Are Visual Novels Becoming Too Much of The Same Thing?

[Lunethex]

In most Japanese visual novels, and perhaps some fan made ones, the writers are usually always using a High School setting and kids barely out of puberty. I do not understand, to be honest. From many Google searches and what I have observed from the sidelines, I see that many, many of them do this, but it doesn't really leave much room for being unique, does it? If not High School settings, they just go for the "Main character out of high school but still under anxiety" approach. I'm sure the fan base for these types of things is high, but it really gets...same-y after a while.

Most of the time when they do this, they always have to make a lonely main character who thinks he has trouble with girls, and ends up being able to win any of them over without fear of loss in some cases from the very beginning. Sometimes they do a little differently, and make him someone drawn into some kind of conflict, though it always comes back to the same setting as before. It will end up being something we've seen a dozen times already.

I don't post on this forum regularly, but I have seen it still being used very widely. A buzz of the visual novel community was "Katawa Shoujo", but at least there was a very distinct reason they chose the school setting, because of the characters they were using. Every time I look at a Visual Novel that has a school setting, I can't help but think it's probably going to be very similar to another that does it. I understand that not all of them are like this, it seems too much of a common thing that is starting to become stale.

So my question is, do you think Visual Novels are becoming too similar because of this setting? I know that every writing is different, but they all seem to follow a general basic plot line. Perhaps there is a particular reason that they usually choose this?

[Wintermoon]

There are actually plenty of Japanese visual novels that don't use a high school setting, and plenty that use the high school setting without falling into the typical pattern. Just off the top of my head:

• うみねこのなく頃に (Umineko no Naku Koro ni) - The setting is a mansion.
• Ever17 - The setting is an underwater theme park.
• Triptych - A small part of it takes place in a high school, but it avoids all of the usual clichés. The protagonist is a detective who infiltrates a high school.
• Katahane - Centered around a train trip.
• Planetarian - The setting is a post-apocalyptic city.

Yes, there are tons of unimaginative high school romance visual novels (and a handful of really good high school romance visual novels). There are also tons of other visual novels if you just look around a bit.

[number473]

You can take this as an indication of the health of Visual Novels. As soon as a genre or medium becomes popular, you get more and more generic copies of the same old thing being churned out. It is the same in the manga industry in Japan. There are so many plain, completely formulaic (and often bad) offerings that one can be fooled into thinking that the whole thing is falling to pieces. But these (well, they aren't necessarily weak) attempts are what permits the thriving industry to continue, and without them there would be no opportunity for the stars to shine. You will see that the really good pieces (VNs or manga, or whatever) are those that break the rules in subtle ways or simply disregard them entirely. Often it can in fact be the way you work within the set boundaries, and innovate therein, that will make the work exceptional.

[Lunethex]

You can take this as an indication of the health of Visual Novels. As soon as a genre or medium becomes popular, you get more and more generic copies of the same old thing being churned out. It is the same in the manga industry in Japan. There are so many plain, completely formulaic (and often bad) offerings that one can be fooled into thinking that the whole thing is falling to pieces. But these (well, they aren't necessarily weak) attempts are what permits the thriving industry to continue, and without them there would be no opportunity for the stars to shine. You will see that the really good pieces (VNs or manga, or whatever) are those that break the rules in subtle ways or simply disregard them entirely. Often it can in fact be the way you work within the set boundaries, and innovate therein, that will make the work exceptional.

Mainstream ruins everything.

[Jake]

Mainstream ruins everything.

Only if you let it.

A medium which is crammed with lots and lots of uninspired duplicates of the same thing isn't ruined so long as it still has the potential to contain interesting, unique and imaginative works. Newspaper comic strips may have been mostly ruined long ago by the mainstream, with publishing syndicates generally unwilling to take on new strips which aren't completely inoffensive and devoid of real meaning in order to placate the angry-letter-writing moral minority, but that doesn't mean comic strips or comics in general are; there's a thriving webcomics scene with plenty of imaginative and original material, and even 'mainstream' comics are willing to try new and interesting things (Sandman, Transmetropolitan, etc. off the top of my head) every now and again.

Visual Novels have lots of school stories because they sell/get downloaded and praised/whatever, and because people want to imitate the things that inspired them. And because people play to an audience, and if the audience for your romance-em-up is late-teen boys who feel that their chances of finding love are remote, then giving them control of a late-teen boy who feels his chances of finding love are remote and then giving him plenty of girls anyway is easy reader-satisfaction. Just because there's lots of them doesn't mean VNs are ruined by mainstream concerns, because there's still space in the VN market for things which aren't school romance stories - people don't come up with a story and then think to themselves "no, there's no way I can tell this imaginative and daring story because it isn't set in a school and the protagonist isn't a friendless loser and there aren't fifteen girls falling all over him".

[Samu-kun]

I don't think this is the case at all in terms of this community. One look at http://renai.us/ tells me that people have set their stories in almost every single imaginable setting with quite a large number of different characters.

In Japan however, moe bishoujo games dominate the galge industry just because the industry itself is a niche interest that only a very specific group of people purchase. I don't think there's a lot of diversity where galge is concerned since there's almost no interest in galge outside of moe fans. Galge is considered (for good reasons) to be a form of "low art" for the masses, so the goal is to just make what generates money instead of expressing some profound or original idea.

[Wintermoon]

In Japan however, moe bishoujo games dominate the galge industry just because the industry itself is a niche interest that only a very specific group of people purchase.

I would like to point out that:

• Not all visual novels are galges, and not all galges are visual novels.
• Not all moe bishoujo games are stereotypical high school romances.
• "Galge" and "bishoujo games" are more or less synonyms.

Visual novels (in the English use of the word) are stories with pictures distributed as computer programs, often with choices that influence the path of the story. They can have any type of of theme or plot. Bishoujo games (aka galges) are games focused on pretty girls. They can have any type of gameplay.

[LVUER]

Even if the setting is cliche, it doesn't mean the game is bad/same-y. Because the story and characters could be refreshing and different. Besides, what matter most (for me, at least) is the presentation, not the setting, story, or characters. There are lots (VN, manga, anime, etc) that use cliche things (high school settings, cliche characters, ordinary story) but still manages to provide good entertainment.

Oh, and there ARE lots of VN that don't use high school settings. Here's some example of VN that I've played:
Snow Drop: snowy mountain/a lodge
Critical Point: military moon base
Sagara Family: Sagara's house
Man at Work 2: hunter's base (unused inn)/ a village
Brave Soul: it's RPG hybrid, so it's everywhere
Totemo Pheromone: every where, but usually at the his uncle's house/working place
Do You Like Horny Bunnies 1&2: a cafe/restaurant
Gibo: protagonist house
WC: a building (and in that building there are school, apartment, clinic, etc)
And some other VN that I forgot the title but without high school setting. Actually, I think protagonist house is more commonly used than high school setting... but then again, I never really counted (and I don't play that many VN anyway).

And there's a Japanese VN (so I couldn't read the title), that even though it's about high school students, tell the story/life outside the school. So the setting doesn't count as high school.

[Samu-kun]

In Japan however, moe bishoujo games dominate the galge industry just because the industry itself is a niche interest that only a very specific group of people purchase.

I would like to point out that:

• Not all visual novels are galges, and not all galges are visual novels.
• Not all moe bishoujo games are stereotypical high school romances.
• "Galge" and "bishoujo games" are more or less synonyms.

Visual novels (in the English use of the word) are stories with pictures distributed as computer programs, often with choices that influence the path of the story. They can have any type of of theme or plot. Bishoujo games (aka galges) are games focused on pretty girls. They can have any type of gameplay.

(I used the term galge in that particular instance because the term "visual novel" generally is not used in Japan.)

[Wintermoon]

(I used the term galge in that particular instance because the term "visual novel" generally is not used in Japan.)

That may be true, and it demonstrates the difficulties that non-galge visual novels face in Japan. However, even in Japan there are otome games and games like Umineko no Naku Koro ni, neither of which are galges.

[Meems]

The "visual novels = galge" idea, while obviously not true, is one I've seen a lot, and it occurs to me that that perception may be why (or part of why) there are so many High School Romance VNs out there.

[MissKmae]

Hmm... So far, I see everyone pretty much disagreeing, but I DO think this question is a bit accurate, in some sense. I cannot count how many visual novels I've played, not the commercial ones, but the ren'py ones, that take like five minutes to play, and are pretty much the same over and over. Five endings, like two choices, and that's it. That is really annoying, especially if you are looking for one with variety, and that spark of originality to it.

However, seeing many of the school-type VNs are not necessarily bad. It's a pretty basic setting, yes, but it has been proved tried and true. As long as there is a bit of a difference, or maybe a tricky ending that's not SUPER hard, the novels don't seem TOO much the same. In that sense, I'd have to say that they're still pretty okay, with slight twists and differences between them.

Do I think there are an over abudance of those two kinds of visual novels? Yes, very much so. Do I think that visual novels, in general, are becoming too much of the same thing? No, not really. The answer to this question depends on personal opinion and the variety of VNs they've played.

[PrettySammy09]

I think the school-setting is a tried-and-true formula that's produced a lot of great work (a lot of bad work as well, to be fair). Something about cute girls in cute uniforms might just be a selling point, I guess.

I've seen people use the school setting and turn it on its head (Garnet Cradle, for instance, which had a school setting intermixed with a "dream world"), and I've seen games stick pretty well to the school formula (Crescendo). Both are good, and the setting really doesn't affect the quality imho.

You can have a great game set in a school. You can have a horrible game set in a dinosaur reservation where aliens are throwing a beauty pageant. No matter how original your setting is, quality is determined by plenty of other factors.

[Der Tor]

Yes it's true that there are a lot of VNs that have a High School setting - but also many don't.

But the High School setting is understandable... after all in Japan most people who buy VNs ARE High School students, so it's only natural that the author uses a setting that the primary target group can identify with...

Almost all successful fiction authors have always done it that way... for example if you read a romance novel, the protagonist is almost always "an underpaid secretary suffering from obesity, skin problems and low self esteem whose live is suddenly turned around when a time portal opens as she walks down the street and she is suddenly transported into the Scotland of 1205 where she is captured by pirates but then the lead pirate falls in love with her and sets her free but then the evil Lamure clan is after her, but she is rescued by a brave English Knight who loves her deeply and has also been time traveling and been searching for her through the ages..."

Ahmm.. yeah... 95% of the romance novels nowadays basically go like that...

Why? because the target group can identify with the protagonist... well at least with the first part... and then the second part where everything goes totally wild fantasy, superhero, have to save the earth... that is the kinda live the target group wishes for. And as the target group can identify with the protagonist they love to read it as that is precisely what they have been dreaming of...

It's all about making money really... If you do it in such a way you might be able to make money... but you won't have written a good story... you would have written a SUCCESSFUL story - but not a GOOD story...

[Samu-kun]

But the High School setting is understandable... after all in Japan most people who buy VNs ARE High School students, so it's only natural that the author uses a setting that the primary target group can identify with...

Mmm... To tell the truth, I'm not that sure about this. I think the primary audience might actually be 19 or older. Don't quote me on it though, I'm only speculating. Generally though, most of the people in the big manga shops where they sell tones of galge were in their 20-30's.