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Speaking of TV series, actually the anime also use episodic approach, which somehow is very fitting for the obvious reasons. In fact, a lot of popular and long runner anime actually use episodic approach, with the most notable one are One Piece and Conan, and no it didn't stop them to become very popular. I don't really know though if episodic VN is meant to pay homage to the TV series. As for Internal Episodic Structure, Bokuten common route is one of such example with anthology format seeing that it put the focus on the several couples beside the MC and the heroines. Since you mentioned Liar-soft, I may as well mentioned Yurirei in which it's like the anthology of several GL couple that the MC help. Speaking of help the couple plot, ef here is the most prominent example with the main couple help several side couple to find love, and yes it's another example of anthology. That said, not all of episodic stories in VN are purely anthology, seeing that there's Subahibi in which ultimately it tell one big story even with the writer did write it in episodic way (With each episodes have different MCs). Almost forgot to mention that not only Yuzusoft that has non-anthology episodic structure, but Primal Hearts and Venus Blood series also has it. As for External Episodic Structure, it was used by Ryukishi07 in which he sell his each part of the VN at Comiket, before the publisher bundling all of his VNs into one big bundle. Nowadays, there's a lot of trend the using of it is rising, with the most prominent example is Nine series. Obviously the reason on why the company did this is that so they can save the funds, although there can be another reason to do the episodic release though, namely it allow the writer to build his story slowly (Although the writer may forgot his plot point from the early episode if he writer the later episode). Personally speaking, this format is not my favorite, but again it help the company to save some funds, especially when the company face the funding problem like Frontwing. That's all for what I can write in regard of this topic.