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Answerman - Why Haven't Light Novels And Visual Novels Caught On In America?


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Alan45
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 10:35 am Reply with quote
@SilverTalon01

Whether a title published in English is a light novel or not is not so much debatable as it is unknown. Most of us do not have access to a Japanese language bookstore where we could check which section it was placed in. Also most of the US publishers are not going to tell you that the book was published in Japan as a light novel.

In some prior discussions it was reported that at least one title (Twelve Kingdoms I think) was published in one category and later reissued in the other.
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encrypted12345



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 10:42 am Reply with quote
Both LNs and VNs are niches within niches. You are probably already into anime or manga when you get to them, not to mention that you have to like reading in general to enjoy them.

That said, both are way more popular than they were 5 years ago. Yen Press has released a lot of LNs, and most of the classic VNs are translated one way or another. Even many of the famous companies like Key, Nitroplus, Age, and Alicesoft are reaching out to the West officially, to the point where fan translations are a lot less necessary than they used to be.
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Key
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 11:08 am Reply with quote
DLH112 wrote:
My problem with light novel localizations is that usually a series will get brought over after it has an anime adaptation.

And that's usually going to be the case because the publishers know that there is already going to be at least some established market for it. That's why Is It Wrong to Try and Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (aka DanMachi) coming out in LN form in the States before the anime started last year was such a big deal. But even that was a calculated gamble, as the subject matter, title, and link to an upcoming anime made it virtually certain to succeed.
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feuerwerke



Joined: 13 Jul 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:16 pm Reply with quote
...Does OP not know about Mangagamer, JAST, and Sekai Project or something? A ton of visual novels have official translations now. The only super famous one that hasn't been picked up yet is Fate/Stay Night. The rise in popular anime based on VNs probably caused them to spike in popularity here, but seriously. VNs are pretty popular now. Is this guy still living in the era of like. Absolute Obedience or something?
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Mr. sickVisionz



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:34 pm Reply with quote
I played the School Days game and enjoyed it. I thought that was my entry to visual novels and I was going to kick off on a craze of playing VNs. I didn't even want to watch anime. If an anime had a visual novel then that was probably going to be the ideal way of experiencing it. Then I looked at the landscape, actually saw what other VNs looked like, and that dream was dashed.

This is all my opinion but when I saw the market it looked like School Days was literally the only one of these trying to put some quality into the product. Everything else just looked so cheaply made in comparison but was being sold at a premium or the same price. These things function like games and I'm just too familiar with games and how games are priced to justify what most VNs are asking for the product they deliver. I can buy Walking Dead for $20 and that just obliterates the production values on any VN and Walking Dead isn't some visual tour de force, ultra lavishly produced game. It's a budget title made for cheap and priced as such.

VNs are mostly cheaply made products sold at an insane premium. Even in Japan these things have to be porn in order to convince someone to plunk down money for them. Without that even they recognize it's not a product you can expect people to look at and be willing to purchase. Americans aren't any different. I don't think they'll ever catch on here until they start putting some quality into them or they find a way to sell them where the lack of audio-visual quality/elements is reflected in the price.
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crx07



Joined: 21 Sep 2015
Posts: 162
PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:00 pm Reply with quote
Ace Attorney is actually a visual novel (at least according to wiki). And I love Ace Attorney only because of its very nice story, not because of the game. Fortunately, the game aspect is good but sometimes I played the game as a chore because I want the story to proceed.

Last edited by crx07 on Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 1:39 pm Reply with quote
This is gonna be one huge wall of text that could put Trump's to shame...

Not really sure how transporting VN's to mobile platforms would make the medium thrive. I personally don't want anyone else catching a glance of Rance, Muramasa or Saya no Uta while on the train.

Moreover, as an avid reader of VN's, I can't help but virtually facepalm at the generalizations and reductionist opinions about the medium as if they got the chops to lump them all into choice words like "otaku pandering." No, just reading one VN then getting bored halfway through doesn't warrant you dismissing the loads of great works that have come out of this. Stuff like White Album 2, Baldr Sky, Subahibi, Muramasa and Dies Irae prove that VN's can and are quality. Take note, that most of the ones I've mentioned are not translated or only partially so yes, another issue of VN's rather shaky reputation in and out of otaku circles is because of the frankly paltry selection we still have.

On the subject of sexual content, yes there is a lot. Yes, a lot of the time, it's purpose is to simply titillate (an entire genre of VN's are dedicated to that called nukige.), but the sex scenes also serve as a sincere vehicle to the story. The top VN's usually craft it to be both meaningful and erotic (in some occasions funny when the whole purpose should be like in the case of Rance). If you're still stuck into the prudish, "porn is holding VN's back" mindset, then simply holding ctrl should work just fine.

Despite the bumps along the road, the VN translation scene has gotten stronger than ever and I'm happy about it. Even if it's through the rather dubious fame of OELVN's (none impressed me, even the infamous Katawa Shoujo failed to do so.), the medium is heading in the right direction in terms of finding its own place of popularity.

Moving on to LN's. Yeah, they're simply YA stuff that's good for bursts of reading. They're simple, formulaic and rather patronizing, but there's nothing wrong about any of that. People would want to unwind after playing/reading/watching some "epic" with popcorn pleasure. This is the main essence of LN's. It helps because the cover illustrations are usually visually appealing girls drawn by well known artists. There will be outliers that reach out more than the intended demographics as we've seen with Spice & Wolf and Kino no Tabi however and that's fine. My opinion of LN's exposure is of the same optimism that I have towards VN's.
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MajorZero



Joined: 29 Jul 2010
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:35 pm Reply with quote
Paiprince wrote:
No, just reading one VN then getting bored halfway through doesn't warrant you dismissing the loads of great works that have come out of this.

Dunno, I've read a good chunk of novels which sit on top places at VNDB and most of them have subpar to average quality compared to normal literature. I'd rather spend my time reading McCarthy or Ishiguro than choose route after route in your average VN. So yeah, as far as quality of writing goes I've yet to see anything substantial, just mildly entertaining fan-fiction and overlong pulp. But I always opened to any suggestions which can change my mind.
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crx07



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:53 pm Reply with quote
unready wrote:
Quote:
Trying to come up with a reason why something hasn't happened is a bit like trying to explain why the sky isn't orange.
Maybe a better analogy is why people watch "reality" TV or "pro" wrestling or something similarly inexplicable.

For me personally, it is a pretty good analogy. The strength of this analogy is that the the reason why the sky isn't orange is inexplicable to the majority. The drawback of his analogy is that the reason of the sky color is already answered by scientists. And the answer is available publicly, so we are able to google it. And many otakus accidentaly learned it by watching spoiler[Aldnoah.Zero]. But since only few know the reasons, the analogy is effective.
Actually, your analogy is similar to Justin's analogy. Here are the similarities:
1. The answers of both analogies are already explained by science. But the answers of your analogy are not as convincing as the answer of natural phenomena like sky color since explanations using social science (the only applicable method to explain LN VN popularity) are less believable than that of natural science (a very reliable method of explaining the nature of things).
2. Most people think these analogies are inexplicable.
The advantage of your analogy is that it has close similarities to the LN VN popularity because they are both social phenomena.
The advantage of Justin's analogy is that it has poetic effect.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 3:02 pm Reply with quote
Alan45 wrote:
Whether a title published in English is a light novel or not is not so much debatable as it is unknown.


Irrelevant. Being unknown and being debatable are not equivalent.

Alan45 wrote:
Most of us do not have access to a Japanese language bookstore where we could check which section it was placed in.


Sure you do. It is called amazon japan. Using your 12 kingdoms example, if you go look under light novels, you will not find the newer releases.

Alan45 wrote:
In some prior discussions it was reported that at least one title (Twelve Kingdoms I think) was published in one category and later reissued in the other.


You may not realize this, but a series can be both. Actually a series can be a web novel, novel, light novel , and a manga e.g. Gate. The older releases of Twelve Kingdoms are LNs, and the newer are not.
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Alan45
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 3:49 pm Reply with quote
SilverTalon01 wrote:
Quote:
Being unknown and being debatable are not equivalent.

Agreed, though that never seems to stop debate. Many things that are unknown are not worth looking up. Light Novel or not falls in that category.

Quote:
Sure you do. It is called amazon japan.

I've never had occasion to access that site. Even if I did, it would not have occurred to me to sort by Light novel as a type.

Quote:
You may not realize this, but a series can be both.

Which supports my idea that this is information that is interesting but essentially useless.

When a translated book is offered here, if it is anime or manga related or comes from a publisher such as Yen Press that specializes in manga, it will be shelved with the manga regardless of type. At least that is the way Barnes & Nobel handles them. Your location may differ. I assume there are translated Japanese literature books shelved elsewhere but I've never noticed them. As such the distinction of light novel or not is pointless to the consumer. Online stores also do not list them by category.

It is the same thing with the information on the demographic of the magazine in which a given manga title was published. It is interesting but pointless. Here in the US book stores file all manga in the same location regardless of Japanese demographic. You can tell more about a title by looking through it for a couple of minutes then the demographic of a Japanese magazine will ever provide.
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Paiprince



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:10 pm Reply with quote
MajorZero wrote:

Dunno, I've read a good chunk of novels which sit on top places at VNDB and most of them have subpar to average quality compared to normal literature. I'd rather spend my time reading McCarthy or Ishiguro than choose route after route in your average VN. So yeah, as far as quality of writing goes I've yet to see anything substantial, just mildly entertaining fan-fiction and overlong pulp. But I always opened to any suggestions which can change my mind.


Of course, if you're going to put them along the lines of Dostoyevsky or Nabokov it's going to be an unfair competition and you might as well cut your losses and part ways with it. VN's are still essentially rooted in otaku culture throughout whatever era. If you've never been into that, then your choices can be slim. Here's a few that I personally think are the creme de la creme. YMMV especially with your proficiency of reading Japanese.

Soukou Akki Muramasa - Contains a lot of mature but well handled themes with complex characterizations amidst really riveting action and robot fights. Granted, it's not very accessible because the Japanese used in the VN is very, very archaic to the point even natives had trouble reading it. It's hard to describe this anymore without going into spoiler territory, but I won't hesitate it to call it Nitroplus' Magnum Opus.

Dies Irae - Basically a more polished FSN. If you don't like chuuni, then don't bother with this because it has loads of it. Anything from Light is chuuni done right.

Sayonara wo Oshiete - Mindscrew horror that puts Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni to shame. Very scary and depressing and is told in a manner atypical of the average VN.

White Album 2 - Perhaps one of the most realistic romances depicted in Japanese pop media yet, especially the Closing Chapter. Renowned scenario writer Maruto Fumiaki was in his prime writing this. The anime personally did not do it full justice.

Baldr Sky - For the ones who really have to have gameplay in their VN's, this is the best the medium has to offer. Alongside the really interesting plot concerning cyberspace and AI that reminded me of Ghost in the Shell, the gameplay is very involved and substantial rather than an afterthought which is often VN's shortcoming. So much customization options on the level of Armored Core or Front Mission.

Rance series - While the standalone games aren't all that special and the gameplay could be better, the overall lore and hilarious characters are just interesting and charming enough for me to put it up top. Yes, the setting and a fair share of the characters are morally deplorable, but you don't read Rance to get some profound moral message. It's hedonism at its best and worst.

I have a few more, but these are the ones that come up and usually impress even the most jaded skeptic.
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Covnam



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 7:47 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
A well-translated novel reads just fine, of course, but the inherent limitations in what can be expressed in Japanese can make for English that can come across as stilted.


I recently read a bit of a light novel that was fan translated and not licensed and that was immediately apparent to me as I read. It seemed to fit the story and it could have just been a poor fan translation, but it really seemed to be just the way it was written.
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Ali07



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PostPosted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 9:54 pm Reply with quote
Key wrote:
DLH112 wrote:
My problem with light novel localizations is that usually a series will get brought over after it has an anime adaptation.

And that's usually going to be the case because the publishers know that there is already going to be at least some established market for it. That's why Is It Wrong to Try and Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (aka DanMachi) coming out in LN form in the States before the anime started last year was such a big deal. But even that was a calculated gamble, as the subject matter, title, and link to an upcoming anime made it virtually certain to succeed.

Which is why, personally, I found One Peace Books releasing Rising of the Shield Hero to seem...strange. Mainly because it is a gamble, and one being done by a very small publisher (unless I'm wrong, and OPB isn't a small publisher?). And, it being a gamble is why I decided to support their release of the series. So far, 3 volumes in, and my decision looks to be a good one. Laughing
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Fri Apr 01, 2016 4:18 am Reply with quote
Parsifal24 wrote:
The awful ones were never even hinted at on the packaging or in the booklets I mean even Song Of Saya had a warning saying that healthy relationships are not like this.


Song of Saya had an official translation? I thought no one wanted to go near that one due to the illustrations looking like loli porn. (That's a case where you can take all the sex and naked pictures out of the story and not lose anything though.)

Brand wrote:
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.


That's the worst kind of void space to be caught in: When your product is between two things, and fans of those two things consider it too much like the other thing. (From the perspectiveof a company that invents these things though, I'd say it's a high-risk, high-reward thing. Mario Party had a real risk of being rejected by both video gamers and board gamers, as a successful example.)

DRosencraft wrote:
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.


It is definitely a western school of thought to maximize interactivity and minimize non-interactive content. Extra Credits even had a video suggesting for some games to eliminate cutscenes altogether unless lack of player control is important at that point in the game. That being said, Extra Credits DOES occasionally have visual novels in their "Games You Might Not Have Played" column, like Long Live the Queen, so it may be that their stance is that there are some games where cutscenes have no place, but not all games.

There's definitely a divide here. On one hand, western game companies seem to desperately want to be Hollywood, so you get a Hollywood-like cinematic style to games (most notably Heavy Rain, Life Is Strange, and The Last of Us). On the other, you have gamers who just want the game to get straight to the point so they can take action.

I'd also say this is related to the divide between western RPGs and JRPGs: The former is more often about the player making decisions and shaping the story (like the branching paths and customizable player characters); the latter is more often about the player taking a pre-designated role and letting the story unfold around him or her.

In other words, I'd say the root of this is that Japanese gamers prefer to spectate, while western gamers, particularly those in North America, prefer to participate. Visual novels would be a real turn-off to such people, because they aren't much more than observing a character.

CoreSignal wrote:
Believe it or not, kids and teens are still reading a lot. The fact that we've gotten a bunch of Harry Potter and Hunger Games movies tell me that a lot of people must be reading those books, otherwise, why else would they make movies out of them? And I'm sure the movies boosted book sales, too. Not to mention bookstores are still around.


Not only that, but there are a bunch of new bookstores being built right now. The demand to read print is growing substantially, though I don't know which demographics are responsible for this.

Black_Kendoka wrote:
What I think killed reading for fun for quite a while for me was being forced to read all those books that teachers deemed "must reads" throughout high school and having to read during the summer from a pre-determined list of books that I would be quizzed on soon after school started back up again. With only a few exceptions, most of the stories were either uninteresting or bored me to tears and I never got a good explanation on why these books were classics that everyone had to read (now if there was a better tie to historical context, then I could see things getting a little better). I've since gotten a little better after I found some books on subject matters that matter to me (Martial arts), but I'm still a very slow reader.


The idea is that those books were either historically significant, like The Great Gatsby or The Crucible, or they have layers upon layers of meaning, like anything by William Faulkner or James Joyce.

The impression I've had, looking back, is that literature classes in school are basically what should be a niche hobby crammed down the throats of every child in the world. All of the books I've encountered through every English class from middle school and onwards were stories avid literature fans would enjoy but not normal teenagers (except for Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Golden Goblet). They were, basically, for the hardcore. Any books teenagers would've actually liked are just too casual!

The way I see it, literature classes are the equivalent of if schools had required video-game-playing classes but the only games covered are tough 8-bit classics like Mega Man 3 and games that would be utterly incomprehensible and frustrating to non-gamers like Guilty Gear or Deathsmiles while the teacher explains how to play them in the meantime and then you're tested on minor details; or film-watching classes but the only films covered are old classics disconnected to modern life like A Man with a Movie Camera and films so stacked with symbolism that only arthouse crowds would like it like The Last Laugh.
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