Visual Novels: Sausage, Tears, and Teddy Bears

Visual Novel, many people have a misconception about what these are. The outsiders of the otaku world view it as being something like a graphic novel, while insiders sometimes think of them as only being eroge (erotic video games). However neither is true. A visual novel is a blanketing term for an interactive (usually) fiction game that uses sound, pictures and text to tell a story, such as the picture below. Now a visual novel can be separated into a couple of different subgenres which are sound novels, kinetic novels, and the classic visual novel.

Visual novels allow for players to make different choices throughout the game that eventually lead (usually) to a couple of different

endings such as a possible good ending, bad ending, etc. Examples of these are Clannad, Ef- A Tale of Memories, H20 – Footprints in the Sand. Kinetic and Sound novels however, lack these choices. Sound novels, a copyrighted term by Chunsoft puts the emphasis mostly on sound, such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya De. Kinetic novels are closer to visual novels as they emphasize visuals but leave out choices as well, the obvious example being Little Buster.

So using these three mediums usually host three different types of games, adult, nakige, and horror, and adult games are the most well-known by those who do not know visual novels. These visual novels are notorious for perverseness, rape, harems, lolitas, and many other themes that have led to giving visual novels a bad name and even getting some banned from countries.

The first of these visual novels was Night Life from 1982 produced by Koei to aid couples sex life. The visual novels have moved more and more to becoming whorehouses of moe, but this is meant in no way to discredit them as my favorite anime (Ef – A Tale of Memories) was based off one of these eroges that was worked on by Makoto Shinkai and Tenmon. All age visual novels are also often adapted to become eroges, notably Clannad and Little Buster by Key which simply feature a “good ending” and harem for the characters with partial or no clothes.

Nakige are the most popular versions of visual novels, which roughly translates to “crying game” or visual novels designed to make you cry usually with romantic dramas. The formula was introduced by Leaf with the visual novel to Heart in 1997 and has exploded to games by Key and many others. These usually make great anime adaptions (Clannad one of the top-rated anime on ANN and the best bishoujo game as voted by Dengeki G’s magazine. These are really great (I have played a few) and are my favorite type of visual novels.

Finally is the horror genre and this is rather straight forward. The visual novel genre lends itself well to the horror genre with creepy music, demented visuals, and choices of doom. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni being one of the most defining and a great anime adaption shows the basic themes of a story with words, which is what a visual novel is, this one is simply horror themed. These are great but I recommend at least one or two teddy bears (I went through three for the Higurashi anime).

It is difficult to obtain these visual novels unfortunately, mostly by luck at a convention or by importing them (if you want to get them legally) and they are not translated. However recently a few sites have sprung up that legally translate these novels and then offering them for download, the best of these in my opinion is mangareader.com. They are expensive but long, have replay value, and are great fun so make sure to go out there and take a look at some visual novels, you won’t (most likely) be disappointed.So while these visual novels are often faced with prejudice, many people aren’t aware some of their favorite anime come from these visual novels and go farther then a many laying on
top of a girl with a rape or don’t rape option. Romance dramas that make you cry, something that gets your sausage in some buns, or squeezing your teddy bear till it rips, all of these have good and bad features but don’t deserve all of their bad reputation.

Sincerely and trolly, Folium.