April Odds and Ends

This is going to be a more upbeat post than my March 2022 Health Update so I wanted to title it something else.

But for those wondering about the health stuff. I'm on nerve pain medication to manage the remaining damage the shingles left me with. It may take months for it to heal, which I figured since I'd already gone through nerve damage due to both my chemotherapy and my surgery. So the medication I'm taking isn't new to me. It's just... well... I wish it wasn't necesssary.

The rash is still visible on my face, and while I itch a bit, I think it's more from the nerve damage than the rash itself, since the medication also makes the itching go down (though it doesn't entirely go away). My scalp sentitivity has even made me part my hair differently because I can't stand having my bangs falling down on the nerve-damaged skin.

But on the bright side, shingles fatigue is gone. I'm eating more. I don't always manage it, but sometimes I can squeeze in more than 1600 calories in a day, so I'm hoping to gain more weight (since I'm still under what I was).

Though nothing I've played in 2022 has appeared on my blog yet (Rose in the Embers really got stretched out with my illness), I'm still playing games when I get the chance. I'm not going to do a blog post on it since it's not an RPG or visual novel, but Hungry Hearts Diner is a lovely free to play mobile game about running a neighborhood diner that ends up having a tearjerker of a story, and you never have to watch an ad if you don't want to.

I'm woefully behind on others forms of entertainment. Usually I watch some anime or read some books, but I haven't finished a single one of any of those this year. Some of it is likely time lost due to shingles and remaining medical issues from my cancer, but also I think my attention span just hasn't been where it needs to be for them. Maybe I'll pick them up again as the year passes.

And finally, I've started writing a new short story. It's been a long time in coming, and it's not like I never had ideas while sick, but finally putting new words down on the keyboard has been something I haven't started until recently. I hope it all turns out all right. Writing is supposed to be like any muscle where if you do it regularly, it becomes easier, but I've definitely been out of practice. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 6: Atsuro

Atsuro's route is unique in that he's not one of the four men present when Kyosuke buys the MC's freedom. He shows up on all the routes, so he's a familiar face regardless, but he's rarely presented as a member of the in-group with the exception of Tsukumo's route (where he's allowed to hear about Tsukumo's heritage at the same time as the rest of the guys). He's also clearly the least accomplished of the men. Though he runs an upscale restaurant, he appears to be a man of limited means himself, living in a small space above his business rather than a stand alone home.

Because of this, his route starts off a little differently, mirroring Kyosuke's. Kyosuke takes the MC to his house, drops her off with the other maids where she doesn't have a good time of it, and eventually he sends her to work for Atsuro, who has privately inquired if he might borrow one of Kyosuke's maids to help out with his restaurant.

This sets up the MC's new situation where she lives at Kyosuke's, but works at Atsuro's, and Kyosuke gets a month's worth of free curry rice out of the deal.

Atsuro's route is a bit of a slow burn. He's an older guy, which unfortunately leads to him calling himself "old man" even though he's in his thirties, and he's not worried about formalities, leading to incidents such as him appearing in his undershirt in front of the MC like it's no big deal. The age gap is likely part of the slow burn, though it never comes up aside from his "old man" comments.

Mostly it feels like he and the MC are two people just trying to get by, who happen to have found a happy companionship in each other, which for the MC turns to love before she knows it. Aside from the fact he's probably ten to fifteen years older than her, I can see why he's appealing to the MC. He's considerate, he works hard, and he's not a lofty part of society so he's relatable. Their "date" at the festival is sweet, as are their evening trips to the baths on his bicycle (back when riding on the back of a guy's bike was still romantic rather than a safety hazard).

But, of course, that's not all there is to him or this would be a very boring route.

VN Talk: Rose in the Embers - Part 5: Tsukumo

It's been about two months, but I think I'm ready to resume! I'm still not over my shingles nerve damage, but with medication it's manageable, and the acne from last week has cleared up (so grateful). So now that that's out of the way, on to the next and possibly best route of Rose in the Embers!

I didn't have any particular expectations of Tsukumo's route, not because I disliked him, but because he was so hard to get a read on in the prologue. Though he's the one who helps the MC find the inn with her job, and he warns her about the potentially false nature of the people who live in the capital, he doesn't quite come off as someone you can immediately trust. Part of it is due to the cryptic way he chooses to warn her, telling her about fiends wearing masks, instead of a more straightforward "Don't take things at face value around here," but also in that he just seems rather distant instead of welcoming.

But the reviews for his route were good, so I gave him a shot, and I have to agree, his route is good. I had no reason to believe the story would go where it did and as well as it did. It's not without flaws (just a couple things I'd want to nitpick about), but for a three hour experience, it was a memorable ride and will stick with me long after the game is over.

So what is it about Tsukumo's route that makes it so unusual?

After All This Time, Amnesia: Later x Crowd is Being Translated

I'm going to get back to my Rose in the Embers series soon, probably next week, but because I'm still under the weather I figured I'd take this week to talk about something else. Not that I'm entirely well yet. I'm taking medicine for some nerve damage the shingles left me with, and I'm dealing with the worst acne of my life (not even teenage years were this bad) which might be a side effect of the medication, even though nothing of the sort is listed. But in any case, there was some interesting otome news this week!

Amnesia: Memories came out in English in 2015 for PS Vita and Steam. I bought it fairly blindly as a supportive otome fan who wanted something other than the myriad of Hakuoki rereleases we were getting at the time. Code:Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ and Norn9: Var Commons would not come out until later that year so when Amnesia landed in summer of 2015, the slate was clear and I was ready, buying the game on the very first day of release.

It... was not quite what I expected given that my only previous experience with otome was Hakuoki and Sweet Fuse. The game was unusual in some ways in that the game director even said they wanted to try a game where the player starts out already in a relationship, but what got me was that my first route was Toma's and my previous games would not prepare me for what his route would be like. (I won't spoil it in this post, but if you want to read my thoughts at the time, they're here.)

I've since come to terms with the fact that some people find characters like Toma entertaining in the same way that some people bring out the popcorn at the sight of internet drama, so I can understand why they have a fanbase, but I doubt characters like him will ever be to my tastes.

But the thing is, even though I bounced between loving, hating, and being irritated with the various routes of Amnesia: Memories, those feelings were so strong that it led to me starting the current format I use for discussing multi-route visual novels on my blog, because I just had to have a outlet for this crazy game. One blog entry wouldn't be enough. I had to dedicate one post to an overview and then one to each love interest so I could really focus on what I wanted to say.

It's not my favorite otome, and might barely make my Top 10 should I put one together at this very moment, but when I played the trailer for the Switch ports of Amnesia: Memories and Amnesia: Later x Crowd, damn was I taken back by about seven years. It was the music (and Kent's sweet half-month anniversary cake). I hadn't heard it in years, but it just brought back all the warm fuzzies from the routes I did like.

Older games get new console ports all the time, but the thing is Amnesia: Later x Crowd was never translated and visual novels are among the most laborious games to localize since they're 90% text. Most otome fans assumed that Amnesia: Memories just didn't sell enough at the time it released so Idea Factory never brought over the fandisks (Later x Crowd is a combination of Amnesia: Later and Amnesia: Crowd), and it didn't seem like that guess was far off the mark since Idea Factory stopped translated otome entirely until just last year when they released Cupid Parasite.

Most of the localization focus has been on new titles, the ones that just came out in Japan within the past year or so. This is the first otome license to reach back to an older title that has simply been ported.

There is a part of me that is quite gleeful about this. After all, that trailer did take me back and I do have positive memories about the first game. But on the other hand, I'm not quite the same player that I was back then. Because it's not one of my favorite games and I'm backlogged, I'm not likely to shell out Day 1 like I did seven years ago, since I don't love it enough to pay for a pricey limited edition and I know I won't play it right away.

But the nice thing is, the otome market has been growing steadily and there are plenty of fans who are thrilled to have a chance at both Amnesia games the very moment they're available. We've come a long way since nobody knew what otome was and it was just a handful of English speakers trying to make their purchasing power known. I can wait on this one out without worry, because there are already a half dozen other otome games that have already been announced for translation.