Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Haven't Light Novels And Visual Novels Caught On In America?
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Are visual novels as much of a thing in Japan as they used to be? I don't read/play the things so I don't know, but I have noticed that visual novel adaptations have been almost completely replaced by light novel ones (both in numbers & LNs adopting the subjects & genres that VNs previously covered) over the last few years. That would imply either a drop in market interest or a drop in the number of new VNs looking to be adapted.
I have also got the sense that, Pigeon botherer simulator not withstanding (& assuming we're conflating VNs & dating sims, which I know some people don't), a lot of the buzz around new VNs (as opposed to localization efforts for older titles) has come from non-Japanese titles that have adopted all or parts of the format, like Long Live the Queen, Huniepop, Panzermadels & Katawa Shoujo (which admittedly was a collaborative effort with both Japanese & non-Japanese developers). So one might suggest that VNs as a format are gaining in popularity outside of Japan, but Japanese VNs themselves perhaps aren't, or are following rather than leading this latest trend. But again, I don't play or really follow the online chatter about these things, so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about. |
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danpmss
 Posts: 763 |
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The more virtual books like 07th Expansion stuff, the better.
I also think this is the only kind of VN that could get any attention of the mainstream media (the rest is just too full of otaku pandering, waifuism/harem things and sometimes even explicit sex). |
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EricJ2
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FWIW, the Pigeon Game (under its original Hatoful title) is available in English for Vita on PSNetwork. Where it's pretty much...treated as a game. Even the plots of Ace Attorney are considered "visual novels" in Japan, whereas here, the idea that the plot won't continue unless you're smart enough to outwit it is very much the competitive idea of a "game". As for "light novels", the YA-book comparison is a good one. Series books, or books of a movie/TV property, that aren't considered literature, but meant to be bought and read in bulk. Over here, it's just fandom rather than reading, but the idea that we would prefer the book over seeing the movie version is too much for some fans. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Not true; there have been way more than a mere 5-6 titles published before the last year or so. Some that I know of for certain which well predate that time frame include Crest/Banner of the Stars, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Boogiepop Phantom, Spice and Wolf, Moribito, Blood+, Vampire Hunter D, The Twelve Kingdoms, .hack// franchise, Junk Force, Full Metal Panic!, and I know that I am overlooking several others. Granted, whether or not some of these are truly light novels or actually proper novels may be debatable, but the point is the same, I think. Now, has there been a bigger push to releasing LNs in English in the last 12-18 months? That I would definitely agree with. |
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Saffire
 Posts: 1255 Location: Iowa, USA |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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Which is something of a problem IMO, because while there's no doubt considerable overlap - I'm not convinced that gamers and VN players/readers are the same people. The confusion comes from the way computer programs have been marketed to the public since back when rocks were soft, they were either a game you played for fun or an application to be used for Serious Business. VN's haven't taken off in America (IMO) partly because they don't really fit into either of these segments.
There's never been much "incentive" to read for fun. Ever. I think the microprocessor is a significant factor though. Computers (both PC's and game consoles) swept away vast swathes of older hobbies as they rose from obscurity in the early 80's to near ubiquity by the mid 90's. We just notice it with reading in the way we don't notice it with Ham Radio or Model Railroading (for example) because reading is widely socially accepted and approved, while many (most) of the others were (are) niche pursuits. Related to the microprocessor revolution is the rise of cable TV, VCR tapes, DVD and BR disks, and now streaming media - as the options for viewing shows and movies increased (as opposed to watching what the networks provided when the provided it), this too took readers and potential readers away. A commercial playing locally for a comedian appearing at one of the Indian casinos sums it up nicely - "when I was a kid, I didn't have a iPod or a PSP. I had a stick". I'm not one of those grumpy old "it was better in the old days" mind you. I *like* living in the 21st century. But if you're fifty something or older, it's very hard to convey to those forty something or younger just how much things changed in the 80's and 90's. And it's even harder to try and convey it without falsely giving the impression that you're actually trying to say "it was better in the old days". |
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Brand
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A large part of Hatoful Boyfriend is a straight up VN though. So, it is both a dating sim and a VN. And the sequel is a 100% visual novel.
I do agree with this. I think a lot of gamers on Steam would say VNs are not games. And if you go to a place like Goodreads they are not books either. So, they exist in this weird void space. |
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DRosencraft
Posts: 665 |
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I think the discussion thus far shines a light on the issue. I don't even read light novels of visual novels, but the titles everyone mentions are the mega titles, the blockbusters, that all had anime made for them. That is the connection most in the west have towards LN and VN at the moment; reading after the fact because of an anime.
I think Justin did a great job summing up the driving factors; light novels are indistinguishable from just a novel if you ignore the point of it being of Japanese origins. For VNs, it's a similar issue. There's a ton of reading, little in terms of action or non-dialogue click through. Even further, I'd say most western "gamers" don't even like games with lengthy cut-scenes, to the point that more and more games are either making their cut-scenes interactive, or otherwise diminish the amount of time spent in cut-scenes. If you counter instead that VNs are meant to be treated as reading and not games, then like with light novels, you are now just part of the milieu or reading, in a more stunted format. |
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Greed1914
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At least for me, I think the main reason why I haven't had much interest in LNs is the lack of the visual element to them. The times when I've started to read a particular manga came from watching an anime that simply stopped, and it wasn't a difficult transition since I can still see that characters etc. For some reason, going from constant visuals with anime to very few with LNs isn't something that works for me.
I do spend quite a bit of time with VNs, and it seems like those are slowly but surely picking up momentum. Digital distribution helped mitigate one of the biggest hindrances, the production costs. Although, if something sells sufficiently well, Manga Gamer and JAST are willing to do a disc version, too. As another person pointed out, it isn't exactly accurate to call them games, even if there is some amount of interaction. Although, we are seeing more and more games made from small developers that favor story over interaction, such as Firewatch, so I'm wondering if maybe the interest is there and it is the distribution methods that had to catch up. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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For me, the biggest things keeping me from purchasing more Light Novels right now(there are tons of translated series available right now!), is just that a lot of them are simply source material for shows that already exist. And, to be honest, I want the show more than the source material 90% of the time. As a fan of animation, that's a lot more appealing to me. What it comes down to is, whether or not I like the story enough to get more than one version of it. If not, I'd rather save that money for a different series. Right now I'm seriously debating getting Baccano and Durarara in their LN versions. As of right now, the only ones that I am definitely getting are The Monogatari series and the upcoming SNAFU novels. I should probably blind buy less anime and purchase more of my favorite LNs, to be honest though.
As for VNs... I read Saya No Uta and that was great, but it was also extremely short for a VN. Other than that, I have had a hard time getting into them. I don't really like reading things on my computer, the light bothers me after a couple hours and, like someone else mentioned, it's much more comfortable to sit down on the sofa and relax with a book. Maybe I'll give some more a chance when I can read them on my phone. All that being said about LNs. When there isn't already an anime counterpart, I am much more tempted. I just don't have the money to buy too many of them. Last edited by relyat08 on Wed Mar 30, 2016 3:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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This is very true. I'm in my late 30s, and when I look back on the hobbies that I pursued as a kid (alongside my video games, which my parents restricted my time on so that I would also explore other things), a lot of them have declined significantly from when I was into them. I'm particularly thinking of plastic model building, slot car racing, and tabletop war games (not RPGs, I mean the more complicated tactical/strategy games like Star Fleet Battles or Blitzkrieg). All of those have their own virtues for teaching skills like critical thinking, fine motor control, and (above all) patience, but reading always gets all the attention, and declining interest in reading is treated as a national crisis. Look, I work as a librarian, so I'm all in favor of encouraging a love of reading, but the fact is that reading for pleasure is just as much of a hobby as any other leisure-time activity, and like any hobby it's just not going to be something that every single person enjoys. And even within reading itself there are of course styles and genres to consider. With light novels you have a doubly-difficult task because non-otaku aren't going to be familiar with them, and many of my otaku kids who love manga don't like to read regular print books. I get questions about manga all the time, but in the eleven years I've been working in public libraries, I've had exactly one person who's ever asked me if we carry any light novels in our collection. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Agreed. Virtually everything Alloy Entertainment publishes - Pretty Little Liars, Samurai Girl, The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, 666 Park Avenue, The 100, etc. - would be considered a light novel series if it was published in Japan. |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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One thing that's kind of made me wary of going into more visual novels after the bunch that I've read is that they seem almost self-indulgently verbose.
I mean that you can pretty much tell that a lot of these things grew out of a fan-made thing because it almost always feels to me on average like they haven't gone through anything close to a professional editor. Scenes always seem to drag on more than they should, things are over-described and there's no sense of pacing. The prose is so purple it's practically ultra-violet. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Oh, yes. I've read through a dozen or so VNs in total, and this definitely is a bad, bad problem with some of them. Some writers use VNs to pontificate, and there definitely doesn't seem to be much oversight on that. |
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Dfens
Posts: 459 |
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As mentioned before in the article and these forums Light Novels which by their very nature lack the visuals that attract westerners to the medium in the first place.
Also dollar for dollar value wise they are as much if not more expensive for a little over 200 pages and a few illustrations will cost you $13.99 on average. Then their is the fact these series tend to run for a long period of time or are currently on going with 10-15 plus volumes to purchase. Another factor is that a lot them are fan translated online similar to scanlations so that's a small factor when you can read it online or download it read on the go for free. For me personally reading them online etc has made me want to go out and buy a physical copy to have so that I can plop down and read it any time I want and add it to my collection. Their are tons of series that will never get another season. So people like myself like to keep up with the story through reading the continuation via the medium of the Light Novel. Their will be some content/scenes cut out that you get to read about that only appear in the source material. The only thing holding me back from purchasing Light Novels is the first which is not so much of a problem as when they first started appearing. Series got canceled or the publisher went out of business. But primarily the number 1 reason I have yet to purchase one is they take for ever to get released, so long in fact you have to wait years before you can truly enjoy them. On average 3 or 4 volumes of a series is released per year in English, while in Japan they are on volume 15 plus and still going. So it would take 5-6 years to catch up and that is one hell of a long wait to read the next volume. Especially when peoples interests die down over time. Their is also the problem of the first 2-4 volumes will usually cover the same content that the Anime series presented so the reader so basically your re-buying what you've already seen and have to wait a long time before the next volume comes out that moves the story forward. As for Hidan no Aria that series has been on hiatus here state side for almost 2 years. The likely hood that the series will continue to be released is almost nill add to the fact it was a E-book release only killed it for me. That was also a series I really wanted to own and support. |
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