Tag Archives: narrative

Waifu Wednesday: Melvia Siebel

Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland has some wonderful female characters in its cast — each of whom supports the titular heroine in various ways.

One of the most comforting presences early in Totori’s new life as an adventurer on the roads of the Arland region is Melvia Siebel, a character whom we’re led to believe has been a presence in the Helmold family’s life pretty much forever.

Everyone loves a good onee-chan, don’t they? So let’s take some time to celebrate one of the strongest, most badass onee-chans you’ll ever encounter.

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Nurse Love Syndrome: Beauty is Skin-Deep

As we’ve previously explored, some of the core themes that run through Kogado Studio’s visual novel Nurse Love Syndrome include the ideas that people are fallible, that first impressions aren’t always correct — and that becoming overly dependent on someone is usually a bad idea.

The narrative route for Yasuko Yamanouchi explores these concepts from a slightly different angle. Protagonist Kaori Sawai once again finds herself struggling in her early days as a nurse, but this time around the ways she finds herself having to cope — and the things she has to cope with — are a little different from that which we witness if we pursue the route focusing on her senpai Nagisa.

Like much of Nurse Love Syndrome, Yamanouchi’s route is emotionally charged and, at times, a challenging read. Sounds ripe for a bit of deeper reading, no?

Continue reading Nurse Love Syndrome: Beauty is Skin-Deep

Nurse Love Syndrome: Nearest and Dearest

Although Kogado Studio’s visual novels Nurse Love Addiction and Nurse Love Syndrome are available as a set (known as Nurse Love Obsession), they’re actually very different experiences.

While Nurse Love Addiction primarily unfolds in a nursing school and deals with the shared traumatic past of a small group of students, Nurse Love Syndrome, at least on a first pass, is a rather more down-to-earth affair that concerns the struggles of a rookie nurse during her first year on the job.

For anyone who has ever experienced work-related stress and the mental health challenges that presents one with, it’s a difficult and emotional but rewarding read. And there’s a lot more to discover beyond that first playthrough, too. Let’s take a first look at the package as a whole, and what one of the routes through the narrative has to offer us.

Continue reading Nurse Love Syndrome: Nearest and Dearest

Waifu Wednesday: Totooria Helmold

The Arland series, as we’ve already discussed, saw Atelier returning to a lot of conventions from its past.

One of the most notable of these was each new mainline installment being named after and focused on the life of a single main character who was inevitably attempting to make use of alchemy under somewhat challenging and time-sensitive circumstances.

The second Arland game, Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland, gave us a widely beloved protagonist who, in many ways, encapsulates what modern Atelier is all about. Bring on our charming Totori!

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Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland – Tradition, Modernity and Belief in Oneself

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As our exploration of Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland comes to a close, it’s time to contemplate the game’s narrative component.

As we talked about when we looked at the game’s overall structureAtelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland is somewhat more non-linear than previous installments in the series. There’s a core linear progression based around Rorona’s assignments, but the bulk of the narrative content comes from the wide variety of optional events you can enjoy with the ensemble cast.

Between all those events, you get a good sense of what sort of place Arland is — and who Rorona and her friends really are. So let’s take a closer look!

Continue reading Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland – Tradition, Modernity and Belief in Oneself

Waifu Wednesday: Yasuko Yamanouchi

At the time of writing, I haven’t yet finished a full readthrough of Kogado Studio’s Nurse Love Syndrome, but I did want to show some love for one of its main characters. (And probably some more in the near future.)

For the unfamiliar, Nurse Love Syndrome is a visual novel that explores new nurse Kaori Sawai’s early days on the job, and everything that entails — both good and bad. Yasuko Yamanouchi is a character who is introduced early on as one of the more experienced members of the nursing staff but… well, let’s just say she’s a bit of a character.

And she’s voiced by Yumi Hara, too, so if you ever wanted to hear Yumi from Senran Kagura playing someone who isn’t Yumi for once… well, now’s your chance!

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Yasuko Yamanouchi

Magicami DX: Candy-Coloured Darkness

Following on from last week’s look at big-budget free-to-play city pop magical girls eroge Magicami DX, I’ve been spending a bit more time with the game.

At the time of writing, I’m over halfway through the current main story content (on the game’s Normal difficulty), so it’s that side of things I’d like to talk about today — with particular regard to how the 18+ version of the game handles things.

With that in mind, there will likely be mild spoilers ahead, along with NSFW images and graphic descriptions and depictions of sexual violence. You have been warned!

Continue reading Magicami DX: Candy-Coloured Darkness

Waifu Wednesday: Tiffani Hildebrand

One of the things the Atelier series has always done well is infuse its secondary characters who are of minimal importance to the main narrative with just as much personality as its leads.

A good example of this is Tiffani Hildebrand from the Atelier Arland series, who first appears in Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and sticks around for its follow-up Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. In mechanical terms, she’s a shopkeeper. In personality terms, however, she’s so much more.

There’s also a disappointing lack of fanart of her online. Someone get to work, quick! In the meantime, though, let’s take our time to celebrate Atelier Tiffani: The Mom of Arland and her official art.

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My Time With Dee Dee, Vol. 4: First Look

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that friend of the site and big bossman of DigitallyDownloaded.net Matt Sainsbury has been beavering away at a series of visual novels of late.

Collectively known as My Time With Dee Dee, each “volume” of the series focuses on a particular aspect of literature and explores it in depth from a practical perspective, both through the volume’s own narrative and a bonus academic-style explanation of the genre or school of thought.

To date, we’ve taken on the erotic thriller in the first volume, the concept of the male gaze in the second, and existentialism in the third. Now, with the upcoming fourth volume, Sainsbury has set himself a challenging goal: to explore, challenge and confront the ideas of the Marquis de Sade. To that end, he sent me an early version of the new game to take a look at and see what I thought. So let’s do just that!

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Waifu Wednesday: Lionela Heinze

It’s a sad fact of life that we’ve seen a general rise in levels of anxiety and stress over the course of the last couple of decades. Or, at the very least, people are a lot more aware of it — and, crucially, willing to talk about it — now.

One way you can help develop your understanding of a condition such as anxiety is to engage with characters who display traits that you recognise; by seeing how that character acts from an outside perspective, you can perhaps get a bit of an understanding about how you feel about things — and why.

Lionela Heinze from Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland is a good example. While the specific cause of her anxiety may not be something we can directly relate to, the way her anxiety manifests itself is something I’m sure more than a few of us can recognise. So let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Lionela Heinze