Forythos

OMG, I rarely do this, but I preordered nearly as soon as I saw it :
 

I took a look at your collection, and it is so cool ;A; I wish I could get my hands on figures like that T3T

The issue is, there's no point in shitting over anime that never even tried to be deep/mature/whatever.
There are tons of anime that tried to rip off Evangelion. Most of them failed miserably and were indeed crap.
However, how can you attack something like Nobunagun (for example) under the pretext that the plot is stupid when it's the whole point of the show: bringing you entertainment, nice fights, etc?
Anime is a visual medium, and as such a good anime doesn't necessarily have to tackle deep themes and philosophical issues. Giving you thrills is way enough.
 
The kind of anime you're looking for keeps being produced. Every year or every two years there will be one. That's about how often an industry this size can pull out a masterpiece of that kind, and for each of those, tons of other anime will try to be that and will be crap. If that's not enough, you can look for it in other media.
However, anime doesn't sum up to only that. There are tons of shows that never try to do that, instead trying to convey fun, entertainment, thrills, relaxation, emotions. And guess what? Several of them do it successfully. Watching those expecting deep/mature stuff and calling it crap because you didn't get what could never have been there is ruining your own pleasure.
 
tl;dr, know what to expect of an anime before watching it, and don't complain that things never meant to be there, aren't there.

For mangakas : (I need to catch up on most of these guy's recent work though.)
 
Definitely Naoki Urasawa, I've considered him my favorite manga artist for over a decade now.


 
Azuma Kiyohiko.  I really enjoyed the Azumanga Daioh manga, and Yotsubato! is one of my favorites.  Azumanga Recycle was pretty hilarious as well.


 
Tsutomu Takahashi.  Dark and mature mangas, I especialy enjoyed Skyhigh and Blue Heaven.


 
Tsutomu Nihei.  It mostly about the backgrounds.  Amazing gorgeous yet bleak futuristic megastructures.


 
Masakazu Katsura.  I've loved his work since I was in high school.  Especialy I''s, it was one of the first manga series I read in its entirety and it was amazing.  His bishoujos are the best.


 
Kentaro Miura.  What can I say?  I love berserk, I own most of what is currently published in french.


 
Honorable mention to Eiji Nonaka for his comedy genius with Cromartie High School.
 
As for illustrators, I guess I'll make another post later.

Your desktop screenshot reminded me of this.

Rudra no Hihou <3 Still gotta replay it some time soon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkmzoqzPs50
Not the original but I love this port onto Super Mario World. I also get the feeling that I posted this one earlier in the thread but meh, its a good song.

^ HOLY SHIT RUDRA NO HIHOU MUSIC. +1
 
I creamed my pants so hard over this.

I love the SQ album series.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR3N01udZws

Should have posted this week and a half ago, but like Forythos, I also finally got my Natsume Rin Nendoroid. <3

I still have to finish Rin's route, but for now I'd rate the routes from favorite to least favorite in this order :  Hanako/Shizune/Emi/Lilly/(not including Rin yet).  I still loved them all of course.  Lilly's route was pretty good, but I feel like I connected more with Hanako's and Emi's route, and Shizune really surprised me in how much I ended up liking her and I somehow find her very arousing. >_>;;

VNs hit a sweet spot for me packing everything I liked into one package.
 
I like narrative, but western stories are often quite reserved often following very safe and conventional plot lines and ways of thinking. Even the “controversial” reading material created in the west is almost formulaic
 
I like reading but I read slowly. Without other stimuli, like sound and nice art, I would often lose the will to grind through more brown and black pages to extra the story hidden within. Also I like some visual images with the story, so that enjoying a vivid scene is not all a test of one’s imaginative abilities. Typically if western media starts adding pictures to a medium that medium loses depth and maturity. VNs retain full novel depth and their mature content while providing beautiful art, and other stimuli while reading.
 
I like anime style art, so I was attached to Japanese RPG games, but I found that I don’t like repetitive girding, I like narrative, so these types of games were not for me. VNs on the other hand were exactly what I was really looking for.
 
The music with NVs can add depth, and simply having a sound track adds value
 
The themes provided in VNs paint the picture they want to paint without worrying too much about what people might think. Harems, perfectly crafted girls, taboo scenarios, strong human emotion and desires are painted without restraint. So many basic human desires and emotions look bad in the public eye, so they are simply avoided in other media, as not to offend anyone and gain mass appeal. VNs not only use these “awkward” themes but they have refined these desires and feelings into acute pieces of art.
 
Character stories are by far my favorite. I don’t much care for worldly events. I like when the world acts as a stage for a character’s story and conflict. In western media it’s often the other way around and the characters are a lot shallower and are almost more like props for a more global story. I don’t care about global stories, and like personal struggle, conflict, and development to be the story, rather than be part of a story.
 
Motivational messages and thoughts about life are often found in VNs. VNs novel toy with concepts about the human condition, how one should live life, how people almost need each other or how living certain ways can shape people. These philosophical concepts are great food for though. I’d go so far as to say that there is almost a subliminal message in Japanese media telling people that life is harsh and pushing forward regardless is worthwhile as there is a strange beauty in the darkness, confusion, and pain that is life. I like how these themes make me feel, and like the food for thought.
 
I like anime, but they often lack the depth you can get from a book. VNs provide that depth while still providing me with all the things I like about anime.
 
I like female characters, and cute things in my stories, and VNs deliver with prejudice
 
Even the visual novel industry is interesting. Companies work closely with fans and are rather transparent. We also might be on the verge of seeing more content official coming to the west.
 
Starting to read VNs I found myself acting like a kid again; staying up later than I should reading till all hours of the night simply because I was enjoy myself that much. I’ve not had that kind of experience with a game or any other type of media in quite a while. While I do enjoy other things, it’s not to the extent that I’d put off my chores and stay up till all hours of the night like some irresponsible youth. But then again, it’s great that I’ve once again found something in life I do enjoy that much.

Interesting question, I've been thinking about it for a bit and I think part of it is that I've always enjoyed reading for as long as I can remember, and also have always enjoyed video games, including ye-olde text adventure games from the west.  The dating-sim/moege aspect can sometimes also have some influence, depending on my mood, I've always been a sucker for these type of games where you choose your favorite girl and try to have a romance with her, but I also enjoy reading deeper stories that make me think about life and probably wouldn't have the same impact in other mediums.  I'm the type who can stop on a line to think about it for a while, so it usualy takes me forever to finish any VN.
 
I like your point about corporate influence on video games though.  It makes a lot of sense to me and probably affected my liking of the medium without me realizing it.  It would also explain why I find myself interested in less and less console titles as years go by. (At least, Falcom, Atlus and a few others are still holding to flame.)

I was speaking to the postman (casual chatter to deflect from the "what's in this box" line of conversation) and he said its because English speaking postal services generally don't check custom declarations in languages that don't use the latin alphabet. All they look at is the "contents" field.

Are you still seeding the torrent?  I'm just going on a guess, but I think that might be the issue.

Well said. And let's not forget about the one who started it all...

I dont understand your question at all. Its like you were asking why is there a taxa called "Mammalia" when you also have Marsupialia and Eutheria. 
 
 A visual novel its the proper name for a category of videogames. Period. Calling it "game" doesnt do anything for me. It doesnt tell me which kind of game it is, if i dont know it before hand. 
 
 I dont think that i should add much more. If you have a proper nomenclature you can extract a lot of information at once. 
 
 For instance if i say "Real Time Strategy", you know that im talking about a subgroup of strategical videogames, that while sharing a number of characteristics with the rest, have some special qualities that tell them from the rest. They are usually battle games that focus on resource management, etc,etc,etc.
 
 The opossite is also true. Saying VN tells me which kind of game it is, but it doesnt tell me the GENRE of the game itself. It may be a dating simulator or not, you could be chasing boys or girls, maybe its erotic or not, it could give you different paths to choose or not, etc. 
 
 The term Visual Novel sits in the same level as wide encompasing categories like Fighting games, Rol Playing games, First Person Shooter games, etc. 
 
 Its quite self evident, i dont understand what you are asking about to start with. 

the number of times she's needed rescue far outnumber the amount of times she's been useful though. she's about as handy as a dead dog nailed to an armchair
 
I don't mind her character so much as the concept. she's a freeloading ninny who gets angry over the smallest things, violently at times, and is possessive as hell over a guy that she has no right to be possessive of. hearing her complain to touma that she's hungry was funny the first thirty or so times she said it but then you get into episode two and you kind of just want to beat her in the dome piece with a long loaf of stale French bread, serving the dual purpose of shutting her up and filling her up.
 
at least misaka is cute when she's being tsundere. index is tsun and she's dere at the same time, but it's completely different. it's more like a daughter with daddy issues that fights with the step mum over who has the right to marry the old man. while misaka is adorable and gets all shy, and to be perfectly honest I would have a good deal of fun teasing her about it, index is unjustifiably arrogant about the whole thing as though she owns touma just because he's nice to her. not unlike a cat in that aspect I suppose but far less cute and cuddly.
 
this is, most unfairly, my negative view of the character. as badly as I've made my opinion of her sound I don't mind her that much. she's not in my top 3 choices for index heroines, but she has her moments.

I agree about Misha from Katawa Shoujo, I was a bit bummed out when I found out she didn't have her own route. Other than that I would've liked to see "After Story" for other characters beside Nagisa and Tomoyo.

Damn, there are still people reading kotaku.

This question is getting hard for me, I've been gaming for over 20 years now. SMS, NES and MSDOS were my starting point. It also sometimes changes according to my mood. (but I love it at the same time hehe.)

1. Final Fantasy Tactics (I would say PSX, but I loved the new translation on PSP.)
2. Baldur's Gate II : Shadows of Amn (PC, no idea how many playthroughs of this I've played.)
3. Final Fantasy VI (Snes) (Though I'm willing to admit CT was the better game, by now I have feelings for FFVI lol.)
4. Earthbound (Snes) (Scratch and sniff game guide, hell yes! I still have fond memories of beating up hippies and Cranky Old Ladies.)
5. Castlevania : Symphony of the Night (PSX)

Many of the games some of you listed could've been here as well, but alas choices had to be made. I made a quick list of my faves from memory and then went by elimination. I guess the 90s were my "golden age" of gaming.

There's way too many honorable mentions, I could make a top 100. A few shoutouts : Lunar 1 & 2, Suikoden series, Xenogears, Vanguard Bandits, Dragon Warrior VII, Star Ocean 1 & 2, Tales series, The Legend of Heroes : Trails in the Sky, Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Sierra Online's "Quest" games, Planescape Torment, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Daggerfall, Skyrim, Portal, God Hand, Vanquish, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Etrian Odyssey, SaGa Frontier, Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past, Phantasy Star IV, Shining Force, Valkyrie Profile, Radiata Stories, GTA San Andreas, Katamari Damacy, Shadow of the Colossus, SMT3 : Nocturne, GrimGrimoire, Final Fight, and I've got to stop myself now.

There was a really good blog post written by (much loved indie-developer) Jeff Vogel, about when it is okay to steal games/VNs/movies:



http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/sometimes-its-ok-to-steal-my-games.html

Rikka. Just Rikka. No one else.

There is very little a VN can do that cannot be done in another video game genre - though most gamers would not even consider VNs to be games at all. However, if there is one advantage VNs have that no other medium currently existing has... it is the greater leeway some companies give to their writers (outside of moege and nukige) thus allowing them to create stories that would not be allowed in other mediums either because they don't have much mainstream appeal, are socially unacceptable on one level or another, or take on issues no one wants to admit exist.

It's precisely because the medium isn't taken seriously that it can get away with all of this, which is one of the ironic aspects of it. Akatsuki Works games, for instance, always have a philosophical theme that they frequently approach from a point of view that would be considered cynical or anti-social, and they do it in a way that would most likely never have been allowed in another medium. To be blunt, this is just my personal view of the value of VNs... most people probably wouldn't agree.

Understand, I mean that amongst the 'visual' mediums (anime, movies, tv shows, video games, manga) in Japan, VNs are the most likely to do something with a story that none of the others would even consider otherwise. Anime series like Fate/Zero would never have been allowed in such an unadulterated form if FSN and Tsukihime hadn't 'gone there' and proven there was a demand for such works even in the current age of moeblob and brainlessness.

PS: Japanese paper novels are my other passion, for similar reasons. Where Americans have stagnated, there are still some seriously good new insights there.

Wow, it took like, 20 posts before someone pointed out that there's no way in hell the japanese government could possibly insert propaganda into VNs. Why would they give a fuck about a niche medium aimed at people that will largely never hold any kind of relevance to the politics in the country and won't care much about it anyway?
What you see in VNs is just the expression of the author trying to convey his convictions or making an attempt at humor. And, believe it or not, most VN writers are not good writers.

I kinda lol'd when I saw that the American government was introducing propaganda into their TV series though.