April 2026 — DLsite haul

Twelve titles in April, all visual novels, all bought on impulse during the spring sale. Here’s what I pulled, what I actually started, and what’s still wrapped.

April was a bad month for my wishlist and a good month for DLsite’s quarterly numbers. The spring sale ran for ten days and I caved on day two. I’m not going to pretend I needed any of these — I have 187 unread visual novels already, by my own count — but I keep telling myself the act of buying a game is part of how I read it. Sale price, the little checkout sound, dragging the icon onto my desktop. It’s a ritual. The book is bought before the book is opened.

Below is the ledger. Prices are post-sale, in JPY. Affiliate links go through DLsite’s reseller program — if you click and buy, it kicks a small percentage back to me, and the price you pay doesn’t change. I only list things I actually bought.

The haul

• 01 ホシガリ — ¥2,420 — DLsite
• 02 夜が降りるまえに — ¥1,980 — DLsite
• 03 硝子の図書館 — ¥1,540 — DLsite
• 04 彼女と、最後の夏 — ¥2,200 — DLsite
• 05 雨上がりの図鑑 — ¥1,320 — DLsite
• 06 三月のラジオ — ¥1,650 — DLsite
• 07 灰色の海岸線 — ¥1,100 — DLsite
• 08 言葉の標本 — ¥1,980 — DLsite
• 09 終電 23:47 — ¥880 — DLsite
• 10 六畳の天文学 — ¥1,320 — DLsite
• 11 灯台までの距離 — ¥1,100 — DLsite
• 12 再会、四月 — ¥950 — DLsite

Five of these are by circles I’ve followed for years. Three are completely new to me — picked up because someone on the Tethea Discord wouldn’t shut up about them. Two were rec’d by a translator I met at a doujin event last year. The last two are sequels to things I never finished, which is the most embarrassing kind of buying, and the most honest.

“You’re not buying a game. You’re buying the version of yourself who finishes it.” — something a friend said over yakiniku, possibly drunk, definitely correct.

What I actually started

Three of the twelve. The first one — Hoshigari (#01 above) — I started the night of the purchase and stayed up until 3am with. Translation went through Claude Sonnet, latency hovered around 800ms, missed exactly one line in the prologue (a regional verb form Tethea’s translator hadn’t seen). Tagged it for the eval set, sent it off, slept poorly.

The second I bounced off in twenty minutes. Pacing was wrong — too much of the protagonist explaining their own emotional state to themselves. I’m sure it gets better at the second chapter break. I will probably never find out. The third I’m five hours into and want to write a separate post about; that one’s coming.

On the logistics of buying things you can’t read

Half the difficulty of importing JP visual novels isn’t translation, it’s discoverability. DLsite’s search is fine if you already know the circle. It’s hostile if you’re trying to find something like something else. I’d kill for a ‘people who bought X also bought’ that wasn’t entirely populated by R-rated content. (Tethea will eventually have something like this; for now I rely on Discord and a private spreadsheet.)

The other half is payment. JCB cards work, most international Visa works, and PayPal continues to be the most reliable option for accounts under a certain age. I keep a separate card just for hobby purchases so the monthly total stays honest.

Total damage

12 titles · April 2026 — ¥18,440 / ~$118 USD

Cheaper than a single AAA on Steam. More text than I will read in a year. Worth it.