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So What Got You Into VNs?


NotAce

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As simple as the question is, i have a feeling everyone has some interesting stories behind how they got into this medium, 

As for me, getting into Vns was a long winded journey,

It all initially started when i got into anime. Very often i would i see vns being talked here and there in anime forums, but i didnt pay too much attention to it. For starters, i was not very invested in reading and from the few screenshots i saw here and there, i felt like there was a barrier which stopped me from getting into it. This is also due to the fact, i was just getting into anime and i was more comfortable with western shows and series at that time. But  before i knew it, i was hooked into anime and an issue became apparent very quickly, which left me a bit surprised. After i spent years binging anime, i started to notice a lack of quality shows, or shows i liked to be exact. Im the type of person that binges anything i like, so in 2-3 years i was done with every notable anime and watched most of the hidden gems to all the garbage romcoms that came out every fall. Thus i realized i needed a change of pace

 

Enter phase 2: Manga

Now with having exhausted my list of anime (from 90s-2010+) and having gotten accustomed to the medium in general, i was ready for manga. At that time i was bored and needed something to fill the void. I personally could not read manga from a computer as it felt clunky and browsers on my phone felt tedious. Then i stumbled upon Manga rock, which held my hand for 3-4 more years, where i had some of the most memorable time reading. This was a time of excitement, where i found near infinite things to read whilst not getting tired of the medium which i had not predicted. After all, i was never much for reading, but this got me invested and slowly i stopped watching anime all together and started enjoying Manga's more (who said reading manga isn't beneficial, it single handedly got me into reading!). But slowly after i kept binging on manga the inevitable reality was soon becoming apparent, i had somehow managed to exhaust even this medium. I had kept reading day and night (mostly night), in between shifts and bus rides, it was soon becoming apparent this medium was not gonna last forever. Alas all good things must come to an end, i soon realized that most the manga i haven't read are just 1-2 chapters and ongoing. I had read all the obscure manga from Love in hell, to almost all the english manhwa and it was becoming hard to find stuff that was enjoyable to read 

Enter Phase 3: Visual Novels

At this stage i started reading books and novels not related to anime or manga. I had broadened my horizons and therefore i started reading anything that fancied my taste. But there was a hole left behind, a void that always reminded me:  what if there was a medium that joined both manga and anime but offered more flexibility?

 

And lo and behold, i started getting into VN's, a medium that i considered to be very dismissive about in the past. The first one i played was G-senjou maou, which was very interesting to say the least. For starters the first thing that caught my attention mid-way through the game was: "Holy shit, for once it matters which characters i like". Even though G-senjou has a different approach to each heroine and plot progression compared to other VNs, the fact that what i had a choice was a concept that blew me away. Never before did anime or mangas offer that flexibility. Before i knew it, this became possibly the best medium i had interacted with. Infact, i thought it was a better Death Note in a sense that i found its ending to be quite satisfying and it wasnt a typical cliched ending or anything soft, which it could have easily gone for. Comparing the two isn't exactly fair i guess, but its better than mindlessly questioning morals and then throwing away an epic story with a subpar ending with convoluted decision making (cough death note cough). This lead me to reading Fate, Ever17, Karin and really got me hooked into VN's. 

 

Now this is where i stand, fascinated and engrossed in a medium which i know will offer hundreds of hours more of enjoyment, the story behind how i got into VNs might not be too interesting i suppose, but it did get me thinking: "How did other get into it?"

I initially avoided VNs since it looked over the top and was kinda hard getting into, as i was accustomed more to western media i guess, but im very happy that i did manage to get into it, otherwise i would be missing out. 

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I got bored with Pokemon on my DS so I tried playing another game for a change. That game would later become my first visual novel I had ever played, but I didn't know it was called a vn until much later (The game's called Ace Attorney by the way). Then, I played Danganronpa and Zero Escape, but it wasn't until 2017 that I started on my first real vn-- Fate Stay Night. 

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There's not much to tell, in a Forum there were screenshots posted of Katawa Shoujo and I decided to try it.

What really got me into VNs though (I liked the one VN but didn't know about the Genre) was when I was searching for other VNs and discovered Fuwanovel when it still offered the other content (not sure if it's allowed to mention here), I tried some and noticed that I enjoy the genre.

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31 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

My mistakes I made as a 14 year old weeb.

It's a mistake i wouldn't mind having tho 

 

14 minutes ago, wei123 said:

I got bored with Pokemon on my DS so I tried playing another game for a change. That game would later become my first visual novel I had ever played, but I didn't know it was called a vn until much later (The game's called Ace Attorney by the way). Then, I played Danganronpa and Zero Escape, but it wasn't until 2017 that I started on my first real vn-- Fate Stay Night. 

Funny you mention mons, i was super into pokemon upto Gen6. Overall other than R/B/G, i guess my fave mons game is Black and white. I was also super into competive mons, and even managed to get 1st place on ladder in pokemon showdown back when PO was a thing. Also nice taste in Ace attorney, and hope you enjoy fate as much as i did! :thumbsup:

 

13 minutes ago, sarkasmus said:

What really got me into VNs though (I liked the one VN but didn't know about the Genre) was when I was searching for other VNs and discovered Fuwanovel when it still offered the other content (not sure if it's allowed to mention here), I tried some and noticed that I enjoy the genre.

Interesting, i kinda also got into it after i saw a few screenshots over at discord. Joined Fuwa due to it being a great repository of VN info and seemed like a cool place :) 

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I found a random image of a vn while looking through the internet and back then I was already an anime fan and a manga one so naturally I took an interest in it and tried my utmost to find out where it was from, and from there it's all history.

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I gues my case is a bit of an odd one. First when I started to get into VNs it was to improve my japanse. I gues I should start by saying that I have been into anime since I was roughly 13/14 years old. As I spent time consuming it I started to know that this was something I was likely going to like for my entire life. At the age of 18, almost 19 I started wanting to learn japanese, I figured that the best way to do so would be to go through the books used in japanese classes (I didn't take japanese classes myself, but it was an option at my school) which i lended from the school library. I started for real learning japanese at the start of 2015, this was shortly after I had turned 19.

 

I then worked on my japanese for a bit more than a half year and when the summer vacation was starting to near its end I had finished the the books that were used for high school japanese (btw at this time I had returned the books to the school library and bought my own copies). While I still had one more book, which was used at university to go through I figured that it was about time I started using japanese practically for practice. Since I had watched anime I ofc knew about VNs at the time. Early in 2015 the series Saekano had aired which I really ended up loving. When I looked at playasia for some reason I stumbled over Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Blessing Flowers, which I then wanted to play through. I then looked a bit more through the store and ended up buying a PS vita, Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Blessing FlowersSakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo and Nisekoi: Yomeiri!?. I started with playing Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? as that was the one I found to be easiest to understand.

 

I completed Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? and To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess (which I bought a bit later) within about half a year. I had really liked playing them, especially the nisekoi one, so I knew that VN was something I would likely like. At the time I started watching the youtuber lost pause and got introduced to things like neptunia (hybrid between VN and game) and nekopara. Because I really liked these 2 series I also started looking into other VNs first at steam. Then later I started to learn about companies like MG and Jast USA. From there it took of and I started being very invested in VNs. At the moment I own 10 physical VNs from MG, 2 physicals from Jast USA, 13 physical japanese eroge, 16 physical console VNs in japanese (moslty ones based on things that already had and anime before the VN), have pre ordered the Grisaia complete box from Jlist, have pledged for physicals from 2 kickstarters (not run by SP) and ofc have a lot of titles on steam.

Edited by bakauchuujin
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Clannad... no, for real, i really like it the Clannad anime but freaking hate Nagisa, so a friend told me that the OVAS where adapted from the other "routes" and i was like: "routes"? Then he explain me what a VN is, i was into books so the idea of the VN games did like me, and of course my first game was Clannad, i loved so and decided to try others anime adaptaded VN, Toradora (really hate Taiga) and Oreimo (Kirino is in my top of "worst girl"). The rest as they say is history.

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I guess it started with me watching let's plays and streams of Ace Attorney and Steins Gate. Then a small time streamer I knew was streaming Grisaia no Kajitsu. I heard it was a hentai game, and for that (and other reasons I forget), I picked it up in a steam sale.

And I was utterly hooked (and not just on the hentai).

........ ChiruChiru is still best girl. No other VN heroine has topped her yet (though a few have come close). :michiru:

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In my case it would be... Midlife crisis.

In early 2017 I was super-frustrated with my video game addiction and noticed that I often don't even had that much fun playing many of them, just did it out of habit. And even more than that, it was super-alienating and intellectually numbing. By some very twisted logic I banned myself from playing most video games and made a transition into watching anime (which was always very fun and stimulating for me) and reading VNs. I've started writing reviews on Crunchyroll, began learning Japanese, got invited to write a few articles for an obscure website, found Fuwanovel, started a blog... And now VNs are my main past-time.

And I'm really happy about this change TBH. :)

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1 hour ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Confession:

  Hide contents

I have never read any VNs before, ever. I would definitely like to read some, but sadly, I cannot afford to buy them off of many distributor sites. I've only joined Fuwanovel so I can be with another social group that's all.

 

 

There's so many good, free ones though and super-deep sales on Steam come regularly...

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4 hours ago, bakauchuujin said:

I gues my case is a bit of an odd one. First when I started to get into VNs it was to improve my japanse. I gues I should start by saying that I have been into anime since I was roughly 13/14 years old. As I spent time consuming it I started to know that this was something I was likely going to like for my entire life. At the age of 18, almost 19 I started wanting to learn japanese, I figured that the best way to do so would be to go through the books used in japanese classes (I didn't take japanese classes myself, but it was an option at my school) which i lended from the school library. I started for real learning japanese at the start of 2015, this was shortly after I had turned 19.

 

I then worked on my japanese for a bit more than a half year and when the summer vacation was starting to near its end I had finished the the books that were used for high school japanese (btw at this time I had returned the books to the school library and bought my own copies). While I still had one more book, which was used at university to go through I figured that it was about time I started using japanese practically for practice. Since I had watched anime I ofc knew about VNs at the time. Early in 2015 the series Saekano had aired which I really ended up loving. When I looked at playasia for some reason I stumbled over Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Blessing Flowers, which I then wanted to play through. I then looked a bit more through the store and ended up buying a PS vita, Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Blessing FlowersSakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo and Nisekoi: Yomeiri!?. I started with playing Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? as that was the one I found to be easiest to understand.

 

I completed Nisekoi: Yomeiri!? and To Love-Ru Trouble Darkness: True Princess (which I bought a bit later) within about half a year. I had really liked playing them, especially the nisekoi one, so I knew that VN was something I would likely like. At the time I started watching the youtuber lost pause and got introduced to things like neptunia (hybrid between VN and game) and nekopara. Because I really liked these 2 series I also started looking into other VNs first at steam. Then later I started to learn about companies like MG and Jast USA. From there it took of and I started being very invested in VNs. At the moment I own 10 physical VNs from MG, 2 physicals from Jast USA, 13 physical japanese eroge, 16 physical console VNs in japanese (moslty ones based on things that already had and anime before the VN), have pre ordered the Grisaia complete box from Jlist, have pledged for physicals from 2 kickstarters (not run by SP) and ofc have a lot of titles on steam.

First off: Get out, this is scarily similar to some of my experiences and im not even joking 

Secondly: Thats amazing! I never had any japanese classes offered at my school, we only had french. +1 for Saekano, Noitamin A did an excellent job with the crisp animation in the anime, but i sadly haven't watched s2 or read any VNs of it. But i do have a vita and might get em all if they differ from the anime 

 

Thirdly: Honestly any tips? Your possibly 2-3 years older than me and somehow im in the exact time frame where i wanna learn japanese haha, i have no clue about the symbols being used and anything, so id appreciate any tips on how to get properly started into learning japanese to a point where i can at the very least read and speak it :) 

 

4 hours ago, KainLegacy535 said:

Clannad... no, for real, i really like it the Clannad anime but freaking hate Nagisa, so a friend told me that the OVAS where adapted from the other "routes" and i was like: "routes"? Then he explain me what a VN is, i was into books so the idea of the VN games did like me, and of course my first game was Clannad, i loved so and decided to try others anime adaptaded VN, Toradora (really hate Taiga) and Oreimo (Kirino is in my top of "worst girl"). The rest as they say is history.

Thats pretty cool haha, as stupid as it may sound, i never finished watching clanned after i guess ep5 because someone said the VN was years ahead, guess its the perfect time to finish it then! Also +1 for toradora, even the mc was wishy washy and jesus knows how i finished watching oreimo,  HenNeko was better than those 2 for me

 

3 hours ago, r0xm2n said:

I guess it started with me watching let's plays and streams of Ace Attorney and Steins Gate. Then a small time streamer I knew was streaming Grisaia no Kajitsu. I heard it was a hentai game, and for that (and other reasons I forget), I picked it up in a steam sale.

And I was utterly hooked (and not just on the hentai).

........ ChiruChiru is still best girl. No other VN heroine has topped her yet (though a few have come close)

Ahem usamin ahem

Jokes aside, i have no clue why i never watched grisaia, i remember the anime coming out, it was fresh and i think i finished season 1

Guess its the perfect time to read those VNs then!

2 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

n my case it would be... Midlife crisis.

In early 2017 I was super-frustrated with my video game addiction and noticed that I often don't even had that much fun playing many of them, just did it out of habit. And even more than that, it was super-alienating and intellectually numbing. By some very twisted logic I banned myself from playing most video games and made a transition into watching anime (which was always very fun and stimulating for me) and reading VNs. I've started writing reviews on Crunchyroll, began learning Japanese, got invited to write a few articles for an obscure website, found Fuwanovel, started a blog... And now VNs are my main past-time.

And I'm really happy about this change TBH. :)

Haha why is it so relatable? Playing league and YS was my jam, anything thats an jrpg would keep me hooked for hours (i sunk in 150 hrs in Persona 3, and around 180 in Persona 4 golden). Needless to say i was an rpg freak, that considered turn based rpg superior to all genres! From DQ, FF, YS to any shin megami tensei game 

But basically i got bored with games to a point where i just couldnt even be bothered playing them, then moved to anime. And if you read my OP you know how i ended up with VNs!

2 hours ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Confession:

  Reveal hidden contents

What if i lied and i never played a single Vn as well? What if i just want to be  accepted! :(

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1 hour ago, NotAce said:

Thirdly: Honestly any tips? Your possibly 2-3 years older than me and somehow im in the exact time frame where i wanna learn japanese haha, i have no clue about the symbols being used and anything, so id appreciate any tips on how to get properly started into learning japanese to a point where i can at the very least read and speak it :) 

Giving advice is a bit tricky since I have only been working on it on my own, but I would say it is probably important to get a good start. If you manage to get started and learn quite a bit quickly, it will be less likely that you just give up because you lose interest. As for how, well I mentioned that I myself used school books, these can be a bit expensive though I found them to be very usefull, the ones I used at the start were the genki books, they start of with the basics and don't require any previous knowledge. Firstly you should start to learn hiragana and katakana, this shouldn't take too long, I used roughly 2 hours to learn both of them. Kanji will be much harder and is something you will always have to work with, but you should probably wait a bit before starting to learn them.

One of the most important things for me have been self testing. What I have done is write down the words on the vocabulary pages on my pc and then print one copy that includes both the english and the japanese word and multiple copies with only english. The ones with only english are used as tests, on these you try to write the word in japanse and then afterwards compare it to the copy with both japanese and english. Repeat this until you have everything or almost everything correct. At the start I would recommend only using hiragana and katakana on these tests, but once you get better you can start to use easier kanji and move on to more difficult ones. Of course you will also have to learn grammar, but presonally I have found focusing mainly on learning the words to be really good, ofc you need to learn the fundamentals in grammar though. This method of self testing can be pretty effective in going through a lot of words in a short amount of time, unfortually when you do a lot you will end up forgetting many of them, but it should give you a better grasp on the fundamentals of the language and the symbols, and you should still remember a lot of it. Once you have goten the hang of japanese I would reccomend trying to use it to read something. For this i recommend either reading japanese manga since they have furigana (things that are written in kanji, also have hiragana at the side which tells you how it is pronounced) or you can ofc go for VNs, here I would recommend something that is easy and light hearted with as much voice acting as possible. Btw for the self test you should have a printer available, so it might not be a good solution for you if you don't have one.

 

Well advices on the link bellow are probably much better than my advices, so you should probably go for that rather than my way of doing it.

 

Edited by bakauchuujin
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4 minutes ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Yeah... No thanks. I've heard a lot of stories of Steam censoring and cutting subjective content from VNs, so I'm not going to try any of them there. Free or not.

Just go for things that were originally not 18+ for instance if you want a free VN you can just play DDLC or if you want something cheap you can get neptunia rebirth 1 (a VN/game hybrid) which often goes on sale, think it usually is like 80% of when there is a sale.

Edited by bakauchuujin
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6 hours ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Yeah... No thanks. I've heard a lot of stories of Steam censoring and cutting subjective content from VNs, so I'm not going to try any of them there. Free or not.

Well, I meant free VNs in general AND deep sales on Steam. You can play things such as Katawa Shoujo, Cinderella Phenomenon, Digital: A Love Story or CUPID outside of Steam. Even some fairly high-profile Japanese VNs such as Phenomeno (a tiny one, but highly regarded).

And I wouldn't put the whole blame for the censorship on Steam directly, there's a lot of all-ages titles there that never had any content removed and when things gets censored, they get censored by the publishers - and MangaGamer for example always offer free uncensoring patches.

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It was actually my inquisitive nature that got me into VNs.  There weren't many people who were fans of anime and the like where I grew up, and the few that were fans didn't know much about the medium.  More often than not I found myself being asked various things.  So during some of my casual gathering I came across the term "visual novel".  It confused me since at the time I could only liken it to manga.  Did some research and eventually found a place to download Wanko to Kurasou(I think it was that one).  So I read it and noticed the various choices popping up.  Kinda made me think of those Choose Your Own Adventure books I was a fan of.  So I finished my first playthrough and decided to test out my thought on those choices.  Imagine my joy when I found that the ending had changed from the previous one.  I was hooked from then on.

And as I side note, I've since converted a fair portion of my friends to the ways of VNs.  Let one borrow my copy of Bible Black.  He came back with some interesting stories and a new nickname.

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Similar to NotAce. I gradually got myself into deeper levels of webbenes. It all started with classic animes like Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, Cowboy Beebop, even Yatterman ( my first anime btw. While other kids were watching Cartoon  Network or FoxKids my parents thought those were bad influence so they didn’t instal cable tv in our house. The Yatterman was aired on some local channel we had. It has influenced me in some way lol if you know what I mean ;p)

Later I got myself to mangas can’t say how many I read. Hundreds ??

Then there was a break. For reasons unknown I just stoped. 

Then 2-3 years ago I stumbled upon Neptunia game on some minor torrents site. That was a game changer. It was the first game that I obtained illegally but bought it later cause it was so good.

Now it is VN era of my life. I enjoy them as something to balance my everyday load of worries stresses and such. I guess that explains my taste in vn’s which is comedy slice, of life everything that is light. 

But I wonder, if my webbenes is to progress what will be next ? Actually creating stuff maybe ? I had it on my mind for a while but I just don’t have time for that. It is a hard choice between pursuing career or doing something enjoyable that will bring little to no income. Oh god I sound old.

btw sorry for not participating in forums but I just have so little time to spare. Today is first day in many that I can do nothing but laze. At the moment I am laying on lawn in the backyard of my parents house just relaxing. The weather is really nice and there is this beautiful tree blooming next to me DAB4_E590-_A06_C-480_E-_A1_D6-_E79_E8586

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My story is here, so will just quote it. 

On 1/31/2018 at 12:34 PM, snowbell55 said:

It's nice to see so many people having come in via Katawa Shoujo tbh. It really does seem like it wound up having a big impact on people :D.

My story is much the same as many others': a friend of mine was playing Clannad and I asked them "What's a Clannad?". It turns out that a Clannad is a giant hole that yanks you inexorably towards a wide variety of fun and profoundly touching experiences, as I would come to discover later. At that point though, they explained visual nmovels and pointed me to Katawa Shoujo and I tried it, got to the end of the prologue (ie when he's at the gate of the school) and stopped for some reason. A few months later, I picked it up again, and immediately upon seeing Hanako and how skittish she was decided to learn what her story was about. Suffice to say I spent the next 2 or 3 days doing little else other than reading, and the story, soundtrack, themes, and art pulled me in and left me wanting a lot more. When I asked the same friend he said that there was plenty more than KS to discover, so I decided to fire up my copy of Steins;Gate (that I'd gotten on the recommendation of someone else). As with KS I'd started it and stopped it, but I continued, and enjoyed the relaxing parts of it, the characters, and events, and suffice to say, by the time I was done with that I'd come across one of the most memorable and impactful stories I'd ever read. Annoyingly this came just after the Golden Week Steam Sale so I missed out on the chance to stock up on several VNs, but I've been buying them up since then and really enjoying them. Still have only finished 1 route in Clannad itself though :P. 

The funny thing is that it acted as the catalyst for me - I wanted to see if I could find more stories like this, so I started to read manga and watch anime (which I've never really done over a constant period). The thing is, I've always liked stories as a kid, and can read quite a lot, so it works really really well on that front, but I've found that the emotional investment can be quite high too (which I like). 

I'll just add that I'm so incredibly glad for that conversation. VNs have become one of my favorite genres, and several of the stories have been some of the best I've ever encountered in any form of media. Not just that but I feel like there are still so many I want to discover and immerse myself in. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, before I found visual novels I was watching anime. Although, I don't remember how I got into anime.

Anyway, my first one was Majikoi(aka Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai), which I only found because of the anime (which I liked(I know unpopular opinion)). I just heard there was a game. and I was like 'Oh, it's based off of a game?' When I checked it was actually a visual novel. I decided to try it out and fell in love with the series.

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