Kinoko Nasu's "Unique" style?

[Shakedit]

Much of the articles related to Kinoko Nasu seems to suggest that much of the popularity of his works stem from his unique style of storytelling. What I'm starting to ponder is what exactly does some bloggers mean by Nasu's unqiue style? Is it to do with the way he's approaching his novels? I admit I've only recently picked up visual novels after learning about them from a friend of mine but is Nasu's style so unique? I want to know what everyone else thinks of this preferably with some of their own explanation and input as to what you find appealing about his works and how his novels impact you personally.

[ratstsrub]

It's so good I want to vomit.

[Elf]

The only thing "unique" about his style is that he Tells and Doesn't Show, and his prose is so purple it's grape flavored.

However his world building is excellent and he's good at coming up with interesting characters with depth to them.

[Crying_Vegeta]

Not to mention his kanji puns with "death."

[Shakedit]

So far only thing that he seems to excel at is his ability to recreate a fictional universe and it's own set of laws, which is then picked up by readers and used to tie the threads together for a deeper understanding of how the world works, how or why some characters act in which way which in turn itself seems to contribute towards an even more depths to the characters themselves.

But is there anything else that anyone would like to add to that? What sets Nasu's work from other VNs you've played?

And if your a writer yourself how did it influence your own practice? any shifts of judgements and assumption?

Much appreciated if you can afford the time to think about what your posting before you post them =P I do love the honest answers but would like some more depth to them thank you.

[Five_X]

The only thing "unique" about his style is that he Tells and Doesn't Show, and his prose is so purple it's grape flavored.

That's not unique; it applies to 90% of all authors. :V

[Elf]

That's not unique; it applies to 90% of all authors. :V

. . . True sadly. I guess not every author can be as bad assed as us, eh, Five?

As to inspiration . . .

I'm an author myself, and apparently good enough to get myself published and paid for it, and when reading FSN, especially HF, I kept picking out all of these amateur writing mistakes. Like "Telling" about Sakura's past instead of "Showing" it, and he repeats himself over and over again.

I don't remember any of that sort of stuff when reading Arc's route in Tsukhime. Just his sex scenes were . . . special.

[celsius]

That kinda stuff's pretty common in Japanese light novels from what I've seen. Repeating certain points for emphasis, 'telling' pasts instead of 'showing'...

From what I can tell, a lot of Japanese light novel authors prefer to show things almost entirely from the protagonist's viewpoint, and only show what the protagonist him/herself is experiencing. So we won't get to know a certain character's past until the protagonist is told about it.

Nasu's the same. I haven't seen Mahoyo yet, but the majority of his stories were shown almost entirely from the point of view of the protagonist, so all the information we're given is fed through the protagonist's viewpoint. It's basically sacrificing the other characters for the sake of detailing the protagonist's thoughts and emotions. Which I guess isn't wrong, but non-protagonists like Sakura will inevitably get shafted.

Then again, there are ways to get around that. For instance, Shirou was shown glimpses of Saber's past through their connection. However, I guess he couldn't be bothered to come up with a convenient plot device like that for Sakura. As a result, Shirou has to be physically told everything about Sakura's situation, and that's how we receive all our information concerning her.

[Mcjon01]

Some of it depends on the translator. Like, in Japanese switching back and forth between tenses is relatively common, it seems, and doesn't really feel unnatural, but if you do that in English holy shit it sounds like it was written by a schizophrenic person.

Repeating stuff is another thing, it happens in Japanese a lot, and if you don't make an effort to dial that back when you translate it into English... well, it's not pretty. Have to account for each language's tolerances for this kind of stuff or else you're accidentally portraying something the original author never meant to by using his words.

Fucking complicated topics, I tell you what.

[celsius]

See, it's stuff like that that brings me to understand that Cokesato's methods aren't wrong and would probably be preferable to the usual dry literal translations that most translators tend to employ.

You know, if he didn't keep making stuff up so much.

[ratstsrub]

But...that's like his metho-

Oh I see wut you did thar.

[celsius]

Dunno what you're talking 'bout~ '3'

[Mcjon01]

It's kind of like one step forward, two steps back with him. He's sort of got the right idea (some things need to be rewritten), but he wields it like a goddamn sledgehammer (everything gets rewritten). And the few people going around translating VNs for free aren't really "most translators", lol.

[celsius]

Yeah that's what I meant.

[Shakedit]

That kinda stuff's pretty common in Japanese light novels from what I've seen. Repeating certain points for emphasis, 'telling' pasts instead of 'showing'...

From what I can tell, a lot of Japanese light novel authors prefer to show things almost entirely from the protagonist's viewpoint, and only show what the protagonist him/herself is experiencing. So we won't get to know a certain character's past until the protagonist is told about it.

Nasu's the same. I haven't seen Mahoyo yet, but the majority of his stories were shown almost entirely from the point of view of the protagonist, so all the information we're given is fed through the protagonist's viewpoint. It's basically sacrificing the other characters for the sake of detailing the protagonist's thoughts and emotions. Which I guess isn't wrong, but non-protagonists like Sakura will inevitably get shafted.

Then again, there are ways to get around that. For instance, Shirou was shown glimpses of Saber's past through their connection. However, I guess he couldn't be bothered to come up with a convenient plot device like that for Sakura. As a result, Shirou has to be physically told everything about Sakura's situation, and that's how we receive all our information concerning her.

Thanks for your input. I'm interested in what you mean by showing instead of telling. Are you implying that it's one of the frustrations you have about his generic writing style in his protagonists are told of past/basics/nasuverse laws/etc rather than shown them? I'm curious at what you mean by shown.

- - - Updated - - -

As to inspiration . . .

I'm an author myself, and apparently good enough to get myself published and paid for it.

o.O That's actually pretty impressive.

[celsius]

I'm not really frustrated.

It's just that Nasu has a tendency to sacrifice certain things for the sake of his first-person narratives. Aside from a select few third person scenes, such as Saber's fight against Assassin or Kotomine's fight against Other Assassin, we only see the details that Shirou himself sees. Other characters completely play second fiddle to him. Nasu makes it absolutely clear that Shirou is the single-most important existence in the entirety of Fate/stay night's narrative. Nothing is more important than his reactions, his development, his interactions. The vast majority of the information we receive are through his senses. Thus, we are intimately familiar with Shirou's thoughts, emotions and growth, but the other character are only primarily seen through his eyes, which inevitably means stuff like their development and past will be sacrificed for Shirou's sake. We won't get to "see" Sakura's past because Shirou isn't psychic, thus we have to be "told" it. Since knowing Sakura's ordeals are necessary to Shirou's story, that means there's no choice but to portray all the details through his eyes.

Basically, the narrative is biased. With a few exceptions, it won't show anything other than Shirou's immediate experiences and immediate thoughts, because those are the most important things. On the other hand, it'll only very rarely show anything that Shirou himself hasn't personally experienced. Fate/stay night is Shirou's story, and the narrative makes no attempt to pretend otherwise.

Stuff like the Grail War, Saber's ordeals, Rin's whatever, Archer's emo, Sakura's worminess, none of these hold a candle to Shirou himself. The reason the Grail War is important is because Shirou's a participant in it. The reason Saber's past is important is because they're important to Shirou. The reason Archer's important is because he's Shirou and stands in opposition to his ideals. The reason Sakura suffering is important is because Shirou loves her. While the world may not revolve around Shirou, the narrative certainly does. That's why Fate/stay night often leaves out so many details, because those details bear no relevance to Shirou personally. That's why we have so many supplementary books explaining all that stuff. Fate/stay night is a story shown from Shirou's perspective, so anything that isn't important to Shirou may as well be worthless, at least to the narrative.

Of course, as stated before, we still have a number of third person sections, but these are primarily there to show information that's necessary to the story. If a piece of information can be given to Shirou directly, then that'll take priority. Stuff like Zouken's end and the like, while unnecessary to Shirou, need to be shown for closure. On the other hand, Sakura's past is actually important to Shirou, so if he's gonna learn about it anyway, then that'll take precedence over the narrative actually showing what happened.

I don't think this way of writing is incorrect, but it probably won't jive with some people. I'm not particularly put off, though.

[Techlet]

Just his sex scenes were . . . special.

Seafood buffet, all you can eat.

[VelspertheCat]

Every day until you like it.

[aldeayeah]

It really depends. Are we talking about Ryuusoul-Nasu, TakaJun-Nasu, arai-Nasu, food-Nasu, amukunau-Nasu...?

Because I think arai-Nasu writes pretty well. Maybe that's because arai usually translates his favorite bits, duh.

[Sakuraba Haru]

By what I heard he used some sort of technique that kinda only applies to Japanese, that makes one sentence several sentences and stuff like that...