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How To Read Moege 101 - A Comprehensive Guide Preface Many people struggle with learning a second language. If it just so happens that you're trying to learn Japanese, you can probably already tell by now that it's not an easy task. I can relate to the tormenting frustration of desperately wanting to read a certain VN, but being unable to merely due to a lack of Japanese proficiency. Having to look up every word in the dictionary is not only time consuming - it's also actually not that productive because chances are, you won't remember half of what you read. You shouldn't dive into a visual novel that's way above your difficulty level. You need to prepare body and soul with some hearty foreplay. Yes, foreplay. But alas, you don't have the slightest idea as to how you should go about doing that. You have my condolences. That's why I am writing this guide - not to teach you how to read Japanese per se, but to make it easier for you to read your very first untranslated 'moege'. After reading a few on your own, you will start to get the feel of Japanese writing, humour, expressions, and maybe even pick up some kanji. I am merely dropping you off at the doorstep - you still have a long road ahead of you. Good luck. 1) Understanding How Moege Work Moege is derived from the two words, "moe" and "game" (self-explanatory). You're usually going to be paying attention to the characters more than anything else in the game. Sure, they look nice, but what I really mean is their personality. Indeed, personality. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that personality is more important than looks! That only happens in 3D (but let's not get to that right now)... Anyway, there are a select few 'generic' and frankly 'stereotypical' heroine-types that you will find in pretty much every moege. I won't go into too much detail, but I'll describe a few of their unique traits. This will not only help you connect to the heroines better, but it will also help you guess or 'predict' what they are saying (even if you can't read the Japanese) which will be further explained in the next section. I am only going to list five, though I'm sure there are many more out there waiting to assault their onii-chans.The stereotypical heroine archetypes I am going to expand on are: The Tsundere The Senpai The Onee-chan The Klutz The Osananajimi (Childhood Friend) Now, I realize that there may be a tsundere senpai onee-chan klutz osananajimi somewhere out there, but let's leave that for now. Due to popular demand, I will unveil a brand new section for everyone's favourite (including mine) - the imouto. The Imouto 2) Reading Between The Lines Now that you have most of the basic heroine-types nailed down, it's time to learn how to read between the lines (or, "I don't know these words, but judging from their facial expressions, tone, the situation at hand, and their stereotype, I can probably guess what's going on!" for short). The point is that you shouldn't get stuck on a few words you don't know. Sometimes it's best to read through context instead. Like I said before, foreplay. You can grind (hue) all those difficult kanji symbols (that you may or may not ever see again) later. That's all just memorization, and a whole lot of studying. But right now we're tackling a more technical aspect of the Japanese language. Now's the time to sit down and enjoy a moege. 3) Kanji/Vocab You Should Probably Know These are kanji or basic vocab words that you will see in almost every moege. I will add to this list as necessary, so feel free to leave a comment if you think I missed anything key. I will cut it off somewhere so people don't get overwhelmed though, so pick the ones you think show up in 99% of exclusively moege. For now, I will briefly go through them all: 4) Where To Start Honestly, there isn't really a list of VNs I can give you. Besides, that wouldn't be fun. You should read things you think you'll really enjoy. But if moege are not for you, then suck it up. You have to learn to walk before you can learn to run. I guess all I have to say for now is that Cube, ALcot, and Favorite (albeit games by Favorite are harder reads) are all companies that make great moege that are, at the same time, relatively easy to read. If you find yourself bored to death starting out, feel free to pick another game. If you think it's still too hard for you (this is kinda late but make sure you've mastered basic hiragana and katakana), push on through. Don't stumble every time you come across a word you don't know, or you don't know what's going on. Just playing through will help you, even if just a little.

Welcome to Visual Novel Trivia Month! Aschente! Welcome to visual novel trivia month, a series of game related questions testing your knowledge on the one thing we all love and adore. Strap on your thinking caps Fuwanovel, and be prepared to dive into a game that will put your skills to the test. The goal of the game is simple: identify the visual novel or character being asked about in a series of 40 different trivia questions. The more questions you get correct, the more points you'll earn. It is up to you or your team to answer as many questions as you can and work your way to the top of the leaderboards. At the end of the competition, the winning individual or team who earns the most points will recieve a very special prize from yours truly. The festivities won't start for awhile; this is just a preview about what you can expect. With that being said though, let's discuss the themes of each week and some of the questions I may ask. Theme #1 - Quotes: This set of questions will test your knowledge about specific quotes and dialogue found in visual novels. Do you remember any of Sachi's words of wisdom from Grisaia? What is Kud's famous one liner? It is your job to identify the game and the character who is speaking based on the given text. Theme #2 - Voices: This set of questions will test your knowledge about character's voices in visual novels. For each question in this theme, I will play a series of voice clips from a random game. It is up to you to identify the visual novel and character who speaks each line. Theme #3 - Music This set of questions will test your knowledge about original soundtracks in visual novels. For each question, I will play a series of music clips from a random game. It is up to you to identify the game it comes from, where bonus points will be awarded if you can correctly identify the name of the song in each question. Theme #4 - CGs This set of questions will test your knowledge about artwork and CGs found in visual novels. For each question, I will show you a series of pictures from a random game. It is up to you to identify the game it comes from. Initially, I will only post CGs with characters in them to make it easier, however as the questions progress, characters will be removed. With that said, feel free to start discussing teams if you want to form any. Later this week I will update this post with a team roster and participants who are interested in joining. If you have any additional questions, ask away. Best of luck to everyone, and keep your eyes peeled for when the show is about to begin! A quick reminder of the rules and the purpose of this competition before we begin: 1. There will be a total of 40 trivia questions. Each week, starting on Monday the 18th of August, I will list 10 questions from each theme in the competition. I will announce said theme each new week so you can have an idea of what to expect before the next set of questions is thrown at you. 2. All questions are to be submitted in person via PM by a designated team captain (which you may choose if you formed a team), while individual players may submit questions on their own. Do not post any answers in this thread! When you submit your questions for the 1st week, please give me a team name or individual name you have come up with if you want to have one for the competition. 3. Once a set of questions is submitted, there is no changing your answers. You are more than willing to ask as many questions as you'd like via PM, but your official answers may only be submitted one time. 4. Questions will always close the same day they opened in the coming week. This means that the 1st week of questions will close next Monday the 25th @ 11:59pm CST. Respectively, the next set of 10 questions will also be posted at this time as well. For that reason, I promise to be on time with the questions and post them as soon as midnight rolls around each new week. 5. Once a week of questions is finished, there is no going back to previous ones. For this reason, feel free to guess on as many questions as you would like as their is no penalty for taking a shot in the dark. 6. To help you out a tiny bit, keep in mind that all correct answers and characters are pulled from Kaguya's list of 50 translated VNs you should read before you die. Use this to help you narrow down your choices if you are completely lost. There are no rules saying you can't play the games to find the answers! Last but not least, I would like to stress a final point before we begin. While I have done my very best to avoid questions that are not easily found on the internet, I understand that with today's technology in search engines that is near impossible to do. To give you an example, the 1st theme of the competition is able to be searched on the internet relatively easily. For this reason, I am beginning the game with quotes just in case some teams decide to use this to their advantage and cheat to obtain some points. I am not able to monitor how you do your searches nor how you answer the questions, so I ask you to be as honest as you can and try to have fun without looking up anything if you know it is possible. The point of this competition is to wrack your brains and have you work together as a team to solve the questions, so do your very best without cheating if possible! Hopefully this will be harder to do as the other themes are introduced. And with all of that, if you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me via PM and I will be more than happy to assist! Good luck everyone, and here we go!

Hi! i'm new here (this place and the vn world), and i just wanna hear opinions about the game katawa shoujo. it bothers me, why is there no misha route? she seems like datable girl. in my opinion that is.

The drills weren't the only thing gone in the alpha.

Fix'd.

anyway come to this thread. and we can discuss anything related to trap. Hope to see you there. Oh that's fine, I thought that was going to be something horrifying for a second

I was looking at Pile's twitter and saw this : D kawaii

Note that at least as for learning sign language, I think she did it But I might be wrong Also, hanako's bad end is mandatory. Preferably before the good end w

I'm in love.

Yasumi def had some but

Well, you have said you have read 'some', but since we are unaware of which you have read it there will indubitably be repeats. Anyways, for science I recommend Steins;Gate. I haven't laughed out loud this much at a game that wasn't made for comedy in ages. The Muv-Luv series should also interest you. It consists of Muv-Luv: Extra - Your typical teenage romance story, probably not to your interest, but you should at the very least finish one route before moving on. Muv-Luv: Unlimited - It comes with extra and includes a different story using the same characters. This story is a Sci-fi story that you should enjoy. Muv-Luv: Alternative - It's the sequel to the two games above and generally acclaimed as a masterpiece. It explains an Alternative story to Unlimited, but it's obvious that both Extra and Unlimited were made in preparation for Alternative. Ever17 is a brilliant game with a fantasy setting. You just don't notice that until much later. Games by the company Key are also like this; and firstly I'd recommend Rewrite. These are all very popular games, so I'd be surprised if you have yet to hear of them, but there you have it. EDIT: Just check the two lists linked above, they have everything I suggested and more.

Okay dude, second warning here. Kendjin tells you to not double post and you triple post in a span of 5 minutes? Also please write in decent english: complete words and punctuation.

This is fantastic. Thanks Meogii

Eh~~~~ I prefer Mariya or Bridget though. But yeah he is cute and kind a god tier trap. Oh Nice......i`m a really big fan of Bridget ATM. but my all time fav are Mariya and gretel.

oh that's a nice pattern. so you like timid girls first? anyways, imma go for hanako next cuz she has the same atmosphere of izumi takanashi.

SPOILER!

Don't lied to yourself like that. Accept it, Wave x Kurome is already happening.

Click the little VNDB button under his name. Then find the 'list' button somewhere on the right and near the top (but not quite there). Click that. (Or use this: http://vndb.org/u63030/list ) After you get to the list, you'll be able to see all his Visual novels. That should be sufficient. The only other thing you might need is to check his votes, click the arrow pointing downwards next to the 'vote' on the right.

Purple Master race There's no super deep meaning behind it, i think it's visually appealing, it's a color that's also not easily found in the nature in your everyday life, that makes me feel like it's rarer in a way, as a kid I've always liked purple as well because i usually never encountered the color so when I saw it in the wild I thought it was beautiful, it's just unique like that to me. Actually searching for the symbolism of purple I found out that the color purple is used as a mourning color in some countries as opposed to the tipical black. Due to its rarity in nature and difficult synthetization (talking about older times not present time) it used to be attributed to emperors and popes only. Purple is only present in 2 flags in the entire world. So I guess purple is like the diamond of the color spectrum

Nahichun and I are the flamefuckers!

:3

1) If you want to create a potentially good title, I'd say something exactly opposite - if you try to make a VN with Japanese setting and characters, without being very familiar with Japan, then you are doomed to fail. Even one of the very few not-entirely-horrible OELVNs - Katawa Shoujo - completely failed with it's setting. It was only pseudo-Japanese - locations, events, characters and their way of thinking occasionally screamed "This is NOT Japan!". It's unavoidable - trying to write a story with a setting you aren't familiar with, will only turn it into an inconsistent mess. That's not limited only to settings. Japanese anime-stlye art will almost always be better than Western art forcefully stylized too look like that. Their moeges will be better than Western stories trying to imitate those. And so on. If you will go out of your way to create something that feels "Japanese", just for the sake of it, you will fail. At best, it will be an imitation, weaker than actual Japanese VNs by default. Because you're not Japanese. People don't value Japanese VNs over most OELVNs because they are more "Japanese". They are better, because they have consistent, believable settings, characters that act accordingly, and everything feels natural; while the latter have artificial, unconvincing settings, characters that act weird, and everything feels forced to fit some concepts that creators weren't really familiar with. Of course, I'm not saying you definitely shouldn't write something with a Japanese setting. If you know what you are doing, and you really want to write it like this, go ahead. It's doable. Just don't do this solely because "VNs should be written like this", that's BS. 2) If you want your work to sell well, forget everything from point 1). Remember that people who actually can comprehend written text are quite few in number nowadays. You will get much better sales if you slap boobs all over the place and just write some random weeaboo crap. Sadly.