of both of these games are already available, by the way.

More importantly though is that this company is initiating the new wave of visual novels. Their big point is the non-hentai part. They seem to be on a mission to prove that visual novels are not just about the H, and that it can be seen as a viable form of mainstream entertainment, in the same way that anime is emerging right now on the western world.

Another big scoop here: (quoted from their site)

From July to September, HIRAMEKI International will be setting up a booth at conventions primarily along the west coast to demonstrate English versions of Japanese Visual Novel Games. We will be showing to the public for the first time, of course DVD format games, but expanding our line of products with games that operate on a Windows PC platform. Currently in Japan, “Kimi ga nozomu eien” and “Tukihime” have been made into many anime episodes and we’re sure that anime fans attuned to what is happening are dying to play the game that kicked off the craze these anime have created. Please be on the look out for news from HIRAMEKI, which was created with the objective of meeting the needs of these fans. We are working hard to see that we have some big titles on the horizon for you. If you would like to test a game, drag yourself out to one of the venues listed below and tell the HIRAMEKI staff exactly what is on your mind.

While I won’t believe that they could be licensing [Kiminozo->kimi-ga-nozomu-eien] and [Tsukihime->shingetsutan-tsukihime] anytime soon, this proves that they seem to have an eye out on anime fans, specifically, those who download fansubs. I think this can be a double-edged sword on them, mainly because it is both a risk and opportunity. Will international anime fans bite, and finally play the kind of popular visual novels the Japanese fans play? Are they heading for success, or failure? Time will tell. In any case, Hirameki International definitely has something good up their sleeve. I dig it.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Season of Smiles: Summer of Bishoujo Project

[Season of Smiles: Summer of Bishoujo Project->summer-of-bishoujo]

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Not again, what are you trying to do here?
Well, I’m gonna feature bishoujo! The animes, the games, and more importantly, the girls! Since it’s the season of D.C.S.S. and Shuffle, might as well make it the season of bishoujo!

Are you suicidal?
I’m quite regretful that I can’t present enough shoujo material in this blog (due to its under-representation in the fansub community as of late), so I’m gonna switch to the bishoujo game genre full-force for now.

Any details?
Well, the project is mostly for those animes that come from bishoujo games. For now I’m gonna compile the list of all the reviews that I have done so far. For the next few weeks I’m gonna look back to other animes of this genre and review them as well. Maybe I’ll feature some popular bishoujo games too, in one way or another. More details are already in the project page.

You can reach the project through this link:
[Summer of Bishoujo->]

Well that’s it. Expect content in the coming weeks… enjoy!

Counter-Strike NEO -White Memories-

Counter-Strike NEO -White Memories-

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In what seems to be a most unlikely hybrid in gaming, this project by Namco is a free flash visual novel with parts of first-person-shooter gameplay!

The story seems to pit you into the helm of a counter-terrorist soldier, along with a team trying to infiltrate this certain evil facility, as you battle against the remaining NEO soldiers. But you see the facility full of dead people. Along the way, you find this bloody mysterious girl who doesn’t seem to remember anything. And so you continually protect her from harm as you go on solving some mysteries and fighting some more NEO soldiers.

Basically, this is a one-path visual novel with annoying counter-strike fps gaming parts. Really, the fps parts are relatively easy, and doesn’t seem to be important at all. You’re just firing away at baddies. The visual novel parts, as usual, are fully in Japanese text, with only a few voice overs to boot, so I could only understand a bit of the story.

I know some group is editing the flash files so that they can translate this in English, I just don’t know where it is anymore. in any case, all flash files are free and are readily downloadable in the official site.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Shuffle!

Shuffle Preview

SHUFFLE!

Be whatever this July!

Before you say this is just another bishoujo game based anime… well… nothing… say it now, it’s really just another bishoujo game based anime. In this one, there seem to be three races, humans, gods and demons. These three races live somewhat in harmony for now. So when two new neighbors arrive, one god family and one demon family, and they have a respective cute bishoujo girl each with matching elf ears, a boring male’s life will never be the same again. Not only that, you still have your childhood friend, a spunky girl next door, and a mysterious quiet girl too. Better love those cliches…

Anyway, looking forward to this, but from the prologue video I’ve seen, the designs look… inconsistent. There were shots of greatness and other shots of mess. The animation seems to flow smoothly though, due to a lot of in-between frames, which make it look OVA-style. What’s better is that it’s in WOWOW, so not only will we get high-quality raws, I could even have a chance to watch it myself direct from WOWOW! (some cable TVs here have WOWOW)

Here are some shots of the girls, along with their respective CG from the original game.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Playing a Bishoujo Game is Futility Project: To Heart 2 edition

bluemist’s Ultimate “Playing a Bishoujo Game is Futility” Project

To Heart 2

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Let’s just end this once and for all!

What are you trying to do here?
I will attempt the impossible by playing through a bishoujo game… in Japanese.

Are you suicidal?
This is just because of the extreme urge to somehow play a popular bishoujo game.

You won’t understand it at all!
Yes I know. For one, To Heart 2 is a Visual Novel. It has TONS of text which I won’t understand whe way I am now.

But because this is an attempt at futility, I have some tricks up my sleeve:
– I have a walkthrough.
– I have 5% knowledge of conversational Japanese.

Using the walkthrough, I’ll be able to get a proper ending with a specific girl… if I follow directions right.

And using my 5% Japanese words, vocabulary and sentence understanding, I may be able to understand the story.

This is ridiculous. You won’t understand the story without the text. Besides, the player is YOU. You are supposed to be talking, but the talk is only through the text. The girls and other people may be talking to you through voice-overs, but that means you are getting half the conversation only.
Yes I will get half the story that way.

Enough self-talk. Let’s see where this goes.

You will find my introduction and updates through the URL:
http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/toheart2/

Yogurting

Yogurting
Yogurting (Japan)

Who says Koreans can’t do moe~?

This looks like a nice Korean MMORPG that is about to come out. It has a very nice promotion video! The girls and the dancing is so cute, and the video itself is very stylish (felt like I wanna dance along!) If you want, try to find a video download here.

It’s a Korean MMORPG though, so I won’t expect myself to play this one (as if I even play MMORPGs). Looks like a magical schoolgirl setting too.


Update: Yogurting is being ported into Japanese! Hope of an English version is getting closer. These caps were taken from another promo video, over here.

Here in our country, lots of MMORPGs come from Korea, including the ever-popular Ragnarok Online. This game, and MMORPGs in general become so popular here, internet cafes just continue to pop around every corner, and they’re always packed full of online players. Thank goodness I ain’t bitten by the bug yet, or else money would disintegrate faster with all the subscription bills to the online games. I think if Yogurting would come here it would be a hit also, it’s kinda cute and all that. Don’t expect me to play it still though.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

School Days

School Days

In school life, three persons were always together. Our relation was broken on that day. The past never recover no longer
(arrgh… Engrish…)

Hmm… seems to be popular for being one of the only bishoujo games to be fully animated. That’s right. No more lazing through still pictures with volumes of text (and sometimes without speech), the whole game is driven with animation. The bad part about it is that you need to get 8 gigs worth of data, and more than that to install the game, not to mention the numerous huge patches that you need to download over the internet. This is one bloated bishoujo game.

Well the demo movie starts out with our usual loser guy having an eye for this beautiful lady. He’s so much a loser, that his classmate (another girl) still lent him help in getting close to the lady. Well, it’s as Kiminozo as it gets from there, this one girl trying to bridge the two together, but she also has feelings for the guy.

I guess the story starts from there, and it seems to be… whoa! It’s a psycho game! The characters would eventually experience jealousy, deceit, and… violence. Many say it’s not your average high school game after a while… Hmm… interesting. Wanna be spoiled by bad endings? If you’ll probably not play the game anyway, feel free to click here and here, and thank yourself for not having school days like that.

This being fully animated, I can kinda understand the game by treating it as if it is a RAW anime. The only things I don’t understand here are the choices (written in Japanese), so this has been a massive guessing game for me.

But some sources tell that there is actually an ending even if you haven’t made a choice at all! Well, that’d be boring because I may not get to win the girls, but at least I get an ending. Well, I can only guess that it is a bad ending though.

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This is a [Summer of Bishoujo->] feature

Cardmaster Peach

Taken from Comic Party Revolution 9:

Surrender to my moe~ness, or die.

Taken from Comic Party Revolution 8:

mada mada dane

Taken from Comic Party Revolution 5:

Watch out [Sakura-hime->sakura-cosplays-again], there’s another girl referencing your original hoe~moe~ character this season!

Kinda nice, I’ve been waiting for this for years since the original [Comic Party->] anime never featured Mizuki in a cosplay. It even has a henshin (transformation) sequence!

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