The contest is over. It’s been a year of super intense reading, pushing myself to places I never thought I could go. There have been surprises, and there have been disappointments. But most of all, there’s been growth, and a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve read things, comfortably, I would have thought far out of my reach this time a year ago. And I’ve enjoyed doing it.

I’ve been saying this every round. Reading improves your language skills. And I don’t just have the numbers anymore. I went to Japan. I spoke Japanese with real native speakers. I ordered food and navigated the railway system and spent like $300 on anime/video game paraphernalia at Comiket. In Japanese. It’s not just statistics anymore. It’s the real deal. And I made it out of there alive. (Maybe a little traumatized by the times I got stuck, but that’s just a part of the process, eh?)

tl;dr: It works. Do it.

A little bit about this round: it was my lowest-scoring round this year, but I still pulled sixth. A little over 2700 pages in total, 45% of which came from books. I said I wanted to focus on reading books before the round started, and I think I did a decent job there. The games still tempted me, claiming around 33% of my score, but hey, a little variety’s not a bad thing. In the end, I accomplished my goal–to a degree. I improved my speed reading text dense in prose and narration, and I believe I’m also solidifying my ability to see the things being described, like I would reading a book in English.

I have a large stack of books I’m now working my way through, and hopefully I will be able to maintain some of the contest momentum.

This round’s reading list:

• Light Novels
• ダンガンロンパ／ゼロ（上） (256 pages)
  
• 変愛サイケデリック (301 pages)
• 扉の外 II (334 pages)
• サクラダリセット (312 pages)
• 扉の外III (37 / 324 pages)
• Manga
• 涼風 (Vol. 7-9 — I finally finished it!)
• Soul Eater (Vol. 20)
• Weekly stuff
• Games
• code_18 (PSP — didn’t get very far; kind of dull as hell)
• God of War: Chains of Olympus & Ghost of Sparta (PS3)
• Fate/stay night (PC, with added voices — a little through Day 3 of the Fate route)
• Some miscellaneous stuff

This round’s surprise victory goes to 変愛サイケデリック, which managed to be endlessly entertaining on top of being the perfect level of difficulty to challenge me and push me to the next level of comprehension. I will be buying the sequel as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Anyway, I think that covers everything.

…

Oh yeah, I creamed the master ranking. (*´∀｀)

Since the original post already contains a tutorial for using 青P, I’ll just show what I changed here. On the advanced settings page:

In short, I just changed a couple things about the margins.

1. I increased the top/bottom margins significantly. This is so we can chop off the extra empty space and bring the PDF much closer to the nook’s aspect ratio.
2. I decreased the right margin. This is because (as far as I can tell) the spacing between lines applies to the first line and right side of the page, so using symmetrical margins gives us off-center text.
3. I told it to not reverse the margins between even/odd pages. If we let it reverse, every other page would be even more off-center than with symmetrical margins.

Once you’ve made the PDF, open it in Adobe Acrobat, click on Document → Crop Pages and use the following settings:

Don’t forget to make it apply to all pages.

Then, save your PDF and drop it onto your e-reader. You should be making much better use of your screen real estate now.

Before

After

Well, since we’re here, I guess I’ll follow tradition and make a short post about what I want to read this round:

• Games
• 彼岸花の咲く夜に (PC)
• Can’t skip out on my bi-annual Ryukishi fix.
• CHAOS;HEAD (PC)
• I promised LS I’d do this, and I’m kind of craving some psychosis now, so that works.
• 逆転検事２ (NDS)
• I’m actually kind of ashamed I haven’t finished this yet. It’s a fun game, and with Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney just around the corner, I might as well pick it back up.
• Manga
• 涼風 (Vol. 7-9)
• Wondering how many lists I’ll have to put this on before I actually finish it.
• WOMBS (Vol. 1-2)
• Doubt (Vol. 1-4)
• Pluto (Vol. 2-8)
• うさぎドロップ (Vol. 5-9)
• The anime was too cute not to keep going. ♥
• Weekly stuff (I’ve got a bunch of this to catch up on, too)
• Novels
• ダンガンロンパ／ゼロ (上・下)
• サクラダリセット (Vol. 1)
• DEUSLAYER
• コロージョンの夏
• 変愛サイケデリック (Vol. 1)
• ブレイク君コア
• 扉の外 (Vol. 2 & 3)
• 文学少女シリーズ (Vol. 2 & 3)
• 涼宮ハルヒシリーズ (Vol. 7-10)

My focus this round is primarily novels, with a sprinkling of manga/game to keep things fresh. This has two implications:

1. My reading speed will be significantly slower than usual, since I’m not nearly as proficient reading straight books as I am in the other categories.
2. I am NOT shooting for the win this round. As much as I love the competition and the ferocity it inspires, I’m coming to realize that, over the last year of contests, I’ve used #game as a bit of a crutch, to the detriment of my ability consuming other media.

My true goal this round is to improve my reading speed and comprehension reading slightly more sophisticated, denser texts. (Stuff with narration and prose and all the things you get visually/aurally from games and manga.) I’ve been reading 嘘月 for almost a month now, and it’s only 200 pages. I love the book, but there’s no way I’m getting through my backlog at that rate, so I want to kick that skill into high gear.

I have no delusions of actually getting through this list (as with all lists), but having a bunch of stuff I want to read is certainly better than having no idea what I want to do, right?

This will also be the first round I compete without using Anki. I’ve officially retired my Core 6000 deck, and I haven’t started another one up yet, so I’m interested to see how my retention fares pure 多読-style. As far as I can tell, in the few weeks since I stopped using Anki, I haven’t noticed any decrease in my knowledge. I’m still able to watch and read and pick up words the same level as before.

Well, I guess we’ll see when the sparks (and tables) start flying in a little over a week.

(ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻

You win some you― Wait, no you don't.

The final day of the third round was full of surprises. I went to bed on the 30th feeling secure in my rank, but not quite ready to let go of my momentum. It was to be my eighth day playing Ever17, and―if things went according to plan―I was to be moving into the final route as the curtains fell on the contest.

I went to bed with about a 1300 page lead… and I woke up trailing behind by about 1500 pages. So that was a surprise. But what can you do? My highest score for a single day this round was 438 pages, and my highest score in a single day ever is 504 pages (from the second round). For as much as my competitive spirit hated losing my upper hand so close to the end with no hope of taking it back, I stuck with my original plan of attack and pushed through Ever17 as hard as I could. Because, really, that was the more important thing to worry about: reading Japanese like a monster.

And I’ll be damned if that’s not exactly what I did. Even after the contest ended, I kept up the pace for another couple days, until I finally tore down the last of Ever17′s many, many, many mysteries. Holy SHIT is all I can say to that. Beyond just being the best thing I read all competition, Ever17 comes close to having the most satisfying conclusion of anything I’ve read, ever. It ranks up there with the likes of Steins;Gate and ダンガンロンパ―which is something I did not expect to run into so soon after those other two.

To put things into perspective: I started ダンガンロンパ near the end of Round 1, and I played through most of Steins;Gate for Round 2. And Round 3 gave me Ever17. From a reader’s perspective, if I can read or play something as epically fucking mindblowing as them every three months, my life will nothing short of literary bliss. Taking the language-learner angle into account, that’s a recipe for eternal motivation.

Since I started learning, I’ve only ever really been short on motivation once: about a year ago―June and July of 2010. I was working that summer, and my SRS cards were piling up like no other. I had over 1000 reviews due, and hundreds more piling in every day. I couldn’t keep up, and I generally didn’t try. I was doing a little tweeting back-and-forth in Japanese, and I’d bought a couple volumes of the よつばと！ manga (in Japanese), but that was about all the exposure I was getting.

And then I came across the Tadoku contest. As I recall, Liz (of LizLearns) mentioned it in a tweet, or something, and I thought it sounded like a fun way to get back into gear. The contest started in August, and my internship ended just a few days prior to that. I had no illusions of winning―maybe making it through the couple volumes of manga I’d bought. But fate (or luck, or OCD)―bent on denying me my every expectation―had other plans for me. I found an unexplored world of wonder in Ghost Trick and Last Window and J-dramas. Things not yet available in English, but that I could still push my way through, one way or another.

Fast forward to this round. My 2224-page runaway victory looks like a drop in the pond now. I had 2300 pages by the seventh day this round. In the end, I pulled out over four times as many pages as that first contest. Let’s be honest, what is there to complain about that degree of improvement? In the span of a year, my reading speed (and attention span) doubled―twice. (And there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Using some totally un-scientific data-gathering techniques, I’ve ascertained it took me roughly three times as long to finish Rewrite as it would the average native speaker of Japanese.)

In the end, that’s the whole point of these competitions, isn’t it? Motivating people to read like they’ve never read before. First, second, tenth, or seventeenth (not to single anyone out ヽ(´ー｀)ノ). As long as you’re reading, and not just twiddling your thumbs, who cares? The contest works. The numbers speak, loud and clear. And my own motivation and personal sense of achievement provides all the backup the numbers need. I don’t know that it’s possible to provide more decisive evidence than that.

Rewrite was a unique experience for me. If you count each episode of Umineko as separate games, Rewrite is probably the longest single text I have read in any language. It took me just short of a month to complete (June 27 – July 20), spending upwards of ten hours every day reading. This shows I’m obviously not at a fluent reading level (or speed), but it certainly shows progress.

As a story, Rewrite has a lot of ups and downs. Because of how long it is, and how much variation there tended to be in my opinions of the routes, I needed a place to organize my thoughts, as I was going. And from that spawned this review.

In writing this, I avoided spoilers as much as possible, so some things might sound a little oblique, but I hope I get my points across.

Note: Rewrite has a number of distinct sections, most aptly called routes–a familiar device in the visual novel world. In this case, the routes vary in quality pretty drastically, and, for this reason, I’m dividing my review into sections corresponding to each of the game’s routes.

Common Route: 1 / 10

You'll be seeing a lot of this in the common route.

What a waste of time. Scenes drag on two to three times as long as they should. It’s badly paced, with no real sense of direction or purpose. The route presents itself as a collection of “enjoyable” scenes in lives of our characters, but it becomes repetitive, dull, and uninteresting very quickly. There is no trace of character development, even to a minor degree–presumably because they wanted to save the heroines’ development for their own respective routes. What little “foreshadowing” or “setup” they do for the real story is spread so far and so thin, it’s easy to forget there’s even anything remotely interesting about this game. For what it’s worth: Rewrite is NOT a slice-of-life story about a bunch of high-school kids. The common route may make you try to think that, but it’s just a red herring–and a bad one at that. It’s the stuff that comes later that really matters.

To be quite honest, it’s a miracle I made it through the common route in the first place, for how much I disliked it. But the other routes more than made up for the couple days of misery I spent drudging through this trash.

If you plan to play this game, use this guide (minor structural spoilers) and skip often and without prejudice, until probably Nov. 6 or a little after. You won’t miss a thing.

The routes are presented in the order I read them. To be clear: there are scenes contained within the game’s “common route,” outside the heroines’ routes, which are specific to a particular heroine. For example, much of 静流’s development occurs outside her route, in the “common route,” in scenes which only appear after you’ve been locked on to her route. For the purposes of this review, I am considering these scenes as part of the individual heroines’ routes and not part of the common route, as they’re not really “common” between all the heroines. It’s a nit-picky structural distinction, but it allows me to bash the hell out of the common route without getting caught up by some genuinely good heroine-specific development.

小鳥 Route: 7.5 / 10

There are some pacing troubles, which lead to some weirdness in how the story unfolds, and the character development is weak compared to some of the other routes. On the other hand, this route does provide some invaluable insight into the protagonist’s character which becomes hugely important later. Emotional scenes are fairly genuine and realistic, and the final scene was touching, despite being somewhat out-of-the-blue.

神戸小鳥 (Kanbe Kotori)

It’s hard to really get a feel for the scale of the story in this route, so I don’t really have much to say. It’s interesting, but so much happens off-screen that it’s sort of like being on the moon and watching the end of the world. In the end, it does affect you, but you’re so detached you don’t really feel involved.

But, you’ve got to start somewhere, and 瑚太朗’s development makes it the most suitable candidate. It’s not absolutely necessary you have this information to enjoy the other heroines’ routes, but it clarifies several mysteries which crop up and are impossible to solve with only the information available in a given route.

ちはや Route: 9 / 10

鳳ちはや (Ohtori Chihaya)

At first, I wasn’t too excited about going through ちはや’s route. In the common route, at least, 小鳥 was (slightly) more interesting of a character, and I’ve never really been a fan of the “I hate everything about you” love-interest archetype. Throw in her shadow/stalker/brother 咲夜, who annoyed the ever loving hell out of me, and I was shooting low from the get-go.

I was pleasantly surprised with what I got. ちはや ended up being my second favorite heroine, and 咲夜 turned into something rather likable, and even admirable.

鳳咲夜 (Ohtori Sakuya)

The character development is better than in 小鳥’s route, and it actually feels like events are connected in a logical, meaningful way here. The pacing issues are pretty much gone, and the emotional impact is through the roof. It’s kind of a shame that a lot of elements present in this route are ignored for the true route, though. Some of the scenes near the end of this route would have made a great base for some deeper conflict later on in the true route.

The relationship on this route, for the most part, felt natural and believable. I wouldn’t even have anything to complain about, on this front, except for a really stupid scene right at the end, which sort of spoiled it for me.

ルチア Route: 10 / 10

How many different ways can I say “perfect” without the word losing its meaning? This route blew me away in more ways than I can describe. I could tell we were off to a good start, working my way through the new scenes on the common route, when we completely diverged from the usual sequence of events. The catalyst for the other four heroines’ routes is a single incident, which pretty much comes out of nowhere, and actually had me laughing at how out-of-place it felt on the common route. But ルチア’s route foregoes all that and moves in a completely different direction, while still staying true to the setting. As a result, the ルチア route progresses much more naturally than the other routes, which gives it that much more impact.

There is almost no doubt in my mind that 竜騎士07 wrote this route, if only because he has a distinct “style” of punctuation–one I don’t think any other author has. There are some telltale R07 elements here as well: a deep, engaging mystery, with some elements of horror; tragedy, and lots of it; frequent perspective changes; extensive, believable character development; and a climax so over-the-top you can’t help but love it.

此花ルチア (Konohana Lucia)

For these exact same reasons, some people will probably hate this route. But everything really clicked for me here, where something always felt off in the other routes. We manage to flow smoothly from the (far too) peaceful common route into the real meat of the story, rather than being thrown in headfirst. We get a much better sense of ルチア’s character, and why she behaves the way she does, than we do of the other heroines.

The pacing is pretty much perfect. The relationship between ルチア and 瑚太朗 is leaps and bounds above the relationships in other routes. It is, without question, the most believable, the most genuine, and the most emotionally engaging relationship portrayed in this game. I try not to be one of those creepy オタク-types, but if ルチア were a real person, I would probably fall for her in a heartbeat. That’s how genuine her character is.

And the final scenes were that much more poignant for it. I tend to be fairly sensitive to emotional scenes in media. All the heroines’ routes, even the ones I didn’t really like, managed to at least dampen my eyes. I cried, wholeheartedly and without shame, at the end of this route.

For a supposed 泣きゲー, and someone weak to those sorts of things, that’s actually kind of disappointing.

朱音 Route: 5 / 10

This route suffers from almost all the same problems as the common route. There’s actually a story to be told here, and one which could have been good at the hands of a better writer, so I have to give it some points for that.

The pacing is awful. Scenes drag much longer than necessary, and the author seems to think showing the same thing four or five times in a row somehow makes it funnier or more interesting–a problem with the common route as well.

朱音’s route relies on large time skips to “develop” the characters’ relationships behind the scenes, and saves us the trouble of actually getting to know anyone. 朱音 warms up to 瑚太朗–in a romantic way–within the first few scenes of the route, despite showing no considerable signs of such anywhere in the common route. After the time skip, they’ve essentially completed the courtship stage, and we just have to accept they love the hell out of each other, without any textual reason.

千里朱音 (Senri Akane)

A good portion of the problem with this route, though, is the lack of character development. We get a little bit of insight into 朱音’s past, and what it is that brought her to this point in her life, but the development is severely lacking compared to other heroines. It’s hard to sympathize with her decisions because we just don’t know enough. And, with respect to the events of the route, 朱音 is the heroine who needed the most development to justify everything that happens. Instead, she gets the least.

There’s no real sense that any given event leads to any of the following events. It’s more just a collection of scenes tossed together atop an artificial conflict. Despite having the same setting and basic premise as other routes, this one falls flat.

Another big flaw with the 朱音 route is it assumes knowledge only present in other routes. 瑚太朗 knows things about himself and the world which were explained in other routes, but never came up in this one. It’s a huge continuity issue, which isn’t present in the other routes, and prevents the story from standing on its own two feet.

静流 Route: 8.5 / 10

中津静流 (Nakatsu Shizuru)

This route changes up the general structure of things, which is a huge breath of fresh air. In an interesting turn, there’s actually some nice character development leading up to the route, choosing not to wait until things start happening. The beginning of the route offers a good sense of mystery, but the solution is too easy (deus ex machina ahoy). Unfortunately, the relationship progresses way too quickly and doesn’t feel sincere.

This route is much shorter than the other heroines’ routes. It took me about half as long to complete as the others (a day and a half, as compared to three days). This works both for and against it. On the one hand, there’s no real wasted time. It’s fast-paced and interesting, with just enough comic relief to keep things from spiraling out of control. On the other hand, it sometimes feels like there isn’t enough there to really justify what happens.

However, the final scene really ties things together, and the sheer emotional power of it was almost (but not quite) enough for me to give the route a free pass on the deus ex machina and light-speed romance.

There are a number of 竜騎士07’s trademarks present along this route (roses, canned mackerel (albeit of a different type–サバ vs サンマ (maybe too much of a stretch?)), and a character with a pretty miserable past), but the writing style doesn’t scream R07 to me, like it did in ルチア’s route. If I had to guess (based on a number of things), I would say this was written by the same person who wrote the ちはや route.

According to this (minor structural spoilers), that is correct, and it was 都乃河勇人 at the helm this route. I haven’t read anything else by either 田中ロミオ or 都乃河勇人, so I can’t corroborate that for sure, but it matches my guess.

True Route (Part 1): 9.5 / 10

Like a field of stars.

The “true route,” in a sense, is divided into two major parts. I’ve chosen not to include their actual names, to avoid spoiling anything.

The first part of the true route is stunning. The prose is crisp, succinct, and lyrical. The scene it paints is haunting and beautiful, almost transcendental. Serene. A dramatic but welcome change from the writing style up to this point. The story unfolds slowly, though the pacing is perfect. It’s simple and powerful, existential, and an excellent lead-in to the finale.

Some of the things which happen might be a little hard to swallow, without an open mind. But if you’ve made it this far, that’s probably not going to be an issue.

It’s actually kind of difficult for me to believe this is the same author as the 小鳥 and 朱音 routes–my two least favorite heroines. Thematically, and taking into account some of the developments in this part and the second part, it makes sense. But the difference in writing quality is a bit too drastic.

True Route (Part 2): 9 / 10 → 9.5 / 10

You know all that character development we were missing in the common route and some of the heroine routes? Well, here it is. (Some of it, at least.)

NVL Mode

After all this time, the protagonist, 瑚太朗, finally gets a voice (for longer than just the first scene!). And the game switches from ADV mode (like in the common route screenshot) to NVL mode (right). The changes in presentation are unusual, but an understandable, and even praiseworthy, stylistic decision, considering what happened in the story leading up to this route.

There are 27 options: Patterns A to Z, and Pattern ∞.

To be quite honest, it’s kind of hard to talk about this route without spoiling anything, but I will say it does a good job tying things together. The second half is paced lightning-fast, and it makes things a little hard to follow at times, but it doesn’t really detract from the experience. There are a lot of questions left unanswered, which sort of soured things for me a little bit. Working my way up to this point, I was sort of expecting something slightly bigger than what I got. Which is an unusual thing to think, considering just how huge the story’s scale actually is. The first part of the true route, and the first half of the second part sort of set itself up for an epic finale, along the lines of ダンガンロンパ or Steins;Gate’s true route, but doesn’t really deliver on that level. I guess I was hoping there would be a Part 3 to this route, mirroring Part 1, to bookend everything. (I’m sorry this is so vague! Trying really hard to not spoil anything.)

Which isn’t to say it’s bad–not at all. It’s a very good finale, and I accept that I probably built up my expectations too much. Not everything can be ダンガンロンパ.

Miscellaneous:

The music is excellent. There is lots of variety in the tracks, and the music always feels appropriate for any given scene. The art is somewhat inconsistent–especially the CG. Some CG are gorgeous, and some just don’t fit the overall art style for the game, seeming out of place and dragging you out of the experience.

I hope you really like this forest.

But my biggest complaint has to be with the backgrounds. There are maybe a third as many as there really needs to be. One primary “forest” BG, a couple “around town” BGs, etc. Of course, they have their day/evening/night variations, but it’s really just one image. This sticks out like a sore thumb when you’re reading a scene set in the forest which lasts upwards of two hours (at my pace, at least). Scene transition from the forest BG… back to the forest BG. Over and over and over again. There’s nowhere near enough variety, and despite text implying progression, it doesn’t do much to help the sense of movement.

Additionally, it’s pretty much a waste of time to try to associate locations with BGs, because everyone has the same “view from the front yard” BG. So, if that one pops up, you could be in one of fifteen different places across town–there’s no real way to tell until it says so in the text. This is made even worse by the fact that it seems the BGs were based on real locations.

I have no idea how this one made it past QC.

The variety of backgrounds–and specific use for each image–is one thing I really appreciated about the other games I’ve played. うみねこのなく頃に and Steins;Gate both made excellent use of their backgrounds, allowing you to associate specific locations with specific images, and never spending too long on the exact same image.

Another problem this leads to is some scenes are presented without a background at all. Just a black or white screen and text. Many of the more emotional scenes (especially near the end of the ちはや route) would have benefited from a one-time-use background to fill out the scene, but we’re not given that.

From a technical standpoint, the Siglus Engine provides a wonderful experience, by far the best I’ve gotten out of a visual novel. There is a wide variety of visual effects, a plethora of options for customization, and all without crashes or slowdown. This is also the only game I have ever played that can transition to and from full-screen in the blink of an eye, without any visual artifacts or delay.

Overall: 8.5 / 10 → 9 / 10

The thing which strikes me the most about Rewrite, looking at it as a whole, is it seems like the three authors didn’t really collaborate enough. There are some minor contradictions and some major contradictions that crop up when you try to consider all the routes as part of the same universe. I can accept some variation between routes as a natural result of the different decisions made to get there, but some things are a bit too much.

For example: there are fundamental differences in the settings of the 静流 and 朱音 routes, which would in no way be affected by the decisions of an asshole high-schooler trying to build a harem. Roughly the same sequence of events brings about an entirely different conclusion, without any real reason why.

The scenario, as a whole, would have benefited from the three authors sitting down together around a table and discussing, in detail, the effects of various actions fundamental to the setting. As it stands, it seems more like 田中ロミオ, 竜騎士07, and 都乃河勇人 each had different ideas about how the world worked, and they just sort of ran with it. R07, fortunately, veered far enough off the beaten path that his interpretation didn’t conflict with anything else, but the other two certainly had some issues. As a result, Rewrite is lacking that feeling of consistency which could have really spiked the story’s overall impact.

Despite some inconsistency in the quality of the routes, there is a lot to enjoy about Rewrite. It was a slightly rough build-up to a highly rewarding conclusion, but all in all, it was a good read–one I wouldn’t be afraid to recommend.

Suggested route order: 小鳥　→　ちはや　→　ルチア　→　静流　→　朱音

I only suggest 朱音 come last because of the continuity issues I described previously. On the other hand, you might want to switch 静流 and 朱音 and read them in the same order I did, if only so you can move into the true route on a good note, rather than a bad one.

Edit (7/28): In reflecting on the game over the past few days, I made a couple realizations (none of which I can mention here, without being spoilery) which have prompted me to revise my True Route (Part 2) and Overall scores, increasing them both by half a point.

Desire to Translate: 7 / 10

Much to Rewrite's detriment, Monokuma does not appear in the story.

As a learner of Japanese, and someone interested in possibly getting into translation (if programming video games doesn’t work out), I’m frequently hit with a strong desire to translate whatever I’m reading and share it with my English-speaking friends. The frequency of these urges, and their strength, is a pretty good indicator of how much I’m enjoying something–beyond just the things I can express in a review like this.  For example, if you know me and my good buddy Burritolinguist, the two of us would pretty much drop everything we were doing for the chance to translate ダンガンロンパ. It is so good, I want everyone to have the chance to experience that.

Rewrite is complicated in that regard. The excessively long common route–which is nothing but a red herring–and the rather weak 朱音 route are somewhat off-putting to me, but ルチア’s route and the true route are nothing short of works of genius that I would love to get my hands on. (Though, admittedly, I say this having zero experience as a translator, so who knows if there aren’t some other issues that would stand in my way.)

I bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Yeah, well neither did I.

This round has been a unique experience for me. I’ve taken the “All Japanese All The Time” mantra to a whole new level, living it so much more fully than I ever have before. And it’s working wonders.

Throw in a pinch (or the whole bottle) of OCD, and you’ve got a recipe for success.

The majority of my pages (~4700) have come from Rewrite, Key’s latest visual novel. Ryukishi07, the author of ひぐらし and うみねこ, and one of my personal favorite authors, contributed to the scenario, which is the reason I picked the game up in the first place. I’ve had a rough relationship with Key titles, generally being of the opinion that they’re all the exact same story, just spun in different ways. So I wasn’t expecting much out of Rewrite–but I was curious to know what kind of story it was, if R07 was willing to work on it.

I haven’t finished the game yet. It’s pretty extraordinarily long, with some drastic fluctuations in quality (more on that in another post), but suffice it to say I’ve enjoyed the game enough to spend in excess of ten hours every day this month reading.

The important part, in all of this, is that I’m feeling a surge in my ability to read and process Japanese. I’ve come across hundreds of words I’d never seen before, and I’ve learned a number of them. I’m honing my ability to decide what words are important and what words I can skip over without losing the overall meaning, and it’s doing wonders for my reading speed. I’m improving in my ability to decipher new words from familiar kanji.

And, most importantly, I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

In light of my unexpected page count, I am revising my initial goal of 5000 to 10000 pages. I said, in the beginning, I was probably out of my mind. I am now certain of that fact.

• Games
• Rewrite (PC)
• Ever17 -the out of infinity- (PC)
• 逆転検事２ (NDS)
• 密室のサクリファイス (PSP)
• Manga
• 未来日記
• 涼風 (v. 7-9)
• バクマン。 (Weekly)
• エニグマ (Weekly)
• One Piece (Weekly)
• 神のみぞ知るセカイ (Weekly)
• Light Novels
• NHKにようこそ！
• 扉の外 (v. 2-3)
• 文学少女 (v. 2-3)
• 狼と香辛料 (v. 1)

Now, I know I’m probably out of my bloody mind if I think I’ll be able to get through all that in a month. I have essentially four visual novels (compared to my usual one and change); a complete, twelve-volume manga series, plus the latter third of another; and six light novels. On the low end of the spectrum, that’s 1900 pages from light novels, 700 pages from manga, and another 2000-2500 from visual novels (assuming I only make it through one of the games, and maybe some of a second). This makes somewhere between 4600 and 5100 pages, on the low end of my reading list. Depending on how long the games are, this could get as high as 10000 pages.

Like I said. Out of my bloody mind.

More realistically, I’m aiming for at least as much improvement as I made in previous rounds: 2224 → 3042 → 3828. An increase of roughly 800 pages each round, putting my target around 4600 this time. Since it’s summer, and I’m a NEET with a bachelor’s degree now, I’ll bump that up to 5000 and first place for good measure.

In the spirit of good fun, fierce competition, and reading til our eyes explode, 乾杯!

Before the contest started, I said I would be happy earning a similar rank as I did in the first round (fourth place) or about the same number of pages (3000-ish). The idea was, since the second round happened to fall on my last month of undergraduate studies, I’d be swamped with work and busy as all hell.

Well, I got that much right.

The last month of classes was even crazier than I imagined, culminating in a 5.5 hour presentation-athon worth 15% of my grade in a class I wish I never took.

But that’s as far as I was able to meet my expectations. The problems started cropping up around the eighth of the month, when I had my first of eight Steins;Gate marathons, netting me between 200 and 500 pages each. I finished Steins;Gate on April 22, having put in just over 100 hours. I also blew past my Round 1 score of 3042 that day, jumping from 2933 to 3236 pages. First expectation shattered.

Near the middle of my Steins;Gate spree, when the pages were rolling in fast and easy (950 pages in three days: 180, 504, and 267), I was hanging around in first/second place–something I hadn’t done since the original contest. Second expectation shattered.

Unfortunately, school did catch up with me, and I slowed down significantly the week after I finished Steins;Gate, pulling in an average of 37 pages per day and falling back down into fourth place–where I finished. I ended the contest with a bang, as I like to, with 327 pages, mostly from 逆転検事２, my first Ace Attorney game in Japanese.

All in all, I read a surprising 3827.9527 pages, just shy of my adjusted mid-contest goal of 4000.

And here’s a quick summary of what I read (red are things I hoped for and didn’t get to):

• Games
  • Steins;Gate (PC)
  • 逆転検事２ (NDS)
  • Started, not finished.
  • コープスパーティ (PSP)
• Manga
  • 涼風 (v. 6)
  • 涼風 (v. 7-9)
  • ソウルイーター (v. 16-19)
  • Liar Game (v. 9-10)
  • Deadman Wonderland (v. 1-2)
  • バクマン。 (Weekly)
  • One Piece (Weekly)
  • エニグマ (Weekly)
  • 悪の華
• Light Novels
  • クビツリハイスクール
  • 26 pages! I was hoping to have been done with this before the contest started…
  • 文学少女 (Didn’t even touch these.)
• Anime
• Last Exile (eps. 5-12)

And then there were the miscellaneous websites and other silliness bantered about Twitter by the other contestants.

All in all, I had a hell of a good time. I did way more than I expected, and I made better use of my time in April than I have since May stopped by. I think I’ll quit droning here, with just a couple more comments:

1. Read Steins;Gate. Seriously. It’s outstanding–one of the most interesting, most detailed, best written science fiction stories I’ve read, ever.
2. I’m still working on Mangle! I’ve got a half-dozen ideas written down to make converting manga for e-readers even more efficient.
3. Time for some Deadman Wonderland.

I read 3042.8 pages last time (a 37% improvement on last year’s score of 2224.8 pages). Obviously, I’d like to read more than last time, but the current state of life (only 30 days in April vs 31 in January; April 29 is my last day of classes, ever [seriously―I'm graduating college on May 7 (nested [parentheses])], so everything is piling up) put me at a slight disadvantage. I’d be happy with a similar score or a similar rank.

I’ll just have to see how things go. I’ve got a pretty good stockpile of stuff I’d like to work my way through.

• Games
  • Steins;Gate (PC)
  • 逆転検事２ (NDS)
  • コープスパーティ (PSP)
• Manga
  • 涼風 (v. 6-9)
  • 悪の華
  • ソウルイーター (v. 17-Current)
  • バクマン。 (Weekly)
  • One Piece (Weekly)
  • エニグマ (Weekly)
  • Whatever else strikes my fancy.
• Light Novels
  • 文学少女 (Hoping for around 3 of these.)
• J-Dramas
  • No clue!

As usual, the majority of my pages should come from playing games. I’ll probably be doing a lot of manga reading as well, especially since the process of putting manga on my nook has been pretty effectively streamlined with the updates I’ve been making to Mangle.

Here’s to another round as fun as the first two! ヨーシ！

Rather than a lengthy diatribe about what I’ve done, I’ll just drop the changelog here:

Major Upgrades

• Added the option to export books to CBZ format.
• Added the option to split images instead of rotating them to match the device’s aspect ratio.
  • Note: Because of the nook color’s unusual aspect ratio, average-sized manga pages tend to get split in half, and double pages tend to be split into three. You might have better luck using the regular nook profile if you want to split the wide pages.
• Changed how “Draw frame around images” handles oversized images: Previously, oversized images would be cropped to the device’s dimensions. Now a frame is added such that the image matches the device’s aspect ratio.

Minor Changes

• Added profiles for nook (600×730) and nook color (600×980).
  • Note: Since the nook color is, well, full-color, and palette reduction is unnecessary, the “dither” option uses the same palette as the regular nook/Kindle 3, if you want to use that for whatever reason.
  • Note: The nook color’s resolution was selected based on this post. I figure it’s more useful to size pages to the actual usable resolution, so the e-reader doesn’t end up resizing it again before display.
• Changed the wording on “Resize images” to more accurately reflect what it does: shrinks oversized images.
• Added an option to enlarge images which are smaller than the selected device’s resolution
  • Note: Shrinking images uses the PIL’s antialias filter, and enlarging images uses the bicubic filter.
• Added “Save Defaults” and “Restore Defaults” buttons to the options page. This allows you to change which options are set by default when creating a new book.
• Fixed an issue where “Draw frame around images” left an extra pixel of empty space on the right and bottom between the image and the frame.
• Fixed an issue with rotation which could add a row/column of black pixels along the top/left of an image.
• Added a button to the toolbar which opens the options menu. (Icon provided by http://pixel-mixer.com)
• The save/open dialogs now keep track of the last directory saved to/loaded from for as long as the program is open.
• There may be some more I’m not remembering, but that’s the gist of it.

You can grab the source code and Windows binary here. If you only want the binary, just grab everything in the dist folder.

For bug reports/suggestions, please use the issue tracker on the GitHub page.

EDIT: Fixed a silly bug in 2.2 that would have prevented 99% of people from loading the program. Whoops! Be sure to grab 2.2.0.1.

お楽しみにしてください～