Overriding Bustafellows’s Tragic PC Controls

Bustafellows out on PC–yay! Obscure controls where people were keyboard mashing to pull up the menu–boo! (Bonus: I have no controller, which plays this native Switch game much more intuitively for players familiar with visual novels. And I have a laptop, meaning I have none of the discrete keys they assigned the primary functions to. Moral: Never trust Japanese PC ports.)

Even this keyboard has no Home/End/PgUp/PgDn. Tragic!

Since this is a programming issue, I doubt a patch for native key remapping will come out any time soon, and I was bitter enough that I took matters into my own hands and found two solutions.

1. Got a phone? Use Steam Link to configure a touchscreen controller layout. Now you can remote control the game or even play it on your phone proper.
2. Download a free third-party tool to rebind mouse and key commands to more traditional PC controls suited for visual novels.

Consider this your table of contents. But you can also go under the jump! (First authored on Reddit, mirroring here for archiving. Maybe not for long because WordPress is SLOW. SLOW. SLOOOOW.)

Binging Black Butler

I heard of Toboso Yana’s Black Butler but stayed away because of the nature of the hype–namely:

Can anyone clarify for me whether Black Butler is simply episodic Brits fighting in black too charmingly for Black Butler to stop? Any must-read sections, given I’ve read one chapter and was not intrigued?

But then in early January, to celebrate Black Butler’s 15th anniversary, Square Enix finally digitized all 30 manga volumes and BookLive had them available to read for 96 hours. In the interest of time, I strictly skimmed over pictures and paid zero attention to dialogue until it seemed serious enough to warrant it.

My verdict after 30 volumes is my impression was exactly right, along with other helpful responses (“No, there’s a girl in red too!” and “full of random mini-arcs, shit happens”). Not to say I don’t give it any other credit. The serious parts of the arcs are thankfully very Gothic and well-conceived, featuring surprisingly hardboiled sci-fi in this fantasy setting and committing to the protagonists’ cold opportunistic personalities. However, Black Butler is the worst kind of slowburn, in that a busy person could just skip to specific recent volumes and be just as enriched as everyone else. The art is pretty, but not worth waiting eleven years for substantive story-advancing revelations.

Volume-by-volume impressions after the jump (but unfortunately details have faded sharply since I didn’t get the chance to review the volumes before they expired).

Binging BEASTARS

I heard of Itagaki Paru’s BEASTARS but stayed away because of the strong overtone of furries. But then early January, to celebrate the publication of its final and 22nd volume, BookLive made all the manga before that point free to read for 48 hours.

I’m glad I took the plunge. Think Zootopia but even wider-sprawling and imaginative, because BEASTARS in setting, plot, and characters is a Weltanschauung, depicted so thoroughly in ways one would not dare expect. It’s patiently plotted, always progressing, and hardly misses a detail for profound lore, so non-furry fans of 100% full-throttle worldbuilding ought to also take the plunge. Volume 3 was when I never looked back.

Volume-by-volume thoughts follow (but time has blunted memories of details since I didn’t get a chance to review the volumes before they expired–thank goodness for summaries in the page previews). Spoilers are discussed but contained to each volume.

Twenty 2020 Manga

The reason I haven’t posted more of anything than I thought. BookLive turned me into a manga junkie with more free previews, freebies, and sales than I had ever paid attention to in prior years. I read and enjoy so many different titles (albeit few of them finished) that to make a post of finite length, I needed to limit the selection. Cheap digital purchases are dangerous.

This year was about casting a wide net with my budget instead of slowly hoovering up a whole series, but it makes for a good diverse list like this one. When available, I include licensing information and English covers to encourage awareness of official localizations.

Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~: The Localization Hour

I crafted everything last year and then took forever to post it. Like last time for Future Blessings, I’m putting QAQC and Mistranslation findings together. I tallied twice as many errors as Future Blessings’s. Gehhh.

(For new readers: QAQC and Mistranslations are separate issues. QAQC are typos you only need English to find. Mistranslations mean knowing Japanese to figure out, “Wait, that meaning is completely wrong.” And then there’s localization, which for our purposes is making the text sound natural in the target language and rewriting into native context if necessary.)

QUEEN BEE – Baishun (売春)

A song that enchanted me for perhaps a year, with lyrics worth translating.

Lyrics aligned left, right or center (both) depending on singer. Please credit back here if you repost or use for other purposes.

Requiem of the Rose King

I had never heard of this manga until the announcement of its anime adaptation, wherein BookLive (my go-to online store for eManga) quietly opened Volumes 1-13 to read for free over the next 48 hours. I almost skipped it until I saw it’s based on Shakespeare’s Richard III, is even more queered up (Exhibit A: Richard is born intersex???). And then spat my drink upon learning it’s by the artist of Otomen.

Code:Realize Staff Blog

Otomate runs official blogs for most of their releases, primarily for promotional purposes but occasionally they put in some fun facts. In truth I created this post for one specific discovery from Code:Realize, but incomplete coverage would make me feel guilty so let’s read through and paraphrase ’em all. Spoiler-free!

Collar x Malice –Unlimited–

When Anime Expo 2018 announced no localized version for Vita, I bit the bullet for the Japanese limited edition, played it, and let this draft collect dust until the release of the English Switch version this month. The call worked out because the Vita’s end was officially drawn in 2019 (#ganbattaVitakun) and the Japanese limited edition included a booklet with post-bad-end stories that I doubted would ever get an official translation.

Review is high-level and avoids specific spoilers, though there might be meta-spoilers. Definitely spoilers for those who didn’t play the first game, but tl;dr Unlimited is a worthy fandisk for all Collar x Malice fans, going beyond romance and into the darkness.

Anime Expo Lite 2020: Day 2…and Aniplex Online Fest

Day 1 just happened to be dense and wear me out a bit. Day 2 is not as packed, but then Aniplex Online Fest filled out the rest. I don’t have the habit of efficient screencapping, so mostly text (2400+ words) in here.

Again, AX’s videos were not viewable for very long (< 24 hours for even the last of Day 2). Keeping the links I found in-text anyway. Aniplex, on the other hand, will have their program be viewable for one whole week. I linked to the individual panels I cared about; filled in parts I missed after a sleep zzzzzzzzz