adamstan

Paying a language tutor to tell you what you did/didn't get right might be a worthwhile endeavor.  Using MTL is not.  If you already know enough Japanese to tell 'oh I should clean this up to be more standard so the MTL can figure it out' or 'this looks like an idiom, lemme google.jp this and see' then you will be more accurate than the MTL, making it mostly useless for that purpose.

@Plk_Lesiak - some really good stuff there
Yesterday I heard Mariya Takeuchi's "Let's Get Married" again, and it reminded me about the thing we talked about earlier - how some of that '70s/'80s Jpop feels similar to our pop scene from that time. I mean, I instantly remembered this Anna Jantar's song:
And well, just have a look at that music video - you could easily swap Anna with Seiko Matsuda there, and nobody would notice (if not for the language difference )

The same day I heard Yoko Matsuura, I've also heard this:
Guess kind of humble beginnings of eurobeat This song is a funny case. It's a cover of italo disco song. Actually, UK made one. So, I guess, euro-disco then? Nevertheless, original was this:
And it's interesting, because lyrics are completely different (it isn't the translation of Angie Gold's version), making them effectively different songs sharing the same melody. English song is angry, breakup/revenge song, while Japanese version is very lighthearted, with girl hunting at the disco for her "cinderella boy" What's more, Yoko Oginome release also english version, which is the translation of JP one.
I have to say - I prefer both covers than the original
(for some reasons the embedding seems to be temporarily broken...)

Nice, very chilled out
And so today CDJapan sent them to me At first Youko offered to send me the discs directly, but it turned out to be nearly impossible, since international postal services are currently suspended, and DHL, who still operates, is really horribly expensive for individuals - they quoted her 9600円 for this So we decided to wait until postal services resume. But then, I got reply from CDJapan, saying they can get those discs for me. They also use DHL, but they have some kind of partnership, so DHL shipping at CDJ is just 2600円  . So even after adding their proxy service fee, it still was reasonable.  Now let's just keep fingers crossed, that they arrive safely.
Also, next saturday (30.05) Youko will be doing special live performance on YT - from the studio, with HQ sound etc Here's the announcement:
 
And finally, let me spam with another one of my recordings Yesterday I uploaded my cover of Ai Kawashima's "Garasu no kokoro":
 

tae kim

Today I just finished Chapter 9 (Christmas one), so we're now at 73%. There are three more to go - New Year onsen trip, Valentine's Day and endings. By the way, the chapters are as follows:
(These are original title images - I merged the text from JP and EN versions together)

Yeah, I have listened to some of her albums from the 1984-88 period, and have to agree. She is great. I think that 2-3 years ago, while dipping my toes in Jpop for the first time I kind of brushed her off because at that moment I've been searching for something else, but it was clearly a mistake

You have to accept what I said earlier. Not everyone can get Yuzusoft/sprite on board. Are we supposed to shun a company just because they can't make a big name studio give them the rights to their titles? Besides, I don't think many famous companies are left for picking. Maybe Eushully and August, but that's about it. Everyone else is as obscure as you can get.
That sounds like some tech problems or lack of QOL features. I don't know which VNs you mean, but I'll assume it's Sakura Sakura/Yotsunoha or that Laplacian VN. Whatever the case, not every VN is going to be like that. I guess they're limited by what they can do with the original VN engines, which by the way, most of the time suck and is one of the reasons why NN wants to have and use their own homemade engine for all their future VN releases.
And here I thought OniKiss was a big name. Damn. I guess it boils down to who considers what famous.
Yeah, they are "literally who"-games, but it's very likely that Sol doesn't have the means to pick up anything else. You usually pick up some smaller stuff just to get off from the ground, but apparently, it didn't work for Sol. Not to mention, they had to use a Kickstarter for their first two titles, Sakura Sakura and Newton. Obviously, they are very small, and they had no means to pull off what NN did.
I beg to disagree. For the first month Fureraba was out, I saw quite a few discussions about it, and I had an impression it was doing very well as NN's first VN. I agree it may have been a "literally-who"-game (although even that is arguable... I had an impression SMEE titles weren't all that obscure in the first place), but it still put NekoNyan on the map. Can't say the same for Sol Press. They did at least 3 VNs at the beginning, and none of them seemed to have put them on the map. Not Newton, not Sakura Sakura, and not Under One Wing. And somehow, even Onikiss seemed to have been received poorly. I don't know how they managed to do that, but I guess their poor PR hit them in the ass, as well as lack of ability to put it on Steam (still... MG never needed Steam to make Imopara a success story).
Anyway, my point is - not everyone can get a well-known publisher. You talk about that, but if we go by that logic, most companies should just buckle up and leave when they are unable to get any big name stuff. It's very unfair, especially towards some new companies that may want to enter the market one day. Aside from the fact that there aren't any many really famous companies left for picking, you also have to accept that it's literally impossible to get some stuff. And besides, other localization companies used to survive on some obscurer titles than what Sol is putting out. That's why I am 100% convinced it's not their licenses that hurt Sol the most, but the way they handled them, how they advertized them, etc. That's their biggest problem even today. I mean, Nukitashi and Iroseka should be at least decent, even if we disregard how famous they became in Japan. But Sol's handling of them is... "eh" at best. That's one of the things that puts NN and Sol Press apart. The way they handle their projects and licenses. Neither has bad picks, it's just that Sol has no fucking clue what they are doing. I attribute this to poor leadership and management.

Ok, so I think I can throw in a few observations connected to the EVN scene specifically: some lewd games gained pretty wide popularity with the Western otakus and that's pretty much the closest thing to VNs going "mainstream" so far – people fapping on mass or meme'ing to Nekopara and Winged Cloud's Sakura games. DDLC became a massive meme and brought many people into VNs, but generally, the aggressive gatekeeping drove many of them off and made them organize into a separate community that doesn't really know/understand much about VNs. Most VNs, as a see it, do not have the appeal to bring mainstream crowds, with the prevalence of porn and questionable themes pushing them even harder in this shady, obscure corner.
In the West, outside of the particularly dedicated otakus, VNs thrive in basically two places: among women that enjoy romance stories/otome and within the queer crowd. For example, while in Japan yuri is very much created for the male audience, in the West you'll see lesbians/bisexual women being both devs and avid consumers of VNs, simply because it's one of the main forms of media touching on their experience and prefered romantic setups. On the BL side, you'll see more "bara" VNs created by openly gay developers and geared towards male readers. As a medium that is relatively easy to make and story-oriented, VNs in the West became a tool for minority groups to express themselves and create their own brands of entertainment, which is interestingly detached from what they (usually) represent in Japan. This approach, of course, is by default niche, aiming for very specific audiences.
I'm kind of stuck thinking that without the specific trajectory and cultural context that made VNs important in Japan trying to push them into mainstream is kind of hopeless. The idea of porn with story has its appeal, but it's not something the Western audience wants in mass (one could argue that it's because they don't know they want it/aren't familiar with how VNs do stuff, but I'm not sure). The storytelling formula of VNs is also not automatically attractive – just observe the bewilderment of people that stumble upon VNs randomly on Steam. Literary buffs usually scoff at the anime aesthetic and cliches inherent with the otaku media. While VNs are growing in the West and people are more aware of their existence, but I just don't see them expanding out of those few, very specific niches they're confined to now.

Yup, as @Mr Poltroon said, but I'd argue this undersells MGs importance. They're a company with a particularly diverse offering and one that is very consistent with their releases. They also tackle projects that no sane company should be willing to take, like translating Rance X (which is an absurdly large and complex game). While you have companies like NekoNyan focusing purely on moege, Sekai Project trips on its own legs every other month and JastUSA is lost in its own dimension where the timeflow doesn't follow the rules of our universe, MG gets stuff done. Right now, while there's generally more competition on the market and some developers, like Key and Frontwing, translate and publish their VNs in-house, it might not seem that important, but I think it still is. If MG suddenly disappeared, we would feeel it, particularly when it goes to more ambitious/niche VNs reaching the West. So, even though their image definitely suffered through all this drama, they're kind of indispensable and when they take on a project, you can be fairly sure it'll get done unless something really unusual happens.

Uh, yes they are. As much as anybody else.
They translate titles into English and that's that. Not much else really matters, despite what loud vocal minorities might claim.
Somebody having problems with translations has always been common and underpayment is supposedly getting better but Mangagamer is terrible in that area and for that they deserve all the flak.
That all said, as long as they put out titles people who want translated VNs will get them, regardless of the company. Some boycotters exist, but not really a majority and given the piracy levels I'm not sure how much overlap there is between the "boycotters" and the pirates.
From the Japanese side they're well placed with headquarters in Japan and, considering the Japanese side often is unaware of the quality of translations (Hello SakuraGame), Mangagamer likely does not have problems landing deals on that front.
 
So, all in all, I'm not sure I understood what you're trying to say. As long as they have money and they continue to want to translate titles, they will do so.

Haha, I was actually about to edit my post to mention some of the stuff you did. I think YU-NO is a great TL;DR answer for the first most influential story based VN. But of course the story isn't that simple. In my opinion I think a lot of influence could be traced to one specific individual, Kanno Hiroyuki. Who was the primary writer for Eve: Bust Error, DESIRE, Xenon ~Mugen no Shitai~, and of course YU-NO. All of these mentioned VNs are classics imo. 
I also want to give Umemoto Ryu an honorable mention because he often collaborated with Kanno Hiroyuki, and his compositions often captured the tone of Kanno's writing excellently. I think he worked on the compositions for all those VNs I mentioned above, so the two were a great combination. 

What about earlier C's Ware's attempts like Eve: Burst Error or DESIRE - Haitoku no Rasen (written by YU-NO's writer nonetheless)? Or ~1995-96 JAST titles (San Shimai & Meisou Toshi)? Mugen Yasoukyoku? Well, I guess neither of those had the impact and scale of the YU-NO (and JAST titles had much more dating sim elements), so there's some merit in highlighting it.

I've been researching PC-98 visual novels quite a bit lately. And simply put, while you could argue on details, I would say Yu-No is an excellent starting place for what defines the modern story-based VN. 

The search for the chillest Japanese music continues. I think we're getting close.

due to the generosity of a family member, i might, -MIGHT- be getting a BANDAI PERFECT GRADE RX-0 UNICORN GUNDAM soon;

if it all pans out, this will become the centerpiece of the GUNDAM-related portion of my Anime toy/model collection extant;
 



 
Also; have this little cutie-pie coming my way from "AmiAmi" soon as the Japanese shipping lockdown lets up....




 
finally, gonna be revisiting some classics of my childhood, come June;








 
 
 

These are the ones I remember watching, but I don't think they're particularly obscure, and are more likely just the opposite.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor -> https://myanimelist.net/anime/569/Musekinin_Kanchou_Tylor
Crest of the Stars (this barely meets the cut-off point) -> https://myanimelist.net/anime/290/Seikai_no_Monshou
Slayers -> https://myanimelist.net/anime/534/Slayers

Update on this - I got in contact with Youko-san on FB. She does weekly live streams there, performing a few songs each time. I asked in comments for CDs, and she messaged me back with a link to an online store with her records. While it isn't possible to make international orders there (the ordering form accepts Japanese address only), that's where the cdjapan's proxy service comes in Let's keep fingers crossed that they can get it for me.

Right, I guess I also see that with Western fans of Japanese artists, to some degree? Particularly with Daoko, who started with these pretty weird electronic sounds and then released a much more "mainstream-sounding" Thank You Blue album (it's excellent BTW), which English speaking fans apparently see as selling out for money. God, how I hate those snobbish attitudes.
Bonus pleasantness (in the melody at least, the lyrics this band do seem to be a lot more sombre than the sound would suggest):
 
 

Today I just finished Chapter 9 (Christmas one), so we're now at 73%. There are three more to go - New Year onsen trip, Valentine's Day and endings. By the way, the chapters are as follows:
(These are original title images - I merged the text from JP and EN versions together)

Today I just finished Chapter 9 (Christmas one), so we're now at 73%. There are three more to go - New Year onsen trip, Valentine's Day and endings. By the way, the chapters are as follows:
(These are original title images - I merged the text from JP and EN versions together)

Calling it butchered is wrong, the translation is no where near as bad as If My Heart Had Wings (I agree there are some parts they could of did better but it's not unreadable at all), they didn't even censor sexual jokes or kissing scenes and there is even a hot spring scene that just has a lot of steam.
If you want to call something butchered then the Steam version of this https://vndb.org/v15064 is worse then any MoeNovel title.

Yukikoi Melt has been just released on Steam, and there's freeware +18 patch downloadable from JAST. Steam release seems to be dual-language (EN+JP) which is nice bonus