Leaderboard

*Clephas gobbles you down in thanks, sending you to the catgirl harem world inside his many stomachs*

I found some nice deals on amazon again Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na -Brighter than Dawning Blue- for PC - Windows 7 Support Edition and ToHeart2 DX PLUS - Regular Edition I've read fan-TLs of both titles, but it's nice to have originals. And I think one day I'm going to reread them untranslated. I'm especially curious about ToHeart2, since this edition has some additional content and routes from fandisc (which seems to have very polarised reviews ). Also, H-scenes in ToHeart 2 XRated felt tacked-on and out of character, so I'm looking forward to the all-ages version (After all, in case of this title, original was all-ages, with H version coming year later) BTW, before I noticed, I gathered quite a lot of physical Japanese (and one translated) VNs From left to right: Tenohira o, Taiyou ni Kanon Memorial Edition Natsu no Ame Sakura Strasse Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi (without box) World End Syndrome (the only translated one in this bunch) White Album Kono Oozora ni Tsubasa o Hirogete ~Cruise Sign~ Himawari no Kyoukai to Nagai Natsuyasumi To Heart 2 DX PLUS Mashiro Iro Symphony ~mutsu no hana~ Toradora! Sorairo Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o True Love Story To Heart PSE Ano Hi no Tabibito, Fureau Mirai Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na ~Brighter than a dawning blue When did that all happened? I still remember swearing that I'd never buy physical edition of VN (I'm also currently waiting for PS3 version of White Album 2 and PS2 versions of Yotsunoha and Konneko - they should arrive next week)

Learning Japanese is something that might seem like a daunting task that will take forever, which probably scares off a lot of people. However, it can actually be quite a fun experience depending on how you decide to tackle it, as it's possible learn it through reading visual novels and other media. It's also quite likely that you will be able to get good enough at Japanese to finish a VN you've been hyped to play before it finishes, or even starts getting a translation, and once done, you'll still have plenty of other VNs to read, that you might never be able to otherwise. For those interested in trying, I hope the guide here will help you with starting out and having a nice time. (note: while it might tempting to do so after you've gotten some proficiency with reading, I'd advise against learning through translating, as it will be much slower than simply just reading more instead, as you'll now have to concentrate on both your japanese and english and the result will probably not be very good yet (translation is difficult).)

I keep hearing other people describe Clannad and stuff as "melodramatic teenage drama where high schoolers cry about petty shit". Now I have no problems with drama or nakiges but I'm worried that the writing might be too cringey and annoyingly kitsch. Can anyone here tell me their stance on how well executed the drama in Key games are?

My personal favorite KEY work is Kanon (their first title). I mean this as a huge fan of Kanon when I say that you should probably watch the 2006 anime adaptation of Kanon instead of diving into the VN. In general I think its a good introduction to KEY. For one, every major work of KEY has mostly been derivative of Kanon (and ONE, which is a VN many of the founding staff of KEY made for another company). So if you like Kanon, its safe to say you will like their other stuff. The reason I recommend the 2006 anime, is because it hits all the high notes of the original VN, but cuts a lot of the fat. This is one of those few cases where not only is the anime adaptation good, but arguably (at least in my opinion) a bit better than the source material. It is also only 26 episodes long, compared to Clannad's anime which in total is 52+ episodes long. And the real core of Clannad is really in the last quarter. So if you don't want to invest in a huge VN to first dip your toes with KEY, this is what I personally would recommend. Planetarian as others have been recommending is also a fantastic starting place.

Welcome to Fuwanovel and you can ask for VN recommendations if you need it. I hope that you'll enjoy yourself here.

I generally enjoy them. Sometimes it does go a bit over the top but there are genuine issues in there that are interesting.

Well I mean, KEY is popular because of its drama. But it wont be for everyone. Might as well try Clannad, it's the most well-known KEY VN Or try Planetarian for a very short experience to dip your toes in but will give you an idea on how the writer exectues things

1. People mix up quality and their personal enjoyment all the time which makes the discussion about it very loaded. Quality is somewhat quantifiable, while enjoyment is purely personal. It's utter snobbishness to claim you only enjoy good-quality things, or to not be able to appreciate the quality of something you personally despise. At the same time, it's easy to understand why many people do not have that kind of distance towards media they consume – they affect our emotions and can become so important that we see every critique of our favourites as personal attacks against us. 2. Quality isn't objective, as Palas nicely explained, but I also hate the perspective that it's 100% reliant on context. We get to something like claiming that Twilight is a quality series because bland self-insert protagonists and shitty, sappy writing are not considered negative traits for a teenage romance novel (and I've seen a writer that I semi-respect spewing that). I think that the "does it do its job?" question is important, but shouldn't be the end of the discussion. Otherwise, once more, we lose all difference between something being of good quality and just being popular. 3. And as the same time, the pedantic approach of overanalysing pieces of media by some (even well-developed) set of technical standards, and creating some kind of "mean score" assessment is absolute nonsense too. A piece of media is never just a sum of its parts, so to say something meaningful about it you need to include contextual knowledge and subjective impressions about its effectiveness in whatever it tried to achieve. So, to sum it all up... I'd argue that quality, if the word is meant to have any meaning at all, is a bit more objective than some people make it out to be – arts that develop over decades and centuries create their canons of good practices and techniques that are worth utilizing, and should be used as points of reference. But it's also not as important as some make it out to be – both because something doesn't have to be high-quality to provide entertainment and because high quality by itself doesn't create meaning. And that's good, because otherwise art and popculture would be awfully dull.