Despite all the shoujo manga and cute bishonen floating around, there is one singular element that defines the otome genre: romance visual novels. The simple explanation is a "Choose Your Adventure" book with pretty men and lots more love love time. Really, it could be considered a multi-path, 'game' version of shoujo manga. Now, there are an excess of otome games in Japan. But naturally the games that are translated are very, very few. Even though there is always Hanako Games for English made, the only place I've seen to buy affordable translated visual novels is jlist/jbox. And then, there is one true otome game (YoJinBo) and two yaoi games. There have been some rumors of big names like Idea Factory or Otomate translating some of their games but I'm not going to get my hopes up. So, at the moment, I can only drool over the games I want to see brought over. I think the single game I want is Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan (or just Hakuouki). I'm already a total sucker for samurai but these men are just beautiful. All I can do now is cross my fingers that in this case Otomate will translate Hakuouki.
