Tag: Visual Novel

Meta

The Impact of Gateway Anime

[banpai akira]

I don’t usually reflect on my own history as an anime fan, but something occurred to me the other day. What is the significance of a gateway anime? What kind of impact does a person’s first experience with a medium have on their enjoyment and preferences of that medium? Most fans who choose to pursue anime seriously become more well-rounded over time, but I think that the early experiences are given less credit than they deserve.

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Editorial

Aiming for the Harem End, Or Not – An Eroge Theory

There’s a certain topic within moe fandom that is rarely broached. Considering the amount of fuss people make over events like Sal9000‘s wedding, you’d think it would have come up, but most conversations skirt around what I have always considered to be the heart of the matter. In essence, it boils down to the following questions:

These points beat around the bush as well, but I think you get the idea. I believe that the often-overlooked “secret” behind moe and 2D complex lies within the exact opposite of what ero-ge is traditionally supposed to be about.

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Editorial

2D Characters, 3D Projection

[96]

As you might know, I’ve been reading through Kanon, the famed visual novel that sparked many a moe enthusiast’s fandom. All things considered, it’s not a bad game – it shows its age, and I think Itaru Hinoue’s skill has increased significantly over the past decade, but it’s definitely not bad. I could say a bit more about it, but since I’m only now finishing the trunk, I’d rather keep the rest of my opinion for the final post.

More importantly, amidst the chaos of Umineko and the distinct lack of Key over the last few seasons, Kanon is a breath of fresh air. It’s my first “normal” visual novel in a while, a reminder of why I enjoyed the medium in the first place. The endearingly generic characters, the forcefully surreal dream sequences, the cheesy synths of Last Regrets – everything that you could say to insult it, I could spin to defend it. That’s always been the law of visual novels. On top of that, its familiar galge tropes got me thinking about something I haven’t thought about in a while: the art of making 2D characters feel 3D.

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #2: Fate/disability shoujo

[yukitarou]

There’s a lot that one can say about Fate/stay night; I spent about 5000 words on it in total, and I estimate Owen, Pontifus, and Martin have spent about the same.

Of course, when it comes to a game this iconic, there’s no accurate way of counting the impressions and retrospectives of fans. F/SN has always been one of the most popular visual novels in the history of everything, earning not only an anime adaptation and a plethora of merchandise, but also a solid concrete reader score (approximately 9/10 on VNDB and ErogameScape [NSFW]). Long story short, it’s a good game. Period.

Looking back at it – all 80 hours – that’s really all it comes down to. It’s a good game. Fate/stay night instantly brings to mind either countless in-jokes and internet memes or elaborate Nasuverse charts and statistics, but that’s only a fraction of what it has to offer. In addition to providing a memorable story and a complex set of rules worthy of any RPG, F/SN succeeds at toying with the reader’s heart with its eroge-style character development, akin to any good Key game, and it somehow weaves a dramatic and highly unique overarching theme into a seemingly incoherent mess of jargon. The game looks messy at first – GAR jokes here, annoying protagonists there – but by the end of it, it’s impossible to not leave with satisfaction.

I was never a self-proclaimed Type-Moon fan, and just as I didn’t care for Kinoko Nasu’s fictional universe, many of you may not care for visual novels as a whole. However, Fate/stay night is a spectacular story whether you like it or not, and if you let it get a hold of you, it will force you to concur. I have consumed many fictional works that played with my mind and tingled my heart, but I have never before seen something that does everything with such dramatic finesse. You are the only one who will regret it if you don’t play the game before you die.

– – –

2009 was the year that allowed me to experience my current all-time favourite visual novel, but behind the scenes of the usual denizens of /jp/ and the gemot, a potentially revolutionary visual novel has made strides in its progress.

Katawa Shoujo – Disability Girl.

The concept is bizarre, but that doesn’t mean much to us. The production values are nonexistent – it’s a free project intended for the market of fandom. It’s a novel idea, too, but novel ideas aren’t as uncommon as you’d think. What most Original English Language VNs lack isn’t ideas or money or passion, but simply skilled execution.

With the release of the first chapter of their iconic OEL VN, Four Leaf Studios has easily proved that they have what it takes to make it to the top. In a community filled with bright young minds and poor organizational skills, forums littered with projects that feel more like a programmer’s summer sandbox than a full-fledged piece of fiction, Katawa Shoujo is the revolution that we need.

That’s right: the importance of this offbeat EVN is not only about itself. For the dev team and the fans that will play it, nothing is more important than the game, but for the OEL community – for each and everyone one of us who dared to write a visual novel – it’s a tremendously significant step. The hype surrounding Katawa Shoujo has skyrocketed this past year, and if all goes well, it will prove to the world that the visual novel is not a medium that can only work in Japan, and that any group of skilled and dedicated fans can create a story worthy tears.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #8: Keionbu and Gakuensuki

K-ON group picture

[shino]

I hope you didn’t facepalm when you heard the word “keionbu.” If you did, you probably won’t like what I’m about to say.

K-ON was a bit more controversial than most moe shows, and needlessly so. While its premise isn’t anything unique, the over-the-top presentation and glorification of moe was a bit too much for some to handle, forcing it to play the role of either a punching bag or an object of worship. From a meta perspective, it was pretty much a scapegoat for moe haters and fans to attack and praise.

Really, there’s not much to say about the show that everyone on the internet hasn’t already said, but to sum it up, it’s a spectacular example of how to do moe right. I always say that it’s not easy to create the kind of characters who end up with hundreds of posts on Danbooru, despite the superficial appearance of moe characters being a flat set of traits, and I think K-ON proves that. In the eyes of many, including myself, it’s one of the finest examples of pure, fluffy, delicious 2D bliss.

– – –

In other news, back in the summer, lolikitsune released a demo of his meta visual novel, CCY-senpai wa 17sai. The final product is probably still a long way off, but since blogosphere parody/commentary style games aren’t too common (the only other one being Hinano’s RenAi Blogger), it garnered its share of attention.

This is a bit of a pointless reward since the final product won’t be released in 2009, but from the taste I’ve gotten of the game, I can honestly say that I’m looking forward to it. Games like this are usually irrelevant to the people outside of the community, but for the bloggers and readers involved, the experience is like nothing else. Everything from the dialogue to the character designs look great, and there’s even a bit of potential in the story – I still like to think of Gakuensuki as a metaphor for our blogging “careers”, but we’ll see about that. The bottom line is that if you’re an active anime blogger and you haven’t played the demo yet, it would be a NICE IDEA to do so.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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Community

12 Moments of Anime #9: A Brass Concerto for Visual Novel Fandom

Brass Restoration (5)

Brass Restoration is what I would call a hidden gem. It’s a game that flew right under the radar, despite being translated by TakaJun of Mirror Moon and Kara no Kyoukai fame. I spent about half a post talking about the game when I first finished it, but I never did talk about the themes or story since it’s fairly self-explanatory.

I think Brass Restoration‘s most distinctive trait is the fact that it’s self-conscious. That might sound like a bad thing, but for a doujin visual novel targeting fans who have already played their Key and Type-Moon and Circus, sometimes it’s more important to be different than good.

Luckily, this one is both of the above. Despite its typical slice-of-life galge appearance, there’s a painful story lurking at its core. Like Fate/stay night, the protagonist’s development is arguably more important than the heroines’ development, and ultimately, love takes a back seat to the psychological crisis that the player must overcome. While the game isn’t meant to be dark, its bitter setting is enough to slowly ease the happy-go-lucky antics of the “trunk” portion into the heavier, more intense and thematically relevant branches. In reality, each of the routes explores the protagonist’s dilemma from a slightly different angle, and they tie together the theme of the value of having a dream. Brass Restoration is no F/SN, but you’d be wrong to dismiss it on account of its traditional appearance. It’s a worthy memory of 2009 because it makes use of its doujin status to tell a surprisingly moving story to even a seasoned audience.

– – –

On a similar note, the visual novel editor and owner of TLWIki, Moogy, has done a few good things for the VN community this year. Well, I suppose he’s been doing good things for the community for a while now, but as far as I know, his editing and translation guides are a new idea.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I assume that most fans of visual novels and anime have some respect for the people who bring them to an English-speaking audience, and many of the community’s more active members take part in the process at some point in their “careers.”

From that perspective, Moogy’s guides are a spectacular help. True, experience is the best way to learn these things, but it’s always helpful to do some background reading in advance. If you want to write a book, you can probably find a million semi-helpful guides online or in bookstores, but how many people write about something as obscure as the VN translation process? Though it might be common sense to the active translators, many VN players have a limited knowledge of the process, and guides like these can be a great stepping stone to help aspiring translators hit the ground running. I’m not sure when I’ll venture into the community myself, but whenever I do, I can only hope that there will be more things like this to ease the learning process.

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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