Zalor

If you don't mind horror, you should definitely check out Saya no Uta. Other short VNs I highly recommend are Planetarian and Narcissu. Be warned though, both are really sad. And Saya no Uta isn't exactly a mood lifter either. But they are definitely 3 excellent VNs Regarding stuff that's less on the depressing side I would recommend Juniper's Knot and The Dandelion Girl. Both of these are really short though. Each only take slightly more than an hour to read. I also would recommend checking out Katawa Shoujo, as while it isn't exactly a "short" VN (it isn't a long one either), it's split up into parts. Act 1, which is the first part only takes like 3 or 4 hours to read. If you complete Act 1 and you're liking it you should continue with it, and if not, feel free to drop it. Lastly, while I can't personally recommend it since I haven't read it myself (honestly, shame on me). Phenomeno is a short VN that a lot of people I know liked.

This wouldn't happen to have anything to do with this Youtube Channel would it? TwoSetViolin I really hope this isn't a yaoi of them...

This is fascinating

Always like to hear about how people get into VNs, I'll give this a watch later today

Actually I agree with this, and in earlier drafts of my script I addressed it a bit. But when I was editing things down (cutting the fat) it was one of the parts I thought I got a bit too rambly and decided to cut out. But I see the cultural trend of novels going a similar direction poetry did. Sure, some people still read poetry, but its a pretty small niche. Especially if you compare it to more popular media. Poetry will never "die", but I don't see it making a comeback as a culturally significant medium. Likewise, I don't think the novel will ever die, and it will always have an audience, but the audience is shrinking. It's also interesting to note, that most novels that have a significant cultural impact, most often have movie adaptations which serve as the forefront of that cultural impact. There is also one other caveat I have about my argument about reading being in decline (which I also cut from an earlier draft). Which is that I think non-fiction won't be hurt as badly as fiction. Partly because the screen and the internet has made many of us addicted to information, I think many people will continue to read informative, non-fiction. Non-fiction aimed at the general public also tends to be written in ways that don't tend to challenge the reader (at least in it's style of writing). And as a side point, in so far that fiction still does have a somewhat popular audience, it is mostly in genres related to YA, which also are written in styles that don't challenge the reader. Just as TV is easy to consume, so is YA fiction. So what I'm really arguing is that it's the novel (and written short fiction) more broadly speaking that is in decline.

You bring up some serious concerns that I have as well. Particularly the points about if people aren't reading, why would they read VNs? As well as the point that VNs don't seem to be growing. The VN medium may very well be doomed, but I don't think it HAS to be, and I think it could even thrive, so long as the right things happen. And I guess that's my point, if these things don't happen the medium could very well be screwed. So the reason I think VNs have an appeal to people who are increasingly reading less, is because of its acoustic quality. It may sound ass backwards, but sound is actually a much more important element to visual novels than the visuals are. This is to the extent that visual novels were originally called sound novels. Sound involves a person in poignant ways that visuals could never do. But unlike audio books, which aren't even really books since they are just pure sound, visual/sound novels actually allow you to engage with text. You can read at your own pace, you can go back an read previous text via a backlog, and you can even make decisions with the text. But my key point, is that the digital age has strengthened our focus on the acoustic, and visual novels are a novelistic medium which make significant use of sound. As for (the lack of) popularity VNs have, I think the solution for this is simple, and it's a note I ended my video on. Visual Novels are a new artistic frontier, that is mostly unexplored. Most VNs that get made, either JVNs or EVNs, hardly experiment with the medium. But there is a lot of cool things you can do with the medium. Furthermore, precisely because reading is in decline, and publishing as a result is a near impossible goal for many fiction writers, I think traditional writers will slowly start seeing VNs as a medium they could make use of. Similarly, there are a bunch of musicians on Soundcloud who seem to be struggling to get the recognition they are after. A struggling and talented musician, and a struggling and talented writer, could work together to make a VN and the result would likely be interesting. So I guess to conclude, precisely because VNs are an acoustically dominated medium, it has a kind of fundamental appeal to non-readers. At least a much lower barrier of entry than reading an actual book. And for writers and musicians who themselves are working in mediums where it is increasingly difficult to breakthrough, making VNs may prove to be an appealing option to them. Granted, this process, assuming it happens, will start slowly. But artists with outside influences could add the crucial new blood to the medium that it desperately needs.

Apologies, I should have been a little more specific. I'm not saying VNs should completely move away from adult content, and there are certainly genres and individual works that benefit from such content. Rather, I'm just advocating that more VNs that focus on stories where adult content isn't necessary would be an overall positive thing. Similar to how outright censorship stifles creativity in the way you detailed, the still prevalent expectation of sexual content in many commercial VNs reinforce the opposite problem. Where romantic and sexual scenes get forced in for the marketing of an 18+ tag promising sexual content, but where it clashes with the overall focus of the story. For example, Steins;Gate, Umineko, Higurashi, etc would be objectively worse works if they had forced sexual content. There is no serious need for it in those stories. Likewise, to go with an example I used in my video, Sayooshi would be an objectively worse work without the sexual content. So I'm not fundamentally anti-sexual content. But I think if VNs lost the reputation of "VN = porn game", it would be overall beneficial for the medium and could attract more people (both creatives looking to work with VNs, as well as a broader audience for VNs) if that reputation for adult content weakened.

Great questions, and I'll address each one individually. Q1: What about the relationship of VNs to anime, considering most people came from the latter? A1: Partly for a reason I will address in my answer to your second question, I think that the association between visual novels and anime is mostly just circumstantial. As in the market that visual novels originally grew out of, was closely connected to anime and so they have had a close relationship since. But just as chivalric romances used to dominate literature in the early era of the novel, mostly for commercial viability, the medium of novels slowly evolved passed that. I think visual novels can express much more than the themes and styles they are currently limited to with their close relation to anime. And eventually as the medium gets experimented with, it will move away from the current trends. It's also worth noting, that the very early visual novels (Otogirisou and Kamaitachi no Yoru), had no connection to anime at all. Imo they were just very ahead of their time. The connection with anime only happened for commercial reasons for the time. But the original conception for visual/sound novels didn't have anime or adult content in mind at all. As the medium slowly expands through experimentation, I think it will return to the original vision of these early works to be multi-media novels rather than just anime games. Q2: What is the future of VNs, given the continued decline in reading literature? A2: In the very last part of my video, I suggested that visual novels are a potential new frontier for artists. I think creative thinkers and artists who can see the theoretically potential of visual novels, have a whole new medium to play around with and experiment with. I think as artists begin to experiment with this medium and its potential, it will evolve into something more significant. Particularly because the publishing industry is so nepotistic (at least in my home country of the USA), I think steadily we will find aspiring novelists turn to this medium as a way they can express their stories in a medium that that appeals to the new sensibilities of people raised on screens. Q3: The relationship of adult content to the literary value of VNs A3: My answer to this is pretty similar to question 1. Due to circumstances, the visual novel market embraced adult content for commercial viability. But as the medium grows and gets experimented with by artists from different backgrounds, I think it will steadily expand past the need to contain adult content.

This is an idea I'm open to. However, the days when the novel had serious influence on popular culture is long over, and the dominance of screen based stimulation changed that. VNs, as in a medium that combine sound + visuals + text have all the potential to be something much more than they currently are (which in many cases are just glorified anime games). Perhaps they are just a transitionary medium into something else, but the novel (as a medium for significant contemporary influence) is dead and that much I am 100% certain of

The only VN I ever backed on Kickstarter was Dies Irae, which I mostly did because it felt like a really important achievement on the VN community's part. I remember there being delays, but personally I didn't mind. I did ultimately get everything I paid for. I do remember there was a lot of criticism of how the Kickstarter campaign was being handled at the time though.

Hey, I'm really happy to hear you liked Digital Seclusion and that it led you here. This forum isn't as active as it used to be, but it's far from dead and still a really good place to discuss VNs!

For your first couple of threads I dismissed you as high effort troll, but seeing how much this fixation (especially considering that you apparently aren't even black) has obsessed you. I can't help but recommend you go outside and interact with people. Or literally do anything that doesn't involve a screen. But... if this really is where you believe your life's purpose is truly guiding you... I guess I wish you the best of luck.

Yeah, I wasn't critiquing your point or anything. Just adding my 2 cents and venting about the frustrations of this gap. It's kind of amazing to me how Japanese and non-Japanese Otaku seem to live in different worlds in so far as pricing is concerned. Same with anime. Japanese Otaku will spend $30 on blurays that only contain 4 or so episodes of a 12+ episode series. Nobody in the west would consider that a sane purchase (and I may be biased, but I agree with the West on this point). There are so many cheap, often free sources for entertainment in the West, that it really weighed the price down for entertainment. Whereas I don't think the same is quite true for Japan. For one, there is A LOT of really good content on YouTube these days which is 100% free. Japanese YouTube still by in large, looks like Youtube from 2009. Then you have netflix, hulu, Amazon Prime, Funimation, Crunchyroll, etc to watch movies, TV shows and anime. Each of which is only 5 - $15 a month with huge libraries. We are entertained to death in the West. If something is too expensive, we have plenty of other high quality options that are cheap if not free. I think Japan is heading to this direction, but they are still behind. If you want good content, you don't have as many alternative options, especially if you are into niche Otaku stuff.

If you forget the glory days of when pirating pre-patched VNs was super easy, English speaking fans living outside of Japan have it quite good when it comes to pricing. Recently I bought Totono (You and Me and Her) in Japanese from a Japanese website, and it cost me around $60. The Steam price is literally half that. I also was considering buying another VN but ultimately opted against it, in part because for a Japanese copy I was looking at spending $100, whereas the localization on Steam was only $20. I suspect this is also the reason why on Steam they don't have it as an option to read VNs in Japanese. Since Japanese people would probably start buying the localized versions instead. The price disparity is so bad, that I have to use a VPN to buy some VNs from JastUSA. I bought Yume Miru Kusuri a month ago for a reread in Japanese, but I also wanted the English version as well (for extraneous reasons), and I needed to use a VPN to access the Jast page. Keep in mind, I live in Japan. EDIT: I should note that all the Japanese VNs I mentioned here, I bought as digital copies. Meaning all the associated expenses of physical releases don't apply.

Thank you! I was not expecting such an informative reply, I really appreciate it! I was surprised that the Latin pronunciation uses a "k", and it seems to be the basis for the Japanese. According to one of the official translators of Narcissu, the reason that Narcissu gets rid of the final "s", making a "su" instead, is because its suppose to stand for "Suicide". Which is a significant theme in the story. So it seems they took the latin pronounciation and modified the ending to "su" for thematic reasons. It does seem however that most people in English use the "Narsissu" pronunciation. So if I want to avoid a whole segment justifying my pronunciation in the video, it might be easier to default to that.

At least in English, I'm a little confused about the correct pronunciation. In Japanese it's ナルキッソス, which would be pronounced "Narukissosu" (apologies for my accent) Because the "c" is pronounced as a "k" in the original, In English I've always pronounced it like this: "Narkisu" On the other hand, Narcissu itself is a reference to Narcissus. Furthermore, everyone I can find online pronounces it like this: "Narsissu" I'm working on a video about visual novels, and at a certain point I bring up Narcissu. I just want to use the pronunciation that people are least bothered by, which I suspect is the latter one. But I just want to confirm this with other people.

From a marketing standpoint (A) is probably always better. But from my perspective as a consumer, I always prefer (B). It respects consumers more by being straight to the point, where as (A) is focused more on creating hype above all else (just look at the gap between the expectations movie trailers create, and then the actual movies themselves). (B) also allows more creative freedom, since you can change your work as many times as you want until you release it. But with (A), especially if you raised money via Kickstarter, you have to commit to the originally advertised mission. Else you risk pissing off your backers and followers. Overall, (A) seems more corporate, restrictive, and sometimes even fake. Whereas (B) feels more personal, honest, and open to creativity since it's not as focused on winning over the crowd.

I intend to post it on this YouTube channel. It may take several weeks before it's out, as I'm only ~40% done with the script. But it's something I am definitely planning on getting finished!

Weird you made this topic, as the past couple of days I've been working on a script for a video that in many ways is all about this. Ultimately though, I think the only real solution is for actual writers (the type of people who write novels) to start writing VNs. While I won't say I am exactly optimistic that this will start happening, there are a couple reasons why I think this might happen. Simply, nobody really reads anymore. I mean that somewhat hyperbolically, but if you look at statistics the amount of people who read novels and short stories for entertainment has been dropping practically every year. I read a statistic a couple years ago that only around 20% of American's read more than 2 books in an entire year. The new media, notably video games and online videos have completely enthralled two generation (most millennials and the entirety of Gen Z). And lets not forget, that even boomers, many of whom qualify as being elderly, were the original TV generation. One of my favorite self-published books to come out in the past couple of years is false kotatsu. It's a great novella, and nobody knows about it. It has no reviews on Amazon, and on Smashwords the one review of it was actually written by a personal friend of mine (who recommended it to me in the first place). If you want people to read your novel these days, you need one of two things, and unfortunately talent isn't one of them. You need to already have a decent social media following, or you need to have a solid connection in the publishing industry. And even then, the amount of people who will read your work, compared to the amount of people playing the latest games, even indie games, is miniscule. So if you want to tell stories, and you actually want people to experience them, the one (false) option people think they have is to make a video game. Now this is going to be a point I will go into detail in my video, but while video games can certainly feature great writing, for a game to be good it is critical for its level of interaction to also be good. Interactivity is always at least slightly more important than writing in video games, even in plot focused ones. And if you disagree with me, please wait for my video because I go into much more detail in that (I already wrote that part of my script). Visual Novels on the other hand, are a medium that function under a different system of poetics than games do. Visual Novels is where writing is top dog. A great story won't save a game with completely ass gameplay. But great writing, combined with at least mediocre visuals and audio, can make for a great VN. Because visual novels are multimedia, and in many respects close to video games, the coked out brains of a generation raised on the screen can appreciate them more naturally than many of them can stomach to read a conventional book. Writers who want to share their stories would be wise imo, to start using that talent in making VNs. And likewise, visual novels would strongly benefit by having competent writers migrate over. Since it's a medium, that appreciates good writing above all else Tl;DR: This is exactly why I'm planning to make a video about everything I just wrote, because it feels like in many cases nobody wants to read anything longer than a single paragraph

Welcome! What VN's have you recently gotten into?

Angel Beats was originally an anime and got a VN adaptation several years later.

I've spent enough time learning Japanese, befriending lots of other people who were learning Japanese, and hanging out on otaku forums to know that at least half of what you hear is... misleading at the very least. Anyone genuinely interested in jumping the gun and learning Japanese should read this: A Friend of Mine Learned Japanese in 1 Year From what I've witnessed in my own irl observation (and I've met safe to 100 people that have studied Japanese), unless they grew up speaking Chinese or Korean it took them a minimum of 4 - 5 years to get good at the language. I'm talking JLPT N2 - N1 level. And pretty often, it took more than that. Because people learn at different paces. Now if your only concern is reading, and you genuinely have no interest to ever communicate (speak or write) in Japanese, then you can probably get to an N2 - N1 reading level in 3 years if you study grammar and vocab diligently, and after getting a solid foundation in those read Japanese nonstop. I have known a handful of people like this, but most normal people can't and shouldn't do this. Most people burn out if they go too intensive for too long. Language learning for most people is like the Tortoise and the Hare, slow and steady wins the race. Please don't feel ashamed if you aren't N1 fluent in 3 years, or even 5 years. Because I feel in their push to encourage people to learn Japanese, sometimes Otaku communities unintentionally instill a sense of shame in people who don't learn super fast. Again, if you aren't Chinese or Korean, taking 5 - 10 years to get to JLPT N1 level is entirely normal. To specify, Koreans have an advantage because their grammatical system is relatively close to Japanese. And many words sound similar as well. If you know Chinese you already know the meanings of most Kanji, which is a huge advantage because this easily knocks out the hardest part of the language for many people. I should also add, anyone that is already multilingual, even if its not in Korean and/or Chinese also has an advantage because their brains are already more flexible when it comes to languages.

I was honestly shocked. Apparently he died on May 6th but it was only just recently announced. RIP It was always joked that Miura would die before finishing Berserk, but I don't think anyone expected it to happen like this when he was still relatively young. Edit: In case you want sources more official than Wikipedia, here you go. Cnet and Kotaku.

I went half way through yours but got frustrated because my 2nd choice for an answer kept being the correct one and my first choice wrong. It was like the SAT all over again...