Leaderboard

Fuwanovel has this tagline both here on the forums as well as the main site; if you were to Google Fuwanovel, the first result proudly exclaims "Fuwanovel – Make Visual Novels Popular in the West!". I haven't seen too much discussion about it, though, so I thought I'd stir up a conversation to hear everyone's opinions on what needs to happen in order for VNs to appeal to a larger portion of the Western audience, or if it's possible at all. Popularity is subjective, of course, so for our purposes just consider what would make VNs more popular, rather than reach any particular standard of renown. I'll present a few general topics that I feel are relevant to provide a base, but of course don't be afraid to present any thoughts that may pertain to something else. 1. Sexual Content - This post and associated podcast by NowItsAngeTime brought up some good points on this topic. Do you feel that the presentation of sexual content, or the idea of pursuing heroines as a requisite feature, that is so common in VNs needs to be changed, altered, or removed somehow? Dreamysyu noted that visual novels with sexual content are separated from those without completely in Japan - to the point that they are essentially different genres. 2. Setting and Japanese Influence - Naturally, a lot of VNs are set in Japan, frequently in specific settings like a high school. This even extends to OELVNs, where it is not unusual to see a VN that takes place in Japan or has characters with Japanese names, honorifics, and so on. Do you think VNs, particularily OELVNs, need to break away from this standard in order to appeal to a larger Western audience? 3. The Format in Itself - Does the nature of a visual novel make it forever doomed to be a niche genre? Would VNs with gameplay features appeal more in the West? Are there possible changes to the existing format that can be altered while still retaining the core of what a visual novel is? I look forward to hearing your opinions!

1- It should be noted that, unless you intend to strip out romance altogether, avoiding sexuality itself is impossible. However, having actual sex scenes in a VN isn't a requirement, when it comes down to it. That is a Japanese custom born partially from the fact that VNs started with nukige. It is also the biggest barrier to widening the appeal of VNs in general, which is one of several reasons why most companies make a non-ero version of story-heavy VNs when they get localized (other reasons include legalities, Steam rules, etc) nowadays. Sexual content in most Japanese VNs tends toward the excessive (even for romance's sake, one is usually enough even in American movies). 2- The visual novel medium possesses immense potential for storytelling (just look at what Light and Nitroplus do with it). There should be no limit to the kind of settings and stories that can be presented. However, if a VN maker wants to sell their game, they have to get past the art bigotry which consumes a large portion of the community first, and that is a huge barrier to justifying the production of 'pure western' visual novels. 3- Not necessarily. The reasons visual novels are niche primarily come from your question 1 and the death grip the otaku community has one the medium. Sex puts some people off, causes legal problems at times, and is something a lot of corporations don't want to deal with. The other part is that roughly 70% of all visual novel fans are otakus (the other thirty percent being a mixture of adventure game lovers who began from stuff like Heavy Rain, people who only play OELVNs, and people who will read anything with a good story). Otakus dominate the demand in the industry so far, so widening the appeal has remained difficult. Anyone who wants to spread the appeal of the medium, as opposed to a specific VN, will have to be willing to take the risk of abandoning the otakus altogether and convincing people to invest in something that is entirely Western in flavor... a risk most business people will not be willing to take, unfortunately. In other words, it isn't impossible but it won't be easy.

That tagline is literally what brought me here after I've (re)discovered visual novels and decided to devote more of my time to them. What makes me a weirdo is that from the very beginning I was actually infatuated with OELVNs and I'm only very slowly digging into the "proper" VNs. My personal view is that VNs will always be a niche genre in the West because of their strong connection to "weeb culture", which grosses many people out (that very much includes OELVNs) and to a lesser extent because of the stigma connected to sexual content in them. And because people playing video games or watching anime around here are not really that much into reading. Apart from the super undemanding titles like Nekopara or Sakura games, there's simply no mass market for them. I'm also pretty sure that VNs will never go far in the West without a healthy OELVN market. The actual "hardcore" VN community is very niche and hermetic, like most fandoms of this kind and as long as people are told to learn Japanese if they want to get involved and western stuff is treated with disdain, the community like ours really won't help things much. Progress is obviously happening thanks to more and more major JP titles being translated, but those also might hit a wall quite soon, if the fanbase doesn't expand steadily - I don't think those horrible sale numbers of A Sky Full of Stars are just because people were bitter about h-scenes - there's simply not that many people interested in buying quality JP VNs and the market is getting saturated. I think an interesting question is what we, as a community, can do to popularize VNs in the West. I desn't look like we're doing much right now, because outside of the forums, the site is rather stagnant. While the VNs in the West are booming, at least in some respects, we're just cuddled in our own, super-niche corner, ignoring the filthy masses roaming around Steam and other places. Optimally, we should do something to reach people outside of our own little circle, how and who should do it is a nice topic for discussion. EDIT: And when it goes to setting and giving VNs a "western" feel, definitely. But I don't think I've seen a VN developer that didn't come from the "weeb" culture and wasn't heavily inspired by some JP VNs. It would be extremely hard to escape that association because it's a core feature of the genre and part of its identity. The thing that we should do away with is mindless copying - there are situations where using Japanese setting adds something to the game (DDLC is a good example because it tried to look as generic as possible to make the twists more powerful and unexpected), but usually, it's just lack of imagination IMHO.

Yumiko is the only real answer, all other answers are wrong. Unless Asako's VA counts.

lol Fap away my dear friend. Fap away, like there's no tomorrow. And then you do it some more, until the skin starts to chafe and you regret everything.

I read every single one of them. AND I try to find all of them too. I like things like F/SN that is infested with short bad endings/game overs, I think it's fun when you're actually punished for picking a dumb choice.

This more or less details my experience as well. If I'm not too invested yet, I can read bad endings. But as I get more attached to the characters and the story it starts getting harder and harder to the point where I just don't feel it's worth it. If I feel I must, I'll usually skip through the text, occasionally reading a line or two to get the gist of it. Stories that aren't that serious are fine with their bad endings, of course.

Uuuuh... It's a tough one. When I'm reading a VN for some time, I usually get deeply, emotionally involved and seeing a really bad conclusion can f*** me up in serious ways, like make me lose sleep and be emotionally broken for a day or two. The better the story, the more being surprised by something really bad/disturbing will influence me. So, I only approach bad endings in "controlled environment", when I'm in the right mood and knowing more or less what I'm getting into. Otherwise, it would just wouldn't be worth it (especially when I rarely can afford to be barely functional for longer periods of time). Most of the time I read VNs to relax and escape sad parts of my reality so tragedy is not really what I'm looking for, I can be very much ok with it in the middle of the story, but I pretty much need that slither of hope at the end.

Forgot to add this pretty lady . Amane constantly prattling on about how amazing the truck is, plus the action sequences and cgs featuring the truck made me consider buying one lol. Actually started checking prices for the truck and modifications . I've never been influenced by a car commercial till now. Next time someone mentions truck-chan, instead of dread, i'll be filled with fond memories. Yonbarrrrrrrrrr!

Asako>JB=Kazuki=Yumiko=Amane>Sachi>Michiru=Makina Yeah I know Asako, JB and Kazuki didn't get routes but i loved those characters [honestly they didn't need routes, their impact and importance in the main storyline was enough for me to love them]. They brought so much depth to story and yuuji's growth, since they 'raised' him and educated him in being the kind of man he ended up becoming. They were essential to him, he literally wouldn't have lived without them or the lessons they instilled in him. Asako was a magnificent character for me. I liked all the other heroines too though [varying degrees but still liked them all], Grisaia did a splendid job explaining the reasons for their behaviour, thought process and other characteristics. Asako was glorious [yes i liked her alot okay! ]

The best heroine is without a doubt Asako. If anyone disagrees they need to reread Meikyuu. As for order I would say Asako>JB>Kazuki>Sachi>Yumiko=Amane>Michiru=Makina

Same.

Wow, thank you everyone for all the welcomes! I'm not sure I'll have anything at all new or interesting to offer regarding vns, but I'll post anyway. @Plk_Lesiak I usually don't read OELVNs but I've been planning to at least check out Katawa Shoujo for a while now. @mitchhamilton I've heard good things about the actual VN, but horrible things about the official English release. @Zander Thanks! I've only really read Amnesia:Memories, and I picked up Ozmafia recently. I prefer to play on PC and lots of the otome releases seem to be confined to Vita/console. @Ranzo I concur. The purest form of love~ My yuri journey has only just begun. @r0xm2n I want to play it, but preferably uncensored and I don't have a credit card for Denpasoft @Kawasumi I'm just about trying

It's not fucking karaoke unless you sing your fucking ass off

Hm, for me it's probably still the good old Fate/Stay Night. When Illyasviel asked me to ally with her, I thought: Why not? She's a cute girl - what could go wrong?! And then she... That was a quite remarkable experience.

One of the best things I have ever seen Holy shit.

Apparently, fuwanovel(dot)org now redirects to some site that tries to install adware on your PC, and I discovered it accidentally clicking an old link (doesn't work in https). I know, nobody is going to check all the old topics and change the links, but is it, perhaps, possible to do something automatically? I know, some forums don't allow linking the sites of their competitors, for example.

Yumiko and NO ONE ELSE! Too cute

Bad endings with story are common in chuunige, so I generally read them... and some writers have a fondness for Tsukihime-style 'normal' endings, so it is often worth reading them if that is the writer's style.

Well, many people definitely do that (which infuriates me whenever I see it - I despise close-mindedness and bigotry in every form). But that doesn't mean they're that big of a majority or can't be converted to some extent. And yeah, there are notable exceptions when it goes to "weebness" of OELVNs and the are also games that still take a lot from their JP sources but also mix in decent amounts of their own cultural context and ideas, which makes them much more approachable for people without "weeb" sesitivities or any knowledge about Japanese culture. I think that's the right way to go for western devs (and if you go for Japanese themes and setting, at least do it for a reason, like for example Strawberry Vinegar is just a charming, weeb love letter to Japanese food and it's pretty much impossible to hold it against the author ;)). I would love to! Still, the hard part is getting cordinated with Fuwa's administration. The formula of the Frontpage and FuwaReviews probably should be a topic for another, open discussion on the forums but it won't take much sense without authorisation from people actually having access to the site, and to Tay. There's a lot of things that could be done, but won't happen without getting through to people in charge. What do you mean by that?

I normally skip bad endings unless they unlock something like cg's or a secret scene. Vn's like Kara No Shoujo or Enigma have really dramatic and interesting bad endings that add quite a bit to the game. Enigma's bad endings for example, add a very sinister edge to one of the side characters that you would never know about unless you got the bad ending.

Best 'heroine' would be Asako. Best 'main heroine' would be a tie between Sachi and Makina. My Waifu though would be Michiru. Heck, she's my visual novel waifu, period

If we're counting all the series heroines then: 1. Michiru 2. Yumiko 3. Asako 4. JB 5. Chizuru 6. Agnes 7. Milliela 8. Sachi 9. Makina 10. Kazuki 11. Amane I love Amane but given how terrible her route is in the first game with it's pacing and a few other issues, it's hard to separate her character and that really bad character arc. If the issues were more minor and the story a little more interesting then I'd slap her into 5th. But more importantly praise be to the Goddess

You're no weirdo, I'm quite the fan of OELVNs myself. You're not alone in that! Addressing your other point, though, I do think there are OELVNs that have no connection to weeb culture at all whatsoever. Cinders, in my opinion, is a good example of an OELVN that subverts many of the traditional connections to, er, weeb-ism. It has a distinctively European art style, no sexual content, and a lot of input from the player. It's not a perfect or all-encompassing VN by any means, but I think it stands as an example that a connection to weeb culture is not a necessary ingredient to make a successful VN. Unless you mean that people will simply see that it is a VN and instantly mark it off as a weeb thing... while I would like to think my fellow humans are more open-minded than that, it may indeed be the case. I'm interested in taking on similar things, if you ever felt like working together on something or sharing ideas! I do agree with you that Fuwa is pretty barren, with the site being even more so than the forums. On your first point about heroines, I agree that it is a defining attribute and a big selling point, but note that I don't think it should be removed entirely from the genre necessarily, just that the way for other types of VNs should be left open. You later mentioned Danganronpa, which I think is a good example of a very successful VN (although some wouldn't call it that, I suppose) that subverts the traditional trope of pursuing heroines' routes while also selling very well. Popularising Japanese otaku culture in the West is one way of looking at it, I suppose. It seems your opinion is the polar opposite of mine — I feel as though the West should have its own VN industry that stands on its own two feet, whereas you think that the Japanese media should be retained but popularised. I agree with you on the point that VNs aren't available physically in the West, and that digital distribution is often a complicated process due to the, er, proclivities, of some visual novels. I can't really disagree there. Porn games will always appeal to people that are interested in playing porn games, and I don't think having a gratuitous display of nudity and such will really change any of their minds. The way VNs are presented is definitely important in how they are generally viewed by their potential audience; I really can't imagine linking a friend that hasn't played any VNs to Mangagamer to look at Dies Irae, for example, without him getting the wrong idea about my interests... I think you basically have the same ideas as Lesiak and I with regards to Fuwanovel itself. I think giving more attention to OELVNs could be helpful, without degrading the quality of content we have here in terms of Japanese visual novels. OELVNs rarely get any attention on the visual novels subreddit, which is perhaps the only other significant VN community. Are there good OELVNs being released though? Maybe, maybe not. But I feel like if one were released tomorrow, the world wouldn't know about it.

...jesus christ.

1. I've already posted my thoughts about that in length in the thread you linked to. In short I think it is something that is at the moment a necessary evil but it is something I have never been real fond of. I think going forward if vn's want to have a larger penetration() in the west then they do will have to alter or remove them. Or at the very least there will have to be more high quality vn's with minimal h scenes translated and released. The English vn market is still largely dominated by vns that are heavily sex based and I think that will need to change if we want to draw more people in. It still is a bit embarrassing to go on to a vn retailer and see almost nothing but titles like Bleeding Orphan Makers~My Cunt is Overburdened by Lust. 2. This definitely needs to change because for one thing it just demonstrates a complete lack of originality. These elements are already played out in mainstream vns as it is, so if OELVN's want to stand out and be their own thing they will have to drop a lot of overused anime and vn tropes. They will have to branch out and challenge themselves or they will continue to be seen as a inferior offshoot. 3. Well in much of the western world anime itself is seen as a niche market even though it has grown in popularity over the years. Video-games themselves have only just now started to be taken as a mainstream entity. So VN's will probably always keep the cult status they currently occupy. What we really need is more vn's like doki doki and katawa shoujo that become immensely popular and reach a large audience and garner a strong media presence. More anime adaptions are always a positive as well. For the forum itself? I think there should be more engagement with the steam vn audience. I know there is a fuwa steam group but it seems to be pretty much defunct.

They aren't pure girls. They aren't girls at all. They're figments of the writer's imagination and the artist's pen. Certainly there have been times where I've ended up less interested in the h-scenes in a game than I am in the story. But that's about me. What appeals to me. It's not about the girls in the game (who don't even exist).

My Polish Stepmother introduced me to them along with other amazing Polish foods, but I'd have to say Pierogis are my favorite of all them.

Well, when I came here my idea was to contribute to FuwaReviews/The Frontpage with OELVN-centric reviews and interviews (that eventually turned into the blog thingy, as I basically couldn't get a response from the anyone up top about whether they're interested in what I'm offering). Other easily achievable thing is getting more active with Steam Curation and generally promoting VNs there. Endorsing reliable OELVN developers. That's at least when it goes to somewhat easily-achievable stuff. Lack of manpower and the admins being "ded" (direct quote from Nosebleed) is probably the biggest obstacle here, probably more than the OELVN-sceptic mentality. If you Google "visual novels" Fuwa is very high on the results list, I think it can influence quite a bit, the frontpage simply doesn't have much life in it and doesn't offer many reasons for people to pay attention to it. That's the first thing we would have to fix.

As it stands now, I think anime/manga becoming more and more mainstream is the main reason visual novels as a medium have grown the past few years. I think all of us were happy to see big titles like Grisaia and Clannad appearing on steam. When it comes to that, it's honestly gone a lot faster than I anticipated, which is great. I do, however, feel that we're going to stagnate, as Lesiak pointed out. To make this medium work for a western audience... I think we simply need to wait for a few good, radically different OELVN's to be written. Something, preferably, with western art and themes. Now, I don't dislike the Japanese style (on the contrary), but I do think it would impact how the medium as a whole is seen. Even though visual novels are possibly the most open type of medium I know, allowing for virtually any kind of story to be told, I do think visual novels are impeded by exactly the three factors Zander mentioned. If the kind of OELVN's I have in mind were to appear, the first two (the stigma on sex and the Japanese setting) would be overcome. The last of the three hurdles is the simple fact they require lots of reading, and reading just isn't that popular of a hobby nowadays. I don't think this is one that really can be solved... though then again, perhaps if visual novels were popular, maybe people would read more as well. So to answer this question... I think fuwanovel could (I'm not steadfast enough to say should) focus more on supporting OELVN projects. My inner weeb would hate for that to replace what we have now, so I would hope directing our eyes to OELVN's would not stand in the way of our own super-niche corner, as you put it. As for the masses huddling to nekopara and the sakura games on steam... I think/hope that a part of them will find sites like fuwanovel, and thus hopefully get more invested in the medium. It would be good for fuwanovel (and hopefully visual novels as a whole) to welcome these audiences. It'll open up a whole new can of worms, but growth inevitably brings new problems, and we can tackle those as they come. Whoa, all of a sudden I sound really optimistic. It sounds a lot better now that I wrote it down than the image I had in my head... The crux of it is that I think we should open up more to OELVN's. How do you think we could best open up fuwanovel to OELVN's? I know it's cheeky to ask it like that, but I'm honestly not sure myself... and I'm curious to hear what you all think.

For example, they realize that their final work is shit and needs to be redone from the beginning. Or, maybe, an important person for the project management suddenly disappears due to rl, and it all falls apart.

I don't think this is a huge problem, but it is something that probably makes people a bit wary of having visual novels on their steam accounts and such. Differentiating the ones with and without more probably would help though, as many tend to think of porn when they hear of visual novels, if they even know about them at all. I don't think it's the setting that is the main issue, it's more the way they tend to be written. But more neutral or "western" settings would probably help, not everyone is in love with Japanese culture. I do believe it is doomed to be a niche, it is not a great way to neither read nor experience a story. Perhaps the mechanics could be developed to present the story more fluidly, with less text and more video or gameplay-ish content, but would it still remain a visual novel? I don't know.

Amane is great. But I still like all the other heroines more. She has the best route though.

amane for me. then yumiko, michiru, makina, sachi.

Maguroman

My favorite Grisaia girl doesn't have a route: Kusakabe Asako - Yumiko - JB - Michiru - Makina - Sachi - Amane

They are already tainted if they have a hentai scene

I can't agree with that. Things happen. And some people loose interest.

Tordej d'arbetti (tortelli d'erbetta) Al Caval Pist Spaghetti all'Amatriciana

I wanna enjoy the whole game. A H-scene taken out of context is a sin.

I REALLY ENJOY GARBAGE

not an answer to the question just a response to zeno's response.

omg yes, hes so cute! this rambling is spot on

Couldn't agree more. And it's just me or Noiz's scrap scene had some Monika vibes?

I got the time machine used in ste....oh no, fuck!! they're behind me!!

The entire ending was meant to deny you the pleasure of a conventional ending. I fucking loved it. It propelled V3 above the first two games.

I like bois

I'm a big fan of the fourth choice, really helps represent VN fans of all backgrounds.