Zalor

Yesterday I did by posting here: Visual novels and their emotional meanings to you However, it's been around a day and no body has made any contributions of their own. I'm betting in a day or two the thread will be buried again. It's a shame because regardless of what I wrote, I felt what the OP said was quite nice and worth reading.

In the forgotten depths of Visual Novel Talk I found this. I feel a need to post here because the OP reminded me of the reason why I love Visual Novels and continue to engage in the medium. The first Visual Novel I had a deep emotional connection with was Yume Miru Kusuri. I remember distinctly, around 4 years ago during winter vacation was when I read Yume Miru Kusuri. The music from the title screen was what originally hooked me. I knew absolutely nothing prior to reading the VN other than the fact that the title music sounded tranquil but uneasy, much like my life was. I started the journey of Kouhei Kagami's life in my bed with my laptop, shortly after waking up. Within the first couple of minutes I was hooked. The opening scene continued with a different yet equally mellow track that resonated perfectly with the monotony of Kouhei's life. Kouhei was a diligent and obedient straight-A student, but was bored with his life. He observed his life and his surroundings while internally making witty and intelligent analogies. What I quickly realized was that Kouhei was me. He led a passive existence by avoiding trouble and doing what he was told, but consequently was leading a meaningless life. When Kouhei meets each of the three heroines, an opportunity presents itself to stray away from the conventional. An opportunity for Kouhei to find himself through another person. Mizuki for one, represents a path of hedonism. She is in the same situation as Kouhei, but unlike him, she is actively trying to find excitement in life. She offers the choices to live life to its fullest and in the most reckless fashion; instead of continuing to live life in its most mediocre possible way. The "Fairy" girl whose route I have not read actually, seems to represent something similar. But I can't elaborate since I don't know her story. Anyway the other girl is Aeka. Aeka was the girl who I first chose. Unlike Mizuki who offered excessive escapism and hedonism as a choice to lead a different life, Aeka presented the option of living a meaningful life with care and love. What's more, the struggles they couple faced were huge. I could not put the story down, and when I finally got the good ending to her route, I realized that I spent over 15 hours in my bed in front of a screen. When I turned off my laptop and prepared for bed, I felt so apathetic. During that time I didn't care about my life, my mind was still too preoccupied with the story I just read. It ended up taking days to soak in that story. I spent the remainder of my vacation playing arcade classics like Pac-man and Donkey-Kong. I needed to further absorb the experience, but I needed a partial distraction for my mind as well. Some might say that I wasted those days; mindlessly playing video games while contemplating my emotions over a story, but I would strongly disagree. Sure, I felt nearly depressed after Aeka's story, but that was because it made me reflect on my own life as well. As I said earlier, I myself was frustrated over the meaninglessness of my life much like Kouhei was at the beginning of the story. On top of that, it got me to think about the bullying at my school. Much like Kouhei, I played a completely passive role and avoided associating with bully victims, and sucked up to the bullies. That worked well for me, but I was starting to question that my lack of involvement was almost just as bad. Ultimately, Yume Miru Kusuri left a mark on me. The emotions and thoughts it made me experience was something that I liked. In a weird way, the style in which the story immersed me though good writing, music and visuals; gave me a sense of meaning. When I was reading and clicking for the next set of words to appear, I was genuinely experiencing something that was powerful. Nothing else had really affected me like that before. The Kanon 2006 anime kind of did, but not in the same way. In any case, I knew from then onward that I had to further explore the medium of visual novels. I've since had many pleasant experiences with visual novels but the most emotional experience that I remember since then was reading Symphonic Rain. When I have time in the near future, I intend on writing about my emotional experience with Symohonic Rain in another post. (Sorry for the long post. I personally love long thought out posts, so I know other people must as well. But I am also aware that many people don't).

Can we have awards for people who contribute intellectual analysis and thoughts on Visual novels. I worked Hella hard writing this analysis: Kanon: Mai and Sayuri Analysis I'm also sure Maefdomn worked hard on this as well: Swan Song Review/Thoughts thread Honestly one of the things I find a tad disappointing with the forums these days is that there are a lot less insightful threads. If you look at the really old stuff in the back of Visual Novel Talk you can find threads like this: Sexism in Visual Novels The Way of Eroge Visual Novels and their emotional meanings to you Is romance necessary Starting insightful discussions and making analytic contributions are important and should be valued as such. So awarding people who do so seems like an appropriate thing to do.

Thanks for sharing this, if it's any consolation. In fact your situation reminds me of a quote from an anime, "Hidden feeling? How painful they must be." Although significantly younger than you (still in high School like Kyoroto) I can definitely relate to the pain of having feelings for somebody you can't have. Although my situation is far less complicated than yours. It's also kind of nice to have a VN you can return to when feeling down. The visual novel I always return to is Kanon. I think the reason the themes of unrequited and repressed love have been popular since medieval court poetry (and probably even before that), is because it is something everyone can relate to.

Lol, I've been reading visual novels for 4 years now and I still haven't read Muv Luv, but that's been a conscious decision since it doesn't suit my personal tastes. Since so many people are recommending you Muv Luv I'll provide some diversity and recommend Symphonic Rain instead. As opposed to Muv Luv that is action packet with violence, Symphonic Rain is a sweet story that has a huge twist in the middle of it that will completely screw your mind in a good way.

Ever17 is probably the closest you're going to get, here is a review: I suppose 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors is also kind of similar. Both of these visual novels are common in that they are are survivalist stories. However, in terms of a visual novel that brilliantly mixes great writing with philosophy, and psychology; I have yet to find a visual novel as amazing as Swan Song. Don't get me wrong, Ever17 and 999 are both good visual novels and I highly recommend them, but in my opinion Swan Song is better. However, I haven't played every English translated Visual novel yet, so there might be a masterpiece as good as Swan Song that I'm missing out on.

I'm so glad you brought this thread back to life. Regarding the use of the term "true end", I think you are right. When I wrote that post (lol I remember it was in the middle of the night during Summer vacation), I confused the normal end as the "true end" because in a sense the normal end is the real ending. The "good ending" in my opinion is just a cop out, the normal ending is the better one, and is truer and more appropriate to the original story. Regarding your point about Aroe. I completely agree, but here is an explanation by what I meant by burden:

Damn nice choice, I haven't watched the Hellsing OVAs in a long time. Alucard's theme is definitely memorable/badass. This anime is a bit more obscure, but for anybody that has watched Kaiji; many manly tears were shed when Kaiji's theme played: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBzDGG7WeU

I personally am not one of those people, but I think it is good of you to remind people (friends) that you have not forgotten about them. As for me, I regularly take 3-6 month hiatuses out of no where and come back as if I was gone for only a day, lol. In any case, welcome back man.

I haven't changed my avatar since I first joined either. Although, if you're just adding a Santa hat and are going to change it back after Christmas, than I fully approve. But just remember, those of us that have not changed our avatars are a rare species in the Fuwa-universe.

When done right (unfortunately it rarely is) bad endings help develop your perception of a character. You get to see different sides of them that you wouldn't otherwise see. It is for this reason that I do read the bad endings for the visual novels that go out of their way to make them good. However, I avoid the hassle of having to figure out the correct or incorrect choices. Walkthroughs help me avoid needless frustration and ultimately allow me to enjoy the story in a more leisurely way.

There has not been a visual novel I read without the use of a walkthrough. I bolded "read" in my previous sentence because I don't seek to play a visual novel by making choices, I only care about the story; hence the reason why I shamelessly use walkthroughs. Having to sift through bad choices and backtracking to get the proper ending seems like an unnecessary pain in the ass when I only care about the story.

True, though my greatest fear is that the anime industry will one day become as bad as Hollywood. This is quite complicated. On the one hand you can't really blame companies for producing safe bets that will profit them; that is if you emphasize the business and entertainment aspect of the anime industry. However, if you place a greater emphasis on anime as an art form, then you will blame them. I say will, because despite the truth that producers need to make money, it is also in their pursuit of making money that producers hinder artists from making things of true quality. Those who desire artistic brilliance will blame the people who restrict the artist (usually the ones with the money). Not that this is a new issue. Artists have always had to struggle with doing what their patrons want versus doing what they want. But I take the side of the artists in this age old debate. I don't want artists to do what the consumer wants, I want artists to do what they want to do.

Edited my post and phrasing. While I agree that "The "otaku condition" didn't wait for the 2000s to exist and was very much there in the 80s", I think it certainly got a lot worse from the 2000s onward. During the 2000s, mostly due to the internet, Otaku culture spread not only in japan but globally as well. The otaku of today are not only different, but have far larger numbers than the Otaku of the 80s. That's definitely the largest problem with contemporary anime. The anime industry has turned into Hollywood...

ME!ME!ME!, which is an anime short that came out rather recently, had Hideaki Anno (creator of Evangelion) as the producer. Apparently Hayao Miyazaki also made a minor contribution to this short. That said, most of the credit is attributed to these two people It should be well known by now that both Anno and Miyazaki have voiced concerns and criticism on how Otakuism is ruining anime. (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2014-01-30/miyazaki/the-problem-with-the-anime-industry-is-it-full-of-otaku). Instead of studio's taking risks and making more artful shows as they did in the 90's (e.g. Evangelion, Utena, Lain), studios these days primarily market and create shows for Otaku. Hence the increase in Moe and Slice and Life anime that started around a decade ago. Within this past decade, the most successful anime/manga/light-novel that tackled the theme of otakuism in a serious way was Welcome to the NHK, and that anime was released all the way back in 2006. Anime has only gotten more saturated with Otaku fan-service since then. In any case, you can watch this 6-7 minute short here: http://animatorexpo.com/mememe/ I also suggest watching this video afterwards for some entertaining yet insightful commentary on the short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_YjrTyxde8

Visual Novels have the potential to do everything you are saying. They can tell highly complex stories in intelligent ways. The fundamental flaw with VNs is that the market they built themselves around in Japan are Otaku. Otaku are not people I usually associate with being intellectuals interested in complicated themes and presentation. So I would not look at most Japanese visual novels as support for your argument. However there are exceptions, by literary standards Swan Song executes its themes in quite intelligent ways. There are also some OELVNs that have some pretty decent writing. Both Katawa Shoujo and Dysfunctional Systems are written pretty well. In any case, I'm totally of the view that it is up to western artists to save Visual Novels. As long Visual novels are predominately made for otaku, they will be condemned to mediocrity. Since there is basically no market for VNs in the west, there are no incentives to compromise storytelling for VNs like there are in Japan.

What happened to the review?! I wanted to link a friend a review of Swan Song since he is curious about visual novels. I wanted him to read this review to see if he finds it interesting.

Absolutely agree. Visual Novels are a wonderful combination of Visuals, Audio and text. Good music is just as necessary as good art and good writing to make a great VN. To anwser the question, Symphonic Rain without a doubt contains my favorite OST. My personal favorite tracks in Symphonic Rain are the vocal and non-vocal versions of Rain Musique: Personally I find the non-vocal version even more soothing:

Not my personal theory, but I feel a need to enlighten everyone on who really caused 9/11: Sorry for the crappy quality. The government did it to make it more difficult to learn the truth!

Every story has a proper length to it. A long story is not intrinsically better than a short one, nor vice versa. The Great Gatsby is a fairly short novel, but it is considered one of the best works of American English literature. On the other hand, Ulysses is a very long book but is also considered among the best English literature has to offer. The same rules applies to VNs. If I were to give my subjective opinion, than I would say I never read a VN that is 50 hours or longer that I enjoyed. So for me personally, too long is a bad thing.

Death Note's dub is so good I refuse to watch it subbed. Monster also has a really good dub (a quarter of the way through I switched from watching it subbed to dub). The worst dub I have heard is the Revolutionary Girl Utena dub. Which is a shame because the anime is my top favorite. Also, ironically the Japanese dub is among the best I have ever heard. Here is an example of the English dub: (The speaking scene starts at around 1:50). By the way, here is an example of the same character spoken in the Japanese version: It seems like an average performance at first, but the actress's brilliance really shows when the character goes kind of crazy at the end of the scene.

Couldn't recommend Swan Song enough, honestly one of the best Visual Novels I have ever read. It's a great read that fits the harshness of winter perfectly. On a side note, I first read Swan Song during my Christmas break from 2011 to 2012. Considering all the hype at that time of a 2012 apocalypse, I figured it would be a perfect time to read Swan Song.

You're clearly getting a bit too defensive at the end. All I did was explain my experience with reclusive anti-social otaku subculture and how I didn't find happiness that way. I'm just trying to look after another Fuwa-brother in case you were in the same trap I found my self in. But if you are confident that immersing yourself in anime, visual novels, manga, etc will make you happy, than I'm not here to stop you. I'm just saying that I didn't find happiness in that, and only actually found further misery. But you're a different person than me. Many monks of various religions claimed that the road to enlightenment is to abandon human attachment and relationships. However, secluding yourself in a monastery while reading ancient scriptural texts seems a lot more spiritual than fapping to 2D women.

I was criticizing Tohno-chan of being a place to keep misery company, not Fuwanovel. I'm not that active here currently, but I like this place enough to keep coming back. EDIT: I see where the confusion happened. Whenever I said "this site", I meant Tohn-chan since I was refering back to my previous mention of it. In any case I edited the original post to be less confusing.