Bishoujo Games

Seeing a lot of annoying arguments on the net (ten years after I thought the argument was settled) about what constitutes a ‘bishoujo game’ and/or some other word typically used to describe bishoujo games. Here’s the break-down for everyone who’s late to the party.

Visual Novel: Any ‘game’ that’s basically an interactive story- photos, text, and sometimes audio and even animations. Interactions are usually just a handful of pop-up options that are given to you when you reach certain ‘forks’ in the story (the options available might be something like “walk home”, “pick up groceries”, “visit the planetarium”, etc…). Depending on the choices you make, the events that occur through the storyline can be completely different. Think of it as a visual representation of “choose your own adventure” children’s novels if you’ve ever read one.

Ren’ai Game: Romance/Love Game, also called ‘Dating Sims’ in the states- this is a subcategory of visual novels in which the goal is to achieve ‘dating’ status with one of the characters. These games can be either romantic or sexual in nature, or both.

Bishoujo Game: Also called ‘Galge’ or ‘Gal Games’. ‘Bishoujo’ means ‘beautiful girl’ and so a bishoujo game is a subcategory of dating sim in which the goal as a male protagonist is to date one of several beautiful girls/women available in the game. There’s a secondary category to this called a GL Game (Girl’s Love or Yuri Game) in which both the protagonist and available partners for her are female.

Bishounen Game: These types of games come in two varieties- Otome (Maiden) Games, also called GxB for GirlXBoy, and Boy’s Love (BL) Games. The former refers to the reversal of a bishoujo games, the player is in the role of a female protagonist that is trying to achieve a romance status with one of several male characters in the game. The latter, Boy’s Love (or Yaoi Game), refers to a game in which both the protagonist and his romantic interests are male.

Eroge: A catch-all terms that refers to any anime-style game that has heavy sexual content- short for Erotic Game. H-Game, Ecchi Game, and Hentai Game are all different ways of saying it, but although this includes adult-oriented visual novels, it’s by no means limited to them, and can be used to refer to games in many other genres as well, such as fighting games, shooters, etc…

So, to simplify things for everyone who is now thoroughly confused, it’s quite possible for a title to fit into more than one of these categories, especially seeing as how many are sub-categories of something else. The game Crescendo, as an example, is an eroge, visual novel, dating sim, AND a bishoujo game. If you were to translate each of those, in a sense, you see that the game is an adult only (eroge) visual novel that features dating (dating sim) young beautiful girls (bishoujo game).

Hope this clears some things up.

~Misk

Maso?

Despite this incredibly strong sense of my own mortality that’s been plaguing me in the past couple of weeks, I went ahead and watched 2012 (just added to Starz on demand, so I figured I’d check it out). Recently I’ve been getting chills every time I hear or see the trees outside swaying, or heard creaking in the house. I’ve even been waking from my sleep at the slightest movement or noise- all in the sudden belief that somehow I was about to die. I’ve had a few moments like this in the past when jets went by overhead (or during the earthquake last year), but nothing this strong, and nothing that lasted longer than a few minutes.

It’s been nearly three weeks now.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that I’ve shut myself into the house or that I’m building a bunker in the backyard, in fact I’m finding more and more excuses to spend the majority of the day out of the house. It seems like the feeling of, for lack of a better phrase, ‘impending doom’, is something that only sticks with me when I’m in my bedroom, whether awake or sleeping. Before moving over to Anthony’s house, I’d only ever been here maybe two or three days at a time at the most, so I believe that it might have something to do with being sensitive to the vibrations through the floor. After a couple of months of living here, perhaps the feeling of being on the second floor of a house night after night has built up into something greater- like the feeling of always being at the edge of a cliff. That’s the only thing I can come up with, as I’ve grown no more or less aware of the fragility of this world in the time I’ve been here.

This planet will be hit by a meteor large enough to destroy it, that’s a 99.9% probability given the scope of the universe and a long enough timeline, the only question is ‘when’. I’ve always known that, and yet its only now that I find myself quickly scanning the horizon outside the window expecting to see that the sky has gone red or some such thing. Natural disasters, nukes, etc… There’s plenty to fear of course, but no more than yesterday or the day before, so a change in ‘fear levels’ makes no real sense. Meh.

Anyways, as I said initially, I just watched 2012, and I actually really liked the movie. The feeling of ‘impending doom’ hasn’t grown weaker or stronger as a result, though thinking about it now, this could’ve ended pretty badly if I were mistaken in the reason for this fear. Since I’m no more afraid now than I was before though, I’m more certain that this fear is a physiological response rather than a simple case of ‘going nuts’. If my sleeping schedule weren’t so chaotic I’d try sleeping downstairs for a change, but there’s always someone down there making noise during daylight hours.

I think I might go try and learn some sort of self-calming techniques.

Crossing a Line?

I’ve both read and watched many renditions of ‘vampire’ tales. Anne Rice and Bram Stoker come to mind as the more popular creators of such stories lately, but of course one can’t discount Stephenie Meyer and the hundreds of others who have ventured into the genre either. I use the term ‘genre’ lightly, as in fact these stories can fit into almost any genre and sub-genre depending on their audience and content of course. I’ve watched a dozen movies, read many novels, and watched a great number of television series in both live-action and animated formats over the years that have dealt with the ‘vampire’ mythos in some way or another, and with this experience I can say one thing with near-complete conviction: some things are inevitable in a given ‘reality’, such as a reality in which vampires exist, but even in giving it serious thought, and understanding that it makes perfect logical sense, one can’t simply shrug off the feeling that actually using it in a visual story is nothing short of a vulgar exploitation.

On this note I turn your attention to the title ‘Dance in the Vampire Bund’, a newer anime series that’s not really unique enough to grab anyone’s attention IMO, but for one small detail. The seemingly ten-year old blonde ‘vampire queen’ has a penchant for running around half-, or totally, nude. Not only that, but she’s seen in several instances to be wearing garter belts and revealing lingerie obviously focused on ‘sexual appeal’ (I would post a picture, but some part of me would feel like I’m promoting child pornography in doing so).

Now my first point is that, in the context of the story, and indeed in most stories that center around vampires, the idea of an apparent ‘child’ who is over a hundred years old is not a new one- far from new, I can name a half-dozen stories off the top of my head in literature alone have such a character. The heavy contrast between their knowledge, the way they speak, and their mannerisms with their obviously child-like outward appearance is what makes them such powerful characters in these stories, and indeed in most cases it’s written so tastefully that it’s never an issue in breaking immersion (quite the opposite).

My second point to consider is that, given that they are, in fact, much older than they appear, they would have certain desires that children might not. A person who isn’t ‘attractive’ by mainstream standards will still buy lingerie, and will still wear it, and so it stands to reason that even someone who’s doomed to always appear as a child would desire that same sense of wanting to be seen as ‘beautiful’ and doing the same- even more-so for that fact. This line of thought leads us to the conclusion that, given that vampires existed in the real world, and children were made into them and lived another twenty, fifty, or hundred years- it’s hard to refute that at least one of them would probably wear adult lingerie if only out of that sense of great longing for a form they’ll never have. That’s basic psychology, and it’s not even a matter of opinion IMO.

Both of those points taken together makes it an inevitability that such a character would be portrayed in a story, and makes it perfectly reasonable to do so, at least from a logical standpoint. However, even if that’s the case, and even if I could have stomached it in literature (and been intrigued by it, even thinking it a positive point of realism), a visual format such as anime makes it seem like a blatant exploitation, and nothing short of a lure to pedophiles. I can stand ‘moe’, in fact I really love it on occasion, but this I can’t see as anything more than crossing a line that should never be crossed. The fact is that this character type, even if it’s perfectly reasonable and logical, was impossible to implement tastefully- or I should say, I can’t see any way in which it’s possible in anime form. I wouldn’t say that ‘Dance in the Vampire Bund’ ranks anywhere near the digust-levels that I get from KissXSis or Kodomo ni Jikan, which exploited this ‘child sexuality’ theme on a level much higher than this, but it still leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

This is where everyone else comes in. Am I being too harsh on this? Is this a logical inevitability that should simply be accepted, or trash that should burned with all of the contempt that we can muster?

Cursor’s Fury

Okay, I know that this feeling will likely subside over the course of the next few weeks, leaving me with a more objective feel for the novel and series as a whole. However…

HOLY SHIT.

This third part to the Codex Alera books by Jim Butcher was absolutely amazing, in every sense of the word. Even had the first and second books been merely mediocre, instead of great reads on their own as they were, it would have been well worth their 550 pages each in order to get to this one. I can’t remember ever being this excited about continuing a story, though I know I probably have been with most good series I’ve read (‘Song of the Lioness’ Quartet and the ‘Dresden Files’, for instance). I’m suddenly reminded of my full passion for literature, and my motivations when I started writing. In short, it was simply to instill this same feeling of absolute happiness and excitement to those who might read my own work.

While the writer in me is screaming that I need to jump on this opportunity and continue my novel, the reader in me won’t let that happen. I must start on the fourth book in this series immediately.

A Go Match

Played the AGA’s central region director in a game of iGo today, took 5 stones (she’s 1kyu) and lost by 8 because of a complicated ko fight during yose. If only I’d read a little deeper at that one particular instant, I would’ve won. She stated that despite my not playing in awhile, I’m definitely closer to 8kyu than 10 or 11 like KGS states. We were talking quite a bit during the game, and I really felt for the first time like I’d been in a real ‘teaching match’. Rather than stating what all went wrong after the game was over, we were discussing it while playing. I took nothing back of course, played pretty solid for most of the game, and only two real ‘mistakes’ the whole time, so I think I did really well considering.

I think I might start taking Go more seriously again soon, especially if our Go club actually gets some momentum. I really like the representative the AGA chose to look after the central region (which is 27 states btw), so I might start taking the AGA more seriously too. If I get up to her level, I think I might do some tournaments in Chicago. Playing online is really inferior to playing in-person, which is something I learned only today. Great fun.

I think that people are looking at this mosque situation in New York in completely the wrong way. Muslims and extremists are like Cane and Abel, and while Abel follows God’s teachings, Cane just gets mad and stabs a dude in the back out of jealousy. If one of the things that extremists hate about America is our ability to be open and accepting of others, then I think that the mosque is a slap in THEIR face, not ours. Being rigid and forcefully rejecting the views of others by saying ‘you can’t build a mosque there’ is only making us more like the people we’re at war with. I would argue that there’s no better place for a mosque in this entire country, as an example of the correct path we should all follow (as a symbol for all Americans to be more accepting, and as a symbol for Muslims specifically).

And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Religion isn’t my thing.

May God Have Mercy on your Soul…

san-ni-ichi:

inlifetraining:

cheaperthanacupofjoe:

Here’s what the teacher had to say:

 HAHAHAHAAAA.

LOLOLOL.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. Thanks for that ^_^

What kind of otaku/anime fan are you?

rachelxreverie:

sticksothy:

Apparently there are two types of otaku as listed on sankakucomplex.com:

Type A:

A person who simply enjoys “anime.”

Is proud of Japan’s anime.

Evaluates anime based on direction, voice acting, art, etc.

Hates shallow anime with no real content.

Story emphasis »»> Moe anime.

A recent example would Higashi no Eden. Fans of anime like Lain or Ghost in the Shell would probably be this kind.

Type B:

A person who simply enjoys “characters.”

Will watch an anime if it includes cute or beautiful characters.

Doesn’t care if story is awful, as long as the characters are of interest.

Evaluates anime based on which seiyuu are in it and what the characters look like.

Loves moe elements. Doesn’t like complex anime.

The otaku the media picks up on are usually this kind.

Doesn’t know that much about anime and so is often criticised as by Type A otaku.

However, they make much better customers than the more discerning Type A otaku.

Recently there has been a huge increase in anime targeted at Type B otaku.

People who like K-ON!, Queen’s Blade, Strike Witches and so on would be in this class.

————

Personally, I’m a type A but if some anime has cute characters, good animation and the humour is there, I don’t mind it but can’t watch too many at once.

….I do like K-ON though, but I don’t love it, I’m just partial to it.

If the story’s awful, I usually stop watching. And harems piss me off now.

I’m B. but I do generally care about story lines.

I dunno. I’m more than likely Type A, at least by ‘most’ of the standard definitions. However, while in recommendations and reviews I lean heavily on originality and story (and I’ve seen over 700 titles now, which means I’m definitely not in ‘Type B’), I also have no qualms whatsoever about watching things purely for enjoyment and not just to flex my criticism ‘muscle’. I’ve watched ‘K-On’ like five times, sometimes I’ll watch episodes of it simply for ‘background noise’ while doing other things, and sometimes I’ll watch it while laying down to sleep. I’ve seen ‘Cardcaptor Sakura’ around seven times, and that’s a 70 episode series, purely because I enjoy watching it and despite the cliches inherent in the title.

That said, Queen’s Blade was trash. ^_~ There’s a difference between ‘title made solely for enjoyment’ and ‘trash’. Just saying, lol.

I check the ‘Free’ section on Craigslist several times a day, most days. Take that how you will.