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I can speak only for myself and my motivation to read VNs is a bit sketchy in the first place. At first, I simply kept them as an allowed exception while trying to limit my video game habits. It evolved to the current state of affairs, where I more or less stopped playing any other kind of games. The reason I find visual novel way less toxic for me is because they require some basic intellectual effort to follow the story and don't include endless gameplay loops I could burn countless hours on. They're stories to experience, and not autistic sandboxes that'll suck me in for a week and spit out with with bloodshot eyes and realisation of dozens of hours burned on something that didn't even left me an impression that would be worth sharing with anyone. But, if course, if there wasn't something in VN that I really enjoyed, I wouldn't get so much into them. For me its: 1. Incredible variety of conclusive romance stories. I honestly didn't know I liked romance stories this much before I came back to watching anime regularly and started reading VNs. But anime quite too often means harem comedies and I happen to hate "romance" in those. Because they never commit and when they do, it's usually not the girl I was rooting for. This is why having a route for every heroine is an enormous perk. I identified the best girl? I can get the MC to romance her. I like some secondary ones? Also covered. The rest of them? I probably got enough connection to the whole cast by this point to enjoy them too in the end. No linear media will give me that. 2. Variety of romance stories once more. Yuri, otome, galge, BL. Fluffy love stories and serious drama. Tiny games for half an evening and novel-sized epics. VNs got you all covered. It might get stale if you just read moege, but, partially because of my weird blogging endeavours, I end up reading incredibly varied stuff and so far I didn't get bored of any of it. 3. Anime art. I love anime art over any other style. Give me anime girls kissing and you can take all the rest of my visual media away, I won't complain much. But aside from my personal deviancy, VN art is just that good in many cases. 4. And well, for someone like me, with pretty limited visual imagination, in many cases VNs are simply more compelling than literature. I like having at least some visual representation of what I'm reading to give my mind some point of reference/guide on how to interpret it all. For example, I'm not sure if I'd have enjoyed reading Dune as much as I did if I didn't have some vision of its world from the classic games I played. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but from my experience, that's just how my brain is wired and I can't do much about it. VNs are a pretty good compromise between literary text and graphics, showing you a lot but still leaving a lot of gaps for your imagination to fill. Curious what other people's motivations are. :3

I was wondering today, during my daily complain about how I hate VNs time, why do people read VNs? What do VNs offer that other entertainment mediums do not? For example, some visual novels are able to play with perspective in a unique way that other mediums cannot match to mess with how one interprets the story. Personally, I think many visual novels, if not nearly every single VN, fails to actually do anything with the medium itself and instead relies on tradition (for example, "VNs have always had X or Y so this VN has X in it too!") to push copies. Sometimes I see stories being pushed as a huge selling point for a VN, but that has me wondering often, why does it have to be a VN for the story to exist? Could the story work just as well as a novel/LN/manga? So my main question isn't so much what is a VN but why is a VN a VN? Yes I know, stupid question but it is something I'm curious about.

I like it but you should go for making a VN even if people didn't like it. Make what you want to make and do what you want to do.

VNs actually offer a lot in terms of what the creators can do that isn't really possible in other media. They can use the similar literary devices as in plays while having the possibility for a first person narrator, passages in prose and a branching narrative, while keeping full control over the visuals, soundtrack and acting choices and without having the same time restrictions which offers more options when it comes to story structure and pacing.

Good question to ask on Lemma where actual developers hang out. But IMO, the ability to tell multi-route, interactive stories is the obvious one. With VNs in which multi-route structure matters, it's not even a question why they are not in any other medium. They simply couldn't be. You could possibly ask why are they not other kinds of video games, but especially with SoL titles, that kind of framing makes little sense? There are of course ways to convey stories through gameplay, but if your number one goal is to present a complex, branching narrative, this kind of interactive fiction is just a logical and cost-effective choice. With kinetic novels it's more of a legitimate question. but still, VNs offer a pretty unique multimedia experience. Would Eden* manga, Eden* LN or Eden* novel be as rich of an experience as the original is? Probably not, because they wouldn't offer that complete mix of high-quality visuals, music, VA and literary text. They could modify the original to create an excellent experience in their own formula, but they'd have to sacrifice some aspects of it in the process. Not to claim VNs are by default a superior medium, because that's always a dumb thing to say with how much taste and execution matters in this, but they definitely have their merits. And in the end, there's VN being PC games that can include porn. I'm always a bit sceptical about claims of what porn can do for a story, but I have no doubts about how much story can do for porn. In the West, pornography with genuine, compelling context to it doesn't exist. It all operates in the Pornhub philosophy of fap-length videos with 30-second buildups. If you want to tell a genuine story combined with hentai you make a VN and for the players, it offers an experience that they pretty much can't find anywhere else.

Maybe some of the creators of VNs are like me in that they like their stories to have and end? My feeling when looking at manga/LN is often, that a lot of them operate under the principle "Oh the readers like your work; now write/draw it until they don't like it anymore and we can think of an ending then". I at least feel that is one of the biggest advantages of VN, in that they can tell a complete story and be as long as they need to be. In other mediums you would have to split your story in parts. Even a romance VN with multiple heroines would be several books for example.

While these are some good answers as to why you read visual novels, the core of my question was more along the lines of asking why do visual novels exist? Why do creators choose visual novels over other forms of media to express their stories?

This is excellent advice, thank you. I wouldn't expect to make a game for profit until I knew I could deliver something excellent.

It doesn't look bad at all (I liked VNs with worse art for sure), but it's also a bit hard to judge. There are some specific skills that go into creating VN art, like doing multiple facial expressions on one character, that you can't really assess from just one drawing. On the other hand, you won't really know until you try it. If you're not sure how much energy you want to invest, make it simple. Create a prototype or prologue of sorts. Make it about two girls and upload it to Yuri Game Jam to get some feedback. Sorry if it sounds cynical, but you don't have to start big or even start good. You just need to figure stuff out and make a genuine effort, and there's a very good chance people will like it. Edit: Of course it's a bit tricky it you want to make money from it. But leave that part to when you're actually pretty sure your skills and ideas are up to the challenge. I actually don't like people selling their super early game development experiments. When you ask people for money, you expose yourself for much harsher scrutiny. If you ask me to pay for something that doesn't look or feel like a commercial product, I'll quite likely trash you. If you put it out for free and I see issues with it, you'll get constructive feedback and encouragement. ;]

Your story and writing are going to make or break your vn more than your art. As long as you maintain a consistent art style, what you have should be fine.

I didn't understand the question to be "Why do you read VNs over doing other stuff?", but if it is, then the above accurately represents my opinion in almost all aspects. I find less need for variety, but am otherwise generally in agreement with the sentiments above.

For me one major factor is the sexual content. I think it's cool to have a medium actually include proper H-scenes into the storytelling. It lets VNs do a lot of things with mature content other mediums can't, at least not in such detail. And, while it's not really a very deep reason, I have to be blunt, when I see a hot heroine it's nice knowing: I won't have to rely on fanart, I can probably bang her in the canon story. Wohoo.

I think VNs have an advantage when it comes to harems, H-scenes and mystery. When it comes to harems anime often don't have a proper ending and those that does tend to have it ending shortly after the main character gets together with one of the girls which means that you don't tend to get to see much of how they actually interact as a couple. Manga tend to have an ending where the main character chooses a girl, but again in these cases it seems like it tends to end shortly after they get together . As for light novels I am not certain since I haven't really read light novels and anime adaptions usually aren't complete but I would assume they are probably somewhat similar. As for VNs you get to choose which heroine you want the main character to get together with and due to most VNs having sex scenes you usually get to see their relationship develop for quite some time, then after you are done you can read the other girls routes as well. Because of this I think VNs tend to be able to handle harems much better than manga and anime. H-scenes I think has an advantage over eroanime and eromanga due to the length of VNs. Eroanime tend to be quite short, have bad art and animation and pretty much just consist of sex scenes. Because of this I think it gets boring rather quickly, since it is so short and sex focuses the characters are almost never properly built up as anything you care about. Without any character to care about it pretty much just comes down to the scenario and how the character looks, since the art is generally quite poor that usually just leaves the scenario. For me at least this meant that once I had seen lots of different scenarios it just started feeling repetative and boring as they didn't have anything else of value to offer. Eromanga I think are better since the art usually is better and an artists style can keep things fresh, however a problem here is that they tend to be really short and as such I can't care about the characters and get bored rather quickly. As for eroge a lot of them are fairly long and does a good job making you like the character before the H-scenes which to me makes it more satisfying. Thinking about the popularity of Doujinshi based on characters from anime and manga I think this way of thinking is pretty common, but with VNs you get those scenes as an official part of the story rather than just some fanmade what if scenario. As for mysteries I think the route system and choice system of VNs can be used really well to build up mysteries in ways other mediums can't really do. Choices can be used in a way to make you engaged by having you actually trying to figure out the best choices based on your knowledge and routes can be used to feed bits of information from different routes to build up a more complete story. As for general story telling I think an apealing thing about VNs is that adding length does not neccessarily add a lot of cost for the developer. Due to sprites and backgrounds being used repeatedly a story can be expanded quite a lot just based on writing alone, this means that the author isn't as restricted as they are with manga or anime where new drawings need to be made for everything that happens. Also they are not restircted by weekly deadlines like manga and anime. Due to most of them having voice acting and the fact that they shouldn't have too long gaps without CGs there still is more of a cost to adding more text then there is for a light novel. An advantage they have over light novels however is their visuals and audio since I would imagine a lot of people want to see the characters drawn and hear them speak rather than just reading things like a normal book with a drawing here and there once in a while. Btw I do not mean that VNs are better than the other mediums, I think each of them have their own advantages and things they excel at

Because in VNs, unlike in anime and manga, the player sees everything from a first-person perspective. This is why everyone who demands that VN protagonists have faces is objectively wrong; meanwhile, any feature that facilitates self-insertion is objectively right and good.

Completed Muv Luv Photonflowers. This VN is basically split into 2 sections: Extra and Alternative. The Extra section has 1 main story and 6 side stories. The main story is about 4 hours long and the side stories about 15-35 minutes each. Each side story is from the perspective of each member from the female cast: Best Friends Forever: Sumika Never Judge a Book: Chizuru The Case of the Misssing Tail: Miki The Yakisoba Festival: Ayamine Learning to Love: Meiya Learning to Lead: Meiya Of all the side stories, I liked Meiya's the most because they were the most entertaining and actually tell us what her life was like (albeit briefly) before the start of Extra. As for the main story, it leaves off where Sumika's route in Extra ends. Nothing particularly interesting here, except for some serious relationship drama which all started from the debate of soy sauce and steak sauce. Now, on to the better part: Alternative. The Alternative section has 5 stories, 2 of which I skipped (Rain Dancers and Chicken Divers) since I had already read them. Thankfully, the other 3 (Atonement, Confessions, Inheritance) were engaging enough on their own, so that's good enough. 1. Atonement: Takes place around the time when Marimo enlisted and during Operation 9-6. Most other characters are really just filler characters, with the exception of Akai. Akai may come off as a terrible person at first, but as the story goes on, he starts to improve and you start to understand his motivations better. In the original story, there were rumours that Marimo deserted her squad on first sortie, but we get to know what really happened on that day in this story here. 2. Confessions: The longest story and the only one with redrawn art in Photonflowers. Since this was taken from the 2011 remake of Kimi Ita, you probably wouldn't understand some of the Kimi Ita references made in it. Well, not that it matters much, since this story takes place during her enlistment and not before it. Anyways, the story here follows Isumi and her 3 other squad mates, with Marimo playing the "bad guy" instructor (a huge contrast to her character in Atonement). At the start, Isumi is aloof from her squad mates, but through countless hardships, her bonds with them are strengthened. Then, one big event happens which would later change her and her squad mates forever. I really appreciated this story a lot since her background was barely touched upon in the original story, though its likeness to Unlimited rather than Alternative means that there are no BETA fights. 3. Inheritance: The shortest and takes place during the aftermath of Operation 21st. Characters who appear here are Captain Isumi's sisters. Main character here is Akira, who's one of them. At the end of the story, we see briefly that Akira had been involved in Operation Sledgehammer. Would really have liked to see more post-Ouka content, but I suppose this was as far as it went. All in all, can't really say it met my high expectations (except for Confessions), but at least it provides some important background information on Isumi and Marimo. Overall, a 7/10

PSA: The Forum Rules have been updated in regards to self-promotion and how that is perceived in terms of spam. Threads or blog posts made for self-promotion (such as links to off-site personal blogs) should be limited to one (either a blog post or a thread) per product being promoted, because such promotion is more easily perceived as spam. That is to say, if you are attempting to share an article you made by making both a thread and a blog post, you are effectively spamming the forums with redundant content (that may even be unlikely to promote discussion if it redirects users off-site). The second change pertains to the Development Boards and you can find it in either of the two specific threads for them. If you are promoting multiple short (<2 hours) projects in the same series (such as episodic or chapter-based projects), they should all be covered in a single thread, so as to not dilute and fragment visibility, views, and discussion. As explained, the main purpose is for advertising of multiple short to be centred in one place without spamming the forums with multiple short threads for similar/repeated subjects. Additionally, this should concentrate all discussion on any of the titles in a single place, instead of dividing it and fragmenting it (since there isn't much of it to begin with). That is all. This post will be hidden at some point in the future, but will remain for at least a week. Thank you for your attention.

Or they're scared. If they're anything like myself or my ilk, they'd do their damndest to not directly or indirectly violate rules.

Interesting premise, so this VN is part of a larger fictional universe?

Never said they should stop production. I think this is in bad taste and wouldn’t want to back it myself for that reason. They are free to make whatever they want, though, even if it does make people go "but why though?" That’s the beauty of free speech, I guess.

I decided to throw a ticket at her since I didn't have an SSR rider yet

Damn this guy is the definition of an hidden gem Dudes voice is lit as fuck

Welcome to Fuwanovel and sorry for the belated greeting. As you can see, we have a blog here so if you want to post something about your VN or review you can make the blog here. By the way I also have a blog here, and my focus is about VNTS which mean keep writing about the development in VNs translation. At first I just want to do it for fun, but like mod Lesiak above I managed to get into it as my weekly habit and suddenly it's been more than three years since I started the blog. Lastly I hope that you'll have fun here.

I would assume it has to do with so many VN fans having started before there were a decent amount of officially translated VNs and because of this a culture of piracy has been established and lots of newer people getting into it getting advice from these people. Also one thing I think has somewhat of an effect is newer people asking for recommendations getting recommended things that only has a fanpatch thus starting of pirating which just makes it much easier for them to continue doing so. Also due to the length of VNs I think people who pirtate are unlikely to buy something they enjoy. For instance with anime since so many of them are rather short it is possible for people to watch a ton of anime through piracy and then among their favorites pick out which to buy on blu-ray or by merchendise. With the length of a VN it is unlikely that people would want to reread it and a digital download is not as enticing as a physical product like a blu-ray for instance and then for the physical versions of VNs many people don't want to import them either because they don't want physical 18+ stuff or are scared because loli character or semi loli characters being taken as illegal material.

TIL that AnoHana's ED is actually the fourth version. Now I know why the AnoHana version is also called "10 Years After". I feel so dumb for not realizing it sooner. 1st version (2001): 2nd version (2008): 3rd version (2010): 4th version (2011): Live version:

Recently found about this visual novel and ended up playing it until the end of Eris' chapter. I can't wait for the next patch! Please keep up god's work! Thank you very much!

Finished the VN last night Overall I liked it. I would say its biggest strengths are: * All the characters are pretty likable and funny, outside maybe one prominent character in Mimari's route who was written to be unlikable * It has some nice feel good/emotional moments throughout * Unique enough setting with the plane fighting and stuff to make it stick out from other galge. * Character development is decent enough for each character. I'd say its biggest weaknesses are: * Romance seems slightly rushed in each route * The routes are obviously formulaic: Route starts -> Romance starts -> H-scene + SoL x3-5 -> Drama outta nowhere -> EPIC PLANE FLIGHT * While not as bad as say... Muv-Luv every so once in a while the plane explanations are a little too long-winded for a plane noob like me who isn't particularly into fighting planes. * Nahoko and Hikari's voice acting volumes aren't balanced very well with the otehrs and there's no way to adjust individual character volumes. Some other thoughts that are more like observations: * It has a slightly unique art style. While still anime style, all the drawings are... stencil-y? * Those H-scenes are loooooonnnnnnnnnggg * Only 1 choice mattering, I don't particularly whether choices really count as long as the story/characters are good Overall Character Rankings Kazusa > Hikari > Mimari > Nahoko Kazusa- I've stated multiple times but from the beginning but I was VERY impressed with how they handled her as a tsundere. Very reasonable and willing to admit her mistakes and be openly caring of others while still having the typical tsundere trait of being dishonest with her feelings to allow for decent development. Hikari- I thought she would be a generic optimistic ditzy character... well she still basically was by the end but I actually like the way her character was executed in terms of motivating the rest of the team. Also she was pretty funny and a surprisingly good troll humor wise. Sadly she herself didn't develop much. Mimari- The closest thing to a mysterious/kuudere character. While she did have her blunt side, she mixed it with otherwise being very friendly for the most part and only being harsh to people who really deserve it. Her bluntness provided some good humor. Her past was clearly the most deep and interesting. Nahoko- She had some funny moments and is likable enough but she felt oddly... underused even though she was supposed to be the leader? Even in her route I liked the concept of her development but some parts were executed oddly. Overall Route Rankings Hikari > Kazusa > Nahoko > Mimari Hikari- Arguably the most simple route, Hikari herself doesn't have too much development BUT you get to see the positive motivation she has on everyone the most here and it's really nice to see. Also her backstory related to her plane was the cutest. Her development with her plane was the most memorable to me as well. Kazusa- Mostly carried due to the fact that Junichi and her had the most interactions in the common route due to their living situation so them getting together quickly actually kinda made sense. Her development being centered around her insecurities was nice. Nahoko- As stated in her character writeup, I like the idea of her development in her route related to working herself hard to not knowing what she wanted to do and related to her and Junichi not being officially together right away. But... some parts were executed weirdly. Still enjoyed it. Mimari- Her route had arguably the most plot relevance in terms of characters involved in a way that felt like a true route. I personally wasn't a big fan of the typical running away from an arranged marriage trope being the main plot. It caused MImari herslef to not have room to develop in an interesting way outside using her Grandma's plane temporarily. Still was overall decent. Overall H-scene Rankings Kazusa > Mimari > Nahoko > Hikari Won't go into much detail besides Kazusa's were much better than everyone else's. If you wanna know more details just PM or @ me or something. Overall Plane Rankings A6M5 Type Zero Model 52 > Kyushu J7W Shinden > Spitfire LF mk.lXc > Ki-46 III Otsu + Hei > Ki-44 Shoki Zero- I like the specs and features of it the most. Also has the cutest relations to the plot/route. Shinden- Kinda unfair due to plot and MC relevance but can't beat that speed and firepower. Spitfire- Mostly for the plot/route relevance. Ki-46- Has an interesting design. Shoki- Least memorable. Characters I want a route of most Rankings Akane > Katou > Saiko > Haruka > who cares Akane- I usually like down to earth girls who have potential to be fun. Not sure where her development would be though. Katou- A very confident girl who would have interesting developments Id imagine. Saiko- Seems like the obvious choice but... she did have more of an obsession with machines and god what the fuck are those boobs size wise Haruka- She's nice and all but given when happens in Kazusa's I would feel bad. Favorite Song It's Counterattack Time! (Sadly not on YouTube at the moment, may have to fix that myself) Final Rating TDLR If you like slice of life feel good VNs and don't mind a touch of fighting plane action, recommend. 7.5/10, rounds up to an 8.

Yep, still following the progress every week, good job, I mean objectively having reach more than 70% of overall translation is already a good achievement. Hope to see a Saint/Irene patch when TLC is done :))

Good job on reaching 10% milestone of Eustia's chapter there, and keep it up.

Go Go Nippon does I believe

It's a rough world we live in...