Ayana

Yeah, I said I was going to wait until I'd played at least two more heroines before I posted again... but Rin's path has enough impact that I felt a distinct need to post on it ahead of time.
Misakura Rin is the protagonist's osananajimi... a childhood friend and one another's first love (this is said pretty much from the beginning, so it doesn't really count as a spoiler).  For reasons the protagonist deliberately only hints at (typical Sca-ji) he has been avoiding any sort of contact with her for years... since she transferred out of the area.  This is despite the fact that his memories with her are some of the ones he treasures the most from his childhood. 
To be honest, though Makoto's path is really good, the engagement with the protagonist and heroine is completely different in Rin's path.  Unlike in my past experience with Sca-ji, the progression as Rin's personal issues are revealed in detail is carried out in a manner that is neither irritating nor excessive, and even the building of their relationship feels more natural than you generally see in a VN.  Understand, if you have read a lot of Japanese literature, it is really easy to figure out where Sca-ji is going with Rin even without getting on her path.  He lays the hints on pretty thickly, and the reaction of a certain fushigi-ko character (not a heroine) to Rin is the final nail in the coffin.  If you honestly haven't figured out why the protagonist is so intent on avoiding building a relationship with Rin early on, you are probably pretty dense... though the details are - of course - only revealed in her path.
In addition to the purely physical issues, there is a significant amount of psychological weirdness involved, and I have to make the suggestion that you keep in mind that Sca-ji can't seem to avoid inserting mysticism into any and all his stories on some level, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that read Ikikoi the way he tries to keep certain issues ambiguous throughout this path.  I have to wonder if he himself has an ambiguous relationship with faith and fantasy, considering the way he writes about them.
I honestly cried during the climax scene of Rin's path, and I was surprised to find myself actually ranking the path pretty high up there as emotional VN paths go... right up there with the true path of Irosekai and a few others that had me in tears.  A lot of it is that the protagonist has that bad habit a lot of my favorite protagonists in emotional games have... he has an odd disregard for his own safety, health, and future when he puts them in balance with someone he cares about or even someone who simply needs his help.  While I love pragmatist protagonists and even ones who can be cruel, that is mostly for the same reason as I like this type of protagonist... people that exist at extremes of the range of human personality are inevitably fascinating... far moreso than some humdrum 'normal' schoolboy, lol.
 
Edit:
Linguistic issues
Now on linguistics... I don't think most people who read VNs really understand how a simple choice of words can alter how someone views a whole issue.  Above, in parenthesis, I said 'typical' Sca-ji in relation to what I referred to as a bad habit in a previous post.  Now, if I were a long-standing fan of Sca-ji, I probably would have said 'classic' Sca-ji.  What is the difference?  By using 'typical' there, I inserted a note of sarcasm/cynicism into an otherwise neutral statement.  If I were to have said 'classic', that would have altered it to sound somewhat fanboyish... I wonder how many of those who read this blog even realize how much reviewers manipulate you through simple word choices like these?  Not only that, ninety percent of a writer's skill is in figuring out how to insert emotion using subtle word choices like this. 
The reason Masada - the writer of Dies Irae - attracts writers and reading-addicts like flies is because his prose really is a work of art, designed to gain a very specific reaction without entirely making you aware that he is doing it.  The reason Sca-ji tends to irritate people like me is that he lacks subtlety from the perspective of people like me.  Now understand, he is perfectly subtle from the perspective of your average reader.  I doubt most people will pick up on more than ten percent of the hints he gives... but for people used to figuring out subtle hints as second nature, it feels like he is laying it on a bit thick, to the point of extreme repetition.  Sometimes this works (Rin's path is an example of this) and at others it doesn't (my experience of Subahibi).  This is an entirely subjective issue and not one that the mainstream will ever even recognize is there without some jaded jerk like me going out of his way to point it out.  However, I felt a need to say just why my bias is always going to be against Sca-ji, because I can't stop it from coloring how I write about him.
 
Edit2:
Rina and the Yuri path
Rina's path is in some ways darker than Rin's.  For all the depth of emotion involved in Rin's path, the entire thing was almost entirely between Rin and the protagonist, with only occasional intervention from third parties.  However, throughout Rina's path, Yuumi plays an intimate role together with them.  Indeed, a good portion of the path is devoted to a recounting of Rina's and her past from Yuumi's point of view, as well as the first meeting between Naoya and Rina.  Yuumi as a child is pretty... messed up inside, at least partially because she is an honest to god born lesbian.  In a moege, there would probably be a 3P path here... and while that kind of path is generally fun to read, it wouldn't have the depth this one did.  After the recounting of the past, it splits into Rina's heroine route and a Yuri path between her and Yuumi.  To be honest, I don't think I would have gotten as much from Rina's path if I hadn't chosen to do the yuri ending first, so I can honestly recommend it as something that adds some depth to Rina's ending, putting some things in perspective.  Rina's path... is equally intimate to Rin's, but it lacks the kind of high-emotion cathartic drama that Rin's had (at least for me), at least in part because a great portion of the path was devoted to recounting the somewhat messed up formative time of Rina's and Yuumi's relationship.  From a purely intellectual point of view, it was an excellent choice, but it had the effect of making the path deeper intellectually at the cost of emotional engagement, an occasional problem with that kind of flashback recounting.

First, I should say that I hated Subahibi.  Those of you who loved it will probably try to convince me it was a kamige or that I'm not rating it without bias... but from my perspective, it ultimately fell flat.  Part of this is because I absolutely loathed the psychedelic fantasy craze that went through otaku media around the turn of the century and gained full strength in VNs with Sumaga and Subahibi.  Another part is that Sca-ji doesn't know when to shut up.  Oh, I honestly think that if he wrote a chuunige, it would be awesome... but someone like him has no business writing a story where you aren't supposed to know at least something of what is going on from the beginning.  For me, Subahibi was a slog, because I'd already figured out a good part of the protagonist's issues within the first chapter.  The rest was, to me, a bunch of psychedelic BS that wasted my time because Sca-ji insisted on foreshadowing everything and dropping hints continually.  That is, to me, the primary marker of his style, and it is seen in Ikikoi to an extent as well.  The problem is, this is a hate born of the simple fact that mysteries don't hold any mystery for me and I don't really need someone constantly reminding me of something I already figured out while I'm trying to read a story.  Naturally, this won't be an issue for the greater majority of people reading Subahibi.  To be frank, most people simply haven't read as widely as I have, so catching the dozens of hints and bits of foreshadowing he lays on like peanut butter is probably not as easy for most as it is for me.
Sakura no Uta does indeed suffer from this same - to me - flaw... but not quite to the extent Subahibi does, so it turned out to be bearable in comparison.  I say this because it seems that Sca-ji is incapable of not overusing repetition and laying the hints out too thickly in anything he writes without ever saying anything outright.  If Ikikoi was a straight charage that departed completely from his style in most ways, Sakura no Uta can be said to be a story-focused slice-of-life romance that retains many of the same qualities of his writing seen in Subahibi without the poisonous addition of psychedelic fantasy to the mix. 
Aside from that, those who played Ikikoi will probably nod in recognition at the character dynamic here.  His love of creating abnormally strong relationships between the protagonist and the various characters is present here, and the fact that all the heroines are intimately related (whether by blood, his actions, or through those of his father) to the protagonist in some way - even if indirectly - before the story begins is probably the result of a decision that any other methodology would feel far more awkward. 
In the sense of taking the idea of a natural harem-maker protagonist and actually making him attractive to the reader, he succeeds for the most part.  Ironically, the part where the protagonist is at his worst is during the beginning, because the first scene feels oddly awkward - to me - in comparison to the way he introduces the various relationships later on.  This is because his bad habit - in my eyes - is on full blast during the first scene, making it almost worse than a first-scene infodump (a convention that is generally restricted to jrpgs rather than VNs). 
To be honest, if it weren't for the sheer length of the heroine route I've played so far - Makoto's - I would have been tempted to say that he fails on the character development, as two of the mains - Ai and Shizuku - are sort of left by the wayside in the first two paths so far (you are required to complete Rin's and Makoto's paths first).  The fact that he was willing to devote so much text to a single heroine route - of a relatively minor heroine - tells me that he intends to do most of the intimate character development in the heroine routes, so I've chosen to reserve judgement for now.
Makoto's path is really heavy on drama, both personal and in general, and it shows off both Makoto's and Yuuya's good points nicely, while not sugar-coating their flaws, for the most part.  As a result, I honestly found myself satisfied with the path as a whole, and the resolution of the drama was also reasonably satisfying, even if the result of her personal issues wasn't entire satisfying for Makoto herself.
 
Look forward to part 2, which will cover at least two other heroines...

Introduction:
 
When it comes to reading VN's in Japanese, required skills can be grouped into four areas: Vocab, grammar, basic parsing skill, and kanji skill. In this post, for each area I'm going to explain:
-what knowing skills in the area are good for
-how you might study them
-how much you'll need to start reading.
I'll also give some related tips.
 
The requirements mentioned below are a conservative estimate. I've known people who've jumped in to playing VN's with less or much less, but I'm giving a safe estimate. A level which at most people, without any special knack for learning languages through immersion, should be able to gain traction. If you learn this much before starting an easyish VN, the amount you are completely lost should be significantly less than the percentage you are able to pick up and improve from.
 
This is not a comprehensive how-to guide by any means. Just an informative post.
 
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1. Vocab
 
Knowing enough vocab to study your grammar resource without being bogged down by vocab:
-About 30 verbs and 50 other words for Genki 1/ Tae kim Basic.
-By the time you get to Genki 2/Tae Kim Essential you'll want a good set of verbs (about 100), and maybe about 300 total vocabulary.
-~600 words about how much you'll want to be able to study N3 grammar without getting bogged down in vocab.
 
Having enough vocab to start your first VN:
-I recommend over 1000, but anywhere from 800-1300 is good. I remember trying Clannad with only 800, and I felt like ramming my head into a wall. It's also important to pick an easy title. It will still feel hard no matter what, but an easy title will be much more helpful and rewarding to play. You also must just translation aggregator and ITH. They are the reason why Visual Novels are the best medium for learning Japanese out of anime/books/movies/drama/etc.
 
Vocab Lists:
There's a dedicated verb list here: http://nihongoichiban.com/2012/08/13/list-of-all-verbs-for-the-jlpt-n4/
Verbs are helpful to learn, because they are often the most important part of the sentence AND you need to to have stuff to conjugate.
In general JLPT-based vocab list is here: http://www.tanos.co.uk/jlpt/jlpt5/vocab/
 
Regarding English definitions:
Be mentally open and flexible. If the english definition doesn't quite add up, don't try and think about it too hard. Focus instead on associating the word with the situations where you see it.
For example, you might be confused by the word 都合 and it's unhelpful definition J-E definition, but if you seen 都合がいい used in a situation where you know it means "is convenient for me" from context then remember that occurence. There might be (there are, in fact), other usages of the word 都合, but that doesn't hurt you in anyway. The next time you see 都合 you can pair it against this meaning and see if that makes any sense.
 
2. Grammar Skills
 
With N5+N4 grammar you will be barely able to start making your way through a VN. Without N4, you will have quite limited gains in the long term from reading visual novels. (Equivalent to Genki 1+2.)
-Required to be able to play VN's
 
With N3 grammar, everything will feel a lot clearer, the amount of grammar you'll understand will exceed 60%. (Equiv. to Intermediate approach to Integrated Japanese). Highly recommended to study this before or soon after you start your first VN.
 
N2 grammar further cuts the amount of unknown grammar you face in three.
 
N1 is kind of like a bonus that gives you a lot of uncommon or formal expressions. It's NOT comprehensive at all, in terms of covered all Japanese phrases. From my experience, some of the phrases you learn in here show up often in novels (ばかり、んばかり), others quite less. Good to know, though
 
Expressions not covered in JLPT
There are a lot of patterns and phrases not covered in JLPT that you will see in typical native reading material. Examples (社長に議長, phrases like なんだと！？ Xってなんだ？　ですって！？　～てくれないかな。 オレって、なんてバカなんだ ) Not to worry, many of them can be picked up as you go. For the rest, once you get settled into reading, you can start noting down those phrases you don't get and google them or ask other people.
 
Imabi for grammar
You can also try studying from http://www.imabi.net/. It's a phenomenal reference, it's just goes into tons of depth, too much. I think there's 2 or 3 times as much information there is covered by JLPT up to JLPT 1. As such it's going to be overwhelming for a beginner and is much better suited as a reference for intermediate or advanced learners.
 
3. Basic Parsing Skill
 
Knowing the different types of words (Covered by doing a vocab list of about 100 verbs, and then the JLPT 5 list. You also have to have done or be doing Tae Kim's Basic Guide, since he explains what na-adj's, i-adj's, and other word types are, etc.).
-(nouns, suru-verbs/nouns, verbs, na-adj's, i-adj's, adverbs, temporal adverbs)
-Required to be able to play VN's.
 
Knowing the basic sentence structure and how words can modify each other and fit in a sentence.: (adjectives modifying nouns, verbs).
The knowledge is covered by Tae Kim Basic + a mix of Essential Grammar and Genki 1/2. I personally find Tae Kim's explanation good even though the learning curve is steep and his lessons aren't good for review like Genki books are. He tries to convey to you the big picture.
-Required to be able to play VN's.
 
Being able to breakdown sentences and spot the different types of words based on their position.
-you can practice this by reading bits of text in your genki textbook, but more likely, the first time you really gain this skill is going to be the first month in which you read a visual novel with TA. Heavily practiced during your first month or two of reading VN's.
 
4. Kanji Skill:
 
Learning to spots radicals in kanji (could be covered by doing the 214 radicals, about 1 month. You could also do this ongoing basis, learning how to spot the radicals that make up a kanji, for the words you learn.)
-not needed to read VN's with TL aggregator, but extremely helpful for learning new words which have new kanji.
 
Learning to remember kanji, ie. start recognizing when words share the same kanji. (it is a long ongoing gradual process. You can start doing this with the vocab you learn once you are comfortable learning vocab. You can also pick out words you see in vn's and check whether they use the same kanji by typing them out (example 朝（あさ）　and　朝食（ちょうしょく）　use the same kanji.). Oh course, to be able to easily produce the kanji you want to compare you need to remember how to spell a word that contains it (in this case 朝). So, as your vocab expands, you'll be able to compare more kanji. Note that to be able to do this comparing you must be able to spot radicals in kanji (previous level skill).
-moderately helpful for learning vocabs. The same way remembering radicals helps learning with kanji: if you know the kanji clearly, you can remember a word just by the two kanji it uses, which is very precise and doesn't take a lot of mental bandwidth. It also means that you will much more rarely confuse words which have similiar looking kanji.
 
The following two skills are for more advanced, they won't be particularly useful until much later. You might not notice the problems they solve until later as well. I include them mainly for completeness.
Learning on-yomi for many of the Jyouyou kanji (start when you are intermediate-advanced, a medium-long process)
-helpful for exactly what it is, reading kanji words and compounds correctly.
-don't need to worry about this. From learning vocab you might pick up some of the common ones, but there's no need to pursue this actively for a while.
 
Learning kanji meaning: (start when you are advanced, and can use a J-J dictionary)
-suffixes like 府、省、性、症, as well normal kanji whose different meanings apply to clusters of words.
-helpful for kanji compounds which won't directly show up in dictionaries
-helpful for developing a native level understanding of vocabulary (not everything can be learned by exposure). A lot of literary words are fairly influenced by their kanji meanings, though sometimes consulting the word differentiation explanations can be more helpful.
 
 
 
One last topic...
 
On learning enough grammar and jumping into works too difficult for you.
Reading a VN isn't the best way to learn basic sentence structure. However, it's a great way to reinforce grammar points you've learned. It's also a great way to get an understanding of conversational patterns you won't find in textbooks or JLPT. But you won't have the presence of mind to pay attention to that if you are bogged down by not knowing basic grammar.
There are benefits for venturing early into native material or difficult vn's, but you wouldn't give a grade two student Tolkien, or even Harry Potter to improve their English. All the fancy prose and unusual concept would distract you from the more immediately useful things like, say: basic sentence structure.
There are works which are the right level, and there are VN's which you really want to read. For the best experience, it's best to find some combination of the two.
 
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Ok that's all for now. Feel free to ask any questions: I didn't really go into the details of how to study, instead focusing on the, well, skills involved. But it's also hard to remember what it's like for someone just starting out. I remember parts of studying very clearly, but I forget the thousands of things I used to be puzzled through varying stages of understanding but now take for granted.
The process was all I could think about for the longest time. Now I don't give it much thought, it's just a regular part of my life, reading and a bit of studying. It's not bad idea, to just find a type of study that you know is helpful, stop thinking about all the right ways and wrong ways and magic tricks which don't exist, and just do it, for a while. Regularly. For a month or three.

First, I should probably address those who questioned why I never played this VN before... the answer is that I did try this VN 'way back when' and couldn't get past the prologue. To be frank, the prologue of this VN is pretty... unimpressive. However, once you get past that prologue, you are put into what probably amounts to the best nakige I've ever played.

This VN is a kinetic novel, with only a single ending. It combines elements of mythology, mystery, fantasy, and psychological horror (relatively mild) into a single whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. For those who love Araragi (to be honest, I think all of those who read this VN love Araragi) more than Hiyo... my condolences. There is only one path and it is Hiyo's.

The child-version of Hiyo in the pic above is part of one of my favorite early scenes in the VN and the scene that pretty much locked in my love of the characters as a whole. I'm a sucker for appeals to emotions like the ones in this VN, and there is very little in this VN that doesn't appeal to your emotions on some level. The warmth and kindness of the three girls closest to the protagonist and the dynamic between the four of them is central to most of the story. While Hiyo-love indeed has a big impact on the story, romance in this VN is ultimately merely one of many themes, ranging from the obvious 'love of art' and 'autumn', to 'the nature of kindness'.

For those who have seen the opening song on youtube... you should probably be aware that the entire OST for this VN is on that level or better. Like many of the best VNs out there, the musical direction and the choice of music in general is superb... a work of art. There are many Chinese-classical and hybrid Japanese-classical themes mixed in with various other types, and this adds to the atmosphere created by the 'old Japan' design of the school and dorms where all the events of the story take place. These aspects, combined with the plentiful expressions and poses given to the characters' tachie, are used effectively to create the 'personality' of the VN as a whole.

The most important way to evaluate VNs that fall into the 'nakige' category is how much they made you love the characters, thus giving you a reason to cry for them. In that sense, I can honestly say that it leaves almost every nakige I've played in the dust (including all of Key's). The lack of massive casts of heroines and multiple paths serves to make every occurrence in this VN feel 'real', adding more impact to the sorrow, joy, hope, and pride that continually break your heart. I can honestly say that I feel Propeller used the 'kinetic novel' format to its fullest, succeeding in creating a story with an impact far in excess of what it would have possessed if it had been a multi-path story.

Now... I feel it is about time I stopped praising this VN and spoke about the one issue that bothered me, even after I finished it...

... it truly amazed me how bad the VN is during the initial stages. It feels awkward and forced, and that sense of 'eh, what were they trying to do here?!' is so strong at first that it was enough to make me drop this five years ago without a second thought. Of course, back then I hadn't been as thoroughly 'trained' by years of playing moege that are far worse than this... but it is still a flaw in an otherwise awesome VN. That said, once it gets started, this VN is really, really hard to put down.

Overall, the only people I can't recommend this to are the extreme moe and dark fantasy fans. For all that the designs are most definitely moe, the degree to which the characters suffer in this VN will be a bit much for the soft-moe addicts. For the dark fantasy fans... you'll probably be a bit put off by a lack of action and murder. This VN has precisely one action scene that would interest that type... and it isn't that long (though it is important to the story in general). Everyone else? If you can make it past the prologue, I can guarantee you'll fall in love with the characters, even if other aspects bother you.