Ranking the top ten visual novels I've actually played through, in order of the value added over and above what you would gain from just watching their respective anime series, it would look like this:
1. Kono Oozora ni, Tsubasa wo Hirogete
2. Majikoi + Majikoi S + Majikoi A
3. Da Capo + Da Capo II + Da Capo III R X-rated + Suika + Dal Segno
4. Rewrite
5. Grisaia no Kajitsu + Idol Mahou Shoujo Chiru Chiru Michiru + Short Stories + Phantom Trigger
6. Clannad + Tomoyo After Story + Clannad Side Stories
7. Planetarian
8. Umineko no Naku koro ni Chiru
9. Osananajimi wa Daitouryou + Osananajimi wa Daitouryou Fandisc
10. Shuffle! + Tick! Tack! + Really? Really!
My #1 and #9 visual novels in these rankings have no anime adaption, so they get a massive 'over and above' bonus compared to the others.
Rewrite is #4 precisely because its anime adaption was so bad. Insofar as an anime is good, the visual novel becomes less and less necessary. Rewrite's adaption was so horrid the visual novel is still top priority. Clannad was adapted almost perfectly, so it's lower priority.
#8 is all new content, because the anime never got to the Chiru part of Umineko.
So as you can see, #8 and #9 aren't that great in abstract, when other visual novels' value added is still higher than their plain value.
But this is the proper order to read visual novels in. There's no reason to be reading any visual novel so long as you haven't watched all the great anime in the world. But once you've done that and still have free time, it should be plowed into the #1 selection listed here, Konozora. Once that's done it's time to tackle Majikoi, and so on down the list.
Only if you have enough free time to read the original Clannad visual novel on top of having already watched the anime should you even consider moving on to the likes of Umineko Chiru.
Under this rating system, despite Little Busters! obviously being a fantastic visual novel (it spawned the 14th best anime ever, after all), it doesn't breach the top 10 at all. Since these rankings exist to encourage people to go read what I've read, it's intuitive to not list things I consider low value added wastes of time. This is the better version of ranking visual novels for my purposes.
Meanwhile, Disney and Fox are merging together. This will allow the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-men to interact again, just like they do in the original comics. I love faithful adaptions of sources so this is great news.
Also, Russia is banned from receiving any honor at the 2018 Olympics. The athletes are still allowed to compete, so I think this is a pretty fair compromise. Hopefully this dumb doping scandal will be put behind us with these sanctions and then we can get back to normalcy at the far more important 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics.
Steins;Gate 0 is slated to air in spring of 2018, so this long announced project will finally roll forward soon.
A whole new arc has been announced for the SAO light novels, so clearly this franchise isn't going away any time soon. The translation is so far behind, though, that it's not like we'll benefit any from it.
Soul Calibur 6 has been announced. Back in the day I was a huge fan of fighters and was actually pro level at Guilty Gear XX, but these days I find my reflexes and motor control have deteriorated too far to enjoy them anymore. Perhaps even more importantly my thumb hurts like crazy if I try to seriously play a fighter for even a few minutes. (And no, joysticks aren't the solution. It's very hard to control a character with a joystick and it's way too expensive a purchase to justify for just one game.)
So even though Soul Calibur 6 looks like great fun, I have no intention to play it. What I will do is check if Junichi Nakatsuru is the composer again like the previous games. If so, that's another boatload of great music headed our way.
Sail Moon Crystal S3 is commercially available, in English, in blu-ray, for $52. This means the chance of a pirated copy becoming available is much higher than before, which is the true good news.
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