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Hi everyone . Thank you for helping me cope with my dad's funeral earlier. About a month has passed since his death. I am back at work and things are generally okay. Our family stuck together during Christmas and had a great time, though there is a sadness in the background because we all know someone is missing. Work helped to distract me from these thoughts, but I felt sad again during the Christmas break. Still a bit up and down. We have been given a recording of my dad's cremation ceremony. Turned out I didn't have to press that button to send him into the fire. I actually wanted to, but they closed the curtains after the ceremony ended, and I never got to see the casket again. Next time I dropped by, they handed me the urn with my dad's ashes in it. I guess they believe it's too cruel to make loved ones press that button. No one in my family wants anything to do with that video, but I copied the file onto my laptop, and I'd click through it once in a while. I'm not sure if that's healthy, but I can't help it. It's not like I watch it 24 hours a day. Maybe a skim once every week or two. The video doesn't make me sad, but just kind of empty. Another confession is, I regret not taking a photo of my dad in his casket. The casket is closed the whole time during that video, so I'll never again get to see him in his final state. I know it'd be so inappropriate to take a picture during a funeral, but I got to spend some time alone with his body in the hospital, so I could've done it then, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. If I had taken a photo, I'd open my phone once in a while to stare longingly at a picture of a dead guy. Not sure if that's messed up. I admit sometimes I open his photos on my laptop, and I touch my screen as if I can somehow remember what it feels like to touch him. A lot of things that might seem cringe worthy, but I can't deny I'm doing them. I put all the old videos of my dad into a folder as well. When he first died, I watched through all the clips almost right away, yet now, even though I feel like I've recovered, I can't bring myself to click on those videos. Somehow, I can watch that film of him in a casket, but not ones where he's still alive and moving. If I hear his voice again, I'll mistakenly think he's come back to life, and that will just hurt far too much. I had a dream about my dad recently. It's Chinese New Year, and my relatives came into the house to spend time with us. My dad followed them in when I opened the door. I freaked out, but no one else seemed to notice his presence. He was all smiles and well dressed. Since he spent his final years quite ill, I had not seem him this happy in a long time. When our eyes met, he gave me a winking, "don't tell anyone" sort of look. After that, he didn't look my way again, and he didn't say a word throughout. Instead, he just looked around the house, acting excited, a bit childlike. I woke up straight after that. The Chinese people believe spirits can communicate with us through dreams. I have no idea if that's real, but the dream brightened my day. Chinese New Year is coming in a few weeks, and our family agreed that when our relatives visit, we will leave the door open for an extra second or two. Thank you everyone .

Something to keep in mind is that Dating Sims regularly make a resurgence, and a small but significant proportion of the VN community came from people seeking dating sims who got hooked on slice-of-life VNs. One thing about dating sims is that they are relatively easy to make (the basic system hasn't changed since the nineties, with only minor details different between games). Another thing is that they don't require a ton of processing power, so they can easily make their way onto mobile platforms. This has made the popularity of western-made games of this type rise in recent years. One other thing to keep in mind is a fundamental difference between a true dating sim and a VN (including most otomege). Dating sims are active experiences where you create your own love experience from the options available. However, VNs are essentially a passive experience where you experience other people's romances in most cases. This is where tastes tend to split off between VN lovers and dating sim lovers... A dating sim lover will often find it frustrating to play your average slice-of-life VN, as they won't feel they are an active participant in the story. In opposition, your average VN lover will find dating sims frustrating because they are interested in the characters' perceptions, not in inserting their own into the story beyond a choice of heroine. Keep in mind that I'm speaking about 'center of the road' players on both sides, not the 'fringe' players who can enjoy both. Another issue is that otomege have one huge advantage over male-oriented VNs when appealing to young female dating sim lovers... the sexual element is rarely, if ever, blatant outside of a few scenes here and there (extremely unrealistic situations that stop short of actual H).

It's only because I read the manga that I shit on Kuzu no Honkai. It honestly was refreshing when I first checked it out too. It seemed to dive into sexual relationships and how sex isn't just about love and all that, which is nice. But then things start gradually getting worse.

There's a lot I disagree with on your perception of otomege, but all of that would take way too long to talk about and ultimately doesn't matter to the point I'll try to make, so I'll just not touch that. I also think not classifying them as VNs in the first place is almost ridiculous, but that also doesn't matter here and I'm just going on a tangent about my dissatisfaction with it. The same way bishoujo moe games like Nekopara won't destroy the medium despite being overwhelmingly more popular than story-driven VNs, otome games won't. They're even marketed towards different audiences (unlike those bishoujo moe games, which plot and character driven games also appeal to the audience of) and on different platforms. Guys won't stop buying their games about cute girls with swords because there's suddenly an influx of games about being wooed by hot vampire guys. Guys who don't even buy games about cute girls with swords because they care about the story of those games certainly won't stop buying their hipster fata morgana or whatever else it is they buy. Ultimately, I believe otomege thriving or not simply doesn't matter for the health of the niche you're worried about. Now, I know there's a point about otome games shaping the public perception of what a visual novel is that can be made here, but I don't think that'd ever be a problem (at least not more than what it already is), since the VN community has worked out pretty well with people already having very warped ideas about what VNs are anyway. In fact, I believe getting people more used to the VN style in general is already super likely to drag in fans (like those guys who started reading VNs because they played some Neptunia game,) so it's probably something worth celebrating.

I flipped through every single manga with the "coma" tag on manga updates but did not find anything matching your description (girl in a coma who sees dead people). Closest I could find was this series called Yamamoto Zenjirou to Moushimasu (girl who sees dead people) and this one-shot called Yumenara Samenaide (girl gets into a comma and wake s up 10 years later, no mention of seeing dead people though) and even then they're still pretty different from what you're looking for (at least from the synopsis). I've asked in the /r/manga discord but haven't gotten any reply yet. I also suggest you yourself post in the /r/manga subreddit because that place is usually pretty good at finding series no matter how vague the description.

Visualnovelcharts aims to summarize monthly VN releases for English users in an intuitive visual format while aggregating data from multiple sources. http://www.visualnovelcharts.com/ [Interview] Visualnovelcharts: A new resource for tracking VN releases

Before I announce the VN of the Month, I'm going to go ahead and apologize to those who wanted me to play Honoguraki... to be blunt, I don't have the energy for it. Ragnarok sucked me dry, and I need to get away from undead and demons for a while. Moreover, I hate zombies in the first place (so many reasons), so I'd be unlikely to give a pleasant review or comment anyway. Now... it is kind of startling how so many great games got packed into a single month. December 2016 was a monster month for story-focused VNs, with a relative dearth of charage/moege (with only two released). I played as much as I could, but after six games, including the monster known as Venus Blood Ragnarok, I feel drained and tired. The main reason I don't deny the existence of charage utterly (other than the occasional shining diamond I find in the piles of icarabu shit) is because even I need a break from bloodshed and darkness sometimes. There were three releases that had the potential to become VN of the Month this time around... Akiyume Kukuru Ryuukishi Bloody Saga Ou no Mimi ni wa Todokanai! Now, to be blunt, Ou no Mimi would be my first choice. Why? Because, without the art bigots interfering, it is the most solid of those three candidates by several degrees. In fact, if this were six years ago, all things equal (including art), I would without hesitation have named it VN of the Month. While AXL doesn't escape its own unique formula, there is a reason why this company is a consistent seller despite reusing character art and music constantly. However, we come to Ryuukishi, which is only a few steps behind story-wise and has the advantage of being an immensely creative story that doesn't fall back on tropes for the most part. It also has a more modern art-style that is highly-detailed, illustrating battle scenes and some of the more shocking guro scenes in loving detail. Last of all, we have Akiyume Kukuru, which didn't fail to please as the third (and possibly final) game of Sumikko's 'Seasons' series. As usual, it provides the kind of meta-science mystery combined with violent and sexual humor that the company has become infamous for. For a certain type of reader, this VN is pure crack, though if you aren't the type it is aiming for, it will be a huge miss. So what is the conclusion? In the end it came down to Ryuukishi and Ou no Mimi. I balanced Ou no Mimi's solid, well-narrated story against Ryuukishi's more innovative approach... and in the end I chose Ryuukishi Bloody Saga as VN of the Month December 2016. While AXL's works are really 'at-home' for me, I felt that Ryuukishi will probably have a larger impact on the VN community as a whole in the long run... and they were dead even on how I enjoyed them. Now... look forward to VN of the Year 2016, which I probably won't finish considering until sometime next month. Fortunately or unfortunately, 2016 was almost as good as 2014 and 2011 for VNs...

Peace~

I've always had this as a minor issue but with recent changes to the website that seem to use an image proxy it's much more of a problem that embedded pictures simply never load. The more pictures there are on a page the worse it gets. The post pictures you like thread is the worst example of it. See the screenshot below for what I end up seeing instead of the embedded pictures. Refreshing sometimes brings up the lost pictures but then it ends up making other pictures disappear. I'm currently using Firefox 50.1.0 without any blocking extensions or anything like that.

Yes, you were waiting for it, all you tentacle-loving freaks... this is the newest game in the Venus Blood series, as full of tentacles and sex-training as any of the others... I come to you having finished the Law route and after being forced to go back a chapter in order to get to the Chaos route on my second playthrough (apparently you absolutely have to start the 'goddess insanity' chapter, by failing to complete one of the monster-hunting side-quests). The gameplay will be familiar to anyone who played Hypno, though there are differences introduced in the unit-creation screen, just as in all the others in the series (every game puts its own twist on this aspect). It is the sequel to Frontier, occurring some three hundred years later, and it is based off of a partial 'fallen goddess but still on Law Route' path. The biggest difference in the gameplay from previous entries is the introduction of a 'research' system where you basically have to open each step in a tree to get access to other units. You expend medallions to get particular units on each 'block' that you've opened up, and what medallions are available to you determine what units you can access and how much of each tree you can complete (it is impossible to get access to all medallion types and units in the first or even the second playthrough due to difficulty and route issues). While this might not sound that different in fact, it was a great difference visually, making access to the various monster types more obvious than in previous entries. The system of 'leveling up resources' is back from Hypno, allowing you to use research to level up your auto-healing, auto-experience gaining, and automatic resource allowance (at the end of each turn) independent from what places you've captured. I advise anyone planning to do multiple playthroughs to get everything as high as possible (focus on healing over experience and all the other resources before gold, since gold is the most plentiful resource). Story-wise... it is standard Venus Blood. You come, you conquer, and you decide whether to make the goddesses love you normally or just drive them crazy through sex training. The actual basic plot is inferior to both Frontier and Hypno, though it it is more 'stable' in that it doesn't trip up in the last chapters like in the previous games. Unfortunately, this game suffers somewhat from being a direct and obvious sequel, as the shadows and persons of characters from the previous game pop up everywhere, distracting you from the protagonist's story. I need to say something about the Venus Blood games here... it really is a shame that this company doesn't go 'legit' and start making non-ero games. The complexity of the skill system and the way you can make levels almost irrelevant through simply combining the right units in the same squad is incredibly rewarding. This is actually only the second game in the series where I actually explored this aspect of the game in-depth, but I was seriously impressed with the degree to which you can customize your army, creating the ultimate force. In fact, it wouldn't be far from the truth to say the outcome of all battles is entirely determined by the way you design your squads. Sanah is something of a hard-ass when it comes for this game, always beginning on Hard mode... but I honestly don't recommend that for newcomers to the series. For one thing, the basic endgame difficulty level is pretty high even on normal difficulty, and playing hard mode on the first playthrough has certain annoyances like running short of resources at key points. Anyway, for gameplay, this, like most of the Venus Blood games, is fairly enjoyable. As a story? Lots of potential here, some really interesting points, but in retrospect the story pales somewhat in comparison to previous entries in the series as a whole, despite exceeding most previous games when it comes to the endgame story.

The question I have is a bit more complex than the title I have, so allow me to give some context. From what I have seen just in my own personal life, otome games in the west have reached a popularity that visual novels are failing to achieve. And while otome games are a sub genre of VNs, their market is completely different from the market of story based VNs. In real life, I have met around 10 girls who I am decently acquainted with who play otome games. When I asked if they played other visual novels, they said no. From the information I gathered from them, they don't care about visual novels as an alternate medium, but only care about dating sims. They like otome games as dating sims. And Otome games are a genre that are growing on the western mobile market. Mystic Messenger has gained a lot of popularity these past couple of months, and with its success is very likely going to bring more otome games into the market. I initially thought this would be a good thing, since if otome games gain more popularity, then maybe those people will expend their interests into visual novels. But from what I have noticed, there is no evidence that suggests that the growth of the Otome game genre is going to benefit visual novels. In fact, I think it might even damage the potential for the visual novel market to expand in the west. By Otome games, I am mostly referring to the shitty dating sim ones that plague the mobile phone market. I know that there are some good story based ones out there, and sadly those seem to be just as unpopular as most story based visual novels. My real concern, is with how Dating sims are overall doing much better in the west than story based VNs. On the male side of things, shitty games like Sakura spirit and Nekopara I think are doing just as much harm to the reputation of Visual novels in the west. The popularity of dating sims is perpetuating the false understanding of visual novels as dating sims. VNs ≠ Dating sims! While I don't have anything wrong with dating sims existing as a genre, I do think it is very important to create a distinction between dating sims and VNs. Just like how it is important to create a distinction between Nukige and story-based visual novels. Just because they use similar formatting, does not mean that they are synonymous with each other. But the popularity that otome games are getting, are going to have more people associate VNs as dating sims, and this will make it hard for actual story based VNs to expand their market in the west. Furthermore, Dating-sim oriented Otome games in particular are marketing themselves to a western audience much better than VNs are imo. Developers for these games realize that this genre thrives most on portable devices. And I think it is that realization that is helping them expand their market so well. VNs on the other hand are still mostly just pc games, especially if you only take the western audience into account (since few psp and vita ports ever make it to the west). Not only are VNs limited to computers, but they are limited to windows. They largely exclude mac users, which is a huge problem in the west considering how many people have macs. Few people will do what I did and buy a notably more expensive ultra-portable windows laptop to enjoy VNs on the go like I did. Most people settle for the cheaper mac-books. And for people who are non-gamers and who have not yet discovered visual novels, it is perfectly reasonable for them to do so. Maybe I am in the minority out there, but I genuinely see visual novels as a medium of story telling in the light that books and movies are. Visual Novels can tell many types of stories and can encompass any genre of fiction they want. Hell, there are even some amazing genres like denpa that I think are basically exclusive to VNs. In terms of depth and writing quality, there are visual novels out there that offer the same amount of intellectual depth and meaning that some books do. I fell in love with this medium because I like experiencing interesting stories with the accompaniment of music and art. To see a medium I love getting neglected for mere dating sims just really pisses me off. I would really love to hear what other people think. Edit: After discussing it out a bit, I realize that my problem is not with Otome games per se, but with Dating sims as a whole.

Otome arent ruining story based VNs, fking Code Realize is golden, it's moeges that are.

There's a number of strange ideas in the OP. Let me point out the ones that caught my eye. This is just your perspective. Another perspective is that VNs are very much a genre of wish-fulfillment games for lonely men in their late teens and early 20's, focused on a cast of attractive female companions (inevitably high schoolers) to choose for the male protagonist to date and ultimately have sex with. Both perspectives are valid. Both perspectives oversimplify. As I see it, the otome genre is just the converse of the much more common bishoujo genre: games focused on a cast of attractive males rather than attractive females, made for females rather than males. They tend to be on mobile devices because that's where the female "gamers" are. Young adult romantic fiction has been targeted at females for a long time now, so it's no real surprise that otome games would catch on. The market was already there, waiting to be tapped. Are we living in the same world? Macs are generally more expensive for the equivalent hardware. There's even a term for it: the Apple tax. People pay more for the premium branding, which commands respect due to the ease of use and excellent service plans. And why would you need expensive hardware to play 2D VNs anyway?

If they only care about the dating element they are the female equivalent of the sakura crowd, they only play crap otomege for mobiles. High quality otomege such as code realize or Hakuouki are no different than VNs.

Since these are already a third of everything posted here, do know that irrelevant shitposts will be hidden and repeats might lead to temporary bans.

I take a standard visual novel, replace every guy with a girl, and every girl with a guy. Does anything change?

I think visual novels already have a public perception of being dating sims, with the overwhelming success of Nekopara compared to everything else, and how the Sakura series has been able to thrive. Sex scenes existing and a big part of the active community losing their shit over them whenever they're removed from a game certainly doesn't help either (though amusingly, that part of the community seems to have an incredibly low effect on sales. Certainly helps outsiders to shape their view of what the community wants when they see constant bitching about it, though!) From what I know, the western market did start a long time ago with people buying nukige in jp to masturbate and being unable to read a single word of it, too, which certainly doesn't help either. In the end, I believe that perception already exists, that it won't harm the community or story-based titles and that otome games have little to do with it.

After reading this, I was like ''na too much exaggeration going on'' and that judging stuff by couple of minutes isn't logical. Then I actually gave it a watch myself ....... god the hell did I watch. It's animation is like a half-assed attempt to copy Project K's art-style with less than a tenth of it's budget.

You may be thinking of The Sixth Sense, written by legendary manga artist M. Night Shyamalan. Nosebleed's suggestions are helpful too, though.

Welcome bro! Hope you find what you're looking for! Have a nice time!

Likewise.

Welvomd to Fuwanovel there. Just ask us whether you need some recommendations there and hope you enjoy yourself here.

@Limerence_ happy birthday! (It's okay, I still have 1 minute until midnight here, so I made it!) \o/

From my view, a better question might be: What does this site add that Omochikaeri or VNDB don't provide? Also that's a lot of data to keep up with. It currently lists 40 January releases, which is about 2/3 of the major brand releases for the month (according to DependSpace, HolySeal, and EroGameScape). If the site is going to keep providing all that info (even English descriptions of 50% of the games!) then I see there is something of value. But that's a LOT of work and keeping it up is not going to be easy. I guess what I'm saying is, would all this effort be better spent providing more and better updates to VNDB or other, pre-existing, VN focused websites?

You can try with duel savior.

I actually liked the H in this game. The reason I put it down as a bad thing was simply the frequency and amount of it. The first 2-3 scenes for each heroine felt like they achieved something, and they felt relevant to the story. However, once they started going into their 6th H-scene, what was achievable in terms of character development was kind of achieved already, and it was mainly just pointless H. Hot, but not really needed.

Tbh the whole switch console looks like nothing but trashy gimmicks with overpriced accessories and no games but Zelda at launch. Sad!

It's a very useful trick to keep in mind. If a webpage is acting funky in your browser, the first thing to try is reloading the page. The second thing is to restart the browser. And the third thing is usually to try a different browser.