A Rant on Eroge
by
, 06-06-2016 at 12:56 AM (4397 Views)
Oh boy, let's make a blog post about this because what could possibly go wrong...
There's an aspect of visual novels I've always just mostly ignored and glossed over in my year and a half of blogging on here. It's something I always fear of touching upon since I don't want people to look at me like I'm a weirdo. But then again I feel like it's something I should address at some point. And that is the rather close relationship between visual novels and erotic content.
It's very different from other media. In books, film, anime and the recent VR, erotic works are pretty much separate from story- and narrative-focused titles. There is no such distinction when it comes to visual novels. Sure there are 'nukige' - visual novels focused solely on being porn - but erotic content is far more widespread than that. If you go to VNDB and sort visual novels by popularity, 8 of the top 10 visual novels on that list are eroge (eroge being short for 'erotic game'). This includes classics like Fate/Stay Night, Muv-Luv Alternative, Saya no Uta, Tsukihime, Kanon, AIR and Grisaia no Kajitsu. Even Little Busters! had a release with adult content.
I'm no stranger to this part of the culture. My first 18+ rated visual novel was Tomoyo After which was one of the first visual novels I'd ever read. Its first hour - the prologue - was literally a string of about 10 sex scenes that added absolutely nothing to the plot or the characters or anything else. But this brings me to my next and most important point: that being an eroge does not, in any way, shape or form, diminish a game's narrative value.
Tomoyo After is my #3 favorite visual novel of all time. I consider it one of the most inspiring, heartwarming stories I've ever read and its romance is bar none my favorite of any story. The fact that it has pointless erotic content in it is a trivial matter compared to that. The same goes for G-senjou no Maou, Muv-Luv, F/SN and all the other good eroge out there.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because this is the visual novel culture I've come to accept and appreciate. I love visual novels for their story and no longer bat an eye at the fact that they may contain erotic content, or even really at the fact that more than 90% of it is stupid, pointless and does nothing to help the narrative. At some point I had to ask myself: if my favorite (non-VN) game or book happened to have erotic content in it, and I'd have still ended up playing/reading it somehow anyways, would I have disregarded it just because of its erotic content? For me, the answer is a definitive no; I'd still love it all the same and it'd still have affected me in the same ways.
Anyways to get back on track, recently, English localizations of visual novels have become common, something I couldn't even have imagined two years ago. And with that come a few... mixed feelings.
I'm extremely happy that the visual novel culture is getting more exposure in the west. And yet at the same time I almost feel a little melancholic when I see or hear about Steam versions of 18+ games with their unnecessary adult content cleaned out and made all ages friendly. It's not that I think that erotic content belongs in these games, it's just the feeling of seeing a culture you've accepted everything of, its positives and its negatives, and seeing it brought to a new audience with its negatives cut away and ignored. I don't think it harms the artistic integrity of these games at all and you'll never see me pining for 18+ releases like some people on Steam forums do, but I can't deny that I'm just a little bummed. After all, this was the medium that taught me to appreciate stories with adult content just as much as stories without it, to not be predisposed towards eroge and to keep an open mind about them; and for all the troutty H scenes I've read that I wouldn't hesitate to call a pointless waste of time I still feel like I've grown thanks to them.
I can't possibly deny the worth in making visual novels all-ages friendly for their English releases. A few people on this very site I know wouldn't ever read a visual novel if it had erotic content in it, and the fact that they can still enjoy these games is doubtlessly a very good thing. And let's not kid ourselves; if visual novel localizations didn't come primarily in all-ages releases, they'd fade into obscurity way more than they already are.
Also, I know that 18+ localizations do exist. But there's a difference between the all-ages version being right there on Steam just waiting to be bought while the adult alternative is on somewhere else almost completely unadvertised, and looking for a copy of G-senjou no Maou and finding only an adult version and just... dealing with it. Accepting it. Eventually no longer minding it in the slightest.