Nekopara Thoughts: Catgirls, Visual Novels, Japan, and the Anime Industry

            Nekopara, this is a video game I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time. After finishing it months ago, the game gave me a lot to think about, like a lot. Visual Novels, video games in Japan, waifus, anime in its entirety, thoughts regarding all these swirled around in my mind following the completion of this game. So with a lot to dig into, I thought I’d finally share them here. I went ahead and separated this rant into several parts, since it’s a long one. But there’s a lot to uncover here, and I hope that if anyone reads this, they can take something away from it. It’s going to be a journey friends, one that every write up I’ve done this year was leading up to.

Bravely Default Review (Part 1)

I’ve been playing Bravely Default for the past month, and as I near what I believe is a significant part of the game, I think it is worth sharing my thoughts, for any interested, and if only to best preserve my feelings towards this game at this point. As it stands, I have now played 60 hours of Bravely Default. At this point, I have just started the 4^th chapter of what I believe is an 8-chapter game. That in and of itself is ridiculous, how can I not even be halfway through the game and already have played over 50 hours? I swear the next chapters of this game must be much shorter than the three I’ve been through, they just have to be. Are JRPGs really this long?

Commentary + Thoughts on Japan's Video Game Industry and its Discourse

So, I wrote an essay on the history of the history of Japan's video game industry, trying to understand why it succeeded and was so dominate during the 1980s and 90s. In doing so, I learned a lot about the early video game industry, and I wanted to talk more about it here, because there was a lot I wanted to say in that paper that I wasn't able to due to it not really relating to the topic. So here's a few points about my paper and how I feel about video games:

School Essay: An Analysis of the Success of Japan’s Video Game Industry

This is an essay I wrote in a class I took called "The History of Modern Japan." The class only had 1 essay due, but it was a big one, and as such the teacher let us choose any topic we wanted that concerned modern Japan. I talked with him about it, and threw around the idea of doing Japan's video game industry. He was for it, and so now after months of research, reading, and understanding the video game industry, I finished. I just got the paper back, getting an A, so I'm happy about that.

I don't normally post my school work here, but given that the topic I wrote was video games, I thought it was worth sharing. After all, doing this paper has completely changed how I view the video game industry in general, especially in Japan and North America. So if you're interested, have a read. It's a little long, so for that reason I'll put two lines to denote what I think are the least important and I would argue weakest part of the essay that aren't worth reading.

Anyways, enjoy, and huge thanks to anyone that actually reads this! I'd like to add some of my own commentary on the essay in the following posts and how it's changed my perception of video games:

Fire Emblem Fates Review - Characters, Revelation, and Conclusion

Welcome to the final of my 3 posts covering my thoughts on Fire Emblem Fates. In the last one I spoke of the story and themes of the narrative. However, that’s not all there is to a narrative. For many narratives, especially those of Fire Emblem, with its emphasis on support conversations, the most important part is the characters. So how are the characters of Fates?

Fire Emblem Fates Review - Story, Three Paths, and "Choice"

SPOILER WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE STORIES OF FIRE EMBLEM FATES AND FIRE EMBLEM AWAKENING FOLLOW

This is the second in a three part series on my review of Fire Emblem Fates.

Fire Emblem Fates Review - Introduction, Birthright, Conquest, and Gameplay

All right, it’s time. 150+ hours after playing Fire Emblem Fates through all 3 of its paths: Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation are for this post. I put a lot of time into this game, so I figure I should talk about it and get my thoughts out there. So, without further ado, let’s begin!