A medium for me
I was probably 14 when I played my first visual novel. I had a friend at that time who was big into anything obscure, Japanese, and somewhat techy, and he used to wear his love for the Ace Attorney franchise on his sleeve like a badge of honor. This was the time when weebdom was in its infancy, of course, so anything not under the narrow umbrella of Saturday morning dubbed action anime wasn't really in vogue. People didn't bully you for it per se, but it was understood as being a niche that you kept at arms length. "We won't mess with you, but don't try to stand out too much." You read the room, and let the nerds and weebs keep to themselves. That kind of thing.
Alas, I was someone terminally incapable of reading said room. Never had been great at it. I remember distinctly being told by someone in primary school[1] that they wanted me to quit reading books at lunch break because they didn't need "another Alan" [2].
But that kind of thing made me obstinate. So I read many, many novels in primary school. And I also made an effort to jive with my friend's hobbies, no matter how obscure, or Japanese, or weeby they were. My friends had long hair, so I grew my hair out. I played the guitar like them. I parrotted their opinions and thoughts and feelings like they were my own. And of course, I got into visual novels. A choice which set me down the path I stand on today, writing this entry.
My first toe in the water was, naturally, the Phoenix Wright series. And it was a shocking experience for sure. Booting it up on my hacked DS, the only inkling I had was that it would be some bizarre kind of courtroom simulator, and I had nothing but questions about how that would work. The last thing I was expecting, really, was that it wouldn't really be much of a game at all, but a window into a kind of dynamic, textual experience not really seen elsewhere.
There's debate about what constitutes a Visual Novel. I'm not really one for that kind of argument. To me, if it's notable enough to trigger the debate, then that proves there's a commonality there. Some meat, or value to dig into. Why throw away good works of art just because they're not meeting arbitrary lines in the sand? Heck, what makes Visual Novels special to me is precisely that playfulness with medium. I want my media to defy categorization, to show me new ways to exist and tell stories and to connect. To be weird.
For me, there's only really one constant, perhaps two, I would assign to the medium. Rule 1 of VN club: You have to be about text. [3]
I love the written word. I love art, and music too, but it's the word, and the wit behind the word, that has always kept me captivated. There's a magic to saying things——a study I've yet to crack——where you can charm and convince; make the most minor of things meaningful; conjure visions of extravagant fantasy castles, flying elephants, intoxicating love; all manner of superhuman feats. So of course I love novels as well.
But where these visual ones excel, I think, is in their capability of toying with the writer-reader relationship. A novel can only be read in one way, the temporal arrow of time starting from the writer and ending at the reader. But a digital medium allows for a back and forth. I'm not talking the macro existence of choices that branch the story——I find these get overused and abused in many cases. See: Tookyo Game's HUNDRED LINE——but the ability to anticipate and accommodate for the many ways the player engages with the experience.
In Ace Attorney's case, the game doesn't have choices in any real sense. But yet, the player can share authorship with the writer. When the court proceedings take place, the reader is able to press and push on many different statements, seeing sides and discussions of the debate that wouldn't appear in a traditional, linear narrative. The flow is linear, but the experience is not. As a reader, this gives a unique sense of ownership of perspective, which a novel wouldn't be able to provide.
Perhaps the most infamous examples of this dynamism are in the Infinity series——Ever17, Remember11, etc——and Zero Escape. In these VNs, the reader is given choices, but the underlying expectation is that they will eventually choose all of them. In fact, not doing so would be fairly strange, and confusing. It's through the interleaving narrative, brought about by reading both sides of the choice coin, that these works even function, and their existence fascinates me. Ever17 was what my friend had to recommend me after the Ace Attorney series, and you could say I never truly recovered.
And there's other examples too. I'm particularly fond of how, say, Umineko uses even the structure of its episodes and the character profiles to communicate its themes. Or how White Album 2 toys with hiding scenes in earlier chapters that only unlock on a reread. In a more recent example, Black Sheep Town has a fascinating structure where a linear narrative is eschewed for a diverse web of short stories, inviting the reader to approach it in any order they wish.
But even beyond this metafictional dance of reader and writer, I'm smitten with Visual Novels. I'm not sure why that is, but I can hazard some guesses. There's a visual novel I read when I was around 15 called Quartett!. I saw a readthrough on 4chan, back when the internet seemed much smaller and more laissez-faire, and was enraptured with this creation I saw.
Part of it was Oyari Ashito's art, which within his Littlewitch works was at its best——rich, beautiful, and full of color——but even before that the unique, eye-catching presentation really struck a chord. I'd read my fill of manga, of course, but this was something entirely new. A carefree fancy of music, visuals and animation which beckoned the reader into its world. I think this was around the time webcomics were starting to hit it big, right before Homestuck eked out its own niche in the world, and this creation seemed to fit square in the no-man's-land of a digital novel where the player's choices mattered and a striking, well-illustrated comic.
I downloaded it that night, and was very, very shocked to learn that this work of art was also very, very naughty. I turned red in the face, and had to make sure my parents weren't about to walk in on me. But even that was fun, and I felt a few barriers in my mind crumble that night, never to return.
I'm aware now, 15 years later, that Oyari Ashito might be a tad problematic. As you get older, your thoughts and feelings on lolicon begin to change, I think, and you start to question your former biases and the things you assumed were normal. But still, even within its strange, perverted niche, the artistry and zeal that spoke to me that night was real. And I've been chasing that ever since, I think.
I've read many, many Visual Novels now, in both Japanese and English. And from time to time I still encounter that thrill: A new way to play with the medium, a clever twist on dialog or narration, a mind-bending story structure. I'm ravenous for anything new and inventive, and especially back then the hits would keep on coming.
These days, eroge are most certainly dead. Japan used to be the forefront for new, inventive digital novels, but their capital was spent, and the slim pickings of moege had started to wear thin even my patience. I was out of the game for quite a few years before starting this blog. But there's a revival on the horizon, I feel.
I first sensed it with Disco Elysium——No, let me finish. I consider DE to be a decade, maybe two ahead of its time. And while it might not fit into those traditional trappings of being a visual novel, it's undoubtedly a text-driven collaboration between writer and reader. It may present as an RPG, but in practice it sheds the usual pretense of being about victory or failure like a true video game, in favor of a rich choice and roleplay system——encouraging the reader to explore and engross themselves in the many novels worth of gorgeous prose and worldbuilding it has on offer. I feel strongly that DE could have done away with its top-down view, and been just as effective in its arena. But people don't need to fight me on this.
Reading Disco, I sensed that hunger in me for more. And I've found other modern Visual Novels willing to satiate me for a while. Slay the Princess was a great one, I felt, with excellent prose, captivating style and a plot structure to die for[4].
Most recently, I played Misericorde, which I think represents most clearly why I have new hope for the industry at large. I felt a drive there to make a unique work of fiction that pushed this visual novel field forward. Something aiming higher than wish-fulfillment romance, or slice-of-life escapades that end with 'life is worth living' drivel. The prose is strong and witty, the use of the medium inventive, adeptly swapping between ADV and NVL, and there's a craft there that connects visuals, text and sound into a whole beyond its separate parts. I like it a lot. Let's never define VN as 'uses the default textbox in Ren'py and has the characters stand facing the viewer at half distance' again, shall we?
So in short, I'm excited about Visual Novels again, possibly more than I have been in a decade. And that brings us to this blog.
I made a promise to myself this year that I would start to break out of my shell. I needed to stop hiding myself away, and find an outlet for all the thoughts and creative juices in my head. I'm an inherently opinionated person, and for the longest time——too long——I've let my opinions gnaw away at me. I'm the influenced, not the influencer, I'd tell myself, and keep my mouth damn shut. If somebody else broached the subject, then I can play second fiddle, but I had to match their tune.
But that isn't any way to live. I love Visual Novels! I'm overflowing with thoughts and ideas about them. Heck. I love all sorts of things, weeby or otherwise. So, I thought, why not spread the love? Maybe somebody will see it, maybe they won't. But that doesn't matter. I wanted to write more things, make things, translate things, share things, and this is as good a place to do it as any.
So hello. I'm Twog. Welcome to my blog.
お会いできてうれしーなぁ！！
