Done c: . Funny that with our new organisation for the club kinetic VNs divided into chapters are suddenly harder to manage . If you look at Tsui no Stella’s chapter divisions the numbers end up being a bit weird, but this is an example of a plan we could go for for an 8 week plan:
Week
Content
Character Count
1
Chapters 1, 2 and 3
19 514
2
Chapters 4 and 5
16 958
3
Chapter 6
21 783
4
Chapter 7
16 346
5
Chapter 8
21 197
6
Chapters 9 and 10
21 663
7
Chapters 11 and 12
21 188
8
Chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16
25 880
Sadly we’d mostly be reading below our new mark, but I mean it’s probably not a big deal anyway and the voting can sort that out, being only a 2 month period. I’m not sure if we could push for a 7 week plan as neatly. We can do it like we’ve done 9-nine-, purely cut in the middle of a fitting spot and call it a week. However with works that are explicitly divided into chapters I’d expect them to follow a certain logic throughout their entirety so cutting in the middle of one is probably not as convenient. If they were very long chapters then I suppose that’d be a different story though.
Not sure if I want to nominate something else right now, I’ll take a look and see what I find.
I’m sure something like Steins;Gate and the like would attract people to the club . That would be fun to read, but it also kinda feels a tiny bit like playing dirty in a sense like it’s a nomination that would most likely get many votes just out of popularity. Not that that’s a bad thing, if many people do want to read something like Steins;Gate together then that’s a good pick and one I’d happily join for sure. Honestly if we could be at a point already where people can nominate the more popular ones or whatever they want freely that’d be awesome. We’re slowly getting there, I’m so happy . Brb looking for a >1M character VN.
Also If I remember correctly Steins;Gate can’t be hooked with Textractor, right? You had to use a different one?
Same. Just don’t tell them I dropped the anime like a hot potato and have no interest in the series as a whole.
I really don’t know anything about that series or hooking it, just that it’s one of those absurdly popular series that getting anything from it would probably get a couple people interested.
I’ve been playing Melty Blood recently so Tsukihime is on my list now. There’s actually a Japanese only Switch remake that came out not too long ago. I’m also a sicko that wants to read Muv-Luv (+Alternative) which is another ~1M can of worms. Aaand for my possibly cheating response with the best soundtrack Umineko no Naku Koro ni is another famous title with like 2M split over 2 arcs/8 episodes.
Just to be clear, no one have to figure out a reading schedule ahead of time, just divide the character count with 22.5k for the higher amount of weeks (rounding up), and with 25k for the lower amount of weeks (rounding up). Making either a 14-15 or ca 7 (I added ca for those that came out the same for both).
An actual reading schedule can wait until a nomination have won the vote. ^^
I just wanted to make that clear so no one else feels like they have to figure out the schedule ahead of time too.
The VN is actually one of my favorite VNs ever made while I absolutely hate the anime I read the VN first and then tried to check out the anime later and they changed so much/omitted a ton of stuff, it felt completely different. All of the sci;adv games are really good and interesting, but I never liked a single one of their adaptions so I think its still worth checking out the VNs at some point even if the anime wasn’t your thing.
Oh yeah yeah for sure!! I just remembered that the one I nominated was divided into chapters and was bored and curious enough to see how it would work for the current state of the club.
I instead have only ever watched the anime and I loved it so now I’m a lot more curious about the VN . I also don’t think I remember the anime at all at this point so it’s a good fresh start .
Developer: Liar-soft
VNDB Play Time: 8h26m
VNDB Link: Adabana Itan | vndb
Character count: Not on jpdb so not sure. Based on what I’ve heard, I’d estimate anywhere from 200-250k.
Number of weeks to finish: 9-12 weeks?
Summary
A girl finds herself in a dark and unfamiliar forest when a monster appears out of nowhere and attacks. A mysterious boy, wielding a brush as if it were a sword, appears just in time to cut down the monster.
He calls himself Kurofude, and he addresses the girl in a familiar tone as Shirohime. Yet she does not recognize him or the name he calls her. She has lost all of her memories.
According to Kurofude, they are in the land of Adabana, a realm of illustrated books. Their tales are like dreams; no matter how deeply one immerses oneself in them, once one wakes up, they are gone. Thus the name Adabana—a name given to flowers that will never bear fruit. Their duty is to travel through story realms and look for signs of distortions in the tales.
Shirohime, a girl with seemingly all the agency of a doll, accepts this explanation and opens a book handed to her. The title: Hanasaka Jiisan. As she opens the dilapidated illustrated book with its pages riddled with worm-eaten holes, the pages glow brightly and whisk the girl and boy away to a fairy tale realm…
The visual novel is relatively short and the genre is a lot different than the stuff we have read so far. It is also available on both steam & Switch so everyone should be able to participate. The art is also very beautiful.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Beautiful art
Can texthook
All the characters are voiced
Cons
It’s a Liar-soft game so the language is probably harder than anything we’ve read so far
Three routes (although it seems simple to go through them)
Steam version seems to be unavailable if you are in Europe so you would have to buy the game on JAST to play it on PC.
I’m trying to figure out what I could possibly nominate but it seems like all the things I come up with that could be interesting to the club are either too long, have +18 content on their PC version or are only on less convenient platforms…
Okay, let’s make a poll on what platforms everyone has available so I can discard some of those for good, and it might be useful for anyone thinking of nominating something, I’ll put the usual suspects when it comes (or came) to VNs but if you think I missed a relevant one please let me know. I know I’m going kinda pretty far back with some of these but…there are some DS and PSP gems if you ask me, and the VITA was the golden standard for console VNs like…yesterday
Please select all platforms on which you’d be able to play visual novels:
PC
Nintendo Switch
Mobile
PS VITA
PSP
Nintendo DS
Other (please specify in comments)
0voters
Of course this is not an official club poll, I’m just curious!
Edit: sorry to whoever had voted right after I posted, I realized I didn’t make it public and had to redoit
I had this same issue too when trying to look up VNs to nominate. There were a lot of VNs that looked really good but were only 18+ or the all-ages version was console exclusive. I wish they’d put the all-ages versions on PC too instead of just console, it’d make finding nominations a lot easier
Added it to the OP, also wanted to mention that the steam link is showing “error, unable to load information”, like I can’t even click it so the link is that broken for me. Might be better to make it into a normal link. The Nintendo store image link version works for some reason, but might be better to do the same to that one. Just in case it decides to break in the future.
Checking VNDB, it looks like the steam version is unavailable in most of Europe for some reason. I wonder if that is the issue? Either way, I edited it. The game can be bought on the JAST store if you are in Europe from what VNDB says, so I added that link too for people.
The obstacles are pretty obvious with the absurd length, but it’s sorta been my dream in the back of my head to one day do something like reread Higurashi with others here. It leans into anime nonsense a bit much but it’s also such an incredible piece of writing in so many ways, has stuck with me like few other things. Umineko I stalled out on for a bit now in the middle of arc 5 (in English) but it has some wild moments and seems extremely fun to have people discussing and theorizing about – it’s the kind of thing you hear people say is straight up their favorite piece of writing across any medium. But man would doing that truly take ages.
Kidnapped and taken to an unfamiliar location, nine people find themselves forced to participate in a diabolical Nonary Game by an enigmatic mastermind called Zero. Why were they there? Why were they chosen to put their lives on the line? And more importantly, who can be trusted?
more specific summary (not super spoilery but just in case):
Nine people have been kidnapped by a mysterious person called Zero and are forced to participate in a survival game called the “Nonary Game”. Each player has a bracelet numbered 1–9, which they must use to pass through doors numbered 1–9 to reach the exit before 9 hours run out and the ship in which they are in sinks. Various puzzles must be solved in order to advance through the ship and reach the exit, while uncovering the mysteries behind the Nonary Game.
Availability
Steam (includes second game) PS4 (includes second game) XBox (includes second game) DS (original version, not voiced)
PS Vita (includes second game)
mobile version technically exists but is weird apparently
Personal Opinion
999 was the first long-form thing I read in Japanese and I had a wonderful time with it! It’s the sort of thing that drags you along for the ride desperate to know what’s going on, which I think is really good for motivation. If you enjoy other mystery death game puzzley sorts of things I’d definitely recommend it (Spike Chunsoft is also known for such things as Danganronpa, AI: The Somnium Files, and Steins;Gate if that’s any indication); it’s also on the more well-known side as VNs go which could be cool. Schedule-wise I think it’d be pretty easy to figure out as well considering the structure of it, and I certainly have insight to provide there
Also don’t let the idea of sequel games scare you off, they’re there for you if you enjoy the first one but 999 can absolutely stand on its own.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
Most dialogue voiced
I believe text-hookable? I used game2text so
Clear structure
Well-known good old fun mystery VN! (8.29 on vndb)
Puzzles if you’re into that sort of thing
Available a lot of places apparently
Good balance of dialogue and narrative for reading practice (though there is a dialogue-only option if that appeals to you)
Cons
Not fully voiced
Covers a pretty wide breadth of topics, though weird vocabulary asides tend to be short-lived
Older style reading interface if that bothers you (see screenshots)
On the more expensive side, but it’s on sale like every other week it seems like
Putting this here in case anyone’s interested in a mini book club, but this game is limited to PSVita so it probably wouldn’t be possible for a proper pick sadly
Side Kicks! ( サイドキックス)
Developer: Extend & Toybox Inc.
VNDB Play Time: 18.5hr
VNDB Link: Side Kicks! | vndb
Character count: ?
Number of weeks to finish: don’t have a character count, but it seems to have 1 less route than B$ so I’d imagine a little less than the current schedule. The VNDB playtime is also significantly shorter, but there’s only one vote so it’s not as reliable
Summary from VNDB
Side Kicks: a newly established special investigation bureau within the Sakrada Police Force, located in California, designed to heighten the security of Sakrada City with their unique style of thinking and individual skill. Currently seeking additional members.
A city in California, USA — Sakrada. In recent years, the spread of a highly addictive drug, ‘Lipcode’, has been causing several issues in the sunny, quiet city located on the West Coast. In order to control cases like this, the Sakrada Police Force established a new organisation — a special investigation bureau made up of members with unique styles of thinking and their idiosyncratic skills, known as the Side Kicks.
Chika, who has exceptional athletic talent.
Hibari, the profiler who possesses a way with words.
Shishiba, the quiet hacker prodigy.
Rico, gifted with photographic memory.
Tatewaki, the leader in charge of the four.
The special investigation bureau has become well-known in the city for its ground-breaking investigation methods that are unlike anything ever seen before.
One day, the heroine Inori is scouted as a new member of Side Kicks. The skill she possesses…is the mysterious ability of clairvoyant dreams.
Availability
(the PSVita’s store)
Personal Opinion
It’s the previous game by the team behind Bustafellows so if you liked B$ you’ll probably like this one too! It also takes place in the US and has no major fantasy, scifi, or specialized vocab apart from police lingo. However the MC isn’t voiced (unlike Teuta).
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
everyone apart from the MC (and her inner thoughts) are voiced
has the usual modern VN options: save any time, backlog to read and re-listen to what was said
apart from some police jargon there’s no heavy fantasy, scifi, historical etc vocab or different dialects
engaging story
font is easy to read, and a lot of menu options are in english
9 hours 9 persons 9 doors my beloved I love Zero Escape so much, 999 in particular being one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve wanted to try reading it in Japanese for years, so if this is picked I’ll definitely read along!
Should probably mention there are some differences with the DS version (which is the original version, the rest are a remastered version). Most notable for the sake of language learning: the DS version isn’t voiced and iirc it has slightly different dialogue due to the nature of some scenes being rewritten for the dialogue-only option you mentioned.
yeah, I know Steam/PS4/Xbox all are remastered for sure. I think the Vita version might be remastered too? (just checked wikipedia: yes the vita version is the remaster) The way to tell is if it’s packaged as The Nonary Games, it’s the remaster.
mobile version is weird since it has an extra ending for some reason and doesn’t have the escape rooms, but I don’t think you can download it anymore anyway. I have no idea if it’s voiced since I haven’t played it, but I don’t think it is?
And here I was content to lurk in this thread until my all time favorite game was mentioned…
The mobile version of 999 is unvoiced, and notably does not include the puzzles. It’s not the ideal way to experience it but it is probably more streamlined if someone wouldn’t want to sit through all the puzzle solving.
As for the port, a lot of the narration that gets cut from ADV mode is IMO pretty critical, and NVL mode makes sure you won’t miss any details - but ADV mode is certainly faster and easier to parse given that it’s 100% voiced.
loving all the 999 talk! It’s easily in my top 3 games of all time and while I don’t know if I’d play it in Japanese, if it got picked I’d love to play in English alongside the group and help out that way
I also only ever played the trilogy through the original 3/DS games so i didn’t realize 999 got voiced in the remaster! I bought the steam version to force on lend to friends but sadly can’t play it on my mac otherwise I’d love to replay it voiced.
Edit: also didn’t realize they released a version without the puzzles! the story is definitely strong enough to be fun on its own but that’s missing out on a huge part of the experience. granted it would work great for a book club
. If you look at Tsui no Stella’s chapter divisions the numbers end up being a bit weird, but this is an example of a plan we could go for for an 8 week plan:
. That would be fun to read, but it also kinda feels a tiny bit like playing dirty in a sense 
. Brb looking for a >1M character VN.
I love Zero Escape so much, 999 in particular being one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve wanted to try reading it in Japanese for years, so if this is picked I’ll definitely read along!