So. Japan is odd. They've got magical girls, gross food that tastes of batteries and incredibly mascots for... air defense units?
Another odd tidbit of Japanese culture are visual novels and dating sims. As the name implies, visual novels are stories told in a mixed format of visually-aided, linguistically-illustrated formats, using different methods, such as full-screen boxes to little ones with visual aids, such as characters, backgrounds, and computer graphics.
In case that last paragraph made no sense, here's basically what I'm talking about.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel]
So, slow-paced stories with pictures and music. Perfect for... well, many kinds of stories, particularly romance. A dating sim is when RPG elements are introduced into the game.
Obviously, this arises another question: What is a visual novel in the games industry? They need programmers, artists, musicians, writers and producers, and if they are sold for money, marketers... just like a game. However, unless they are a dating sim, they probably won't have "game" elements.
For example:
Dating Sim - Cherry Tree Comedy Club. Free movement, technically a dating sim.
Also, pretty much anything by Hanako Games. Fate/Stay are also dating sims with RPG elements.
Visual Novel - Katawa Shoujo, School Days... lots and lots.
??? - This is where things get messy. You could argue that Ace Attorney is a visual novel because the "present item x to get response y and continue story" sequences are just an overly complicated dialougue tree. But, when you bring elements like non-standard flags and hit-points into it, it's harder to classify.
In the end, though, I played a few, and here are some shorter reviews of some. These might get full reviews, but, oh well...
[HEADING=2]Katawa Shoujo[/HEADING]
Why do I even need to tell you what this game is? You already know. It's cripple porn from 4-Chan. To elaborate, this game is about Hisao Nakai, a boy who has a heart attack after meeting up with his girlfriend-for-five-minutes, and goes to a complex high school specifically designed for disabled students.
There, he meets several characters, and the game is about getting to know them: their traumas, problems, and their ambitions, and resolving them. It's a very well made game; good writing, a well done moral - all the characters basically function as adults. For example, the deaf girl is a forceful and competetive student council leader, and the armless girl is an aspiring painter, whose only real struggle is understanding herself, nice art, and great music.
And it's for free!
Like, you can play it, right now. Don't let the "sexy crippled schoolgirls" laconic description get in the way. It's certainly a love-it-or-hate-it game.
...Ok, obviously, there's a lot more to say about it than that. The game's heroines all have baggage. Emi's lost her legs but she runs track, Hanako has horrible burns from a fire, but has found support in her blind friend (get it? She's bodily damages, the other's blind.. oh, that's a good idea for a sitcom) and tries to enjoy her life. All of the characters have problems not related directly to their disability. In the end, the moral of the story is...
Disabled people can still live a life they wish to
[Insert secondary moral based on chosen route here]
There are plenty of funny, heart-rending bits to put a backdrop against the game's many, many emotional and grand parts. The CGs and sprites use a bishoujo art style, similiar to Sailor Moon's or any other Magical Girls series, with a very mature twist which compliments the story. The music is also fucking brilliant. Seriously, there is not a bad, boring, or uncatchy song in this entire game.
In the end, Katawa Shoujo is a great example of how a game doesn't just need to be good; it needs to establish a community. These kinds of things that come into life on the Internet, like this game did, from a sketch by an artist called RAITA, and are then made and nurtured by people coming together, truly resonate with people. Ask an average person on the internet for a visual novel, you'll probably get this game. Or at least ask them for three, and this'll probably be on of them. It's truly a brilliant game, and it's like nothing I've ever played (read?) before.
[HEADING=2]Morenatsu[/HEADING]
Morenatsu is a lesser known but still cult-tastic visual novel that has been in development, on and off for about a decade by a small team of artists and writers. The game is a yaoi/bara work (more about that later) centered around childhood friends and character development. The main character returns to the village he grew up in from the busy and populated city, and from there, a long, long, character-driven plot that differs greatly from route-to-route.
Oh, and everyone's a furry. And I think there's a shotacon in there. No. Seriously. Furries. All of them. And on that note, so is this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlKDu_XtG_I]. I think those adverts are about juice or something, I don't know, the French are weird.
The game's history is such: In 2003, a kemono (an anime sub-culture centered around anthropomorphic animals.. so, Japanese furries, pretty much) artist called Keita Bantou, also called "Gamma", a well known mangaka in the furry community, decided he wanted to make a game. So he went to 2CH, Japan's equivalent of 4Chan, even more ruthless and memetic, and found a group of people interested in making this game with him.
Fast forward, like, 11 years, it's still not done. They're taking their sweet damn time, though, and what is finished (5 out of the 9 routes, still unfinished in terms of art) is available to play if this is kind of your thing.
Even so, the game is so ridiculously mushy and character-dependant that you can alter the sprites and CGs with Paint to be sexy animu girls or whatever your thing is and you can just pay attention to the story. There's also, like, nothing camp or gay about the game, except, well, being gay, so you don't have to worry about stereotypes.
Really, the worst thing about the game is a "put yourself here" protagonist that works on paper, but in practise, ends up with an uneven character who is inconsistent and bland. And this archetype is used constantly. When Katawa Shoujo didn't use it with Hisao, it was actually pretty noteworthy.
So, I used from pretty hate-garnering words there. Yaoi and bara. The manga industry in Japan is very interesting; there are manga for all people, from old to young, male or female, gay or straight, hypoglycemic or pushing up daisies. There's literally something for everyone.
And in that came a previously niche market now very notable called yaoi. Yaoi is, more or less, romantic stories about pretty boys, usually with dynamic roles - the uke and seme. Those are martial arts terms meaning "defender" and "attacker"... yeah, not much to be explain here that can't be done without the wonderful power of implication.
What makes yaoi so interesting is that it's predominantly made by women, though that's changing, to both outrage and welcome. So, except things that women find attractive - brooding personalities with soft and caring cores, handsome twenty somethings, and so much gurgle, romance and mush that you could slip on it and have fatal head trauma on a nearby coffee table.
Then there's bara, which is basically the same thing, except made by men. So, except to find thing men find attractive, like.. the exact opposite of the above.
Rule #1 of fujoshi (fangirl) circles: Never call bara yaoi, and vice versa. You will attract rage, hatred, and complete disgust.
Congratulations, you are now well versed on Japanese furries, illustrated porn by women, and how to behave in their circles. I'm so proud of you.
[HEADING=2]School Days[/HEADING]
What the hell, Japan? What the friggin' hell? School Days is an animated visual novel about a love triangle, between two girls and a guy. It's a deconstruction of, "what if a guy behaved like he was a protagonist of a visual novel overloaded with sexual content, but in real life?" The result is a complete clusterfuck of violence, hilariously cruel endings, more violence, fan diservice of the vilest kind, memes, and probably everything wrong with the manga idustry, played for laughs and irony.
The game is well known for most bad endings resulting in 1, 2, and sometimes 3 of the 3 main characters dying in horrible ways, usually at the hands of Big Tits McEmotionless.. sorry, I mean Kotanoha or Sekai.
And that's just the first game.
Sex, death, some plot, more plot, oh, third time lucky with the plot, then lots of sex. And it's all insanely Freudian, more insane...
Oh, I feel so sorry for the people who made this game. Were they bored? Did they need something to do for a few hours? Did they just want to? Did they do it because it would be funny? Why do most of the endings conclude the story with death, panty shots, stupidity, then more death?
Throughout the game, although I was certainly enjoying the good writing, and deliberate, defensive laughing of the cringe-inducing, gorny deaths, it suddenly struck me.
I can't remember much except from the death.
And that's what memes will do to you. They'll corrupt your life. Take it over. But I was safe. Yes, I'm still wearing that tin hat the Easter bunny gave to me for Christmas.
In the end, School Days is a novel little thing full of blood, sex and funny stuff that I'm probably being too hard on for... being full of blood, sex, and funny stuff. It's a smart look at romantic comedies, harem anime, and h-games, all while staying far above the smut it looks at, only dipping for the sake of comedy or your own disgusting tastes.
[HEADING=2]The Magical Diary[/HEADING]
The Magical Diary is a clean, diabetic, happy-lucky feel-good story by Hanako Games, now known for God Save the Queen, full of pink, fluffy death.
The Magical Diary is a look at pastiches of Harry Potter and The Worst Witch and similar things, fanfiction, and all that other stuff Harry Potter fans love.
This game is a dating sim; it contains RPG elements and gameplay-based puzzle solving. Which gives a basic distinction between the two genres.
The game begins with Mary Sue (no, that's her name) accidentally jumping, or more like floating, over a fence. Three years later, she is invited to a magical academy after being given The Choice: Go to the academy or get stripped of your powers and be inflicted with amnesia.
Obviously, that doesn't sound like much of a premise. But it's actually pretty well thought it, and it's analysed very closely. It basically asks one question:
"What if Harry Potter decided he didn't want to be a wizard?"
Many of the characters, a girl called Virginia in particular, are unsatisfied with their life as a Wizard in training. In fact, this is what two of the five routes are about.
Now, this game is an otome game: a "maiden" game. The main character is a girl. Duh. But, in a field like visual novels, most of the heroines (yes, even if they're male like in Morenatsu or this, they're still called heroines. Think of them are the "pursued" instead of heroines) are female, and the main character is male.
Otome games are still a growing genre, and most of them don't have any sexual content at all, like this game, because really, men writing stories about lesbians, but without the benefit of male gaze, is hard. Even moreso when writing about women seeking men. So, more often than not, the protagonist is made bisexual and the girls are given the interesting routes...
Which is absoloutely and completely averted with this game. Yes, there are female and male routes, but they're predominantly male, and the game world is a surprisingly expansive one. It'll take many many playthroughs, save scumming, new games and insane problem solving to learn everything there is to learn.
Oh, yeah, this game'll take you about 7 hours to beat, give or take, but there is an insane amount of content. It'll take a ton, at least 10, playthroughs to even get a vague idea of the game'a world, meaning that this is a game that you will need to buckle down and give a shit about.
Regardless, it's a very good game. The puzzle sections I was talking about earlier also take form in "exams", which are kind of interesting, but they're wasted to a degree. Every once in a while, you're placed in a dungeon by your professors to do an exam. A practical exam.
You have to use spells you've learned from classes you chose to find your way out of the dungeon and collect your Merits, which add up and get you benefits, such as... not getting kicked out of the school.
So, it's like God Save the Queen, but cheerier, less deathirific, and with even more stuff jammed into every single corner? ...Really, it's probably even darker, not directly, but in terms of lore and backstory, the game couldn't be darker.
Particularly interesting is Virginia. She comes from a magical family, and if she said no to the choice, then she would be taken away and given a life of solitude, never knowing that she had the potential to be a witch, or that magic even exists. Her route is mostly about getting over that, and talking about her problems... and there's a lot of talking. So much talking, in fact, that I think I muted about the bits not about "I hate my life" and "I want to be a rock star but I can't because that'll bring publicity to magic".
Again, I might sound far too harsh, but this is a good game. A really good game. It's very story-heavy, and you can tell how much fun the developers had reading bad Harry Potter fanction, throwing it all in a boiling pot, and then making a game about it.
[HEADING=2]In the end?[/HEADING]
Exactly. Two of the games here are western made, though there is no doubt a heavy eastern influence. Even the art styles are derived from anime. So are the stories.
So, visual novels are a decidedly a very Japanese thing, like sexy pillows and direct-to-DVD blockbusters. It's something that you just can't take out of Japan. They will always be looked on as something consistently and very Japanese. It's not until you realise that there's such a large western fanbase and culture behind them that fuels these games.
Then you realise that this recently-arisen sub-culture is just as dumb and otaku-ish as most western anime cultures. Not saying that every fandom is like that, but... seriously. They're the kind of people who seriously sprinkle their sentences with "desu", "kawaii" (without having any knowledge of what the word means. No, it does not mean cute. It just has a vague borderline similarity with the word) and other such drivel that it's hard to take them seriously when 10% of their total verbal sentences are Japanese they don't understand.
Even so, visual novels are still a pretty rich.. thing. There are a lot of visual novels, a lot of people making them, and a lot of fresh ideas for ones being made. Like weird manga about 12 year olds who use their dogs to turn into transformers or sculptures of some girl beating a guy up with an umbrella, they're something unmistakably Japanese, but that doesn't mean they are bad.
And, let's face it, Pheonix Wright is awesome, even if it is the weirdest thing ever.
[HEADING=2]Can major companies in the west make visual novels?[/HEADING]
No. They cannot. Any attempt has been utterly horrible. Any attempt has failed, with the loss of jobs, tears, and people looking at ugly screenshots and thinking, "ew". Only smaller indie projects like Hanako Games's efforts, Katawa Shoujo, and more one person-team projects than you could count that are like a pile of shit compared to anything Ubisoft makes in terms of the public spotlight.
Mostly because the west doesn't really understand why people watch anime, or play visual novels. Sure, you'll probably get lured into Kill la Kill by the sexy girls, but it'll be the story that keeps the fans interested. I mean, you don't get people gushing about how sexy Mako is anymore, you get insane, Seinfeldian discussions about how it symbolises puberty and sexual awakenings.
Which is kind of nonsenseical and insane but maybe slightly true.
Another odd tidbit of Japanese culture are visual novels and dating sims. As the name implies, visual novels are stories told in a mixed format of visually-aided, linguistically-illustrated formats, using different methods, such as full-screen boxes to little ones with visual aids, such as characters, backgrounds, and computer graphics.
In case that last paragraph made no sense, here's basically what I'm talking about.
So, slow-paced stories with pictures and music. Perfect for... well, many kinds of stories, particularly romance. A dating sim is when RPG elements are introduced into the game.
Obviously, this arises another question: What is a visual novel in the games industry? They need programmers, artists, musicians, writers and producers, and if they are sold for money, marketers... just like a game. However, unless they are a dating sim, they probably won't have "game" elements.
For example:
Dating Sim - Cherry Tree Comedy Club. Free movement, technically a dating sim.
Also, pretty much anything by Hanako Games. Fate/Stay are also dating sims with RPG elements.
Visual Novel - Katawa Shoujo, School Days... lots and lots.
??? - This is where things get messy. You could argue that Ace Attorney is a visual novel because the "present item x to get response y and continue story" sequences are just an overly complicated dialougue tree. But, when you bring elements like non-standard flags and hit-points into it, it's harder to classify.
In the end, though, I played a few, and here are some shorter reviews of some. These might get full reviews, but, oh well...
[HEADING=2]Katawa Shoujo[/HEADING]
Why do I even need to tell you what this game is? You already know. It's cripple porn from 4-Chan. To elaborate, this game is about Hisao Nakai, a boy who has a heart attack after meeting up with his girlfriend-for-five-minutes, and goes to a complex high school specifically designed for disabled students.
There, he meets several characters, and the game is about getting to know them: their traumas, problems, and their ambitions, and resolving them. It's a very well made game; good writing, a well done moral - all the characters basically function as adults. For example, the deaf girl is a forceful and competetive student council leader, and the armless girl is an aspiring painter, whose only real struggle is understanding herself, nice art, and great music.
And it's for free!
Like, you can play it, right now. Don't let the "sexy crippled schoolgirls" laconic description get in the way. It's certainly a love-it-or-hate-it game.
...Ok, obviously, there's a lot more to say about it than that. The game's heroines all have baggage. Emi's lost her legs but she runs track, Hanako has horrible burns from a fire, but has found support in her blind friend (get it? She's bodily damages, the other's blind.. oh, that's a good idea for a sitcom) and tries to enjoy her life. All of the characters have problems not related directly to their disability. In the end, the moral of the story is...
Disabled people can still live a life they wish to
[Insert secondary moral based on chosen route here]
There are plenty of funny, heart-rending bits to put a backdrop against the game's many, many emotional and grand parts. The CGs and sprites use a bishoujo art style, similiar to Sailor Moon's or any other Magical Girls series, with a very mature twist which compliments the story. The music is also fucking brilliant. Seriously, there is not a bad, boring, or uncatchy song in this entire game.
In the end, Katawa Shoujo is a great example of how a game doesn't just need to be good; it needs to establish a community. These kinds of things that come into life on the Internet, like this game did, from a sketch by an artist called RAITA, and are then made and nurtured by people coming together, truly resonate with people. Ask an average person on the internet for a visual novel, you'll probably get this game. Or at least ask them for three, and this'll probably be on of them. It's truly a brilliant game, and it's like nothing I've ever played (read?) before.
[HEADING=2]Morenatsu[/HEADING]
Morenatsu is a lesser known but still cult-tastic visual novel that has been in development, on and off for about a decade by a small team of artists and writers. The game is a yaoi/bara work (more about that later) centered around childhood friends and character development. The main character returns to the village he grew up in from the busy and populated city, and from there, a long, long, character-driven plot that differs greatly from route-to-route.
Oh, and everyone's a furry. And I think there's a shotacon in there. No. Seriously. Furries. All of them. And on that note, so is this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlKDu_XtG_I]. I think those adverts are about juice or something, I don't know, the French are weird.
The game's history is such: In 2003, a kemono (an anime sub-culture centered around anthropomorphic animals.. so, Japanese furries, pretty much) artist called Keita Bantou, also called "Gamma", a well known mangaka in the furry community, decided he wanted to make a game. So he went to 2CH, Japan's equivalent of 4Chan, even more ruthless and memetic, and found a group of people interested in making this game with him.
Fast forward, like, 11 years, it's still not done. They're taking their sweet damn time, though, and what is finished (5 out of the 9 routes, still unfinished in terms of art) is available to play if this is kind of your thing.
Even so, the game is so ridiculously mushy and character-dependant that you can alter the sprites and CGs with Paint to be sexy animu girls or whatever your thing is and you can just pay attention to the story. There's also, like, nothing camp or gay about the game, except, well, being gay, so you don't have to worry about stereotypes.
Really, the worst thing about the game is a "put yourself here" protagonist that works on paper, but in practise, ends up with an uneven character who is inconsistent and bland. And this archetype is used constantly. When Katawa Shoujo didn't use it with Hisao, it was actually pretty noteworthy.
So, I used from pretty hate-garnering words there. Yaoi and bara. The manga industry in Japan is very interesting; there are manga for all people, from old to young, male or female, gay or straight, hypoglycemic or pushing up daisies. There's literally something for everyone.
And in that came a previously niche market now very notable called yaoi. Yaoi is, more or less, romantic stories about pretty boys, usually with dynamic roles - the uke and seme. Those are martial arts terms meaning "defender" and "attacker"... yeah, not much to be explain here that can't be done without the wonderful power of implication.
What makes yaoi so interesting is that it's predominantly made by women, though that's changing, to both outrage and welcome. So, except things that women find attractive - brooding personalities with soft and caring cores, handsome twenty somethings, and so much gurgle, romance and mush that you could slip on it and have fatal head trauma on a nearby coffee table.
Then there's bara, which is basically the same thing, except made by men. So, except to find thing men find attractive, like.. the exact opposite of the above.
Rule #1 of fujoshi (fangirl) circles: Never call bara yaoi, and vice versa. You will attract rage, hatred, and complete disgust.
Congratulations, you are now well versed on Japanese furries, illustrated porn by women, and how to behave in their circles. I'm so proud of you.
[HEADING=2]School Days[/HEADING]
What the hell, Japan? What the friggin' hell? School Days is an animated visual novel about a love triangle, between two girls and a guy. It's a deconstruction of, "what if a guy behaved like he was a protagonist of a visual novel overloaded with sexual content, but in real life?" The result is a complete clusterfuck of violence, hilariously cruel endings, more violence, fan diservice of the vilest kind, memes, and probably everything wrong with the manga idustry, played for laughs and irony.
The game is well known for most bad endings resulting in 1, 2, and sometimes 3 of the 3 main characters dying in horrible ways, usually at the hands of Big Tits McEmotionless.. sorry, I mean Kotanoha or Sekai.
And that's just the first game.
Sex, death, some plot, more plot, oh, third time lucky with the plot, then lots of sex. And it's all insanely Freudian, more insane...
Oh, I feel so sorry for the people who made this game. Were they bored? Did they need something to do for a few hours? Did they just want to? Did they do it because it would be funny? Why do most of the endings conclude the story with death, panty shots, stupidity, then more death?
Throughout the game, although I was certainly enjoying the good writing, and deliberate, defensive laughing of the cringe-inducing, gorny deaths, it suddenly struck me.
I can't remember much except from the death.
And that's what memes will do to you. They'll corrupt your life. Take it over. But I was safe. Yes, I'm still wearing that tin hat the Easter bunny gave to me for Christmas.
In the end, School Days is a novel little thing full of blood, sex and funny stuff that I'm probably being too hard on for... being full of blood, sex, and funny stuff. It's a smart look at romantic comedies, harem anime, and h-games, all while staying far above the smut it looks at, only dipping for the sake of comedy or your own disgusting tastes.
[HEADING=2]The Magical Diary[/HEADING]
The Magical Diary is a clean, diabetic, happy-lucky feel-good story by Hanako Games, now known for God Save the Queen, full of pink, fluffy death.
The Magical Diary is a look at pastiches of Harry Potter and The Worst Witch and similar things, fanfiction, and all that other stuff Harry Potter fans love.
This game is a dating sim; it contains RPG elements and gameplay-based puzzle solving. Which gives a basic distinction between the two genres.
The game begins with Mary Sue (no, that's her name) accidentally jumping, or more like floating, over a fence. Three years later, she is invited to a magical academy after being given The Choice: Go to the academy or get stripped of your powers and be inflicted with amnesia.
Obviously, that doesn't sound like much of a premise. But it's actually pretty well thought it, and it's analysed very closely. It basically asks one question:
"What if Harry Potter decided he didn't want to be a wizard?"
Many of the characters, a girl called Virginia in particular, are unsatisfied with their life as a Wizard in training. In fact, this is what two of the five routes are about.
Now, this game is an otome game: a "maiden" game. The main character is a girl. Duh. But, in a field like visual novels, most of the heroines (yes, even if they're male like in Morenatsu or this, they're still called heroines. Think of them are the "pursued" instead of heroines) are female, and the main character is male.
Otome games are still a growing genre, and most of them don't have any sexual content at all, like this game, because really, men writing stories about lesbians, but without the benefit of male gaze, is hard. Even moreso when writing about women seeking men. So, more often than not, the protagonist is made bisexual and the girls are given the interesting routes...
Which is absoloutely and completely averted with this game. Yes, there are female and male routes, but they're predominantly male, and the game world is a surprisingly expansive one. It'll take many many playthroughs, save scumming, new games and insane problem solving to learn everything there is to learn.
Oh, yeah, this game'll take you about 7 hours to beat, give or take, but there is an insane amount of content. It'll take a ton, at least 10, playthroughs to even get a vague idea of the game'a world, meaning that this is a game that you will need to buckle down and give a shit about.
Regardless, it's a very good game. The puzzle sections I was talking about earlier also take form in "exams", which are kind of interesting, but they're wasted to a degree. Every once in a while, you're placed in a dungeon by your professors to do an exam. A practical exam.
You have to use spells you've learned from classes you chose to find your way out of the dungeon and collect your Merits, which add up and get you benefits, such as... not getting kicked out of the school.
So, it's like God Save the Queen, but cheerier, less deathirific, and with even more stuff jammed into every single corner? ...Really, it's probably even darker, not directly, but in terms of lore and backstory, the game couldn't be darker.
Particularly interesting is Virginia. She comes from a magical family, and if she said no to the choice, then she would be taken away and given a life of solitude, never knowing that she had the potential to be a witch, or that magic even exists. Her route is mostly about getting over that, and talking about her problems... and there's a lot of talking. So much talking, in fact, that I think I muted about the bits not about "I hate my life" and "I want to be a rock star but I can't because that'll bring publicity to magic".
Again, I might sound far too harsh, but this is a good game. A really good game. It's very story-heavy, and you can tell how much fun the developers had reading bad Harry Potter fanction, throwing it all in a boiling pot, and then making a game about it.
[HEADING=2]In the end?[/HEADING]
Exactly. Two of the games here are western made, though there is no doubt a heavy eastern influence. Even the art styles are derived from anime. So are the stories.
So, visual novels are a decidedly a very Japanese thing, like sexy pillows and direct-to-DVD blockbusters. It's something that you just can't take out of Japan. They will always be looked on as something consistently and very Japanese. It's not until you realise that there's such a large western fanbase and culture behind them that fuels these games.
Then you realise that this recently-arisen sub-culture is just as dumb and otaku-ish as most western anime cultures. Not saying that every fandom is like that, but... seriously. They're the kind of people who seriously sprinkle their sentences with "desu", "kawaii" (without having any knowledge of what the word means. No, it does not mean cute. It just has a vague borderline similarity with the word) and other such drivel that it's hard to take them seriously when 10% of their total verbal sentences are Japanese they don't understand.
Even so, visual novels are still a pretty rich.. thing. There are a lot of visual novels, a lot of people making them, and a lot of fresh ideas for ones being made. Like weird manga about 12 year olds who use their dogs to turn into transformers or sculptures of some girl beating a guy up with an umbrella, they're something unmistakably Japanese, but that doesn't mean they are bad.
And, let's face it, Pheonix Wright is awesome, even if it is the weirdest thing ever.
[HEADING=2]Can major companies in the west make visual novels?[/HEADING]
No. They cannot. Any attempt has been utterly horrible. Any attempt has failed, with the loss of jobs, tears, and people looking at ugly screenshots and thinking, "ew". Only smaller indie projects like Hanako Games's efforts, Katawa Shoujo, and more one person-team projects than you could count that are like a pile of shit compared to anything Ubisoft makes in terms of the public spotlight.
Mostly because the west doesn't really understand why people watch anime, or play visual novels. Sure, you'll probably get lured into Kill la Kill by the sexy girls, but it'll be the story that keeps the fans interested. I mean, you don't get people gushing about how sexy Mako is anymore, you get insane, Seinfeldian discussions about how it symbolises puberty and sexual awakenings.
Which is kind of nonsenseical and insane but maybe slightly true.
