Monday, November 28, 2005
	| First| Prev | Next |Last | Love Situations #2 "Su-Cool 2" (Story Arc: Su-Cool) | First| Prev | Next |Last | "Su-Cool 2" by Akira (2005-11-28) There are couple of rules to be "Su-Cool". The first rule is: A "Su-Cool" girl never blushes (or shows expressions) even during the love confession. She is always cool. She doesn't get embarrassed confessing in front of a whole class. I think most American feel "What's the big deal? There is nothing embarrassing about expressing their feelings (especially love)?" But I think it's one of the big culture differences between Japan and US. When I first visited US (around 10yr), I was quite surprised to see a couple kissing on a public place/street. Unless a couple is living in another 'love love dimension' (icha icha paradise), you don't see people kissing on the street in Japan... People around you will give very strange (and annoyed) eyes, if you do... (*_*) Anyway, most Japanese (especially girls) will prefer not to confess in front a group of people like that, unless they want a very "dramatic" confession setting. Hmm... I think I word it wrong. American people have more guts than Japanese people and have higher percentage of confessing like that... (did I do better? ~_~; Nnn...); So maybe this "Su-Cool" type might not be anything particurally new to American readers. But anyway I hope you enjoy the series... (^_^;) Please write your comment to this strip at pOnju forum

	Tuesday, November 29, 2005
	"Game Fansubs" by Konstantin (2005-11-29) For anyone who may have been drooling at all the untranslated bishoujo games I mentioned last week, but didn't have the benefit of taking several years of Japanese (or the good fortune of being born in Japan ^^) there is still hope. While the official licensing companies have been rather lax in bringing over good renai and bishoujo games, focusing on wider-audience console titles and cheaper porn-without-plot H titles (though there have been some notable exceptions(18+) that were porn-with-plot) there is still hope! After years of abortive efforts, it looks like a stable, vital, and productive fan translation community is starting to emerge. The subbers whose work I've had a chance to play through (and the ones with the most work actually available to play through ^^) are insani and Haeleth. While they both have their major projects, insani working on Wind ~a breath of heart~ with NNL, and Haeleth undertaking the monumental task of single-handedly translating Kanon (and apparently 57% done at the most recent patch), they have also done two collaborations on shorter visual novels: Planetarian and Narcissu, both of which I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone interested in trying out a visual novel. Planetarian is a short game from Key (the makers of Kanon and Air), and is their contribution to the kinetic novel experiment. Calling it a game would probably be a misnomer, since kinetic novels take the visual novel concept down to its most basic form, eliminating minigames and conversation branches and using the engine of a visual novel to tell a story with the help of graphics and sound. Unlike Key's other games, this one is placed in a post-apocalyptic future setting, though it still remains very much a Key game in both theme and presentation, with plenty of humor, cuteness, and tragedy to go around. The game's translated demo and the translation patch for the full version can be acquired for free from insani's site, though you need to buy the full version in order to have something to which to apply the patch. Luckily, insani has provided detailed and thoroughly illustrated ordering instructions on their Planetarian page, and, in my opinion, it was well worth the $10. Narcissu, on the other hand, is distributed for free in its entirety, with full knowledge and permission of its original creators. Being a doujinshi game, this one takes an even more minimalist approach than Planetarian, though it does not detract from the emotional hold of the story. In an interesting twist, this game features two separate translations, one for the voiced version, and another for the unvoiced version. While generally I prefer going for the voiced versions of visual novels because the voices help me deal with the kanji and I'm a drooling fanboy of a number of seiyuu, I thought the unvoiced version worked even better in this game than the voiced. Maybe it's the nostalgia for old-school pre-multimedia adventure games, or maybe it's because I played it first and have already formed a mental image of what I expected the character to sound like. Please write your comment to this strip at pOnju forum