Visual Novel Book Club // Reading: Fatal Twelve! // Get Your Nominations In!

Japanese Language Book Clubs
375

I think you shoud leave it because I want to vote for it since it’s all an estimation and it’s supposed to be shorter than BU$TAFELLOWS anyway not to mention the only otome with a seemingly interesting plot that is available on both PC and Switch and isn’t 40h+

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376

:joy:

One day, earliest next year I suspect (more likely 2025 lol), I will start reading Hakuouki that I bought not too long ago. That one could only be a casual non-related-to-main-vn club at best, considering its length. xD

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377
Hakuouki Talk

Whew, that’s one beast of a VN, easily +100h. Initially I think it wasn’t so long but then they added a bunch of extra routes and now there’s like 12 routes :skull: I got it a few years back and even though I played in English I’ve only done like half? At this point my plan is to just jump in to do a single route whenever I feel like it since it can get a bit repetitive doing so many routes in the same setting one after another. I wonder if I’ll be done by 2025 :joy:

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378
More Hakuouki talk

I hadn’t thought of that. :thinking: Then, maybe, I can put Hakuouki earlier in my plans, if I won’t read it all at once. xD

Following that, is there a lot of story stuff before the routes starts that you can forget if you do the routes spread out over time?

I would prefer to have some historical and samurai vocabulary under my belt before I tackle that. I wonder if I can slot Rurouni Kenshin (manga) into my reading plan by the end of this year… :thinking:

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379
Even more Hakuoki talk

I almost said to bring this convo to the Otome thread but it seems it was closed a while ago, oops

I’m not sure how your version works, but I have the Steam one where it’s basically divided into two games (so all routes get split in half which is… a choice). The first half is all plot plot plot, mixing historical stuff with other things unique to the plot of the game (I won’t spoil it), and there are a few variations depending on choices that eventually determine which route you are on, but after a few routes you’ll have probably seen it all. You don’t really get into the character’s specific route until like the last chapter of that first half. Then in the second game they just let you choose which route you are on (since it wasn’t possible to know your choices in the other game), and that’s where the more otome side of the game begins. However in all-in-one-game versions I imagine it’s continuous and the choices carry over but I have no clue really.

In my opinion once you’ve seen the variations in the common route you’ll feel pretty done with it and at that point I’d just recommend skipping to choices to see what’s different for this character’s route. It’s very easy to know if you are heading for a good end in this game because there’s an indicator that shows when you picked the ‘good’ choice for a certain character so a guide may be needed to get locked into a character’s route but once you are there it’s a matter of saving at choices and reloading if you got it wrong.

The first half of the game is pretty dense and the samurai/historical talk feels pretty intimidating not gonna lie, but I’d also love to be able to get into those historical setting games in Japanese eventually so I’m rooting for you! Well, at least I can use the listening practice I guess :sweat_smile:

Now I kinda wanna go play one of the routes I have left…

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380

Vote time!

It is that time again! Time to vote for the next VN. Remember to check out the info on each nomination. Some VNs are one platform only—and not necessarily the one you’d expect—like Side Kicks! Others might be pushing up against our new maximum time limit of 5 months, if so, it means the speed might be increased halfway through or so to make sure it finishes in time.

Voting ends (automatically!) on the 15th. 3 votes per person. Check out the links in the poll for information on our choices

0 voters

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381

Could a Regular please change the title to:

[Voting!] Visual Novel Book Club // Currently reading BU$TAFELLOWS and 9-nine-!

Thanks, @MrGeneric !

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382

No problem! I’ll have to do my voting later, though, when I can look through the options more closely and decide. :stuck_out_tongue:

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383

Oooooh no 999 is in the lead. I’ve got too much on my plate so I’m not voting, but if it wins I’m probably making the horrible life choice if joining y’all. I adore that game.

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384

I’m interested in reading a lot of these! Not an easy vote. Had never heard of 徒花異譚, but one look at that art and I had to pick it.

999’s the only one I’ve already read, but I love the series and I’m down for the original language reread. That one would surely be a lot of fun to see people’s reactions to as well.

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385

Yeah, there were a lot of interesting VNs, it made it hard to choose what 3 to vote for.

I read 999 too recently unfortunately but the entire series is amazing for anyone that hasn’t read it yet.

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386

I just wanted to say hi :wave:, it’s been good seeing you back in the forum lately!

I hope I’m doing the VN club justice. :blush:

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387

Thank you! I’m really enjoying being back. I expected to have a much harder time getting back into Japanese than I have been, thankfully.

And you’re doing great! Thanks so much, to both you and @rikaiwisdom , for keeping this going :slightly_smiling_face:

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388

Dang that really proves I only look at profile pictures and don’t read names ever, didn’t even recognize you :joy: welcome back!! Glad it’s been going well :grin:

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389

Quick question – this has probably already come up in some capacity but I might’ve missed it across multiple threads with the time I was away. I’m aware that 9-Nine- not being a full self-contained story in its first episode has left the ending understandably dissatisfying for people because it sounds like it’s not much of an ending at all. And as a result, there was some discussion about if people would have the time to read its following parts and the next pick, maybe having to make a hard choice to stick with just one.

So, is selecting just part 1 in a VN with this structure (parts sold separately as technically different games) more trouble than it’s worth? It’s not the most common way for sure but this does crop up the first that come to mind are Higurashi and Umineko. When I nominated it, I figured that in some ways it’s a positive because it allows people to sample and then drop if they decide they aren’t interested enough to see the whole story through, and it’s a way to work in larger picks without causing even more enormous gaps between VN changes. But with this being a relatively small club to begin with, and with relatively high demands on reading time, is risking fracturing us not worth it? Or would it be ok to do sometimes? Obviously we don’t want every choice to be like that because too many VN side clubs at once will definitely split us too hard, but when some side clubs end?

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390

I would think it’s a case by case thing. It’s way better if there are some that are more self-contained, but to use another nomination as an example something like Fault: Milestone One is relatively speaking small (two short VNs) so regardless of what people choose to do in the end the impact is small.

I would also think for some popular series it just doesn’t matter at all. Ask someone where to start with Fate and you’ll get like a thousand not-so-helpful answers to the point that just trying literally anything is probably the right call. Sure, it sucks not finishing a series proper, but I’d really only be annoyed by abandoning a game partway through. Saying “we tried and moved on” is way better than “we dropped it like a hot potato after the first route”.

It’s a disappointing ending, imo, but not horrific. I’d blame the marketing more than anything else for that especially with how they did a totally unnecessary post-credit tease. I think it stings for our group more because we’re all ok with the type of story it was, but if we had a larger crowd with more varied tastes a lot of people would have dropped it after episode 1.

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391

Since it is the weekend, let me remind everyone to go ahead and vote if you haven’t in the poll to pick the next VN! Voting closes in four days. I set it to close to midnight Wednesday (15th), but I don’t actually know if it goes by my time zone (central European) or another… So don’t wait until last minute. xD

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392

In a discord server I’m in, Nightshade was a recent monthly pick for their club so I asked someone who finished it and they said their total character count came out to 491,768 characters. So, it fits in perfect with our current limits for future reference :grinning:

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393

Thanks! I will update everything (well except the poll and stuff) with the new info. :star_struck:

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Poll for next pick closes automatically in 8 hours!

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