[Guide] Reading Visual Novels in Japanese
[Guide] Reading Visual Novels in Japanese
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.comfysnug.space/post/79947
Anime has slowly grown into a global phenomenon, but visual novels are far more niche. Many visual novels remain untouched by localization companies, and sometimes the localizations we do get are…lackluster.
Often, the best way to experience a visual novel is in the original language—Japanese. Whether you’re already interested in learning Japanese, or want to learn Japanese purely to play visual novels in their original language, both motivations are perfectly valid. Visual novels are a great way to learn Japanese, because you get exposure to both the written and spoken language.
I've written a guide on how you can learn Japanese by playing visual novels with the help of a friend who made some suggestions to improve it, and it's available on our wiki, wiki.comfysnug.space. As with all pages on our wiki, it's licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, meaning you're free to share, remix, and build on the content.
If you're interested in learning Japanese or have already begun, I hope you find this guide useful. It isn't meant to be a dedicated guide on learning Japanese, but there are some tools you might not know about that will make your life easier.
If you have any additions or corrections to offer for this guide, or are interested in working on our other pages, you can sign up for the wiki here. You'll need to contact Neo on Matrix for a password as emails aren't setup yet (details on page).
I have localised visual novels before, and from my experience, there’s just not enough funding to get the medium the love it deserves. A lot of projects I started working on simply died from a lack of funding before they even got announced. There are genuine gems that never get to any non-Japanese speakers because it’s such an overlooked medium, and I think it’s a shame.
The porn stigma it carries doesn’t help either, as I have found many people hesitant to give them a try because they think they’re all power tripping fantasies, erotic harems or downright pornographic. And gamers think they’re too boring and devoid of mechanics to be considered games.
But the storytelling and creative potential behind visual novels is actually massive. I would love for the medium to get more recognition everywhere. That would also help out their creators as well.
I'd have to imagine that, given the length of a lot of visual novels, you'd need a lot of capital to pay for the full translation, editing, proofreading—not to mention any engine hacking on the programming side. Or you'd need to pay everyone dirt cheap.
There are stories told in visual novels that are so different to other mediums. Some of it comes from many of the developers being hobbyists, rather than big corporations, and not needing to care about keeping it under a certain length. It allows them to delve deep into topics in a way anime and manga can't, for example. Even novelists need to care about page count.
The porn stigma it carries doesn’t help either, as I have found many people hesitant to give them a try because they think they’re all power tripping fantasies, erotic harems or downright pornographic.
This image is hard to shake. While these types of visual novels certainly exist, they're what we call "Nukige". There are many other types of visual novels, and plenty without any sex scenes at all, like Steins;Gate or Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. There are also plenty of great visual novels that contain some sex scenes.
While it's mentioned in the wiki page, we also have a Buying Visual Novels guide. If you're interested in playing a visual novel in Japanese, this is the page I reference myself to buy them. We've turned it into something really useful. The instructions on where to find DRM-Free releases is particularly pertinent for non-Windows users.