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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About Magical Drop 3: It's not purely bishōjo I'd argue. There are several male characters in the game, the text below the pic was misleading saying it was girls only... Kajtek 19:48, 9 Dec 2004 (CET)

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The characters in the Magical Drop games are based on the major arcana of the tarot. There are female characters in the game because their tarot counterparts happen to be female. I would not classify this game as bishōjo either. --Anon user.

The main character is the extremely bouncy-breasted World, and others include the moé Star, the dominatrix Empress and the angel-winged Temperance. The art-style is pure bishōjo, emphasizing the femininity of the characters and baring a considerable amount of flesh in the arms. While the game can certainly be enjoyed for its fine puzzle gameplay alone, there is no way that this is not a bishōjo game. The tarot was chosen as a theme because it contains mostly female characters, not the other way around. 69.70.138.192 18:59, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I'm considering changing it to Money Idol Exchanger for three reasons.

1. Nearly half of the total Magical Drop character lineup is male.

2. World is not the main character. I'm fairly sure there IS no main character.

3. Money Idol Exchanger, as far as I'm aware, only features one male character.

Sounds good to me. Go ahead and make the change. 69.70.136.130 19:31, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I did it (finally). Hope I didn't mess things up too much!

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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?

Some fan translations into Chinese language exist in Taiwan and I have heard of pirated copies with translation in Chinese as well. I also have heard about, but not sure where I heard it, about some fan translations done in French, German, Italian, and Spanish but I can't confirm this.Revth 17:43, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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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)

Please do not troll on Wikipedia. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 05:38, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC) (this was in reply to a comment I made have subsequently removed)

This article is awesome, in my opinion. If you're letting your kids on Wikipedia unsupervised in the first place, they're going to be exposed to things that aren't all-ages appropriate (several pages on the reproductive system, for instance). This article is a wonderful example of the standards of encyclopedic writing that the 'pedia strives for, and I think it's just fine as it is. Perhaps as a compromise, the MediaWiki developers can add a parental control flag to each account, and allow articles to be flagged inappropriate for children? Vogon 05:42, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Something similar is being debated--Evil Monkey → Talk 05:51, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Please do not whine about something that you know next to nothing about. Few bishojo games involve any porn. The article itself isn't the least bit pornographic. You are judging an entire genre of video games based on a stereotype.

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)

That's a good catch, I would definitely expect 子 there. But oddly enough, for both of the affected terms Google gives more results for the spelling with 娘. I suppose it should be left as-is. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 05:41, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't doubt the veracity of the kanji, but I think the translation could be improved a bit. Vogon 05:43, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Translating "meganekko" as "young-girl-with-glasses" wouldn't really capture the original ring of the term, I think, so the current translation seems like an acceptable compromise. Also, 娘 is usually read "musume", not "ko"; so I think this is an irregular reading that emphasises "kid"-ness. 69.70.138.192 05:50, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It is an odd cultural and language tid-bit and 娘 is used with a positive, somewhat sexual meaning to replace 子 in bishojo genre. 子 means child especially those under teen when used together with 娘 and this distinction let writers use Onna 女 to mean those older than the main character. It is somewhat like the use of "baby" or "baby girl" in a casual English conversation or a song. Revth 17:39, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I believe "boku-girl" and "glasses-girl" would be better translations than "-kid", as neither of the original words are gender-neutral. Damien 23:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Background?

I found this article lacking in the fact that it describes the content and history of the games extensively, yet there is no section on the background of the phenomenon. Why is Bishojo so popular in Japan, and why is it so unpopular in other parts of the world. There are likely numerous sources that explore this part and I would like read about that in this featured article. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 07:52, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

(Note: I'm the original author of the article, User:Shibboleth; I just don't have access to my account.) Good point, that's indeed a question of considerable interest. However, at a base factual level all we can really say is "Japanese people just like it because it's in their culture". They (or at least some of them) like young girls, they like anime-style art, they like highly feminine and cute stuff (and Westerners mostly don't). They just do. Any more elaborate answer explaining how this preference came about would be a theory, and inherently POV. I was actually adding my ideas about this to an early draft of the article, but ended up junking them because they were original research.

Actually, the sources are remarkably few; the only real scholarship I know of about this comes from Sharon Kinsella (one of her articles is in the references), and even she only spends a few paragraphs on the topic in the paper linked. As I understand her, Kinsella's thesis is that bishōjo is popular among Japanese males due to sexism. In her words: "Despite the inappropriateness of their old-fashioned attitudes, many young men have not accepted the possibility of a new role for women in Japanese society. [...] The little girl heroines of Lolicom manga reflect simultaneously an awareness of the increasing power and centrality of young women in society, and also a reactive desire to see these young women dissarmed, infantilised, and subordinate." As I said, very POV.

Now that you mention it though, it would be interesting to present her theories provided they're properly attributed to her. Also, Kinsella will be releasing a new book covering more of this topic soon, perhaps there'll be more to say then. The history of the general phenomenon maybe could be expanded as well --- as I mentioned in the article, this, as well as most gender-oriented anime and manga, is really strongly tied in to dojin comics. However, maybe the general bishojo article would be more appropriate for this stuff, since it's not specific to games. I'll make additions when I have the time. 69.70.138.192 08:43, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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I wanted to make the bishojo "correction" on the Talk page, but a restrictive firewall at work prevented me for some strange reason from accessing the Talk page but not the actual article. So, I stand corrected. However, I do want to bring up an additional concern on this talk page: NPOV. For example, most of the article is rock-solid, but isn't there some North American cultural POV in terms of analyzing Japanese culture? This article has the slight but detectable air of "that exotic foreign topic," to it, IMHO. Anyone else see this? --Naif 08:15, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I wrote the article with the assumption that the reader knows nothing about the topic to start with, and also made several comparisons with North America with the assumption that this would be more familiar to the reader than Japan. That might account for your feeling. I am not sure how this can be fixed, though; if the topic is inherently unknown and "exotic"-seeming to 90% of its readers, the article has to adapt to its audience. That said, if you find any specific POV phrase, go ahead and fix it. 69.70.138.192 08:55, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perverted and depraved?

For example, one of Enix's was a 1983 game entitled Lolita Syndrome, which consisted of five mini-games with cutely drawn girls appearing to be about ten years old. One of these mini-games involved throwing knives to remove the girl's clothes.

Reading this has solidified my disgust with the Japanese moral character and explained to me part of the reason why the Japanese were capable of committing hideous WWII atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. During the Rape of Nanking Japanese soldiers slashed girls' vaginas open with bayonets. Doesn't this kind of sick sado-sexual violent depravity sound similar to the things they fantasize about in their video games? I will forever be uninterested in all things Japanese. Some people get titillated by this crap but I don't. Zh 23:10, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sigh, I mention a game to show the history of Enix and you turn it into a sweeping condemnation of Japanese culture. You are hugely overgeneralizing --- most Japanese would also be repelled by this game. Lolita Syndrome probably sold no more than (my guesstimate) a few thousand copies, to porn fiends exclusively. Nor would it be releasable today under the new regulations established in the 90s. Do you also judge other countries by the content of their hardcore pornography? 69.70.138.192 00:55, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It would be easily releasable even today as games like those are very popular in Japan. If you were to have a look at Getchu you might find a lot of ADV games involving characters like those.

Every single country in this world has its atrocities and things in its past that they are ashamed of. Parihaka, Auswitch, Abu Ghraib just to name a few. But of course you wouldn't judge all New Zealanders on the actions at Parihaka, just as you wouldn't judge all Japanese by Lolita Syndrome Evil Monkey → Talk 01:53, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

It seems you have absolutely no understanding of how a bayonet was used in Japanese Army during WWII. It was used like a spear attached to a gun to stub but never to slash. It actually looks like a knife but this is due to the fact that the design was copied from a French bayonet. In many fictions and nonfictions of Japanese troop in Southeast Asia, after capturing wild animals to eat, they were forced to use machete and officer's swords as well as privately owned knives to eat. Now, please read something beside propaganda to figure out how Japanese behave. Revth 06:11, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Meganekko

A character wearing a pair of glasses who turns out to be quite beautiful once they are removed. A meganekko is often parodied by having a character drop or lift their glasses, but unexpectedly not become beautiful — much to the disappointment of everyone around.

I believe that this is inaccurate, as it presumes that characters with glasses are not considered beautiful. I see no evidence for this--indeed, to the contrary, there are a number of fans who prefer the glasses-adorned characters. If nobody objects, I'll reduce this to "A girl wearing a pair of glasses." Damien 23:08, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've rephrased what's there to be more accurate but still keep the extra text since it does have some truth to it. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 23:23, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)