[Guide] Reading Visual Novels in Japanese

Anime has slowly grown into a global phenomenon, but visual novels are far more niche. Many visual novels remain untouched by localization companies, and sometimes the localizations we do get are…lackluster.

Often, the best way to experience a visual novel is in the original language—Japanese. Whether you’re already interested in learning Japanese, or want to learn Japanese purely to play visual novels in their original language, both motivations are perfectly valid. Visual novels are a great way to learn Japanese, because you get exposure to both the written and spoken language.

I've written a guide on how you can learn Japanese by playing visual novels with the help of a friend who made some suggestions to improve it, and it's available on our wiki, wiki.comfysnug.space. As with all pages on our wiki, it's licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, meaning you're free to share and re-post the content.

If you're interested in learning Japanese or have already begun, I hope you find this guide useful. It isn't meant to be a dedicated guide on learning Japanese, but there are some tools you might not know about that will make your life easier.

If you have any additions or corrections to offer for this guide, or are interested in working on our other pages, you can sign up for the wiki here.