Karifean's Blog of Visual Novels

Just speaking for myself, I won't play a game with erotic content. I don't want it in games or visual novels. There are other things I will use if I want porn, and when I am playing a game, I do not. I feel like I've missed out on some good visual novels because of this, but playing them with the erotic content would ruin the whole experience for me, it would be a waste of my time and money. So I think it's great if they have all ages versions and it does open up the possibility of many more people playing the games.

There are a lot of reasons I don't like it, but one of the big reasons it makes me uncomfortable is because I'm a grown woman now and I am not comfortable watching teenagers have sex. Or God forbid, even younger than that, which I have sadly recently learned is a thing in some anime and things like that. I don't need to see naked 15 year olds, animated or otherwise. I don't need to see 16 year olds boinking. And that seems to be around the ages of a lot of these characters. Plus, regardless of ages, you can easily tell a great story without the need for erotic content.

That's my two cents anyway!

There's always the issue of Values Dissonance. Japanese media are known for catering to various niches, with even shotacon anime being publicly acceptable and their directors heading other, non-pornpgraphic projects and still being considered respectable. That there is representative of the huge gap that exists between our cultures that basically necessitates censorship in order for those projects to see the light of day here.

So no, I don't think censorship is an evil that must be stopped, but it's also important to not go crazy with it. I'm like Pumpkin in the way that I really don't want any porn in any video game I play, regardless of how good the plot is. It just breaks immersion for me and I can't help but just imagine that this is jerk-off material for some sad, sad human being who just desperately craves affection.

The sexual content is something that kind of turns me away from a lot of visual novels. I don't necessarily have a problem with it theoretically, but I don't think I've experienced any scenes from that which are well written compared to the rest of the novel. It just feels unnecessary a lot of times, almost as if it's there to hit some sort of unspoken quota of things to be in visual novels. I do think it would be nice to have uncensored options along side all ages versions as I do think sometimes more than actual sex scenes disappear. Jokes and dialogue may get changed or removed that can lessen some of the routes of some visual novels as an example of comments on this discussion I've read. There's the potential for other content that is actually important to get cut, I think.

I'm running on no sleep so I'm not really sure my thoughts make much sense right now. Basically, I agree with Fynn and Pumpkin to an extent, but I can also see the other side of the argument. I do feel like a lot of the people who would actually purchase visual novels and read them are the kind of people who want the whole, uncensored experience though. It's a niche where I feel like they'd potentially make more money with the uncensored version or by releasing it along side an all ages version though.