Saya no Uta Hits the Mainstream
Over at Kotaku they’ve done a review of the classic horror visual novel Saya no Uta. I meant to post about this yesterday but the XBOX One conference kind of took over. Regardless, this is a sort of remarkable event. Visual novels receive little to no meaningful press coverage in the west (not that they do in Japan, either) and are generally considered a subclass of video game here in the west. For a major gaming news outlet to talk about, much less to a full review, is notable.
Do I hope that more light will be drawn to the very good visual novels that currently exist? Yes. But this also scares me a little bit, because drawing attention to any visual novel is bound to draw attention to all the horrible, sexist, disgusting, and completely character less visual novels that do exist. My great fear is that the genre will continue to be defined by its worst parts, and not its best.
I suppose only time will tell.
