Archive for the ‘Other Stuff’ Category
On vacation!
I’m sorry for the late update, but I’m on vacation right now and may not post until the 30th! I might be able to do a Grimm post on the 23rd though.
Seiyuu links?
I was just thinking of adding links to the Wiki seiyuu page when I list seiyuu for a game. Would people find that useful?
PCA/ACA Conference!
I’m very sorry, I couldn’t post yesterday because I was out of the country, at The National Popular Culture & American Culture Associations Annual Conference where I presented an intro paper to otome games! It was a lot of fun, there were tons of interesting papers, unfortunately I could only see a handful of them.
I was in the Romance section, which had some really interesting papers as well as many great presenters! Jessica at the romance blog Read React Review is putting up summaries of the panels.
I’m going to post my paper up here soon, for longtime otome fans it will seem pretty basic, but maybe it will help some people who haven’t had too much exposure to them, and that’s what this blog is for too!
Things I learned on the trip totally not related to pop culture:
1. When going out of town, double check your route on the other side. I didn’t realize that there was a train link and took a 45-minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel.
2. Also make sure you will have Internet access. This one killed me, the hotel charged $15 USD per day for internet, not even wireless!!!! AAAAAGH.
3. Don’t go exploring the first night in heels, change to flats even if you think you’ll only go a couple blocks! I don’t know what I was thinking (can I use jet lag as an excuse, even though it was only one hour’s difference?)
Not much happened in the last week in otome games – oh, the Hakuouki anime starts today! Other than that, pas beaucoup…
And my next post, should be up tomorrow or Monday, will be a synopsis of Mizu no Senritsu 2 Hi no Kioku, because I finally went and searched through my old IGN blog, and apparently I never did a full post on it! So that will come too.
And now that my paper is all done, I can focus on making the game! Expect the website to come next week or April 16th!
Lijaka / Lijakaca: This blog/website
Is it common to do a post explaining the site? I dunno, but I’m going to do it.
Lijaka / Lijakaca: Basically these are both my web aliases, I used to use Lijaka, but sometime either forgot the passwords (aha, oops) or someone else registered on the sites I wanted with that name, so I added a ‘CA’ to the end (’cause I’m from Canada, eh?)
In this site, I’m using Lijakaca as the blog / personal gaming title. This is where I have been blabbing about otome gaming news and reviews for a few years now.
and Lijaka.com is the title of the blog’s sister site where I…am working on an otome game! Yes, the first project of Lijaka Games is an original otome game in English, that should be out this summer. It took a long time to formulate, originally I was trying to translate a fan-made game from Japanese, but I had trouble getting responses (maybe they thought I would try to sell it or something, I don’t blame them for being careful). And I thought about trying to license a commercial game from Japan, but, uh…I’m not that rich. So I started thinking of making my own game, and got pretty excited about ideas and stuff, but in addition to not being rich, I’m not a programmer! My real job is actually of no help whatsoever in making otome games. But I heard about games being made in Flash, and I thought that I could start off with a simple one just ‘for practice’. So I bought the whole Adobe Creative Suite, and am currently learning Flash (I was pretty optimistic about how simple it is, haha). I also started looking for artists, because out of all the requirements for making a videogame, art is the one thing I know I will never be able to do myself. Well, art and voices ^_^. And somehow, my stumbling along has developed into a real game! Other surprises have come along to delay things (thank you faulty plumbing and car accident!), but I am trying to get back on track.
So right now the outline is done, the art is coming along (I will try and get a mini-site up soon), now I’m working on the programming and script! Wish me luck!
Tidbits (mostly about Oomi in HnK1)
Wooo what a productive weekend (in gaming terms, not so much in, say, cleaning terms, or getting organized terms)! Even though I was pretty mad on Friday because my website was down when I wanted to write about the SYK fandisk – it’s happened before, and if it happens again, I might change my hosting sevice.
Anywyas, I finally finished the original Hiiro no Kakera – I had never done Oomi’s story, so I did that and his bits in ~Ano Sora no Shita de~. Hmm, I tried to take it slow and read everything, but I got impatient sometimes because the story is so long, and near the end it’s like, okay, I know he does this, I know this happens, hurry up and do it and get to the ending battle! It was satisfying to finish though. I was surprised that his guardian backstory wasn’t anything special, I guess one good thing about having an older character is that you can have their issues coming from their current life instead of a past one, heh. I think his storyline was also one of the sadder ones (not necessarily for his story, but for what happens to other characters in it).
Anyways, I think I actually like the ‘Oomi’ storyline better in the new Hiiro no Kakera. In the original, for me, a lot of the suspense and drama was diluted because I’d done all the other storylines and knew most of the plot points already. In the new one, it doesn’t depend much on plot, it’s more of a character struggle, so it works even if you know the basic story.
And another milestone – I finally got the real Tomomori ending in Harutoki 3 Izayoiki!! I had the ‘fake’ one, and was disappointed, but went online to check, and found out what I had to do. It only took a few minutes, I should have done it a long time ago. Ah, Tomomori ~fans self~ Anyone thinking Edward Cullen is the ultimate in sexy bad boys should play Harutoki 3 – Tomomori blows him out of the water.
Now I’m playing Lucian Bee’s again trying to finish it – I had two characters done when my save file got corrupted, so I had to erase the whole thing and start over (yeah, I was NOT happy). But now that releases have slowed down for the winter, I can finally go back and finish stuff! My orderly Excel-spreadsheet* loving side is very happy! Maybe I should make another To Do list…hmmm…
* Some of you might know, I keep track of my otome games in an Excel spreadsheet, and have a percentage complete as well with lists of endings to check off. Yeah, I’m a list person…
Not an otome game, but fantastic nonetheless!
I’ve been plunged headlong into a binge — a reading binge that is, and I finally came out the other side tonight. I had seen a couple webcomics before, but this is definitely my hands down favourite – and it’s totally free!
Girl Genius has been serialized online for years, and I think I’d heard of it before, but never got around to reading it. It’s a steampunk adventure romance that is hilarious and fantastically written and drawn, with tons of awesome characters that feel like real people.
A new page comes out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they have a complete archive, so you can read right from the beginning in 2002. They also release paper copies, which I think I’ll try and get so I can enjoy them without scrolling (I think the size is the same as other American comics, so much bigger than manga).
I can’t really add anything, if you’re at all interested check it out! And now that I’m all caught up, maybe I’ll be able to tear myself from the computer and play some otome games 
Friday Fun – Wallpapers!
It’s finally Friday! And I should do a post on Love x Loop, which I just got, but I haven’t played it enough. SO! I’m posting some of the beautiful wallpapers that came on the furoku CD with B’s Log this month. Enjoy!
Dare ni demo Ura ga Aru
Bloody Call
Death Connection
Kurayami no Hate de Kimi o Matsu
Lucky Dog
S.Y.K.
Exciting news!
I expected to get the July B’s Log by now, but I keep forgetting that ordering unpopular manga with it makes it take weeks longer to get it, so no dice on new scans etc.
However, something exciting (at least for me), is that this website (have you ever checked out the actual lijaka.com site? Haha, probably not) is getting renovated and updated in preparation for a new project!
I’m working on the actual site now, but I have a couple features I’d like to add soon after – as soon as I learn what I need to about PHP and everything 
I haven’t paid attention to programming since working on old sites in HTML (and a little CSS), but hopefully it won’t be too long.
Anyways, just a little update! Other than that, I played Kazeiro Surf and am finishing Johan’s route – this game definitely has some well-written conflict! Made me cry a couple times, yes I’m a softie :P
Free otome and BL furoku!
I am trying to organize my place and get rid of all the stuff I never look at! It’s some of the extra things from otome game mags, so I thought I’d ask here if anyone wants anything. Everything is free! Please direct people here if you think they’d be interested. Oh, and if you want something or have a question, please email me at admin at lijaka dot com. Replace the at and dot with the signs.
Update: I’ll be crossing stuff off as it’s taken, some of it is claimed now!
Full-colour 32-pg booklet about 12 Nin no Yasashii Koroshiya (Aug 2008 B’s Log)
Full-colour 32-pg booklet about Marvelous Entertainment games – xxxHolic, St. Beast, Ookiku Furikabutte, and Rune Factory 2, plus one-pagers on Orange Honey, Cluster Edge, Dessert Love Sweet Plus, and Princess Princess (Sep 2008 Girl’s Style)
Double-sided poster (folded) Drastic Killer / Gin no Eclipse (BL) (September 2008 B’s Log)
Double-sided poster (folded) Kimi no Naka no Paradigm (BL) (Mar 2009 B’s Log)
Gakuen Heaven the Musical (BL) – photos featuring four (two on each side) actors in costume. I’m not sure who they are, if you like I can scan them (Sep 2008 B’s Log)
One-sided poster -Kiniro no Corda secondo passo – pic of Hihara (Jun 2009 B’s Log)
2008 Calendar / notebook – Clover no Kuni no Alice – pages are a little wavy, but there are no marks on them other than the back cover, which has some damage to the left edge (Mar 2008 B’s Log)
2009 Calendar/notebook – Kichiku Megane R (BL) (Feb 2009 B’s Log)
Special Interview/Photo book – seiyuu Morita Masakazu (Jun 2009 B’s Log)
Small shitajiki (15×19cm) – Kichiku Megane R (BL) (Jan 2009 B’s Log)
Small clearfile (19×25cm) with “Wanted” posters of the characters that you can put in – Lucky Dog (BL)
Waiting…what else is new?
I think I’ve been pretty patient, but I’m getting tired of waiting for my new games – Arco Baleno and Kazeiro Surf (which is what I really want to play) are ready, but Himehibi 2 Gakki is holding them up by being delayed (according to Amazon.jp, it was released but is currently sold out). Now I’m just glad that I bit the bullet and chose split shipment for my next order so they all come whenever they’re ready.
On the bright side, I’m catching up on all those games I didn’t have time to try before like Monochrome Factor. Who knows, maybe I can actually finish off some old games – only one route left for Hiiro no Kakera, and a couple alternate routes for Little Anchor.
I think it’s time for an overly ambitious to-do list of games to finish before I get a new shipment!
- Real Rode – I got tired of going through the whole game, but it’s calling me back and I want to finish Rukia and Somari
- Kanuchi Black – Still have only finished a couple routes, and I DO want to know the full story – and get all 200 possible weapons made
- Harutoki Maihitoyo – I never actually finished any of this…first I might need to work on Hachiyousho though
- Meine Liebe 2 – Meine Liebe 1 is too hard, but this one is facile
- Neo Angelique – still need to finish Nick!
- Petit Fours – this is quick, so I have no excuse for not finishing it *update* finally finished Seiji’s route! It was half done, so there were only about two new scenes before I finished
- starry sky ~spring~ – for some reason, I find it really hard to finish PC games, maybe I get distracted by web-surfing too much…
Alright, there’s no way I’ll finish all of that, so I’ll stop. Anyone have any old games they’re working on?