kanaimouto

Cows are notoriously unsexy, this is a niche market for sure.

All I can find is "I write often about the word 常識 joushiki, which means "common sense," e.g. the common beliefs and opinions shared by a given group. Naturally what is common sense to someone in the U.S. or Canada is often going to be different from someone living in Europe, in Japan and so on. Part of the "common sense" of otaku culture in Japan is that it's perfectly reasonable to charge fans $80-100 for a DVD or Blu-ray with 2-3 episodes in it, because the discs come in limited versions with cool artbooks and stickers for collectors, though this is obviously not a price most consumers in the U.S. would be okay with. (This is why the import anime Blu-rays we stock are priced as they are, in case you ever wondered.) The higher price s Japanese fans pay is important to anime studios of course, and anime fandom fans around the world can be said to rest on the backs of these dedicated Japanese fans. One of the important things for companies to keep in mind is to make sure you're never trying to do business in one country while retaining the "common sense" rules of another -- doing so will lead to a failed business in a very short time. Over the years, J-List has worked with many Japanese companies, and one of our challenges has always been, how to to keep them from trying to apply Japanese "common sense" rules to the West, for example charging prices that are higher than our customers would be comfortable with for our licensedEnglish-translated eroge and visual novels, or printing gorgeous dakimakura and wall scrolls which look nice yet cost hundreds of dolla rs, more than most fans will agree to." It has been mentioned in a few of their newsletters over the last few months though. It would be very interesting to pick Peter Payne's brain about some of the difficulties he has encountered adapting a Japanese business style to the west. It would probably make a lot of us less hostile towards companies like MangaGamer and JAST if we knew some of the problems they encountered during licensing.

I don't know if anyone read it, or if its been mentioned in the previous thread but J-List sent out an article a few weeks back about Japanese companies and how their "common sense" differs from that of Western consumers. Japanese fans generally pay 10,000 yen for an anime blu ray disc with 2-3 episodes on it or 12,000 yen for a visual novel with maybe 5 hours of gameplay, so it has become "common sense" to Japanese companies that this is the price to charge. Western consumers are used to paying £9.99 for a partial TV series, £30 for a full one and £40 for a video game, so this price has become "common sense" to Western gamers. The problem that exists is the conflict of "common sense" between these two groups and this conflict makes it very hard for Western companies to license Japanese visual novels. It's why the most widely distributed and affordable VN titles are over 5 years old, because similar to a bargain bin in a supermarket these titles have saturated the Japanese market so the creators are happy to give publishing rights to Western companies for much less than they would have on launch day. That's my view on the whole situation anyway, the west is the Visual Novel Bargain Bin. QQ :'(

Do any of you guys have MFC or Last.FM?

Thanks everyone!

Better late than never! :3

I'm sure I will thank you :3 Yeah plenty! Just to name a few of the top of my head School Days, Da Capo and Saya no Uta (because they are staring at me from my shelf), Bible Black, Chaos;Head, Hitomi My Step Sister, Family Project, Swan Song, Steins Gate, Muv Luv etc etc etc. Got a list a mile long on my computer/order list as well What are some of your favourites? Going to hazard a guess at little busters being in there! ^.^

I would say Kana Imouto provoked the most feelings out of me, like it seriously absorbed my attention for the duration of it (plus it was the first one I ever played). Higurashi was a solid investment time wise and I always say it but Ryukishi07's writing is fucking phenomenal. Kara No Shoujo and G-Senjou no Maou were great as well. I'm most looking forward to a full translation of Yosuga no Sora, just because I like some of the parallels and tropes it shared with Kana Imouto. How about yourself? :3

I'm sure I will! Thank you ^.^ Thank you! Should hopefully have a relaxing Suntory time. Thank you :3

Just thought I would introduce myself seeing as most of these threads seem very warm and fuzzy. Collector, visual novel fan and general obsessive hoarder hoping to successfully/symbiotically slither into this community. Never really get a chance to speak to anyone about VN's since I deleted tumblr so here I am, my url was tsumi so some of you may have conversed with me there.

Go for Chaos;Head for the "makes you think" factor. It has a cool positive/negative flag system so if you're going into a situation on it you can come at it from a "shit im scared" stance or a "actually this chick with that giant sword looks like she may not disembowel me" stance. Plus the art is great. Also Higurashi, probably won't me MUCH of a mystery if you have seen the anime but its still worth it for Ryukishi07's top notch writing.

I was speaking to the postman (casual chatter to deflect from the "what's in this box" line of conversation) and he said its because English speaking postal services generally don't check custom declarations in languages that don't use the latin alphabet. All they look at is the "contents" field.

I own Kana Imouto, Higurashi 1-8, Da Capo, School days HQ and Saya no Uta. I want to own... them all. Just bought a house so I'm broke but looking to slowly increase my collection now that all my figure space is used up >.<