No problem! I think Steins;gate is quite a good entry point to see if you gel with the vibe of the series. My personal favourite is chaos;child, but steins;gate is definitely close behind. I have only played steins;gate in English, so it would be fun to play it in Japanese at some point…
Chaos;Child took me almost 150 hours to read completely in Japanese [but take that as an upper bound as I’m pretty slow at reading and get distracted easily], so there’s definitely a lot of reading material if you end up enjoying these games.
Would you like to do a VN book club, official or unofficial, starting September 1st (just to give everyone a few days to get it). It would be fun to read a brand new VN together! Of course, we have no idea of how long it will be, how difficult, if it’s hookable or anything, but that’s what’s fun about reading something new…
I was planning on reading it so if we make an unofficial club for it I’ll definitely join and post my thoughts on the VN The VN should be on the shorter side so I don’t think it’ll be a big time commitment for anyone else that is interested.
Haha almost none I guess, only the “official” ones have a fixed start date and are supposed to stop at some point so the next pick can start, but the unofficial can have whatever schedule they decide!
Unofficial/informal clubs can just be started by whomever at whatever time they like, usually for exactly one piece or series of media, and follow whatever format the participants want.
Official/structured clubs have that whole “voting for what to read, reading one thing at a time with a schedule, then voting for the next thing” structure.
It’s almost September 1st. Do you want a longer hiatus? Do you want to have another poll and start an official book club, or do you want to wait a little longer? Should we have an unofficial book club now?
@AzusaChan if we make an unofficial book club for Everlasting Flowers, do you want to make it? Or do you want me to do it? I don’t want to step in and potentially step on someone’s toes, so please let me know what you want! Or do you want to start a vote for the next official book club, and hope that Everlasting Flowers win? Or do you want me to start a vote for the next official book club? I’m happy either way!
If you want to make the thread, I am okay with that If you need any help with it though or would prefer for me to do it, I can help as well.
I’m fine with doing whatever the rest of the group wants. If there is interest in doing another poll and reading together as an official club we can try that. If not, I’m fine with a small unofficial club reading Everlasting Flowers since I planned on reading that either way.
Now’s not a great time for me with all the many things I’m in the midst of, but they’re really emphasizing that Everlasting Flowers isn’t intended to be lengthy on the Steam page, heh, so maybe I can try to join in for that wherever it happens.
Has anyone else been keeping an eye on that new Switch VN, Emio? I’ve never played Famicom Detective Club stuff, but it looks like a fun spooky mystery, and reviews have been reasonably positive. Sounds like it might be more in the ~20 hour range, so short compared to a lot of VNs, heh. Gameplay seems a little more involved, more actual investigation rather than choices for multiple endings. I’m very tempted to try it, figured why not talk about it if anyone else is interested. Comes out tomorrow! I haven’t tried it, but there’s also a demo apparently.
This is just kind of random VN related musing, but I started Steins;Gate and I know a lot of people end up not liking or even dropping Chaos;Head because they don’t like the protagonist… but THIS guy is fine? I’m like 2 days into reading this and already hate him more than almost any character I’ve ever seen.
Haha you’re not alone, he’s not very popular around here either it even made some people drop reading completely. I managed to enjoy the VN all the way anyway but might be biased as I saw it as very special as it was my first one. And I think I started it right after Wonderful Everyday Down the Rabbit-Hole so I guess anything seems light after that
Edit: Oops somehow thought you were talking about ISLAND because the title of the thread contains “Now reading: ISLAND”. Maybe we should change that
Haha no worries – I’ve dropped that part from the title for now.
Oh I didn’t know anyone here had read Subahibi; that’s an experience
Yeah I’m waiting for Steins;Gate anime fans, if nothing else, to get mad about this. But so far I’m reading a guy declaring himself a mad scientist and ascribing everything he sees to “the organization” and within ~15k characters it’s already exhausting, and the other primary character is ditzy anime girl trope enough that I’m worried she might have a concussion
Steins;Gate is one of my favorite VNs but I absolutely hate the anime All of the Sci;Adv games have really bad adaptions but I remember trying the anime right after reading the VN and being so disappointed in it. Not sure how the adaption became so popular.
I did read C;H and S;G like a decade ago so my memory isn’t that great but I didn’t have any issues with the MC in either of them from what I can remember. The one in C;H is kind of pathetic at times but the way its written, it fits the story really well so it didn’t bother me the same way it would in a slice of life type story. The S;G MC is kind of eccentric I guess? His character grew on me throughout the story but I don’t remember ever hating him.
C;H guy never bothered me at all, being pathetic in that way made sense and he was kinda self aware about it? I am VERY early in S;G of course so we’ll see. I had gotten the impression from everyone that S;G’s anime adaptation was actually good, but from what you’re saying I’m guessing it’s the same sort of thing as Higurashi – there are lots of Higu anime fans but at least if you are familiar with the VN, the anime seems to really heavily lose like all of the depth that the VN has and turn in into a gore show without the same heart to it.
For what it’s worth I’ve read both Chaos;head (well, almost, I have like three endings left in Noah currently) and Steins;Gate and found both protagonists worked well enough for the story being told.
Though just as a side note, of those two I only read Chaos;head in Japanese, because I read Steins;Gate before I started studying Japanese.
The VN should be on the shorter side so I don’t think it’ll be a big time commitment for anyone else that is interested.
it even made some people drop reading completely. I managed to enjoy the VN all the way anyway but might be biased as I saw it as very special as it was my first one. And I think I started it right after Wonderful Everyday Down the Rabbit-Hole so I guess anything seems light after that 
All of the Sci;Adv games have really bad adaptions but I remember trying the anime right after reading the VN and being so disappointed in it. Not sure how the adaption became so popular.