Archive for the Yuri Visual Novel Category


Yuri Visual Novel: A Beautiful Ride to Carlisle

December 23rd, 2018

In honor of the massive amounts of Yuri Visual Novels on yesterday’s YNN report, and because everyone likes to feel good about the world, I can think of no better thing to review today than Little Viktoria’s A Beautiful Ride to Carlisle which is described on the site as a “kinetic visual novel.”

To begin with, the story is a straightforward girl-meets-girl plot. Dana is taking a train to spend her vacation volunteering on an organic farm. On the train she meets another woman, Sharon, and the ride becomes something much more than a 5 hour lacuna in her life.

This is not a novel, per se, but there is a nice, long short story’s worth of content. I quite liked that this was written as a piece of writing, with supplementary illustrations that have some motion, rather than presuming the art as a full stand-in for description and narrative. In fact, this is the first VN so far that I have encountered that 1) acted like a story, i.e., didn’t pretend to have game elements and 2) was written in 3rd person. I really liked both those things. It let me release any expectation that the art had any other purpose than illustration. That gave the kinetic aspect a boost up for me.

The art is pretty and the character designs simple and appealing. I would read a manga with this kind of art with no complaint. It’s not the kind of hyper-realistic background art I have come to expect from VNs (and so much other non-film media.) Instead, we are given the feel of being on a train and the narrative fills in most of the rest, and yes, of course that appeals to me. I read books for the narrative, not for the illustrations. I mean, creative teams spend so much time on the art and it’s…a school hallway. Those lockers don’t need to be that detailed.

Which brings me to the characters. I would have both Dana and Sharon over for lunch any day. ^_^ We spend only a short time with them, but they are lovely.

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6
Service – 0 (okay, maybe .5)

Overall – 8

As a nice little “Story A” confection, A Beautiful Ride to Carlise lived up to its name. 

Many thanks to Viktoria for the review copy. I’ll definitely be interested to see what she’s working on next.





Yuri Visual Novel: Heart of the Woods Demo

June 29th, 2018

In 2016, the Yuri Visual Novel Highway Blossoms impressed me with some quirky story-telling and decent character development. Creator Josh Kaplan followed that VN up with the announcement that he and a team of creators were opening Studio Élan, a Yuri Visual Novel studio. It’s just under a year later and Studio Élan has released the demo to their first Yuri Visual Novel, Heart of the Woods, available  on Steam and itch.io.

I will begin this review with my usual disclaimer about me and Visual Novels – I am not the audience for these. No matter how many I “read” (the quotes here express exactly how I feel about them) I will continuously be vexed by the mechanism of reading one line at a time while an-all-but-static powerpoint slide image sits there doing almost nothing. And, I believe that my criticism of this mechanism is not just get off my lawn-ist rhetoric, but that it speaks to the very essence of the weakness of VNs. But I will get there. 

The story of Heart of the Woods is described on the website this way, “Traveling to a remote village in the woods, Maddie and Tara have low expectations. The two run a popular online show focusing on the supernatural, but thus far it’s been nothing but smoke and mirrors. When they receive an invitation to the antiquated village of Eysenfeld, they’re expecting more of the same. But it soon becomes apparent that the locals are hiding a secret. Maddie sees unnatural beasts in the forest that she’s sure are products of her imagination. Lights in the woods flicker and sparkle but disappear if she gets too close.

In time she learns that the lights come from a girl named Abigail. Well, the ghost of a girl. She was sacrificed hundreds of years ago by the villagers to appease the god of the forest. Maddie devotes her time in Eysenfeld to getting to know Abigail, and eventually promises to break the curse that binds her to the woods.”

This seems accurate and appealing, if you like ghost stories, curses, etc. And, given the setup of Tara and Maddie running a supernatural online show, it feels right for the characters to become involved with this. Very much unlike the confusing setup of Starlight Vega. 

First, let me address the demo itself. AS A DEMO, I think the Heart of the Woods demo was brilliant. It gives me a nice window to the story, the characters, the setting, the art and writing. I feel confident that I understand what the full VN will be like. I also enjoyed the meta-commentary of chibi-Tara and chibi-Maddie, pointing out where we timeskip through the story, for technical or demonstrational reasons. These were my favorite part of the demo, in fact.  I’m never above a little meta-commentary. ^_^

The art is lovely. The caveat for this (and for all VNs) is that “lovely art” is what, a handful of pictures? (This drives me crazy, when people who tell me that the art for Flowers is beautiful, I’m like, “Well, sure but it’s like 6 pictures. So what?” Yay, they did a couple of really pretty landscapes. Is that worth money to you? Then rock on. ) Rant aside, the art here is thoughtfully created and thoughtfully presented. There even is a little movement to imply motion. And there are a few scenes where sprites are not just facing us in a line. That was refreshing, although the range of motion of sprites still leaves me befuddled. I will not, cannot and do not understand why I am told “She grabbed my arm” and the sprites stand there. Why?!? Draw them grabbed. You can do it, you’re artists. 

Now we get to the meat of why I rarely really like VNs and the source of my contention that reading them like picture books is a flawed mechanism. Reading one line at a time means writers are writing for people who read one line at a time. Like a picture book, this removes the space and function of writing for readers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but I am a reader of words. The pictures, IMHO, are meant illustrate a scene, not to be the focus. The upshot is characters are rendered down to – again, in my extremely biased opinion – simple, unsubtle concepts, words and scenes.  

All this has been stated for the purpose of being extremely clear why I, personally, do not much like VNs. It is not a judgment of you liking them, nor a condemnation of this specific VN. And, if you do like VNs I am fairly certain you will very much like Heart of the Woods, which is a solid ghost story wrapped around a romance with an outcome that I cannot even vaguely predict, based on the demo. All of which seems very promising.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7 in demo, but TBD
Character – 6 I had a bit of trouble liking Tara or Maddie upon meeting them
Service – N/A in the Demo. There is an adult patch that you can download. I think this is an excellent solution to adding adult content in an otherwise romantic story
Yuri – 9
Music – 7 Original, and there’s a soundtrack. I can’t stand repeated bgm riffs, but it wasn’t bad

Overall – 7 with potential for more if you like VNs

I’m probably not going to read the full VN when it comes out later this year, but if you do and would like to tell us all about it, please let me know! I’d love a guest review. And I certainly hope you will try this demo out and decide for yourself!

 





Yuri Visual Novel: Lovely Anemone

March 14th, 2018

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! 

A few months ago, I was approached by Yuri Game Studio and Okazu supporter Luscious Spirit Studio with an offer of a VN to review, so I have asked our resident VN reviewer, Louis P. to take a look at it for me.  And here we are with another terrific review, so take it away Louis!

When Salena returns to the flat she shares with her girlfriend Lydia on the cusp of their one year anniversary, she sees something that any soap opera viewer would have been expecting, her girlfriend cheating on her with another woman. This person immediately taunts Salena that this betrayal was inevitable as Salena is asexual, and how could Lydia be fine with a relationship without sex? In tears, Salena breaks up with Lydia then and there and returns to single life with the ever-present fear that her asexuality will forever bar her from the romantic relationship she wants. The very next night Salena runs into Aanya, a fresh out-of-the-closet music student who already has a huge crush on her.

And so starts Lovely Anemone a game by Luscious Spirit Studios for Ace Jam, a game jam that ran through January of this year focusing on games with characters in the asexual spectrum.

I am not asexual so I cannot give a real opinion on how ace feelings are represented in this game. But the game’s story focuses on feelings that a lot of queer people can understand. The feeling of being in the closet and being afraid to reveal yourself, yet knowing you have to come out in order to have an honest relationship is something a lot of people can understand. We follow Salena’s thoughts as she wrestles with these feelings of fear that they bring up.

This fear about coming out and then being rejected is focused on when Salena starts dating Aanya. This plot is helped along with some of the cutest date sequences I have seen in a visual novel for a long time. As this game was written in only a month the story shoots for only the most surface-feel of Salena and Aanya’s (and Lydia’s) relationship that, while shallow, is still able to invest us in their relationship in a short time. I was very impressed by how torn I was when time came to make a choice between Lydia and Aanya the first time round. What is more, Aanya’s acceptance of Salena, while awkwardly written, is precisely the kind of acceptance you would hope to see more of in the real world.

Lovely Anemone is a short game you can finish in one evening. While the slightly awkward writing lead to one character saying: “Didn’t you tell her you were an ace?” it is clearly sincere in what it is trying to achieve..that is,  adding to the small pile of media containing decent representation of asexual characters and also providing a visual novel where the main character is endlessly fawned over by two amazing, butch romantic leads.

I really do mean that both Aanya and Lydia are dashing romantic fantasies that spend their time showering the main character with affection and kisses once the required angst is taken care of. It was exactly what I wanted from my silly brain candy that only takes a few hours to read. Before I ran into these scenes I was preparing to say Lovely Anemone was an okay attempt, despite its wonky writing and overuse of screen shake (just do it once, not three lines in a row) but, if you are like me and love the idea of cool butch girls whispering romantic compliments to you while they hug you then this will be great thing to read on a rainy afternoon.

Ratings:

Art – 7 A lot of CG considering they had a month
Characters – 5 Only the main three have anything going for them
Story – 6 Not bad for something written in a month…
Service – 4 Some nudity that seemed to be just there for service
Yuri – 7 Good but soapy relationships

Overall – 6

I had not heard about Luscious Spirit Studios before reading Lovely Anemone but I will be looking through their catalogue now and I look forward to their next project.

Erica Here; Thank you very much for taking a look at this for us. I think you speak for many here when you say that being fawned over by a couple of cool butch girls. ^_^





Yuri Visual Novel: Ne no Kami – The Two Princess Knights of Kyoto, Guest Review by Louis P

January 24th, 2018

Welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu! I am pleased as punch to welcome back our good friend, Okazu Superhero and Guest Reviewer Louis P. Take it away, Louis!

Ne no Kami – The Two Princess Knights of Kyoto, a visual novel by Kuro Irodoru Yomiji, starts of promisingly enough. Len Ese is a compelling and interesting protagonist, with the ability to sense the presence of living things. Before you can say ‘ordinary high school student’ she is dropped into a new life and a new home just outside of Kyoto. Reuniting with her childhood friend Shinonome Sarume she is whisked away to a secret village, the headquarters of Kunai a secret organization of sacred sword wielders who have promised to fight Ayakashi that threaten the human world. Len learns that Kunai wants her to help them fight these dangerous Youkai, she even gets a cool magic sword that only she can wield like her friend Shinonome who also works for Kunai. In fact everyone in the small village she used to visit growing up works for this secret monster fighting organisation.

Now if that last paragraph makes you think that Ne no Kami like some kind of fun supernatural version of Thunderbirds, it isn’t. In fact it is quite the trip to watch Ne no Kami systematically make its setting as pleasant to read as dry white toast. The writers were clearly fans of the urban fantasy visual novels that have long periods of exposition mixed with everyday life (Aoi Shiro) but they seem to have missed that what you then need to do is populate that everyday life with interesting characters and make that exposition meaningful to events we have already experienced early on in the story. No, instead Ne no Kami decides to front load its entire mythology right from the get go and when it is not doing that the characters’ daily lives feel truly banal. Quite an achievement when Len is moving into a new home, re-uniting with two childhood friends and learning about a secret youkai war but all these scenes are populated with characters that have such low energy it is hard to stay awake never mind care.

And that is a pity because…

Spoiler warning here but seriously you are not missing much and knowing this is probably the only reason to buy this visual novel. If you really do not want to know, skip to the second set of asterisks.

****

 

It turns out that the war the Ayakashi have been waging against humanity is not as simple as Kunai have been making out. Indeed it seems that Kunai is pretty much the illuminati and the war is not so much to save humanity but to expand their control over it. In the end Len, Shinonome and their remaining allies must find their own way to survive after being betrayed by the very people who taught them and us about the entire setting. This throws all that we learned in the first third of the story back into uncertainly for both the characters and the reader.

****

It is a nice twist even if the people that will betray Len are pretty obvious from the moment you meet them as well as those Ayakashi that will prove to be not blood thirsty monsters. However this twists power relies on how invested we are in the lie we are fed at the beginning which, as I said, was dull and boring and I did not care about. So while this sudden twist feels inspired it did not put the work in at the start to make us feel invested in the status quo. So I was far more relived to find out about all the deception and that one of the most annoying characters was evil enough to deserve what was coming to them.

‘But what about the Yuri?’ I hear you ask, now that is actually a bit more interesting although you have to pick it out of the gizzards of the poorly told story and the character designs that are ridiculously infantile. What is nice is that both Len and Shinonome have their own love interests. Uzume Sarume and Ruka Himemishi: both of whom are given serious significance in the story but are also lacking in nearly any kind of agency. It doesn’t help as well that Uzume is deliberately made up to be a shut in with a really creepy crush on Len that somehow blooms into romance while Ruka’s story is making you think that she is one kind of fetishised ill girl when she is in fact a fetishised traumatised girl and then one-upping how exploitatively traumatic they can make her back-story every two chapters.

Despite everything it does wrong I could imagine recommending Ne no Kami, five or seven years in the past. It is clearly trying and its heart is in the right place. I mean love between women is what saves people at the end and our heroes are two pairs of girlfriends but in this modern world with Kindred Spirits on the Roof, Butterfly Soup, Highway Blossoms and Ladykiller around there is just better stuff to spend your time and money on. If only this had been released ten years ago it could be something like Sapphism no Gensou. Yeah we read it despite all its glaring flaws but it was because there was so little else to read. Today however I have no such excuse.

Ratings:

Art – 3
Story – 5
Characters – 2 (I had to look up everyone’s name while writing this. That should tell you what you need to know)
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 5

Erica here: I would like to thank Denpasoft for the review copy of Ne No Kami. It was much appreciated! And many thanks to Louis for another cogent review.





Introducing Yuri VN Creators Studio Élan

August 4th, 2017

This past weekend, Yuri VN Highway Blossoms creator Josh Kaplan announced the creation of a new studio, Studio Élan, specifically to work on Yuri VNs.

I asked him to tell us a little bit about it. Here’s Josh’s response:

…I started the group early this year specifically dedicated to making yuri games, and particularly yuri games for girls. I’m still proud of Highway Blossoms, but I decided I wanted to do more in that vein. Alienworks, the group with which we made HB, is still alive and I’m still part of it, but Studio Élan is like… my main thing for the foreseeable future. Most of the team are girls, and so far I’m really excited about what we’re doing in a way that I’ve never really been before. We have two projects right now, both of which will be announced at Anime Weekend Atlanta in September. I hope that people will like them. 

The folks at Studio Élan are tweeting backgrounds, character designs and screenshots like crazy now, with credits to the folks who are working on the art for the VNs (a touch I quite like.) The first two game announcements are slated for September, but check their Twitter account regularly for teasers! In the meantime, we’ll wait with bated breath for the first releases!