I might be interested in joining, depending on the visual novel. Most things would be fine, really. I actually started reading a pretty simple one called uh… looks it up
It’s ok, but kind of introductory.
It has its funny moments, simple dialog, etc.
What me and a friend did was choose characters and read the lines out loud, but that’s because it was just the two of us. Reading it through and then talking about it is also fine.
About the choices, we could always vote whenever one appears, but maybe some simple choices would make it so we’re pausing every few minutes.
Someone who already read it could check the routes or major questions and separate it into chunks.
I think this one was available for free in a site for Japanese indie games, and there were some other ones in there, iirc.
But I would prefer not to read something bland just because it’s easy.
Also, sorry, I’ve just been lurking, but it’s because I don’t have any strong feelings or good suggestions at the moment. I might join, depending on what gets picked, and if I have time to participate, so I’m just silently hanging out and watching the discussion.
I think that might work? For the majority, simply setting one’s system locale (which doesn’t actually affect time/language/etc on its own) is usually plenty. The one I was talking about was a bit of a special case, for which I know there’s a sort of… “locale emulator.” Probably would just not pick one that requires that much effort unless we just really have everyone wanting it and saying that’s fine. And especially for our early choices, I think we’re leaning towards a lot of ones that just work through Steam or the like, something convenient.
Yeah exactly! To the best of my ability I’m just going out and searching for people’s perspectives on reading them in Japanese too, and will do that more when we’ve properly nominated, but that’s of course limited in results. I’m totally down with all your choices, and I’ve personally been rather wanting to check out the 9-nine series…
It’s short, the Steam version has the sexual content cut… there are a few routes but I mean, what better thing to first associate everyone’s opinions of this club with, right?! I read it in English a long time ago, heh.
I haven’t heard of the one you’re talking about reading, but good to know! Assuming enough people do want to stay on the same general route, I think your suggestion is close to how that would look. I guess I was thinking more voting on the total route than a given choice, but as you say, that’ll have to come down to how the VN is structured. Some don’t make what their routes are clear but have just a few big choices, which would suit that well. Others might have a bunch of small choices that culminate in getting X route but the route being mapped to a person or something makes what the routes are broadly fairly obvious. Etc. Will have to handle that on a per game basis somewhat.
Damn, no Hanahira then. I’m gonna do my best to estimate and see that we find things not offputtingly hard for someone who has a semi-competent grasp on assisted (texthooked) reading, which tbh I’m probably only slightly above. But we’ll definitely be going for something that looks interesting to people above all else!
Hope to see you then, I’ve been away from the shared book clubs too long
Haha, I was just going off of the quick synopsis I saw in the link. Just made me laugh a bit at the similarities with the whole “closet otaku and only her brother knows her secret” thing.
For sure! Honestly, I’m pretty open to pretty much all kinds of content, so what gets picked isn’t going to be the big killer, it’s going to be the time factor. I had, like, a month where I tried to not join as many of the book clubs and focus on finishing what I’ve started, which meant that I put down Way of the Househusband after the first volume (with an intent to return later)… but then picked up checks notes three or four other series instead, and while I have finished the manga series I was reading on my own, I also immediately replaced that with a novel that my tutor recommended to me, so I’m failing pretty hard at the “slow down and finish things before picking up more stuff to do”.
Either way, if I have the time, I’ll definitely try and be here!
Oh yeah I had totally forgotten about that! Thanks for bringing it up. I believe it should also allow for a quick language swap with a button, which might be preferable for some people. But yeah, that helps lower the barrier to entry even more. Of course we’ll be around to answer questions anyway, but with even the short VNs having quite a lot of text, I imagine some people would very much like a way to double check (with the strong warning about localization changing things, of course).
When it comes to the VNs that are not too long, very good, without hentai content, on Steam, and in Japanese, I wholeheartedly second PARQUET. While "9 -nine- " as a whole is pretty long, it’s episodic structure might help.
Also, I haven’t seen anyone mentioning ATRI yet - it’s also great and seems to fit the thread’s requirements
I’d be down for (re) playing this in Japanese if we stop wanting to go for short, linear vns. Since I’ve played it already (even if it was a long time ago and I don’t remember details) I might not even care much about the order… Not totally sure about that, haha!
I like visual novels, so I would be happy to talk about them with other people. I think planning this is going to be tricky but actually, for what I could read so far, most of them are divided into chapters. We just don’t know how many pages are in a chapter and it can sometimes be quite long. Also, I think it would be a pity to limit the choices to non multiple choices VN because it would drastically limit our choices of games (to my opinion), though, it is going to be really tricky to plan and to discuss.
Moreover, I don’t think VN are that long, compared to a book. What usually takes a lot of time is doing all of the endings and routes (in multiple choices games at least).
Anyway, I am quite excited by this idea.
That’s great! Yeah I know what you mean, there’s often something like that. It would just require someone to have foreknowledge of the structure, but that second part is the real killer for scheduling. Sometimes they vary wildly and unless someone is on hand who is pretty confident about their memory of how parts go, I can’t think of a good answer to not end up trying to commit to a schedule that might be an absolute killer. Could adjust if we come across something and try to be flexible I guess, but there’s only so much last minute changing we can accommodate before it feels like we just shouldn’t try, you know? It’s tricky.
Yeah I think we’re in agreement there, this club is going to expand on that point in the future. We’re leaning towards going for an easy opening with a VN without choices while we find our footing, but we can’t restrict those forever.
Yeah, I guess it’s just that I’m thinking of doing all routes as basically my definition of a “full” playthrough of a VN. Cause there’s definitely variance in length of both books and VNs, but I’d say VNs for sure lean longer if we mean all routes. jpdb.io is useful there too since you can see word counts of VNs – while comparing word count between Japanese and English can be a little weird, it’s very much not uncommon for several VNs there to be longer than, say, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (at 481k words, first comparison point I stumbled on lol). A ton of the well regarded ones that aren’t are at least 200-300k, which is not a small commitment!
I’m actually currently reading Umineko in English, which I will readily say is an extreme exception, but I can’t resist mentioning it for fun. It’s like double the length of War and Peace or something ridiculous. With over 80 hours logged I’m nearing the halfway point
Anyway, I do think eventually we’ll probably want to expand to at least sort of “medium length” VNs because that widens our options considerably, but drop out is going to be a real concern for sure.
My guess is that we should start with very famous novels because maybe we could find the structure somewhere already, or I hope so at least.
Another concern is : what platform are we going to use ? Because, games consoles (Switch, PlayStation,…) are very expensive. However, a lot of VN on Steam are not compatible with Mac Apple Well, I guess we could leave that problem aside for now, as the most famous ones are easily accessible (like Umineko, as you mentioned, is accessible quite everywhere).
Obviously, I don’t raise concerns to make other people scared or to demotivate them. Complicated doesn’t mean impossible. And I think we should just give a try and adjust as time goes on, that’s the only solution I think.
Must admit I hadn’t considered compatibility outside Windows at all, heh. Was thinking anything we’d pick would be on PC at minimum, which would be reasonably accessible. Like I’m going to definitely ensure there is an easy to purchase version in Japanese from Steam or one of the big VN seller websites that doesn’t require people to go through any crazy hoops, console releases and the like are a nice bonus, but I’m not sure if there’s more I can do beyond that, you know?
On a slightly related note, VNs usually aren’t CRAZY expensive but some definitely are moreso than books and I don’t really like the idea of a club with socioeconomic barriers so when I make the real club, if I can skirt the edge of WK’s rules without attracting attention, I kind of wanted to drop my Discord name or something with a “if you can’t join the club for monetary reasons, message this address to complain and certainly nothing will happen in response ”, but uhh, we’ll see?
Of course, you can’t really do anything about the compatibility problem and I wouldn’t expect that. As I said, most famous ones are accessible almost on every platform. The problem might for more… Niche ones ?
The PC accessible ones tend to be quite cheap indeed, but the ones one Switch are crazy expensive (well, Switch games prices). But honestly, I don’t think we are going to run into these (looks like a lot of them are otome, so mh… Quite a niche).
I don’t think we’d necessarily need to start with anything famous. I don’t mind looking up guides so you can easily see how things are split up (usually a guide will list chapters, choices etc). A potential possibility would be if we all followed the same route to have some type of schedule as “reach x choice by a certain date” or if its split into chapters then try to get to x chapter by a certain date. I think in the end a definitive schedule will be a bit hard to achieve and since it sounds like our first VN will be something kinetic/short, it will at least give us an idea of how a free-for-all type format works.
Although if we do end up choosing something that people have read before, we can ask them if they have a general idea on structing for it. For example, if we ever chose Flowers, I know the game is split into chapters, each chapter is roughly the same length, the branching is very simple in the game etc so I would be able to provide an okay estimate of a schedule I think. So maybe we can ask around once we choose a game to see if someone has experience with it?
Not totally sure about that, haha!
Well, I guess we could leave that problem aside for now, as the most famous ones are easily accessible (like Umineko, as you mentioned, is accessible quite everywhere).