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Doki Doki Literature Club Redesign Controversy as a «mise en abyme» of Certain Culture War Issues
I saw a small-scale controversy on Tik-tok (ugggggh, I know right?) recently. First let me give the background. Doki Doki Literature Club (DDLC) is a knock-off visual novel, in the same way that California Champagne is a knock off of Champagne. Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia. They are not really video games, but more like something in between a manga and an anime delivered in .exe format on a computer. The only dynamic element they have is a tradition of branching choices, which anime and manga cannot do.
Anyway, it is not that important that DDLC is a knockoff, except that it provides some background for the type of people who like it. The art of this knockoff is quite faithful to the real deal, but the story is not. I have never played it and am not planning on it, because I am a snob, but from what I have gathered, it's like the anime girl version of Depression Quest. It also features a lot of annoying deconstructive quotes like, «these girls are like if you took all of the traits that make someone human and just took the cute bits» said by the player character in the middle of it. Quite rude for some foreigners to do, no? Kind of like making something in California called Champagne but you somehow criticize the concept of using Chardonnay grapes and making it have gas in it while you're at it, while taking the alcohol out of it for tee-totaling Americans. Almost like it's a product of hatred for the original thing.
Well, it will turn out that you will of course get a lot of fans that hate the fact that it comes in a wine bottle. The wine bottle of DDLC is that the characters look like cartoon, moe, teenage anime girls. They have round faces, big eyes, cute mannerisms, and wear bows and and school uniforms for most of the VN, as is customary.
Here are some examples of official art from the game.
Now, what if they were designed to look like real girls? Obviously they would look like this, right (edit: this is one of the original redesign posts)? Well no, because they obviously look like cross dressing men here. The fact that those redesigns look like men is now being denied by real girls who look nothing like those men.
I can only describe this as gas-lighting. And it perfectly parallels the way gender discourse from the left happens in the broader culture war. Transgenderism of course is the biggest gas-light of them all, but feminism broadly is filled with some of the most bald-faced untruths of any political ideology. Many feminists believe women aren't mentally different from men, and can beat men in fights, for example. On the trans issue, we are supposed to believe that people can be born the wrong sex, that sex doesn't exist, that there is, in a meaningful sense, more than two sexes, and that sex changing operations are good for people. To me, these claims are about as credible as the claim that those redesigns look at all like 16 year old girls with two X chromosomes and not cross-dressing men. It is hard for me to understand how blind or dishonest one must be to really make those claims.
Do you mean this in a literal linguistic way, as in if it doesn't come in Japan it doesn't technically count as a "visual novel" even if it's identical in every way, as in the Champagne example? Because this is entirely false. Neither "visual" nor "novel" are Japanese words. We don't have an equivalent word in English because that's what these are.
Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.
Warning: extremely pretentious weeb discussion below.
Personally, I would argue that they are different in the first way; in my view, the difference between a "visual novel" in the Western and Japanese sense is a semantic shift, in the same way that " マンション / mansion" in Japanese means a small apartment, but "mansion" in English means a large free-standing house, with connotations of land and status.
In the Western context, visual novels are really just considered cheap porn, and even when Western indies try to surpass this definition, it's much like trying to build a bigger apartment to try and re-create a mansion (in the English sense). Apartments are great and all (as many Western indie games are pretty great), but fundamentally they're just contained in different categories.
In contrast, there is a Japanese otaku subculture where visual novels are considered a serious artform, and as a result there are real auteurs, who would have been acclaimed authors of high society in another life, who end up in a position of writing high-budget erotic games (although again, "エロゲー / erotic games" is a bit of a semantic shift, the difference between Hot Singles In Your Area and Lolita).
For example, I would consider White Album 2, Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai and Albatross Koukairoku (amongst others) to be legitimate works of literary art that equal or surpass much of the actual literary canon; there's frankly no Western "visual novel" that would even come close in my estimation.
I agree with your object level criticisms about how Westerners have approached this problem, but would categorize all of that under the second way. If a certain culture or group of people publish a bunch of smut novels and can't figure out how to write a decent novel they're still "novels", just not very good ones. If they start filming and publishing porn films, they're still "films". It's the same type of media, even if it's only one specific genre within that media. Visual novel is a form of media, and it's trivial to make something that's in the media. It's highly nontrivial to make one that's good. A mansion is a type of house. A building is a structure which can contain many different types and serve many different purposes. I argue that the word "visual novel" is more akin to "building", and the West can make those. You don't look at a log cabin and say "it's not a building because it's smaller than this mansion". They're not the same, they're not really in the same ballpark in terms of quality. But in a literal and linguistic way they are still the same category of object.
Yeah I think we're 99% on the same page here, that the Japanese are building mansions (of varying quality of course, most "authentic" Japanese visual novels are still awful, as most of everything is awful) while Westerners are only constructing a bunch of log cabins (apart from Katawa Shoujo as someone mentioned downthread, which is structurally identical to a Japanese mansion except in language).
I would say the difference between your viewpoint and mine is that I think to further torture this metaphor, that Westeners view the definition of "building" as identical to the definition of "log cabin" and cannot imagine a building to be like anything else that isn't a log cabin. DDLC broke fairly hard out of containment, and while Salvato himself is pretty tapped into Japanese VN culture, normie reception to DDLC was generally along the lines of "this is the only good visual novel, how did he do it?", which isn't helped by how the game is framed, from the normie perspective at least, as a structural deconstruction of every other visual novel being a cheap dating sim.
In Japan, while obviously still extremely niche relative to broader society, the conception of the building as something greater than a log cabin actually exists, and by extension the idea of the visual novel as an actual artform actually exists. Typing this out it sounds extremely pretentious, but I think this conception of "the building as greater than the log cabin" purely exists only amongst the Japanese and highly Japanese-influenced people, and hence it wouldn't really be wrong to claim that it's different in a real, linguistic way.
I don't think this is quite right. Because obviously a significant fraction of westerners have played Japanese visual novels and are aware of what can be done. And while this is not the normie, even the normie anime-viewer, neither are the people making western visual novels. The average normie does not write their own visual novel. And when someone who clearly does know and care about visual novels makes one, like DDLC, it's still not a full length visual novel. Not because they don't know or care, but because they can't.
The real issue is infrastructure. The big fancy good mansion visual novels in Japan cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, involve many high quality writers, artists, and voice actors. Anyone in the West who imagines a full length real visual novel cannot get the funding to make it, and cannot find/hire voice actors who would both be willing to work on the project, and good enough to do it well. There ARE no Western equivalents to Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, or Mamoru Miyano.
It's not merely an issue of imagination. Anyone can imagine things. It's the technology and infrastructure required to take that imagination and turn it into reality. And I suppose in some sense this is downstream of culture and imagination. The majority of Western audience imagine and ask for log cabins, so none of the investors or talents try to create this infrastructure. And if some rich visionary made an expensive AAA visual novel it probably wouldn't sell enough to recoup its costs, so the investors aren't wrong. But it's more complicated than simply "no one can imagine anything better". We can clearly see the better things, which is how you and I are talking about them right now. But even the most skilled and creative architect can't go out into the woods with nothing more than a rusty hatchet and make themselves a mansion. Individual people with ideas can only make indie games.
While I agree with you that budget is certainly a factor, I think budget alone kind of overstates the case that you're trying to make.
Two of the most influential visual novels in the genre, Tsukihime and Higurashi, were both literally created by a couple dudes in a basement each, and while certainly not gold-plated 6-figure mansion experiences, still vastly outstrip the scope, ambition and quality of any Western visual novel I'm aware of. Maybe they're kinda shabby mansions, but they're clearly larger and of different provenance to the log cabins.
Visual novels are like, the cheapest medium out there to create behind literal novels; while you certainly need budget for the best graphics and voice actors, you can get very far by just having a good writer, a good artist and a good composer.
While I agree that there's no, say, Western Clannad because of budgetary reasons, I think it's much more a deficiency of vision (and frankly, skill, because all the competent people do something respectable instead) that is why no serious Western competitor to something like Tsukihime or Higurashi exists.
Ahem. The OG Clannad might disagree about that.
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I usually find Western erotic games to be superior to Japanese h-games, even apart from the bother of setting up a Japanese locale emulator to get the damn game to run. But that may just be because I don't like ugly bastards. I certainly prefer anime-style graphics to something like Daz 3D, but in the age of Koikatsu Party and Pony Diffusion any Western dev can make those.
The obvious answer is of course to combine western player characters and Japanese love interests.
Edit: I present Exhibit A ("1girl" anime style) and Exhibit B (from Summertime Saga, an apparently popular western erotic game). Obviously somewhat NSFW. I realize that according to the internets (or at least many such western game creators) men are obligated to prefer HHH-size boobies but, at the risk of coming off as a deviant, I'm going to have to go with Exhibit A (even though it was created in 30 seconds using an ancient AI SD 1.5 finetune).
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This is the opinion that matters on this one. If anyone else disagrees I honestly dont care
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If you're just comparing quick cheap goonslop and/or small indie projects, then sure both of them can make some passable stuff. But if we look at proper visual "novels", masterpieces like Grisaia no Kajitsu, G Senjou no Maou, or Steins Gate, there just is nothing in the West even remotely comparable. The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.
Um, I haven't played G-Senjou no Maou, but I've played the other two and I wouldn't describe them as "masterpieces". I'd describe them as "decent VNs with AAA production values" (well, Steins;Gate and Kajitsu; Meikyuu and Rakuen I'd describe as "AAA sequelitis").
(Kajitsu's way too long for its plot and a bit cookie-cutter; Steins;Gate has an interesting premise and then hamfistedly declares that 90% of the interestingness is arbitrarily denied by "convergence" and mostly does romantic misery porn instead. Chaos;Head's (a lot) less polished, but it delivers on much more of its premise than Steins;Gate.)
All of your criticisms are directionally true, I just think the quality of the games is high enough to make up for this (with the exception of Meikyuu which... meh, they could have done better). Maybe they just uniquely appealed to me and my sense of humor. I laughed throughout the entire (quite lengthy) common route in Kajitsu and would gladly have played more (which is why I've replayed it two more times over the years). The character routes, especially the flashbacks, can be a bit of a slog but are still quite good. Likewise, I think Steins;Gate is peak when it is making jokes and being hilarious, while the sad drama stuff does drag on a bit. Overall though, I think they needed the sadder slower parts to tell a meaningful story, and they did, and nothing the West has ever made is even slightly close.
...Hmm.
So, I find slice-of-life comedy completely useless (LCD sense of humour =/= mine, probably aspie-related). What I was saying was too long about Kajitsu was the common route, which has a pretty-terrible word-count-to-plot ratio; I liked some of the heroine routes (mostly Sachi and Michiru; Amane and Makina routes should have been combined, and Yumiko route is bleh).
I'm fine with romantic dramas (the two VNs I've ever rated 10/10 are School Days and Totono, and Saya no Uta's 9/10), but Steins;Gate pulls the same "blow up your relationship or the world ends, lol" trick four times (in lieu of any kind of creative solution, because "convergence"), which is why I called it misery porn.
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What about Slay the Princess or the Coffin of Andy and Leyley? They're both overwhelmingly positive on Steam, comparable to Steins Gate.
I don't generally do spooky horror stuff, so haven't played either of them. That said, they appear to still be small scale indie games with stylized but clearly budget art styles, little to no voice acting, and about 4 hours of content each. They are small indie games. Their target audiences apparently like them for what they are, but they are not what I'm talking about. Stein's Gate is about 30 hours and Grisaia no Kajitsu is about 60 if you play all routes. (And both have sequels with even more content, albeit slightly less amazing) These are big meaty stories with intricate details, whole casts of characters, recurring jokes, themes. They develop characters and make you feel for them. They go into backstories. They have slice of life and action and drama. They do everything because they are not constrained by the limitations of a 90 minute cinema timer or the indie creator's non-existent budget.
They are to full visual novels what Five Nights and Freddy's is to Elden Ring. They're different things which cater to different target audiences (with some overlap). But there's a difference in scale and ambition which (in visual novels) the West can't realistically match.
OK, slay the princess was short. But it was voiced and interesting. As for Coffin, I watched a streamer play through it and do voices for it and it was a pretty gripping, intense experience. There is a lot going on beyond 'incest haha'. There are themes, developed characters, intricate details for both.
Most of the reviewers had 10-20 hours.
Furthermore, the quality of a visual novel or any piece of literature is not decided by size. Otherwise Chinese webnovel bros would be the undisputed masters of writing. Visual novels don't need flashy graphics or voice acting to be excellent, the primary thing is the writing and all else is a cherry on top.
The test of quality should be in its review score. Anything overwhelmingly positive on steam has a perfectly good claim to high quality for its genre.
Japan is not more cultured than the West. Anything Japan can do, the West can also do and vis versa. They're just more into visual novel type games, less into shooters or grand strategy. They could make a first rate shooter or 4X game, they just choose not to. Just because a Western audience might generally prefer more gameplay (putting it up from visual novel to 'story rich') or less gameplay (novel, cartoon) it doesn't mean there's some deficiency in the West compared to Japan.
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Slay the Princess is fully voiced, at least as far as I played it (I got pissed off and quit, IIRC).
Which perfect woman was too much?
I got pissed off when I didn't manage to kill her the first time and then I got told "You cannot go further astray" when I tried to do it right the second time.
So IIRC I tracked down the save file, murdered it, killed her properly, got the deliberately-terrible reward, and quit.
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