H-scenes in Visual Novels: Opinions and discussion

Off-Topic
#303

Nah man, people just dont read the whole discussion before posting. Its OK, just be patient.

Right, and wrong! In a vast majority of cases, H-scenes are probably are included for the primary reason of “if there is sex in this game, then people who want porn will buy it.” I would say its more than “a couple extra units” too , heh.

But as Glenn, and others, have said several times, that is not the only reason. I wont go back and restate them all, you can read them yourself. But the point is, as Taka pointed out, you cant just say “x is the answer”; there is always more than one reason for everything.

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#304

Yeah I thought more about it the more reasons for the inclusions, my bad

#305

As long as their inclusion doesn’t actually ruin anything, then it’s fine to have them. If it occurs right after a dramatic moment, then it could ruin the mood, but if the entire VN is pretty lax and it happens in a natural setting, then just pressing “ctrl” to skip them is fine by me.

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#306

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.

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Kazamatsuri Awards 2014-2016 Nominations
Kazamatsuri Awards 2014-2016 Nominations
#307

I personally very strongly dislike H-scenes in VNs, i’ve tried to stomach them for a few VNs but couldn’t in the end, also i live with my mom and granny and the computer is in the living room so having that kinda stuff on my screen is a nono

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#308

Like most things in japan that come over here in the US, have been out for a few years before you hear about it (unless you keep up with Japanese media)

We finally get an influx of official VN translations ie: from Sekai project, jast, mangagamer, etc… and I know from the sekai projects corner they promote oelvns (original English language visual novels) and they have no h scenes whosoever. Most of them anyways.

Like KEY used to make eroge till Clannad changed the world. You don’t need sex in a story to make it good. Little Busters as many of you know, has H scenes in the original EX release. Idek why they chose to do this, possibly to resell the game and promote the new routes to the non eroge players. And make more money :yen: :maeda:

But sex scenes have been a staple thing in Visual novels. I have no problem with them, only with the people the mistake between
Eroge (story with explicit sex scene) and Nukige (plot is irrelevant and sex is the main focus)

And the people that think they can jump onto the vn community and pout about how sex scenes undermine the premise of the story and ruin it.
Look at rated R movies, either sex or extreme violence or in a book in general, no rating…something is bound to surprise you.

I know most people will think twice between reading a novel with a sex scene, but for certain novels like fate stay night and Grisaia, those sex scenes are quite an important part of plot development.

Its like going onto a coffee shop and trying to get them to remove decaf. Many people like coffee, and there are different types. Choose your type and don’t try to turn wine to water.

I’ve seen enough posts online to say don’t read a novel if you arn’t ok with the porn. Don’t complain and say ‘is there an all age version?’ When the point of these games are to get romantically involved with a girl.

Sex is bound to happen (a serious assumption, I know) but whether it is prevalent or not shouldn’t make people resent the game itself or consider to not play it.

From my point of view VN’s with sex scenes put no hindrence to a story. Honestly, Visual Novels pretty much were focused on sex to begin with. Much has evolved the past decade.

All in all, whether you read VN’s for the plot or sex, the eroge market won’t leave us yet in japan. There is a story for everyone, don’t try to read a eroge with h scenes removed, it ruins the story and you will be lost at some parts. Thankfully mangagamer and jast have been bringing us games with censorship removed from games otherwise in japan that have been censored.

There is still hope for this world

#309

I find that H scenes can be relative and important to narrative, though they often are not. Very rarely is there an actual reason for sex and often it is placed unnaturally in an otherwise cohesive narrative. At worst they can almost seem destructive like with one of Komari’s in Little Busters and, while I have not personally experienced it, I hear this is a common fault of Kanon’s visual novel. Ultimately, though, I think sex is just another narrative tool that when used correctly can add to a narrative plenty.
Hanako’s route in Katawa Shoujo is, personally, the best use of H scene in a narrative I’ve ever seen in how it subverts the reader’s expectations and tragically develops the character of Hanako. There is a clear and easily comprehended narrative reason for the sex to happen and it develops the cast emotionally.
Shame more novels do not use sex in any important way.

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#310

I have only read a few VNs so far, but I think that for me it would mostly depend on how the h-scenes are handled. The only VN I read that had h-scenes is Fate/Stay Night, and I found the scenes to be very poorly written and the dialogue very cringy and just painful to read. It didn’t really feel like it fit in the story to me, so the next time I read F/SN again (it’s been a long time since I last read it) I will definitely go with the non-h version. I think I would have far less issues with these scenes if they were written differently and were more romantic. And if they didn’t feel so out of place. Though maybe I will generally prefer VNs without them, but I can only find out for sure as I read more.

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#311

Well, i feel i should try to form a more general notion beyond my personal opinion.

The main argument seems to be that many VNs have H-scenes that are placed in inconvenient moments or way too often besides being very poorly written and just generally difficult to stomach in an otherwise good story, i personally had this experience and have dropped reading otherwise enjoyable VNs for this reason, there’s also the argument that a lot of VNs are just made to have said scenes.

On the other hand VNs are a form of art and thus the discussion of whether or not something belongs in them is bound to be subjective by definition, so i’ll instead tackle a different matter that has been mentioned by many: why are H-scenes in visual novels so strongly disliked, @Yerian has brilliantly brought up a reason already: people don’t like H-scenes in their stories because they feel that they are watching porn, now this may sound blatantly obvious but there is another variable to keep in mind here: why did the reader acquire the VN, i believe most of us do it to experience a story and as such are shocked to see porn in it and think to ourselves "aww man… i didn’t get this to watch porn… if i wanted to watch porn id go to insert website name here" and feel the flow of the story broken. What i mean to point out by this is that most people (myself included) can’t enjoy H-scenes because they require a different let’s call it mood/mindset, the dirty stuff mood and that mood clashes with the normal reading mindset.

To wrap it up i’d say that while H-scenes can break the mood they aren’t necessarily bad, if well written they can perfectly fit in the narrative being shown not to mention that no form of art should be banned.

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#312

I was once an avid VN reader, and at no point did I expect to not see H-scenes in a VN. It was more often than not a surprise when a VN didn’t include H-scenes; they’re just a staple of the medium. It’s not like the concept is unwanted…

The problem is not so much that they are unwanted or unexpected, or even that they are porn, but that they are unenjoyable. Many have said that H-scenes “aren’t necessary for the story” however much of a story is unnecessary. H-scenes become notable in their unwarranted nature because they are generally both poorly written as a scene and lacking in the enjoyability of pornography. It leads to the question “why are they even there?” They don’t progress the story, they aren’t entertaining to read, and they can potentially ruin the experience for some.
You can have poorly written porn and it can work. You can have well-written intimacy that doesn’t try to be porn. The problem arises when a scene tries to be porn but fails to hit the right note, which is what most Eroge scenes end up as.
If the H-scenes were good pornography I’m sure most of the people in this thread would be on-board with them, but on a general whole, H-scenes suck. I think a lot of this comes from the fact that H-scenes are just requirements to tick off on a sale plan, and so they have little focus outside of marketing. This leads to them feeling both throwaway and out of tone with the progressing story.

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#313

When i said shocked i didn’t mean completely surprised by them because let’s not be naive as you said they are a staple of the medium, i meant it more in the sense of the shock it causes to ones cohesive understanding of the story, something along the lines of “oh man… here comes an H-scene”.

I fully agree with this, however as others have pointed out some VNs do get H-scenes right. I must also emphasise that all of the VNs i’ve read that have them had that kind of H-scenes, keep in mind as well that i was speaking from a general standpoint and not based on actual facts, but rather on ideals.

Let me be absolutely clear: i despise H-scenes but they are not technically bad

#314

Personally, such a thing hasn’t happened yet; interestingly enough, all stated examples of H-scenes done right were from VNs I thought were garbage, so I guess in the context of those individual products the H-scenes weren’t so bad.

As with all things, a H-scene can be good if the creator does a good job, but that creator seems to not yet exist.

1 Like
#315

I believe the discussion is not whether or not VNs have gotten H-scenes right in the past, as it is clear that nearly none of them did, in my opinion it’s if all future VNs should be banned from having H-scenes, this i am strongly against because if a VN came out that did get them right the world would miss it, sure i would avoid reading it until someone told me “look this one does get it right”, but i do strongly believe that it should be allowed to exist.

#316

It’s a talking point. This is just a general opinions thread.

Bit extreme, I don’t know if anyone is going that far in their posts. VNs wouldn’t exist without H-scenes, and they’re pretty much the only thing keeping Japan’s scene from collapsing into a full-on indie scene. If we’re looking at a pure western market however, banning H-scenes probably wouldn’t affect the current prosperity of the scene too much, and it’d still be projected to grow.

#317

I apologise if i sounded like that, i believe discussions are both about personal opinions/experiences and generalisations/theoreticals/ideal world considerations, and i personally tend to care more about general discussions than specific ones, as a result of that i care more about making opinions that would be correct in any circumstance than whether or not they have proven to be true at the moment. It is true that from my point of view H-scenes are harmful to a story, and many others seem to share it, that i do not deny.

#318

So as someone who’s read his fare share of VN’s both with and without H-scenes, my opinion is that it doesn’t really matter. If I come across a H-scene, I just skip it, it’s not a big deal. And there are some people who enjoy them, so me going through a few seconds of holding down ctrl isn’t a huge sacrifice on my part for their enjoyment (though this is someone talking who grew up watching South Park, so I’m not exactly as sensitive to this stuff as some people.)
However, it does bother me a bit when a game is localised and the H-scenes are taken out. I have to wonder what the difference is between their western audience and the (in all likelihood) original Japanese audience. Is it because of the different ways such things are perceived by the culture? Even if that were true, the age demographic at least should be the same. I’ve always been behind what Katawa Shoujo did (can’t think of any others), to have a setting to turn them on or off.
However, while I don’t really mind if a game is censored when it gets localised, I will not read it if it is not uncut. I’m up to reading Eden of Grisaia, and I don’t particularly mind that the H-scenes have been taken out, but because all even slightly erotic content has been removed from the game, some actual story-relevant scenes have been altered/cut. This is equally true when they have to censor jokes. Therefore, I’m not gonna read it until I can get the full game I’m paying for. For these reasons, the censoring of a game can have greater effects than just the H-scenes.
And also, I noticed the If My Heart Had Wings censorship titbit, and I have to comment. As someone who played it without the fan patch for a while first, then patched it after finishing a route, I can say with a good measure of confidence that the reason Moenovel got so much flack wasn’t that it took out the H-scenes (though I guess it could have been a part of it), it was the terrible translation quality, as if the people who want to read it matter so little compared to the pure sales that they can get away with a translation that awful. I wouldn’t even call it half-assed, because I think the bare minimum requirement for even that would be that each line has to form a coherent sentence, and they fail to do so. So I really doubt that many people cared about the H-scenes, I think it was just because of the translation quality.
One more thing I forgot to mention. I guess it’s true that people are likely to pre-judge VN’s for having erotic content, and generalise this to all VN’s, which is a shame. But is this not more the fault of a society that rejects it’s own sexuality than the VN’s themselves? When the society is at the point where they reject something based just on the fact that it has erotic content, I question the society judging the VN’s, not the VN’s that are being judged. Although the one point I feel the need to concede is that it puts young readers in a difficult position, but I think problems like that are resolved when you put in a choice for turning them on or off (probably off by default, since a kid who doesn’t know about the setting obviously wouldn’t be able (willing?) to turn them off.)

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#319

Nah. If the VNs are looking to sell, it’s their responsibility to market towards societal guidelines and desires. ‘Society’ has little fault from a business standpoint; only the products and/or marketing have fault.

#320

It’s not really that I disagree with that. It’s the company’s prerogative to market towards their intended demographic, and I’m not trying to say that people who fall outside of that demographic are at fault in any way, though I admit it probably came across that way.
But from the perspective of someone who plays(reads) Visual Novels and hesitates to admit it to people because they’ll think I’m just a pervert, I do think it’s a problem that people generalise it like that, and that people feel that just because something has pornographic content, it’s not worth looking into for the sake of it’s good qualities.
Of course, I don’t say this with conviction, I don’t say anything with conviction. I’m just some dumb-ass kid from the backwater suburbs of SA, what do I know? This is just my subjective opinion on the subject based on my experiences.

#321

As someone who really enjoyed IMHHW, I have to say that’s why I went looking for the restoration patch myself. That being said, the fan translation wasn’t really any better than the official release, in my opinion. So while I’d like to agree with that statement, the work they produced didn’t show that. At the time, I felt that it had more to do with a knee jerk reaction to censorship rather than anything else. In fact, I’d argue that the H-scenes were weren’t just unnecessary, but made one of the routes look significantly worse, but that would be a discussion for a different thread.

Anyway, like others have mentioned way up the chain, I feel like the issue with H-scenes is both parts of Western cultures repressing sex (but oddly fine things like extreme violence), and also how they tend to feel forced, don’t add much of anything, or just used to placate audiences or pad time. Those scenes (and fanservice in general) personally don’t bother me anymore, as I’ve just accepted that it’s ingrained in this kind of media and there isn’t really any getting away from it. I used to completely avoid any sort of fanservice-y anime or H-scene VNs, but now that I both have been reading/watching this stuff long enough (and have a lock on my door :stuck_out_tongue:), I just stopping giving a shit and skip through them. They don’t bother me, but I certainly can’t say I enjoyed any of the ones I’ve seen or thought they were good/additive in any way. Generally speaking, alluding to sex can be just as poignant and effective as actually showing it, so on that basis I don’t think that the full H-scenes can really be viewed as necessary to the overall narrative.

At a certain point, I had to ask myself if I was willing to completely stop watching/reading my favorite genre types/tropes (slice of life, slapstick rom/coms, school life, etc. kind of stuff) or stop in the middle the ones I had already started simply because a few scenes made me feel like I was doing something wrong, but then realized it was kind of silly. I know what I am, I don’t find 2D sprites in and of themselves attractive in any way, so I realized I didn’t have anything to worry about, and therefore shouldn’t let that keep me from the things I might be otherwise interested in or enjoy.

#322

I’m not sure if you got an earlier version of the restoration patch or something, but I didn’t have any problems with it at all. In fact, I was very impressed by the fan translation and had no difficulties reading it to the end. I can’t speak Japanese myself mind you, but I know enough Japanese to tell a good translation from a bad one.
I do have a point in mentioning this, and it’s that I’m trying to say that it was the translation quality of the original and not it’s lack of h-scenes that prompted people into making a patch for it. In fact, though it was years ago, I remember the guy who posted the patch on the forum I downloaded it from saying that the intent was to let Moenovel know that it’s level of negligence in translating the game wouldn’t just be taken lying down by the community - at no point did he mention the h-scenes.
i’m not saying there was no demand for the h-scenes to be put back in, they were, after all, put back in. But the driving force behind the team who made the patch had little to do with the h-scenes, and more to do with the translation quality, as I understand it.