For Love of VNs: For Beginners

[Clephas]

First, knowing kanji isn't really necessary to play VNs with the translation aggregator/ITH combo (using jparser only) or the VNR's furigana function.  These are solely for getting used to the language, separately from the kanji.  To be frank, learning kanji takes a lot longer than learning how to read Japanese this way, and unless you want to wait two or three years before you start, I don't suggest using kanji-knowledge as a marker for when to start playing VNs in Japanese. 

 

These levels assume a basic background in Japanese grammar, syntax, and common vocab (particles, tenses, sentence structure, negative form, te-form, ta-form, etc. as well as words in common use in everyday conversation).  Understand, if you can't understand a raw anime episode (at least to a reasonable degree) you shouldn't even make the attempt.  While the written language has the advantage of a lack of the ambiguity lent to language by the intervention of a voice, it also has the disadvantage of being more complex than what is normally spoken in most cases. 

 

Furigana converters like jparser and VNR's furigana converter basically allow you to circumvent the need for kanji-knowledge by putting romaji or kana atop the kanji to make them comprehensible to the kanji-illiterate.  If you haven't mastered ALL of the radicals (with an understanding of WHY they effect the kanji they are attached to the way they do), as well as all of the kanji seen in everyday use, you shouldn't even make the attempt to play without these tools. 

 

Sorry, I ranted.  However, too much importance is placed on learning kanji, when it isn't really necessary to learn it before jumping into VNs.  Rather, you should understand their function.  Kanji function similar to the way parts of our words such as -ology (biology, astrology, etc using it as an obvious example) function, in that they lend specific meaning to widely-used syllables, which can lend the reader a richer understanding of certain words... if they already know those words, can recognize them in the context of the sentence, situation, and/or conversation.  Symbolic writing's advantage over and disadvantage against phonetic writing is summed up right there.  More meaning can be more easily conveyed in the written language, and thus understanding of the spoken language is weakened (thus too much kanji too early can lead to poor or flawed understanding of Japanese as a whole). 

 

Really, it is best to balance them out, but if you want to read VNs... learning the spoken language then using those tools is the fastest, most effective way to do so.  I advocate a spoken-language-leaning approach because it results in better understanding at the endpoint, but others prefer to enter from kanji because it provides a seemingly easier (if you are really good at memorization) route to simply stealing the gist of what is being written by just extracting the kanji and staring at them until you THINK they make sense.  This is also why Japanese>Chinese>English translations are just... terrible in most cases (speaking from experience as a fansubber/fantl).  The illusion of understanding without any grasp of the subtleties is usually all that kanji without a greater understanding of the language gives you.

 

Edit:  Sorry, I've had several people I know jump into VNs with kanji knowledge but a weak understanding of grammar... and the results to their understanding of what went on were hideous.  I couldn't believe some of the results (see the English reviews on the web of Devils Devel Concept, for instance... they don't even resemble the actual game).  Seeing the light bulb go on above their heads when I explained the meaning of a key line was gratifying for me... but also disturbing.  It wasn't so much about the generalized (very generalized) meaning... it was that they missed most of the key details of what was going on, details that frequently defined everything that happened after that, even though they didn't seem important at the time. 

[Chronopolis]

 

Really, it is best to balance them out, but if you want to read VNs... learning the spoken language then using those tools is the fastest, most effective way to do so.

I agree. There is a spoken conversational portion that all VN's share, easy or hard. That part is kinda relatively hard to tackle with pure grammar, and the dictionary only gives you the meaning of words. It's better to acquire it top down e.g. Characters sound like *this* when they are mad. A rhetorical question has *this* sort of tone.  Notice the voice tones and common words that show up when a character is: agreeing or disagreeing with the other person encouraging them, or trying to get them to stop. When the speaker is insecure/uncertain and looking to the listener for agreement (そうだよね！？　ねえ？).

 

Aside from continuing to study grammar, paying attention to these things while watching subbed anime is good.

 

For an beginner VN:

Spoken part -- Pretty similar to everyday anime conversation.

Description part -- can be tackled with a relatively small vocab using dic, and basic grammar

[mordred]

I see,thanks....grammar is my only good point in Japanese(but its actually just 何となく分かる lol,but I can watch all anime raw if thats what we need),and kanji is my weak point(btw what do you use to learn radicals?),so I what I was thinking was to get a better grasp of kanjis from these games haha....but I still want to read some of these anyways so I'll try playing with those tools.

 

Edit:and yeah,that gets me realized they're a lot of people who are the opposite of me,which is quite funny,since we'd be jealous of each other.

[Chronopolis]

I see,thanks....grammar is my only good point in Japanese(but its actually just 何となく分かる lol,but I can watch all anime raw if thats what we need),and kanji is my weak point(btw what do you use to learn radicals?),so I what I was thinking was to get a better grasp of kanjis from these games haha....but I still want to read some of these anyways so I'll try playing with those tools.

 

Edit:and yeah,that gets me realized they're a lot of people who are the opposite of me,which is quite funny,since we'd be jealous of each other.

How I learned radicals was from learning vocabulary.

 

For the first 2000 or so words, when ever I hit a kanji I didn't know、I would look up the stroke order. I started by writing the characters, but after a while I just traced the kanji in my head or with my finger on the table.

http://jisho.org/kanji/details/%E6%9A%AE%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B

 

When I saw new radicals, I would try to relate them to some simple kanji that contains them, or I would give a name for it.　漢字（かんじ） the first character has a radical that I think I've seen before, so I type　難しい　（むずかしい）　and compare. Once I've seen a radical in two or more kanjis, I often name it. In this case I associated that radical with 難しい. Incidentally, I associated the right radical of 難しい　with 誰（だれ）, and the left radical of 誰 with 言う（いう）.

 

After a while you can make a decent guess of stroke order for many kanji, so I stopped looking up stroke order unless I was curious.

 

Simliarly for words, if I saw familiar kanji in new word I would try and recall an old word that shares a kanji. E.g　行動（こうどう）　and 動く（うごく）。 Once I've seen a kanji in multiple words, I try and associate it with a convenient word, in this case the word 動く（うごく）。I don't look up stroke order anymore, but I still do this exercise.

 

It's also good to do this excercise to when you mix up kanji which are actually different. I see the word 塵（ごみ, trash）　but misread it as 鹿（しか, deer). "I guess I should look at the differences. It turns out 塵（ごみ）　has an extra ”土”　radical at the bottom. Now making this effort pays off more for common kanji, so feel free to only do as much as you are curious 

[Clephas]

The radicals all have their own meanings that they add to the main part of the kanji, such as the liquid radical, which is part of the kanji for seas, alcohol, hot water, etc.  If you just do a search on 'kanji radicals' you'll get a nice listup of them and in most cases, with a little thought you can figure out what many kanji mean just by what radicals they are using and the context the kanji is placed in.

[zoom909]

Besides the primary radical, don't forget to examine the other elements too.  In particular, if the character is a phonologogram, then one of those elements indicates the On-reading, which is a helpful reminder.

[mordred]

Oooh,this is helpful,thanks. I do feel like my brain almost exploded when I learn it the rough way... ,this is mind blowing for me.

[mordred]

Decide to start with Kamikaze explorer,wish me luck.

[Clephas]

Added on more to the list.

[RinXD]

I am Brazilian, sorry for my English   So, I want to know how difficult Baldr Sky is. I have played plenty of novels but Baldr Sky is my objective and I have fear that it will be too much complex for me. If it is similar to Muv Luv Alternative, so I will play it in the end of this year   Thanks.

Baldr sky is about a 6 on a scale of 1-10 of difficulty to understand if you're not fluent in japanese

[Bolverk]

Baldr sky is about a 6 on a scale of 1-10 of difficulty to understand if you're not fluent in japanese

I don't feel 6 is really accurate. It jumps between 3-7. It's has some hard infodumps and wierd stuff about the sc-fi in the baldr universe (6-7). Has a much easy stuff friends and such (3-4) and mostly moderate stuff story stuff (4-5). The most daunting about the series is the length really.

[Snowtsuku]

I'm using a list like this to see what I should read. Thanks for this as it will allow me to add more VNs to the list.

[GreyWolfXx]

What level would okujou no yurirei-san be? 

[Clephas]

Haven't played it, so no idea.  However, it looks nukige-ish, so it can't be that difficult.

[Conjueror]

Hmm... How come Maruto (Parfait/Aozora), Takahiro (Tsuyokiss) and Maeda Jun's stuff aren't on this list? I read those back when I wasn't that good in Japanese and it all went pretty smooth. I don't think 'Harukani Aogi Uruwashi no' is much easier than those, at least.

[Clephas]

Takahiro's VNs are about at or slightly above the second rank beginner's level.  This is because of the fact that they use several obscure dialects, frequently have so-so involved narration (one of the biggest difficulties for beginners), and a tendency to make obscure references to elements of Japanese pop culture. 

[Renumnum]

Hum, I'm wondering about something... several times in this thread, some people mention that being able to understand raw-anime-level conversational Japanese is a must, and how it equates to beginner level... but is it really that easy? I mean, I, for one, am absolutely not able to understand raw anime, and I wouldn't say I'm the most novice of Japanese learners out there. ^^ But maybe I'm just really bad at parsing spoken language, and it's actually easy for most people. Well, just wondering...

To be honest, before reading this thread, intuitively, I'd have thought that texts with lots of written-style Japanese, which uses a more well-behaved syntax, would be easier for beginners to understand, as opposed to lots of spoken-language quirks.

[Clephas]

If you can understand the daily conversational Japanese in a slice-of-life anime, you can probably handle at least some of the level 1 VNs I listed.  Narration in moege/charage is rather limited, and it tends to consist mostly of the protagonist's conversation-like thoughts and simple actions.

[Uni]

What do you guys think of practicing with one VN that has rpg elements? do anyone know one kind of easy to read?

[GreyWolfXx]

Trying an RPG is probably about the same as any other VN. It just really depends on the level. To start, maybe you can look up a list of English translated RPG's (if you can't find any Japanese ones) and then search for an untranslated download.

[Clephas]

The decent ones tend to be more difficult to read, though.  I don't recommend beginning with Ikusa Megami Zero, for instance.

[Vince]

this list is just real sweet, Clephas, really.

 

but for akatsuki no goei, i think if you can read akagoei with no problem you'll have no problem reading the harder ones. (speaking from my experience)

excluding series like dies irae, KKK, muramasa, fate... just. dont.

i tend to avoid the vns with full screen text box when i was just starting reading untranslated vns.

what about hapymaher and majikoi?

 

as for kanjis, you don't need to remember 1500++ kanjis just to read those untrans. just emphasize on the grammar (文法) and particles (の、は、が、に、と．．．). i even didn't even studied kanji when i started reading akagoei (my first untrans) though i had few confusion back then, i managed it by linking the words and particles.

but i still wouldn't recommend akagoei for first time reader, lol.

 

 

seeing nobody has mentioned the tools for reading them, i figure i'll share this here. TA, and ITH

https://kipchu.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/visual-novel-help-translation-tools-for-playing-untranslated-visual-novels/

[Clephas]

My first in-Japanese VN was Jingai Makyou.  Talk about setting the bar high...

[Vince]

My first in-Japanese VN was Jingai Makyou.  Talk about setting the bar high..

how hard is that compared to akagoei?

[Clephas]

It is about the same level as Devils Devel Concept.  So it is fairly difficult... Akagoei as a trilogy varies between 4 and 7, whereas Jingai is a constant 6-8.  During the narrative portions, it tends to stick to 8, and even the dialogue is a bit tricky (the protagonist's manner of speaking and choice of words).