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So we all know there's multiple ways to help us read Japanese VNs by now. All Japanese VNs have text you can grab and display, which makes them an easy target for practicing reading. There's one downside though, visual novels are typically incredibly long, especially if you are a beginner (yes, even the shorter ones can take a while to read if you're inexperienced). I always thought this downside affected lots of people that wanted to practice reading but didn't have the time/energy to read through an entire VN in Japanese to start with. However, other mediums like manga and LNs are much more difficult due to requiring you to either constantly look at a dictionary or just know all those kanji from memory (with the exception of manga that have furigana, but those are usually aimed at younger audiences and might not be the most interesting). It felt unfair that such fun media couldn't be used as easily to study Japanese. Well luckily yesterday I was talking to a friend on discord and fanboying over the Monogatari Series with them and they ended up showing me a few tools they used to read LNs, and after that I myself looked up for ways to read manga in Japanese, and thus we come to this thread in which I'm hoping to share something useful with those of you who wish to read these mediums as a way to practice Japanese. Note: If you know any other/better software, please by all means share it! Kanjitomo Kanjitomo is an incredibly useful software to read manga on your computer. It detects kanji/words by simply hovering over them with your mouse. But not only that, it gives you the reading/meaning of those words/kanji. And lastly, if it fails to show the correct kanji, it shows you a list with similar looking kanji for you to browse, it also lets you edit the individual kanji contained in the word in case it guessed the 2nd or 3rd characters wrong, thus always letting you pick which is the right one. Some screenshots: Advantages: Easy word lookup Very customizeable Let's you actually import images and scroll through multiple images in a single folder. Also supports Chinese Disadvantages Can get laggy sometimes (mostly on startup) The zoom feature can get somewhat annoying to control Although it lets you import files, I found the file viewer annoying to use and prefer to just use some other software to open the images Download (requires Java to be installed): http://kanjitomo.net/ JGloss This software is primarily geared towards books. What it does is it lets you import .txt files (or copy text) and open them in the reader. After that it places furigana on top of all the words, and also creates a glossary of words on the right for you to look up if you need. One feature I really appreciated in it was that it only displays furigana for the first instance of a word only, forcing you to memorize the word after that (although if you want to, you can select the word and it'll look it up for you regardless). Now you might be thinking, doesn't Translation Aggregator also do something similar? While TA does indeed have these same functions, TA is mostly practical for smaller chunks of text, not whole sections of a book. Screenshots: With translation enabled: Advantages: Easy way to read large chunks of text with furigana Can use different parsers. Can also place the English translation underneath the words if needed Creates a glossary of words for an easy lookup Pretty costumizeable interface (you can change the font/size/colors/etc.) Also works with German Disadvantages: Requires you to copy the text or have a text file of the book you're reading, which doesn't always happen. Parsing is not perfect and you may find some weird results at times (but that's the same for any Japanese parser). It seems to have a certain limit of text it can display (I kept running into an error when I imported a lot of text), so you may not be able to import whole books but instead have to copy multiple chunks (they're pretty big chunks though) Download: http://jgloss.sourceforge.net/ Yomichan Yomichan is an Anki add-on that lets you read text and look up words while simultaneously being able to create an anki deck for the words you want. This tool is incredibly useful if you want to study and read a book at the same time. Screenshot: Advantages: Lets you read entire books at once (you can also copy the text) Very easy to create an anki deck with the words from the text Disadvantages No furigana on the text itself Requires you to have the book in a .txt file More useful for studying than actually reading Download (requires anki to be installed): https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/934748696 Capture2Text Capture2Text is a simple but intuitive OCR (Optic Character Recognition) program that lets you select a part of your screen to convert into text. It's useful to grab whole sentences from a specific bubble of text or a sentence from a book and automatically copy them to your clipboard, which you can then use to do whatever. If you're a translator, it makes the script writing process much easier since you don't have to manually input everything. (I don't really have any screenshots since all the software does is grab and copy text.) Advantages: Easy way to grab text from an image and paste it onto your clipboard (or someplace else) Works well in conjunction with other software like TA. Disatvantages: The recognition can fail pretty hard depending on the font used (you can easily end up with scrambled jibberish) Download: http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/ I know it's not groundbreaking and it might not even be as appealing as just grabbing text in a VN, but I find manga and LNs very fun and less tiresome to read and so these tools come in really handy for that purpose. Think of it this way, do you want to start practicing Japanese by reading an entire visual novel with more than a thousand lines from the get go, or would something smaller like a 20 page manga chapter be a little easier for starters? Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't try to read visual novels, they're great practice, but I think a lot of people lose themselves when starting off with them and perhaps these tools will help keep the focus on studying and memorizing things a bit more instead of just reading.

Get out Go back to your books Run away and never return

Considering mommy has dollies of The Avengers, daddy is in the clear.

Chaos;Head, people were badmouthing the anime back then (yeah... the anime is just trash..), then the pacth came out and it was awesome.

Value is relative. This is a Steam gamer's perspective: "I can buy AAA budget games deep discounted for $10-20 1 year after release with 50-100hrs of gameplay, that cost much more to develop. Why should I pay the same or more for a low-budget title of the same length or less?" The answer: You pay a premium for niche content. AAA games have a large budget but also a large customer base to disperse those costs over. VNs are niche with a smaller customer base, and therefore they have to keep prices somewhat higher in order to recoup costs (as niche content also tends to have a more inelastic demand curve; as price decreases, sales volume doesn't increase quite as much). But mainstream AAA games are limited in the types of content they can feature, as they must always have broad appeal. Can't have hardcore ero in a mainstream title, for example.

One Thousand Lies. I don't expect much from free games but this has a somewhat unique story and hilarious character interactions.

They're mostly positive so far merely because I haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet.

"Mommy, why does daddy play with dollies?"

Genuinely can't think of any. I've got a bunch of examples for the opposite though.

Not really, because I rarely get into vns/games/anything that don't have an immediate appeal to me. With pretty much all of my all time favourite pieces of media, I had this strange feeling about them in advance, something about the imagery and/or sound that gave me high expectations. That feeling has never let me down, except with Sekien no Inganock, which just felt like most of the story was going over my head. I do have one example though. While I had high expectations of Planetarian, I did not expect it to completely destroy my understanding of stories and leave me with a much greater appreciation for good writing, plot and characters

Kimi e okuru, sora no hana. Wasn't really sure what I was getting into when I started it. In just kinda picked it up because Matsuri looked hot, not even kidding It ended up becoming one of my favorite VNs of all time. It was so beautiful, I still go back re-playing a scene here and there, just because I enjoyed it so much. It also introdouced me to my all time favorite waifu, An.

I thought I should post an update on what's going on: The name was chosen - it's going to be "Mikan engine". Thanks, Scorp! Open source project was published at https://github.com/mnakamura1337/mikan_engine Feel free to join and contribute! Noratoto converter + porting scripts are publishted at https://github.com/mnakamura1337/noratoto_port If you own Noratoto, you can convert it to .story format yourself by running these scripts If you don't, well, it never hurts to ask around Currently I'm working on better support for BGI engine with never (subroutine-based) scripts.

I still don't think you need to understand a language to understand the emotions a voice conveys.

I am also love childhood friends, except Airhead-Deredere with ultimate cooking skill. Hell, Tomboy/Coodere childhood friend is the best <3

Uh, what's up with ppl on steam reviewing the game without even reading it? The top review sounds like they played a Sakura game or something. So misleading. T_T

http://store.steampowered.com/app/345620/ And now the wait for 18+ begins.

the reviews for suika as+ make it look bad but goddamn, was full of amazing plot twists, story and well time music

Definitely looking forward to buy it. .............just as i finish collecting money to buy phone, laptop, and college books

Hmm, while there are certainly VN's that exceeded my expectations, there aren't that much which I didn't want to play at all and then they were really blowing me away. I think the most prominent example in my case would be Kara no Shoujo. Initially I thought it would be some dark hentai guro crap like Maggot Baits, but thanks to some reviews and clarifying forum comments I got curious and tried the demo. I was literally glued to the screen - the VN turned out to be a very mature and serious work with a brilliant story and oozing atmosphere from every pore. Overdrive's Edelweiss was also much better than expected and Suika A.S. surprised me with one of the most beautiful endings ever. Nothing reaches the big contrast of initial expectation and actual experience like Kara no Shoujo though.

I have spotted a couple of mistakes, (they forgot to put spaces between a couple of words in a sentence,) but overall it's not bad. It feels natural. I haven't really noticed any blunders anywhere, except for those 2 sentences lacking a few spaces. The writing isn't exactly rocket science, but editing / translation wise, it looks pretty acceptable.

I know what that's like all too well ;_; (glasses breaking) @spoiler - that just means the writer is succeeding at his job

<3 https://soundcloud.com/animuzacks/aria-the-animation-op-single (This is kinda mislabeled. It's the insert song for episode 12.)

And here I was thinking that I did check properly on this side-.- Thanks I did not even think to search in jap:)) Well, I usually manage to do 100% so yea... Thanks for the link:D Thanks to both of you:D

Euphoria. I played it fuly expecting a fullblown hardcore nukige with barely a plot to tie it together. Not to mention a low expectation. ANd then I played till the end and I was like DAMN.

Now the Dark Pharaoh looks as intimidating as his actual character.

Oops. Can you tell I flunked History of VNs 101?

at least it was good romcom trash eh, amane switch, I knew it was right up my alley when I started it up, but I never expected so much drama that was somewhat basic but felt well thought out. Dra+Koi was a little vn I played because I love dragons, I didnt really have any expectations for it other than I have heard good stuff about the guy that wrote it, it was really good for a rather small vn.

It's probably not worth it anyway, just like GnK wasn't really worth it. And yet I'll probably buy it at some point. That's the perverse nature of my love-hate relationship with this torrid franchise.

You actually get it for under $10 as it starts on sale 15% off. The game play is challenging but not as hard as some think. The key is to remember you have a full 10 seconds before dropping the gem you picked up. You can swirl around the board up and down and left and right and slide tiles into matches during that time. Optimum strategy would be build a heart match for the one move double points and use that move to build a lot of matches. Points rack up, fap material will soon be achieved.

Next / Go - Left mous button, both enter-keys and maybe space bar Hide UI - Esc/Right mouse key History - Scroll/ Backspace Load - L key/ designated number (ie. 5, for example) Save - S/ designated number Quickload - Q/ designated number Quicksave - Some key close to 'Q' in this case, probably 'W' or 'E'/ designated number Settings - Esc/ Backspace Exit to title - Most likely double-tapping some 'rarer' key, like F10, for example Exit game - Same as the previous one Skip to next choice/ previous choice - Holding down or double-tapping right and left arrow keys respectively One step backwards/ transition to a previous line - Works in conjuction with the backlog by backlog having some sort of an option of jumping to a line in every line Skip - Ctrl Toffle Fullscreen On/Off - F Most of the things that seem to belong in the settings-menu should be put there without a keybind. Saves and loads usually have buttons in the UI, so it's debateable if they really need keybinds. Settings-menu usually works as a menu in-game, so return to title and return to menu should probably be there and not have a keybind at all. Skipping and skip to the next/previous choice are usually in the UI if they're present in the engine/game, so they don't necessarily need keybinds and Ctrl works as a manua skip, being that it stops skipping as soon as you let go of the button. One other thing that's usually present is the 'repeat voice' keybind, but that's usually within the UI, and if need be, I'd probably put it in as 'R' or a designated number.

That is actually what happened with Kajitsu though. The fan patch on steam contains both the new and the old content. (I have no idea how they did it ) https://vndb.org/r45153 So the chance is there, but I'd say it's still low, considering the work they have to put into it, as they run on different engines.

So you are talking about making VNs without voice acting from the start. Well I can understand that from your position and many others in the west, if you don't understand what the characters are saying or maybe you do but just a few words/expressions here and there then it doesn't make much sense to have them, but remember that the main target of VNs is the Japanese market and voice acting is a big deal to them, it also speaks about the quality of a novel too, specially if they voice the main character (of course this is not a rule). So while it sounds logical from the point of view of a western it's not realistic.

You could use http://sagaoz.net/savedata/index.htm. Its has 100% save files for almost any Vn out there. Just key in the Japanese Vn names from VNDB in the search. Cheers

u could find ur answer from here.......

That's a funny way to spell "years".

Growing a fuck

It's coming...

The ones I remember would be Amane/Sachi from Grisaia Sakura from FSN Emi from KS Tonya from Ayakashibito Ageha from Konosora Sachi from Sharin no Kuni So... save for Tonya I guess they're all... sluts?

Feels very I wish they'd stop using "there's no use." Certainly mechanical. The characters are lacking some personality, especially Suguha. From the Japanese there's no way way he'd say "According to your information" and certainly wouldn't refer to a girl he liked and got rejected by as "Miss." No one does that in English... "I was rejected by Miss Sophie." Sounds like a fucking teacher, not a classmate. Oh well, there is no use. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Hopefully they'll get settled into the writing as it goes along and it'll improve over time.

I'm a sucker for the childhood friend and will inevitably want her to win in the end. Which explains why I am the only person in existence who thinks this girl's route is the best in PE: Same thing with Clannad: Etc.

ChuSinGura46+1 is like 60 hours long and has five ero scenes which are utterly terrible. The game is actually gonna be improved by cutting them out. Like, even FSN's sex scenes are a billion times more relevant to your enjoyment of the work. xD ...and I usually like ero in my VNs.

Welcome, it's nice to make your acquaintance, dfbreezy. Hope you have fun here at the forums, and i'll see ya around. Here's some CardCaptor Sakura.

The dangers of buying digitally on full display here :/ Thank goodness we're at least getting something from both series in the West

Well hey, my mistake for thinking people here cared about VNs, I guess. If there was ever any chance of these releases ever making it to the west - or even MG just acquiring the rights to the Alchemist/Kaga assets - there sure as hell is none now.

Seconded. F/SN is the only VN I ever forced myself to complete and it still is my hugest disappointment of hype to this day. Other things I feel disappointed towards: G-Senjou no Maou Clannad Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke o - Deatta Koro no Omoide ni