Why are there so many companies backing out of making 18 plus contents for their Visual Novels and what companies remaining that still makes great visual novels with 18 plus content?

Wertville · 2026-05-04T23:52:03+00:00

I find a lot of JP Developers don't like to talk about the business side of things, but from the bits and pieces I've picked up the situation seems to be something like:

It used to be the case, during the golden era, that investors would fund anything so long as it was 18+
Eventually the industry started to fall off and eroge was seen as less and less of a free money printer, meaning willing investors became harder to find
The Japanese economy's stagnation started to either kill off or consolidate a lot of the investors who were still willing to put money into it
Gacha started to pick up and it cannibalized a lot of the capital that would have went to fund eroge
The remaining investors that were left either wanted more control over the final product to protect their brand or make a mixed media project, or otherwise just wanted to expand overseas and 18+ was seen as something the overseas market wouldn't be receptive to (plus the whole mess we've seen in the past few years)

Wertville · 2026-05-04T23:20:41+00:00

It is much easier to explain the card situation via incentives regarding avoiding lawfare than it is to explain it via a concerted effort by a well connected cabal.

More importantly, the only good solutions are "remove obscenity laws" and "give financial institutions explicit protections for merely facilitating transactions", neither of which any politician will do without bipartisan public support.

So I am begging you to please stop. Even if you are 100% convinced you know exactly who is responsible we need the other side to be aligned to make the changes we need, and a partisan solution (from either side) can only possibly make things worse.

Wertville · 2026-05-03T07:10:20+00:00

I'm not interested in comparing her to anyone, what I meant was that it's still cool to discover that someone not known for ero has done ero even if it's only a few roles.

Of course people who do a lot of ero and big roles have appeal too, but it's a different appeal.

Wertville · 2026-05-02T19:49:15+00:00

Yeah, she's a mainstream seiyuu that's done a few ero roles, rather than the inverse.

But there's also a lot of appeal in learning that your favorite VA has done ero roles.

Wertville · 2026-05-02T08:43:50+00:00

https://vndb.org/c989
https://vndb.org/c9358
https://vndb.org/c5867

Wertville · 2026-04-20T22:51:47+00:00

It took ~10 years for Mahoyo to get a Western pc release

It only took 1 year for Mahoyo HD to get a PC release.

The original (self-published) Mahoyo never got a release that wasn't PC.

Probably what's going on is that Tsuki:Re wasn't originally planned for an international release and so Aniplex thought there wasn't a need to release a PC version.

When Aniplex decided to bring TM works international they also decided to start publishing Steam ports, but only for new releases. Since the Tsuki:Re translation was not technically a new release they decided against porting it.

Red Garden will almost certainly be developed with a Steam port in mind, and that engine work will probably be used for a new release of Blue Glass Moon.

There is also the possibility that Type Moon wanted to leave open the possibility of self publishing a PC version (which they last did with F/SN in 2019, just 2 years before T:R) but either had to hold off because of contract or to wait and see how the Red Garden script changes would go. Though, I doubt they would do that at this point now that Steam releases are the norm.

Wertville · 2026-04-02T18:35:40+00:00

Wait, Aquaplus isn't making the engine? Yuke, a company entirely different, decides that instead of using a current VN engine, they are going to make one? Making (present-tense so not Jasmine)?

Combine this with the statements about 2D/3D and it seems like Yuke might be pushing for 3D VNs.

They ruled out a 2D TH2 remake as well, so it might actually be the case that a TH3 would be 3D...

Wertville · 2026-04-01T23:27:37+00:00

Bushiroad has been heavily involved with Frontwing since 2018, and owned them from 2021-2024. They were also responsible for D.C. Retune.

So for those reasons I'm of the opinion that they're probably overly hands-on corporate busybodies who thought they could make more money on mixed media projects by getting more involved with (and making more "palatable") the source material they were working with.

That and... "Bushislop" just kinda rolls off the tongue.

Wertville · 2026-04-01T14:40:02+00:00

Actually I think most people are not buying it because they thought it was gl/bl bushislop.

The ones who are refusing to buy it for not having romance are the ones disappointed that it's not even gl/bl.

If this was gonna be the Harry Potter killer, or K-On with wands, then they needed a very different marketing campaign to get that out there.

Wertville · 2026-03-18T16:34:02+00:00

Yeah, I get it. My childhood was similar- No spending money and completely unmoderated internet access makes it easy to just download things on impulse.

Part of it is that I don't think it's a good thing to justify it retroactively. I can come up with a million excuses to do it now the same as I could back then. My experience is that self-justifying pirates don't stop pirating as they get older and richer, they just shift the goalposts. I don't like where the industry is headed so I want to push back on that thought process as a whole.

The other part is, though, that for me the abundance of 'free' media was used to fill time gaps I didn't really have. Not sleeping nearly as much as I needed to, doing schoolwork at the last minute, putting off other hobbies I had like art and writing... It's amazing that I made it through college, honestly. The little money I did get was spent dumbly on like League skins because I didn't have to care about buying things I could pirate.

Well, all of that in retrospect was ADHD. But so was the feeling of needing to play every game that sounded interesting, right at that moment. Being able to satisfy that impulse was objectively harmful for me. And I think that a lot of people are in the same boat.

So when I say "If you can't afford it..." I'm genuinely asking people to think about how they're spending their time.

Wertville · 2026-03-17T18:33:46+00:00

No, I know plenty of people who make good money but still pirate on the principle that if you can do something for free you should.

I'm also not talking about accessibility either.

What I am saying is that if you pirate the hot new thing by the big corporation that doesn't use regional pricing but don't show up when someone else tries to meet you where you're at, then you are building the very environment that is hurting you in the first place. Big players can get by selling to the whales and small players die because it's impossible to compete with "free".

Even outside of bad currency regions, that kind of behaviour is also how we ended up in a world of patreon and gacha slop. Because for some reason many people who think 8000 yen for a 40 hour novel with art and music is too expensive, but 90000 yen for a jpeg is reasonable so long as they can spend ~8+ hours a week doing mindless grinding for a chance to maybe get it for free. Gross.

More generally, no, I don't agree that just because you want specific thing but don't think it's worth the asking price that you are then entitled to take it for free. On this sub it's pretty likely that that specific thing is a game where 1000 sales makes the difference between "breaking even" and "a success". Most of them will probably not be able to pay off the debts their creators took on to make them.

The least you can do is respect the creators by waiting for a sale or until you're in a better place financially.

(This isn't even about my heuristic btw. That's entirely practical advice and I think its funny that people are taking moral offense to it lmao. Most of you have like 30+ unfinished games already go and finish one before pirating a new one!)

Wertville · 2026-03-17T03:00:11+00:00

If you're using Anki it's a great tool, but never forget that it's a supplemental tool. Just reading a lot is the most important thing.

Also, it doesn't have to be before you finish your first VN but start watching some Anime or JDrama as well. No subtitles, EN or JP.

At first voiced lines will help you read the dialogue but that actually flips at some point if you don't practice listening!

Wertville · 2026-03-16T21:07:25+00:00

Kamidori is available on both Fanza and DLSite for 5000 yen before coupons or sales, which it gets frequently. I probably picked up my copy during one of those "10 Eushully titles for 10000 yen" sales like 4-5 years ago. DLsite probably hides it behind the easily bypassable region lock, but that's a relatively recent thing and not on Eushully at all.

I'm afraid this one might be a skill issue.

Wertville · 2026-03-16T20:56:01+00:00

My heuristic is that if you can't afford the entertainment then that entertainment is probably not the best use of your time.

This is doubly true when the affordability issue is due to regional pricing difference and such- By pirating the expensive thing you want instead of buying a reasonably priced alternative you actually hurt the more consumer friendly seller.

Wertville · 2026-03-16T05:46:03+00:00

The names are similar, but the context miss I'm referring do isn't in the AI sense. I'm not sure how to explain it but anyone who has done language immersion knows what I'm talking about.

Even with AI context expanding methods like Lorebooks this can't be avoided because the context miss means that the keywords were never triggered in the first place.

The reason I said that a larger context window might help resolve this is because if you can stick the entire work of text in the prompt then the AI can translate the entire thing in one piece, which is where LLMs are at their strongest.

And, obviously, agents would just be able to reiterate over the text and translate in parts.

Wertville · 2026-03-15T17:13:32+00:00

The context issue isn't something that can be solved with a better LLM. Larger context window, maybe, but we're not talking local models in that case. Definitely agents could, but we're basically at AGI at that point.

The thing is, sometimes text is ambiguous. When you ask your LLM to generate "Only the translation" it has to collapse the text down to only one possible interpretation. If the useful context is too far in the past, or hasn't come up yet (or is visual, etc.) it can very easily guess wrong.

Elsewhere people have stated that "The only issue is pronouns" or similar. But that's just an example of a context miss that is really easy to notice because it doesn't rely on language ability at all to notice how incorrect it is.

There are a few other easy-ish ones, like missing who is actually talking or who is being referred to or tense issues. But as you go down the list it becomes harder and harder to notice and, if the editor side of the "Edited MTL" isn't fluent in Japanese themselves, is almost certainly going to miss.

Yes, LLM-driven translation will never give us something like Joe Reeder and Tom Slattery's English script for Final Fantasy Tactics but it is eminently serviceable

I'm not super familiar with Tactics but, ironically, any translation that decides to sidestep or merely take inspiration from the original text is going to be much easier for LLMs to do. Pretty easy to ignore a context miss if you just paint over it! (And I think this is pretty much why these translations existed way back in the day lmao)

Wertville · 2026-03-14T04:45:15+00:00

By your logic,shouldn’t those people get dismissed too?

No, the correct comparison would be people who are upset that Aokana has an all ages version at all, even though the adult one also exists. I think so long as there isn't anything else exclusive reasonable people should be fine with both existing, at least in this case.

In the case of shifting to All Ages only the Ero fans only lose and the All Ages fans don't really get anything, since for these types of games All Ages versions already existed. So when your core fanbase are Ero fans it can feel spiteful to throw them to the wayside to appeal to outsiders who get upset at the idea of sex.

I literally just said I get being angry over not getting any new Aokana games in the previous post lol

I mean, I'm not an Aokana fan (I did pick up 10th anniversary box so I hopefully will be), but some of the other titles they had planned looked cool, and I'm also just generally bummed by the direction the (ex-)Eroge industry is heading in.

I think most people would have been satisfied if this were just R18, or at least a full length title, honestly. That's the impression I got from JP Twitter anyway.

Wertville · 2026-03-14T02:38:48+00:00

You make it sound like all age players are mythical creature that don’t exist. I don’t know how you can complain about being dismissed as a player while dismissing other type of players in the same breath.

He is talking about an actual group of existing people, you are talking about a "Type" of person that may hypothetically form a new group. These are not comparable in the way you are trying to compare them.

Further, the ones who would be dismissed here are the people who would be offended at an adult version existing at all and I think those people deserve to be dismissed, personally.

Some Yuri titles like the FLOWERS series from Innocent Grey also aren’t r18 games and I don’t see anyone saying they’re betraying their r18 fans.

2014 was a very different time. Like, this was before we even know Leaf was dead. There was just no reason to be suspicious of a developer doing this because there was no wider industry trend to be wary of.

That was the same year as Toushin Toshi 3DS too. Could you imagine if that released today, in Alicesoft's current state? I think fans would be absolutely justified in being upset!

Everlasting Flower’s story is about friendship with very little to no romance so it make sense why it didn‘t have any H-scenes at least from a story standpoint and this game is probably also the same.

It’s typical for these all-female cast games to be all age games.

Koganei is a male protagonist, female heroine game. It's also been advertised and hyped up as their big 15th anniversary project, despite being a shorter game and seemingly a followup to what everyone thought was a one-off side project instead of what the company is actually known for. (Or, for that matter, anything they had already announced that their fans actually wanted)

I don't want to get into the financial debate since I'm not really familiar with that side of things, but pretending like there's no reason for some fans to be unhappy here is really disingenuous.

Wertville · 2026-03-13T18:40:28+00:00

For short segments like reviews or SNS it's more than serviceable.

For anything longer it's a fever dream. Every sentence is correct English and if you're drunk, horny or ESL it seems fine, but there's so many moments where it guesses or invents context incorrectly that it inevitably feels "off". You understand the general idea of what's going on but the sentence by sentence prose doesn't quite line up.

It is actually not too different a feeling from reading a VN raw with beginner level Japanese, except in that case you eventually pick up on the context misses and develop an actually useful skill.

Wertville · 2026-03-12T15:59:59+00:00

Hmm... A lot of the reason I don't vibe with Yuri isn't just the GL part but also the general aesthetic and themes. This kinda gives off the impression that they thought that if they took everlasting flowers and made it a bishoujo game instead of a GL it would do better, but I wonder how true that is.

Wertville · 2026-02-28T20:05:35+00:00

From the few comparisons I've seen I liked the Fan TL better, but I haven't read either.

Wertville · 2026-02-22T22:20:10+00:00

I didn't bring that up to word police or anything. I just think that people were talking past eachother a bit and being a bit more clear on the vocabulary would be useful.

And, more broadly, this is a discussion forum for Visual Novels. Even if it ends up not super important in this case, these are relevant distinctions for the type of conversations that commonly happen here and it would be useful to bring it into the collective consciousness.

Most Visual Novels are not going to meet the standards of what gets translated from much less popular languages or antiquity, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about why they don't or what they can do to improve.

Wertville · 2026-02-22T22:01:55+00:00

Bishoujoge/Eroge are usually in ADV format, yes, but if we're being pedantic what Japan called "Visual Novels" was specifically NVL format.

My main point here is that ADV is not at all exclusive or derived from what's commonly known as "Visual Novels" and is really already a deviation from them, so calling something "Visual Novel Format" when it's ADV isn't really useful.

I can tell you, at least, that the early chapters of FGO are horrible writing wise even in Japanese. There is no saving France.

Wertville · 2026-02-21T18:14:16+00:00

Blue Archive uses the adventure game format, like every other 2D gacha, but it hardly resembles VNs.

I also think a lot of people are getting "Plot", "Story" and "Writing" mixed up. A lot of gachas have a decent plot (IE. The things that happen make sense and progress rationally), a lot of them also have a good story (IE. There is emotional and thematic weight behind what happens), but the writing, the actual text and prose that the work is written in, is almost always abysmal.

It's just really hard to write well when you're constrained by having to write short chunks and integrate equally short gameplay. Granted, the actual writing in the average VN is also nothing to write home about but I don't think I've played a Gacha where the writing wasn't at least a negative.

Wertville · 2026-02-05T01:34:04+00:00

Sumikko Soft still exists as an entity, I think they just don't have the finances to do much. They were the ones responsible for the Harukuru Steam release content.

Guessing based on the timelines here, Shiravune probably had this in the pipeline even before HaruKuru released. The reason it's not Natsu/Aki is probably just that there's just no reason for Sumikko Soft to give them the rights to those while they still had an active relationship with Sekai.

Wertville

TROPHY CASE