Talk:Bishōjo game

I tried to finally create a solid article on this topic. In particular, I tried to set down some stardard terminology for use on Wikipedia. My view is that the three most unambiguous terms are "bishōjo game", "ren'ai game" and "H game", so these are the primary ones I'm using. I know a lot of people are nitpicky about these things --- I hope this naming scheme will be acceptable for most people. If not, feel free to discuss it here. Note also that I'm using standard Wikipedia naming conventions, with the macrons over the "o"s and all that. I would've preferred "bishoujo game" and "ren'ai game" in the article title too, but hey, it's the standard. --Shibboleth 22:58, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

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I cut a comment about age of consent. The Japanese national age of consent is 13, but in most prefectures it is higher (16--18). the article less misleading if this sentence is cut.

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Terminology and slang

I think I can add more but there are some problems. Revth 02:43, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• Some words apply more to a H game and not to a Bishojo game.
• Some words are just normal Japanese words used out of their normal meanings.
• Some words doesn't even make sense to me, as I have never played those games.

Thanks for your efforts. I think it isn't so important to be rigidly complete on these terms, because they are extremely temporary and rapidly changing ephemera --- e.g. people will still be playing bishōjo games ten years from now, but nobody will be saying "ugu". An encyclopedia doesn't necessarily have to keep up with that sort of stuff. As well, they are of no practical use to anyone except Japanese speakers, which isn't the main audience here on en. So their main benefit is providing some cultural color, and insight into the type of talk that goes on on Japanese websites. For this purpose I think we have plenty of terms already, so there's no need to add more if you find them dubious. --Shibboleth 03:45, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

English translations

I admit that I haven't played any bishōjo game in English translation (I bought the ones I had while living in Japan), but my sense is that the games currently out are poor stuff. It is hard to exaggerate the obscurity of most of them in Japan: googling for "さくらの季節　JAST" (Season of the Sakura) results in all of 20 hits. And visiting Season of the Sakura's web page and looking at the screenshots, I don't get a good impression. That's why I didn't bother naming any of them aside from Princess Maker: I consider all of them pretty much non-notable in every sense except that they happened to be translated. (With one exception: I do get 5000 Google hits for "加奈いもうと" (Kana Imoto), which is not bad.)

So English speakers are currently in the position of judging an entire genre based on a few of its third-rate clones. Imagine trying to form an opinion of first-person shooters without having access to the major players like Id software and Valve, or of J-RPGs without Square and Enix. No wonder Something Awful is so contemptuous of them.

Now, I'm not on a mission to advocate for ren'ai games to the West: even the most popular ones are not very good as games or as writing. They're mainly interesting because of what they reveal about Japanese sexuality, gender roles and attitudes to pornography. Still, I think it's important to make it clear that the games currently translated are poorly representative of the overall quality of the genre. Kanon is poorly written, but it's still leagues ahead of Western pornography. I don't want people to apply Western preconceptions of pornography to Japanese works --- and unfortunately the bishōjo games currently out in English happen to lend support to the misconception that any work containing pornography must automatically be vapid in every other respect. --Shibboleth 00:51, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good and thought-provoking points, and I think you're basically right. Please do edit the sections I added if you want to clarify this - I'm not possessive of what I wrote, and I'm all for giving as accurate a portrayal as we can. I think that for an article on en, though, being translated is in and of itself something to render a game notable, to non-Japanese speakers. I'm also convinced that, even though they may be poor by comparison with what's out in Japanese, they also provide a near-unique combination of story, game decisions affecting the story, and romance and sexuality. Few as the translated ren'ai games are, there are probably more of them than of Western-origin computer games with any significant romantic aspect. I think this is the chief appeal to the "thinking" English-speaking bishoujo player.

(Who is in the minority: one of the best-selling translated games is X-Change, which is agreed almost everywhere to be frankly awful and just a set of sex scenes strung together. It does still sell in large amounts even now, which is why I listed it as notable, but it reveals that the majority of the market for English-language games is still basically people after porn. I personally hate the way that the marketing in general will hype up the sex scenes out of all proportion to the romantic rest of the game, especially in cases like Brave Soul where there's proper gameplay and puzzles as well as romance and the sex is a tiny amount of the romance stories, but I tried to avoid my Wikipedia text coming out biased (please edit if anyone thinks I failed). There are a number of people who'd love to see the big names like Tokimeki Memorial translated to English, but it seems that it ain't going to happen soon.)

It may be that games like Season of the Sakura, Brave Soul, and the AnimePlay games are awful by comparison to those in Japanese, but it seems they're among the best available in English, and lots of those who play them do love them. And I think for an English-language encyclopaedia article, both sides of that should be communicated.--AlexChurchill 08:38, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

You're right that the mere fact of their being translated does make them worth noting, so I've left them in. But I think Wikipedia generally shouldn't say that a work is good or bad (unless it can be backed up by a quote from some notable critic), so I've just noted that they're obscure and said nothing else either way.

Yeah, I used to feel strongly about such things also, but I've come to grow detached. The more anime I watched and bishōjo games I played, the more I realized that with a very few exceptions, it's always the same old cliches over and over again. Japan's pop culture output doesn't really hold a candle to its serious artists like e.g. Haruki Murakami or Koreeda Hirokazu. So I've come to appreciate Japanese pop culture mainly as fodder for analysis of the country's culture, instead of for its own sake. I've been writing all these articles because as a disillusioned fanboy, I feel I have the unusual capacity to be both highly informed and NPOV :).

Tokimeki Memorial is one of the last games I can see being officially translated, because Konami doesn't want to hurt its brand name in America by becoming associated with something potentially controversial. A game by a bishōjo-specific studio probably has a better chance. --Shibboleth 01:34, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, X-Change was admittedly pretty vapid but I really enjoyed X-Change 2 and not just for the H elements. Then again, I haven't played very many titles due to my Japanese being mediocre so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing. Also, since Something Awful's reviews exist for the sole purpose of making fun of everything I don't think their opinions are very instructive :P DopefishJustin (・∀・) 05:07, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Non-English translations

Bishojo games have been translated and released in Korea. Fan translation is not unheard of, and a few projects have even been completed. I think this would need to be taken in to account. Does anyone know about other non-English translations?

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...the most popular have sold over a million copies, and they make up the majority of offline PC games in Japan.

Fine, except that the word "offline" links to the single player article. They're not necessarily the same thing, since you can have online single-player and offline multiplayer games: which one is meant in this case? 81.156.109.77 02:46, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank the Gods!

Finally, a good article about anime that has earned the "featured" title! This is wonderful! Good job to everyone who worked on this! I'm saving it so I can remember...

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What Happened to Wikipedia?

So a game about Japanize porn video games makes the front page. This is awful, as many little kids come to Wikipedia. This disgusting garbage should not be on the front page of Wikipedia, it should only be availible to those perverts who want to search for it. --BarbaraM 09:18, 7 dec 2004 (UTC)

Did you read the article, or uh, what? Apostrophe 04:18, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think it is an excellent article. I guess I must be a pervert. --Zero 04:44, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ahh always got to love it when other try to tell me what's right and wrong. Taking a stab in the dark but you could be from the US that got up in arms when a female nipple was shown on television because it would turn all children who saw it into rapists and murderers (I guess everyone in the US as a baby is fed formula instead of breast fed). And just recently the FCC decided that profanity was not allowed no matter what the context before 10pm on TV. Just glad I live in NZ which has decriminalised prostitution and about to pass a law allowing civil unions for straight and gay de facto couples--Evil Monkey 05:30, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Please do not troll on Wikipedia. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 05:38, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

娘

In the list of terms, the kanji 娘 appears a lot of times, and is translated as "kid". Its meaning is closer to "daughter" or "young girl"; it may have been a conscious translation choice, or the author may have been thinking of another kanji (子, which means "child", is also read "ko"). Just thought I'd put this out there, in case it was a mistake. Keep up the good work. Vogon 05:36, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)