Though not really, since I’m pretty sure everyone saw this coming.

Though maybe the progress numbers actually are a bit of a surprise. And they’ll require some explaining on my part. But let’s ease into things in my usual rambling way. It’s been a while.

Right, so first things first, I’m back. It’s been almost five months since we released the Natsuki patch for Hoshi Ori, and now we’re back with a common route patch for GinHaru and some progress numbers which seem to suggest that I’ve been particularly duplicitous about whether or not I’ve been intending to continue. And I may have been.

In all honestly I was pretty much fully intending on just moving onto GinHaru as soon as we were done with Hoshi Ori. But Irru and I actually both had some legitimate real-life things we needed to finish before we wanted to announce and actually start putting up the usual weekly updates. I had my thesis proposal and the lab work that’s immediately followed after that, and Irru bought his own place somewhat recently and he’s had his hands super full with just getting all the logistics figured out and the moving in and whatnot. We didn’t really want to announce something that would get a non-zero number of people hyped and then have to spend the first few months of progress updates going “sorry guys we were swamped with work etc. again we only got like 5% progress on the route” or whatever. Kinda boring.

So I decided that I’d just focus more on fighting games, piano, work, real-life social stuff, being needlessly tyrannical on the discord server, whatever. But obviously I also TLed a bit in my spare time. To those in the Tripland fighting game know, I was totally TLing (or fixing errors that had been pointed out in Hoshi Ori) most of the time while I was waiting for my turn during fight nights.

To be honest, I was actually TLing during my hardcore thesis proposal prep period, as a change of pace and to reset myself when I hit a wall writing stuff. It was a genuinely minor amount—think I just did common route or something—but it helped me get through whatever. Plus it was fun.

And here’s the thing. During that time when I was starting on common route TL, I had told Irru that I wouldn’t be TLing at all while I was focusing on thesis proposal prep. So I figured I’d just do all of common route without telling him and just dump it on him out of nowhere. But then as it so happened after I did that [and he wasn’t particularly surprised thus rendering my secrecy pointless] he essentially became busy with things just as I finished my thesis proposal, and then I became especially busy with the followup lab work that I had to do after getting input about my project from my thesis committee just as his business started to wind down a little, and then he got busy again.

So essentially we just kinda traded off being busy and we didn’t really get to get much done. Irru pretty much didn’t really get to do a thorough read-through of the common route until like two months ago, and then I was lazy about reading for my TLC as per usual and so the script wasn’t ready for his second read-through until like a month ago, and he wasn’t free enough to actually do the read-through until like a week ago. Fortunately I was available and alert for the finalization immediately after his second read-through.

And so what I’m trying to arrive at is the fact that the reason we have an entire route TLed is because I was bored while Irru was holding up progress on common route being in a releasable state and decided I’d just start chipping away at our first route. Irru and I both agreed Bethly route would be first after our initial read of common route, so I figured I might as well get a head start. But then I finished it.

Kind of a stupid way for things to go but I guess that’s not surprising to anyone at this point.

Now I probably need to have a second part to this explanation—why didn’t we just drop common route + Bethly route on you guys out of nowhere instead of just common route? Simple. Bethly route is really really long. It’s absurdly long. It’s the second-longest route in GinHaru, trailing only slightly behind Mizuha, and it’s definitely a good deal longer than Rikka route, which was the longest route in Hoshi Ori. Bethly route is 41.4k lines (this is our usual inflated siglusengine line count) and Rikka route is 30.8k lines. So since Irru’s only just finished his second read-through of common route and hasn’t actually finished even his first read-through of Bethly route—which means I also haven’t read all of it in game yet—it’s still probably going to take a few more weeks of focused work to get that route in “releasable” state. We really didn’t want to wait any longer to announce/release because I was vaguely antsy the whole time about acting noncommittal about whether I was going to TL again or not, and I wanted to put ourselves back out there before the “will they TL again or not?” turned into a “they’re not coming back.” Not really sure why I had a particular opinion about the latter point, but it’s just how I felt.

But yeah so I figured the next best thing would be to just drop the common route patch out of nowhere and then have a progress report the next day with the second surprise of finding out that I’ve translated about a third of the entire VN already. Thought that would be fun for everyone involved, and would hopefully mollify anyone who was annoyed about us keeping mum this entire time.

Anyway that’s pretty much it for my excuse. To summarize, allow me to ask the simple question: “What has Tsurezure Scans been doing these past five months?” The answer is: “Being really uneconomical about our workflow while we’re busy and Trip is also stupid.”

—Same as usual, pretty much.

Oh also I did image editing for all the menu stuff at a pretty consistent pace while we were on our hiatus. I think the common route patch has something like 151 g00 files that get replaced. Fun fun.

I am now going to actually talk about the VN that I have committed myself to translating and have already translated an okay amount of. I’ll tell you when I’m about to talk actual spoilers for what I’ve TLed that is as of yet unreleased.

So what do I think of Gin’iro Haruka thus far? I quite like it. To tell the truth, I’ve always been somewhat apprehensive about GinHaru because there was never a singular heroine who really jumped out at me just from the VNDB page etc. in the same way Runa and Marika did for Hatsukoi and Hoshi Ori respectively. And yes, for those who are not too enmeshed in the Trip lore, Runa is the reason why I decided to do Hatsukoi. The Yukino love only appeared after I started.

Right so I mean Momiji is cute and all and Hinata’s kind of a breath of fresh air in terms of Tone Work’s heroines but there wasn’t really a heroine that I could really see myself relishing TLing. So that was kind of an amber flag of sorts for me (do amber flags exist? I was thinking if red flag was a term and all there might as well be an amber one) and again there was that slight hesitation over the fact that GinHaru was supposedly pretty long. That wasn’t to say I had any other options in particular for a next project—GinHaru is probably the only VN I would’ve considered doing at all after the fiasco that was Tsujidou.

But now that I’ve actually been working on it and reading it in game I find I really quite like it. The snowy setting is cosy in a way that’s really different from Hoshi Ori’s cosiness, and the overall middle school > high school > after arc structure really does feel like a great progression that leads to a very natural progression of character dynamics. I’ve found that I really like every single one of the heroines after seeing them and their interactions, so it turns out GinHaru is pretty much perfect for me. As usual with Tone Work’s moege. The soundtrack is pretty good, though I still think Hatsukoi’s got better peaks, and Yukito is a good protagonist.

Actual spoilers follow. Scroll really fast if you don’t want to see the images I guess. Or maybe Irru could put a link to skip over this part like he does sometimes.

The thing I think is the most major and probably welcome difference from Hoshi Ori (other than the obvious stuff like “there’s a middle school arc now”) is that each of the routes seem to be preeetty different all the way through. I think a common complaint about Hoshi Ori is that pretty much all of the routes revolved entirely around the Shionagi First Academy Tanabata Festival for the school arc. This led to a lot of samey elements throughout all of the routes. This is actually a [perhaps] problem in Hatsukoi as well—the cafeteria committee stuff is pretty much omnipresent, to the point that in Hatsukoi the “common route” files actually extended past heroine route branching point, with files that were common across all routes being peppered in throughout heroine routes.

So far I’ve TLed Bethly route and part of Hinata route, and the middle school arcs are pretty different between the two. The high school arcs are also really different because Yukito joins different clubs in each route. And then there’s the fact that Bethly’s route is wildly different in the after because Yukito goes to Toronto so he can attend the same Canadian university as her.

My opinion of Bethly route is that Bethly herself is somewhat [purposefully?] bland as a character. Which I think is because of the language barrier. She’s cute and all but my vague impression of her throughout a lot of the route is she’s kind of meek and just “always does her best for Yukito’s sake” etc. She has some stronger facets that come up later on in the high school arc that I’m thankful for, though. Another thing is that for some reason in Bethly route I feel like all of the h-scenes are just one after another and then there’s a huge span of no h-scenes at all. It’s paced weirdly and it made for an absolutely hellish stretch that lasted for like maybe a week and a half of nothing but h-scenes to TL.

BUT

Bethly’s route just comes alive in the after. And I think the reason for that is because Bethly’s after arc introduces three unique characters with sprites and everything who become friends with Yukito and Bethly at their university. These side characters have really great interactions and the group chemistry is just great. I really liked the whole dynamic, and it made me realize once more that Hakamada and Sugiyama really were some great idiots to have around in Hatsukoi. Maybe one thing I have against GinHaru is that Yukito has absolutely no friends he interacts with other than the heroines throughout middle school and high school, and it feels a bit empty. Having some other side characters to have warm and fun interactions with that don’t necessarily revolve around romance or potential romance would be—at least I think—welcome.

Judging by the character bios I’ve seen on VNDB and the official site, my guess is that every route in GinHaru has at least one unique side character. Alyssa the rival skater for Mizuha route, Akane the other theater club member in Momiji route, and so on. Just another example of GinHaru going out of its way moreso than Hoshi Ori to really differentiate the individual heroine routes from one another.

Another thing I have positive thoughts on is that Yukito is a slightly more interesting protagonist than Ryousuke. Ryousuke was seriously a kind of ubermensch when it comes to moege protagonism. He had very concrete career aspirations, he was really assertive, and he was athletic via soccer and whatever.

Yukito is also quite capable and he’s definitely an impressive specimen when it comes to being assertive and such. But there are a few times when Yukito has inner doubts, mostly stemming from the fact that his parents divorced when he was young and he kinda convinced himself that he was at least partially to blame and so he needs to be as good a boy as he can be so he doesn’t ever risk hurting others around him. This side of his character isn’t necessarily heavily focused on in Bethly route, but it does come up a few times.

Yukito comes across as kinda stiff and over-mature in common route—and there’s actually a pretty notable line in the common route where he muses to himself briefly about how he’s never really been good at showing overt emotion—and I found he loosened up and became a little more casual and genuinely easygoing in his temperament as the route went on. He’d crack more jokes and have something along the lines of banter—though he’s always ridiculously affable and unperturbed even through that.

The facet of Yukito that’s focused on more in Hinata route is that he doesn’t really have any specific aspirations or dreams for his future in the same way a lot of his peers do. So trying to find a drive for himself in that way so far seems to be a major part of his own character arc in the route. Relatable to a lot of people, probably.

I also like Hinata route a good amount so far, though I’ve yet to read any of it in game so far. Hinata is a good, precious, energetic, and assertive heroine who feels very different from Bethly’s quietness in a refreshing way. She’s essentially what Runa wanted to be.

Also Yuzuki is adorable. I’m just so mad that her route has actual fucking in it instead of just being a wholesome onii-chan simulator.

I think that’s pretty much it for what I think of GinHaru so far. Spoilers over. There are a few more things I like about it on a really mundane level like how they’ve made a few quality-of-life adjustments to their game engine. For instance, you can now choose to have in-game LIME conversations only advance on mouse click instead of the lightning-fast automatic speed that Hoshi Ori had.

There’s also the option to change the speed at which things like sprite movement and expression changes transition, so if you want to have a really surreal experience reading GinHaru you should try switching everything to “Instant” in that menu and marvel at how much you took those fades for granted.

So yeah I think that about wraps things up. I’m enjoying GinHaru thus far. It’s hyper cosy and I can’t wait to finally be allowed to listen to the entirety of the Tone Work’s Perfect Vocal Collection album and not have to skip the last third of the album every time.

Also in case you’re wondering about Tsuki no Kanata de Aimashou and whether or not I’ll be TLing it after GinHaru, I dunno. I wouldn’t bother asking me. I’m not suuuper interested in it because I really hate settings that are just “this is just like reality except there’s a slight supernatural element,” so this is something that I may actually be liable to be turned off of working on just on the virtue of being annoyed with people asking me about it. I might skim through it at some point to see if it’s palatable for me in the event that I don’t feel like ignoring it out of spite, though.

Also-also, as the release post said, we’re still going to be releasing a final-final patch for Hoshi Ori in the near future. I’m waiting on one last person to give me their fixes for their last route, and then we’ll release that last patch with hopefully everything fixed.

Okay. Bye now. Maybe I’ll do another one of these someday. I’m just going to stop even suggesting that I’m going to do these regularly, because I never do.

Trip out.