How did you start reading VNs?

[Albedo]

I was bored one day, and I read on some other forum about Ever 17. Seemed pretty cool, so I played it and the rest is history.

[Nyanko]

I was watching umineko anime and saw people complaining about it, how bad it was compared to the original "visual novel". So I was like "what is a visual novel..?   a novel? but I don't like to read.. -_- but it's with music?  no complete walls of text and more like a game..?  "

 

..So I started umineko VN and was sold. Never expected that I would be able to have fun reading something. 

[Hazel-Bun]

A mixture of my friends being into the Ace Attorney series, watching anime, finding what I then didn't know was an otome game on my phone... and finally stumbling across the English demo, I believe, of Rose Gun Days.

[castor212]

How did I met VN?

 

I surfed the net. For a long time.

[Crimson]

Until a few weeks ago, I used to be a simple anime otaku. I was so much into anime that I finished them within a ridiculous amount of time, during holidays I would probably watch 3 entire 12-episodes-animes per day. Well, at one point though I noticed I had basically watched all the very good ones and in order to kill some time until the new season started, I decided to look for alternatives.

I had already been into the Japanese culture for a long time, so of course what I was going to use to kill time had to be related to Japan in some way. At that time, I already knew of the VN genre. I had watched Steins;Gate and Higurashi and I knew that both of them were originally VNs, so I decided to try some of those out. And this is basically the end of the story. Now I'm reading VNs whenever I can, which kinda means that I don't do anything else as soon as I get home Already finished Grisaia (all routes except Amane), Fate/stay night (still not done with HF), Remember11 (only Kokoro's route), EnA (all routes), and LB (Komari, Yuiko and Rin Part 1)... And this list is rapidly growing larger

[Diamon]

Hmmmm for me I think it was thanks to The World God Only Knows (in manga form).

I was pretty much intrigued by what kind of games could hook up that much Keima to the point that he would be non-stop playing them.

In the end, I googled "galge" and "eroge", and ended up downloading Katawa Shoujo and Kanon at the same time.

[AMMSY]

How did I met VN?

 

I surfed the net. For a long time.

 

Were you looking for VNs? how did you find out about them in the first place?

[Kurisu-Chan]

One of my internet friend was a complete fanboy of Steins;Gate, he tried to convince me to give it a chance, but back at this time(2012) i wasn't, unfortunately, interested in japanese productions, i was obsessed with fallout(all of them) and "insert uninteresting french backstory"

 

But, this year, because of important exams, i decided to blow of some steam and got interested by japanese stuff : animes, mangas, video games, and finally, visual novels, and i remembered my friend's advice "go for steins;gate, you'll never regret it"

 

And so, i opened the gate of a whole new universe for me, the VN universe.

[itsJazz]

Clannad got me into visual novels. Though, I had watched Air and Kanon before (but that was when I was starting to watch anime). It was really the fact that Clannad had a really big impact on me compared to the other Key animes that I wanted to play the visual novel, which I found out about after seeing all the CGs on google images *lewl*. I think I got it off piratebay, too... Needless to say, I've been into visual novels since coming to fuwanovel last year (Oh, you don't know how excited I was to see a site totally devoted to VNs, and ohhh, how I could download any of them!!).

 

Actually, it wasn't really until I found Fuwa that I began to get into VNs. I've had Clannad since 2 years ago, but when I found Fuwa it was like a door opened Q oQ)/ And I've been playing VNs more than watching animes ever since.

[mr0cheese]

I originally began with the Clannad visual novel after having seen the two seasons of the anime, having fallen hard for Tomoyo. As it turns out, I found out about Tomoyo After being a sequel to her original route so I jumped onto that one. It was also the first really H-game I'd ever played. Then came Katawa Shoujo, which REALLY made me enjoy VNs (Cuz, you know...Lilly...). Went on to Fate/stay Night, Majikoi, Stein's;Gate, Grisaia....Now it's turned into a favorite hobby of mine.

[Hivelkir]

Stumbled upon one of 'em while searching for Yuri material, and that was Sono Hana 1. The lack of "action" turned me off, and I read it like it was just some joke. Then eventually I got used to it, thinking that it was like reading a book than watching anime. It made me fall in love ever since.

[Soradragoon]

I guess everything started when i finished 999. I start to get interest on Kotaro Uchikoshi work, then i find the great infinity triology (I love this games xD). Infinity got me busy for a while, then one day browsing on neogaf forums while searching for Virtue last reward info i saw a curious post talking about Katawa Shoujo. The game did not catch my attention at first but decided to give it a try and it was a great decision (Hanako.... xD). My interest on VN grow and one day i found the "Great Kaguya's" post, 50 translates VNs you should read before you die. 

The post enlightened me and since then I could not stop reading.

[Seath]

I've been into anime and RPG's in general since I was young, but the first time I read a visual novel was after I watched Clannad, and heard from several different sources that the VN that it originated from was superior. So after buying into the hype I decided to check it out one day and found out that I really liked it better than the anime. As I was already a fan of RPG's with meaningful choices and character development I found it to be a similarly enjoyable experience and became hooked.

[castor212]

Were you looking for VNs? how did you find out about them in the first place?

I like reading manga translated to my local language -> I searched for more further english translated ver in the net -> I found out about the anime adaptation -> I met anime -> I met anime adapted from VNs -> I met VNs -> I cant let go of VNs.

 

Pretty much like this.

[madvanced]

In my case, it was after years of reading manga, and having stop watching anime altogether(it doesn't interest me that much anymore, the stories feel chopped up most of the times now), I wanted something different, and since I had already heard about them because of fate/stay night and shuffle!, I just gave it a try and ended up loving them since they had so much more story behind them than animes and mangas usually do.

[Chocolat]

I was wandering on the Internet, and I came across an article which talked about Narcissu. I tried, and I loved it, so

I started looking for more games like that..

[Narcosis]

It's an old story, and I wouldn't want to bore anyone to death. Let's just say I grew up with them and was one of the lucky few to actually understand what vn's were, before most of you even managed to learn how to properly piss into your potties.

 

Word: your favorite vn's are shit.

 

I'm not even being sarcastic. Really.

 

(￣ー￣)

[Katatsumuri]

Stayed home one day due to a minor illness (but mostly because I didn't feel like leaving the house at all), had nothing to do, so I looked for something to play on the computer.

Felt like trying something anime-ish (I was originally thinking of a dating-sim or something), then I saw an image of Rin from Fate/stay night (I didn't know her name at that time, obviously), so I looked it up, read a plot synopsis, and I decided to download it to try it out.

 

Long story short: It's quality surprised me greatly, and made me want to try something similar again. The second VN I read was Tsukihime.

[garejei]

While Narcissu was my first VN around 2005-6 (or whenever it came out in English), I didn't really start caring about the whole scene until much later.

 

I mostly got into VNs with FSN, Saya and Kara no Shoujo, all of which I read in English. My first untranslated VN was Muramasa which got me hooked on reading stuff in Japanese.

[Narcosis]

Muramasa which got me hooked on reading stuff in Japanese.

Good taste, indeed.

[grim_tales1]

For me I think it was when I played PW: Ace Attorney around 2006 (if that counts as a VN), I loved the tension and mystery aspect of it I played all 4 AA games up to that point, and then tried 999 because I thought it sounded interesting (and read some amazing feedback), and I loved it!

[Guest]

A youtuber made a Katawa Shoujo playthrough.

So I gave the game a try and finished it in 4 days.

 

Then I searched for Steins;gate and stumbled across fuwa.net

The beginning of an adventure.

[Jptje]

I heard about Phoenix Wright last december (if I recall correctly, through an osu beatmap) and got interested in it. Even though I don't think it should be labelled a VN, that's how I got introduced to VN's, and at the same time, fuwanovel.

[itsanangeru]

I watched clannad the anime and then heard about the visual novel downloaded the torrent from fuwanovel and then spent 50+ hours sat in my room reading through it. And then got more.

[OriginalRen]

It's interesting to me that the VN genre as well as the anime/manga scene is almost completely separate from one another. Most of the time when I describe liking something to my friends, or people see my tattoos, they instantly jump to anime as the answer. Still, when I do correct them it seems a lot of people understand what they are about more than before, so that's maybe a plus.