Which VNs can you recommend?

[Life]

With the infinity series, they're all separate games so I think you can start with whichever you feel like. They're in the same universe but are all separate stories.

[Crimson]

So there are no references to the other games within each one of them? Then I think I'm gonna start with the one where the characters are being trapped in an underwater park, that story sounds pretty intriguing. And I think afterwards I'm gonna do the one with the plane crash. Or would you recommend a different order (maybe due to story quality reasons or whatever)?

[Clephas]

Mmm... most protags in VNs tend to be nekketsu (hot-blooded/somewhat thoughtless) or normal.  Shirou's personality and action make a lot more sense as you go along, but that doesn't decrease the sheer annoyance with the Fate arc, where all of his most annoying aspects are displayed in the most annoying of ways.  Shirou shows better both in UBW and Heaven's Feel, though for different reasons.

 

tbh, the only pragmatist protags I know of in translated VNs are G-Senjou's protag, Sharin no Kuni's (to an extent), and Yuuji in Grisaia.  They all have their reasons for being that way (ingrained fear in G-Senjou's, survival instinct and cold planning with Sharin's, and training for Yuuji's), but those are the closest you'll get.

 

You can also get bugfuck insane protags in a few VNs (Cross Channel's Taichi) or a protag that is cool on the surface while impulsive under it (Akihito from Comyu). 

 

I could suggest large numbers of protags to fit your tastes in untranslated ones, but it is apparent you aren't ready for those, lol.

[Crimson]

Uhm, yeah, I'm not ready for untranslated VNs at all. I started learning japanese a few months ago, and my vocabulary knowledge isn't even bad at all, but those kanjis... damn, they're hard. I can write about 50, and even those were a ton of work.

Clephas, how did you learn to read VNs? And how long did it take you until you could read your first VN?

 

Interestingly, all three of the VNs you mentioned (Grisaia, G-Senjou, and Sharin no Kuni) are ones I was planning on reading. So you think I'm gonna like these three protagonists a lot? Then maybe I should try on of the three sooner, since the protagonist is in my opinion clearly one of the most important aspects in a VN / Anime.

[Clephas]

Grisaia is huge... G-senjou has various problems (plot structure that will make you hate the writers for having more than one heroine), and Sharin no Kuni has a really unique cultural setting.  If you want to go for the main dish first, go for Grisaia... but be warned that most of the stuff written in other VNs suffers a lot by comparison.  It is one of those VNs that causes other VNs to pale greatly in comparison.

 

Also, if you use jparser, kanji knowledge isn't really necessary for playing vns in Japanese.  What you need is a working knowledge of grammar, particles, and common words.  Depending on your mental agility, you'll probably pick up the most common kanji automatically as you go.  I do suggest you know the kanji for 'reasoning', 'minute', and a few others (mostly conceptual kanji) that get used commonly in literary Japanese.  These aren't necessarily ones that will pop up early in your kanji lessons, either...  so I'd suggest you make it your business to go out of your way to learn 理　and 分かる, as well as others that have seemingly unconnected usages, though many of those will be automatically grouped in jparser, so you'll learn them automatically. 

[Crimson]

So Grisaia is the main dish, huh? Sounds like you enjoyed that VN a lot. And since you seem like you have a very reasonable knowledge of VNs I think I can trust your opinion

 

Have you ever read several VNs in at the same time? Since now I'm really curious about Grisaia, but I still got 90% of Fate / stay night to go... Does reading several ones at the same time somehow... I dunno, sabotage the fun of it, or is this something that many people do?

 

Oh, by the way, what I'm really interested in is: How many routes are there in Grisaia? So there are 5 girls in that school, plus the protagonist. Does this mean there are exactly five routes, one for each girl? Or is not every one of them a heroine?

[Crimson]

Wow. Just WOW. I was kinda fed up with Shirou from fate / stay night so I decided I might try Grisaia out and then decide after a few hours which of the ones I was gonna finish first. Well, after having played only ~15 minutes into the game, I already know which one I'm gonna finish first.

 

This game is so... AWESOME. The MC is such a badass and damn funny as well.

I'm in the interrogation scene right now, right after the MC stopped the thief

This protag is definitely one of the best I've seen so far, as long as he keeps his personality I love characters like this one, seriously, I was just laughing my ass off at every single line for the first 10 minutes

[Clephas]

I generally don't play multiple VNs at once, though I do put gameplay-heavy ones on hold after a single path frequently.  I can finish VNs fast enough that I don't feel the same level of frustration some people get with ones that don't fit their tastes, allowing me to finish games that are outside my personal range, despite the parts that irritate me about them. 

[Crimson]

How is it that you can read VNs so quickly? I understand by now you read only japanese VNs? Isn't that incredibly hard, especially considering that you said that you can read VNs really quickly... have you been learning japanese for a long time?

 

Ah, and regarding Grisaia:

I'm about 3 hours into the game by now. And so far, well, I don't know what to think of Yuuji. He is ridiculously funny and badass, but I don't get it why he's so mean sometimes... I mean, I do get it, he's got some sort of dangerous job going on, and he's obviously not a normal guy, considering that he can fight so incredibly well. So what is the matter with him... Oh wait, don't answer that, I guess that would be a huge spoiler. Just tell me, how long will it take for him to warm up? And when do we finally find out what his "arubaito" is?

[Clephas]

You'll find out eventually.  I'd really advise against asking other people to spoil masterpiece VNs for you.  It takes all the fun out of things.

 

As for how long I took to learn Japanese...  about three years before I reached the point where I didn't need anime subs anymore.  I started playing VNs in Japanese about five years ago... maybe longer (I'm not really good about remembering the passage of time).  Bush wasn't president anymore, but the healthcare debate that lead to Obamacare hadn't happened yet either.  I was still fansubbing anime at the time, and it was my VN-obsession that eventually put the last nails in the coffin of my fansubbing career (too many interesting VNs, too little time, lol).  I plowed through all the translated VNs of the time, and for a while I was playing newly translated ones as well as untranslated... but then I got to the point where I wasn't interested in translated versions at all and sort of stopped paying attention to what was getting translated. 

 

Playing the untranslated was made so much easier by jparser, which utterly changed the speed with which I could process kanji.  I'm now at the point where I can read a Japanese VN at a time equivalent to what it would take me to read one in English (with jparser in use)... and my English reading speed is enough for me to finish the entire Game of Thrones series currently released in just under fifteen hours...lol 

 

Needless to say, since I can't 'swallow' entire paragraphs in a VN the way I do with books, I'm slower with VNs, as I can only read them one line at a time, but a single glance is enough for me to read, process, and comprehend anything in a line written in modern literary Japanese (trying to be precise here).  If I try to process it into English, it takes about five to ten times as long, so I don't even bother with that, haha. 

[Crimson]

Holy crap. You must be indredibly talented at learning languages... I mean, I'm really good at foreign languages too, English is like my second mother tongue, but still, I find learning the japanese vocabulary ridiculously hard since it's so different from both German and English. And what the hell is the matter with that reading speed? The entire "Song of ice and fire" series within 15 hours? o.O I'm already proud of myself if I can manage to read 100 pages within an hour :/

 

Did you make use of any books when learning japanese, or did you learn it purely through online material? Are there any good sources online with, I don't know, "Anime vocabulary"? What I mean is, there are terms that are used quite often in animes / VNs, for example the classic "urusai urusai urusai!", the standard "suki desu", and all that other standard stuff that you feel like you hear it once every few minutes. I do own a book which teaches the japanese language quite well, but, you know, of course it starts from the very beginning and it would take a whole lot of time to work through the entire book, especially as there are 2 successors to it, each with ~500 pages...

 

And about jparser - I understand that apparently it displays the kanji in kana. Is that correct? That would mean I could skip learning the Kanji, which would be an incredible advantage. So did I get that correctly, or does jparser do something entirely different?

[Clephas]

Mmm... once I had the grammar and particles, I pretty much just ran with my hobbies (subbed anime and rpgs with Japanese voices), and I eventually absorbed enough vocab that I didn't need any aids to understand the spoken language.  Literary Japanese (which differs significantly from spoken Japanese, as everyone knows I harp on at every opportunity) took about another three months to master completely once I started playing VNs in Japanese, but after that, I had no problems, except for the occasional typo or conceptual/technical phrases that popped up.  Understand, I don't translate to English in my head... I just understand it 'as' Japanese.  I think in Japanese while playing VNs, even to the point of muttering in the language under my breath at times.  For me, it is now as natural as breathing to understand Japanese... it stopped being something special years ago.  I'm also aware that my experience is exceptional, mostly due to the unfair advantages I had (Japanese class at the high school level, a teacher who rearranged the class so everyone learned ALL the grammar in the first two semesters, with minimal focus on vocab and none on kanji, and I also happened to already have the skills necessary to comprehend language precisely, built up through over a decade as a bibliophile) . 

 

Edit: Just to let you know... YES, I do have better than average intelligence, at least enough that I had something of a problem with megalomania when I was younger.  So, as arrogant as that sounds, I'm well-aware this approach will not work for others, will require more time for them, or would have to include rote memorization for them to reach the level I'm at.  It isn't like most non-native speakers can reason out the meaning of an unknown word in Japanese just by how it sounds and is used... like I said, most people won't be able to do things like I did, and even fewer will be able to skip through most of the 'translating it to English in my head' stage like I did.  If I had a piece of advice for supplementary learning... train yourself to reason logically until it is completely subliminal for you to do so.  Once that happens, you'll find it a lot easier to pick up language, because all languages have their rules (which don't necessarily translate or show up in the textbooks), and those rules all have a logic behind them, even if that logic might seem odd at first glance.

 

Edit2: The downside of subliminal logic is that you stop being able to enjoy inconsistent stories as easily and you have to make an active effort to distance the more mechanical side of your thinking when dealing with entertainment.  This is the biggest reason, incidentally, why I dislike pure moege and moeblob anime, haha

[Crimson]

May I ask you how old you are? Since you sound like you've been learning japanese for an eternity ^^ Well, I'm still not even 20, so I guess I've got plenty of time to learn the language. It's just that I'm not a very patient person... No wait, that's a clear understatement. I'm probably the least patient person I know, so learning something over a long course of time is something I really struggle with... Anyways, since I'm not even merely able sub an entire episode of an anime, which way would you suggest to start? Should I just learn the contents of the three books I use in order to learn Japanese, and then once I'm finished with that, learn the more "anime-like" vocabulary, watch some anime and focus on the spoken language instead of the sub titles?

[Crimson]

Oh and, what I forgot to ask - you really understand everything they say in anime? I mean, there are quite a few phrases I do understand (those with a simple syntax and not too many uncommon words), but that's still probably only ~10% of the entire spoken language. And as soon as those genki girls with their machine gun talk come up, I don't even need to bother trying to understand anything, the speed at which these girls talk is just way too much for me, I can't even understand a single damn word when these girls talk :/

[Clephas]

Yes, I do understand everything they say.  As for how old I am... I'm the third oldest person in this forum at 32.  I first began learning Japanese seriously at the age of seventeen.  I'd stopped using textbooks by the time I hit nineteen years of age, and I was watching at least some anime without subs by the age of twenty.  However, I still preferred to watch already-aired anime with subs, when possible, as it took effort back then to keep up, thus tiring me out.  I only watched raw video for anime that I was seriously obsessed with, and I still archive subbed versions, though I stopped paying attention to the subs long ago (the subs are for the benefit of the rare individuals who want to watch them with me).  If you just want to get to the point where you can understand most of what is being said without the subs, it won't take that long... but there is a point where you will have to start thinking in Japanese.  Otherwise, you won't get any better at it.  The best translators think in both Japanese and English, and the worst ones are the ones who have to actually pull out a dictionary or a textbook to remind themselves.  I don't say this to be mean... but most official subs are horrible because most of those translators are people who came out of a college with textbook understanding and not much else, lol.  Internalization is the key... and it is also the biggest barrier.  I usually suggest long period of immersion, once you get to the point where you can do without subs to a certain extent.  Say... a month without speaking or listening to anything spoken in English while watching TV dramas or anime constantly in Japanese?  That's usually enough to tip reasonably intelligent people over the brink, if they are almost there.  For the average person, who still has a minimal talent for linguistics, it might take two or three months...

 

Edit: I did it unintentionally, during a long period where I did nothing but watch anime series after anime series for weeks on end.  By the end of that long marathon, I was muttering Japanese in my sleep, lol.

[Crimson]

Unfortunately I can't afford to go on vacation for 4 weaks, I don't think my employer would like that And since I really enjoy posting on this forum I'll be confronted with English a lot too.

 

Geez, the fact that there are people who have the possibility of learning japanese in school is making me so sad My school only offered spanish, french, english, and frickin chinese... What the hell am I supposed to do with chinese -.-

Over a longer period of time, would you suggest also seriously learning the kanji? How many can you read, and did you only learn how to read them or did you also write them down repetedly?

 

As for me, I started learning japanese probably a year ago. Back then, I had just started getting really into anime and so I had already soaked up quite a few phrases, but at some point I realized I really wanted to learn the language, so I bought a book... However, I lent it to a friend of mine about a month before christmas (yes, 2013 -.-) and he still hasn't given it back to me so right now my japanese learning efforts are kinda being sabotaged ^^ Anyways, it's a book that focuses much more on grammar and vocabulary rather than Kanji. The kanji are used in texts, but the kana are written above and it doesn't say anywhere in which order you have to do the strokes etc.

So as I cannot "copy" the way you learned japanese of course, I have to find my own one... Which sources would you suggest in combination with that book of mine?

 

Edit:/ I just found this list online. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:1000_Japanese_basic_words

Would you consider it useful in order to learn the basic vocabulary used in anime, or are there better sources?

[Clephas]

Kanji is just a lower priority... if you don't mind restricting yourself to PC VNs, there are any number of ways to get around a lack of kanji knowledge.

[castor212]

Clephas, did you play Akatsuki no Goei in 3 different disc? By chance, do you know if the Trinity Complete Edition includes all 3 or not?

[Clephas]

Trinity edition includes all three Akagoei games.  I played it originally as separate discs/games.  The Trinity version includes all three games in a single install, with a single startup application.

[Zodai]

minna-san, ohayou gosaimasu!

 

So I finished downloading HoshiMemo during the night and right now my pc at home is busy downloading little busters. As soon as I get home, I would like to download the Remember-series (or whatever you call it). I noticed that there are 3 parts to it, remember11, never17 and a third one... Well, I don't even know if those two names were correct, but I'm pretty sure you know what I mean

 

Anyways, I tried to find out which of the three is the first one in the series but somehow it didn't say anywhere which one is which part. So which one should I start with?

 

And, regarding fate / stay night - Im about ~4 hours into the game right now. Just finished the scene where that idiot protagonist

tries to rescue Saber from berserker and gets his stomach blown out of his body

and so far, I don't really know what to think of the VN. When I started EnA, I was lacking sleep for several days since I simply couldn't stop playing, even if it was 1 AM and I had to go to work the next day. However, with fate / stay night, things are different. It just doesn't fascinate me this much yet, but I don't even know why. Probably it's because of the protagonist. I just wish for once in my life to see a protagonist that doesn't act like a child when they're encountered with something they cannot change anything about.

During the scene where the "fake priest" tells you about the holy grail war and the protag is like "I dunno, i still haven't acceptet that master thing yet" I was seriously like "you goddamn idiot, do these two look like they're joking?! Or was what they said too hard to understand? No? Then grow some damn balls and accept your fate!"

Seriously, this is so annoying. I hate when protags act like children and refuse to believe something which is pretty damn obviously the truth. Does the protag change during the story? Because if he doesn't, I think I'm gonna skip fate / stay night and start instantly with HoshiMemo.

[Crimson]

What do you mean by "his attitude changes"? I mean, he basically fights for the same Thing in all three routes, just that UBW is Rin centered, while HF is Sakura centered; doesn't he? Or am I mistaking something there?

 

Well, anyways, after 4 days of excessive VN reading, I finished one fate/stay night run and one Grisaia no kajitsu.

 

Fate/Stay Night:

It wasn't amazing, but it was still very well done. The sex Scenes were Kind of irritating, I don't know whether it's just that I might not be such a huge fan of h Scenes after all, or maybe it was simply poorly written. Anyways, I really liked Saber, and the relationship between the protag and Saber took some really nice turns, and both characters' behaviours were quite understandable. The fight Scenes were well done, even though I would have wished for some badass Actions from the protag. Could you answer one question - does the protag, I dunno, do anything more Special in UBW and HF, or is that simply one of the Points of the Story that the protag is not that classical superhero guy who manages everything on his own?

 

Grisaia no Kajitsu:

WOW. Such an amazing VN I could read it over and over again. My first route was Makina's route, and the Story was simply overwhelming. There were so many funny Scenes and yet, when it was necessary, the mood would suddenly change to dead serious within the blink of an eye. The characters were all really likeable, I especially found Michiru to be quite interesting, unfortunately I disabled myself from chosing her route when I accepted Makina's Money. The fact that she's a Tsundere who doesn't act like this because "that's just the way she is" but because she doesn't know how to act otherwise was really refreshing and funny at times. Of course, one other big Point about the Story is the main character - I haven't seen such a great MC since Steins;Gate. He's a damn Genius, and even though he's had that really tough past, the changes he undergoes during the Story are so well-done, subtile and credible that it really feels like something like this could happen.

 

So, to conclude this, while Fate/stay night was simply very good Grisaia was a damn masterpiece. After I finished Fate/stay night yesterday, I decided to Play Remember11. And as soon as I'm done with that, I guess I'll try HF or Play Grisaia's Michiru's route. Again, thanks for the awesome advice, whoever brought Grisaia up, this game was simply overwhelming.

[monkeysrumble]

What do you mean by "his attitude changes"? I mean, he basically fights for the same Thing in all three routes, just that UBW is Rin centered, while HF is Sakura centered; doesn't he? Or am I mistaking something there?

 

Well, anyways, after 4 days of excessive VN reading, I finished one fate/stay night run and one Grisaia no kajitsu.

 

Fate/Stay Night:

It wasn't amazing, but it was still very well done. The sex Scenes were Kind of irritating, I don't know whether it's just that I might not be such a huge fan of h Scenes after all, or maybe it was simply poorly written. Anyways, I really liked Saber, and the relationship between the protag and Saber took some really nice turns, and both characters' behaviours were quite understandable. The fight Scenes were well done, even though I would have wished for some badass Actions from the protag. Could you answer one question - does the protag, I dunno, do anything more Special in UBW and HF, or is that simply one of the Points of the Story that the protag is not that classical superhero guy who manages everything on his own?

 

Grisaia no Kajitsu:

WOW. Such an amazing VN I could read it over and over again. My first route was Makina's route, and the Story was simply overwhelming. There were so many funny Scenes and yet, when it was necessary, the mood would suddenly change to dead serious within the blink of an eye. The characters were all really likeable, I especially found Michiru to be quite interesting, unfortunately I disabled myself from chosing her route when I accepted Makina's Money. The fact that she's a Tsundere who doesn't act like this because "that's just the way she is" but because she doesn't know how to act otherwise was really refreshing and funny at times. Of course, one other big Point about the Story is the main character - I haven't seen such a great MC since Steins;Gate. He's a damn Genius, and even though he's had that really tough past, the changes he undergoes during the Story are so well-done, subtile and credible that it really feels like something like this could happen.

 

So, to conclude this, while Fate/stay night was simply very good Grisaia was a damn masterpiece. After I finished Fate/stay night yesterday, I decided to Play Remember11. And as soon as I'm done with that, I guess I'll try HF or Play Grisaia's Michiru's route. Again, thanks for the awesome advice, whoever brought Grisaia up, this game was simply overwhelming.

 

FYI you can't play HF without beating UBW. It's kind of weird but it's better that way for the story anyway. I can't wait to play Grisaia.

 

Shirou is kind of different in each route, Fate is probably the least interesting one in my opinion but it's still very good.