The Devil on G-String / G Senjou no Maou (2008)

The story opens up with two characters. 'Maou', or the 'Devil', is shown walking through the city's bustling streets during a cold late October night, ready to soon begin with some kind of criminal event he's been planning through for years along with his group of loyal 'followers'. At the same time a high school girl with a long gray hair passes by with the intense will and intent to catch the person who killed her mother - to catch the person known as the 'Devil'.

G Senjou no Maou (The Devil on G-String) is an adult (R18 due to H-scenes) thriller and mystery visual novel produced by AKABEi SOFT2 and was first released in 2008, and now re-released in 2015 by Sekai Project. It's available for purchase on Steam for a decent price (voiceless edition is even cheaper). The story consists of four chapters and the epilogue, and multiple end-games, in other words it has something called branching storylines, but most of the game is spent just reading through the text. From the information I can gather the game had quite positive reception in Japan when it was first released, even though I see barely anyone actually ever talk about it.

Our main character (the one we play as) of this particular visual novel is Kyousuke Azai, a high school student and the adopted son of a ruthless yakuza (mafia) boss, but he for some reason has memory problems and heavy headaches. During the day our protagonist usually goes to school like normal, a school filled with quite quirky characters such as the almost too cute-looking boy Eiichi Aizawa and bunch of girls our main character gets close to, such as a diary-keeper, daughter of the schoool's owner, and a world-class ice-skater and real daughter of the protag's adoptive father. Kyosuke though was actually forcefully adopted in order for him to work under the mob as a president of of one of his adoptive father's (Gonzo Azai's) corporations to collect money that he can pay for the immense debt left behind by Kyousuke's real father, and ultimately after doing that he wants to reunite with his mother. Kyousuke is also quite a fan of classical music which mirrors the honestly beautifully atmospheric OST that this VN has.

The real story's gears kick off as a messy long-haired girl by the name of Haru Usami transfers into Kyousuke's school. Haru is the main heroine and a detective-type character with notable powers of observation and knowledge of criminal psychology and negotiations. Too bad she's absolutely awful at dealing with social situations. Haru is the character with a history against the game's primary antagonist and villain 'Maou' but she's not willing to talk about it, which cuses the game to not progress as smoothly as it perhaps could have had the characters just been more front about what's on their mind.
By the way, Haru (The Devil on G-String, 2008) reminds me of Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, 2010).

Now, while there is this sense of mystery regarding the motivations and pasts of our main cast, the main conflict the player bumps into is more psychological regarding Maou's and the protagonists actions. As Maou gets closer to Haru and our protag, the mob boss (MC's adoptive father) orders Kyousuke to catch Maou. This leads to different types of "showdowns" with with our antagonist, but there's something wrong as we always see Maou during times when Kyousuke gets memory lapses and headaches - there's even a scene in which his psychiatrist ponders about this memory problem of his, and we get some scenes about possible alter egos.

I remember when this series was called "Death Note on steroids" by certain group of people a long time ago, but it's really not, the story isn't that special by today's standards and would probably even come off as a poorly plotted if it was a light novel. The visual novel format definitely helps it. It's a fairly compact story with a small cast of characters, but at least it doesn't feel like a drag to go through. And in comparison, G-String does at least have some mysteries to ponder about, such as who this assumedly cool villain could possibly be, and what do our main characters and the yakuza have to do with him, and whatever it is that moves our characters forward?

I'm not sure if I can get behind all the writing choices in this story. I actually first played this game in around 2011 if memory serves right, but even then some of the red herrings and character writing just didn't click with me. Kind of like how I feel when reading a generic crime fiction. But hey, at least it has great music to create an entertaining atmosphere. I'd say it's a game worth playing if one wants to play a visual novel as it's a surprisingly easy read and nothing too big, but still decent enough. That's not something I can say about certain other games in this medium. As a last note, the title of the game is actually neatly symbolistic regarding what happens with our main heroine in this story.

Going Back to Rokkenjima of October 5, 1986 - Journey to the Golden Land

More than ten years ago my journey with the When They Cry franchise began. I was in last years of high school when I decided to immerse myself into visual novel series. I can't remember how I got to know of this weird medium and how it all began for me exactly, but I've been a huge fan of mystery fiction all my life and my favourite series consists of detective fiction series - in fact I'm aiming to become a mystery author myself one day and I love to get inspiration from series like this. I'd like to create a long-running series every half a year for about ten volumes, but instead in a way that's much different from anything else, for example instead of the story looping I could create multiple individual cases in different settings.

 I recall watching the Higurashi and Umineko anime series and then just wanting to get my hands on the original source material. This was before the original Umineko series was even over. 07th Expansion uploaded new Episodes ever half a year. I also remember loving the Motion Graphics and getting hyped over the next one, but I recall a certain natural disaster - a tsunami - took the lives of some of the creators.

First of all, When They Cry franchise consists of horror/mystery-fantasy visual novel series such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Umineko no Naku Koro ni as well as the newest series Ciconia no Naku Koro ni. The series written and created by Ryukishi07 and rest of 07th Expansion development group.

The series used to get flack for its art style (drawn by Ryukishi07) but I never had a problem with it personally. However when in 2013 they announced Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru: Nocturne of Truth and Illusions, I was incredibly excited to experience the journey again one day.


It's somehow been hella long since the original series ended but I still remember the story and its characters well. The main character,  Ushiromiya Battler, is an obvious Phoenix Wright 2.0 so now that I've played the Ace Attorney games I'll be making some heavy comparisons. I am now actually getting back to this story in its full PS3 glory. I'm waiting for the best time to start the game though as I want to immerse myself as best as I can.

Ahh, I remember following this series for a good few years. It was incredible in a way. Chilly days, fun days, summer days. Always back in Rokkenjima. I've read the first episode of Umineko so many times as I liked the generic Agatha Christie-styled manor case it set up. Anyone who is familiar with long-running detective fiction series from any medium is more than familiar with this type of setting. Even the side characters feel very similar to those from Poirot stories.
Now that I think about it, the feel I got from following this series must be similar experience I'm sure many are getting from following Final Fantasy 7 Remake until its finale for many years now.

What I really liked about this series were the immersive parts - characters of course brutally die and it leaves one to question about what's going on. The music is fantastic and helps to elevate the experience. I loved to just look at the menu with the blood splattered avatars everywhere and read the information on characters. Of course now that I'm more experienced with the genre I can see that this series has some ridiculous pacing issues as it barely progresses over 8 Episodes of visual novels, similar to Higurashi (which has far more extra parts though).

I'm not expecting the PS3 version to change anything about the story but presentation is actually a very key aspect about any story. Dialogue, background, framing, lighting, everything matters. The PS3 version is definitely going to be a new experience for me in a way.

In its core Umineko is basically a Zero Escape game with Phoenix Wright dealing with a generic manor case, which then develops into this overworld war against witches, dealing with dimensional layers and multiverse theories as visual novels often seem to do. Umineko however did pull it off very well. The Schrödinger's Cat theory is a fan favourite for any mystery series and visual novels often tend to find many ways to focus on it so I'm interested to see how many times it's referenced in this series again.