VN Fan Sites and Videos

[kyrt]

Fuwanovel is a great website and it has an awesome community and a goal to make visual novels popular in the west but it's not the only site out there with some interesting vn related stuff to check out. The following is a list of usually vn related websites than can be used to help further this idea. These websites deserve a little shout-out and hopefully with the knowledge of these places you will be able to further grow as a vn fan. These all probably link to nsfw content so you've been warned. Most of you may already know about these but since we keep getting new people I figured why the hell not.

 

Overall Useful:

 

Visual Novel Database: The visual novel database is a large, comprehensive and up-to-date database for information about all existing visual novels. It has information related to the visual novels themselves, available releases, character descriptions, links to translators (if they have any), and helps categorize and keep a record of their own visual novel viewing. If you are a fan of visual novels this website is great for keeping track of what you've read, what you want to read, and any ratings you've given to them. The website has been around since 2007 and is still used by many visual novel fans today.If you don't have an account here I highly recommend it and fuwanovel even has a spot in the profile to link your vndb account. 

 

Fuwanovel: This one should be obvious. A website primarily with the goal to make visual novels popular in the west there is a main site, a community forum, an area for blogs, reviews, and news. The news section of this site in particular is very useful to the western visual novel reader as on a weekly basis they post an update of the status of all known fan-translations in process as well as let readers know about visual novel releases for that week both licensed and fan-translations. I am hoping you already know about this one...

 

Japanese VN Oriented:

 

Hau~Omochikaeri: The main purpose of this site is to provide information about upcoming eroge to English speakers via monthly releases, weekly news, eroge reviews, and sometimes figure impressions and reviews. This site at the beginning of each month have Micchi and Zen outline the upcoming eroge and their thoughts about them as well as showing cover art, release dates, story synopses, OP videos and links to the sites themselves. The weekly news on the other hand is a bunch of news related to eroge and visual novel related announcements. This is a good website for anyone interested in finding out what the hot titles being released each month in Japan actually although it is an opinion piece so they don't mention everything. They tend to ignore anything nukige based however and Micchi seems to have an imouto obsession. A lot of visual novel descriptions they translate are then used on vndb.

 

Erogetrailers: Erogetrailers is a website for those people who like to look up the OP video information or view videos for the various visual novels they may have read or the ones they wish to read. The website has video links and further links to youtube, official sites and more. The videos range from sfw to nsfw so keep that in mind when checking the site out. Basically if you liked an opening, an ending, or a specific trailer for a vn you can probably find it or a link to it on this site.

 

EroGameScape: A website similar to vndb except for a Japanese audience. VNDB has a way for readers to vote and most of the visual novels and top ones in particular are where they are based on western audiences. This is a website for Japanese audiences and more follows their particular interests rather than a westerner's interest. It's a good way to see what exactly is popular in Japan but is not necessarily a good method for finding exceptional games. This site is particularly useful in seeing how the Japanese vn fans rated recent releases and if you can properly read/speak Japanese this might give you an idea of some games to try in the future. The rating system is a bit flawed as it is not weighted and this is primarily opinion ratings so keep that in mind. This website is sometimes blocked in some locations so using a proxy to access it is a good way to get around that.

 

Translated VN Oriented:

 

Lewd Gamer: Lewd Gamer was founded January 14th, 2015 in response to the growing interest in adult video games. The website provides comprehensive coverage of adult games in the media with pursuit towards accuracy, objectivity, quality, and ethics. Since many of the main video game news sites tend to ignore adult games due to the societal taboos related to them Lewd Gamer aims to change that by giving adult games the same sort of news coverage as you would see for any other type of game. They cover all erotica found in gaming and visual novels are a huge part of this. Lewd Gamer has news, reviews, editorials, and interviews...sometimes with oelvn creators or people like Peter Payne the founder of J-List and JAST USA.

 

- If there are any other websites I may have missed please let me know. This list is primarily for fan sites and not actual places of where to buy visual novels so if you have an idea of a site to add please keep that in mind. Here's hoping someone finds this useful...

[Clephas]

Most of the big anime sites (non-corporate) have VN sub-communities, just to mention it... and Hongfire is still a center for the ancient fans (fans around since around the turn of the century). 

 

I'm wary of Lewdgamer, if only because I see a distinct possibility of future Canadian and EU central members and popular bloggers being rounded up en masse... 

[Eclipsed]

I knew 3 / 6 of these sites, woot woot.

[Satsuki]

Another one is Otaku Lair, they are really fast with updating about newly announced titles.

[sanahtlig]

I'm wary of Lewdgamer, if only because I see a distinct possibility of future Canadian and EU central members and popular bloggers being rounded up en masse... 

Way to be alarmist.

 

Erogamescape blocks many foreign IPs.  I have to use a Japanese web proxy to access it.  That's certainly worth noting.

 

The visual novel subreddit is worth mention.

 

HongFire is a notable community, especially since they host major text-hooking projects such as AGTH, ITH, ITHVNR, and Translation Aggegator.

[Josephl64]

Way to be alarmist.

 

Erogamescape blocks many foreign IPs.  I have to use a Japanese web proxy to access it.  That's certainly worth noting.

 

The visual novel subreddit is worth mention.

 

HongFire is a notable community, especially since they host major text-hooking projects such as AGTH, ITH, ITHVNR, and Translation Aggegator.

I haven't tested this out, but I got Windows 10, and have my location, language, and locale all set to JP and I didn't need a vpn when before I did. Guessing it has to do with the location part, but it may very well be coincidence.

[sanahtlig]

I haven't tested this out, but I got Windows 10, and have my location, language, and locale all set to JP and I didn't need a vpn when before I did. Guessing it has to do with the location part, but it may very well be coincidence.

Setting those to Japanese makes no difference for me.  Some ranges are blocked, others aren't.  Easy way to test it--set all of those to English and see if you can toggle the block on/off.  My guess you got lucky and your current IP is outside the blocked range.

[Chronopolis]

A while back I wrote a post rounding up all the VN fan sites (communities, not content sources and resources) I could find. Just ignore the number estimates cause they are very inaccurate.

https://chrolize.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/visual-novel-communities/

Copy of the post:

Tlwiki (Chat exists on IRC: irc.rizon.net #tlwiki):

Estimated active members: 150
Renowned for its residents having a slightly elitist overtone, the IRC (132 users currently) still boasts home to relatively intelligent discussion at all times. VN localization is a common topic there, every event is likely to be touched upon at some point. Also common are vn-related twitter posts, humorous/absurd image links, and JP-music, J-RPG’s and console games, and mocking bad translations obliquely alluding to good translation practice.

The main site (wiki) hosts a number of active and a significant number of completed translation projects.

Reddit /visualnovel/:
Estimated active members: 400 (Edit: Pretty off, a statistics post showed the monthly unique visitors to be 3000. )
The second VN survey garnered 344 replies. One can estimate the active user count to be about 400. They have their own rec subreddit, /visualnovelsuggest/.
The day to day links are dominated by Grisaia, Umineko, Mud-Luv, Sharin, and a few other popular TL’d titles . (The secret mascot untranslated vn of /visualnovel/ is Asairo.)
Recently, threads with a discussion topic (What makes a good Sci-fi VN?) were tried out, which I think is quite great.

I would like to see more of those in the future, as not everyone has something to say about every topic. A side bar of 3-5 active topics would be good, there is definitely thread space to spare. What I like most about those topics is that people can still have an interesting discussion without necessarily having played the same VN’s.

Also of note is /vndiscuss/, a small pod that plays through vns together and hosts scheduled discussions every week. (Estimated active users: 20)

Fuwanovel:
Estimated active users (600): Registered members 400, +700 lurkers (holy cow).

The current amount of online users is 177. (25 members, 165 guests) The maximum ever was 544. There are 800 registered users with 10 or more posts, and 400 users with 40 or more posts. There are probably around 600 active users. Of them, about 80 regularly post in the VN sub-forums.

Note worthy for being the only stable active VN community based on the forum medium. The community atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming (to the point of coming off as saccharine to some), and I give them credit for their activeness in improving the site (like this introduction post). On the flip side, being a new growing community, there are a lot of vocal members with differing ideas on how the community MO should be.

They cleaned up rec threads into a dedicated recommendations sub-forum, which is headed by a go-to vn list which every community seems to have.
The website hosts torrents (I’m pretty sure there’s the consideration that download links attract visitors they can try to capture and grow the site.).

Has an active discussion thread every time a hype-worthy VN has a TL released. Archive of reviews, analysis, and discussion.
The most talked about untranslated VN of late is AstralAir no Shiroki Towa, thanks in no small part to the local loli sub-community/following.
Also of note:
-There’s a (unaffiliated) semi-closed Skype group (about 15 regulars) for people learning to play untranslated VN’s while studying Japanese. Forum thread’s here. It was set up at the start of this year (2014).

I was part of of this and I thought it went very well, and is pretty good idea for other groups to try out, given the proper organization and dedication.

4chan /jp/ (threads expire, go to the catalog and ctrl-f for “VNTL or VN General” to find the most recent)
VNTL Discussion:
Estimated active users: 150
Undeniably a shithole at times, the thread is still the headwaters for up-to-date TL progress. Futhermore, the posters are undoubtedly active vn users and there is discussion on almost everything on-topic. I guess, if you didn’t actually find the “discussion” interesting, you wouldn’t be there. Maybe like 150 active users and 40 regular posters. The VN threads are just a small part of /jp/, which is just a small part of 4chan.

VN General:
Estimated: 200
A lot of the discussion here is on untranslated titles. A lot of titles get named, some posts spawn discussions a few short posts long, while the higher profile titles form longer discussion threads and are occasionally brought up in future threads. There are relatively high proportion of untranslated VN readers (naturally, anonymous). I surmise this is due to the age of the community. Created in 2008, /jp/ has existed for long enough for some of its members to stay interested in VNs to reach power reader status. Estimate: 200 active users 40 regular posters, 20 power readers.
Also of note:
-Umineko General
-Nukige General

Lemma Soft
Dates back to: 2003
They are a OELVN community centered around promotion and development using the Renpy engine.
As for judging commuity size, they have very little google traffic even compared to renpy, the engine they are based off. However, a high percentage of devs per member (I think 30-40% of members had worked on making a VN at some point). What probably illustrates this point the best the near 1000 completed games they have. While sturgeon’s law applies in full-effect, it’s impressive to see that the artists, programmers, and writers able to find each other and hammer projects out. Without an environment like that, the number of projects that would spontaneously arise would be much lower, not to mention the lack of a definitive audience to present the product to.

Honourable mentions:

Katawa Shoujo Forum: Currently 31 users online (10 registered, 21 guests), highest 544 (Jan. 4th, 2012). Given it probably had a much higher post:lurk count at the time, that means that during the few months after its release (Jan. 2012), the KS forums eclipsed the entire western VN online community (10747 total registrations).

AnimeSuki Eroge General Thread
Estimated active users: ?? 40->20 It’s a 4400 post/220 page thread (started in 2004!) that shouldn’t die anytime soon, despite a continued decline in activity over the years.

Suprisingly, the forums also holds the main place to talk about Dies Irae and some other inaccessible but highly regarded titles.

Facebook Visual Novel Club
Almost overlooked this one. Tons of pictures, some news, discussion, and a few well-made reviews. Not very active, I think most people like once (4,669 likes) and never come back. I’m sure it will resume activity whenever something notable happens and people want to talk about. It is “the” facebook group for VNs, after all.

Other minor groups:

Steam Group
-List of all VN’s hosted on Steam
Doujin Style vn thread (large touhou community + DL link host) thread. It hasn’t really gone past an ordinary minor thread though.

Ton of tiny groups that don’t visibly exist + lurkers of the medium.
The remaining gathering places are random forums with a population of 20 people or less, which inevitability die out eventually (Ex. ScarletDevilMansion). My guess all the lurkers on the above sites play eroge and bring it up infrequently in their own circles if it’s appropriate. If you sit down with enough people who are fans of Japanese media, you will find people who have played VN’s. Many just don’t engage in it online any more then commenting on relevant youtube videos or pictures.

Other (Less-directly related)

Anime-Sharing Eroge Corner
Dates back to: 2011
Estimate active users: ?? I don’t know, they seem more interested in actually playing VN’s then discussing about the story. They are good for provided pirated games, getting them working, and helping people through gameplay.

Hong Fire H-Game Sub-forum
Dates back to: 2004
Like Anime-sharing, but doesn’t actually post DL links but is better as a forum. Very active and probably the primarily place for Eroge-RPG/H-Games discussion. There are some VN threads but they aren’t the main attraction. The thread count is very high in this forum, with every game getting a thread.
There’s also a Bishoujo Game Club, but it’s died. The site traffic as a whole dropped dramatically after 2011, according to google trends, which coincides when they stopped hosting DL links.

 

Besides this, there's  tumblr (probably where'll you find the otome/BL game fan population)/

[kyrt]

I'm sure there are a few different youtube channels out there that review, discuss, let's play, or parody visual novels so feel free to share. I wasn't sure if this should go here or in the youtube random thread but figured it's a big enough update or something. It's especially interesting from a sociological view to see how perceptions and people's opinions on aspects of visual novels have changed over time.

 

Here's a funny video by Otaku-Vs on why we shouldn't play dating sims.

 

Here's a place to find a bunch of different youtube vn videos...you can find people who do let's plays, music arrangements, tops lists, discussions, etc... at #visualnovel

 

Please Keep links and recommendations to specific channels or websites.

[Kawasumi]

I'm sure there are a few different youtube channels out there that review, discuss, let's play, or parody visual novels so feel free to share. I wasn't sure if this should go here or in the youtube random thread but figured it's a big enough update or something. It's especially interesting from a sociological view to see how perceptions and people's opinions on aspects of visual novels have changed over time.

 

Here's a funny video by Otaku-Vs on why we shouldn't play dating sims.

 

Here's a place to find a bunch of different youtube vn videos...you can find people who do let's plays, music arrangements, tops lists, discussions, etc... at #visualnovel

 

Please Keep links and recommendations to specific channels or websites.

[CeruleanGamer]

I love you guys, so I'll choose Fuwanovel over everything else. No lesbians though. ~_~

[sanahtlig]

A while back I wrote a post rounding up all the VN fan sites (communities, not content sources and resources) I could find. Just ignore the number estimates cause they are very inaccurate.

https://chrolize.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/visual-novel-communities/

Copy of the post:

Tlwiki (Chat exists on IRC: irc.rizon.net #tlwiki):

Estimated active members: 150

Renowned for its residents having a slightly elitist overtone, the IRC (132 users currently) still boasts home to relatively intelligent discussion at all times. VN localization is a common topic there, every event is likely to be touched upon at some point. Also common are vn-related twitter posts, humorous/absurd image links, and JP-music, J-RPG’s and console games, and mocking bad translations obliquely alluding to good translation practice.

The main site (wiki) hosts a number of active and a significant number of completed translation projects.

Reddit /visualnovel/:

Estimated active members: 400 (Edit: Pretty off, a statistics post showed the monthly unique visitors to be 3000. )

The second VN survey garnered 344 replies. One can estimate the active user count to be about 400. They have their own rec subreddit, /visualnovelsuggest/.

The day to day links are dominated by Grisaia, Umineko, Mud-Luv, Sharin, and a few other popular TL’d titles . (The secret mascot untranslated vn of /visualnovel/ is Asairo.)

Recently, threads with a discussion topic (What makes a good Sci-fi VN?) were tried out, which I think is quite great.

I would like to see more of those in the future, as not everyone has something to say about every topic. A side bar of 3-5 active topics would be good, there is definitely thread space to spare. What I like most about those topics is that people can still have an interesting discussion without necessarily having played the same VN’s.

Also of note is /vndiscuss/, a small pod that plays through vns together and hosts scheduled discussions every week. (Estimated active users: 20)

Fuwanovel:

Estimated active users (600): Registered members 400, +700 lurkers (holy cow).

The current amount of online users is 177. (25 members, 165 guests) The maximum ever was 544. There are 800 registered users with 10 or more posts, and 400 users with 40 or more posts. There are probably around 600 active users. Of them, about 80 regularly post in the VN sub-forums.

Note worthy for being the only stable active VN community based on the forum medium. The community atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming (to the point of coming off as saccharine to some), and I give them credit for their activeness in improving the site (like this introduction post). On the flip side, being a new growing community, there are a lot of vocal members with differing ideas on how the community MO should be.

They cleaned up rec threads into a dedicated recommendations sub-forum, which is headed by a go-to vn list which every community seems to have.

The website hosts torrents (I’m pretty sure there’s the consideration that download links attract visitors they can try to capture and grow the site.).

Has an active discussion thread every time a hype-worthy VN has a TL released. Archive of reviews, analysis, and discussion.

The most talked about untranslated VN of late is AstralAir no Shiroki Towa, thanks in no small part to the local loli sub-community/following.

Also of note:

-There’s a (unaffiliated) semi-closed Skype group (about 15 regulars) for people learning to play untranslated VN’s while studying Japanese. Forum thread’s here. It was set up at the start of this year (2014).

I was part of of this and I thought it went very well, and is pretty good idea for other groups to try out, given the proper organization and dedication.

4chan /jp/ (threads expire, go to the catalog and ctrl-f for “VNTL or VN General” to find the most recent)

VNTL Discussion:

Estimated active users: 150

Undeniably a shithole at times, the thread is still the headwaters for up-to-date TL progress. Futhermore, the posters are undoubtedly active vn users and there is discussion on almost everything on-topic. I guess, if you didn’t actually find the “discussion” interesting, you wouldn’t be there. Maybe like 150 active users and 40 regular posters. The VN threads are just a small part of /jp/, which is just a small part of 4chan.

VN General:

Estimated: 200

A lot of the discussion here is on untranslated titles. A lot of titles get named, some posts spawn discussions a few short posts long, while the higher profile titles form longer discussion threads and are occasionally brought up in future threads. There are relatively high proportion of untranslated VN readers (naturally, anonymous). I surmise this is due to the age of the community. Created in 2008, /jp/ has existed for long enough for some of its members to stay interested in VNs to reach power reader status. Estimate: 200 active users 40 regular posters, 20 power readers.

Also of note:

-Umineko General

-Nukige General

Lemma Soft

Dates back to: 2003

They are a OELVN community centered around promotion and development using the Renpy engine.

As for judging commuity size, they have very little google traffic even compared to renpy, the engine they are based off. However, a high percentage of devs per member (I think 30-40% of members had worked on making a VN at some point). What probably illustrates this point the best the near 1000 completed games they have. While sturgeon’s law applies in full-effect, it’s impressive to see that the artists, programmers, and writers able to find each other and hammer projects out. Without an environment like that, the number of projects that would spontaneously arise would be much lower, not to mention the lack of a definitive audience to present the product to.

Honourable mentions:

Katawa Shoujo Forum: Currently 31 users online (10 registered, 21 guests), highest 544 (Jan. 4th, 2012). Given it probably had a much higher post:lurk count at the time, that means that during the few months after its release (Jan. 2012), the KS forums eclipsed the entire western VN online community (10747 total registrations).

AnimeSuki Eroge General Thread

Estimated active users: ?? 40->20 It’s a 4400 post/220 page thread (started in 2004!) that shouldn’t die anytime soon, despite a continued decline in activity over the years.

Suprisingly, the forums also holds the main place to talk about Dies Irae and some other inaccessible but highly regarded titles.

Facebook Visual Novel Club

Almost overlooked this one. Tons of pictures, some news, discussion, and a few well-made reviews. Not very active, I think most people like once (4,669 likes) and never come back. I’m sure it will resume activity whenever something notable happens and people want to talk about. It is “the” facebook group for VNs, after all.

Other minor groups:

Steam Group

-List of all VN’s hosted on Steam

Doujin Style vn thread (large touhou community + DL link host) thread. It hasn’t really gone past an ordinary minor thread though.

Ton of tiny groups that don’t visibly exist + lurkers of the medium.

The remaining gathering places are random forums with a population of 20 people or less, which inevitability die out eventually (Ex. ScarletDevilMansion). My guess all the lurkers on the above sites play eroge and bring it up infrequently in their own circles if it’s appropriate. If you sit down with enough people who are fans of Japanese media, you will find people who have played VN’s. Many just don’t engage in it online any more then commenting on relevant youtube videos or pictures.

Other (Less-directly related)

Anime-Sharing Eroge Corner

Dates back to: 2011

Estimate active users: ?? I don’t know, they seem more interested in actually playing VN’s then discussing about the story. They are good for provided pirated games, getting them working, and helping people through gameplay.

Hong Fire H-Game Sub-forum

Dates back to: 2004

Like Anime-sharing, but doesn’t actually post DL links but is better as a forum. Very active and probably the primarily place for Eroge-RPG/H-Games discussion. There are some VN threads but they aren’t the main attraction. The thread count is very high in this forum, with every game getting a thread.

There’s also a Bishoujo Game Club, but it’s died. The site traffic as a whole dropped dramatically after 2011, according to google trends, which coincides when they stopped hosting DL links.

 

Besides this, there's  tumblr (probably where'll you find the otome/BL game fan population)/

[Chronopolis]

This is a surprisingly good resource.  I never realized you wrote stuff like this.

[CeruleanGamer]

Not to mention Steam has been greenlighting a record amount of vns so more of the western world is exposed to it now and is welcomed with open arms. Hope our community continues to grow like this because vns aren't just about cute girls and sex. =P

[sanahtlig]

As with Reddit in general, I find /r/visualnovels pretty frustrating.  As a reader it's a pretty nice source of news and commentary, but the community itself is capricious and highly critical.  The content voting creates an unpredictable environment--you never know when a post or comment will get tagged for attention, creating a dogpiling / bandwagon effect.  As implied, this attention could just as easily end up being negative as positive.  The discussion is sometimes interesting, but it's not really an enjoyable place to post.  I've been on the receiving end of both types of attention.  It often surprises me what types of content end up getting upvoted--often it's not the content I'm most proud of or that required the most effort to write.