I just published an article titled Trackback Spam on Iroha Isshiki Hair Color Study. In that article, I covered a rather impious spam backlink to one of my family friendly Japanese 2D person hair color research articles. While that article never, to the best of my knowledge, attracted visitors looking for impious content, there was one case where I discovered that The New Leaf Journal did in fact benefit from web surfers with impious interests. I had intended to share this story a long time ago. Now having been reminded of it, I adopt the better late than never approach.
On December 21, 2022, I published a visual novel review titled Kaori After Story – Visual Novel Review. Kaori After Story was a sequel to a visual novel called ACE Academy, which I had reviewed several months earlier. My ACE Academy review had not been especially popular, so I had little-to-no reason to believe that a review of Kaori After Story, which depends on having played through Kaori’s route in ACE Academy, would be a big attraction. Do note that these games are no longer officially available.
My review of Kaori After Story unexpectedly began to see success in 2024, most notably with an end-of-year surge in December which saw it place 11th in the monthly ranking and move to 36th on the list of most-visited articles for 2024 as a whole (16 spots better than Iroha that year). Its rampage continued into 2025 and in January, my review of Kaori After Story became the first, and to date, only, article about a visual novel to lead a month-end ranking. Based in large part on its early 2025 performance (it weakened significantly in the second half of 2025), my Kaori After Story review ended up being the 9th most-visited article of 2025, which was, and will almost certainly be at the end of this year as well, the best yearly performance by one of my articles about visual novels.
I was initially unsure why my article about Kaori had, in December 2o24-January 2025, emerged as the most popular article on The New Leaf Journal after having done little of note in terms of attracting visitors from January 2022 through about June 2024. I accidentally stumbled upon the answer in mid-2025 when I was looking at data in my Google Search Console account.
(Note: Lest there is any misunderstanding, Google Search Console tracks Google Search data for The New Leaf Journal. This is distinct from Google Analytics. We do not use Google Analytics or any Google scripts on The New Leaf Journal. My analytics solution is Koko Analytics, an entirely local page counter with no third-party scripts.)
In Google Search Console, I saw a concerning “popular” search query which caused me to investigate further. I discovered that the five or six most popular Google Search queries surfacing my article about Kaori After Story involved some variety of “porn” or “hentai” and many of them appeared to be from India (according to Google). To be clear – there were many referrals from “clean” searches as well, but the top of the list indicated that many searchers found the article through what one could describe as non-family friendly queries.
Upon close review, I may have unintentionally invited Kaori After Story’s search success with the section of my review with the “Content non-warnings” header. While both ACE Academy and Kaori After Story have significant dating elements and feature college students, neither has “adult” content. Moreover, there is no “patch” for adult content (there are many visual novels that are free of adult content in stores but have optional patches which add (or restore) such content). Neither has what I would describe as anything beyond PG-13 (or “T” for Teen in ESRB terms) content, lest one bumps them up to “R” (or “M” for Mature in ESRB terms) for alcohol. But I anticipated that some people who come across Kaori After Story may be unsure about its family friendliness. Firstly, Steam, where both ACE Academy and Kaori After Story were sold at the time, now hosts many adult visual novels, most of which are probably, like these two, original English-language visual novels. Secondly, that Kaori After Story is entirely about the romantic relationship of Kaori and the protagonist and includes After Story in the title, readers could wonder whether it goes “beyond” the generally tame ACE Academy. I will note that its title was clearly inspired by the CLANNAD (CLANNAD is a very well-known Japanese visual novel with no 18+ material) spinoff sequel Tomoyo After: It’s a Wonderful Life, which, like Kaori After Story, focused on a romantic relationship between the protagonist and one of the girls from Clannad, and, in its original Japanese release, included adult content (the English localizations, and many of the Japanese releases, do not include adult content).
When I wrote the short “Content non-warning” section of my Kaori After Story review, my subjective intention was to reassure readers that it was not an adult visual novel. For one, The New Leaf Journal is, as always, a family website. (It was for that very reason that I did not publish a full review of LEAVEs in my long-running al|together visual novel review project.) For two, I will venture that most people who read The New Leaf Journal are not specifically interested in visual novels (Japanese, Japanese-inspired, or otherwise) and, to the extent they may be inspired to try one, would be more likely to take up one without adult content, which of course describes Kaori After Story. I will submit for the record that it did not occur to me that including a section explaining that Kaori After Story “has noting approximating adult content” and that the relationship depicted was more consistent with “bashful high school (if not middle school) anime characters” than college students, would lead to my review ranking in searches by people looking to see if Kaori After Story had adult content (most likely more often than not hoping it did).
Of course, it is entirely possible that Kaori After Story had a generalized unusual volume of search traffic corresponding with a Steam sale and that Google’s algorithm turned up my article, which is, to be sure, one of not too many full reviews of the novel (and almost certainly the most detailed), and its brief “moment” had more to do with external circumstances than my having specifically addressed its lack of adult content.
My ultimate take-away from the Kaori After Story saga is annoyance. I am not annoyed that it is my most successful visual novel review thanks in part internet searchers likely hoping that Kaori After Story has 18+ material. All jokes aside, my review does in fact provide credible and detailed information about the content in Kaori After Story. What annoys me is the fact that of all my visual novel reviews, this one is the most successful. Kaori After Story was fine, but it is effectively an ACE Academy fan game made by its developers. Neither ACE Academy nor Kaori After Story are available for sale anymore (they were pulled from Steam in early 2025 due to the closure of the studio which developed them). While I think my Kaori After Story review is a good entry in my growing collection of visual novel reviews, I have reviewed many better and more interesting visual novels, some of which touch on interesting visual novel history points or involved internet sleuthing. But as I learned when my joke article about having predicted a second season of The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten anime ended up being more successful than my long, detailed review of the first season of that anime, you never know what will happen after you hit publish.
