I was curious if there was any chance that there’d be a fourth game for the Jisei series?
Yes! It's called Shinsei, and I've been working on it for a bit. I had hoped to have it done sooner, but like everyone else on this planet, the last few years have been incredibly hectic and unstable for me. It's definitely still going, though!
The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out.
Do we love the same VNs?
While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best.
We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad.
There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs...
While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released.
We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones.
So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories:
Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans.
The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher.
The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text.
The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget.
VN popularity
It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West.
Note that this chart is using a log scale.
The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated.
Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is.
Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB.
Differences in taste
So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is.
Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS.
This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare.
A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here. Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative.
Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”).
This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS.
A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.
It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB.
Differences in the marketplace
We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one?
A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.
It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists.
Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs.
A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags.
The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content.
EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties.
Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters.
Criticisms
Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data.
The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data.
It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting?
Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years.
The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through.
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis.
I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my past posts and twitter for more VN analysis. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616).
Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~
The Visual Novel medium encompasses an enormous range of diverse content. From stories about philosophy to murder mysteries, romance, comedy, and of course, porn. But to what extent do these categories and the fandoms that love them overlap? Using the vote data on VNDB, we visualised the VN medium by mapping out the fandom overlap, and in doing so, learned a few things about the VN fandom.
The Analysis Process
To get an overview of the Western VN fandom, we downloaded all the user-submitted VN ratings on VNDB (using this as a proxy for which VNs each user had read), and filtered out any VNs with fewer than 250 ratings (to keep the final result a manageable size), leaving us with 410 VNs. We then calculated the proportion of users who had rated both VNs to see how much of an overlap there was in the fandom between those two VNs.
To visualise the results, we modelled each VN like it was a beachball floating in a swimming pool. Each beachball has some elastic strings attached to it, where each string lead to another beachball (representing another VN), with the tension in the string determined by the fandom overlap between those VNs. So VNs with large fandom overlaps would be pulled strongly towards each other. However, to prevent the beachballs all clumping together in some horrifying beachball orgy, each beachball also caused ripples in the water as it bobbed up and down, pushing away anything that gets too close. We ran the simulation until the beachballs stopping moving, having found an equilibrium point between the pull of the strings and the push of the ripples.
You can see the early stages of this process in the test simulation below. Each beachball/VN is coloured to highlight the type of VN it is. Handheld console VNs are pink, EVNs are green, and the rest are blue. The elastic strings between beachballs/VNs are shown by faint red lines, with the strings that pull tighter shown as a brighter shade of red. The font size is proportional to how popular a VN is.
You can see that the VNs are randomly distributed at the start, but quickly form into clusters of similar content. The murder mystery focused VNs (Danganronpa, Ace Attorney, and Zero Escape) form a cluster on the right, while the strategy gameplay heavy Sengoku Rance and Kamidori Alchemy Meister cluster in the top left.
The VN Market Map
A full size version of this image is here.
When we run the algorithm, the results can be a bit intimidating. A huge jumbled mass of VNs. How do we interpret this? The first step in understanding this map is recognising the clusters that the VNs have grouped themselves into. If we use the VNDB tag and release data, we can begin to highlight similar types of VN and the clustering becomes more apparent.
The Plot Focused category is only approximate as it highlights only those VNs with certain tags: “Horror,” “Utsuge,” “Nakige,” “Mystery,” “Murder Mystery,” “Life and Death Drama,” or “Thriller.” You can detect my plot preference biases in that list...
Combining these categories, we can generate a much clearer map of the VN fandom.
A zoomable version of this map can be found here, and a high resolution image is here.
There are two major elements in interpreting what this map says about the VN fandom. The first is how dense each cluster is (how tightly packed it is). The density tells us how much fans tend to stick to VNs of that type, and how important that type of content is to them. The second is each cluster’s position relative to one another, which tells us how much the fandoms overlap and what they’re most similar to.
Analysing the map from the top, we see the porn cluster stands erect. Its somewhat fringe position indicates that the nukige fandom is a minority of the Western VN fandom, although it’s still pushing hard into the main VN mass which shows there’s a lot of overlap, especially with those who like more light hearted stories, comedies, moege etc.
The strategy gameplay VNs barely make it into a cluster at all as they’re quite widely spread out, indicating that people aren’t necessarily drawn to them for their gameplay content, but value other aspects of them (*cough* the porn).
Next, we have the core of the map, the plot focused VNs with emotionally heavy content. Katawa Shoujo takes pride of place in the centre of the fandom as it’s by far the most frequently cited first VN fans read. In the bottom left we find a particularily tight subgroup of those VNs that seem to be linked through their detective gameplay mechanics and release on handheld consoles.
Over on the right, we can see a couple of popular VN series that seem a little disconnected from the rest of the map. The Nekopara and Sakura series have large fanbases, but are off in the fringe, nearer nukige stuff than anything plot related. Their fringe position implies that their fans are coming more from the Steam gaming community than the rest of the VN fandom as people who read either of those series don’t go on to read many other VNs.
Further down, we see the untranslated VN cluster is quite tightly bound, indicating that those who can read untranslated VNs tend to stick to just untranslated content. They highly value a VN being untranslated when choosing a VN to read. Its position at the opposite end to the nukige cluster indicates those learning Japanese for VNs are primarily interested in them for their stories rather than the porn.
The Western VNs are less a cluster than a halo around the the main VN fandom. This shows that EVNs have yet to really integrate themselves with the VN fandom as a whole (outside of otomes), and that while VN fans might be happy to read a particular EVN they come across, they aren’t actively searching for more EVNs. Those most willing to try them seem to be those who enjoy plot focused or otome VNs.
Lastly, we have the otome and yaoi clusters off by themselves in the bottom left, with the two of them sharing some fans. The relatively tight clustering indicates a loyal fandom, but they don’t seem to read much outside of that. They’re almost an entirely separate fandom from the rest of the VN scene, although they seem much more willing to read EVNs than the majority of VN readers.
VN Recommendations
Using this map of the fandom’s tastes, could we generate VN recommendations for someone? If we highlight only those VNs they’d read we could see if it clustered in one area, and if it did then any unread VNs in that area would be a good suggestion for them. I made a web tool (see here) to do exactly this (it requires you to have had a VNDB account before Nov 18th). If you’ve got a VNDB account, give it a try and let me know if the nearby VNs fit your taste~
I hope you found the post interesting. If you liked it, please share it around. I had a lot of fun working on it, but it was only possible thanks to the invaluable help of /u/8cccc9 and Part-Time Storier.
Next week’s post will break down the map into more categories and analyse them in more detail, look at how the VN ratings differ per cluster, and investigate how the EVN fandom is split. I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions for further analysis. If you want to get in touch, you can comment here, on my Twitter, or PM me via the Ren’py Discord Server.
I keep thinking I want to post more here about other vns I read and then not doing that. I'm gonna just mention some stuff here in roughly chronological order.
I'm going to skip things that are super short or otherwise unremarkable because I read a lot of shorter vns. I decided to focus only on evns so I can get this post done during my lunch break.
toxic yuri jam 2025 entries: I read a lot of them at the start of the this year. Not all of them are mentioned on my post but most are.
some of the longer entries that didn't make it to the top 10
Mechacyte: this one almost made it to the top 10. personally not a fan of the handler/hound thing generally but I liked both characters and their fucked up little relationship here. Very bleak.
Anomalous: surprisingly good robot x moster romance. the robots design put me off but everything else was good enough to pull me back around.
Part of Me Loves You: I did not like this but it kind of festered in my memory so it is remarkable I guess. I woudln't call this toxic yuri. It's definitely toxic but not so much yuri. Mostly about a trans woman with DID having the worst several days you can imagine. Like it's pretty bad to start with and then she gets kidnapped. The depiction of DID as well as the sheer upsetting factor I think is what made it stay with me regardless.
Some vns that fit the theme but are not, in fact, from the toxic yuri jam
Broken Core: loved this one, I had determined that Nadia Nova was not for me as I was lukewarm at best on her stories but this one turned me around.
Spring Gothic. Really good until the end which I hated. I have a review here but the more I think about it the more I dislike it, so honestly it might be too positive right now for me.
Yes, And So Our Hollow Hearts Called For Love: I really liked this when I read it, but I can't say it staid with me all that much. Review here.
These are all by my friend Ebi-hime (hi if you are reading this)
Sweetest Monster & Refrain: This is a dark and upsetting story about how much being a teenage girl sucks. It's good! and will probably make you angry!
Out of the Ocean: cute and sweet yuri romance with a mermaid. There is a poly route.
The Demon Queens Dire Dilemma: "evil" demon queen tries to seduce her captive princess/maid. It's cute. I really love the art for this.
Cage of Roses: Vampire romance. Not as dark as I was expecting actually quite sweet. I really liked one of the side characters. There are a lot of connections to other vns of ebis you can spot!
Z.A.T.O. I really loved ZATO, I actually read it twice. I think it's a vn where rereading adds a lot. I'll probably read it again at some poipnt. This was recd to me by a friend and I also rereread it again as a gorup read. It was nice discussing it with others. Despite the larger plot I think my favorite parts of this vn are still teh character interactions.
senescence: oh man I really love this dev other work (operation eventide) but this one just did not work for me at all. It's mostly fetish material with the plot being in the last few scenes. The style of this dev which can get often hard to follow combined with light plot just made me dgaf. It had some interesting elements but not enough for me to feel it was worth reading. Pretty art though.
