Video: A Defense of Visual Novels

Favorited I learned about an interesting YouTube video about visual novels titled A Defense of Visual Novels: What are They and What They Do Well through an email exchange with the creator. I have been collecting materials for a future article on making the most of the visual novel medium, so I can now add this in-depth video take to the collection. If you are interested in visual novels, the video comes with my recommendation. Below, I highlight a few points for emphasis. Zalor distinguished visual novel story-telling and narrative from books/short stories and video games by noting that visual novel dialogue tends to focus extensively on the internal mental state of the narrator. He attributes this in part to the fact that the “visual” aspect of visual novels relieves the narrator of some of the scene-description burden. I agree with Zalor’s take despite never having put it in these exact terms (I will note however that some Japanese light novel protagonists (looking at you, Hikagaya…