When I told my friend I was going to buy a com­mer­cial OELVN to check it out, the response was “Why would you do that!?”

Even west­ern fans of Japan­ese visual nov­els often frown upon the OELVN (Orig­i­nal Eng­lish Lan­guage Visual Novel) com­mu­nity. Pro­duc­tion qual­i­ties are always a con­cern, as the ama­teur teams formed by west­ern enthu­si­asts sim­ply have no chance of com­pet­ing against fan-translated famous Japan­ese visual novel titles. But there’s always a start— the Key staffers’ first big title, ONE, cer­tainly had nei­ther good art­work nor detailed sto­ry­writ­ing, even com­pared to ani­ma­tion from back then. But just as the early visual nov­els offered some­thing dif­fer­ent from the ani­manga medium, OELVNs have their own appeal. Yet as far as I can tell, OELVN groups haven’t made much progress at all in expand­ing over the recent years, espe­cially in com­par­i­son to vis­nov local­iza­tion com­pa­nies like Man­gagamers. Read the rest of this entry »