Narcissu and Rapelay

What a combo we had today:

Narcissu 2 Released (the news item I wrote for VisualNovels)

After nearly three years of effort, the English edition of 2007 doujin work "Narcissu side 2nd" has been released. Narcissu 2 is the highly anticipated follow up to the 2005 doujin novel Narcissu by Stage-Nana. This author-sanctioned release contains two translations of the 2nd game and three translations of the original Narcissu. The game is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux/Unix as well as as a stand-alone OS virtual machine dubbed "Operation Setsumi".

More information can be found on the official site.

CNN revives Rapelay drama

CNN proves they will be anyone's puppet if it gets them a headline. Kotaku has a good article on this. I would rage here for a page and a half but Narcissu 2 just came out.

Black Rock Shooter Nendoroid and Figma

While most of us have already blown major bucks on the 1/8th scale Black Rock Shooter (my self included), only to then be tempted with the budget black blade version (which I skipped =P), I could not pass up the chance to get some other incarnations of this character. Indeed, these two figures are the fastest I've preordered (from reservation up to ordering).

She makes such a kyooooot nendoroid! I love the bonus face (lower left corner).

I just like figmas. ^_^ (I suspect I'll need to get a DL:stage if I want to hold her gun out?)

Expect more when these ship in July!

Miku-4 (mikuyon)

Miku-4, pronounced mikuyon, is a doujin 4-panel comic by Nagimiso that took the net by storm some time back. This comic has very few words but tells a pretty long story of Hatsune Miku's (the vocaloid character) coming of age.

I got the tankoban bound edition at BookOff! this week. This version varies slightly from the web edition but the majority is the same. (I recommend getting this version if you can because the art is much larger and nicer.)

You can read it here (some Japanese).

Goods round up! Chocolates and Kitty-chan (also Vocaloid puchi nendoroids)

I received some packages from J-List these last few weeks and now that its all arrived I took some photos. ^_^ The vocaloid puchi nendoroids are from Rising Sun Creations but J-List did carry them as well.

Luka is happy to show off the Kit-Kat "Pass the Test!" mug set. Kit-Kats are associated with passing tests in Japan (kit-kat sounds like kitto katsu; you will surely win/pass); also the term "Pass the test" (gokaku) can also mean pentagon so the mug is five sided.


Rin is peering at the included sample of Nescafe'. Instant coffee can be amazingly bad so I haven't had the nerve to try it yet. Starbucks Via is pretty good though.

Saihate Miku is examining one of the wackier items I've ordered (J-List specializes in these): Sexy Dynamite I love Oppai Chocolates, which are little oppai shaped white chocolates and come in a fitting torso case.

Rin is stealing the scene again.

Kudo likes the chocolates too ;). (NSFW? I shrank it just in case.)

This is a miniature strap type Hello Kitty omamori amulet intended to raise one's grades (between this and the KitKat set I should be OK right??). I took the bell off because it is hanging from my iPhone.

These are going to my mom, both are also strap type omamori. the kitty charm is for traffic safety and the other is a feng sui happiness charm.


This one is a full size general luck Kitty omamori.

I also bought a cute 3D Hello Kitty ice tray. Very sturdy feeling and surprisingly easy to use. :)

A very cold but cute Hello Kitty. She has a nose and such but ice doesn't photograph well.

A cute bunny friend of Hello Kitty. According to the official iPhone app her name is Cathy. (the more famous My Melody has a hood on.)

Thoughts of Brass Restoration and Busy-ness

Hello loyal readers, due to life changes I haven't been updating here faithfully. (I've been active on twitter, its not like I've left the fandom or anything ;) ) This is the first of hopefully many posts I will be making.

After blowing my mind by finishing Fate/Stay Night last month I've taken a respite from games and have been catching up on anime now that legal streaming is taking off strongly. I'll blog about some of those series soon but today I am back to visual novels. Actually, back to a game I gave up on some time ago: Brass Restoration. I got to a bad end and just stopped playing. I don't mean that too suggest it was boring. Rather, I related to it much too closely.

The plot revolves around an amateur musician, Ryo, who recently lost his arm in a train accident. Without his arm he cannot play music any longer. The music club members, beg him to come and help, visit, and be part of the fold again and this is the main conflict of the story. Now, I have both my arms, I'm typing with two hands right now, but it was this "coming back into the fold" part that really bothered me. I quit violin after going to lessons and playing for about a decade or so. Its not that I hated violin, I just didn't have the desire to spend the time time to practice faithfully and didn't feel it was right to my teacher to go if I wasn't going to be a diligent student. After all this was a hobby. Everyone I knew begged me to "start again" even people like my (now amicably ex-) boyfriend begged me to play even though they had complained about my practices taking too much time before. My sister harassed me for "being a quitter" as well. Later when I actually wanted to fool around with music again (not take lessons just play for fun) I knew the drama would start a fresh once my bow hit the strings.

When I was in Ryo's mind and all these people are begging him to "come back" it stirred up that old drama. Now obviously Ryo actually still wants to be a musician and all that, he had his chance taken, he didn't get a choice. These are not parallel situations but the story was effective enough to stir those feelings of resentment and I think this is probably a sign of good writing.

That ended up as quite a personal rant ^^; I'm giving BR another shot, if your interested get the game here (free).