Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

[shivan128]

Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 

[Vinny]

Who's losing their minds? I haven't seen anyone getting upset or anything.

The people playing 2x MSRP on eBay.

 

[MagicCarpet]

I expect a lot of returns on those eBay orders, tough luck for those sellers

 

[shadowysea07]

Who's losing their minds?

Patrick Star- I'm already hearing voices.

 

[swordity]

I'm realy mad, online, on the internet

 

[nightc1]

I kind of get some of the hype for this Lunar Collection. Go price the PS1 games complete. Also, it made sense for those who wanted this but wanted to know if the new voice actors were good and the ports were good... that they would wait for launch and some feedback before throwing money at it. Myself, I'm sticking with my digital plan. I'll wait for 1/2 off and if I really want to play them then... I'll buy them.

Anime update:

• Honey Lemon Soda
• The Dreaming Boy is a Realist
• My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999
• K-On!
• Bocchi the Rock
• The Danger in my Heart
• Say "I Love You"
• Lazarus

• Spoiler: My thoughts on each series.

  • Honey Lemon Soda - I was in the process of watching this during the last update. Overall I enjoyed it. The introspection by the female lead was pretty good. I now see there is this whole sub-genre of anime where a loner/social-outcast gets paired with the popular kid. I think they covered some good ground here and I felt pretty satisfied by the way it ended.
  • The Dreaming Boy is a Realist - Started off kind of odd with the guy obsessed with the girl, but it course corrected quick and I loved all of his inner dialog and how he changed the way he was thinking and grew through to the end.
  • My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv999 (also called, Loving Yamada-Kun at LV999, not to be confused with "My Love Story" which is a different anime). Even though I'm not into MMORPG's, I found this pretty enjoyable. Pairing a second year college girl with a high school senior, while a bit odd... this is Japan and they were only 2 years apart. Dude graduated before anything happened. So it was pretty innocent. The way they used the MMORPG in the series was kind of fun, even though I don't care for those games. This is also one of the few in my list here that isn't based in a school setting.
  • K-On! - My oldest son pushed me to this. While I enjoyed the whole series, none of it really hit me until season 2 episode 20 (pretty much during the last few episodes and the movie). My son actually ate dinner with me as I was watching this for several days and then watched the last main episode and the episodes after as well as the movie when I did. It did take me a bit to get over the character designs as in the episodes they look way too young to be high school students. Only the end credits really made them look their age.
  • Bocchi the Rock - Another of my son's recommendations. While this didn't really hit the emotions for me, the story telling and richness of developing the characters was amazing. Having a lot of the show set outside the HS in a club was a nice change of pace. Even though I tried to listen to some K-On music, I mainly just liked the ending themes... meanwhile I've been listening to Bocchi The Rock songs through apple music (Kessoku Band) pretty much since the day I finished this. They did a lot with the short first season. The character development from the social outcast growing out of her shell was nice to see without there being any romance angle. It's kind of a shame there's no dub for such a fantastic show. If they ever do one, I'll rewatch just to take in the visuals again.
  • The Danger in my Heart - I was mixed on starting this as I didn't like the premise. Starting it, yeah, pretty disturbing view by the main character. Thankfully that softened quickly and it moved on from his initial screwed up thoughts to showing his growth and change. In the end, I thought this was a pretty great ride as season 2 came to a close. It did manage to hit some emotions and I like how the characters developed through the entire run. Also, another anime with outcast character and popular character getting together.
  • Say "I Love You" - I started this last night on hulu. Again, it falls into the same genre of social outcast and popular kid being paired up, but I feel like all of these series I have watched so far have done some unique things despite falling into the same sub-genre. Like, this one pairs up well with Honey Lemon Soda because the outcast character is female, but the path and the characters are quite different as are the settings and goals. I'll probably finish this tonight or tomorrow since it's another short series (one of the reasons I picked it).
  • Lazarus - My oldest son and I are watching this together, though so far we've only watched the first episode. It's really stylish and shows the Cowboy Bebop roots with the first chase sequence. It's definitely not in my current genre preference, but it's hard not to see the quality there. Probably will continue saving up episodes until my oldest son is ready to watch more.

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