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Will just post this here but just like I suspected, the reason why Noratotos are not getting 18+ versions are because they want to keep the company, Tokyotoon, all-ages. If you take a look at their new game's website you can see it says it will release on Steam with English and Chinese versions too. It will also only be all-ages with no 18+ version even made. https://uyragnigotocr.am/

Spice and Wolf (11 Volumes) - The first light novel I ever tried reading. I brought a load of volumes during a holiday a couple of years ago, and it became my sole source of entertainment. Homely entertainment, anyway. As a result, I ate the volumes up in a week, reading 10 or 11 of them. It, uh, exhausted me, to say the least, and also ensured I failed to commit most of them to memory. Especially with the complicated topics that were oft breached and the Yen Press translation that I thought made it harder to parse for a plebeian such as I. I like the character interactions and am okay with the economics, so I should love this, but I found them rather dense. And now, when I try to restart at volume 12 three years later, I quickly realise that the gap creates issues of both memory and engagement. But every time I see the volume 16 cover I feel compelled to try again...! I should try and make it daily reading on the train or some such. In Another World With My Smartphone (5 Volumes) - As the translator, which I follow on twitter, often talked about his work on this series, I felt tempted to try it. Indeed, it tackles a lot of themes I really should enjoy. And I did, as I read it. The main character finds romance and there's actual development on that department; He's overpowered and free to do whatever he feels like; He's a "political player", even though the politics here are more hilarious than anything else. By all means I should love it, and yet there's one big problem: Not enough focus on character interactions. There's loads of characters, and all of them have moments, but with such a large cast a lot of them seem to be lacking a personality, or, more specifically, seem to only display it whenever the author feels it is convenient. This is a recurring issue I have with Light Novels: The non-reader-perspective characters only speak, interact, or act whenever it is convenient for the plot or if the author has determined this is to be a character interaction moment (such as some slice-of life chapters or group discussions), and they'll be ignored or just be in the background (doing not much in particular) otherwise. How can this be fixed? Well... Konosuba (9 Volumes) - Unquestionably the best light novel I have read. Characters have character! They do things! They have personalities! They're doing things even when it's not meant to be their moment or required for the plot! Even if characters are "off-screen" you hear about the consequences of their actions or how their mood has been affected or whatever! Konosuba is the king of character interaction, and that is the single aspect I most appreciate, and the reason Visual Novels are (usually) my entertainment medium of choice. Phenomenal. Especially so for the plotpoint that started in volume 5 and came to a head again in volume 9! @cro-mag - With Volume 6 of Konosuba I definitely felt... odd. It's like it suddenly took a random turn and veered right off-course into the middle of chaos. I initially thought the development to be kind of generic, but quickly found that I love the characters too much to mind. Whatever position they're put in will turn out alright when you consider their ridiculousness, in my eyes. It's also the first moment that I came to realise that they're really all trashy human beings that require a lot of poking and prodding to let their stubbornness go and play nice. I'm glad I still love them all. How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (6 Volumes) - I loved the first two volumes! A whole lot! The themes this tackles are very much to my interest (government, politics, military, development, etc), and there is romance and development in that area! Lovely! However, the more volumes I read the more it came to suffer from the same things as Smartphone. With so many members of the cast, it becomes difficult to give them all life. Those who were interesting and intricate in 2 were by now forgotten or flanderised in 6. I can clearly recall moments created to provide them with personality and all that, but I cannot do anything but file away those attempts as generic, or at least, they failed to elicit a good reaction from my part. I have cause to believe that perhaps large casts on this level are simply unmanageable. I cannot keep an emotional connection with them all. Minatosoft most writers are not. Hokuou Kizoku to Moukinzuma no Yukiguni Karigurashi (2 Volumes) - A fan translation, which unfortunately isn't very good, on top of the topics already being... slightly uninteresting to me (lots of cooking, butchering, hunting, etc.). The premise of the novel itself, however, is excellent. The characters are excellent. Romance is one of the main topics, and it's really good! I like the personality and design on of the main character and his wife. It's really great. It's just that the existing translation for it is not very good in English. An Archdemon's Dilemma (3 Volumes) - Volume one was perfection. It feels as if it were made such that the whole thing could've ended there. Wonderfully self-contained and loose ends generally tied. But it continued, and I'm glad it did! Romance is one of the focus areas, so that's already 11/10, but it goes further! I like the personality of the protagonist, and, for once, the battle scenes! The Sorcerers' fashion sense slightly aligns with mine own, and for some of the battles the descriptions try to show the main character as keeping calm and taking care of business with a single arm with the other behind his back. Not every time, but it's enough to make me all happy inside. Second best series I've read to date, aside from Konosuba. About the Reckless Girl Who Kept Challenging a Reborn Man Like Me (Completed) - A oneshot. A beautiful, emotional, powerful oneshot. I think this is very much worth reading. As usual for me, Romance. Marietta-hime no Konrei (Complete) - Something I stumbled upon whilst looking to see if 18+ Light Novels were a thing. This is the fluffiest fluff that hath ever fluffed. It's fantastic, and the princess in this is the most precious thing in existence. Characters are not real people, so it's good to be able to appreciate a character that can be made to be so lovable and... just create happiness. Lazy Dungeon Master (2 Volumes) - Probably the third best series I've read. Unlike others it's not particularly addictive, but it's always enjoyable while I read it. The character interactions are also fun. The main character's got a strange fetish that gets played up all the time, but at least it clears any illusions of possible romance, so it's way better than those novels that constantly tease something that'll only be resolved in 20 volumes. As a side note... It's also got the most explicit illustrations in a light novel series that I've seen! One of the colour pictures in volume two would not look out of place in my local eroge (and I actually prefer its intimacy to what is typically present in said eroge)! I also like the character design for the main character. It's interesting. Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! (6 Volumes) - Love a whole bunch of stuff. The main character has traits I really enjoy, the most stand-out of which is being unabashedly (technically not unabashedly, actually) OP and everyone recognising that is the case. I love that it's generally light-hearted and that it's an adventure story. It also does the cast pretty decently. It's not ideal, but the characters in the party have personalities and I do feel attached to them to some extent (though I may be starting to lose that a bit at this point). It's also somewhat of a problem that most of Mile's inner thoughts and jokes very specific weeb references I don't get or puns that scarcely count as puns because they only make sense with a Japanese pronunciation, for example (by Japanese pronunciation I am referring to, for example, the English words that have been incorporated into the Japanese language. Their meaning sometimes even changes and they don't always sound like the English equivalent). After all this, I wanted to ask if anyone has any recommendations. I'd be especially interested in anything that has romance that is actually romance and not just "feelings" that'll get addressed in the centenary volume. I can take waiting 5 volumes or something for there to be a confession or something of the sort after the interest was teased to the reader. But if that's not going to happen, then please have the decency to not tease such a thing!

Y'all read vns? I just save them to my folder then alter my binary file to access the data directly. That said, if I (hypothetically of course) were to read vns, I would say that my time spent with entertainment media is split based on my relative interest level in the current things I am consuming. I'd say I spend on average twenty hours per week consuming entertainment media and on average about 40% of that is spent on reading vns, so about eight hours per week.

That's for the best tbh. Porn is disgusting

The last part of the trilogy has some things that are inconsitant with earlier parts like retcons and an odd unexplained merging of uncompatible routes as well as in my opinion a bit of a stupid plot twist towards the end. However I think it still has a lot of quality when it comes to the characters interactions, action, comedy and a lot of what makes Grisaia good. I think whether you like Eden of Grisaia comes down to what you like about Grisaia, if the story aspect is what you like the most then you probably won't like it that much, but if the characters and comedy are the main thing you like about it you will probably like it. Personally I really liked it, its flaws made it less enjoyable than the 2 earlier titles, but I still had a lot of fun with it.

Arifureta is such a weeby garbage tbh. And that's exactly that makes it so enjoyable. I guess I'm already too far gone...

Does anyone but me still care about this thread, lol? So, anyway, since it will soon have an anime adaptation and I've been kind of interested in this series for a while, I decided to read the first two volumes of So I am a spider. So what? Overall, it was pretty good, but some things make me cautious. Overall, this is more of a dark comedy type of isekai. I noticed that these tend to be hit or miss for me, but this one is pretty entertaining so far, but I feel like I might get bored if there's no major development in the story in the next volume. The somewhat unique thing about this story is that the entire MC's class got isekaied, and it's pretty entertaining to watch how they cope with their new roles. At the same time, I'm not really sure how I feel about the plot twist at the end of the second volume. I kind of suspect that it might be a massive red herring, and even if it is that, I feel like it exists only for the sake of there being a plot twist, and I'm not really sure I like where this story is going. I'm also still following Shini Yasui (which I mentioned in the previous post) and it's actually getting better and better as the story progresses. I really like how the author masterfully foreshadows the story and the mystery, and the character development is pretty neat too. It's actually very hard to find a web novel this well-written. Really a shame this isn't more popular. It would be great to see an anime (or, at least, a manga) adaptation at some point, but the chances are basically zero.

I guess I'm the exact opposite. I've been watching all kind of weird shit imaginable since a very, very young age (11-12 yo). It never really bothered me, and while you might argue that "it surely must have had consequences in your psyche that you're not aware of yourself", the fact is that I'm not a violent person AT ALL, I've never been in a physical fight in my entire life and I don't have any sort of weird inclinations. I can see someone getting ripped off and torn into pieces on a screen without even flinching, but when it comes to real life, I struggle to even cook my meat when I have to look at a dead chicken or rabbit. It all comes down to empathy, I think. I do find hard to watch when bad things happen to characters I care about, but since most gore media's goal is not exactly to make characters you particularly care about, the imagery by itself can't stir up any powerful emotions in me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What I'm trying to say is that while I can't relate to lolicon fans or people who enjoy some good ol' rape in their VNs, I do know where they are coming from when they say they keep it completely separate from reality. After all, I know I'm no psychopath even though I don't feel anything while seeing random people suffer in a gore movie.

Gonna be honest with you chief, I can't even remember the last time I read a VN, let alone finished one