Video: A Defense of Visual Novels

I learned about an interesting YouTube video about visual novels titled A Defense of Visual Novels: What are They and What They Do Well through an email exchange with the creator. I have been collecting materials for a future article on making the most of the visual novel medium, so I can now add this in-depth video take to the collection. If you are interested in visual novels, the video comes with my recommendation. Below, I highlight a few points for emphasis. Zalor distinguished visual novel story-telling and narrative from books/short stories and video games by noting that visual novel dialogue tends to focus extensively on the internal mental state of the narrator. He attributes this in part to the fact that the “visual” aspect of visual novels relieves the narrator of some of the scene-description burden. I agree with Zalor’s take despite never having put it in these exact terms (I will note however that some Japanese light novel protagonists (looking at you, Hikagaya Hachiman) have similar tendencies). I touched on this idea indirectly in my reviews of two versions of The Dandelion Girl visual novel (see the 2016 version review and the original 2010 version review) where I compared them to the short story on which they are based. Zalor used the incisive term “linear relationship with a nonlinear narrative.” This refers to a scenario where a visual novel has meaningful choices and branching paths, but most players would be disinclined to pursue one set of choices or path for narrative reasons. This touches on an interesting challenge in making games with branching narratives: How do you incentivize the player (or reader) to pursue different branches? None of the novels I have reviewed thus far are great examples of inspiring players to have a linear relationship with a nonlinear narrative, although I would submit Shiroi Printer and its late-breaking branch as a small-scale example. Outside of my review selection, I immediately thought of the three-part Zero Escape series, especially parts two (Virtue’s Last Reward) and three (Zero Time Dilemma) as interesting examples in that they “require” the player to more or less make every choice, good and bad, to complete the game. (The first part of the Zero Escape series, 999: Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Nine Doors, is my favorite of the three.) Zalor took the position, with which I agree, that a visual novel which takes full advantage of the medium is a work that could not have been done better in another medium. Returning to my reviews of two visual novel adaptations of Dandelion Girl, one issue I had to work through in my reviews is that both, while decent visual novels, compare unfavorably to Robert F. Young’s short story. But I have reviewed a few visual novels that go above and beyond in taking advantage of the medium. A few fun examples: Collage, Summer, Cicadas, and the Girl, and the beyond-categorization Crimsoness. I also agree with Zalor that visual novels with straight-forward or linear narratives can take advantage of the medium through their presentation. He discusses Narcissu, which I reviewed, in some detail, and I agree with his assessment of its aesthetics (although I do not like Narcissu as much as he does). Some other good examples from my review collection are Christmas Tina (the evolution of Narcissu’s cinematic style), May Sky (captures the essece of spring with limited means), Until We Meet Again (the most impressive visual effort from al|together), and LoveChoice (charming visuals, albeit let down by its clunky English translation). Zalor weighed in on many weightier visual novel and media topics that I may reserve for future article projects (I have a visual novel-to-anime idea related to point three), so I will leave my short notes here for now.