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The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out. Do we love the same VNs? While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best. We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad. There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs... While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released. We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones. So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories: Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher. The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text. The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget. VN popularity It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West. Note that this chart is using a log scale. The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated. Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is. Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB. Differences in taste So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is. Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS. This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative. Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”). This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB. Differences in the marketplace We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one? A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists. Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs. A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags. The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content. EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties. Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters. Criticisms Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting? Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years. The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through. Acknowledgements A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis. I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my tumblr and twitter for more VN analysis posts. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter, or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~

Goddammit, Japan.

While language is an important barrier, I think that amount of pornographic content is another big issue. Many countries have problems with it as well. For example, in the region I live, the only true way to find any pornographic content is to google it. You cannot see it on TV or any kind of stores. It is viewed extremely negative. Due to this, it is hard to recommend it or to even talk about it with others. Majority of VNs have little story and a lot of h-scenes. If you want to sell them, you need to censor them. Another point, many cultures don't care about high school that much. While it focuses on specific demographic, but lack of variety is harmful. If more VNs with different settings and without h-scenes were released in the west, it might be easier for younger generation to freely introduce it to others, which in turn would lead to higher fan base.

In my opinion, this is the dominant effect. We don't choose VNs to play randomly; we pick games we think we'll like. If I have a greater selection of games to play, I can choose VNs that I'm more likely to like. Whereas if my selection is limited, I'm stuck playing games that have less intrinsic appeal to me, and I'm going to be harsher on them.

Goddamn this is great work. noddingboromir.gif

Nice try

The best combination by far

First of all, here's the Twitter from them below. As for my opinion, well nothing in particular that I want to be officially localized by them as of now. But still since this is VisualArts that we talk about, maybe it would be nice if somehow we can break Saga Planet curse through official localization (For the reminder Saga Planet is one of Visual Arts subsidiary). So what VN from them that you want to be officially localized?

Felt like reviving this thread as the last post is on July 2017 and there had been quite a lot of new VNs released since then. Fuwanovel-ers should have new fav OP to recommend 1 of the VNs I'm reading/playing now is Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate. I think the OP is pretty catchy:

*Insert obligatory Kuu-chan hyping* Seriously tho, Steins;Gate 0 is the first MAGES' visual novel being released by spike chunsoft in the west, the first of many (i hope), tbh, all i hope for is a Chaos;Child + Robotics;Notes PC release, and if S;G 0 is what it takes to get these released, well so be it. Good luck for everyone who'll buy this fantastic visual novel. I have to include some bit of context to S;G 0 : Read/Watch steins;gate before, because S;G 0 relies a lot on previous VN/Anime (it is a sequel, after all).

This review was written by fun2novel and edited for grammar and style by Clephas. Etatoto review The mystery genre is one of the most interesting and captivating genres in fiction (Clephas: We are all entitled to our opinions). While there are many mystery vns out there, finding one that has an addictive, twisting plo, and a satisfying ending is a difficult task. It is even harder if you’re looking for something really unique and different from the usual murder who’dun’it, detective, mystery plots... Such as something that will make the reader doubt and rethink what they think they know but also gives satisfying answers. Welcome to Kieta Sekai to Tsuki to Shoujo -The World was Prayed by The Girl Living A Thousand Years- or Etatoto. Okina Seiji comes back to his home town for a visit. After his arrival, he reunites with old friends and makes new ones, goes to school with them, and spends time bonding with them. However, the real reason for his visit is the mysterious death of his mother, and his goal is to find out the truth. Nothing goes as planned, of course. As the story progresses, the mystery grows more and more complex, questions are raised, and more mysteries are uncovered. This is ALL you need to know, as saying anything more than that will ruin the plot. So, if you’re looking for a good mystery visual novel that is not quite the usual kind of mystery, something complex and twisty, this is a game for you. It’s not quite as complex as the Infinity or the Zero Escape series, but it’s definitely worth your time. In terms of art the game made a few odd artistic decisions. While the backgrounds looks great, and the main characters are all drawn well, some of the characters look as if drawn by a completely different artist than others. On top of that, their sprites look rough and sketched in comparison. CGs have a similar problem due to a strange artistic decision to draw the h-scenes in one style and the other CGs in a different one. The non-H CGs look rougher, almost sketched. These CGs still look good and match the atmosphere, so perhaps it was an artistic decision rather than a budgetary one (Clephas: It is Lacryma... it was probably just a fumble). Speaking of production values, the music deserves special recognition. The music is superb, with a variety of deep soothing compositions, atmospheric music, emotional music, and perfectly timed moving pieces. However, there aren't a lot of them, so they might come to feel old with repetition. That said, the music is so good that it shouldn’t be a deal breaker for anyone. There are a few low points in Etatoto’s writing as well. Most of the characters are not especially well developed and leave you much to be desired. Though, this wasn’t a huge deal breaker, as the story was good enough to pull all the right strings. The reason for this is that most of the game's focus goes into the story, rather than the characters. The romantic elements are a bit sub-par as well, since almost every route develops its romantic relationship in exactly the same way, with pretty much the same amount of time spend on each heroine and with the same ‘date’ spot as everyone else... Not to mention, it takes a while for the story to get going. The first few hours were very difficult to get through, but it is still worth it, in my mind. Those slow peaceful times are used to introduce the characters as well as do some clever and obscure foreshadowing about the events to come. On a technical side, things aren’t perfect either. The auto skip function doesn’t work as expected (Clephas: Lacryma's technical staff sucks), and sometimes it just doesn’t work at all. At other times, it takes a little longer to load the backgrounds after you resume from a saved game. These are relatively small annoyances that could (and most likely will) be patched later; so, thankfully, they don’t become an obstacle for enjoying the experience of the VN as a whole. In conclusion, talking about Etatoto is difficult without spoiling the intricate details of its plot. It’s the kind of VN where you should avoid searching for more information than is contained within this review. This gives you a good idea of the pros and cons of the game, and with a little patience, a mystery lover will get hooked on what is probably one of the best mystery visual novels in a while.

Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate - Don't see this title in recommendation threads enough, so I thought I'll mention it here. Has elements similar to Princess Evangile, especially the romance aspect (which is pretty heavy and serious stuff). Do take note the common route is a bit boring to read through, you cannot go into other routes without finishing Chisato's one first (there are good reasons for this), and her involvement in other routes is heavy and her character is a bit dramatised. Still a very good Rom VN imo. Princess Evangile W Happiness - For obvious reasons (being the FD of the original P.E) Noble Works - Rom-Com charage with a setting which is very similar to P.E (Story is about a down on luck MC who gets to attend a prestigious school by chance and what happens there). Storyline is quite funny (especially in Shizuru's route). Good cast of likeable characters too. To Heart 2 - Never read before, but could be what you are looking for Rest of the stuff I can think of are repeated very often in the recommendation thread forums: Clannad - Never played before, but accordingly to people everywhere (including in fuwanovel), a romance nakige with a story almost guaranteed to make you cry Rewrite - MC is proactive. Common route is well written. Lucia's (one of the main heroine) route is great and pretty romantic. Main things to look out for are the story itself is pretty convoluted and written very long (latter parts of the story answer more questions than it answers), huge wall of text to read through in order to complete/understand the story, romance is not a central part of the VN, and there's a unfinished / open ending (I HATE this part of the VN) Grisaia no Kajitsu - Common route is interesting, and comedic (but very long). Yuuji (MC) is pretty proactive. I like the heroines a lot, and the routes are deep and well written. One thing I would say about Grisaia is the romance is a bit thin comparatively The next couple of VNs will probably pop up at some point, but I think you should avoid them: Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa o Hirogete - A cult fav. The art is simply gorgeous. I enjoyed the romance in the routes as well. However, the common route is SoL-filled and a bit boring to read though. It is also very heavy on the technical aspect of aviation throughout the entire VN which absolutely bored me to tears. 2 of the routes is a bit mediocre; 1 is quite a bit messily-written, while the 1st of another route is so generic and short, it makes it look like a Yuzusoft side route (I like Nicola's route in Dracu-Riot is better written). Hatsukoi 1/1 - Slow, draggy, and SoL-filled story which can be insomnia inducing. It's quite over-dramatised too especially in the routes, with 1 route in particular so overly-dramatised that it puts soap operas to shame

If you don't score enough good karma with one of the heroines you end up with the Yuuji ending. Sasara was the only character added after the all ages version to X rated, however later versions added yet another character Mio Hanesaki who was never in the original games or anime or anything: http://aquaplus.jp/th2dxp/character11.html They also explained her conspicuous absence from the rest of the story by making her so bland that no one notices she exists most of the time. The continued popularity of the game a decade later is the reason they could still milk the franchise for another character as an excuse to make people buy the dx version when the rest of the game was unchanged (apart from removing the H content since the later versions were all ages.)

Interesting. So looking through the data, it seems that the vast majority of the VNs that increased in rating after being released are either continuations of some popular VN series, like SciAdv, or are made by the companies that already had highly popular releases in English prior to that. And it's kind of understandable, because it seems like those who didn't like the previous installments don't touch these new VNs. So if we exclude them, the trend is even more universal. I think, it probably means that that @sanahtlig is right. Other than that, Kindred Spirits and Fata Morgana seem to suggest that there actually is some difference in tastes between EOPs and JOPs, though it's very minor.

I've been changing around how some of that code worked as I was experimenting with it, trying to explain the drop etc, so this list might not perfectly match the animation, but this should be a list of VNs and their change in score over those 60 days.

It's because EOPs are dumb and JOPs are always right. w

Great job, as always! Interesting. Yeah, this trend that the rating for recently translated "kamige" tends to drop is pretty noticeable, and I myself wondered about it for some time. I personally thought that it has something to do with hype most early readers of the translated versions have for them, but it would mean that the score would slowly increase back to its original value, as long as the new readers arrive, and this doesn't correlate with your data. Actually, is it possible to see the raw data behind that chart? It would be interesting which VNs fell the most and which increased their score after translation.

Yeah I agree, Japanese speakers are spoilt for choice. That theory also aligns well with the popularity chart, where even fairly unpopular EGS VNs can still attract large audiences on VNDB, probably because our selection is quite limited so we'll read everything.

I will recommend Chrono Clock here.

Yuuji ending is considered bad - it is in the walkthrough too.

Hey guys! Just thought I'd say hi since I just registered yesterday on fuwanovel. Though most likely I will be mainly a lurker here. I'm a 28 year old from Sweden, been a fan of Japan and Asia for pretty much my entire life, games, anime, movies, music, language, culture, you name it. Lived in Tokyo for a year and will most likely move back next year, amazing city. For some reason I've not played all that many Visual Novels in the past. Recently though I've started exploring them more and I like what I've uncovered so far, but I'm still a newbie. So far I've played Danganronpa 1-2, Psycho Pass, Root Letter, Leviathan Last Day of the Decade, Ever17 and Dengeki Stryker. Tried a few others here and there but can't remember which ones it was. Right now I'm playing Majikoi since it's been highly recommended to me. Also playing the first Ace Attorney game however I don't feel it's quite a visual novel but more of a point and click/investigations type of game. Anyways I hope to see you around!

Finished both of Nanami x Yuuna and Kaede x Sara (Cousin coupling) story, and more or less I can say that it's more or less like the third games for both of them because they have further development to their life, mainly to the MCs themselves. The development goes like Nanami learn of how to be a committee chairman, while Kaede was learn to be in the spotlight by debuting with Sara who is a very famous and very busy model. For my opinion here, at least we can see Nanami's effort is quite successful with her graduation album is widely accepted, while for Kaede we still didn't see that she became confident yet even though she about to do her solo (We didn't even see her debut solo). For the next story, I'll go with Mai x Reo here.

Voted for the Gakuen Heaven series. You're all welcome, no thanks necessary.

I posted this in "What are you playing" thread, but I think I should put it in game thread too: I finished To Heart 2 yesterday. It was great experience for me. I just had to get used to the interface (no separate textbox), but it went smoothly. It is "mother of moeges" (at least for translated ones ) - there were sooo many familiar things I recognized from later games I've read. I liked all routes - Yuma route felt somewhat weaker than the others for me, but it was still enjoyable, I just felt that in some places it didn't flow as smoothly as the rest. I can't decide on best girl - all were sweet.First route I read was Konomi - nice start, and good one to start with, as her route makes also most of the "common". Next was Tama-nee I thought she will be my best girl, but then other strong contenders appeared However, she still is somewhere around the top. Next onto Sasara. After reading some posts I was little afraid, but it actually was good too. I agree - the MC's stubborness was a little over the top, but I was (or probably still am) on similar levels of stupidity, so can't really complain Being scolded by Tama-nee (which she also did in Ruuko route) actually gave me some food for thought. And Sasara herself was sweet. Manaka - she probably is the MOEst of them all. Nice and sweet route, with some drama thrown in - very good. Yuma - the tsundere. Lots of funny moments, but later I feel there were some jumps in the story, therefore it is the weaker route for me - but still OK. "Don't think that means you have won!" Karin - nothing special, but nice. "Guess who?" Yuuki - this route took me somewhat by surprise - it was great. Yuuki was beautiful and nice, and her ending had some of the KeyMagicTM (it wouldn't feel out of place in "Little Busters"). Little short, but definitely one of the best routes for me. The Twins (Sango & Ruuri) - nice. Ending was... erm... interesting Ruuko - out-of-this-world setting , but very enjoyable route. Ruuko is easily one of the best girls in this game. "Ruu!" \o/ Art (characters and backgrounds) looks good. Music was very nice too. And the animated OP was amazing - it's pretty rare to see full animated scenes in VN OP instead of just character sprites with credits next to them and some effects. Translation was decent - there were some missing or redundant words here and there, but no game-breakers. Overall - 8/10 from me.

Well, here a few standouts in my eyes at least. Starting with the obvious I really loved the opening of Aoishiro as well. Got to represent my favorite vn

As for the translation, I would say that it'll go with the latter categories (More just a few quirks here and there). I would suggest you to find out about the translation by yourself because it's pretty much quite subjective if we talk about translation quality, and from there maybe you'll be able to liking the story. Have fun and I hope you'll enjoy it.

I think Stein's Gate doesn't take itself too seriously. It has a bit too much comedy and slice of life elements for that. It's therefore sometimes a bit confusing when they are intentionally mocking the issue or just misunderstood some things. But the whole mixture was probably an important reason for the huge success of the VN.

The software you use depends on the game engine. When i tried to extract dies irae's files i used Garbro. Here's a list of the extension that work with garbro, maybe you find you VN there. https://morkt.github.io/GARbro/supported.html

I would say no. Say a word can be translated into 4 different words. The translator will read the definition of each case and pick the best suited. MT will pick a semi random. That alone makes it worth telling human translators apart from MT. For a human made translation to be considered as a machine translation, the translator should do something stupid like always picking the first choice for each word. As for dictionaries, I don't really have a problem with people using them. In fact it would be a far worse problem if people don't use them at all. Translation is not about just knowing as many words as possible. In fact that's the least of the problems. The importance of grammar can't be overestimated because screwing up grammar will likely lose a lot of the meaning even if you get the words right. Another issue is how each language handles how to say different concepts. We had one in an introduction thread recently, which was "native language" vs "language of your mother". Other examples are homeland vs fatherland vs motherland and "they shook their heads" vs "they shook their head" (first is English with logical plural as it counts the total number of heads. Some languages count the number on each person, meaning plural will make multi headed people). Those are examples of translation issues between Germanic languages, despite being closely related. Now take two completely unrelated languages like English and Japanese and differences like that will be in a significantly higher number. By the time a person master issues like that, the vocabulary will most likely be good enough for that to not be an issue. Another note regarding dictionaries is that they have to be used often during translation work. The accuracy required for a good translation mean if in doubt, look it up. If it looks a little bit out of the ordinary, it could be a double meaning, a play on words, kanji or similar. Even native speakers can have a hard time picking up on all the details, which should hopefully be included in a translation. I would say it's likely the best approach to build up a vocabulary because you only encounter words, which are actually used and if you encounter the same word again and again, you will have a higher chance of remembering it, meaning your learning is optimized for learning commonly used words. Some people write words on cards (Japanese on the front and translation on the back) and then try to remember each morning before flipping. This is sometimes done with random words from the dictionary and even if they are successful, it will be completely useless because they often end up using words they will never encounter. It might work for learning hiragana or something, but not really to get a useful vocabulary.

I wanted to comment on your points and add a few things from myself, but I decided against it since I only watched the anime, and I'm sure that the VN version could lead to many things a lot better. But, yeah, Steins;Gate has quite a lot of little things like that that simply don't make any sense. As a result, the story is pretty much filled with plot holes of different importance, and I had to put quite a lot of effort to keep my suspension of disbelief intact. I find it kind of understandable, sci-fi VNs generally are pretty bad at making technical stuff and "science" actually realistic and believable (and that's why I prefer fantasy). Chaos;Head, for example, has it even worse: it takes Born's ideas about the nature of observation in quantum mechanics (and you could say that they are actually closer to philosophy than to science), completely misinterprets them, and in the end we basically have an urban fantasy visual novel that pretends to be sci-fi. Well, this all is pretty understandable, making an accurate sci-fi world is a pretty impossible task since the author has to have a good understanding of quite a lot of different fields of science and a lot of other stuff. And usually making it very realistic isn't even very important, because most viewers/readers aren't even going to notice that there's anything wrong with that. Still, you can't really blame people who actually notice these things from criticizing the novel, because they do take away from your enjoyment. Oh, and I actually like Steins;Gate anime. Which is quite surprising, considering that among the characters I only liked Okabe... and Suzuha, I guess? Still, even with all the cringe-worthy moments, the story was pretty interesting and relatively well-structured (excluding several completely pointless plot arcs). These moments, on the other hand, definitely took away quite a lot from my enjoyment, and I would prefer that they simply weren't there.

One important thing to keep in mind is, there is a big difference between understanding everything in a sentence on a grammatical level, but having to look up one word, (like a noun,) to fill in the blanks, and having to look up every single part of the sentence. If all you are lacking to understand a sentence fully is one word, then you are still translating it like a professional would have after you learn said word. All you have to do is look up one word, after all, something that you might want to do even if you know a word, just to make sure you got the usage down right. I personally use a Japanese dictionary on the side of Jisho, in order to make sure I have the Japanese contextual usage down right, and often end up looking up words I already do know, just to make sure. The best way to understand how a word/ phrase is used is to read the Japanese definition and Japanese example sentences. So, "a string of jisho definitions" would, in my head, just mean someone who did not understand the sentence on a grammatical level, and ended up looking up everything, which in turn means it's a machine translation. But if you're asking how many fan TLers use jisho to look up words frequently to either learn them, or make sure they got the word's definition down, then I'd say all of them. (Even professional TLers do that, after all.)

Budget? And there are 2 more of them. But my favorite would be the UBW and HF Op.

sometimes I hate myself : I totally forgot about these two beautiful openings ( I already finished them a long time ago) Having said that, I have a weakness for this intro : Let's be clear: just like LB! Ex's intro, it's probably the music that enchants me And I almost forget another one of my favorites :

Can't post Umineko openings since I'm too biased to be taken seriously (great ops)

ef (the first tale) and eden* have to be my favorites. My God they are beautiful.