Despite the overwhelming changes in the recent years, visual novels are still a niche genre even in the Western anime, manga and otaku community. This is the reason why Fuwanovel considers translations of visual novels as the foundation of the genre’s success in the western world – and this is also why Fuwanovel always supported any kind of translation effort.
However, in the 10 years of Fuwanovel’s existence, not only the visual novel market has changed enormously: Fuwanovel itself changed too and adopted its methods and core concept to new conditions. On this page we would like to give you an overview of our long, diverse and sometimes also controversial history.
The genesis: Fuwanovel.org
Back in the early 2010s, getting playable visual novels in English was a difficult matter: There was no Steam or other huge game stores and only a small handful of English publishers which officially translated visual novels into English. In most cases, Western visual novel fans were depended on unofficial fan translation patches which were spread over the entire web, Japanese-only download stores most people couldn’t even understand or, in worst case, virus-infected piracy sites which provided fans with easy-to-use, but also potential dangerous copies visual novel downloads.
Driven by the idea to simplify this and make this entire process more secure, a young Australian woman and visual novel fan translator named Aaeru came up with the concept of a centralized place which should provide fans safe and ready-to-use game downloads of visual novels with already pre-patched fan translations. The result of this effort was a visual novel download, translation and discussion community under Fuwanovel.org, founded in early 2012, which turned quickly into a beloved place for people from many Western countries who “just wanted to play visual novels”. For many newcomers in particular, Fuwanovel.org was often an entry point into the world of visual novels and the Fuwanovel Forums also their first visual novel online community. But Fuwanovel.org was also the foundation for a number of fan translation groups and efforts, some of which are now even well-established Western visual novel publishers which translate visual novels now officially into English.
Although many people loved Fuwanovel.org’s concept of a repository for already pre-patched visual novel downloads, especially under the difficult circumstances the community faced 10 years ago, it had at least one obvious drawback from the beginning: Free downloads of actually commercial games were a legally difficult matter, and this brought Aaeru and Fuwanovel.org also a lot of criticism – from other fan communities (where Fuwanovel.org was often on block lists), from many hard-working fan translation groups (who mostly encouraged their users to buy the game legally from Japanese online stores), and from Western publishers (who, of course, wanted to build a legal market).
In early 2014, Fuwanovel.org’s legal situation became increasingly difficult while its founder girl, Aaeru, disappeared. Under these circumstances it was clear that Fuwanovel.org’s time was coming to an end.
Aaeru ふわっと; ふわーっと; フワーっと; フワーと (adv,vs) (1) (on-mim) floating; drifting; weightlessness; (2) (on-mim) softly; gently; lightly
Aaeru but apparently westerners interpret it as fuwafuwa which is fluffy
Aaeru which is fine too
Aaeru but originally i thought
Aaeru they were novels that make u go fuwaaaa—
Aaeru make your heart go alight
kaguya …
Aaeru bcuz of the romance
https://www.vice.com/en/article/are-visual-novels-just-porny-boring-video-games/
The rebirth: Fuwanovel.net
With its collapse, Fuwanovel.org left behind a huge fan community, an established name in the Western visual novel community, and this big dream of making visual novels popular in the west. But it also left a lot of uncertainty: Aaeru, the founding figure of Fuwanovel.org, had disappeared, and there was no access to the servers or the old content of the site. So the question was whether the site could (and should) continue at all. And if so, how?
After a tough and emotional community discussion, the decision was made to continue – but under on one important condition: A line had to be drawn under the past and a new Fuwanovel had to be established, with a new leadership and a new operator. Under the leadership of Tay and with the technical support of Nayleen, this plan has became a reality: After a public announcement by Tay, the Fuwanovel community moved to Fuwanovel.net which became the new home for the Fuwanovel community.
This change led also to a new interpretation of Fuwanovel’s slogan make visual novels popular in the west: Instead of offering free game downloads, it was decided that this goal should now be achieved by building a large fan community and an extensive visual novel news, reviews and think pieces blog, while working closely with Western and Japanese publishers as well as small Western indie developers. This process was also accompanied by major changes to the site itself: Step by step, a completely new website with a new theme and logo was created, filled with useful tools and services to help fans to find interesting visual novels in English. At the end, although it took a lot of effort, it was even possible to rescue most of the community content from the old servers.
But as always with such changes, not everyone out there agreed with the transformation and there was a lot of dissatisfaction that “Fuwanovel doesn’t offer free games anymore”. But the change allowed the idea behind Fuwanovel to continue. And whats much more important: it allowed Fuwanovel to continue to provide a useful service to the western visual novel community as one of the largest visual novel dedicated website on the net.
Fuwa today: Fuwanovel.moe
Over the years Fuwanovel.net slowly drifted into a crisis: On the one hand, the growing popularity of centralized social media services such as Reddit, Discord and Twitter challenged Fuwanovel’s dominance within the visual novel community. On the other hand, more and more of those people who once spent a lot of their free time running Fuwanovel were no longer able to do so, resulting in a lack of activity, especially on the Fuwanovel blog.
For all these reasons Fuwanovel merged with the German visual novel site Visual Novel.Info, resulting in another change in leadership: Tay and Nayleen, who had been running most parts of the site for many years, retired, and Hata and Sinned from Visual Novel.Info joined forces with Zaka and Emi from the old Fuwa team to form a new leadership council: The Fuwakai. Over the course of a few months, the Fuwakai successfully rebuilt the blog and forum teams from scratch, resulting in a new activity, especially on the Fuwanovel blog.
In 2023, the Fuwanovel quiz and recommendation site, formerly known as Fuwanovel.se, was fully merged into Fuwanovel.net. Later that year Fuwanovel.net moved from its overpriced and often slow server setup to a new one, resulting in a better user experience while at the same time new theme for Fuwanovel’s main page/blog was released to get rid of the old and buggy 2015 theme. Finally, Fuwanovel.net changed its domain name to Fuwanovel.moe.
