With the recent influx of all-ages visual novels in the west, I feel the need to say this: There’s one merit, I feel, to visual novels being riddled with unnecessary H scenes. And that is that it gives a great opportunity to learn to become more open-minded and not judge or write off perfectly good stories just because they have porn in them.
When I first got into visual novels, I wasn’t even really aware of the prevalence of H scenes in the medium. When I ended up reading Fate/Stay Night I was caught completely and utterly off-guard by the sudden sex scene. But Fate/Stay Night, G-senjou no Maou, Muv-Luv and, of course, Tomoyo After, all contributed to letting me see past sex scene and enjoy visual novels for their own merits even if they have 18+ content in them. And, honestly, I think that’s a very good thing.
There’s value in deliberately exposing yourself to something you’d otherwise reject and thus simply learning to deal with its presence and not let it hamper your enjoyment.
Which is why, even if I’m glad the visual novel market is moving away from useless H scenes that only exist to guarantee a few extra sales (and I will never dispute that that is a positive development), I can’t help but be a little disappointed. You’ll rarely find an opportunity like that ever again, and I honestly feel it only helps with being more open-minded about works of art in general. Of course if you have a personal reason for disliking H in visual novels that’s perfectly fine, but I feel like a lot of times it’s just a prejudiced reaction without such a basis. And that ever so slightly bothers me.
And now with the all-ages release of Tomoyo After I will forever be salty at a certain subset of this community that never felt like giving an honest-to-god great story a chance just because it had sex scenes in it.
