Half Game, Half Comic: How the Visual Novel Adapts Manga

This paper will argue the seemingly paradoxical statement that a video game can also be a comic. It will explore how the visual novel adapts manga features in the video game form by using research and methodologies typically applied to comic studies – such as comic semiotics(Cohn, 2013) – on an area that is usually analysed solely via video game studies and methodologies(Poole, 2001; Azuma, 2009; van Zoggel, 2011; Greenwood, 2014; Chen & Crawford, 2018). This will involve a brief discussion using the comparative point-by-point method, as well as a literature review of relevant material on layers, space, sound, time and reading in manga and visual novels.