Narcosis

This is how lolicon is often justified as well, if we're already at it.

Another few, notable examples: "Let me show you my awesome magical powers!" "It won't stop! My imperial juice won't stop!" "And with this, I took X/Y/Z's virginity." "If you continue to suck it like this, I'll- explode!" You also forgot about the most traditional one: "I'm coming!!!11" Japanese sure are funny.

They are not taking in any criticism, they are avoiding it. You haven't even truly started and you're already making the most basic mistake, any western visual novel developer could make - copypasting a japanese viewpoint for a visual novel and expecting it to work flawlessly on the west. That is the sole reason for me to immediately cross out the whole project, no matter how good it might look; this is also the sole reason why more than 95% of similiar western visual novels fail and fall into obscurity without garnering much attention. Your game might have decent art, might be voiced by a horrible english voice actors trying to mimic professional japanese seiyūs, might have a cast of your typical weeaboo pandering out-of-the-mill anime characters, including at least one gothic lolita, tsundere/yandere and a cool/donkan protagonist and perhaps some sort of a storyline that propably won't make any sense in the end, cause post-apocalyptic settings aren't just about making everything look cooler; you are propably going to avoid 18+ content as well, out of the obvious reasons. You have something, that looks like your average japanese visual novel, just a few times meager and want to sell it to an average western consumer, who typically has few times bigger expectations than any average japanese otaku? "You can't please everybody", my ass. If that visual novel isn't adressed to me or similiar people, who's actually going to read it? Does your team actually understand the issues of the western market? You're going to take money, you're going the semi-professional way. Are you really prepared, or just a group of skilled people with way too much spare time on your hands? Trying to make an easy buck and both justify and submit to your otaku urges? I'm glad when people consume, re-create and produce, but production without much of a thought behind it is completely meaningless. Unless you simply want the money, which is completely fine.

Clannad. The only vn that actually ever reached that far and managed to take it further, remaining serious, meaningful and enjoyable.

Jormungand is average; Preety enjoyable in terms of a show for a typical western fan, mainly because of it's more mature atmospehere, it has an incredibly underdeveloped and unreliable storyline full of plot holes and nonsense. For someone who's actually into the sort of stuff presented in the anime, it might actually be really annoying to watch. In other words - wasted potential, that could become a really decent series. Eitherway, it's still preety enjoyable, as long as you're able to cope with the nonsense within it.

That popularity propably came from the fact most of these people didn't have much else to chose from in the first place. I dislike the part of community that grew up on MG's titles and haven't actually touched anything else besides them; they are detrimental to the rest and with a tiny exception, don't bring anything exceptional themselves.

I'm not a fan of adventure games trying to label themselves as visual novels, nor am I a fan of completely "westernized" visual novels and neither am I a fan of the copypasted, weeaboo pandering crap certain groups are currently trying to create. Don't get me wrong, though; I still think they are needed, have their own merits and purpose. But the sole fact people don't learn from the mistakes left by previous groups is more than enough to rest reassured nothing will change. I while ago I completely lost my interest in the western visual novel development community, simply because those people are blind in the same exact manner the japanese devs are unable to grasp the modern age and adjust to it; they don't see the potential and they are way too afraid to move out of the safe zones and cope with the issues. I've seen a lot of people eager to bring visual novels to the west and talking about how important they are in the history of computer entertainment; going out on crusades, trying to accustom western community, fighting the annoyances, luring the fanbase and trying to get their own piece of cake for themselves; they all failed. It's because of a very simple factor - western community isn't ready to accept visual novels the way thy are, there's still a long way to go. And worst of all, they aren't even trying to make anything better for themselves. I won't go lightly on anyone that actually wants to take a chance and at the same time, try to avoid the responsibilities that come with it. That definately killed the thread. Truth hurts, eh? I could go on for hours about the subject. Don't see a reason though, when people cover their ears. I can only wish you luck and hope you won't regret it later.

Meh.

That's why Song of Saya is considered one of the most memorable visual novels. One, barely a bunch of other visual novels are able to stand on par with.

People still watch/read Naruto? Damn.

That show is so honest. I just hope your approach at japanese popculture won't get skewed after watching it, haha.

No. Just... NO.

F/SN was horrible in that particular case. It's a typical eroge that has a (mostly) awesome storyline and blends it (or rather, kills it) with it's awful h-scenes; Song of Saya, on the other hand is a decent example, on how h-scenes can be handled in eroge (even though, it's still resides mostly on the unreasonable, naughty side).

It's not the worst, but definately not the best either. Actually, far from being decent; watchable, but not much besides that. I'm quite amazed certain people hold it in a high regard, when I'm not sure whether there's anything to regard at all, except for the fact it's definately on the yuri side. Yet another factor, which in the end limits the potential audience (though, not that I'm dissapointed with, personally, heheh). Not watching it; one of friends actually encouraged me to take a look at it, but there's a lot more than yuri for a show to prove being worthy of my attention.

In the end, h-scenes boil down to one thing - fucking, as rude and vulgar it may sound; you can't expect much else out of it. That's the nature of the genre. The issue with most eroge is that they tend to focus on the final part and mostly skip everything else. "Let me show you my awesome magical powers!"

People watch Captain Earth for the graphics. No Game No Life and Black Bullet seem to be the most interesting shows this season. I'd add Hitsugi no Chaika too, but it's already turning onto the mediocre route with it's current plot twists. At least Chaika makes up for the rest, haha. I'm worried with it as well. It does seem story had reached something, that would be considered a final escalation of the whole conflict. There's a bunch of routes everything could go after this, but I'm too used to poor story direction to remain calm they won't fuck it up. Hapilly, teaser showed something that might actually mean what we've seen so far was just the beggining. If they will keep everything up this way and won't lose focus on character development either, it might turn into a decent anime.

That was one of the most hillarious scenes, both in anime and visual novel, haha.

There's a huge difference between erotic content one enjoys, and the very best scenes that were ever written. I read a bunch of visual novels with decent, enjoyable sex scenes or naughty situations, that made your heart go flutter. But calling some of them "the best" would be a huge overstatement.

If I forget, or barely remember anything, it means the visual novel I've read was weak, and it happens in most of cases. I call them disposable entertainment.

Pia Carrot. Don't mix vn's with dating sims. Those are completely two different genres; they share similiarities from time to time, but aren't the same. I'm actually quite allergic to this, since it's what made the western people tag all visual novels as "dating sims" and it's just outright wrong.

They do not exist. Hats off, gentlemen.

I doubt it will happen, since TENCO is currently on a serious lookout for any unofficial TL's. There's a reason why they blocked and DMCA previous english TL. I also doubt that TENCO would ever want to release a western 18+ edition and expand it to the PC market. Even though vn's take a huge portion of the japanese PC gaming market, it's still treated as a foster child compared to the console market. Even the sole fact that visual novels make up to 70% of japense games doesn't change that fact japanese simply do not treat PC's as a main gaming platform, like we do. There's also the issue PC market tends to bring a lot bigger loss in general, than console market, which is much more restricted and thus easier to conrtrol. The only possibility I could consider "realistic" is the fact that the game will actually have decent sales. They will be so good, that it will actually push TENCO to release the game on PC's as well and then release the 18+ content as an additional DLC (though, I cringe on such idea), or simply release a 18+ patch for those who'd like to have the ero content ingame. I doubt it will ever happen though, since the game is a heavy otaku-pandering srpg reminiscent of Rance series; besides small circles of avid fans, these games were actually never really popular on the west and neither in Japan. I preassume the sales will be really mediocre at most, and that will only reassure both Oyari and TENCO, that western market isn't worthy of their attention, not to mention they still have a long way to go after Littlewitch's flop back in 2010 (though, it seems ES became quite popular right now and company seems to be doing well so far).

You shouldn't judge a visual novel by VNDB's rating system; people tend to horribly overrate anything they find "good" within their own opinion. I tend to avoid fandisks like fire; they are typically what it says on the tin - fandisks. I have yet to find a single one, that actually brings something more except the plain fanservice with a bunch of fluff and cutesy to cater to the fans of the game. Perhaps it's because I personally didn't found Sharin no Kuni as good, as people used to say; Even though the dystopian setting was really interesting and had a lot of promise, the story seemed to drift way too much from the important aspects, plot twists were poor and everything ended up in a typical galge clusterfuck. It just strenghted my own opinion that visual novels tend to be an incredibly subjective matter, just like animu and mango are.

It's hard to find anything good nowadays. Best series usually don't tend to reach further beyond mediocre at most, and if they seem to have traces of awesomeness, they dissapoint in the end quite often. Few last seasons were incredibly shitty, though you can still find decent stuff to watch from time to time. I'm currently watching No Game No Life, Black Bullet and Hitsugi no Chaika; I also picked up Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii, not sure why - perhaps because it seems to be something more than your typical otome show. From all of those, No Game no Life is propably the most entertaining; I quite like the art style they went with and it's nice to see such a vivid, colorful palette. Black Bullet has certain degree of potential, but I'm worried they will actually dwelve from the post apocalyptic drama into some average action series; so far It seems they are doing it right and I quite like the way they are actually giving more impact on the relationship between our main duo as the main factor for the storyline. Hitsugi no Chaika seems to be interesting to a certain degree; I picked it up mainly because of the magitech setting and really good designs. Unfortunately, even though premise isn't anything original yet has some degree of potential, I can already sense a shadow of mediocrity looming around. I learned to not hold my hopes up; I tend to watch anime mainly as pure entertainment nowadays and it's actually better this way. If the animu you watched wasn't anything good in the end, you won't get severely dissapointed. If it will, you'll be pleasantly surprised instead.

Good taste, indeed.