It's aight, but there's VNs that do what this set out to do but better. Doesn't really help the devs don't know shit about VNs, as well as clearly dislike them, and are basing their criticisms based on surface level knowledge about them. It tries to act all high and mighty about "anime and VNs bad!!!!!!11!!!", but really, it's about as deep as a puddle. I always say that the best deconstructions of something come from people who actually love what they're making fun of. And this is a good example of why I think that.

Edit: I don't think the dev necessarily hates either anime or VNs after reading up on it and discussing it in the comments, but I feel a lot of my points still stand. It misconstrues a lot of VNs by implying most of them are just these shallow dating sims.

Reviewed on Mar 07, 2021


8 Comments


3 years ago

it literally does none of those things at all
"For years, I have been enamored by the ability of visual novels - and games in general - to tell stories in ways not possible using traditional media. Doki Doki Literature Club is my love letter to that."
quote from the dev in the game itself, he's also mentioned liking several VNs elsewhere

3 years ago

Got a source on that? I recall hearing that the creator made this game in general because of his "love-hate" relationship with anime.

3 years ago

That actually seems true after reading up on it, there's a Kotaku article where he says the "love-hate" relationship thing. Not really sure exactly what he meant by that since it doesn't really seem to be elaborated on. (Article just says "that he feels like the trope of “cute girls doing cute things,” can be both an asset and detriment to shows. ")

You get this note if you do certain things (https://doki-doki-literature-club.fandom.com/wiki/Possible_Endings#Letter_from_the_developer, image at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DS-AXsBWAAE2ig7?format=jpg&name=large) which has the quote I copy pasted.

I recalled him saying he played VNs in an AMA (https://www.reddit.com/r/DDLC/comments/7dvb70/hello_my_name_is_dan_salvato_i_created_doki_doki/dq14vqr/) but I guess he doesn't explicitly say he enjoyed them, and goes as far as to say it was inspired by non-VNs more.

I personally always saw this at aiming to be a deconstruction less and more just playing on the general public's ideas of what VNs are, but I think it inadvertently worsened that. A lot of people probably think VNs are as interesting as the first half of DDLC as a result, but I've also seen a lot of people say this was their gateway, so who knows lol

3 years ago

Thank you for that. I guess it wasn't really his intention after all, but like you said, who knows. lmao

3 years ago

because it's mostly speculation this is key "Although primarily inspired by creepypasta stories and not originally a “parody” in that sense, the work has since been thought of as a visual novel critiquing dating sim tropes."
It's thought by the press in a certain way because of a longer trend of bad western vns

https://mimidoshima.wordpress.com/2019/09/07/why-cant-people-make-cute-vns/

3 years ago

Which happen to be bad dating sims

3 years ago

Skimmed through quick and didn't see any vn mentioned in the Kotaku article, this part

"Although he’s clearly a huge anime fan, he described his relationship to the genre as “love/hate,” saying that he feels like the trope of “cute girls doing cute things,” can be both an asset and detriment to shows."

Is p obvious since it's all ddlc is about, had he good intentions about vns or any knowledge about how critics deal with the medium he just wouldn't make something like ddlc to begin with lol

3 years ago

That might be more his intention, yeah. I feel most of my points still stand, though.