Currently I am learning Japanese, reading VNs, and going through a bunch of anime that I've wanted to watch for a while now. Thanks to MAL, I am going to be able to catalogue all anime I can remember, and hopefully interact with the community from time to time and discuss anime!
If you look at my profile, I think you can tell I am a big fan of the stuff by Key and KyoAni. If you have any interest in talking about that sort of stuff, or anime/Japanese in general, feel free to message me! Maybe we could become friends.
NOTE: While I try to keep the descriptions on my anime list as spoiler free as possible, the "More" button which tends to show an in-depth review or extra information on certain shows (Marked as '*More') CAN contain spoilers, so keep that in mind.
Ordered by oldest to newest.
I try to keep it as spoiler free as possible but no guarantees. Blatant spoilers are marked.
Doki Doki Literature Club[7/10]
My gateway VN, read in English. Was rather enjoyable (unsettling) and I enjoyed the twists. Natsuki > All
Kanon[7/10]
Pretty much my first Japanese VN. Learned a lot of words while reading. With the exception of a few routes I really enjoyed it. It has a nostalgic feel to it, and the soundtrack is very good. H-scenes were poorly done and would have been better if they were completely cut out honestly. Mai's route was notably bad and Makoto's desperately needed some foreshadowing; thank god for the 2006 anime fixing it. Inferior to the anime but still a very worthwhile read.
Read with a text-hooker. I did not start logging time until further in the story. Estimate is based on mean average reading speed. Hours logged include breaks while reading and I also manually made 363 sentence cards (with a self made English translation of each sentence; this is not something I necessarily recommend but I think it was worth it for myself) with this using Anki. Since then, I have changed my workflow a lot (refer to Clannad's note). For a helpful guide on how to do this yourself, check this site: https://learnjapanese.moe/vn/ for the basics and https://rentry.co/mining for more tools
[Start | 04-13-22] [End | 06-02-22]
[Total: 142.75 hours/6 days (logged) or 172.75/7.2 (estimate)]
[Total read: 915,112C/57,968L]
[Mean average read per hour: 5.75kC:370L]
[Lowest: 3kC:200L] [Highest: 9.25kC:600L]
Note: 'C' stands for Japanese characters and 'L' stands for lines (clicks)
AIR[6/10]
Was fine, albiet a slightly convoluted ending. H-scenes suck just as much as Kanon's did. Enjoyed this one less compared to Kanon and that probably has to do with the characters. Just couldn't get into most of the routes, not to mention the protagonist who was not very likeable. The 3 arc split made for an interesting (especially Summer arc!) and very very confusing story. The twists were on par if not better than Kanon's.
Same sentence card creation process as last VN and the last to use English translations which outlived their usefulness (takes too long, some stuff is untranslatable or different nuance to English translations, and I finally internalized most Japanese grammar at this point). Coincidentally made the same exact number of sentence cards.
CLANNAD[9/10]
I consider After Story a 10/10; my score of 9 takes all the other routes into account. I knew what I was getting into after watching the anime, and honestly this lived up to my expectations all the way. For context, I finished all main routes + true ending, the baseball route, Sunohara's route, and some extras listed below. I also used the visual fan book (techgian style) which I am blessed to have a physical version of to help guide me on some routes .
Jet Saito scenes, こちらときめき☆学園 game, Nagisa's ちょっとエッチ scene, and Tomoyo 64 hit combo
The early routes were not my cup of tea. I think the way that the anime handled Yukine's in particular is superior to the visual novel version, but otherwise most of these routes are 1:1 to the anime with the only differences being that you romance most of the female characters, and that there are lots of small jokes and bits which weren't adapted to the anime. I personally liked that because it kept my reading about these characters somewhat fresh compared to how I viewed them from the anime and added an extra dimension to them I never knew about before.
Sagara Misae's is good and I think it's on par with the anime's version so no complaints.
Tomoyo's route was just ok, wasn't too interested in hers but it was done fine. I have a review of her standalone VN lower in my VN list.
Surprisingly, I did not enjoy Kyou/Ryou's routes at all, which is odd because I really didn't have anything against them in the anime adaption. Something about Kyou just brushed me wrong and I couldn't handle her abusive constantly angry and violent tsundere archetype which got old fast.
Another thing to note is the presence of a certain route which wasn't adapted to the anime at all: Hiiragi Kappei. I have absolutely no idea why they included this in the visual novel because his route pretty much had nothing to do with the overarching storyline other than an extra light for the true ending. Also the conclusion to it was poorly written with a deus ex machina to solve the main problem and WTF was wrong with Ryou? I think it was the right call for the anime to write off this character and this is really the only route I truly disliked.
From those routes on it gets better with Sunohara Siblings route (love to see the reconciliation arc).
Kotomi's route may very well be my favorite next to Nagisa/After story, I really loved the themes of moving on with that one. Would play a standalone VN of her.
Fuko's was ok I guess (not really suitable for a romantic partner) although anime is better, and then we reach a bump with Komura's route. Komura's route pretty much consisted of a 10 minute epilogue and is otherwise identical to early Nagisa route so I was disappointed in it, pretty much as irrelevant as Kappei's and lost potential.
Do I even need to explain how great Nagisa/After Story is? I don't want to even talk about this part because I think it's best to experience it yourself, whether that be through the anime which focuses on it as the canon route, or getting through to it via the VN. It is done wonderfully and includes some minor sub-character routes which weren't touched on in the anime such as Akio's route so I would say that reading this added a bunch more detail to what the basis of Clannad is in the first place. Also, the Visual novel's concept of lights translates a lot better with the whole separate routes thing rather than how the anime did it in one giant combined route so After Story feels much more coherent, which after all is how it was originally intended to be experienced.
Baseball route is dumb fun and I highly recommend it as the first route you do just because it introduces the most characters in the shortest amount of time.
Sunohara route is also funny although it only consists of a couple scenes after turning down all the other girl's routes.
Overall, I really enjoyed this visual novel even if there were times I would take weeks-long breaks due to the slog that was the early routes, I think it was well worth it to go through all of it. I loved every moment of the second half of this game, and will be sure to look back on it from time to time. The common route got burned into my mind to the point I could practically recite some parts from memory, but it really helped with comprehension no matter all the extra hours added due to it.
Obviously it is a huge time investment even if you're skipping the common route each time and aren't reading it in Japanese as a native English speaker, but for what I consider to be one of the greatest forms of Japanese media, I considered it worth it. Outside of the light hearted jokes and gags, these characters despite their archetypes have layers to them which are gradually uncovered and make them really feel human. It covers so many important themes which I don't think anime cover enough and am glad to have been exposed to them. I think that this truly changed my life for the better, so if you are able to put up with the constant Sunohara abuse which is inflicted on him in most routes, I highly recommend giving this a read or watch (THATS A JOKE.... but a sad reality......)
Thanks to my new sentence/vocab mining workflow which uses monolingual dictionaries, pitch accent charts, native audio recordings, and several tools to speed up the creation process to only a few seconds, I think I have made even better Japanese progress and it has taken less time to create cards than the last two VNs took. I added 1,118 words/phrases from this.
Also another thing to keep in mind is that like the previous VNs, I have rarely skipped repeating text or the common route outside of closely related late-game routes like Kyou/Ryou or all of the extra content. I think not doing so boosts gains and comprehension if you can endure the repetition.
planetarian ～ちいさなほしのゆめ～[8/10]
This was beautiful and touching. It was a short read ー a simple story taking place in a post apocalyptic world with only a couple characters ー but even then it still managed to make for a very engaging story full of philosophical elements which make you think. The projector scene in particular was breathtaking; that was a work of art. Highly recommended.
Same creation process as Clannad and will likely stick with it for the foreseeable future. This was honestly the hardest thing I've read up till now; I suppose that is to be expected for a novel with futuristic scifi, post apocalyptic, philosophical, and robotic themes. There was practically 1 or 2 new words every line which wasn't simple dialogue. I added 139 cards but could've easily done 3x that number from all the words which came up. I chose not to mine certain words due to comprehensibility, and obscurity. I can always do those anyways if I see them a second time.
I liked the inclusion of gikun furigana to give a nuance to certain kanji compounds and think that it added character to the writing, even if it wasn't applicable to actual language learning.
智代アフター ～It’s a Wonderful Life～[6/10]
First half is an illogical mess and if it weren't for the amazing second half this would be a much lower score than it is.
I really don't think Tomoyo changed much as a character in comparison to her original role in Clannad despite what many other people claim. I think this belief has to do with the different art design, voice actor, and dynamics with newly introduced characters, but overall I did not notice a huge disconnect between Clannad Tomoyo and Tomoyo After Tomoyo.
I finished the true ending, and while skipping common route: bad end 1, plus two versions of bad end 2 (Tomoyo ver. + Alone version). I got all CGs minus the one from Dungeons & Takafumis (did I mention they created a dungeon crawler side game alongside the VN which you could spend hours on?) I'm not into that rpg format so I only played it for half an hour but there's some extra bits in there.
{Super Sexy Prologue (SSP)}
We start off after the events of Tomoyo route in Clannad with an adult Okazaki living his own apartment with Tomoyo (who is in her last year of highschool I think). This part is frontloaded with H-scenes just for the sake of H-scenes
Oh Key; Visual Arts, why do I even try with your Eroge editions? I did notice an improvement from Kanon/Air's scenes... which is not saying at lot but at least due to the different artist it's somewhat better? From there we have an intro which honestly I have never had complaints about; Key does superb visual novel intros and they're almost worth reading for them alone.
{Dad is a fucking whore}
Now, here's where it gets really bad. We are first introduced to the main plot device of this arc. Tomo EXPLICITLY FOR THOSE WHO ALREADY CONFUSE THE NAMES TOMOYA AND TOMOYO; The young half sister of Tomoyo and Takafumi. Illegitimate child of Sakagami Tomoyo's father from an affair, the mother abandons her near the Sakagami home.
So, Takafumi brings her home and comes to the conclusion that they should keep their father's infidelity hush hush. Why, you ask? I guess they HAVE to keep the family together.... or something. Anyways bad end 1 basically entails this going public, with Tomoyo and Okazaki caring for the child and tbh despite being a 'bad ending' it's honestly a happier conclusion compared to true ending (ちなみに、bad end 2 is the happiest end). Oh also we have Takafumi's ex (Kanako) move in or something, cuz why not.
{Don't talk about Fight Club}
So next after some time of caring for the child the writer(s) probably decides things are getting somewhat boring and they need to spice it up. How do they spice it up...? By turning it into a knockoff "Fight Club" of course! Yep! Apparently there are still dozens of criminals out there who are not over the days of the legendary and ruthless Tomoyo and they are back for revenge! Why now, about 1-2 years after Tomoyo settles down into a *relatively* peaceful lifestyle and not earlier you may ask? How did they find each other and form into such a huge group before finding her, you may ask? You know what, who cares at this point!? So now they decide the most logical step to get Tomoyo's attention is to attempt to kidnap Tomo, and then invite her to this isolated area to challenge her in a set of brawls. This of course does not work, because Okazaki decides he is not having this shit and decides to fight in her place (in 1-1 duels every day) without letting her know. Cue several days of Okazaki returning with a horribly bruised face and Tomoyo just brushing it off after the excuse that it's all Kanako's doing (wtf), an epic training arc with Sensei Kanako, and he eventually earns the delinquent groups respect to where they decide they don't even want to fight Tomoyo anymore. Yep, this is good writing!
{Takafumi litery cant run}
This one was not that bad, but a little short. Basically Okazaki and Tomoyo 勝手に decide that the two should get back together, and also work on getting Takafumi back into running; a sport he loved and club he was in but which he gave up around the time the two broke up. He ends up getting into a marathon, and freezes up due to the belief that he wasn't ever going to achieve his dreams of running, and how his relationship ended badly with his former (deceased) teacher, but Kanako and the other cheer for him and he goes all out. He ends up far behind the ranks but Kanako tell's him everything's okay and he doesn't have to achieve those things because she loves him for who he is anyways. One of the better arcs.
{Return abandoned child to depressed mother who is dead inside! (♪thats a great idea♪)}
Do I even need to explain this one? Horrible, absolutely horrible with hundreds of logical leaps and plot conveniences. So Okazaki decides the best thing is to take Tomo back to the mother because she OBVIOUSLY loved her (something something she wanted pictures of the child but never meet her again while they took care of her). So they track down where she ran off to due to some obscure washi writing paper and her departing words of going to some mountain place where sakura trees first bloom if I recall correctly?.
Taking like a week long vacation, Okazaki, Kanako, and Tomoyo (Takafumi takes care of Tomo at home) head down to the rural area and find themselves in some old former hospital-now institution for people who don't have the will to live/work anymore and are waiting for the day they die. Idk didn't look into it too much but damn that's depressing af.
So now Okazaki tries to convince the mother to raise Tomo while Tomoyo somewhat passively resists this by hinting at wanting to keep the child as her adopted daughter/sister. The mother bluntly says no: this is no place for a young child with a bright future and truth be told she is correct. But of course Okazak and Kanako don't take no for an answer and look for the best way to convince her. The answer? Build a school!!!! No, I'm not joking they try and refurbish this old building out back using only trash from this conveniently placed junkyard in the mountains next to the institution.
Anyways Tomoyo decides the best way to stop Okazaki is to seduce him and if you fall for it you get bad end 2 hahaha loser you fell fore the sex trap! you cant make a school for children if you're too distracted by making a school of children in Tomoyo now can you! (this ends like bad end 1 taking care of Tomo but now you have takafumi and kanako reconciliation arc + closure for the mother or something AND extra tomoyo sexe so epic win)
So let's say instead you respond to her advances with "BEGONE THOT, THOU SHALT NOT COMPROMISE MINE OWN SEED"
Well you clean up the place, put some black boards and desks in there and call it a day. I'm sure these depressed people will figure it out somehow. One of them was even a former teacher! You drop off the child, and after some tears, Tomoyo says goodbye to Tomo. Thus concludes part 1.
Safe to say, I was not too pleased with most of this. 3/10
So as you may have read from the first half, it was pretty bad. So bad you would be forgiven for writing off anything that happens after those arcs. It is exactly because of this that I was shocked how great the second part was and it makes me wonder what if they had expanded on this story making it more intricate rather than waste our time with the beginning which doesn't really have any influence or connection to this part? It's pretty short ー I read beginning to end in less than 3 hours ー but so great and depressing that I'd put it up there as the Tomoyo version of Clannad After Story without the good ending.
Okazaki has no idea who Tomoyo is, or even his own name. Apparently he is suffering from amnesia (likely due to the head injury suffered while collecting the parts for the school) and can only remember up to the end of his last middle school year. He is quickly discharged from the hospital and taken home with Tomoyo, who is acting somewhat suspicious when asked certain questions.
He then spends the remainder of the week getting to know Tomoyo while she takes hims around to places featured in Clannad to see if she can get him to remember the school, her, and previous characters like Sunohara.
Towards the end of the week Okazaki gets a headache but Tomoyo is still insistent in taking him to the school. Confessing his love to her, she drops the big reveal: you have been in an endless loop of comas for the past 3 years only to wake up every now and then for a period of a week before going back to sleep to forget everything. There is a surgery available which could potentially cure this but there's only a 50% chance of it working at best, otherwise you are not in any life threatening condition but will seemingly continue in this hazy state for the rest of your life.
Tomoyo doesn't want to lose Okazaki so she instead took the route of taking care of him for all this time.
Now that is intense! I don't even care about the potential plot convenience or leaps in this because it is so much more interesting than the first part of this game!
Up until now, he had only apologized to Tomoyo after learning the truth but this one time he tells her that he loves her. After contemplation, Okazaki proposes and says he wants the surgery. The next time he wakes up they both have wedding rings, she explains what happened, and then they visit his father's home. This part really hit me hard because unlike Clannad Afterstory, in Tomoyo route he never really reconciled with his father and had left the home for many years now. It's surprisingly clean despite recalling his middle-school days of his father's slovenliness due to losing Okazaki's mother in the accident.
Okazaki tells him that he plans to do the surgery and tells him that they'll probably never meet again (even if the surgery is successful) and wishes him a good life, BUT when leaving Tomoyo points out how his father kept the house clean in the hopes that Okazaki would one day return, and was even working on it after they left despite the knowledge that his son may die and never come back. This hits Okazaki hard realizing his father truly loves and misses him and is trying his best to improve himself for his son, and Okazaki quickly takes back his brash words and tells him he will meet him again if he survives the surgery.
We are then greeted with an H-Scene! But this is not like the other H-Scenes. I changed my mind about not playing the Eroge version of Key games; this was an H-Scene done right. It wasn't lustful like the previous ones but full of love and uncertainty for the future. Okazaki spends his last night before the surgery holding Tomoyo in his arms, and they sleep together while listening to eachothers heartbeats.
Unfortunately, this is where it ends.
For the remainder of the game, you are given a screen of text which explains the outcome and what happened ー A rather odd way of presenting the epilogue. It is heavily implied that while the surgery did return Okazaki's memory, that he did not live very long afterwards (it is also possible she had his baby). He tells Tomoyo that their love is eternal, regardless of if he remembers or not, regardless of if he lives or not, and for her to not regret her choices. To keep fighting and living, and loving, and crying, and laughing, and trying, and helping other people, to keep her head high. The final scene shows a lone picture of Tomoyo looking at the rising or lowering sun (whichever way you'd like to interpret it) and ends like that. Holy shit, now I understand why some people rated this game a 9 or 10. Who knew it'd be just as heart wrenching as After Story?
This was painful, and emotional. Easily a 9/10
So there you have it. A very poorly written beginning-mid full of inconsistencies, and a masterpiece of an ending. These two parts barely had anything in common with each other and could practically be separated in two different categories, but since I am reviewing the VN as a whole I have to sadly put this at a 6/10. Still worth the read and filled my hunger for extra Clannad content. Thank you for reading.
About same comprehension as Clannad which was very nice compared to how difficult the previous VN was. Added 159 cards and put voice lines on some of them since this is the first(?) key VN to allow you to repeat lines! This was my best time on reading speed as of yet (overall because you have to keep in mind a bunch of my Clannad reading speed increases came from repeated reading of common route) like if I had read this lightly in English I probably would've been faster but not too far off from my Japanese reading speed.
If Clannad was about the strength of family, then Little Busters is about the bonds of friendship. If Clannad's soul was in dangos, Little Buster's is in baseball. This was truly a beautiful experience and if you are interested in reading it and able to set aside the time to read this, I highly encourage you to do so.
For context on how much I read: I got 100% CGs, all routes finished, and pretty much seen every major scene included in the VN.
I just realized while writing my in-depth review on the routes that there is a character limit on profiles, so I will be writing it elsewhere and possibly link it when finished (if ever).
All routes except for bad & alt ends (which are loaded from their decisive choice in my saves) are done without skipping common route unless otherwise stated.
Baseball practice was only enabled on Rin's routes, Saya 1, and Muscle Sensation with a match win in Rin 2 and Muscle Sensation. Other than that, I did not toggle any of the other optional bits off in any routes unless otherwise stated.
Unknown life form (謎の生命体) is listed in each respective route where I enabled & beat it as "(生命体)"
Routes listed in order started: 小毬(Komari) -> 鈴(Rin) 1 -> 小毬 Bad end -> 来ヶ谷(Kurugaya) -> 葉留佳(Haruka) + bad ends -> くど(Kud) + bad end -> 美魚(Mio) + bad ends -> 鈴 2 (生命体 1) -> Refrain -> Refrain 2; 鈴 「うん」 choice (loaded from epilogue save) -> 笹瀬川佐々美(Sasasegawa Sasami) all ends + Mask the Saito defeated -> 佳奈多(Kanata) all ends (生命体 2) -> 沙耶(Saya) 1 -> 沙耶 2 + bad end -> 馬鹿理樹 (Loaded from the first 沙耶 choice; shooting minigame disabled) -> 筋肉エンド (Muscle Sensation; previously read text skipped) + Mask the Saito defeated (生命体３) -> くど alt end -> 来ヶ谷 2 True end + bad end (true end loaded from when the title first changes to 来ヶ谷 ) -> 学園革命スクレボエンド(School Revolution!; loaded from start of replay with previously read text skipped)
Added 575 cards. Doubt I will ever mine anything on the level of Clannad and this on a single piece of media again.
Setting up with textractor was a huge pain but managed to get it to somewhat work with hook code: HS932#-8@417E30 (remove the 4 if that one doesn't do anything) and regex filter: [\u0000-\u2fff\ua000-\uffff]
喫茶ステラと死神の蝶[6/10]
Easily the best UI and settings I have seen in a VN up to now, and an animated intro? Overall very high quality. I had been craving エロゲー plain and simple! With this, we also take a departure from KEY's games into Yuzusoft territory.
As far as the content goes, it wasn't great, nor horrible. Mostly a slice of life with melodramatic climaxes. In terms of character ranking I'd go ナツメ>栞那>愛衣=希>涼音. The after stories are a mixed bag ー mostly used to fit in some more H-scenes which probably didn't make the cut for the main story ー but I genuinely found 希's to be so chaotic fun that I really enjoyed it. Taking all the route scores into account I get a 6.4/10
Added 198 cards. Nothing too special, just a few more phrases and proverbs than usual? 青は藍より出でて藍より青し
Fun things are fun. I tend to only score once I have fully finished the show/book or decided it is not worth continuing. Below are my overall intentions when rating things.
10 - Masterpiece; The absolute best of anime
9 - Very unique; Groundbreaking anime I love
8 - Touched me or enjoyed with no flaws
7 - Enjoyed; Has less flaws
6 - Enjoyed; Has more flaws
5 - Average/Little to enjoy
4 - Not worth watching
3 - I regret watching this
2 - This should not exist
1 - Dear god why have you forsaken us?
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