Zalor

This game gets me. From the first 5 minutes this game understands my hidden desires. Please tell me I'm not alone in sharing Kyu's yellow fever...

Can you read untranslated Visual novels? If you can (or if you're willing to try) than there should be plenty of options to pick from. One VN from 2011 that I'm interested in is 穢翼のユースティア (Aiyoku no Eustia). You can see the opening of the VN inside the spoiler:

Not going to lie, I always though Remilia from Touhou was kind of hot.

I forgot about that one. For an OELVN it's pretty good. And even for short VN standards it is short. If I recall correctly it only too me like 45 minutes to complete.

Holy shit its just been released! I have a Final paper to write but I am soo tempted not to, lol but I will. I already preordered a copy by the way. Its just that this is my first hearing news of its release.

Best intro thread ever? Welcome to the forums!

Challenge accepted. The first 4 episodes really establish the thesis of the anime (especially the end of episode 4). But I would give the anime at least 10 episodes before considering dropping it (it is 74 episodes long by the way, but no filler). Also note, while it is technically a mystery, it is not a conventional mystery story. It uses the genre to debate questions of morality and philosophy rather than thrill you with questions like "who did the murder?". However, the show does keep you on your toes as well. But that is more of a secondary focus.

I'm not going to leave you alone until you mention whether you watched Monster or not. ;P Serial Experiments Lain is good as well.

Monster by Naoki Urasawa is a masterpiece manga and anime. Both are great (as you know, it's rare that an anime adaptation can be as good as the original source material). If you haven't watched it already, then do yourself a favor. Here is a review of it from one of the few Anime reviewing sites I trust: THEM Anime Monster Review The mystery in this anime is not "who", but "why". The answer is quite complicated and interesting. The show expects you to fit certain pieces of the puzzle yourself and it doesn't hold your hand. All in all it is one of the few anime I have ranked a 9.5 and rests 2nd place on my top 5.

I'm curious to see a picture of Tay. We should get a cult going on here demanding Tay's picture. ;P

My vote is with Narcissu as well! Hell, I wrote a whole analysis of it for the blog. I loved it so much it motivated me to write something that wasn't for school. xD

I just did all this last week, I knew I should have waited. Nice guide though, since I had to use multiple sources to figure out how to get everything working, and this guide organizes everything all in one thread.

1997-2002 should include nakige as well (To Heart, ONE~, Kanon, Dacapo, Air,etc.). OP: If you haven't already, you should read this article: The History of Eroge

A big part of me is wondering why you want to convert kanji to romanji and not to hiragana. If you're going to read stuff in Japanese, you might as well use their phonetic alphabet. A lot of people I know who taught themselves Japanese recommend staying as far away from romanji and getting accustomed to reading the kana. This makes a lot of sense, as one of the reasons many Japanese pronounce English words with such a strong accent is because they learn many them with the katakana pronunciation, and not with the proper English pronunciation.

Actually I learned about some of this stuff in my Traditional Japanese theater class. I'm not sure about homosexuality between two men of the same age, but certainly homosexual relationships between younger men and older men was socially acceptable for a long time. For instance sexual relations between an apprentice and his master were quite common. What I find even more interesting is that traditionally male actors playing female roles in Kabuki were prostituted after performances. Not sure how relevant all this is, but I had to read some boring ass plays to gain this trivia, lol. Seeing as I've been reading VNs since I was 13, this probably explains why I had such unhealthy views of female sexuality when I was in my younger teens. I think the liberal education I received has fixed most of the damage though.

Is your username based off of Mai Kawasumi from Kanon? If so, I wrote a whole analysis of her character. Link to the post is in my signature. Yume Miru Kusuri was also one of my earlier VNs, I still love it. Aeka's route got me the most. Welcome to the forums~

Thanks for the long post, and I did read all of it. When I said "done" I didn't mean "finished", I meant I invested the time to get through over half of RTK. What I meant by that word, was that I am certainly not going to drop RTK after spending all that time learning new Kanji and reviewing them over and over. As for it being a whole block, I completely agree, which is why it would be stupid to stop now. Since a lot of common kanji are learned later on, it would be a complete waste of time to quit RTK before I even get to them. However, having taken (and suffered) through a year of Chinese in 9th grade. I can say that I much prefer learning Kanji with Heisig's method than by memorizing them through writing them over and over and over again for a stupid test. I was constantly forgetting Chinese characters for my course, but through Heisig and SRS memorizing tools I am maintaining an 85% - 90% retention rate; which is way better than what I had for my Chinese class. Also, for some Kanji that I learned earlier on, I have already forgotten their English stories but I still remember how to write them. Heisig was correct about the stories eventually leaving you but the Japanese staying, and it doesn't take that long for it to happen. Probably after a month or two of learning a kanji the story fades but its symbol and keyword sticks with you.

Man, I feel like I'm on the unpopular side by starting with Kanji before grammar. Am I really the only one (patriotic enough) to have chosen to follow Aaeru's guide? I'm already over halfway done with Heisig, I'm too invested in it to drop it now... As I said before, I know RTK won't teach me Kanji, but it will familiarize me to the point that I will have a head start when I do learn them. Are people's suggestions really to drop RTK and avoid it like the plague? (I'm already infected if that's the case).

I heard of those stories of people who learned a decent vocabulary from anime, and it makes me envious. I've learned no more than 20-30 words from all the anime I watched. I heard watching without subtitles increases the amount of words you will learn. So maybe if I refused to use subtitles I would be better off. Doesn't TA make it easier to look up words? Well I guess since looking up words in a physical dictionary requires more effort, the words may stick in your head better.

While it would be nice to have a bit of a head start, I don't think I will mind looking up words much. The first VN I plan on tackling in Japanese is the untranslated version of Period. I didn't like that VN and considered it a waste of time in English, but it seems simple enough where it would be an ideal starting VN for learning Japanese. For my first few VNs I'm more interested in learning how to read Japanese through context than in experiencing the story. All the untranslated VNs I'm genuinely interested in are far beyond a beginners level (thanks Clephas for tantalizing me ).

Can somebody define "basic vocab". Is it N5 level of vocabulary, or does it include N4 as well? Approximately how many basic words do I need to memorize before attempting to read a VN? (This is of course after I learn basic grammar)

Definitely the three gymnopedies by Erik Satie. They capture my melancholy perspective perfectly. It is neither depressing, nor happy, just calm.

Thank you You can tell how socially awkward I get just from that photo. That was also my first time using the web cam on my laptop.

I've never considered what it would be like to read this VN as a girl. I would probably hate the game to then. But what I like about this VN is how it takes a regular every day teenager (he really is incredibly bland) and shows the audience what every teenage boy would do if he acted completely on his instincts and gave no thought whatsoever to morality. Makoto's complete lack of personality is what makes him such a great self-insert for our own repressed desires, and through him we can act them out.