Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

On a similar note to the second-to-last sentence way back here:



I find it rather ironic that the man is so much uglier than the troll.

Who wins?

Notes: These were the most adversarial-looking images I found in appropriate resolutions. I chose to flip the former (forgetting that I'd left some text in) so they'd look a little more like they were facing off, in case the latter had asymmetrical tattoos. As with its predecessor, I hope the image itself doesn't take up much in the way of bandwidth.

For some time, I'd been planning on making a helluva tough fancomic (a one-shot along the lines of Darths & Droids) to hone my layout skillz, but it turned out that my image-editing skillz weren't up to the task (as you can see by the crudely pasted-in text in this one). The chief problems were appropriate panel spacing and word bubbles. I imagine both of these will be solved in comics I draw myself, the former because I'm planning on using graph paper, and the latter because I can draw them myself.

Another one on in this batch was Na*na*ki!! Vol. 1, which I chose to read early on so I could decide whether or not to buy the sequel before it goes out of print. Upon looking it up, it turns out that the illustrator started out as an assistant to the famous Ms. Minekura Kazuya, but judging by this (and the fact that she's also published another series), she's graduated fully to professional status. The heroine uses "friendship" as pretext for her glomping, but the badass upperclassman (who doesn't have a cover shot yet because she's only the heroine's third-best friend) has quite a following as well, with one groupie in particular having dropped the "k" word in an emotional moment. I am indeed looking forward to more.

Meanwhile, you may have noticed from things like Ran, Sakura no Kiwa, Shimai no Hōteishiki, and Project Homuncupunk that Japanese names often include numerals, and these are often used to denote the order of birth of siblings. However, today's comparison is a bit more specific.

You'll also notice that only one of these three actually has the numeral character in her name—In the other two cases, the seventh is the exception. Also, it's only natural that the ending character is different in the case of the Kinjō family due to the differing genders, but the -nami family all have names ending in the same character, and at least one of Ms. Mar[k]ioka's elder sisters' names also ends in the same "-ki."

Edit (2007.09.15): Ah yes, and Ms. Marika has a very affectionate elder sister, but she seems to see her as an annoyance.

Edit (2007.10.01): Upon closer inspection, the odd-numbered Makioka sisters all end in 「姫」, while the even-numbered all end in 「葉」. I can't make any judgments about the previous generation, as only one example appears so far. You might think that this wouldn't work, as the mother would have been born into a different family, but judging by the heavy X-chromosome-bias of the current demographics, I imagine they might have used this method. Also, I've updated the information on the Sasano family above, resulting in slightly less correlation—although they still have a big-ass house and at least one servant.

I've finally gotten around to reading Chapter 0 of the visual novel I mentioned way back. I'd never read one of these before, so it was an unusual experience. It took me several tries to realize that I needed to right-click to save, which was a big help.

My comments (no particular spoilers):

The circle that made the game is known as Atelier of Chiharu. The Japanese loving the word "atelier" aside, I only recall seeing the name "Chiharu" used for minor characters in yuri-themed works: HAYATE CROSS BLADE, PURE Marionation, and "Kanojo" (one of the main characters in this case, but only a short story, so relatively minor) (included here and probably here). I can only assume that's coincidence, as in the case of my _hizuru comparison.

The story itself is very heavy on the melodrama, with a good dose of graphic violence and some light moments (often switching moods very suddenly). I don't know the language well, but I can tell that it's a lot more poetic than anything I write. It was somewhat unfortunate that the engine used doesn't have a system for ruby text, so ate-ji and the like have to be added in brackets afterward.

The writing isn't the only fancy part. Despite this being a freeware game (and thus having a low enough budget that they had to use open photos for the backgrounds), there are numerous full-color illustrations and half a dozen BGMs composed for the game. That's presumably what helped me to overcome the attention-span problem I have reading prose. The men tend to be a bit ugly, but the ladies (and one yasa-otoko) look quite nice.

One minor thing that bothered me was that the main characters are members of traditional Japanese families, which means that the ladies all have to use polite forms when speaking to the men. On the other hand, I rather like the concept of the family dōjō where they don't teach actual martial arts, just whatever method can be used to kill most efficiently—much like Ms. Inferne's teachings in Project Artificer. And in any case, I have no complaints about the fact that the main heroine is ridiculously strong.

Another interesting thing I noted: The heroine was bothered by the fact that she has trouble with history class because they have to memorize so many dates; she wishes they would learn about the significance of events instead. I agree with this, and I think that in my schooling, it was more the latter style. This seems likely to be a common difference between Western and Eastern education, as we are more right-brained and they more quantitative (?). This reminds me of how I could never write anything with such metaphysical and artistic elements as this, since I can only properly process more down-to-earth themes. Maybe that says something about the difference between their mainstream society and their cult media.

Incidentally, if you want a taste of the illustrations, I've stored what I've collected for daily_yuri here.

It appears that some things about vertically challenged bounty hunters just don't change over the millennia.

( One . . . two . . . )

Fujieda Miyabi likes to give characters from his works guest appearances in his other works. I decided to compile the ones I knew, and found that the diagram was very simple.

( Balanced this time )

Upper Left: AliceQuartet

Upper Right: Kotonohano Mikoto Kotodamano Majyoto

Lower Left: Iono the fanatics

Lower Right: ameiro–kohchakan–kandan

The "↑" on the right was apparently popular enough that the ameiro characters are listed in the main cast of the drama CD.

TWINKLE SABER NOVA isn't included because I haven't heard any yuri plugs about it.

It's a common thing in Japanese series (from what I've seen) to have main characters whose names are based off of the four seasons. After all, Japanese names are really easy to build from scratch. Here are the ones I remember:

As you can see, they're even tentatively naming one of the series after the seasons, too. So, anyone got any more?

[Edit (2007.04.30): Added Hatsu-Koi Shimai]

[Edit (2007.05.14): Added Family Complex (incidentally, by the same illustrator as Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu, under a different PN)]

[Edit (2007.08.28): Added to Family Complex]

[Edit (2007.10.12): Added Minami-ke]

I've mentioned before that I had made a correlation between a certain element in the nature of characters (and a real person) with names that Romanize to seven letters where the last six are "hizuru." That correlation is, of course, yuri. Unfortunately, I'm now only batting .800.

Can you guess which one is the real person without looking at the links (or their URLs)?