On Visual Novels

We now set out to examine visual novels. In a way, it is in them that anime-style media finds its most complete expression, its most aesthetically and emotionally compelling form. The absence of the need to produce countless drawings to create animated frames, as in anime, allows artists to make illustrations that reach the highest level of detail and stylistic refinement insofar as static images remain on the screen for a relatively long period of time. Upon examining them, we notice that, especially in this form of anime-style design, the representation of reality is characterized by a plastic-metallic transfiguration of materials, textures and forms, that is, everything presented is marked by a visual quality that can be described as plastic, metallic or both. This plastic-metallic metamorphosis of things seems to suggest a desire to escape, a will to withdraw from the realm of external reality, which is chaotic, marked by the conflict of opinions and interests, the struggle of classes and individuals, the spontaneous, raw and naturally unpredictable processes of nature, and to take refuge in the artificial world of engendered form, of domesticated, controllable and rationally transparent processes and products. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the otaku's entire personal world is itself plastic: their room is covered on all walls, on all furniture and in every corner with plastic objects (posters, figurines, dolls, CD and DVD cases, video games, various trinkets etc.). This plasticity – and, therefore, artificiality – of their life, with the disturbances and anxieties that naturally accompany it, explains even how a visual novel like Saya no Uta could, not long ago, reach the level of popularity it has today. Truly, the fundamental narrative idea of ​​the story, the plot of a man who sees the entire world around him as a grotesque mass of entrails and, conversely, an alien (which is itself seen by normal people as a grotesque mass of entrails) like a beautiful young girl, signifies exactly the fear and torment of the person who has enclosed themself in a plastic world devoid of any spontaneous and natural meaning. The transformation of the outside world and the annihilation of all its beauty through its reduction to a grotesque carnal mass, as well as the re-signification of an alien being that is strange to this world into something beautiful and worthy of appreciation, expresses precisely the distinct – and even anomalous – way in which the otaku conceives the reality in which they are inserted and their relationship with it, something that the audience unconsciously perceives and that leads them, unknowingly, to identify with the plot and characters of Saya no Uta.

This plastic-metallic quality is further aided in the construction of its uprooted reality by narratives that are entirely artificial and that equally express the same tendency of fugue relatively to the world. Curiously, the visual novel does not usually build its aesthetic effect on the poetic quality of its text, but on the audiovisual impression resulting from the harmonious juxtaposition of its graphics, sound effects, musical interventions and textual elements, which constitutes its greatest flaw: it is a strange and Frankensteinian hybrid of cinema, theater and novel. It is, in effect, an art form that fails in each of the isolated and unique criteria by which its component arts should be evaluated. The visual and cinematic elements are inferior for obvious reasons, while the literary aspect is constantly disregarded in its poetic peculiarity and is always treated as a mere means for the mechanistic, inelegant and crude transmission of the plot, as if the narrative itself wanted to exist not as text, but as a vague notion that penetrates directly into the player's mind and that exists confusedly and impalpably only in their mind. In effect, the communicative form of the visual novel depreciates any and all art – in the primordial sense of the word by which one meant "technique" – insofar as it wants to skip the very formal stage of art as technique, of art as the cultivation of one or more techniques, and simply wants to go straight to the promotion of a certain mental state in the player, providing an objectified, commodified "experience", an immaterial product that is as if it already arrived ready-made with the download. The visual novel presents itself, therefore, as the result of forces that are contrary to art itself, a kitsch taken to its ultimate consequences by means of the processes of alienation, loss of aesthetic sensibility and the automation and mechanization not only of the productive stages, but of the very enjoyment of the work of art. It is, consequently, an abomination of immense proportions whose grotesque aspect is even difficult to put into words.

Similarly, the musical ambit is also always underdeveloped, and fundamentally for the same reason. Since the musical element is merely an accompaniment – that is, just another means by which the visual novel wants to hammer its "experience" directly into the player's mind – the entire role of the music is reduced to reinforcing certain ideas linked to specific environments, events and characters. It's Satie's Musique d'Ameublement, only in an even more subservient form. Indeed, the literary and musical parts never even aspire to reach the levels established by great art because they are always subject to the needs of the resulting harmonic effect, that is, because they are and continue to be slaves to the "immersive" audiovisual phantasmagoria which (at least until today) remains devoid of any deeper meaning, incapable of achieving the status of serious art on its own.

It must therefore be said that the path to overcoming these problems lies either in a total and radical reimagining of what exactly this "immersive" audiovisual phantasmagoria means, or in consolidating the text as the decisive part and aspect of visual novels, transforming them into an art form that is consciously more literary than interactive, "immersive" or audiovisual.

Ideally, the transformation of the visual novel into an art form of the highest level, the realization in it of a culturally and temporally transcendental artistic value, a mirror of the most genuine and esteemed human condition, would stem both from a poetic-narrative elevation of the text as well as from a revolution in its audiovisual elements, but this obviously encounters a series of problems for which there is still no definitive solution. Firstly, the textual element, being a hybrid of theatrical and novelistic text, requires us to rethink traditional narrative and dramatic structures in a way that adequately accommodates, for the purposes of high art, the intrinsic peculiarity of the visual novel medium whereby dialogue plays a more important role than in the novel, but not more important than in theater, while narration plays a more important role than in theater, but not more important than in the novel. Secondly, it is necessary to reformulate the visual and cinematic element in such a way as to overcome the typical limitations of the anime style without, however, adulterating it to the point of losing its own genuine character. Finally, it is necessary to liberate the musical component from its docile and undignified role and bring it closer to an operatic style, taking full advantage of the practical and theoretical legacy of the great European composers.

With the current decline in the popularity of visual novels, their shortcomings and their primitive, not yet fully refined technical-stylistic condition become evident, especially when we compare them with the most modern examples of video games and notice their interactive-cinematic inferiority, their inability to compete in providing a truly immersive audiovisual experience. It is always a tragic thing when an art form dies or decays before reaching its maturity, but, at the same time, if it is necessarily deprived of a path that directs it towards high art, its demise then appears as a natural and unavoidable future. This is why visual novels currently have two choices: either take a qualitative leap and rise to the level of serious art and literature, becoming comparable to the great works of world literature (thus ensuring their preservation as a living tradition through the assimilation into the canon), or wither and ultimately perish in the face of the competition from modern-day games, which are undoubtedly superior in their graphic, cinematic and interactive capabilities. Unfortunately, the latter is the most likely outcome.