Announcements from Anime Expo

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Today we’re proud to announce several new acquisitions and partners via Anime Expo! For those who couldn’t attend, you can catch up on all the amazing news below!

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Our first big announcement for the night is our new partnership with St. Michael to bring A Kiss For The Petals -Remembering How We Met- to Steam! The newest chapter in the famous A Kiss For The Petals franchise, –Remembering How We Met- takes a long look back at Risa and Miya’s relationship, telling the tale of how they first met and came to be lovers.

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For those who are new to the franchise, this series is a must-follow for every fan of yuri. Focusing on the relationships between two girls who fall in love with each other, A Kiss For The Petals stays true to the romance between two women. Though adult scenes are plentiful, this series is characterized by the charming, natural development of relationships as the heroines go on dates, try to steal moments alone to express their love, and bond with each other in a very tender fashion.

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Remembering How We Met is a great chapter for those who new to the series as it tells the brand new story of Risa and Miya’s romance while looking back on the history of their time in St. Michael’s Girls’ School. Their story is unique, even within the franchise, as Risa and Miya were initially antagonistic toward each other. Though both are smart in different ways, they’re almost polar opposites—Risa is studious and works hard for her achievements while Miya seeks the freedom to pursue her own interests, her innate intelligence making class a bore for her. How did love manage to blossom between such rivals? Find out as they recount the tale.

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Our next major announcement is Umineko When They Cry from 07th Expansion, creators of Higurashi When They Cry!

In Umineko, the player will join Battler, a scion of the wealthy Ushiromiya family, as he attends their annual reunion on the island of Rokkenjima for the first time in six years. However, that night, a disaster falls upon the Ushiromiya family, and they all begin to fear for their very lives. Battler’s cousin Maria believes the golden witch Beatrice has returned and committed murder through magic, but Battler doesn’t believe in such a fantasy. Still, could anyone in his family really have killed their own kin for the sake of riches? You know both the situation leading up to the incident and its tragic result, but the course of events is an enigma, and no one willing to share the whole truth. What really happened on Rokkenjima that night?

Fans of Higurashi will already be familiar with Umineko‘s unique manner of storytelling—over the span of eight different chapters the player will experience several different ways in which events of the murder may have played out. None are certain. All bear truth. Will you be able to piece together the real story of what happened that day by the climactic finale? Accompanied by a soundtrack worthy to deem this prose a ‘sound novel’ just by itself, this enticing tale is a must-read for anyone who enjoys thinking outside the box.

We’ll be working with the team at Witch Hunt to update the translation for Umineko alongside this new, official release on our platform and Steam. We’ll also be including new character artwork for this upcoming release! We plan to follow R07’s episodic release system with Umineko in order to to make it accessible with the new art as soon as possible, just as we have for Higurashi.

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Our third announcement is even more special, since we’re announcing this title first, before its major announcement Japan. Together with Frontwing, we’re proud to announce our acquisition of the brand new PC version of Himawari: The Sunflower featuring all-new artwork by Kuuchuu Yousai, artist of the Angel Djibril series!

As a complete visual remake of Blank Note’s popular hard sci-fi romance, Himawari: The Sunflower tells a tale of love, tragedy, and sacrifice played out on two stages – Earth, and outer space. Enter Hinata Youichi, a young high school student and sole survivor of a tragic spaceplane crash that robbed him of both his family and memories roughly two years prior. Amnesiac but steady in his new life, Youichi manages to find solace in surrounding himself with friends: Amamiya Ginga, the eccentric son of a world-famous astronaut, as well as the tomboyish, yet ultimately kind-hearted quasi-childhood friend, Saionji Asuka. Everything changes, however, when an unidentified object crash-lands in Youichi’s hometown and he meets Aries, a mysterious – and similarly amnesiac – young girl from outer space. Who is Aries? What happened on that fateful day two years ago? And what secrets lurk behind the accident that turned Youichi’s life upside down?

Himawari: The Sunflower paints Blank Note’s highly-regarded classic in wonderful new colors, featuring brand new artwork by Kuuchuu Yousai and a script written by Go. Explore Youichi’s struggle in coming to terms with his lost memories while an entirely different story is revealed to have taken place far beyond the clouds, in the chilling void of outer space. What starts out as a young man’s light-hearted high-school adventure soon takes a more serious turn as both Youichi and the reader are led to face a sobering revelation: that not everything is as it seems at first glance.

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Last but not least, we’re proud to announce our new partnership with Alice Soft! Famous for their gameplay-focused eroge such as the Rance and Toushin Toshi series, we’re excited to be adding such a fun and sexy partner to our lineup! Our first title with Alice Soft will be Beat Blades Haruka, a successor to Beat Angel Escalayer.

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Haruka Takamori is a ninja of Crescent Moon clan, come to the present in pursuit of an evil organization, the Noroi Faction, who seeks to spread terror and resurrect the great Noroi, an evil creature they draw their powers from. Once in the present though, Haruka falls in Takamaru Ikusabe, the descendant of Crescent Moon clan’s original master who inherited the ability to grant superhuman powers to the Crescent Moon ninjas by——having sex with them! Can you have enough sex with Haruka to save the world from the Noroi Faction?!

Beat Blades Haruka is also an RPG at heart—you have up to 99 days, with three phases each day to try and stop the enemy ninjas from invading the town and completing their final plan. During the first two phases you’ll choose from different actions (including a wide variety of sex acts) to train Haruka and improve her stats for battle that night in the third phase. At night you’ll use the skills and stats you hammered into Haruka to fight off enemy ninjas attacking the city or to raid their castle headquarters and drive back their advances! Be careful, though—go in unprepared and you might lose, causing Haruka to be ravished by the enemies! With well over 80 different H-scenes and multiple varieties to each, this game delivers a ton of high quality sex delivered with great art and voice acting in addition to its gameplay!

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18 Comments

  1. WTF…..Alice Soft X_X
    How did you manage that?
    This is probably the biggest suprise 2015 for me

  2. Still waiting for White Album 2:( but really excited for Himawari:)

  3. Petals news is always great news! Even if I’m already getting slightly lost in the series after all this time. 😀

  4. Sono Hana! I guess this was kind of spoiled when it was announced last week on their radio show, but still exciting to see it confirmed. Hopefully this leads to the entire series being brought over. A good year for Yuri anyway.

    Himawari seems a great pickup, I’ll definitely be grabbing a copy. And since it’s already been translated.. maybe we might see it this year (one can dream)?

    And finally, Alice Soft?! Who did you sleep with/pay off to make this happen? Did previous successes catch their eye? Certainly the biggest announcement of the year for me. Like 75% of their catalogue are games I’d want translated. I think Beat Blades Haruka is a fitting introduction to Alice Soft and certainly caters for the ero in eroge.

  5. Based MG. Very good announcements!
    Expect my support on them.

  6. I wonder if MangaGamer is planning release Episode 1 of Umineko before they have released all of the chapters of Higurashi. The first ??? of Umineko spoils a bit the significance of a certain character’s importance to the plot of Higurashi.

  7. Kudos to you guys for bringing Alicesoft into the fold. Really looking forward to all four announcements, especially Haruka because we need ninja eroge…especially a certain T+A series (hint hint)

  8. Four really good announcements. I think this is my favorite collection of announcements from any convention you’ve been at. I hope this A Kiss For The Petals game does well enough that we get more in the future. I was really happy to see that someone asked at the panel if there would be more yuri games in the future and the answer was “Yes”.

  9. You guys are freaking amazing; Umineko, SonoHana and AliceSoft, this was better than E3

  10. The best game announcements were at Anime Expo this year. All of these titles are great in their own way – personally I’m partial to Umineko and intrigued by Himawari. I hope all of them do well!

  11. End1essSorcerer

    Umineko?! I was not expecting that but as a huge When They Cry fan I’m really glad, especially that you will work with the people from Witch Hunt for a new translation because I really enjoyed their old one (and considering the nature of the series this will probably help your new translation quite a bit). So even if I have physical copies of both arcs this will be an instant buy for me.

    Though as Chaos_Alfa commented, while the series are mostly not connected there are some characters that spoil events from Higurashi (especially one reveal from Episode 7/Minagoroshi-Hen) so you might want to look over that before setting a release date.

  12. Those are some really nice announcements! I’m super happy to see Beat Blades Haruka and Kiss For The Petals -Remembering How We Met-. I’ll be buying those for sure!

    I’ll probably buy Himawari too. Umineko is a maybe. I still never bought Higurashi, so I’m iffy on that one. I really need to get Higurashi sometime.

  13. Any chance for Beat Angel Escalayer? I’m fine with the original or reboot version, will be twice happier if you can do both XD

    Good work for getting Haruka from Alicesoft!

  14. Well, those announcements are a bit underwhelming to me.
    “Umineko” is nice. I like Higurashi quite a bit and therefore am interested in everything 07th Expansion has to offer as long as it has bearable artwork 😉
    The “outer space part” of the story of “Himawari” could be interesting, but the vague description offered here doesn’t really peak my interest.
    I don’t care about the other two titles.

  15. cant deside if happy or sade about Alice Soft
    kind happy sind you got it
    very sadesind all good game from fan translate died
    and that it sooo boring looking
    guess keep managgame on no game worth buyng list
    hopefull som good title will com up next year or somthing
    got a nof buying all managgame titles after
    (Kara no Shojo.softseal)
    but i will keep my fingercross for som good tittle from Alice Soft
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  16. Really happy to see all these awesome announcements.
    Also really suprised that you got a Alice soft titel this Year, really love playing them, but are always getting kinda butt hurt from them because your favorite charector always ends up geting raped or something, when you least aspect it .-.

  17. HOLY SHIT YOU ACTUALLY GOT ALICE SOFT!!! Man talk about burying the lead…leaving that to last was evil evil evil!!! Last but not least yeah…funny. Now just get all the Rance games and I will never have money again…

  18. Pingback: Himawari: Pebble In The Sky – Kanj's reviews and thoughts

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