Japanese Reading Report: 10 August 2025

ランス02改 反逆の少女たち

A bit of a shakeup this week. I ended up dropping and picking up a few new things you'll see below. Next week will look a bit cleaner, hopefully. Not mentioned below, because I didn't read any of it this week, I've decided to indefinitely pause 白蝶記 just because the passion isn't there right now.

英雄伝説　空の軌跡ＦＣ

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm last week was a sign. I was trekking from Ruan to Zweiss, and after my twelfth exhausting encounter I just decided I didn't have the time for this game right now. I'm sure there's a great deal of content to explore in the Trails series, but the lack of interesting story density was just too much for me.

This week I did the entire Genis Academy arc, unmasked the true culprit of the orphanage fire (it was exactly who I suspected), and then ran around Ruan some more to get from story beat to story beat.

この素晴らしい世界に祝福を！

I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. As you'll see below, I decided to explore the world of Rance, and someone pointed out that the protagonist of this anime shares a design with Rance, so my interest was piqued.

I basically dislike isekai as a subgenre, but I think Konosuba does it well. Instead of any world-breaking items or abilities, Kazuma basically drags the isekai goddess Aqua with him into his new life. After a few episodes the full party is assembled; Megumin, a powerful mage who only uses one spell, and Darkness, a tanky knight who masochistically jumps in front of every attack. I'm sure I'm not the first to make the observation, but it was very true to the general experience of late-game parties in RPGs. Eventually the formula for victory is just using a meat-shield to block all attacks and a group-wide spell to clear out all the enemies.

The fact that Kazuma and Aqua sleep in a horse pen immediately flagged as a Wizardry reference to me, and Kyouya, the other isekai protagonist from a later episode was clearly a Dragon Quest reference. The small nods are fun, but I think the real strength is just how self-aware the main cast are about their stupid situation.

ランス01 光をもとめて THE ANIMATION

I actually played the Rance 02 game (below) before watching this, but it feels weird to order them differently, so here we go. The Rance series is mostly erotic and its selling point is sex, so if that doesn't appeal to you feel free to skip below.

Perhaps because of the recent censorship news, or perhaps just because I saw a random meme about it, but Rance entered my consciousness again and I decided that I wanted to see what was up, so this is the start of my Rance cultural education.

Rance 01 is set in a fairly generic fantasy town. Rance is investigating the whereabouts of a missing girl, Hikari, while accompanied by his slave, Sill. I was a little bit disappointed to see that Sill was already an established character in the anime, since Rance 02 starts in a similar way and my first thought when playing that was, "I wonder how they met." Ah well, I guess I'll either find out one day or it doesn't really matter.
In episode 1, Rance enrols Sill into a local school to go undercover while he goes out on the town, failing to engage several women in sex. Eventually he meets a barkeeper who convinces Rance to save his daughter, who was kidnapped by a gang. He figures it might give him a lead on Hikari, and the barkeeper's daughter is cute, so he agrees. Rance has sex once with Sill and once with the barkeeper's daughter in this episode. The latter was more interesting to me, because he pretends to be the gang leader while she's blindfolded, and then only frees her after he's done. Ultimately he's able to get his way while also coming across as a hero, but we know.

Episode 2 is mostly about Rance trying to track down a ninja from the end of the previous episode. He thinks he's tracked her down to a colosseum, but it turns out the Master Ninja there wasn't her. He sleeps with Sill again, and also with a cute town guard who previously blocked his way to the colosseum. She's sort of a tomboy, so she has a complex about her body, and Rance charms her into valuing her womanhood. For the first time I felt like he was kind of a sweet guy. I fell for Rance alongside her, but that also made me feel bad for her in a new type of way; basically I was struck with the feeling that these girls fall for him but he moves on so quickly. I wish he would settle down.

Episode 3 is about Rance challenging the champion of the colosseum to a fight. The terms if he wins? Her ghostbane sword, and sex of course. With Sill's help he figures out a method to defeat the champion and they engage in some more dubiously consensual sex. I didn't like this one as much as the guard from episode two, but this woman was still pretty cute, and she melts into Rance's charm pretty quickly. I sort of wish her physique was played with a bit more. She's a champion gladiator but she just has the same supermodel design that you'd expect of any woman. With the ghostbane in hand, Rance goes out to slay a ghost for the town's leadership. It turns out the ghost is just a cute girl who was the victim of the woman in charge of the town. Instead of slaying her, Rance listens to her story and allows her to move on. He also finds Hikari in the haunted house. The episode ends with Hikari in hand, and a desire to get revenge on the corrupt leadership!

There's still one episode to go, but overall my feeling is that it's a pretty entertaining show. Rance's morality is about the baseline of what I expect of a Japanese erotic protagonist, but I also found myself falling for his charming characteristics. I think it's a story that men or women could enjoy if they went in with realistic expectations.

ランス０２改 反逆の少女たち

Okay, so I played this before all of what you read above. I was just browsing dlsite and saw that this was free, so why not?

This game's plot starts off fairly simple. Four young female mages rebelled against their wizard teacher, wrecking the town of Custom (yes that's the name), and escaping into a twisting labyrinth. Rance and Sill show up to the town, learn the backstory from the town's mayor and his daughter, and then Rance sets off to save the day. I wouldn't know it until watching the anime, but my actions were completely in line with the game's expectations. During any dialogue with a female character, you have the option to "make a move" and, just like the anime, every early woman deftly rebuffs Rance's advances. The only woman Rance can get lucky with is Sill.

After chatting to the NPCs in town I headed into the cave to find the titular maidens. The combat is bad. It's just not very fun, and it's fairly slow. It's a bit like a browser game. Some of the events in the dungeon were funny, and eventually I found one of the maidens, but she also rebuffed me, sending me down a whirlpool and into an underground lake. Because of that, I ended up running out of resources, dying, and losing some of my progress. So, so far I've had very little luck. We'll see how next week pans out.

Wizardry Variants Daphne

Another thing I've decided to drop this week. The story was fine, but the gacha elements of the game were just too much. I felt like I wasn't getting much story for my work, so I decided it wasn't worth continuing if I want to immerse.

Before I stop talking about it altogether, there was one interesting story element I want to mention. When I arrived at the 5th or 6th floor, I started seeing objects that, when interacted with, had some missing piece that I couldn't resolve. The narration would then explain, if only this person was still alive we could ask them to help... it turns out all of the NPCs who died throughout the story weren't just offed to demonstrate the danger of the dungeon, they were the consequence of me making bad decisions. If the game was more compelling I would have enjoyed replaying those moments to get everyone through alive.

ISLAND

So I dropped Trails and 白蝶記 because I felt as though my few moments between school work were lacking information density. ISLAND is going to be my remedy for this, hopefully...

ISLAND is a visual novel, and it does just about what I expect of VNs. There are branching paths (though so far that has only been expressed through one gag death), plenty of voice acting, plenty of convenient systems for fast-forwarding and rewinding time, and hundreds of save slots.

The story so far has involved the MC, Setsuna, waking up naked on a beach, being accosted by police, and then being saved by a mysterious, somewhat gloomy girl called Rinne. As a condition for shelter, Setsuna is taking on housekeeping duties at Rinne's large house. We've also met Rinne's shut-in mother, Kuon, the mayor's daughter, Karen, and a young shrine maiden, Sara.

I haven't played many VNs, but last year I played Amagami, a dating sim with a few VN trappings. I think the biggest difference I notice about the pace of the two genres is that the chapter breaks for ISLAND don't really feel like meaningful stopping points, but it also feels bad to stop in the middle of a chapter (I don't know if chapter is even the best term to use; I just mean the points where the scene changes and the VN name, ISLAND, is on screen briefly). On the other hand, Amagami scenes are all selected through the in-game map, so pausing between those scenes felt natural. It gave me a "just one more moment with her" feeling that I'm not getting with ISLAND yet. I'm sure the story will develop and I'll be hooked eventually, though.

世界樹の迷宮IV

I probably won't play too much of this, but I was compelled to start a new file after the little Wizardry boost from last week. I've played a few Etrian Odyssey games in Japanese, but never beaten any in anything but English.

There's not too much to say. While the game has plenty of text at the start, the dungeon crawling isn't really noteworthy from an immersion perspective. I love the map mechanic of Etrian Odyssey, but that's about all I have to say.