Unboxing: ef ~ A Fairy Tale of the Two - Limited Edition (Visual Novel) [NSFW]

Time to experience some feels as we take a look at a special release from visual novel publisher MangaGamer for the ef series!

Disclaimer - This Visual Novel is an eroge and is only suitable for a very mature audience (meaning only for ages 18 and over). Some of the photos below may contain elements that are Not Safe For Work.

Took a while to arrive but it looks like I was lucky enough to grab a physical copy of the ef ~ A Fairy Tale of the Two visual novel. The game was released digitally a while back (like a few years I think) but Minori allowed MangaGamer to bring out a physical version in December last year, however the release was limited to a certain amount of copies and it's suspected to be sold out (despite the main site saying otherwise).

Some of you are probably wondering why the game is rated by the ESRB. It's apparent that Minori have requested MangaGamer to get it rated in order for the company to release a physical copy of the games. Minori are quite paranoid about the western laws and how the visual novels are handled in the market ever since controversy was in the media over the Rapelay game. MangaGamer announced they'll take responsibility for any bad issues that would occur to the customers or anything related so that Minori won't get any bad reputation, there's more about it from Siliconera if you want to know more. It resulted with an AO rating which is fine (no surprise though) given it's only for PC and private use (strangely enough, 'Sexual Violence' was mentioned in the ESRB specs so I'm actually curious).

UPDATE: Added/Fixed some details above.

The Limited Edition package contains the physical copy of ef ~ The First Tale and ef ~ The Latter Tale in addition to a 'Visual Collection' artbook with tons of art and character details and a sticker to promote Minori's latest visual novel *eden which is now on Steam. For obvious reasons the artbook contains eroge images but I have checked each page (when I was watching SlightlyOtaku's unboxing it sounded like the pages were pretty extreme) and it's mainly topless or semi-naked pictures that would be used on a dakimakura. There's only one major page that minors need to stay away from but that was to explain the difference between the original Japanese version and the MangaGamer version. The game apparently comes with two different options (Original Minori script and Alternative NNL script) with one of them allowing faster transition speeds and styling.

Visual Novel Specs:

Format: PC

Language: English text, Japanese voices

Exclusive: Yes (In English)

DRM: Free

Eroge Content: Yes

PC Requirement Specs:

OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1

CPU: Celeron 566MHz

Memory: 256MB (512MB on Vista)

Resolution: 800x600

Colors: 16bit

Sound: DirectSound

Graphics: VRAM 32MB

HDD Space: 8GB

DirectX: 9.0c

And that's pretty much it for me to explain this ef package, honestly it looks great so if you want a physical copy of these games then I suggest you go ahead and find one immediately as they apparently sold out already. I managed to order a copy from United Publications and it took about 2 weeks to arrive. If you can't access the visual novel but want to experience the story, studio SHAFT have done an anime adaptation of both ef games in the form of ef ~ A Tale of Memories and ef ~ A Tale of Melodies which is available on Blu-ray & DVD from Sentai Filmworks and Hanabee Entertainment (North America and Australia respectively) and as a DVD only release from MVM Entertainment (United Kingdom).

Before I show some snapshots of some of the pages in the artbook, I should probably apologise for getting my actual hand caught in the shot. You see, like some artbooks that come with other sets this artbook was quite tough getting some photos out of it unless I intervened. No exposed nudity is shown below aside from the fanservice type (similar to the Dekamori Senran Kagura set and various ecchi Funimation sets I own). There are 120 pages in this Visual Collection artbook.

ef ~ A Fairy Tale of the Two Limited Edition was released by MangaGamer for SRP $59.95 (£40.00) from December 24th 2014.