Nanaboshi Kanata is a student who has been traumatized by love. He is lying down in front of the Shiratori Academy gates in protest of it being torn down. The weather forecast is sunny with a chance of UFOs. This is the day he comes into contact with the Guide for Galactic Lovers. One small step for man, one giant leap for the plot. His classmate Yamada turns out to be an alien. UFOs start raining down from the sky. On top of all that, the Galactic Empire is demanding him to fall in love.
When he returns home, he finds that the sofa of his living room has been occupied by the Chancellor-Elect. One thing happens after another, and Kanata finds himself the target of the President of the Galactic Empire’s affection! “Analysis of both routes complete. Rate of success with either party is immeasurable.” When the impossible becomes possible, Kanata and the heroines engage in the Fourth Loveduction.
@Anonymous
thank you for your reply. It certainly made me think about this a bit differently.
i can see a company trying to survive on producing cheaper titles faster, while aiming for smoother translations. Those companies probably do not deserve my criticism, even though their games still might.
I have trouble imagining people with passion working on many of these titles, although maybe it’s not passion but experience and skill they are lacking more. I think real passion would reveal itself at least somewhat, even on a budget.
Anyways even if i don’t think the scenario you describe holds true to that extent for most companies, it still made me see this in a different light. thanks!
this games remind me of My childhood friend is the President (Osanai). But this is crap, i’m still hooked even when replaying Osanai now but this story is really bland on cuckoos. I’m not someone who says Isekai a bad genre and Majikoi the best Grisaia the best Steins Gate the Best like being the elitis but this release lately really a crap. for example Sweet Sacrifice about to release this month, i wont say there are no market for them but isnt that too niche? even Taimanin fans are bigger. While a lot of complained about so many isekai manga and all but being a lot of isekai theme out there it means it sells and so what its cliche, i want to enjoy it not trying to be elitist who trying hard to find something to complained. Anyway this is garbage
Nonsense VNs, lately inly crap VNs got localised in English. And gameplay also shit, the text bar colored white with text that also white and small. Even tho its light hearted not random mind break gb shit, i’mma skip
i don’t know man, are people not getting burned out on this lazy deus-ex-machina story setups?
i guess it can work sometimes if the characters/interactions are well written, thinking kokoro connect for example, but usually it seems like a clear indication that everything in the story is designed just as half heartedly as the introduction.
Well, it’s mainly that the english translated games are just rapidly translated garbage these days. Games like rance even though their fully translated already are taking an obscene amount of time and studios like Eushully who make quality games with great plot don’t get translated except by fans. Basically the only stuff that gets translated are the crap eroges and the good stuff like Fate and Tsukihime or Eushully are only translated by fans because companies ant to quickly get a buck or in the Case of Eushully they actively don’t want their stuff available to an english audience because of how crap the english companies are.
I mean just look at the Trails series. For china and Korea they get day one releases but for english companies they won’t give the scripts and stuff to until the game is released because they don’t trust the integrity of english translation companies to not leak their stuff etc.
I suspect it’s more that the western market for these is rapidly growing, and simple shit VNs with low-quality translations are quick, easy, and cheap. It’s low risk, high reward, because this shit sells anyway. Big name projects are much more difficult and expensive, and a bad translation would be a lot more meaningful for them, because those companies actually care about their reputation.
There’s also essentially no bar to limit entry into the “industry”. If you can draw anime lewds, or pay someone to draw something, you can write some nonsense shit and pair it with anime girls, and bam. You’ve got a VN.
it obviously has to have a financial reason. So there must be a big market for these kind of vns.. I mean isekai would not be such a popular genre if most people had any sort of standards concerning story-quality.
I just can’t wrap my head around it.
i’m also wondering if these companies underestimate the range and viability of the higher tier vns. Steins gate for example seems to have been a huge hit in the west as well.
But yeah if the less complex stuff sells, why go there?
Visual novels like stein’s gate are largely the minority of visual novels. Don’t forget the term “visual novel” is a western term; in Japan they’re called eroge, nakige, etc. Most of the things we call visual novels were never even thinking about games like stein’s gate, because it’s further away than just a different genre. It’s like asking why Breaking Bad isn’t more like Stein’s Gate. Completely different audiences. Or, why doesn’t ASMR ever have a good story.
As for the game on this page, it wants to be a comedy with sex scenes, which is common for eroge. However, fans of eroge are interested in what they can get out of the game, same as you. But you want a complex story with death and mystery and such, while most eroge fans want a fun story that reads smoothly. Steins Gate actually has worse pacing than a lot of eroge, and it asks a lot of the reader to stay focused. Many slow scenes, lots of world-building and lots of characters, all who develop at their own rates. Eroge such as this game will hook you and keep you reading until it’s complete, if it’s the game you’re after,
I think it’s important for the community here to remember that visual novels are a very, very expansive medium. There are so many ways visual novels can entertain people, and none of those ways are wrong, or bad. I personally love both Love-Duction and Steins;Gate. But I always find it frustrating when the community, here or on any website, wish that all visual novels were the same. Anyway, sorry for the long post, thanks for reading, and have a nice day!
@Anonymous
yeah i mean of course you are mostly right, this is not my genere / i am not the target audience / there are people with a lot more tolerance for this kind of entertainment… But i feel like that is not the core of my issue with this. I don’t hate on an entire genre (just naming isekai for example as 90% of that is terrible), i dislike these vns that are just so absolutely lazy. I mean it’s fine if you want to do an erotic comedy, but is it too much to ask that you think about a scenario or situation that makes it a little unique? I feel these people do not have the goal of making something that is funny or erotic. They want to make something with as little effort as possible. Jokes you have heard a thousand times over, Story progression that just happens (like an algorithm wrote this), and some almost decent art that does not cost too much. It’s so incredibly lazy. It feels so… depressed.
I mean look at imouto paradise or the recently uploaded dark elf sister game, at least here you feel that somebody took a day to think about how to make this hot, or funny. Like somebody liked thinking about how to build tension. Most of these games feel like the people making them asked themselves only “how to make money of people we think of very poorly, without breaking a sweat?”.
@Revvo
To be honest, it probably comes down to something we don’t think about on websites like this, the price tag. The visual novel industry was never a real economic powerhouse, and it’s always been a little shaky. Probably, most people who work in visual novels/eroge are there because they have passion for the medium. It might be easier to make money as a writer with paper novels, even. So a lot of eroge developers aren’t working with a lot of money, and most of them could be considered indie companies at that. They have to keep costs low, especially since releasing a game every 2 or 3 years is what you’d expect to need, to stay afloat.
So, for a lot of devs, it comes down to what’s practical money-wise. One 4,000 yen game every two years? Four 1,000 yen games every year? It all comes down to questions like this. That’s why art is sometimes rushed, or cheaper looking. Stories don’t have as much time for rewrites, editors are too busy/expensive, etc. And these questions are applicable for translation companies as well. In my previous message, I mentioned that lots of goofier stories like this one “read smoother.” It has a side-effect, it’s easier to translate.
The eroge industy isn’t lazy the way EA and Ubisoft can be called lazy. In fact, EA and Ubisoft employees work way too hard, and it’s usually the upper management’s errors that result in lower-quality games. With the eroge industy, if you find these games “depressing” or lame, it’s probably because they’re not rolling in money or time. It’s far from lazy or condescending, it’s closer to desperate and inexperienced. If you find games like this sloppy or unenjoyable, nothing wrong with feeling that way, but this industry doesn’t have corporate bastards like most of the video game industry does, so try to take it easier on them. Many aspiring creators would be scared to enter the world of visual novels, so they have my respect at least.
Anyway, not trying to contradict anyone, just sharing my thoughts. Have a nice night.
@Anonymous
thank you for your reply. It certainly made me think about this a bit differently.
i can see a company trying to survive on producing cheaper titles faster, while aiming for smoother translations. Those companies probably do not deserve my criticism, even though their games still might.
I have trouble imagining people with passion working on many of these titles, although maybe it’s not passion but experience and skill they are lacking more. I think real passion would reveal itself at least somewhat, even on a budget.
Anyways even if i don’t think the scenario you describe holds true to that extent for most companies, it still made me see this in a different light. thanks!
I was just pointing out how there are a myriad of quality story based games that aren’t translated because the Japanese really don’t like western companies on average. Yet Korea which hates Japan with a passion because of WW2 and the myriad of atrocities that were committed that Japan still denies and who the Japanese generally don’t like get access to the Trails series code in time for them to have day one release or how despite fate being a massive franchise in the U.S type moon never licenses their games to anyone except the Koreas who got their translation out 7 days after the Japanese release. Clearly their is a general distrust of western translators and whether that is the arrogance and condescension that they often express towards the Japanese which has been well documented or distrust that the employees won’t just leak their game. Or in the case of Eushully they just seem to want to avoid controversy and the toxic foreign markets.
Anyways, as someone who has seen the utterly massive amount of fate level quality or muv luv level quality vn’s that are exclusively in Japanese I can say clearly that there is obviously a profit motive and a general distrust for why their stuff doesn’t get translated.
It is right to not trust the the English localization companies. I read the NiSA forums at the time Criminal Girls came out where the mod applauded the censorship calling the game pedophilia and insulting all the pissed off potential customers while having the gall to spout the is this the hill you want to die on crap. No matter your personal feelings on a game, a person should not work for a company if what they do goes against your morals that much since that type of person is only there to hinder the company.
Wow, Eushully actively declined any translation request? That’s horrible news, they have the best gameplay in eroge history, I was hoping that someday Mangagamer or something would make a partnership with them…
It does seem that the english VN market is getting worse (and lazier) over time. It just fucking sucks, it’s like you either spend thousands of hours learning Japanese/Kanji or suck it up and play localized trash.