How did you start reading VNs?

[OriginalRen]

What do you have tattoos of, a VN character?  I can see how people would jump to anime.  It's the most popular type of Japanese entertainment in America, and from what I've heard, a lot of other countries, too.

 

3 visual novel characters actually, adding a 4th soon.

[Ceris]

I was an anime fan and while waiting for Little Buster Refrain to air, my friend went on and on about how good the Refrain route in the VN was so I downloaded it and read it. Since I enjoyed it, I asked him to recommend me a VN without an anime adaption, so he did the simple recommendation, Rewrite, since he knew I love Key stuff.

[Satsuki]

Reading manga >>> Saw Kud in the credit pic of a manga translation team >>> Love at first sight ( haha.... ) >>> Asked Google-sama who she is >>> Found Little Busters >>> First step/First VN in the VN world.

 

Btw, I can also use this for the question "how did I become a lolicon" 

[HMN]

so i picked up Japanese and i was looking for stuff related to the Japanese culture,and it was then when i discovered anime and manga shortly after i've became aware of VNs and i thought i'd see what it was about and i got more interested,my first VN was harem party(i swear i didn't know it was nukige at that time!!!!)

[Scars Unseen]

I had Katawa Shoujo installed on my PC for...  what, a year?  and never actually played it.  Then I moved and was without internet for nearly 5 months.  After I got through my existing backlog at the time, I figured I'd give KS a go.  And that pretty much got me hooked.

[JustThisOne]

After watching the Fate/Stay Night anime, I was really hooked on its world and wanted more. So after some extensive time on the internet, I got F/SN and I read it. Then I read Tsuikihime and well one thing led to another, and now I a huge fan of them. 

[Itsurakoriuki]

if only I could remember. In 2012 I re-discovered some copy from Katawa Shoujo. Before/Until then I often had found some dating sims, but they weren't satisfying. With finding ever17 in late 2012 I finally fell for VNs.

[Yeah Way]

Chilled Chaos's "Katawa Shoujo" videos.

[InvertMouse]

I know Narcissu was my first VN. It came with the Insani 2005 translation pack, I think. As for why or how I stumbled upon it in the first place, I can no longer recall! This thread only just made me realize I'm unable to remember how I came to know VNs. Now I'm sad (TUT).

 

I can say, however, that if I'd picked some other inferior VN as my first read, I might have never continued. Then I never would've discovered this community, etc~

[DawnWolf]

I've been an Anime/Manga/JRPG Otaku since I was a kid. Around the time I was transitioning from Elementary to Middle school I discovered online means of watching anime... and then went on a rampage and started watching a bunch of stuff, from Elfen Lied to Air Gear. I watched a loooooooooooot of different shows, case in point I've had three different instances of watching what I thought was a new (to me) anime, only to discover an episode or two in that I marathoned through it as a kid.

 

One of the shows I watched was Fate/Stay Night (this, as all aforementioned titles, was before the dub). I thought it was alright, nothing special at all though, so I kinda just forgot about it. I watched the dub with a friend in High school, but that was about it. I knew it had a VN, and I didn't really care since I figured it'd be just like that anime. I knew of the other routes but figured they were just slightly altered endings, and as such not worth my time.

 

Then last year that same friend kept bugging me to watch Fate/Zero with him... so eventually I did. Absolutely loved how dark it was compared to the norm (Gen Urobuchi <3). One thing that really piqued my interest was Sakura. They imply some things in Fate/Zero about her, things I was curious about. So I decided during the last December break that I would read the VN to answer my questions. Read Fate, liked it, was better than the anime and it satisfied my innate perversion, but it was nothing to write home about. Then I got to UBW and HF.... and like everyone else got hooked :S.

[LiquidShu]

I was watching Oreimo and it piqued my interest. So here I am now

[chansey]

i've been into manga for like 10 years but i never heard of visual novels until last august (i played some, like phoenix wright and hatoful boyfriend, without knowing what they were). then i kept seeing stuff about dramatical murder on tumblr and came here to download it, and a few months after i finshed it i came back to this site and realized how many there were on here and i feel like i hit the jackpot ovo

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edit: actually i think hatoful boyfriend was my first VN

what better way to start a genre than with a satirical genre critique

[Praeliator]

Well the first time I've ever been exposed to VNs is by playing the Ace Attorney series but I didn't even know what a visual novel was. So I looked it up on Wikipedia which somewhat sparked my interest but not to the point where I really got curious. Sometime in the future I was really bored of the games I've been playing and there weren't any novels that were worth re-reading, so I needed something new to get into, something fresh and exciting.

That's where VNs come in, I've done some research on VNs because of my interests in it and I thought this could be the next best thing for me to really get into. Finally I've decided to play my very first Japan-exclusive visual novel, Rewrite. I have played through it, and it was one hell of an experience! That is when I started to really get into VNs.

[Snowtsuku]

I hate Nagisa so I played the Visual Novel. Then Symphonic Rain and then I just read whatever.

[Yeah Way]

I hate Nagisa so I played the Visual Novel. Then Symphonic Rain and then I just read whatever.

Who did you like from "Clannad"?

[HeilMary]

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.

This actually happened to me, but instead i think i ended up trying clannad instead of katawa for my first VN.

[Flutterz]

Huh, I haven't posted here yet?

Not that there's any reason too - everything is on my profile, but the tl;dr version is that a gaming forum introduced me to Katawa Shoujo and it all went downhill from there.

[Ezeefreak]

I wrote that in my introduction, but who cares ...

 

I've never read any mango or wathced any anime (maybe as kid and i didn't notice) ... But i played a lot of video games... So i become older and older and at some point at this year i was bored by all of them and then i saw Go! Go! Nippon at Steam. Because i really like the japanese cultural i thought i give it a try ... And very fast i were fascinated by this Stuff. After I finished it i did a little research what i played and found sites like these here. And now... thanks to you all i'm addicted to that Stuff ...

[mordred]

I suddenly read G Senjou because I saw it and feels like it seems interesting and I just played it lol

[SanadaShadow]

I first played a VN without ever realizing it. I fell in love with the game's design and did some research as to if there were other games like it. I played quite a few VNs before I ever even heard the term "Visual Novel".

My first VN was Ace Attorney.

[Boon]

This is a great question akin to the question regarding your first anime experience. Always brings back a tinge of nostalgia.

 

Let's see... As far as my vague memory allows, the first VN I remember playing was probably Thousand Dollars Soul, though I had played it at Newgrounds as a flash game. I didn't even realize it was a VN at that point till I checked VNDB much later, and I wasn't really familiar with the medium of VN either.

 

After that, I think the next VN I got to was Clannad, of which the anime I had watched beforehand, followed by Kanon, Little Busters, and then School Days. There were a number of Nukige in my VN experience in between those titles, but it wasn't until recently, when I forced myself to continue Fate/Stay Night after I had dropped it (mostly due to my laziness rather than the quality of the story) that I got serious into VN-reading. After the lengthy read that was F/SN, I felt like I could read through any VN now. :3 Of course, light novels are still a challenge for me... heh.

[MDruidd]

I remember I played the VN because my friends were talking about it, and I was curious, then I don't know anything: p 

but I asked for the game, and copy it, 

 

then, the first thing I played was Kira☆Kira Curtain Call,

and expression when it is "ahh, I'm just bored to look a  images and writing, better anime" I thought

 

but, after I read the other VN especially when i read G-Senjou no maou,

wooohhh, I was deeply moved by the story., 

 

then, now I'm be so crazy with Visual Novel, lol

[crunchytaco]

Mine wasn't a very original experience. I wanted to get into the Fate series one day, but was confused about my starting point. I posted a question on myanimelist and from there, people gave me 3 answers. 1) Skip Fate/stay night and watch Fate/Zero. 2.) Watch Fate/stay night and UBW first 3.) Just play the visual novel skip F:SN anime.

 

Had I chosen to watch the animes first back then, I probably wouldn't be here talking right now. 

[sm2345]

I was just looking for a nice something to read, when I stumbled across True Remembrance, and I haven't looked back since then.

[Guest sakanaとkoeda]

I actually played VNs before and didn't realize it (games like Ace Attorney and 999). I really didn't know or care about why they were so text heavy or saw them as peculiar; I just played and enjoyed.

 

Then I saw Steins;Gate all the way through (with some encouragement) and needed more Kurisu. Afterward, I officially recognized the VN genre as a legitimate interest.