Ashadow700

Forgive my rudeness, but I don't like it when people pounce at me while foaming at mouth, having completely misunderstood the point of my post.
 
When did Fuwanovel become like this?

Hey OriginalRen.
I thought I would just chip in and volunteer for episode 10. That's the one about how the visual novel industry is going to develop here in the west, correct? I made a video on that topic a few months back, so I figured I could join in for this episode in you cannot find anyone else to do it. 

Hey OriginalRen.
I thought I would just chip in and volunteer for episode 10. That's the one about how the visual novel industry is going to develop here in the west, correct? I made a video on that topic a few months back, so I figured I could join in for this episode in you cannot find anyone else to do it. 

I don't get it, DrKleiner, why would this be a bad idea? Sure, it'd be controversial as F, but it should make for an interesting discussion non-the-less, as long as everyone is able to keep it civil, of course. 

Just a thought that struck me when was replying to another topic here of the forum; I have no idea what the actual how one actually defines what qualifies as a "visual novel", and where one draws the lines between what's a VN and eroges, dating sims and even rpg:s, to some extent. 
 
Couple of examples of what I talking about:
Fate/Stay Night. It has adult content, but I personally wouldn't call that an eroge in same way I would call something like Imouto Paradise an eroge.
 
Kamidori Alchemy Meister. It has both strategy-RPG gameplay and a very "visual novel-esk" story, so is that a "visual novel with rpg elements", or a "Strategy-rpg with visual novel elements"?
 
Pheonix write. What genre does this series even belong to? The "text based-mystery-adventure-visual novel-genre"?
 
I don't think what is and what isn't a VN really matters all that much, but it could fun speculating a bit about it anyway.
So, what do you guys think? How would you define what a "visual novel" is, and where would you draw the lines between it and other text-based games? 

That sounds much better. The most common cause of incorrect solutions to social problems is the misdiagnosis of social problems themselves. This obviously lead to solutions which are incorrect because they address the wrong issue. What is the problem, and what are the symptoms of the problem. It requires much thought and much care *glares at Youtube author*
 
EDIT: @Babiker: You misquoted Wiki btw. VNs made up 70% of the PC GAMING MARKET in Japan in 2006, which doesn't say much because the PC market in Japan is quite small.

This is something I've been thinking a lot about back and forth and here the short version of my theory; I think the popularity and growth of dating sims and synthetic relationships is an effect of a much deeper issue in modern society, rather then the root of the problem itself.   
 
I don't know that much about japanese culture, but I do know that men are expected to work extremely hard to support their families, making a lot of them feel that marrying simply is not worth it. Like the creator of the video also brought up, Japanese women also seem to have some form of image of having unreasonable expectations of their partners, which likely leads to a lot of young people feeling that they don't have much of a chance in the area. But I believe one of the more important factors could be that many of us just feel sort of... lost in modern society.
 
In a situation where you have to spend 50 hours per week working or studying, constantly have the societal pressure of achieve amazing results in school so that you can get the best work, you don't have a lot of friends, you have little contact with your family because they will too far away, your girlfriend maybe recently left you – in a situation like that, a lot of people will crave for something – anything, that can fill the void of sheer loneliness in their life, just to not completely break down from depression. Even it that ”anything” happens to be a set of 1:ns and 0:es that happen to add up to form a digital girl.
 
I don't know about everyone else, but I see quite a few parallels to the growing issue of MMO:s addiction, as I believe the root cause of people getting stuck in video games or start dating virtual girlfriends are largely the same. It's this overall feeling of meaninglessness and loneliness caused from that living in a society of 7 billion people in which you know your own life has effectively no true purpose.
 
Extra credits made an excellent video on this subject a while back; I suggest having a look at it:
 

 
Okay, okay, that might all have been a bit pretentious and all over the place, but this is an incredibly complex issue and I can hardly address it properly in a single forum post written in less then 30 minutes.  -_- 

Hm... "...a visual novel where a guy enters a new school and has to choose between multiple girls". Darn it... I can't really think of anything that fits this category, except every visual novel ever made...   
Nah, just kidding; there are other kinds of VNs too . 
 
All jokes aside, Key's VNs you probably suit you. Personally I believe Little busters and Clannad is something you might enjoy. Hoshizora no Memoria could also be worth having a look at, if you can take it's "loli"-esk nature. Yeah, these are all extremely long, but you don't actually need to finish them to get a decent ending. They work a bit like Katawa Shoujo in that you can stop playing after finishing any one single route and feel like you got a mostly satisfying conclusion. In all of these you would miss out on the unlockable final route if you read like that though, so keep that in mind.
 
Sharin no Kuni and G senjou no Maou would be pretty good choice too, but they incorporate other elements them just pure slice-of-life romance.
 
Oh, and welcome to Fuwanovel, a.k.a. best visual novel related forum on the internet! 

Hm... "...a visual novel where a guy enters a new school and has to choose between multiple girls". Darn it... I can't really think of anything that fits this category, except every visual novel ever made...   
Nah, just kidding; there are other kinds of VNs too . 
 
All jokes aside, Key's VNs you probably suit you. Personally I believe Little busters and Clannad is something you might enjoy. Hoshizora no Memoria could also be worth having a look at, if you can take it's "loli"-esk nature. Yeah, these are all extremely long, but you don't actually need to finish them to get a decent ending. They work a bit like Katawa Shoujo in that you can stop playing after finishing any one single route and feel like you got a mostly satisfying conclusion. In all of these you would miss out on the unlockable final route if you read like that though, so keep that in mind.
 
Sharin no Kuni and G senjou no Maou would be pretty good choice too, but they incorporate other elements them just pure slice-of-life romance.
 
Oh, and welcome to Fuwanovel, a.k.a. best visual novel related forum on the internet! 

Hm... "...a visual novel where a guy enters a new school and has to choose between multiple girls". Darn it... I can't really think of anything that fits this category, except every visual novel ever made...   
Nah, just kidding; there are other kinds of VNs too . 
 
All jokes aside, Key's VNs you probably suit you. Personally I believe Little busters and Clannad is something you might enjoy. Hoshizora no Memoria could also be worth having a look at, if you can take it's "loli"-esk nature. Yeah, these are all extremely long, but you don't actually need to finish them to get a decent ending. They work a bit like Katawa Shoujo in that you can stop playing after finishing any one single route and feel like you got a mostly satisfying conclusion. In all of these you would miss out on the unlockable final route if you read like that though, so keep that in mind.
 
Sharin no Kuni and G senjou no Maou would be pretty good choice too, but they incorporate other elements them just pure slice-of-life romance.
 
Oh, and welcome to Fuwanovel, a.k.a. best visual novel related forum on the internet! 

Hm... "...a visual novel where a guy enters a new school and has to choose between multiple girls". Darn it... I can't really think of anything that fits this category, except every visual novel ever made...   
Nah, just kidding; there are other kinds of VNs too . 
 
All jokes aside, Key's VNs you probably suit you. Personally I believe Little busters and Clannad is something you might enjoy. Hoshizora no Memoria could also be worth having a look at, if you can take it's "loli"-esk nature. Yeah, these are all extremely long, but you don't actually need to finish them to get a decent ending. They work a bit like Katawa Shoujo in that you can stop playing after finishing any one single route and feel like you got a mostly satisfying conclusion. In all of these you would miss out on the unlockable final route if you read like that though, so keep that in mind.
 
Sharin no Kuni and G senjou no Maou would be pretty good choice too, but they incorporate other elements them just pure slice-of-life romance.
 
Oh, and welcome to Fuwanovel, a.k.a. best visual novel related forum on the internet! 

God freaking...
 
Now someone is gonna take this idea and run with it. It's gonna be the 2016 visual novel of the year, or something

Eh... maybe, but I won't do that any time soon. it's like a year ago since I read Narcissu now, and I don't feel any real need to re-read it at the moment. Besides, my buddy Mattrocks101 has said he is making a review of it, and it's probably going to end up better then anything I could do right now
 
 
 
Yepp that old.
And there is no way you could have seen it on my channel front page because it has never been there. This video has always been set as unlisted.

....
....
....
....what the heck, guys?...
I haven't seen a thread necrosis this bad since InvertMouse dug up the old Fuwanovel podcast thread, and that one was only 6 months old at that time.
 
Well, might as well tell you, I just felt that this video wasn't nearly on par with my other works at the time on finishing it, so I basically just decided to scrap it. I'm keeping it unlisted so that I ever find myself disconnected from youtube and unable to make anything for several months,  I could just reupload this one to fill up that void, telling people that it was something I made way back in summer 2013 and that they should not get their expectations up.
 
And thanks for your compliment about my Rewrite review, Tenkuru =)

...aaaand I really need some feedback on it.

Somehow it turned into one of the most embarrassingly pretentious things I've ever made, so I can't really tell myself if it's good or not.

So... what do you think? It is currently set as unlisted, so are there any changes I need to make before I upload the final version to Youtube?
(Or should I simply bury it under a mountain and forget I ever made it...?)

Hi everyone!
 
A little over a week ago I made a video on Youtube outlining some of my thoughts about what the future of visuals outside Japan might be like. I thought it would be interesting to hear what everyone here thinks about how the industry is going to develop as well, and if you agree/disagree with my thoughts so I figured I might as well post it here too.
 
Here is the video, if you're interested in watching it:
 

Even in Japan, VNs have only really exploded beyond ero-fans in the past decade and a half.  In previous decades, 'serious' VNs were a rarity.  However, the relatively recent (the last fourteen to fifteen years) expansion of the plot-focused side of the industry is slowly altering the way they are seen, both over here and over there.
 
As the thread author states in the video, VNs will never be other than niche, precisely because more people are functionally illiterate (they can't sit down and read a book and feel that it is enjoyable) than ever before.  Anime fans that never get beyond dubs are classic examples of this type of person... they don't want to read subs, so they live with sub-par English voices instead.  You have to be introduced to reading for fun pretty early, if you want to be able to enjoy it.  With more and more kids raised by their televisions, I doubt this trend will reverse itself anytime soon. (incidentally, studies have shown that the human brain's cognitive functions develop faster the more you actually read, rather than watching videos or listening to lectures)
 
I started out as a speed-reading bibliophile... and so becoming a VN-lover was just a natural step, once I was introduced to them. 
 
I've watched the fanbase and market for VNs expand rapidly over the last five years here in the West, but I've yet to meet a person who started their otaku life as a VN fan, who was born in the West.  Almost everyone enters into otakudom through role-playing games, anime, or manga.  So, it is only natural that VNs would be the weakest branch of the otaku tree here.
 
Like the author says, the biggest barrier besides the reading aspect (which is ultimately the biggest one), is the sexual aspects.  One of the most ironic things about the VN industry is that better than 90% of the best VN plots come out of the eroge (VNs with erotic content) part of the VN medium.  This sometimes gets me to thinking about whether good writers just want to write about sex... or good writers are using the sex to get people to pay attention to their writing. 
 
Another barrier is that, unlike manga and anime, there are relatively few VNs that appeal to both genders.  Otome games are basically unplayable to the average guy, outside of a few truly excellent entries, and only the best male-oriented VNs are enjoyable to both sexes.  For the otome game side of things, the issue is really, really simple... DIDS (Damsel-in-Distress-Syndrome).  Almost every otomege I've tried has had this fatal flaw, where the protagonist spends most of her time either afraid of the guys, looking to be saved by the guys, and/or actually being rescued by the guys.  Since I grew up respecting women as equals, this pisses me off when I have to deal with it - especially when the female protagonist is otherwise capable and strong-willed.  The reason behind this seems to be that otome games get the same treatment as romance novels as a genre over there.  Who takes romance novels seriously as a genre here?  There is a reason why most of them sell for less than the other genres, whether in paperback or hardcover. 
 
Another problem blocking growth of the market is translator burn-out.  Fantranslation is an incredibly thankless job.  If you do badly as a group, people bash you for your horrible translations, and if you do well, you get other translators nitpicking about your mistakes.  Not only that, but you are basically giving up dozens of hours of your time for free.  Volunteer spirit only takes you so far, and the appreciation of the community starts to feel empty after a surprisingly short time.  Even passion eventually burns out entirely.  In my case, what was left when all of the above occurred was the simple fact that I want people to be able to see what I've been seeing for the past five years, as I've delved into the depths of the VN abyss.  I don't like people... but even I want to be able to share my passions on occasion.  Since I've spent most of my free time on niche hobbies for the past twenty-two years, that's definitely been lacking overall, but with untranslated VNs, it has gone to another level. 
 
Now that I've ranted, a few serious thoughts.  VNs in the US will ALWAYS be balanced on the precipice, for several reasons.
 
1.  Erotic content: A society influenced by Christianity or Islam is inevitably going to be prudish... and democratic political parties are always looking for the next social lever to use at the bully pulpit
 
2.  Piracy: The entire medium's growth in the West beyond nukige is due to fantranslators making patches, thus resulting in mass piracy.  Since game piracy is seen as a big issue and the government is always looking for a new criminal issue to distract people, all fantranslators are taking a risk to a greater or lesser extent by working on such projects.
 
3.  Niches tend to narrow when times are hard
 
4.  For those who aren't in the last stages of Otakuitis (the disease that causes one to become an otaku and grows worse as one indulges the accompanying impulses), VNs are difficult to get into.  As such,  if there was a movement to get VNs out of Western markets, there is a good chance no significant opposition would even be put up by the otaku community. 
 
5.  Most bibliophiles, those most likely to enjoy VNs, would rather read actual pure-text literature. 
 
These define both the limits and dangers that will always keep the medium on the precipice in the West.

Short answer: No
 
Longer answer: It's a fairly upbeat and fun game and so moe it it practically kills. It has a lot of both emotional and very entertaining moments, but I for one don't understand why anyone would want to read it over any of Key's VNs, as to me both Little Busters and Clannad seem superior in every way. (Except possibly in it's amount of cuteness and adult content).

Yo, seems that you're from the group of people that registered because of the Majikoi translation thread. Nice to meet you.

O Aaeru!
Our lord and president!
True VN love in all thy sons command.

With reading eyes we see thee rise,
The True West IP free!

From far and wide,
O Aaeru, we torrent things for thee.

Nay keep our stuff seeded and free!
O Aaeru, we torrent things for thee.

O Aaeru, we torrent things for thee.

Basically I regard violent scenes the exact same way I regard everything else.
 
Violent scenes for the violence = bad
Violent scenes that adds to the story and/or character development = good (or well... as long as it's not too horribly excessive about it)

Thanks a bunch Rain Kazeshini!

I had the exact same "unable to find movie file" problem, but after un-checking the 'read only' boxes of the movie files, it worked. =D

...aaaand I really need some feedback on it.

Somehow it turned into one of the most embarrassingly pretentious things I've ever made, so I can't really tell myself if it's good or not.

So... what do you think? It is currently set as unlisted, so are there any changes I need to make before I upload the final version to Youtube?
(Or should I simply bury it under a mountain and forget I ever made it...?)

School days.
All of it.

School days.
All of it.