Japanese Otome Games

Okay so........... I actually have no idea what all I want to do with this thread. "Japanese otome games" (referred to from now on simply as "otoge") might be a bit too broad of a topic, so if things get too hectic, we might want to split certain topics off. But for starters, here's what I want to cover...

• How to get into playing Japanese otoge if you've never really done it before
• Where to find and buy games
• Where/how to find otoge news
• Upcoming otoge (December/January)
• Some hidden gems that people tend to overlook

If you have any input, feel free to chime in, otherwise I guess I'll just start rambling and explaining. Umm if there's a specific otome game (that was released in the last year or two or that is upcoming) that you've been curious about and would like to have more information on, speak up and I'll see if I can help you out. I'm pretty familiar with otome CDs, too, so uhhh feel free to ask about those, as well.

Okay so first two bullet points, finding and playing Japanese otoge. There are quite a few great otoge that are available for PC. The important thing to remember is that you have to change your system locale to Japanese before installing games, otherwise everything kind of goes haywire. There are a handful of flash-based otoge that are available for both Mac and PC, but those are pretty rare. I can think of, like, two off the top of my head.

Here's a tutorial on how to use ITH, which is a program that extracts the text from a PC game as you're playing it. ITH is updated a lot more regularly than AGTH and is much easier to use, so I highly recommend it. I use ITH alongside Translation Aggregator. Do note, however, that these are machine translations you're getting, so they are rather hit-or-miss in terms of accuracy and how comprehensible they are. Honestly, it's best to try to learn Japanese by memorizing the kanji and learning grammar rules. These machine translators should be used more as a tool/guide than as your sole way of playing and understanding these games. This website is a database for various hook codes that are useful to use with ITH to make text extraction a bit easier, but not all games are on there. Some games just flat-out refuse to let their text be extracted, which is a pain, but just more reason for you to try and learn Japanese.

Nowadays, the vast majority of commercial otoge are released for PSP. I'm not sure why exactly this is because PSP games are so easy to pirate, but I suppose it's nice to have your games be portable, especially when VNs tend to be rather lengthy. PSPs are region-free, so you can import your otoge and play them on your PSP, no problem.

The tricky thing about PSP games is that because the text is so damn small, it makes it a bit hard to read, so before buying a game, I'd look carefully at sample screenshots to see if the font is legible for you. The best way to go through Japanese games when you don't get to use a text extractor is by learning how to identify radicals. If you can break a kanji down into distinct parts, you can then use a radical dictionary to look up the kanji. It's a slow process, especially at first, but the more you do it, the better you'll get and the more Japanese you'll eventually be able to understand. I also really love the Rikaikun/Rikaichan browser plug-in. Indispensable.

Here's a couple of places you can buy otoge from that have international shipping:

• Amiami; also has and ships R-18 PC games, which is rare. They tend to have good sale prices and a good selection, but this site is primarily pre-order based. It's rare that you can go back and buy a previously-released game through this website.
• Amazon.co.jp; has the best selection, but shipping costs an arm and a leg, so you should buy in bulk when possible.
• Play-asia; I'm not crazy about this website because their prices aren't the best and they can be a bit messy about pre-orders, but I have friends outside the US who swear by this site, so I guess it kind of just depends.
• CDJapan; primarily a CD website, they also sell PSP games and the occasional PC game, but their selection isn't great. I do like their points system, though.
• Yesasia; I really don't like this site. I've had bad experiences with their shipping and their prices are ridiculous. You should only buy from here as a last resort, I think.

When pre-ordering otoge, there tends to be various bonuses that vary depending on where you buy it from. Stellaworth, Skit, and Animate are just three of the many different stores that tend to participate in these tokuten (bonus) campaigns. Sadly, none of them ship overseas. (if you see "Neowing" listed on a tokuten bonus list, it means CDJapan has a bonus—Neowing is what they call CDJapan in Japan) That's where proxies come in! Here are two proxies that I've personally used that are pretty cool and have fairly reasonable commission rates, etc:

• FromJapan; love this site. They've got this automated bidding service you can use to bid on Yahoo Auctions and whatnot, too, so you can find used games and other merchandise pretty easily.
• Treasure Japan; they've got higher (ish) commission rates, but their customer service is pretty good. I've bought a couple of things using their service over the years.

Proxies basically buy items from Japanese shops for you, then ship them to you. So you do have to pay 2x shipping and a commission fee, but it's well worth it if you want rarer stuff.

My Neo Romance also has a great thread on buying otome stuff.

Next, how to learn more about otoge news and stuff. I'm just going to put up a list of links. Like I said, this fandom's not super consolidated, so bear with me.

• B's Log is kind of like the fandom bible. It's a Japanese monthly magazine that has all the latest news on anime, otome games, drama CDs, and all that other fun stuff, but it's specifically made for and by women. BY OTOMES FOR OTOMES. You can buy these magazines from a lot of different places. CDJapan sells them, Kinokuniya sells them... It's an important magazine. Normally scans from them are stuck up on Weibo and then make their way to Tumblr/Twitter, but then we all wait for Cadavaberry's high-res scans. This is the magazine with all the news on upcoming otoge plus interviews and special information about them.
• Girl's Style is another magazine quite similar to the above, but I don't think we all obsess over it nearly as much.
• Lijakaca posts about otoge-related news on her blog. Of course she can't cover everything, but she gets through quite a bit.
• Hinano also posts about otoge-related news. She used to do B's Log coverage, but I think her subscription ended or something, so now she's just trying to post about general otoge news.
• Yumii's Dream Factory is another otoge news blog, but she hasn't updated since October, so...
• O Sweet Voices posts otome/drama CD-related news, translations, and reviews. She does post about CDs that aren't otome, but her blog is still a great resource.
• Wakannaiyo is also a good otome/drama CD news resource.

Tumblr is a really huge hub for otoge fans nowadays, so if there's a specific game you're interested in, chances are there's a tag for it and people post news and scans and all that fun stuff there, too.

Now for actual companies...

• Otomate is the big cheese. They've made probably the most otome games and continually churn out like a game every other month or something. They are a behemoth and most of the other companies collaborate with Otomate at one point or another. Otomate has a list here of all of their games organized by console. THERE'S A WHOLE LOT OF THEM. I don't even want to bother counting. Clicking on one of the games will take you to the specific game's website where you can learn more about it.
• Takuyo is a pretty long-running otoge company with a wide range of games from R-18 to all-ages. Here is their games list. They are probably most famous for Shinigami to Shoujo and Kaeru Batake De Tsukamaete.
• Quinrose is another big company. They're famous for their Alice series, but they've done a whole lot of other games and are branching out a lot more nowadays, too. Here is their list of games, but it's organized by series/franchise. Most Quinrose games are for PSP.
• Rejet is a company that's been up-and-coming over the last year or so. (and my personal favorite life ruiners) They don't have a dedicated games list, but they have a works list that you can then filter by type/console. They're responsible for Diabolik Lovers, Black Wolves Saga, and the Tokyo Yamanote Boys series. Life ruiners.
• Mirai is primarily an R-18 company, I think. Their list of games is in the upper left hand corner of their website. They did that Phantom of the Opera game, so you can probably imagine what most of their games are like......

Well, those are the big ones. Here are some smaller companies with fewer games to their name:

• Little Cheese; R-18, they're famous for their Kuro to Kin no Akanai Kagi game.
• Ignote; the parent company of Operetta and Operetta Due (R-18). They made NOISE and Koezaru wa Akai Hana (which I'm LPing).
• Sanctuary; here's their very short games list. They're most well-known for making MIYAKO.

Okay so all of those companies have blogs and each of the games has their own website, too, so that's how you find out general information like release dates, story info, and the like. I put a whole lot of different update blogs onto my Google Reader so I can keep up with them and then keep an eye on on official Twitters and B's Log updates, too.

Whoa, so much info. You totally went 'ganbare' on this, huh. You're so coo, onee-sama!

Ahem. A good idea might be to put up a list of noob-friendly games, the ones that do not require in-depth knowledge of Japaneses culture (basically the opposite of starry skies, which I made the mistake of recommending to a friend of mine, at the time new to the scene. Her reaction was basically "...Is this a fan disk of something?").

I'd like to help but, um, I dunno if I have anything for all ages. Hehe. If anyone wants recommendation for porn, I'm your gal, but otherwise I'm kinda stumped, since I jumped right in with a sugar beans game.

Ooh yeah, I was planning on giving a "difficulty rating" for my VN recs... But Starry Sky and other high school-based games generally are the easiest to understand because you don't need a lot of vocab, so if she found Starry Sky difficult, I'm not sure what else I could recommend. Other fantasy or history-based games have a lot more specialized vocabulary you have to know to understand, after all.

I've only played a handful of R-18 otome games (like.........four) because uhhhh well I'm asexual and most of those games are also very heavy on the rape and PWP, so if you'd like to recommend some good ones, go for it? I'm really not what you'd call well-versed in the porn games, haha. _(:3」∠)_ You also reminded me that I totally forgot to put Sugar Beans up there, uh. Here is Sugar Beans' website and here's their works list. Do note that the site itself is R-18, though there isn't anything explicit on either of the pages I linked.

While I'm working on my lists still, here's Hinano's otome game recs list. She puts them into different categories like "strong heroine" and "time travel" and she's reviewed all the games she recs, so that's a pretty good resource to start with. She even has a category for easier language difficulty.

The thing is, about 85% of the appeal of the game is the seiyuu. So if you're new to the scene, and most of the voices aren't familiar to you, you just feel like it's kinda 'meh'. Plus she played the fall one, which doesn't have the most engaging storylines. I should have told her to play winter. But it's basically one big fest of YOUTH, kinda like how Tokimeki is this idealized game about high school, so if you're not used enough to the setting, it can feel kinda random.

One should note Hinano is a very strict reviewer, alot of the games she RAAAGES about are very popular. So her reviews should be taken with a grain of salt~

autumn was actually my favorite one of the four /shot

Seiyuu and the story being engaging has little to do with the language difficulty, though. If you're purely looking at language difficulty, I'd say the Starry Sky games are the easiest to understand. Particularly Spring and Summer.

Every review should be taken with a grain of salt since it's a matter of opinion and interpretation, haha.

Still have no idea what I want to do with this thread uh I guess I can just post about random already-released or upcoming Japanese otome games that I think are interesting. I'll do two per post.



Shiratsuyu no Kai is an upcoming game from Otomate (slated for a 2013 release). What makes it unique? It's a true horror otoge, which is very rarely done.

School Wars (PSP) is the latest offering from QuinRose (famous for their Alice series) and came out at the end of November. I'm currently playing through it and it's actually fairly easy to understand... They've got some battle tactics and history vocab thrown in there (they mentioned Hutier tactics and I had to look that up, haha), but a lot of the story is fairly typical high school stuff, so this game would probably be good for those who are a bit weaker in Japanese.

I open this thread, look at these posts, and weep for my inability to learn Japanese autonomously.

Shiratsuyu no Kai looks awesome.

I hope someone LPs School Wars, any otome game that apparently involves a bunch of guns and wholesale school warfare is bound to be great. Plus, QuinRose, assertive protagonist, hell yeah.

I thought about it, but decided that proooooooooobably wouldn't be the best idea with my attention span. But yeah I hope someone else does!

Once I am done with the Kuni No Alice games, I am romancing the girl in the tank. FUCK YES I WANT THESE GAMES.

From what little I've heard about the game, that girl in the tank is apparently a ninja or something. I'm not sure if she's romanceable, though.

Oh yeah, I heard about Shiratsuyu no Kai! It looks really good, and love a bit of horror so I might play it? But I'll most likely just read reviews of it since Otomate has been pissing me off as of late so I don't want to get my hopes up, eh...

I remember I saw a picture of the characters and someone pointed out their horribly drawn tiny feet but I don't think it really matters since the sprites only show from the waist up. But that still made me laugh more than anything, haha.

This post is reminding me of an otome game called Ozmafia that I was really looking forward to playing, and was even thinking of LPing, getting delayed from Christmas 2012 to Spring of 2013 yesterday.
Someone translated a lot of the stuff that's on the official site like character info and the story into English if anyone wants to take a look, here you go. It looks really interesting but all these delays have been worrying me.

Anyway, don't mind me. I'll just be here in my corner depressed over this Ozmafia news. ;_;

Considering this is QuinRose, she'll have a crush on the totally straight protagonist. All my tears.

Woah, I haven't heard of Ozmafia. It looks great, I'll be keeping an eye on it. Thanks for the heads up!
Pffahaha, going down the character page, it just gets better and better (✿ ♥‿♥)

I know right? ^^ I might LP it in the Summer since it looks like it'll be really fun but these delays have been making it harder to look forward to it...

I first heard about it because the artist is the same artist for Diabolik Lovers, but I think this will be a more lighthearted, standard otome game. Well more like I hope it is.

I love how a visual novel where the characters of the Wizard of Oz are mafia members which you have to romance can be considered your standard otome game.

Oh, come on! QuinRose beat them to that with the Mad Hatter becoming a mafioso!

I love how someone could make an otome game of Wuthering Heights at this point and no one would blink an eye.

Make an otome game out of ALL OF THE THINGS!

I thought the art looked familiar.... and I dunno, I'm not sure what to make of a game with an Oscar Wilde inspired brothel. It's definitely on my radar XD

Aaaah I really wanna play School Wars, but I heared it's no Starry Sky (i.e. it's hard to understand if you only speak enough japanese to understand an episode of an harm anime. I used to call my level of jap 'weeabo level' but after Atashi no Riri I don't think I will).
It looks like so much fun, and the soundtrack should be really good too. Japanese, why are so hard?

Another two game recs... First upcoming. This is another PSP game slated for a Spring 2013 release.

Friendships that won’t last; Love that you can see the end of. But even so, people cannot be alone, and the ship sails on, towards the end of the story.

What is "reset"? If I asked you to come with me, would you? Even if we must part one day, I still love you.



This is another one of Otomate's upcoming games, NORN9.

——Within an old-fashioned town, much like the Meiji and Taisho Era, there exists a giant globe that floats in midair. This is the ‘ship’, called ‘Norn’, that these youngsters are aboard on. The inside is set like a small town with parks etc.

The story takes place a little in the future. Guided by one particular song, young elementary kid Suzuhara Sorata is warped through a time skip to an unfamiliar place much like the Meiji and Taisho eras from his textbooks. In this world, he meets 3 young ladies and 9 young men, and joins them on a journey aboard the mysterious ‘Norn’ ship in the sky.

Staff: Music—Uematsu Nobuo (Final Fantasy series), Illustration—Teita (JYUUZAENGI), Song—Yanagi Nagi (Jormungand anime ED theme), Background—Akiba Minoru (Pokemon BG art).

——There are 3 heroines to choose from, each with 3 playable routes, giving a total of 9.

You can find out more about the cast of characters here. Even the heroines are voiced in this game. This game is significant just because of the multiple heroines. Three has never been done before and everyone's wondering how the game will be split up and whether each guy will get a decent route when there's 9 of them. The music is a strong point—if you go to the website, you can hear three music samples and they're all gorgeous.

Next up is another Otomate game already released and actually a bit on the old side. This game tends to get overlooked, though, which is a shame because it has a very strong story and most of my friends tend to say that this game or Shinigami to Shoujo is their favorite otome game.

I'm talking about Clock Zero.



It was released for PS2 in 2010 and then ported to the PSP in 2011.

Kurou Nadeshiko is the 12 years old daughter of Kurou Group’s head. She wants to be a doctor when she grows up, currently a 6th grade student in Shuurin Gakuen. Lately she keeps seeing strange dreams about a world in ruins. One day a student named Kaidou Takato transferred into her class and they quickly become friends. Her homeroom teacher, Kaga Akira, asked her to join an extra class after school with some other students.

Each student who joins the extra class is considered to have a personality problem, and the purpose of the class is to fix them. Since they’re a bunch of problem kids, they have problems communicating with each other until Takato comes and joined the group. They make him the leader and named the group CZ (Clock Zero) after Takato’s research project. After a month attending the class and doing assignments together, the members become close friends and share a strong bond between them. On the last day of the class, they buried a time capsule together for 10 years later.

When she first starts attending the class, Kaga gave Nadeshiko a talking bunny plushie named Rain. The real plot of Clock Zero starts on the day after the CZ members buried their time capsule. Rain suddenly asked Nadeshiko to go near the clock tower at school, where he stopped the time. A strange man named Bishop then appeared and tried to take her away for King, their boss. This kidnapping attempt was interrupted by some people she recognized seeing in her dreams, and she was taken to the ruined world in her dreams. The world in 2020, ten years into the future.

(from Love-Colored Sky)

Yesssssssssssss multiple protagonists

Clock Zero looks ridiculously intriguing, but alas, all I will ever know of it is through summaries unless there is an LP.

That sad moment where it takes a thread for you to realize just how much of an otoge otaku you really are.

Goodbye, spare cash. It was nice knowing you.

...I just noticed that one of the obtainables in NORN9 is voiced by Saiga Mitsuki.





SOLD

EDIT:

Wait what did I just read one of the protags might go yandere for Sugita's character

This game is going to be amazing.

This is what I've been saying for 2013... and it hasn't even started yet :3~ I have about 7 planned otoge that have been announced for next year.. and who knows how many will pop up once 2013 hits.. = A=

I have all of the QuinRose games planned on being bought (mostly the Kuni No Alice series), the seven TokiMemo games, numerous Otomate games (namely the Hakuoki games), the PS2 version of Yo-Jin-Bo, a bunch of other otome game series whose name escapes me because the title is so long but it has a TV Tropes page so that's something, all of the Rejet games, the games by the group that made Musketeer: Sang du Chevalier and Confidential Money, nothing will stop me from buying Ozmafia, I also want to buy Cinders and a couple of other English language otome games, not to mention the routes in quite a few Voltage games, I'm also planning on getting DRAMAtical Murder... Oh, and I'm also going to browse the otome game scene in Japan whenever I go because I know there's a lot of stuff the West hasn't even heard of. Oh! And that Power Rangers otome game, and a bunch of other plot driven VNs with some romantic tones.

...

...

I have a problem. I have a serious problem.

ohhh the backlog of games I still need to get is so long...

I just... need to ... I dunno maybe marry into money or something 8D

but basically once I found otoge... it became everything and took and continues to take all my money.

It also doesn't help that I love to order limited editions of games if I can help it.. and that usually runs $100+ a game after conversions...

I just need to find a really well paying job that doesn't eat up all of my time. That's all I want in my life. So I can play otoge. I need help. Sobs quietly.

Thanking the Gods I have a social life outside of the Internet, else I'd feel like I'd have no hope.

But I feel your pain. "LIMITED EDITION? DO WANT."

ohh lucky you, you have a social life... I don't have one of those... haha. orz

yeah its like... annoying to not have that limited edition box all lined up in the collection of limited editions if you like to keep psp games together or something ... my hakuouki english edition is regular, but I plan on purchasing the limited edition soonish just because it literally pisses me off that I have the boxed toki no kizuna and then ... yeah. (there are just some titles where I have to literally force myself to give up a search for boxed/limited edition... haha I'm kind of a collector for that stuff..)

Not that that's saying much since I don't go out much. (Shh, it's okay, let me hold you.)

I feel your pain.