Visual Novels, Anime, and the Trouble with Adaptations

((Note: This was written mostly before the Rewrite anime was released.))

It's always exciting to see a favorite story get adapted. You get to see your favorite scenes animated! The story will get greater exposure, giving you more people to talk about it with! And for some of us, we get that hipster cred when we discover something before it becomes mainstream! The downside is that it's remarkably difficult to make an adaptation work, and some mediums have it worse than others.

Visual novel adaptations, unfortunately, usually don't turn out very well. When they do turn out well, they're usually still inferior versions of the source material. It's why the great news about the new Rewrite anime is often met with anger and frustration instead of excitement and optimism.

That's a justified response given the anime industry's track record. Some of them will even describe why the anime is doomed from the start. What exactly are the solutions, then?

"The Rewrite anime can be good, but they have to do it right."

Despite being a tautology, this is completely useless advice. Literally anything on the planet can be good "if done right." Animation, interior design, murder, you name it. There are a set of qualities that can make each of these productions "good." Our job, then, is to isolate what major obstacles face anime producers when making adaptations and describe possible remedies for them.

In short, the fundamental obstacle with most adaptations is this:

---Writers choose the medium to fit the story. 

Note that this isn't always true in storytelling. Authors write their stories in books because they lack the resources to make movies. These are limitations which don't necessarily reflect qualities of the stories themselves. Perhaps the starving author would make a movie if they could. That's not what we're concerned with.

---Visual novel writers chose the medium for the story. 

For a visual novel writer, there are particular qualities that are attractive in the visual novel that are absent in other mediums. Sometimes these writers will select other mediums for their stories: a notable example is Jun Maeda, who began with VNs (Kanon, CLANNAD, Little Busters!) but eventually started writing for anime (Angel Beats!, Charlotte).

For him, choosing the medium was an explicit choice. 
"I want to explore the function of family in a number of different ways, so I'll write CLANNAD as a visual novel so I can have multiple routes."
"I want a fast-paced mystery that spans one timeline, so an anime would be better for Charlotte."

In short, the medium itself played a role in the telling of the story. Adaptations often will ignore this and try to coerce the VN into a linear, animated form. If we really want a good adaptation, the subtleties of the new medium itself needs to be considered. Changes need to be made. A carbon copy usually just won't do.

You have to analyze the strengths of each medium in order to make a good result. You need a new direction. 

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Below I list some common pitfalls that anime adaptations suffer and offer suggestions each of them. I tried to list as many as I could think of, but I don't expect this to be complete. At the very least it's a good starting point for analyzing the differences in media.

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Problem 1: Content 

This is usually the first thing that people point to when describing faulty adaptations, but I wouldn't classify this as the biggest contributor to bad anime. However, it is still a big concern.

Visual novels are long and dense. Many of the "great" VNs are in excess of 50 hours long. How can you condense 50 hours of content into 13 hours of anime? Inevitably, content will be lost. You can't avoid that. It's impossible to represent everything in the adaptation. You have to cut things out.

Do we really need Kappei's route in a CLANNAD adaptation? No, this doesn't tie in as well to the main story as some of the other routes.

Do we really need talks about food in a Fate/stay night adaptation? No, there are other ways to characterize the protagonists while having them do things that matter.

Do we really need Okabe's dense description of the laboratory in Steins;Gate? No, we get that already through visuals and cinematography.

The problem of reducing content is difficult. Trimming content is hard without deciding on a new direction for the story in the adaptation. Sometimes projects are doomed from the start (Umineko) if you can't find a way to condense information in subtle ways.

The strength of motion picture is that things can be shown. There are plenty of ways to represent information outside of text. You don't need to turn description into dialogue. You can turn description into imagery.

Problem 2: Multiple Routes

This is the next most-cited point in these kinds of discussions. At first glance, it's impossible to reconcile this difference. Anime is linear, The visual novel isn't. However, directors have shown us clever workarounds over the years. The CLANNAD approach can work if you can "de-romanticize" the routes: simply splice the temporally compatible routes into character arcs for the minor characters. The CLANNAD anime's treatment of the game is altogether special: since the narrative focus in the anime is almost entirely devoted to Tomoya and Nagisa, you get to experience Tomoya and Nagisa solving the other characters' problems, instead of just Tomoya. It creates a new dynamic between the story's characters.

A lot of the time this simply isn't possible, though. It the routes are not temporally compatible, the directors will need to reevaluate the structure of the anime. Why cram a bunch of incompatible routes together? This stems from the misconception that an anime adaptation of a VN needs to be a strict retelling of the VN's events. It doesn't have to be that way as long as you frame the audience's expectations appropriately. Aren't there other ways to characterize the minor characters without ripping the routes from the VN?

Problem 3: Perspective

In my opinion, this is one of the largest obstacles in adaptation. Visual novels are (usually) told through first-person limited narration. Anime is not. The importance of perspective is often overlooked because it usually doesn't contribute to bad adaptations, but rather mediocre ones. Most of these VNs would be "just okay" without the focus on narration. Certain VNs are fantastic because of their reliance on this narration (Muv-Luv Alternative works so well because we are constantly assailed by Takeru's most intimate thoughts). Failing to capture that aspect of the story doesn't always cripple the adaptation, but reduces its emotional impact on the audience. It's a silent killer.

There are a number of choices anime studios have made over the years to address this:

• Provide the narration as voiceover
• Provide the narration as dialogue ("People die when they are killed")
• Ignore the narration altogether
• Show the character's thoughts visually (through cinematography and mise-en-scene)

Each approach has its merits and uses, but the choice should be made consciously and with awareness of the work as a whole. 

Problem 4: Serial vs Complete

This is a subtle point that is often overlooked. Anime are episodic, visual novels are complete. To turn a complete work into a serial one, you have to slice up the plot.

Compare this with manga, another serial medium. Manga is delimited by chapters. At least in this way, manga is easy to turn into anime since you don't need to make decisions about where to interrupt the action. That's given to you by the author already.

For the visual novel, you need to forcibly impose boundaries for plot segments. This is a storyboarding and directing problem. Thus, the directors' and scriptwriters' vision is imposed onto the anime itself. This isn't a bad thing. On the contrary, this forces them to develop their own vision for the anime and adopt stances that may differ from the source material.

Problem 5: "Quirks" 

The visual novel, as a medium, has a rich history behind it. There are plenty of "quirks" and conventions now attached to it that aren't present in other media. It's natural that some artifacts would play around with our expectations of the medium. Ever17 and Little Busters take full advantage of the conventions of the VN form in order to subvert them later on. This effect is lost when translated to a medium without those quirks. At least in these two examples, you can probably achieve a comparable effect with nonlinear storytelling, but then the resulting statement is one broader and less focused than the one in the original work (i.e. commenting on the expectation of linear narrative is less specific than commenting on the expectation that subsequent playthroughs of a VN exist in their own closed-off narrative spaces, for example).

Summary: What is the purpose of this adaptation?

This is the most fundamental question we must ask ourselves when adapting an IP. What do you wish to accomplish with this anime? Do you want to faithfully retell the story or introduce a unique spin on the concept? Specifically, are you marketing this towards fans of the IP or are you trying to appeal to a wide audience? You can do both, but you need to frame the anime for your specific goal. You'd be surprised at how frequently the anime industry spawns ill-conceived adaptations. In reality the issue is complicated because directors and screenwriters must work with bigwig executives to balance artist merit with mass appeal, but this doesn't have to be damning.

I don't care if the studio has to remove things to make it marketable.

I don't care if you change the style to make it work.

I don't even care if you deviate from what made the VN good in the first place.

Just make the anime good on its own terms. 

"Equivalent Side-Character" Syndrome

((Spoilers for YU-NO, Air, and Steins;Gate ahead!))

A well-written side-character really excites me. It's often refreshing to see interactions between these kinds of characters because they tend to have larger flexibility in the story with respect to personality and actions. Sometimes they can even steal the scene they're in (for me personally? Rohan Kishibe from Diamond is Unbreakable, Mettaton from Undertale, to name a few).

Visual novels have it kind of hard in this area, though. It's not so much that VNs don't have well-written characters, but more that the conventions of the medium force these characters to be treated by the narrative in certain ways.

A large portion of visual novels with routes belong to the harem genre, or at least follow conventions of the harem genre (namely that the protagonist has multiple love interests and that each route focuses on a single love interest in some form).

Traditionally, these kinds of games offered up multiple female love interests so that each player would be able to develop a romantic relationship with characters they were actually interested in. Players are more likely to be interested in at least one character if their selection is large, after all. A consequence of this is that they tend to get "equal attention" by the narrative; after all, eroge players tend to get mad when their favorite character is framed as "equivalent" to other female leads but is actually given significantly less attention than the others ("why don't we get a 'Kyou After'? Nagisa is boring!"). This can make the narrative fairly predictable at times, since you know that the stories involving the girls are going to be "balanced" to make sure no one heroine gets more attention than the others. Additionally, there isn't a whole lot of room for one character to steal the spotlight, which can be disappointing.

An interesting example to bring in is Elf's 1996 classic YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. The majority of the female leads exhibit an equal amount of agency over the events in the game, which leads us to assume that they are going to be treated equally towards the end of the game. In the game's final act, the protagonist is sent to an entirely new location and encounters an identical counterpart to one of the game's main heroines. Because the heroines thus far have been "equivalent", I expected to see ALL of them have some appearance, but this never happens. In this last act, one heroine is given more attention to the story, and it was actually slightly disappointing for me. The pretense of equivalency was dropped at the end of the game, violating my expectations in a negative way.

VN's have changed since then, especially since KEY's Air, which features a "true" route. This route occurs after all of the other routes are completed and usually focuses on one (or a few) heroines over the others. Air initially frames one heroine, Misuzu, as "more important" than the others, and the true route focuses exclusively on her. This allows for more narrative focus, since the story is no longer forced to equally accommodate to each heroine. I personally prefer this format since it allows certain characters to really shine, but also because the concept of a single "canon" ending allows the writers of the VN to actually construct a coherent thesis. For example, each of the original routes in KEY's CLANNAD focuses on some aspect of "family", and the true route unifies each of the thematic threads in those routes and presents a final message about family as a catalyst for personal change.

Many of these games don't escape the "Equivalent Side-Character Syndrome", though. Nitroplus's Steins;Gate, while a fantastic game, is a good example to study. There are a variety of female characters, but only two of them actually matter. The others each are only important in that they get a single character arc. The structure of the game makes this aspect especially tedious. We know that since only two characters matter, the rest are going to be treated roughly the same way by the narrative. Once one of those characters gets a story arc, all of them must get a story arc. We are thus given a sizable portion of game that is spent on character arcs that don't entirely matter to the plot, but occur so that each of the minor female leads gets attention.

All in all, this trope isn't all that bad, but it definitely can frame our expectations about the game. If the game goes out of its way to let us know that all of the characters are "equal", then we know that we can have fulfilling experiences no matter which route we take. If the game attempts to elevate certain characters as more important, we can expect a more cohesive, focused narrative. There are great (and also bad) examples of both styles.

ErogeQuest 2016

I'm getting kind of interested in visual novel history, so I'm going to embark on a journey into the deepest depths of hentai hell. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work, but I'll probably just perform analysis on games within one eroge company at a time, perhaps leading to some masterpiece of the studio.

Everyone knows about KEY and Type-Moon so I might do those later. I think I'll start by looking at C's Ware, the creator of Divi-Dead, and whose author and composer went to Elf to work on YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world. A lot of their earlier stuff is reaaaaally bad, so that'll be fun.

Hentai へ！

((And I have like 5 posts that are half-finished, so I guess I'll do those too...))

Let Me Figure it Out on My Own!! ---- Subtlety and Emotional Response

We all know the classic adage in storytelling: "show, don't tell."

A lot of authors will underestimate the intelligence of their audience and will drive home important points through dialogue instead of actions... but wow, it turns out that humans are really great at making connections and recognizing the unsaid! In fact, it seems that overtly stating things can even diminish their effect!

What exactly entails "showing" as opposed to "telling"? In reality, it's more than just actions versus words. Central to this adage is respect for the autonomy of your audience. Readers tend to become more engaged when allowed to arrive at conclusions on their own. That's one of the things I found charming about shows like Serial Experiments Lain and Revolutionary Girl Utena: both of these shows feature naturally complex social and societal relationships in esoteric and symbolic ways, and the process of decoding such dense imagery increases our satisfaction when we uncover what is actually being said. Topics like patriarchy, technological dependency, and emergent social consciousness are difficult to grasp, and allowing us to draw our own conclusions based on interpreting the information we see from these shows is more effective than lecturing about the authors' own worldviews. That said, Lain and Utena both fall near the "extreme" pole of the spectrum: many works of fiction are able to tell easily-understandable stories and still leave a lot unspoken for the readers to absorb organically.

A simple example:

Sentence 1: "Sally threw the unused movie tickets in the dumpster."
Sentence 2: "Sally was stood up by her date."

Both of these sentences tell the same story, but Sentence 1 forces the reader's mind to arrive at the conclusion in Sentence 2 by way of context clues and inference.

A term I think is more accurate when describing these situations is "subtle storytelling." Subtle authors will give us exactly what we need in order to understand what's happening between the lines in a scene and nothing more. To be clear, things that are not "between the lines", such as descriptions of events and necessary communication between actors, should mostly be made explicit. We don't want the audience to constantly be guessing about what's happening in the plot (unless that's one of the draws of the story, like in Lain). In the end, it's up to the author's discretion as to what should be made clear and what should be hidden. In general, I think that thematic content, emotional states, and characterization are things that benefit greatly from subtle presentation.

The examples from Utena and Lain focus on the conveyance of intellectual perspectives, but there are definitely other uses for subtle storytelling. Stories in the horror genre often will employ subtle techniques to increase suspense and fear. The scariest things are those we can't understand or visualize. That is why great horror writers never lay all of their cards on the table. Instead, they leave hints and let our minds go wild: the most talented horror author in the world can never produce a scarier creature than what I am imagining in my mind when I am given weak descriptions of Yog-Sothoth in Lovecraftian horror tales.

The use of subtlety in horror is something I want to return to later, but the practice I wanted to focus on today is the use of subtle hints when trying to elicit emotional responses from readers. Many Japanese visual novels will use explicit emotional scenes or heavyhanded dialgoue in order to draw reactions from the audience. To be fair, many of my favorite scenes in all of gaming employ these techniques well when used in climax (CLANNAD and Little Busters! come to mind and I love them both to death) but I'm interested in the examples that use other practices. All it takes is one special shot or line of dialogue to cue us on how a character is feeling. Letting us fill in the blanks can be extremely effective in allowing us to empathize with narrators or characters.

Here's a famous six-word sad story by Ernest Hemingway:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

And here's an alternate retelling:

"The baby died in infancy and the shoes didn't have a use anymore."

I don't need to tell you which is more effective.

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For fun, here are some examples off the top of my head that use subtle storytelling to evoke emotional responses from the audience. These are pretty meaningless if you haven't seen them already because I'm pretty terrible at description but here goes anyway:

(Spoiler warnings for everything listed, read on if you don't care about any of these even though you should because they're great)

Muv-Luv Alternative: What's kinda interesting about this example is that there are really heavy-handed emotional scenes in the latter half of the game (and they actually are effective) but there are also a good number of more subtle parts as well. In particular:

• Chapter 7 of Muv-Luv Alternative might be my favorite section in all of gaming because of how rapidly and realistically Takeru develops throughout its course (I might write an essay about this chapter someday). No summary can do it justice, but to enumerate the key points: the premise of the game is that the main character, Takeru, a normal teenager in a romantic comedy harem scenario, wakes up one day to find himself in a post-apocalyptic version of his home world (characters included) where aliens have killed off most of the human population. His goal is to find a way back to his home universe, but it proves to be a difficult task: he's stuck in this foreign universe for years and is forced to adapt to the harsh military environment in order to survive. Eventually Takeru is given a ticket home but decides to stick around to help humanity in the war against the aliens. It's not until Takeru experiences a sequence of PTSD-inducing horrors before he calls it quits and runs away to his home universe. Once there, he tries to re-integrate into his past life but struggles because of the mental scarring he's received. On top of that, because of the way dimension-hopping works in the Muv-Luv canon, Takeru unwittingly carries information about his PTSD triggers back home with him, where they are allowed to manifest again before his very eyes. Because of his lingering doubts about his new-found "happiness", Takeru's existence serves as a "causality conductor" for all of the terrible things that happened in the Alternative universe (there's a good reason for this, I promise). As a consequence, Takeru's indecisiveness leads to the deaths of many of his loved ones in his home universe. Driven nearly mad by this turn of events, he begins to reject them altogether. This prompts one of the other main characters, Meiya, to beat some sense into our poor protagonist. "She's dead, Takeru! You must accept reality!" In this moment, Takeru's mind subconsciously flashes back to one of the horrors in the Alternative universe. This is a powerful realization for the audience: Takeru has accepted the war-stricken nightmare as "reality." Takeru fought so hard to come "back home", but in the process, is no longer able to recognize his cozy previous life as "home." All the happiness in his original universe is hollow and purely escapist from his point of view.
  
  This is just a two-second flashback shot but it reveals so much about our main character without having to tell us with words (excepting "accept reality!").

• Yuuko's appearance in the "Carry on" speech makes me tear up every time I watch it. In the protagonist's easygoing home universe at the beginning of the game, we learn that the teachers Yuuko Kouzuki and Marimo Jinguuji are best friends in every sense of the expression. Naturally, given the nature of parallel universes in the Muv-Luv canon, we expect that relationship to occur in the Alternative universe as well. Marimo is still a teacher to our main characters, but our other expectations are betrayed when we learn about Yuuko's general demeanor as XO at the Yokohama UN Base. She explicitly denies giving a shit about individual human lives and instead prioritizes the success of her plans to defeat the alien invaders. Even when Marimo is eaten alive midway through the story, Yuuko tells Takeru something along the lines of "man the fuck up, she wasn't my friend, only a tool to be used to further my plans." It's not until one scene in the final act of the game that we see her true colors in this universe. During the CO's final speech, right as the main characters, humanity's last hope, launch into the atmosphere by shuttle, we see Yuuko in the background holding a portrait of the deceased Marimo, as she mutters, "look, Marimo, your children are going." This one shot reveals that Yuuko was deeply affected by the death of her friend, but had to put on a facade in order to ensure the future of the human race. She is allowed one moment of weakness in the entire story, but that is enough for us to piece together her true character. 

• One of the things I was consistently impressed with in this game was how well it was able to balance focus between both the global and local struggles caused by the alien invasion. A very, very subtle thing that characterizes the human race in this alternate universe is their reaction to the destruction of the Sadogashima Hive in Chapter 9. The alien invasion began almost 40 years before the game starts and humans have not once been able to fight back against the menace. Once the Su'sano mega-weapon fires and completely wipes out one of the primary hives, the entirety of the naval and ground troops burst out into tears of screams and joy. This scene alone isn't too significant until you realize that these are the cheers of people who literally have never known success against their oppressors in their entire lives. It's a small detail, but one that resonates with you when you think about it. 

Undertale: This game is absolutely masterful at breadcrumbing small bits of characterization for its characters. The attention to detail in this game is remarkable and is something I don't think gets enough credit.

• Asgore, in the final-ish battle, is always looking down because he doesn't want to see himself murder a small child. This one detail characterizes Asgore really well and captures the true nature of the monsters of the underworld: none of them really want to kill the player, but it is a task of necessity, since that is really their only path to freedom. This knowledge makes the final battle even harder on the heart and makes you feel like a piece of shit for wanting to escape in the first place. 

• If you decide to kill Muffet, she drops 0 gold ---- we are conditioned early on to think that she's greedy as fuck for charging so much gold for her baked goods, but in reality she's broke and this is the only way she can afford to feed her babies. You were wrong about Muffet and you murdered her.

• I forget exactly what the monsters are called, but there are two lovers that fight you at some point in the middle of the game. When they are both alive, they will fight in unison, but killing one of them stops the other from attacking altogether, symbolizing his loss of desire to live with his partner dead. 

Mind you, none of these details are outright-stated. They are all inferences to be made by simple embeddings in the game mechanics themselves. The emotional impact of these revelations would be dampened by a textual description.

CLANNAD ~After Story~ (the anime): 

• This is probably the only anime adaptation of a visual novel I would recommend over the source material, even with (actually, because of) the liberties they took. My favorite scene in the game, where the protagonist, Tomoya, is finally is able to cope with the loss of his wife Nagisa after five years, is a 15 minute-long climax. It's an extended flashback sequence where he remembers how much Nagisa positively affected his life and how, ultimately, he shifts his perspective on their marriage and childbirth away from regret and towards fond remembrance. The scene, despite being very thorough with Tomoya's inner monologue, is emotional and cathartic, but the anime adaptation does it even better in only 15 seconds. When asked by his daughter what Nagisa was like, Tomoya simply opens his mouth to speak, pauses in recollection, and begins sobbing in happiness as he finally allows himself to remember the good times he had with his beloved wife (accompanied by a few still images of Nagisa over the years). That's it. We didn't need to hear Tomoya's thoughts or hear him give a monologue about how much he loved Nagisa in order to be punched in the gut by strong feelings --- all we needed was to see his face as he tried to remember her. (Well, not that his sobbing of "Nagisa" didn't help!)

(Spoilers end here)

TL;DR: Humans are generally really good at reading between the lines when it comes to thematic and emotional material in stories. Using explicit description often robs the reader of engagement when it is not needed. When it comes to emotional material I can reasonably infer, let me fill in the blanks myself!

Random "Force Awakens" Thoughts

Spoilers obviously.

Overall, it was a great movie.
Comparing it to the other films:
5 > 4 > 7  > 6 >> 3 > 2 > 1

I was most excited to see a brand new story in the familiar Star Wars universe. The prequels suffered a very common prequel failing (among many others): if the prequel is meant to explain events occurring in the original work, then we necessarily know how it ends. Every big revelation always takes us to a familiar event in a different movie. Everything is contextualized against what we know happens in the original trilogy. It's difficult to maintain engagement when the tension changes from "what happens?" to "how does it happen?" There are plenty of successful prequel franchises, but the Star Wars prequels are not one of them. With the new series, the story can reach new heights by directing our attention forwards instead of backwards.

With that said, I was disappointed that the old characters had such an active role in The Force Awakens. Han Solo in particular commanded every scene he was present in. I love Han Solo, but his presence stifled the growth of the new leads. A lot of the film felt bound to the original trilogy: the main quest involved finding Luke Skywalker with a map held by BB-8 and R2-D2. Leia and Han are Kylo Ren's parents. Kylo Ren reveres Darth Vader and wants to finish his will. Of course, this kind of anchoring is unavoidable to some degree, but in general I want to be looking forward, not be constantly referring to resolved conflicts in previous movies.

For the new trilogy to really take off, we need strong lead characters. Rey and Finn had a good amount of characterization in this movie, but they did not get as much attention as they should have (for protagonists). I think more care was spent with the fanservice instead of proper narrative focus for certain scenes. At certain parts, instead of beholding a Star Wars reunion, I feel like I witnessed a struggle for attention between veteran and new actors.

With Han Solo dying, I'm hoping that Rey takes more of the spotlight in the next film.

Anyway, that's my only real complaint. I have high hopes for the following movies. I'm excited to see Luke take on a Ben Kenobi role!

VNs and Mobile Gaming

The Muv-Luv Kickstarter is promising an Android port of Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative. Sounds great, right? You can play really cool games whenever you feel like it. You don't need to be at a computer or a console to boot up a fun game: you always have your smartphone with you so you always have games with you. What's the problem, then?

Simply put, mobile gaming is traditionally a passive activity instead of an active activity. With most mobile games, you don't sit down and decide to play them. You play them because you want to pass the time, whether you're in line, on the bus, or waiting for commercials to end. In a given context, mobile games don't command your attention. You don't focus on them. In a sense, they're secondary to any given activity. (Of course, there are exceptions - very notable exceptions. But the market as a whole produces games that you play when you want to simply pass time.)

This paradigm just isn't innately compatible with traditional storytelling. You watch movies in order to be immersed in new settings and situations. You read books because you want to see what happens to the characters. It doesn't matter that these activities are punctuated by periods of other activity: what matters is that when you sit down with a book, the book commands your attention.

Visual novels are the same way. Reading visual novels is an incredibly consuming activity - they can last up to 100 hours of reading! It's comparable to reading a book (a very, very, very long book). It's also cognitively demanding, so it's not something that can adequately be done passively.

What would happen when a behemoth of a VN like Muv-Luv Alternative is read on a phone? That's hard to say.  I can't stand the thought that someone reads MLA in five-minute chunks. I don't think anybody would want to only read MLA when waiting in line. It's more engaging than that. I would like to say that the player turns a traditionally passive activity and turns it into an active activity. But if this is the case, why does it necessitate a port? If you're going to sit down and commit yourself to this activity, why does it need to be on Android?

A few answers come to mind:

• Not everyone has a laptop. 
• It's inconvenient to carry a laptop around with you and you might find yourself in situations where you want to commit to reading but don't have the bulky computer. 
• The developers widen their audience by having a game on a more accessible platform.

Admittedly, this isn't totally different from having Netflix and eBooks on your phone. I think it's kind of a shame that enjoying film and literature is sometimes treated like a passive activity. But I do think (and dearly hope) that even though they are "treated" like passive activities by developers, users will mostly engage with them in an active manner.

My Problems with Virtue's Last Reward

Kotaro Uchikoshi is pretty great. A lot of his stuff is pretty great. But he's also the first person who convinced me that you can actually plagiarize yourself.

Spoilers for 999, Virtue's Last Reward, and Ever17 ahead.

Virtue's Last Reward is essentially "Ever17-lite." Instead of being surprised by the big twists, I kept thinking "this again?" There is exactly one point in the game where I was surprised -- and that was just because it turned out that they were on the moon the whole time. That reveal was kind of clever. The other twists? They weren't clever. They weren't satisfying. To see why, let's take a look what the other games did right.

Ever17
What is the twist?
One of the protagonists looks into a mirror to find out that he doesn't recognize the image in the mirror. We don't, either. The significance of "we aren't who we think we are" is twofold: first, obviously, we thought we knew who we were playing as this entire time. Most important, however, is the revelation that this character is not somebody who can possibly exist in the game according to our current understanding of the game's rules. This reveal puts into question everything we thought we knew about the story so far. We are shown through Takeshi's perspective what The Kid is supposed to look like. Now, we have somebody ELSE calling themselves "The Kid", someone who everyone ELSE acknowledges as "The Kid". This image does not match our expectation of what "The Kid" is supposed to look like and, furthermore, seemingly violates one of the fundamental rules of the game: that there are only 6 people allowed on LeMU.
How does the game frame the narrative to allow for the twist to happen?
The first scene of the game establishes the setting for us. The underwater theme park LeMU begins collapsing and a few visitors are trapped. We are rapidly shown scenes of the collapse from two perspectives: one of Takeshi and one of "The Kid." Both perspectives seem to be describing events describing the collapse of LeMU, so we are tricked into believing that both perspectives are actually happening at the same time. Of course, we discover that these two perspectives are actually happening 17 years apart. In short, the narrative structure of the prologue intentionally frames the scenario incorrectly.
What's really clever is that this is the only instance of narrative fuckery in the entire game (save for Coco's route, where the reveals happen). The story occurs in a strictly linear fashion after you select your character. The game doesn't keep throwing confusion at you (unless you're really clever and can identify the incongruencies between the two common routes). The game only needs to trick you once: at the very beginning of the story, the part where we piece together the scenario!
What are the character motivations for the plot?
The characters piece this plot together so that they can rescue Takeshi and Coco from the depths of the ocean. This works because we already care about Takeshi and Coco -- we've spent 20-30 hours with these characters already! There's tension because we want them to survive. It works because we are emotionally invested in the characters.

999
What is the twist?
We thought that we were playing as Junpei, but we were really playing as June influencing Junpei from the past.
How does the game frame the narrative to allow for the twist to happen?
The twist is largely similar to Ever17's, but the "trick" is different (and still clever!). The trick lies in the nature of the Nintendo DS: two screens both show text, but we are led to believe that the bottom text describes events in limited third-person perspective while the top screen describes dialogue and first-person narration. This is a very natural way to understand how the game is presenting information to you --- but it's wrong! The bottom text belongs to June, who ultimately is an observer but is still invested in Junpei's happenings. What's pretty masterful about this twist is that, fundamentally, it relies on the console itself, not the medium or the narrative.
What are the character motivations for the plot? The characters produce this plot in order to save June in the past. Again, this works because we care about June. Our motivations are aligned because we want to see her survive.

VLR
What is the twist?
The protagonist is old instead of young. This questions our perception of the narrator and the setting -- namely "when" the events are happening.
How does the game frame the narrative to allow for the twist to happen?
The protagonist told us through flashbacks that he was young. The "trick" here is just textbook "unreliable narrator." This is a big step down from the previous stories. Additionally, it tries to shoehorn the Blick Winkel character in the last ten minutes of the game, which is only a cliffhanger if you've never played E17.
What are the character motivations for the plot?
Again, the plot was constructed by characters in the game in order to save other human beings. My biggest problem here is that I just don't give a shit about those human beings. Who are they? Why do I care? I've never seen them before. There's no reason for me to care because these characters don't appear on-screen. It's reminiscent of a "saving the world" plot, but worse because we don't even get to SEE the world we're saving!
Presumably, there was this virus that wiped out most of humanity and we ultimately want to save some people down there. Great. This is noble, but I don't have ANY emotional connection to ANYBODY "down there." This point fails simply because it never gave me the opportunity to give a shit.

So what's the problem with VLR, then?
TL;DR: All of these games rely on their plot twists. E17 and 999's twists are clever and defy simple "trope" classification - they're groundbreaking and change the way we view our understanding of the medium's narrative patterns. VLR's plot twist is like E17's if you removed all creativity from it. The "cool" elements of VLR are less good versions of things that E17 and 999 did really well.