poplarbrook

http://www.minatosoft.com/majikoi-a/character-aki.php A new character in A. I have only played a little bit of Majikoi S, so I am uncertain if she showed up in S.

Minato soft has published the results of the official poll of Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai! A (Majikoi A). The poll was divided into two sections: female characters and male characters. The most popular male character was Yamato with 2874 votes. He got more votes than any female character, but I don't know if voters should vote for male and female characters both, which makes the situation more understandable. The ranks of female characters are presented below(only top 10 and other significant characters are listed): 1th: Margit (2640 votes) 2th: Aki (2637 votes) (I am not sure if this pic is NSFW though:) remind me) 3th: Benkei (1684 votes) 4th: Tsubame (1615 votes) 5th: Momoyo (1500 votes) 6th: Li Jingchu (1209 votes) 7th: Lin Chong (1020 votes) 8th: Yukie (1000 votes) 9th: Thelma (986 votes) 10th: Seiso (954 votes) Kazuko: 15th with 740 votes Miyako: 11th with 874 votes Chris: 17th with 526 votes Mashiro: 19th with 485 votes Kokoro: 16th with 647 votes Tatsuko: 22th with 375 votes So there goes the popularity of top 10 and female leads from Majikoi and Majikoi S. If you wanna check popularity of other characters and you are confident in your Japanese, here is the site: http://www.minatosoft.com/majikoi-a/kawakami148.php

Well I am not as surprised because Love Plus performed better than it. Besides Love Plus encouraged pilgrimage to several sites. True. One otome VN producer, Voltage, generated a revenue of approximately 100 million USD per year and stated that 10% of its revenue came from English version of its games. Other non otome titles that come to my mind are just NoeSIS and some Korean mobile VNs though.

RIDING on a 2000 year old vampire? Sound like a boss:) But the poll is quite strange isn't it

Yup I am also a fan of sales figures. I even have a weekly sales figure in bookmarks (http://nozomi.2ch.sc/test/read.cgi/ymag/1404977052/) but the trend is changing. Digital manga sales rise and published manga decline. It will be good if there is an update on digital manga sales, one day. Well I favor digital eroge too, for if physical ones are found by girlfriend, she will be angry:( My mom would as well. However the industry somehow rely on distributors and thus physical copies. Explanation: since most eroge brands (except AB2) cannot lend money from banks because of their products, they are financed by distributors or other business (Hooksoft was under the name of a clothing company in 2007). There are more than 500 eroge retailers in Japan in 2007 and distributors are the only ones that can ship games to these retailers. With each game copy shipped and sold, a percentage of revenue is received by the distributor. As financier of the industry distributors certainly do not want physical copies to disappear. So physical copys still play a big role. This explains why many digital games only release after months physical ones are sold.

Difference of laws and regulations is the reason for region restrictions statement. If you buy a eroge in North America but get arrest of child porn, the developer assume zero responsibility because they stated "Japan Sales Only". In japan porn without mosaics is illegal too, though some doujin CGs are uncensored. Dates back to golden age of video game, "Japan Sales Only" and "North America Sales Only", "Europe Sales Only" existed too. Some female enemies have been converted to male ones outside Japan. Women in action gain popularity only after Iron Eagle 3:) By the way, I have updated the main thread with data of more fields of otaku market:)

Don't know if doujin games are calculated, but the size can be impressive. For example, an online distributor, EISYS,inc (the company that runs dlsite) has reached a revenue of 6.3 billion yen in 2014 (http://www.eisys.co.jp/company.html).

I think there is difference between Japanese and Westerners when it comes to perception of VNs. Japanese sees VNs like ToHeart as a form of ADVs with love/adult content; this form has been replaced by Kirikiri and other engines. Westerners' concept of VNs includes a lot of games including love/sex content free Snatcher and Policenauts. I just checked my downloaded reports and found a report named "Present and Future of Korean Comics Industry Focusing on Copyright Issues". I was surprised to figure out that Koreans use cartoons to refer to comics. But it is not uncommon for Chinese to call anime manga and call manga anime:) Maybe it's just me. But well, the 恋愛ゲーム in original text is renai game.

Yano's report mentioned "English love drama apps account for more than 10% of (Voltage Inc.'s) revenue"(英語版恋愛ドラマアプリが売上構成比1割超). Well I am not sure whether the 売上 should be translated as downloads or in-game purchase, I just assume it is revenue:)

http://www.yano.co.jp/press/pdf/1489.pdf On January 15, Yano Research (矢野経済研究所) released the summary part of their Otaku Market Report 2015 (「オタク」市場に関する調査結果 2015). This report estimated otaku-related market size of 2014 by calculating domestic end user retail prices. Overall, the otaku market is expected to increase except a few fields (分野) like Adult Games (アダルトゲーム) which observed to decline. There are two fields in this report that are related to visual novels: adult games and date simulation games. Adult games are defined as computer games that aims to attract players by sex content and are rated 18+ or 15+ (18歳未満（もしくは15歳未満）のプレイ・購入が禁止され、性的好奇心を満足させることを主目的としたコンピュータゲーム。). Date simulation games, or renai games (恋愛ゲーム), are defined as games simulate dating with fiction character in game but excludes adult games from above; computer games, console games, mobile games and online content that fit in this criteria are included. Price of platforms, connection fee, mobile packet fee are not included when calculating . ( ゲームに登場するキャラクターとの仮想恋愛を主目的としたゲーム。但し、上記「アダルトゲーム」に該当するものは除く。家庭用ゲーム機やパソコン向けゲームソフトの他、モバイル端末向けコンテンツ、オンラインコンテンツを含む。ゲームに用い るプラットフォーム、接続費用、パケット代は除外。 ) 2014 年度のアダルトゲーム市場規模は前年度比6.4%減の 191 億円であった。不正利用や、参入事業者及びコンテンツの減少により、縮小傾向が続いているものの、縮小幅は緩やかになってきている。 Adult game market in 2014 has declined by 6.4% and the size was 19.1 billion yen. Piracy, decrease of numbers of developer and content contribute to this trend. The market is expected to decline but not as sharply as a few years ago. (Well, strangely, Yano's otaku market report 13 says the size of adult game market in 2013 was 18.8 billion yen...) 2014 年度の恋愛ゲームの市場規模は前年度比5.4%増の137億円であった。業界内における競争は激化しているものの、一般女性向けコンテンツが好調に推移していることから、市場は拡大基調である。 Date simulation games in 2014 had increased by 5.4% to 13.7 billion yen. The competition with in the field has become fierce, while the growing size of otome content (games for female players) forms the basis of a blooming market. In addition, 95 people answered the survey about their expenditure on adult games. The average expenditure was 18,354 yen, which contrasts 41,877 yen reported by 103 people from otaku market report 2014. That's what you guys may be interested in. I may translate the rest of the report if I have the chance. ------updated------ Other markets in 2014 Doujinshi Market: Increased by 3.4% to 75.7 billion yen due to expansion of download sales. Plastic Model Market: Increased by 2.8% to 26.1 billion yen due to expansion of character and scale model (real-life vehicle, jet, building and more). (I assume there is only retail price calculated; tools and paints required to complete a model may not be included) Figure: Increased by 1.4% to 31.6 billion yen due to weaker yen and higher retail price, growth of female fans and prosperity of inbound consumption (foreign visitor's purchase), Doll: Decreased by 0.7% to 13.4 billion yen due to fixed user group and no significant user growth. Railway Model: Increased by 4.5% to 9.2 billion yen due to more people are interested in Shinkansen. Idol Market: Increased by 37.4% to 118.6 billion yen due to support from core fans of Johnny & Associates as well as AKB48. Rise of many new groups cannot be ignored too. Professional Wrestling Market: Decreased by 1.5% to 12.1 billion yen. Though new fans were attracted, the expenditure was lower. Cosplay Consume Market: Increased by 1.7% to 43 billion yen due to expansion of light users. Maid/Cosplay Related Business: Increased by 0.9% to 11.2 billion yen. The boom of Maid Cafe and cosplay eateries has ended. General people and foreign visitors led the market. AV (Pornography) Market: Decreased by 0.8% to 51.2 billion yen. Increase of number of heavy users and internet users counteracts the shrinking trend. Boy's Love (Yaoi) Market: Decreased by 0.9% to 21.2 billion yen. There is a struggle of increase in drama CDs, despite strong growth of digital books and doujins. VOCALOID Market: Increased by 3.4% to 9 billion yen due to increase of user generated content, character goods of Miku and booming lives. Airgun Survival Game: Increased by 10.8% to 14.4 billion yen due to more places in city center are suitable for survival game and more female novices are attracted. Anime and manga are not included, but they have been surveyed by the Association of Japanese Animations and Japanese Research Institute for Publications. Anime industry (including oversea market and character goods) has increased by 10.4% to 1.6296 trillion yen in 2014. Published manga (retailers and magazines) has been declining, to a biz of 360 billion yen in 2013. The same goes for South Korea comic publication too. Nevertheless, digital manga has experienced tremendous growth, estimated to exceed 80 billion yen years ago. Yano used to survey the size of digital manga market but they did not continue these two years... Consumer Survey: "Are you an otaku perceived by yourself and others?" Surveyed 9,862 people aged 15 to 69 in Japan, 21.1% of them answered "yes" and 78.9% answered "no". Of the 2,080 people who answered "yes", "are you married or have been in love?" 31.2% of them answered "I'm single and I have not been with anyone", 17.8% answered "I'm single but with someone before", 13.2% answered "I'm unmarried but with someone now", 37.9% answered "I am married or divorced/widowed now". Omake: http://d.hatena.ne.jp/efemeral/20121016/1350386490 "These years eroge market size has decrease by 300,000 volumes each year (around 2011)"(近年エロゲの市場規模が毎年エロゲ30万本分ずつ減少している) https://www.yano.co.jp/market_reports/C53112100 Yano's cool Japan/Otaku market report 2011 「アダルトゲームオタク」の推定人数：約125万人、男女比：88.0%：12.0% It's estimated that there are 1.25 million Japanese claim themselves as adult game otaku and the gender ratio is 88% male and 12% female. 「恋愛ゲーム（恋愛シミュレーションゲーム）オタク」の推定人数：約179万人、男女比：45.6%：54.4% It's estimated that there are 1.79 million Japanese claim themselves as date simulation otaku and the gender ratio is 46% male and 54% female.(Well I just rounded the number) I am pretty confident but English is not my mother tongue and my Japanese is not as good Feel free to give feedback:)

Wow, I just heard of it. Haven't their Japanese HP updated? They just conducted a popularity poll but haven't released the results yet.

What on earth are you recommending? Poor guy/girl wants romance. I haven't read crescendo, but the tags sure are heavy. Hidden Content The theme of Crescendo is quite heavy, but not very heart-breaking, even in bad endings. It's a pity that English version of Crescendo do not include After Story. Alongside more content, Ayane(stepsister) has a overhauled portrait, which is much more beautiful! One more thing to note about Crescendo is that the translation is not very good. Even though my Japanese is far from good, I can tell the difference from Japanese voice and English text.

I love this series but don't like the harem ending of Rakuen.

Welcome. It's advisable to use Visual Novel Reader. It automatically pop up machine(or manual, updated by user) translation so that you can use it as reference. Most people I know recommend being good at Japanese first, then read VNs. One exception is the one who read VN to improve his Japanese, though he started this at 15... I don't have a list for beginners, just a list for beginners to avoid: games by Rail or Liar.

Jesus Christ, they still look 12. I'm looking for something that looks similar to this https://s.vndb.org/ch/07/17807.jpg Mature and chill How about Momoyo from Majikoi then? She's cool and has a quite mature, hot body despite being a teenager. There is also a EN patch for this game.