I love how people take something said by some guy at face value, even though he provided no source for any of that. Five copies for one pirated game when it comes to "standard" games and five pirated ones for every bought VN? Lol.

And what? Sol Press has released four translation with another twelve being announced? Oh no, we are losing money. Of course you do, that's why you have so much in the pipeline...

Also, importing is and was always easy. People just didn't want to. The only exception were old ones that weren't really available anymore (downloads aside which have always been accessible for anyone but I personally would never buy digital).

A lot of the time people are just bsing and have actually no clue. I may have not been around when the first ones were professionally translated in the late 90s but I have been around since the mid 00s which is way longer than most of the people in the VN scene these days.

That's the only style asian devs seem to know...even when portraying other ethnic groups. :\

FROM SOFTWARE would like to have a word with you. They did a great job at Victorian England meets Cosmic Horror, in Bloodborne. And their Souls series is mostly devoid of Pop culture and Anime clichés as well. I'm sure there are other Japanese studios which prefer a more realistic or historically accurate style.

But as for all the other studios -- I guess it sells well? I used to like Anime series and J-RPGs myself when I was younger, but I've grown rather tired of the style. I can tolerate it when it's part of an otherwise great game, but the style itself is usually a turn-off. ( Of course there isn't really one universal Anime style. I'm mostly talking about the overused "androgynous J-Pop boys & their kawaii teenage waifus in skimpy neon outfits team up to save the world" cliché. )

Wow, the soundtrack by itself is expensive! Why does it cost so much?

Because Japan. Those songs are mostly not instrumental (only one or two) and thus songs by other artists.

Such media is quite expensive considering Japan's copyright and licencing procedures...

Yup, exactly. And the whole "people don't want to pay for porn" thing (which is, more often than not, also piracy... but they'd never see it as such).

But unlike anime, VN localizers generally do put a lot of effort in. Their releases tend to be on par with quality fansubs, with good translation quality, full UI translation, signage, etc. Sure there have been a few bungled releases here and there, and there's that one company I hope dies out one day.... But on the whole, it's not like the anime scene. I really hope people aren't so immature as to confuse the two industries and treat, say, Mangagamer or XSEED like Funimation and Netflix. D: