Trends in Visual Novels

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LateWhiteRabbit
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#16 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

Mammon wrote:Damn Japan, how popular are rapist-protagonists with you guys?
Right?!
That was my take-away too. Between "Rapist" + "Perverted" + "Villainous" protagonist tags, the Japanese are looking at 10.3% of their protagonists being ... uh, bad. Of course, that reminds me of the College Humor video that pointed out that the majority of the "pranks" and "hijinks" engaged in by protagonists in movies during the 1980s were rape-y, actual rape, or sexual harassment - at the minimum. As someone that grew up during the 80s, I agreed with the sentiment someone blurts in the video, "How did we turn out normal?!" So Lewis in Revenge of the Nerds would count as a "Rapist" protagonist ... so maybe we shouldn't throw stones in glass houses at the Japanese.

And quite a striking difference in percentage of female versus male protagonists between East and West. I can't help but wonder if this is related to the 75% of Japanese VNs containing sexual content versus just a quarter of Western VNs.

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#17 Post by PyTom »

LateWhiteRabbit wrote: "Rapist" + "Perverted" + "Villainous" protagonist tags, the Japanese are looking at 10.3% of their protagonists being ... uh, bad.
I'll note that the first four tags (Male, With a Face, Student, and Female) add up to 111.3%, so there's clearly overlap between protagonist tags. It strikes me as the three you've mentioned would have a high overlap, such that the true number could be closer to 4% than 10%.
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#18 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

PyTom wrote:
LateWhiteRabbit wrote: "Rapist" + "Perverted" + "Villainous" protagonist tags, the Japanese are looking at 10.3% of their protagonists being ... uh, bad.
I'll note that the first four tags (Male, With a Face, Student, and Female) add up to 111.3%, so there's clearly overlap between protagonist tags. It strikes me as the three you've mentioned would have a high overlap, such that the true number could be closer to 4% than 10%.
Good point. Just so everyone knows, LateWhiteRabbit got a C in Statistics in college.

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#19 Post by Katy133 »

These are really interesting articles! I'd love to see a future article talk about the trends in genres. I was surprised to see such a drop in Drama.
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#20 Post by BunnyAdvocate »

Thanks for the positive encouragement everyone, it really helps me keep motivated~ <3
Katy133 wrote:These are really interesting articles! I'd love to see a future article talk about the trends in genres. I was surprised to see such a drop in Drama.
I'll definitely do some more detailed analysis on genres in an upcoming post. At the moment I got a little distracted with all the character data I got, but I'll come back to genres soon~

I hope you'll like this latest one, it was a lot of fun creating it. Nothing too profound in the results, but it's fun to look at.

Part 2 of my VN protag analysis is up here: https://bunnyadvocate.tumblr.com/post/1 ... sts-part-2

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#21 Post by Mammon »

*Tries to suppress all the awful things that Japan likes that allows the decretion of bodily fluids as a fetish to be a reoccurring top 10 thing.*

A good, although much darker post. You can tell that VNs have had decades to find their roots in many fetishes and preferences that wouldn't and couldn't persist in any other medium. I really liked all the images you added (especially when the Foolish and Popular protagonist were linked)!
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#22 Post by TheJerminator15 »

Once again, an incredibly interesting read. I can't help but thank you for these in-depth posts given how long it must take consolidate all of that data.
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#23 Post by BunnyAdvocate »

Mammon wrote:*Tries to suppress all the awful things that Japan likes that allows the decretion of bodily fluids as a fetish to be a reoccurring top 10 thing.*

A good, although much darker post. You can tell that VNs have had decades to find their roots in many fetishes and preferences that wouldn't and couldn't persist in any other medium. I really liked all the images you added (especially when the Foolish and Popular protagonist were linked)!
Haha yep, I'd generally tried to focus on what I like best about VNs in my earlier posts, their storytelling potential over the widespread porn in them, but it was kind of unavoidable this time. It still kind of amazes me at how widespread some niche fetish content is in VNs, surely there aren't that many people into stuff like urination? Although the results can be slightly misleading, even when such a tag is included, it isn't necessarily a significant part of the VN. It may just be one short scene with one heroine in a VN with many routes.

As for the foolish and popular protag images, they were my favourite too~
TheJerminator15 wrote:Once again, an incredibly interesting read. I can't help but thank you for these in-depth posts given how long it must take consolidate all of that data.
Thanks Jerminator, it makes all the work worth it when I see you guys enjoying the results (:

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#24 Post by Scribbles »

#notallglasses possibly my favorite part > <
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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#25 Post by barefootchuck39 »

this is great research, very interesting read and great charts (sunohara lolz). definitely the first vn research I've ever read. Perhaps ppl will cite your work later for their own research

japan and diversity: i can't say they are very big on being diversified. Perhaps also because vn is more established in Japan, and japanese people being more risk averse in general, which could relate to projects with similar tastes are produced more often.

How about comparing multiple tags as a set instead of individual ones? I know you are kinda doing the linking in your analysis in part 2 already, but how about showing it in numbers? Like, okay just picking randomly: male protagonist + sword wielding protagonist has higher percentage than female protagonist + protagonist with glasses.
Or, cats + all-girls school > worries about a mortgage + horror or something like that. Can be fun no? Idk, just an idea out of blue, not sure even if it's feasible or valuable.

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#26 Post by BunnyAdvocate »

Haha thanks @Scribbles, I liked that bit too (:
barefootchuck39 wrote:How about comparing multiple tags as a set instead of individual ones? I know you are kinda doing the linking in your analysis in part 2 already, but how about showing it in numbers? Like, okay just picking randomly: male protagonist + sword wielding protagonist has higher percentage than female protagonist + protagonist with glasses.
Or, cats + all-girls school > worries about a mortgage + horror or something like that. Can be fun no? Idk, just an idea out of blue, not sure even if it's feasible or valuable.
It's a good idea, and is something I hope to get to once the more general overview analysis posts are done. The main issue is just deciding which pairs to examine, as there are *so* many options, it's hard to decide what to focus on. My next post aims to go into a little more detail hopefully. Just as long as I can squeeze down the results into a manageable post size.

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#27 Post by Brunomir »

Wow this is an awesome post! Thanks for taking the time to do this, is very helpful!

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Re: Trends in Visual Novels

#28 Post by BunnyAdvocate »

Brunomir wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 5:23 pm Wow this is an awesome post! Thanks for taking the time to do this, is very helpful!
Thanks! It's a bit out of date now so I'm not sure how useful it still is, but I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.

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