FLOWERS -Le volume sur hiver- šŸŒŗ Visual Novel Informal Club

Yes, I meant Yuzurihaā€™s voice actor (I just call her Yuzu for short). The list of VNs she has been in is very long Mizusawa Kei | vndb

2 Likes
Off-Topic - English Yuri VNs

This was actually my first Japanese Yuri VN. But it read some in English. Maybe someone of you has read those or wants to read them in the future. I can recommend them:

Synergia (vndb): I can recommend this to anyone interested in cyber punk. If you think the trailer, ost or art are cool, you should read it. I really like how the art is done. Itā€™s not super beautiful. Itā€™s not as detailed or well drawn as a high budget VN. But the use of neon colors together with the sound track are very effective at conveying a mood. Also, instead of putting a character sprite in the middle of the screen with whatever background, the characters are drawn as a part of the scene. The down side is that you will often look at the exact same image and sometimes have less facial expressions available. The upside is that itā€™s more immersive. For a comedy game that would be the wrong choice. But here itā€™s great. I think more VNs should be done this way.

A Little Lily Princess (vndb): This is based on the classic novel A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have not read the original novel, only watched the anime adaptation. I think the VN is better than the anime. I think this one (unlike many other VNs) has very good prose. Maybe thatā€™s no wonder given that large parts are taken from the novel. But to itā€™s credit, itā€™s not like the original parts are obvious by the quality of itā€™s writing. The writing style is quite different from other VNs in that it has much more narration (displayed at the bottom of the screen) and is written in 3rd person. Dialog is displayed as speech bubbles (which I like, makes it easier to see who is speaking). The downside is that there are six different character based routes. Thankfully there is no true end that requires you to read all of them. But unfortunately the route specific plot is interwoven with the main plot, so that you have to go skip the same main-plot every time. If you want to play only some of the routes, I would skip the maid and the baby, but donā€™t skip the villain characters, I thought they had the best route.

Off-Topic - accepting VN recommendations

I played Flowers because itā€™s the highest rated ā€œGirls x Girls onlyā€ VN on vndb (well, except for pintemps. And since that acts as a filter, the ratings are probably inflated).

By that logic, I should put the 2nd highest rated on my to-read list. That would be SeaBed (vndb).

Another logic would be to say that Flowers is @AzusaChan favorite VN. So I should check out their 2nd favorite.

Iā€™ve also started watching the Visual Novel Book Club-Thread. I kind of want something that is long, like a Flowers game, but not long like the Flowers series and also somewhat serious. Though this time I would take more caution with the language barrier (using text hooks or English translation depending on the difficulty). Iā€™ve put Fata Morgana no Yakata from this vndb search on my wish-list (having already read Steins;Gate (elite)). And hey, SeaBed also shows up on that search.

@Akashelia, @AzusaChan I think you both read Flowers and Island. How would you compare them in terms of difficulty? Itā€™s less that I want to try Island and more that I want to confirm my theory that the JPDB difficulty ratings are completely useless (they rate Flowers at 5 and Island at 6, so JPDB thinks Island is more difficult. But I found Flowers very difficult and would expect a higher number.). And maybe for SeaBed, if you have played it (6 on JPDB). Iā€™m beginning to wish Natively would do video games or at least visual novels.

2 Likes

I think that I can answer that, but Azusaā€™s answer will probably be more accurate, since I have read Flowers in English only.
It does seem to me that ISLAND is easier in term of language, less flowery descriptions of peopleā€™s feelings. It is very long though, I would estimate that length wise it is the equivalent of all 4 Flowers together!
As for the story, I really enjoyed it, I know one other reader did too. But there are also people who disliked it so much that they have quit reading. Not sure how you can assess if itā€™s for you or not.

That would be awesome :slight_smile: Iā€™ve heard that it was in the works but not sure when / if it will actually happen!

1 Like
VN recs

If youā€™re looking for yuri recommendations, Iā€™d recommend Usonatsu. Itā€™s about the length of a single Flowers game and its separated into chapters (I think 15? Canā€™t remember the exact number). I think Iā€™d say that one is my second favorite yuri VN.
Yuri Ghosts on the Rooftop is another good one. I read that in English back when it released like a decade ago so my memory of it is a little fuzzy but I liked it a lot. The game follows around a bunch of different couples.
There is also this Chinese yuri VN series that was inspired by Flowers (it even has 4 parts). Only the first two are translated though. I read them in English (I donā€™t know Chinese). The translation is kind of stiff but the story is good.

For non-yuri VNs, Fata is really good and you already have that on your wishlist it sounds like.
I canā€™t remember if you liked ćƒžćƒ«ć‚³ćØéŠ€ę²³ē«œ or not but the writer for that did Monkeys!Ā” which is very similar in the type of humor they use.

I canā€™t recommend Seabeds. I tried to read it in English before I started to learn jp on two separate occasions but dropped it each time. I really hate the low production quality in that game, it made it very hard for me to read. The story itself was also just incredibly boring. It seems like a lot of people like the VN so Iā€™m not sure if it gets better later on but I couldnā€™t force myself to read anymore of it.

Iā€™d say Island is significantly easier. There is no weird kanji usage in Island and the narrative sections tend to be a lot shorter. The main hard parts of Island for me were one of the characters slangy style of speech and some of the long info dumps near the end of the VN. JPDB difficulty ratings do seem random at times. It seems accurate for 1-3 range but the 4-6 range seems all over the place (I havenā€™t read anything they rate an 7+ I think).

2 Likes