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The creator of the site was a gal named Aaeru, haha. She hasn't been around for a few years now. Me, Nosebleed and Down are global moderators, and unless extraordinary circunstances come to be, one of us will usually be the final voice on any moderation-related issue. You shouldn't really post erotic CGs with lolis of any type, even as a link, hm. You're right that it's how we normally handle H content, though. Feel free to discuss your favorite loli characters as much as you'd like! Fetishes are a bit more complicated, but if they're relevant to a VN you're talking about it should be fine. I'm a lolicon myself and I'm pretty sure everyone knows about it, and I think it's fine to mention both your fetishes and that you happen to enjoy lolis in a thread if that's pertinent. Members just shouldn't go out of their ways to talk about the hottest ways to do lolis in or whatever. Don't worry, bans are pretty unnusual, all in all. Permanent bans even more so. Also don't worry about making a bad impression, hm. If anything, throughly reading the rules beforehand and asking about them when they look unclear is something I wish all newcomers did, haha.

>not skype

karakara

That's normal In my case I just kept on looking for the definition of a certain word over and over. Repetition is the key. I know it's tiring but learning is done by doing the same thing again and again. Narration tends to be difficult to read. I suggest just getting the gist/thought of the narration at first and focus more on the dialogue, which is a lot easier to understand because of voices.

I bulldozed through it. I did flashcards on the side but I learned most of my vocabulary by looking up words over and over until it clicked. Selectively choose which ones to focus on. Glance on the complicated ones just to get the gist (or save them in anki for later) and focus on basic looking everyday words. It's going to be HELL the first several hours of gameplay. I remember having to constantly look up most of the words in a sentence to being able to read 40~ lines without needing a dictionary (within maybe 10+ hours of doing the method). If that gets tedious vary your methods for learning the vocab. Maybe watch a video or do pictographs. The VN method is hardest in the beginning so do your best to get out of the hump. After I finished my 1st VN, which took me a year, I knew as much as half of level 2 JLPT (around 600 kanjis maybe).

Title says it all. I am new to posting on the internet, and can count on my hands the amount of times I have done so (in text). I do lurk quite a bit though, and have found myself coming back to this website as well as MAL time and time again. I don't exactly know what to say, as I am new to this, so I'll just spew out random non-inquiries. I have played a handful of visual novels, among them NekoPara, Say no Uta, Kara no Shoujo, School Days HQ, Steins;Gate, Imouto Paradise, and Littlewitch Romanesque. I greatly respect and follow the blogger and forum member known as Sanahtlig for his reasoning and argumentative skills and for his tempered attitude. I ran out of things to list (and need to sleep). I do have one question though. what exactly are the ranks for? I assume they are related to the amount of posts you post. Is it a linear progression, aka you just receive a title? Or do you have a selection to choose from? I am currently a newbie, and I know there is a "Loli Protector" and "Philosopher" and a bunch others. I want one. Can I be Jesus (joking please don't kill me)? Oh, and if anybody is a jerk in this thread, just be so incredibly nice to them they die of giggles. *I don't know if I am speaking too informally or too friendly to you guys. I don't usually post, so cut me an unreasonably large amount of slack*

If you are okay with yuri then I strongly recommend Nurse Love Addiction. It's a very good read.

Depend on your taste I think. Although looking it objectively, both of Tomoyo After and Harmonia were getting quite good average scores. But if I may give some suggestion, perhaps you could try Nurse Love Addiction if you okay with yuri.

Use something like jisho.org instead. You can put in a whole line and it will make highly accurate guesses as to what all the kanji romanize to. (Just be sure you know what's a proper name, it can't recognize those at all.) Definitely don't even try Google Translate, it doesn't do that thing anymore that it used to do where it would highlight part of the source sentence when you hover over parts of the translation anymore (I guess cause that's not how it works anymore).

makes sense...

I would say no. as most of the time the translation is pure garbage and even more puzzling than the original Japanese line.

This is actually very good advice. Don't tire yourself out with trying to understand 100% of the text, down to every word and every nuance. Just pay attention to the words being used and work with what you understand. Vocabulary is always the biggest obstacle, if only because of the sheer amount of it - but if you keep at it, eventually you'll just be able to read things without having to translate them in your head, whether you understand every single word or not. Axanael can be a bit difficult at times, but if you just power through the short but possibly confusing beginning with narration, you'll get a VN that's almost entirely composed of nothing but voiced lines. You can just treat it like watching an anime, with the advantage of being able to see the original 'subtitles' all the time, with the ability to look up the words you don't know easily.

Welcome to Overwatch here's hoping to fight with or against you in the future.

same here. we pretty much learned the same amount of japanese too (hiragana, katakana, 550+ kanji and some vocab). i tried to read (had a quick look) at Love Revenge and gave up after an hour or so. even if you understand every word and/or use a dictionary, every sentence feels like a small puzzle you have to stitch together in the right order.

I love you, @Hanako

Spent the day studying Japanese and playing eroge. 3D sucks anyways.

Wait, are you the creator of the website? If so, good job. Also, I know this is a very fine line I am walking here, but I felt it necessary to clarify your rules concerning loli (just understand, not debate them). As I understand it, one is not allowed to talk about the ethics of the subject, whether it is right or wrong. That is for another time and place where people aren't so strongly divided. As I also understand it, one is not allowed t post sexually explicit pictures on this site at all, but must post links to them with warnings that they are NSFW. I am assuming that this is the same for loli content as well. that is also a good idea. What is less clear is what we are allowed to discuss in connection to the term "loli." I am assuming w can't vividly describe any sexual scenario in any fashion, as that would be text porn. But am I allowed to discuss my favorite loli characters? Or fetishes? Not trying to push my luck, I just think it is really important to get out of the way, as I don't want to end up on the wrong side of a ban because I didn't understand the rules. Sorry if that gave me a bad first impression, but I felt that it was best to ask, as I like the character archetype and personally don't feel qualms saying so. Oh, and all of those visual novels are among my absolute favorites, except for Littlewitch Romanesque, which is very endearing for me, but not reaching the level of the others. Many of the characters didn't feel as fleshed out to me. the other ones were also a bit darker and more realistic (in a dark, gritty, "Last of Us" sort of way). And I loved the art style of NekoPara.

Today felt like the plot of some bad TV show. At work my boss call everyone into a meeting room and gave everyone personalized chocolate hearts. Everyone except me... With everyone looking at me embarrassed and awkward she tells me "Don't worry I have something special for you." She then hands me info on the available severance packages. But hey, chocolate is on discount tomorrow!

Well it is one of those games in which you get to rename the protagonist, I kinda take that as an admission from the developers that they didn't even try.

It's all a marketing gimmick for companies to try and exploit you for cash anyways, in a sense being single and not doing anything special during valentines is like being part of a communist rebellion........ shut up I know I sound pathetic

It's already the 15th here... since 15 minutes ago... phew

I know MangaGamer probably loves the fact that there are no voices. Voices increase the cost of licensing games by an absurd amount.

My definition of a kamige is 'technically superlative+enjoyable'. Either one alone isn't going to be good enough to get that label from me anymore...

There's no point in stuffing kanji into your brain, I see it as a waste of time. You know, when you're learning a new language and find a word you don't know about, you use a dictionary... at least in my generation, but what do I know? I'm an old geezer anyway. It's far better to start with the syllabaries and basic grammar, in order to accustom yourself to they way Japanese sentences are presented, and to identify the glue that ties all words together -hiragana is far more common than kanji in volume and some words are comprised completely of hiragana, like prepositions and so. And maybe it's just me but after being exposed to dozens of anime and VNs you learn basic vocabulary, some expressions and even accents. With VNs though the bad thing is that you'll mostly be exposed to girl's talk, and Japanese varies considerably depending on who speaks it. Then again, about kanji, there are certain ways of identifying them when searching for their meaning (in dictionaries, most likely). Another good idea is make a list of the more common words and create your own quick reference dictionary for regular use, maybe in a notebook. I warn, however, that drawing kanji takes some guts, for me is easy for some reason (well I started getting acquainted with kanji at 16 or so, but never did serious study).

I remember being so exhausted when I jumped into text hooking jp vns that I could only last for an hour at a time. Powering through is a real option, and things will definitely get easier with time as your vocabulary expands. With that said, if you really hate it, there are other ways of getting vocabulary - I've heard people use anki decks of 3000 core japanese words, which might be helpful if you hate what you're doing right now enough. I can't give you anything specific, but you should be able to find something with enough research. All in all, don't be too discouraged if it's hard right now - it's normal, and you'll be learning a lot.

Looking up words is how you learn them. You have to start somewhere, of course it will be difficult at first - but there's not much you can do about that other than just push through. Either you will be learning word after word from textbook texts, or you will be learning a word after word from VNs - it doesn't really make much difference in the end, other than the former being a bit easier but potentially boring (and price-y), and the later being harder, but more fun. Just take it slow and slowly build up your vocabulary, it will only get easier the further you get. At least with VNs you have the advantage of text-hooking, making dictionary checks nearly instantaneous.

"I'm buying a new grill for Valentine's" is not supposed to sound this off.

Do some vocab exercises that include grammar and stuff... and just read a lot.. a whole lot. Also if you start out and only learn Japanese for VNs than kanji is not that important as you can parse it. Oh and you should read easy VNs. You might want to check this thread out. Good luck!

Started watching Kokoro Connect as well. This is great so far!

Am I the only one slightly disappointed with current community line-up? It's also a pity they haven't posted a whole list of requests into a single list, along with the number of votes; would be fun to skim over and check, whether someone else voted for the same works as I did. As if all vn's would suddenly be devoid of romance and sex VN's completely without any sort of romantic developement are a rarity. It may not be the primary focus within the story, but it's always there to a bigger or lesser extent.

Funbag Fantasy, I believe, ranked in previous years under its original name, Kyonyuu Fantasy. That might have been one of the reasons that they licensed it in the first place. I'm glad to see it did well; it's always good to see anticipated demand (from a survey like this) translate into real success. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes they ask you to build it, and you do, and then they don't come. Also, nobody seems to have commented on the very suspicious "typo": dominant (with interior italics in the original). "nan" must be some kind of clue. I don't see anything on the results list that would have the acronym NAN. Any well known games with that abbreviation? Why can't they just post little slivers of the covers of unannounced games? That way we can find out what their plans are before they announce them. I foresee no way this could backfire.

Just finished Haibane Renmei. It was a beautiful story of redemption with angel themes without being openly spiritual or religious as such. It had virtually no themes or tropes from any of the common anime productions of today and was nicely paced without being too slow despite being quite old. It was also really nice to hear Motoko's VA (from Love Hina) in a big role again; I recognised her immediately. My only complaint was what I watched was BD resolution but clearly only about 480p so it had upscaling artifacts which were worse than just watching DVD res. Nonetheless I highly recommend it if you're looking for something different. It's like... Angel beats without the deceptive action and artificial soppy romance. Also I've started watching gintama... with my wife, since I have no intention of watching the whole thing through so far and then going back and rewatching it with her, so it's an experiment for both of us. We've made it 5 episodes in and so far it's okay and seems to be getting funnier as it progresses. Having survived that many episodes so far, I'm hopeful we'll both get an extended watch out of it.

welcome back and good luck, almost done

Re:Lief winning in best scenario ?!? Semms the best chance for winning in that category is not having one. Personal favourites are a bit low, but still higher than expected.

[14:03:38] Yeah Way 【一車】: [14:02] Texas Dice: Fucking fence-sitter [14:04:31] Yeah Way 【一車】: You're either convicted to being a ナイスガイ or you rape her. [14:04:37] Vokoca: I only decide based on how much it would put my own ass at risk w [14:04:44] Yeah Way 【一車】: lel [14:04:52] Vokoca: I'm not a nice guy nor a rapist, I'm a fucking coward [14:04:57] Texas Dice: Anyone wanna become radical? [14:04:58] Vokoca: That's what I am w [14:09:55] Hanako 百合: I'm not a nice guy nor a rapist, I'm a fucking coward - Vokoca 2017 [14:10:06] Texas Dice: (cwl) [14:10:07] Vokoca: Yeah put that on my grave I needed to post it @Vokoca ww

To provide some context, Deemo is a Taiwanese rhythm game developed for the iOS and Android by Rayark Games. For the most part, I think this game has escaped the notice from most western otaku. Which honestly would make sense, since it isn't marketed towards Otaku like other rhythm games (notably Love Live and Osu). In fact, the game play is arguably not even the primary purpose of the game. Rather, the songs serve the broader purpose of telling a story together with the visuals. The word "visual novel", by its name suggests a story that emphasizes the visual aspect to express the story. Taking this loose understanding of the term (and not the conventional definition), Deemo certainly qualifies as an interesting example. In fact, Deemo mostly relies on its visuals and audio to convey its story, hardly using much text at all. This aids the experience excellently as the story is quite simple, and most of the experience is emotional. And nothing conveys emotions as well as music. The game begins in a cut scene showing falling sheet music, and a mysterious figure that resembles a walking shadow (Deemo). The next thing we see is Deemo peacefully playing a piano, when he is suddenly interrupted when a girl falls from the sky into his house. Catching her, they then ponder on the best way to return her where she came from (in the sky). It is then that they discover a little sapling growing on the ground, and they realize that when it grows into a large tree, she could climb it up. Thankfully, the tree grows through the power of music, and that is where the game play becomes relevant. The tree grows by playing music, but in order to keep it growing you need to keep discovering new music. This is where the other key game mechanic becomes important. For the most part, you unlock new songs when the tree reaches certain heights. But usually you can only get the music by finding it. So you have to search through Deemo's house to find new songs. In doing so, you discover all sort of other clues that provide hints about Deemo's true identity. As you search through Deemo's house, you are not only discovering new music to progress the game, but also learning about the weird world you are in. Deemo's house, is essentially the whole world in this universe. By exploring, you will inevitably ask yourself 3 questions. Who is Deemo, who is the masked lady, and what is this world? Visual Novels typically use choice structures as a means to direct the story. Similarly, but also quite differently, you guide the story and its progression in Deemo through exploration of the limited areas. There is not much to explore, just like how VNs usually only provide a few branching choices, which provides the same sense of confinement that VNs give. You are given some room to explore and deviate, but you are mostly restricted to a few places. The art cover for each song also adds a level of storytelling as each picture captures an image of Deemo's and the girl's relationship developing. The song itself provides the mood to interpret the picture. In other words, the song is essentially the words. Or another way of thinking about it is that each song could be broken down into musical notes and transcribed on paper as sheet music. Well that sheet music, is the script to this story. The game focuses all the comprehensive aspects of the story to imagery and exploration (with minimal use of text), allowing for character development and all things emotional to be expressed by the music as opposed to text. And while narrative can always communicate plot points more efficiently than music, music trumps narrative in terms of emotional expression. And ultimately Deemo's story is more focused on mood, than it is on plot. The game wants the player to use their imagination to string the plot together by using images and the music as the core tools to do so. In much the same way that novelists want the reader to use their imagination when visualizing descriptions. In this way, I think this music game, captures the true heart of music; emotional expression. The title of this article suggests that I think that Deemo is in some way a visual novel, and using the term loosely, that is true. As I briefly mentioned before, the term “visual novel” implies a story that is primarily expressed through visuals (this is of course ignoring the historical context to how the term was coined in the first place). And I have seldom seen any story that has relied on the visual aspect as much as Deemo. The game almost solely relies on images to express what is going on, and music to infuse emotional meaning to those images. And it is truly impressive how effective a story can be told in this limited way. To the extent where by the end of this journey, I was in tears. And when I return back to replay certain songs, or to view certain cut scenes, the feelings I initially felt are still there.