Discussion: Is There Real Meaning in Visual Novels?

Oh yeah, you beat me to it. I know we’re going off topic, but you can’t mention quantum physics in a Key forum without mentioning Kotomi. Going back to her route with a bit of knowledge about quantum physics and related topics provides a lot of insight and realisation. It was crazy when I realised the ‘harps’ that were Kotomi’s namesake were referring to string theory. There’s also stuff like Kud’s interest in the many worlds interpretation.

Anyway, this conversation seems pretty freeform, so I won’t try to interrupt it. It’s also very interesting! Just make sure you don’t get your heads too stuck in the clouds with abstract thought. As @rune_devros mentioned, it’s very easy to fall into magical thinking when discussing quantum physics without the proper understanding. Props to Rune for keeping it real.

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Much better lol. Thanks for bringing it all back together~
Yeah, I love Kotomi’s route and the topics it brings up. It wouldn’t be a Key work without the writers having fun with inexplicable things.

just saying: horrible idea…

I’m aware of the counterintuitive nature of Quantum mechanics and I DO know the math behind the theory; I just used one example since for whatever reason people tend to only remember the cat… As I said though, I don’t want this to become a discussion of Quantum mechanics, since people tend to talk like they know everything about it, when that is quite literally impossible with our current understanding of mathematics… Just a bit of a sour subject for me I guess.

[quote=“Bizkitdoh, post:18, topic:414, full:true”]
Could we, perhaps, apply all of this to the whole ‘meaning in visual novels’ thing? o.o;
[/quote] nope. if someone could then it would be some top quality bullshit…

[quote=“Aspirety, post:21, topic:414”]
Going back to her route with a bit of knowledge about quantum physics and related topics provides a lot of insight and realisation
[/quote] Going back with a lot of knowledge on the subject makes it unwatchable… its all fun and games until you really know what’s going on. then everything is just plain wrong; annoyingly so… they didn’t even get string theory right iirc, and they tried to explain that in significant detail.

I think that’s pretty extreme. Anime gets a lot of things wrong for the sake of seemingly intelligent entertainment, but it’s still entertainment. They don’t do anything that newspapers, TV Shows, movies, Youtubers, and many other things don’t.
I mean, if you find Kotomi’s route unwatchable, things like Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate must be deathly experiences! :stuck_out_tongue: They do take themselves less seriously than Clannad though~
In an industry of German = Magic words and English = Easy philosophical nonsense, Clannad should get a pass for messing up something more complicated.

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Wow, you just had to go and ruin all our fun, didn’t you :angry:

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Take it easy, folks~ Word choice is key. (teehee)

Just trying to steer things towards the topic at hand is all. There’s a lot of freedom in deep topics like this one, but keeping things hand in hand with visual novels is good. ^^

[quote=“AngelofDeath720, post:23, topic:414”]
nope. if someone could then it would be some top quality bullshit.
[/quote] And I guess I will be taking this^ title. I don’t know how you guys get those titles next to your name, but it would be great if I had Top Quality Bullsh*tter

Aspi assigns them I think~ You brought it back to VNs very well though~

Thank you. I was mostly joking until my Itaru bullsh*t in the “Key/VisualArt’s Goods Sale Event at Gamers” topic

I got mine from drawing a shitty SnK parody involving Dorj and a Mon Petit can with arms and legs and those giant knifes

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Sidenote here, but you don’t have to take these comments personally. Even though you did apply that to the topic at hand, I doubt that @AngelOfDeath720 meant to say that what you said is indeed bullshit, otherwise he would have called you out on that.

And your comments in the other topic have no relation to that. Even though you may have made a mistake, nobody sees it as bullshit, either.

So I refuse to call you a “top quality bullshitter” because you’re better than that :wink:

Aaaaand let’s all go back on topic now~ (I have absolutely nothing to contribute so I can’t reply anything in regards to the topic at hand)

Don’t worry, I was mostly joking. I try not to take anything anyone says on the internet personally because its not like they really know me anyway. Besides, I think being able to bullshit well is a noteworthy ability, so I probably would have taken it half as a complement anyway if he had called me out.

yeah, sorry about that… Arguing in these threads (and a few other cases recently) has really taken a lot out of me, and apparently its affected me to the point where I’m letting things like this slip by. Sorry if i offended you @yerian98.

Really, it didn’t bother me at all. I usually enjoy arguments so I don’t mind having people disagree with me anyway. And as I said, I think its a compliment to be told you’re good at bullshitting.

Don’t want to stray the discussion off-topic again, but don’t you recognize this pattern? No, I’m not talking about chemistry. It has something to do with dwarves and ripples

Well, I see ripples, objects that might represent “a boy”, “a girl” and “8 dwarves”. I’d love to interpret more into it, but “ripples” and the numbers are the only things that match. And ripples aren’t even part of the tale of 8 dwarves…

On a side note:

There’s a term for that, too and it’s called the anthropic principle. It says that for something to exist, it requires someone conscious to witness it.

And now back to the topic.

I agree with this. In my opinion, VNs add to our “knowledge” just as much as other books do. Works of fiction can influence us almost as much as personal experiences (fiction merely ‘feels’ less real because we’re conscious of the fact that it’s fiction and also because it doesn’t impact all of our 5 senses). But in the end of the day, everything we experience is just in our head and we can’t bypass our brain in order to find out whether the information it gives us is 100% true or not. This is both good and bad. It doesn’t even matter if you tell people the truth or lie to them. What matters is whether they believe it or not. A believable lie or even propaganda will influence people just as much as a truth would.

But I digress. Some people may ask "How in the world are VNs, being a fictional work for the purpose of entertainment, be as valuable and informative as, say, textbooks? Well, did you know that life experience is an important asset in creating a fictional story? The more experience you have, the more you can share, the more realistic your story will become. An experienced reader will be able to tell apart a realistic story from mere juvenile fantasies.
And by writing a story, you share that life experience. VNs tell the stories of people, of lives and life situations. How do people think, what do they feel and how do they react in a given situation.
A textbook will teach you 1 + 1 = 2, but the knowledge you get from a story isn’t as plainly visible. Only by understanding the situations and the characters will you be able draw conclusions and learn something from the story. And you know what the fun part is? Different people might draw different conclusions. Readers might conclude something different from what the author wanted to say. Authors might have subconsciously included something they didn’t even intend to include, but it ended up there because it’s also part of their life experience, which they used to create the story.
Oh, and it’s not like there’s zero scientific knowledge included in works of fiction. Scientific topics are ALSO used as material for stories. Just look at this thread. People were talking about schrödinger’s cat but only a minority of them are actually familiar with quantum physics and the math behind it. Sure, they didn’t know as much, but they more or less had a general idea of that topic.
Now think about it: how come they knew it without reading a textbook on quantum physics? We’re not all physicians. If it wasn’t for certain works of fiction, we wouldn’t even have known about things like schrödinger’s cat. Most of us would never read an actual textbook on that topic. But those things have been mentioned in several works of fiction we’ve read or watched and now we know about them.

We have tons of valuable knowledge in our heads that ended up there by means of entertainment media. So of course there’s real meaning in Visual Novels.

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Good point. Lies are basically just fiction that someone has presented as reality. Perfect example for why fiction can be just as influential.

[quote=“Naoki_Saten, post:36, topic:414”]
And by writing a story, you share that life experience. VNs tell the stories of people, of lives and life situations. How do people think, what do they feel and how do they react in a given situation. A textbook will teach you 1 + 1 = 2, but the knowledge you get from a story isn’t as plainly visible. Only by understanding the situations and the characters will you be able draw conclusions and learn something from the story. And you know what the fun part is? Different people might draw different conclusions. Readers might conclude something different from what the author wanted to say. Authors might have subconsciously included something they didn’t even intend to include, but it ended up there because it’s also part of their life experience, which they used to create the story.
[/quote]So fiction has real and practical knowledge and lessons because it it stems from the author’s real and practical feelings and experiences? Interesting. That would also explain why different people (author included) have different conclusions and feelings about the same work of fiction: because as much as we like to say that facts are facts and the world only exists in one way, everyone experiences reality differently as well.

[quote=“Naoki_Saten, post:36, topic:414”]
We’re not all physicians.
[/quote]I know you meant physicists, but still, lol.

A great example for anime fans, is to compare a Ghibli or Mamoru Hosoda work… or even just a highly rated Slice of Life like Kawaisou or (despite how exaggerated it is) Daily Lives of Highschool Boys… to pretty much anything else out there. Take NGNL, OreImo, or Nisekoi for example.
It’s easy to see from the characters which directors have focused on real-life experiences. I think the one thing the anime industry lacks most is humanity. There aren’t all that many shows that really say “these characters are as real as you or I.”

That’s kinda what I was going for when I said

Totally agree with the idea~ It’s like… recently I’ve been listening to Porter Robinson’s new album. There’s a song named ‘Sad Machine’ sung by Vocaloid AVANNA. It tells the story of a female robot, who depends on the human that awoke her, to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
While the story of the song is something in his head, Porter said that a lot of people have asked him if it’s based on Portal 2, Angel Beats, or Her. Personally I think it’s very Planetarian-ey, but can see it as it’s own story as well.
The fictional lyrics of a song make people reflect on their memories of a different fictional work, in the same way you’d associate a song with a memory.
The idea that so many people can experience a form of entertainment as memories of another experience is amazing.

This sounds really similar to something Hayao Miyazaki himself said in an interview, actually: here.

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The title of the article is hilarious.
I agree with what he is saying, just not as strongly.
“Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people,” is probably truer than I want to believe. When did characters stop being exaggerated humans? When did they become a bunch of tropes plucked out from an Otaku’s DVD set?

There is certainly a disconnect between the majority of anime characters and humans. Something is off about the way characters in a lot of anime act, and sometimes… it can be kinda creepy, you know? Lose focus of the entertainment for a second and you are met with a strangely empty world.
Some anime have it a lot worse (look at DRAMAtical right now) and some anime do it a lot better… but that strange feeling is still there.