Leaderboard

There is a group, kinda sorta in between the ESRB and a Standards & Practices body, called SoFuRin / EOCS. Like the ESRB, it was formed in response to political pressure. Game developers would agree to abide by their restrictions and for awhile, all the major VN makers were members. This body actually standardized the way the schools are described, and it used generic words that don't imply anything about the age of the students, and it mandated not discussing the issue. (It also banned real incest for awhile, but that was eventually relaxed. This is why so many games did pseudo-incest, where protag-kun is adopted or bangs all his step-sisters or what have you.) This is wrong. It depends on what jurisdiction you're in, and the Miller Test (the controlling law in the area) has a lot of stuff but it essentially boils down to 'if it turns the stomach of the jury you're going to be convicted'.

As there are some games where heroines are literally kindergartners, it is safe to say that the Japanese heroines must be over 18 in high school, or even in middle school, because they graduate from kindergarten after they are 18.

You must be new around here...

Next thing you're gonna ask is if people under 18 actually avoid adult content because of the disclaimer

First of all, as expected, I didn't get very far in Konosora. I guess, this type of school life VNs don't really interest me anymore unless they are focused on comedy. And now, it looks like I finally finished something longer than 30 minutes. May Sky is an old free doujinshi VN which I just randomly found installed on my PC. Don't ask me how it happened. Probably installed by aliens or something. That said, in spite of the ugly character portraits, the game is surprisingly nice. It's a rather simple story of a romance between two people who seemingly have nothing to do with each other. Good thing is that the protagonist is in his early twenties and has to deal with some typical problems for that age. I don't really have much else to talk about here. The only real flaw I found in this story is that the ending started to feel a bit too stretched out, so I decided to skip the bonus epilogue. I still enjoyed it nonetheless. 7/10 Ame no Marginal. It's a short supernatural VN by the authors of Narcissu. Overall, as I was reading it, I found it a bit disappointing compared it to its famous predecessor (and I'm not even a big fan of Narcissu to begin with), but after I finished it I realized that I might've missed what the story what the story was trying to convey, so I may raise my evaluation in the future after I think it through. Still, compared to Narcissu that brought some serious problems that real people are facing today, this one felt just tragic for the sake of being tragic, and I didn't even feel particularly sad. I mean, I know some religions in the past could be pretty fucked up, with human sacrifices and all that stuff, but it never really concerned me, so I just couldn't bring myself to care. And by the time I actually started to care about the girl, the story already ended. But, with all that criticism, I enjoyed it. Unlike most other VNs, it's decently well written and doesn't have any filler whatsoever, and if the sequel light novel was available in English, I would definitely read it. I'm giving it 6/10 so far, but, like I said earlier, there's a chance that I'll change my opinion about it in the future. And now I'm back to Katahane. Well, I still like it, but I feel like it started to get a bit boring, and that's exactly why I stopped reading it for some time. But it looks like now I finally have some motivation to read VNs again, so I'll most likely finish it.

Taisho x Alice was sadly remembered in the western otomege fandom for one of the worst otome localizations disasters. It read like garbage, had several bugs and it featured amateur english voice acting as if reading engrish wasn't enough. It failed so spectacularly the localization didn't even get past episode 1 out of 3. Well, thankfully tbh. Still, the damage was there and for a long time we believed we would never see a proper localization of this cute fairy tale reimagination in the west. Until now. Primula (TaiAli developer) decided to give english audiences one more chance, complete in a multilanguage package with japanese and chinese options to boot! Rejoice folks as Taisho x Alice episode 1 is now available on steam with a proper translation (translator this time around is our precious verdelish and from what I read from her previous VN translations it's likely top notch)! Episode 1 have only 2 heroes but they have full proper routes. The rest is in episodes 2 and 3, coming soon if episode 1 sells well enough. It's not always we get second chances in VN localization scene so let's say one huge thank you to Primula and support if you can and if you dig cute otomes! *points to strong female protagonist tag in VNDB, hint, hint* DISCLAIMER: sadly I wasn't paid for this promotion, I did it out of hype alone.

yes, and if anyone asks for instance your neighbor, you family, your friends, the judge, you can say with 100% certainty that every character that you can have sex with or see naked in visual novels are indeed over the age of 18 dont question it.

It took a bit longer than expected, but Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi. (YOU and ME and HER) is set to release in February next year! You can pre-order the physical release on J-List: https://www.jlist.com/NP005 Announced at AX2018 with the goal to release before AX2019, the last we heard was that it should release this year. Now it's set to release in February 2020 but at least we have something more concrete. For those who say, yeah but it was the same with Majikoi and that still hasn't released, on Discord it was said: "Regarding delays. We understand the frustration it causes you guys, but, can only say that, every game is a different project" So hopefully Totono will release in February 2020. Until then here is blog post on J-list talking about Totono and DDLC titled: "YOU and ME and HER Outshines Doki Doki Literature Club" https://blog.jlist.com/featured/you-and-me-and-her-outshines-doki-doki-literature-club/

Good afternoon! Name's DantaliaN, nice to meet you all! I'm pretty much an Visual Novel Otome fan, and lately I've been playing around lots of PSP Otome games since I haven't been able to because of school work hahaha. I'm not a fluent English speaker, so I'm sorry for any mistake I may have uwu Spanish speaker here, tehee. I'm also a japanese language student so, if anyone knows of any Otome translation related thread, can u please guide me? Sorry for all the inconvenience, and thank you all in advance for everything uwu Have a nice week! />w<)/

Looks like nice little game. Thanks for mentioning, adding it to the backlog

No... No they are obviously not all 18+.

I didn't notice this blog post until now. I'm very happy this got another chance. I can only hope this is a story I can enjoy.

Every eroge reader should know that the disclaimer saying that every character is over 18 years old, is just a meme that's only there to guarantee you that all characters are minors. Beware of reading a VN without that disclaimer - you might see a character that's actually 18 or even older!

Venus Blood Frontier is available for pre order now https://jastusa.com/venusblood-frontier-international You can also get the new demo from that page.

Legal matters. It's such a grey area..... Maybe it's a good thing VN's aren't more mainstream. Lest they be far more scrutinized, and subject to far more "artistic" standards (which is really a form of political correctness).

First year characters (i.e. Mashiro) are most likely 15 or 16. Second year characters (i.e. Masaya, Asuka, and Misaki) are most likely 16 or 17. As you can clearly see all characters are "over 18 years old." I don't understand why you'd ever doubt a disclaimer that's so obviously true.

I think some of our japanese readers could answer more accurately, but I think VNs tend to use the general gakko, which means school, without further specifying it, more frequently. Chugakko would be middle school and kotogakko or short koko is high school. Pretty sure I'm also frequently hearing koko, especially when characters are talking about other people who are attending a different school. (Basically when the characters need to be specific) My take is the casual tone within ones school leans towards gakko and the tone when misunderstandings could occur leans towards "something-something" koko. (Or in rarer cases chugakko, maybe when the protagonist has a little sister that is still attending middle school, or just joined from a middle school)

Not sure if it's true since this is based on something I've read in a manga (lol), but apparently schools in eroge aren't typically refereed with the usual word for a high-school in Japanese, and it is done specifically so that everyone could just conveniently assume that it's some kind of school where even the youngest students are 18+, even if it doesn't make any sense.

Uploaded a new video of my Visual Novel Monthly Recap if people wanna see a summary of VN-related news announced during last month.

So, I decided to boot up Nanario again and now this loli is crying about how she was caught masturbating...what a time to be alive.