The Search for Otome: SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEQUEL!

RE: Alistair++, a free, full-length otome game.

Since the summer's begun I've had lots of time on my hands. Thus far, I've rewatched almost all of the episodes of The Office (US version, if you care to know) available on Netflix. One would think I'd have done more than that, but sitting in front of a computer marathoning a show I've already watched takes up a significant amount of time.

So there's that. And I've also been playing a lot of Chain Factor.

Despite my packed schedule, I've been doing research on one thing I haven't looked at in a long time: Otome games! Free ones, specifically. It seems like there have been quite a few new English options to be released since I last did a post, though that also could mean I didn't do a good job researching them in the first place.

I was originally going to do another big post, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that it didn't make sense to put it all together in just one entry. So in the coming weeks, look out for reviews and other opinionated pieces on just otome games! It'll be really swell, and hopefully a little different from what you'd typically find on blogs dedicated to otome. It's not what Manga Meditation's about anyway, and those blogs already do their job way better than I could.

Speaking of which, here are a few links to games, developers, and other otome miscellanea:

The Search for Otome

Heileen, one of the few available English otome titles.

Last semester, Polecat, Starfish, and I found a number of ways of avoiding our always mounting work. In-between playing flash games (Winter Bells, anyone? Drench?), watching movies, reading the news, baking cookies, watching Buffy, and knitting, we sometimes fell into our fangirly, Manga Meditation-ish ways.

While I personally fell off the manga reading train, Polecat and Starfish continued to diligently log onto Manga Fox and One Manga and whatever other scanlation aggregates on the Internet. The three of us also continued our K and J drama nights; we're almost done with Hana Yori Dango 2, by the way.

Starfish took it further and began to delve deeper into the girly comics universe: Dating sims. If you know your shoujo manga, chances are you've at least heard of dating sims, and if you're even more dedicated, otome games.