What does a protagonist tell you about a VN? Does your hairstyle determine the type of heroine you’ll meet? Does your age determine the type of sexual acts you engage in? Using some maths on the tag data on VNDB I aim to find out, and see out what kind of trends we can find with VN protagonists.

Source data

Part 1 of my VN protagonist analysis, where I examined what types of protagonists are most common, is up here.



I downloaded the tag data for every VN on VNDB with at least 5 user ratings, totalling 7,690 VNs and 220,222 tags. I then looked at the tags related to protagonists, filtering out those that appeared in fewer than 40 VNs (as the less common a tag is, the more likely any trends found are just a co-incidence); that left 82 protagonist tags. I’ll present the more interesting ones here in this post and the rest can be found here.

To identify trends, I looked at those VNs with a specific protagonist tag, then compared how common their other tags were against the average. Those with the highest increase in frequency were those we could say are most closely tied to that type of protagonist. For example, VNs with the “female protagonist” tag were much more likely to have the “otome game” tag, as shown in the chart below from my last post (the increase over the average is in green).

It isn’t a particularly surprising or interesting result that “otome games” would be linked to “female protagonists, but it confirms the algorithm works.

Now, onto the results! There’s a lot to go through so I tried to group it into a few categories. I’ll just be adding a few comments on any aspects I thought were particularly interesting. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did making it~

The bracketed number next to each protagonist title is how many VNs had that tag. The green percentage next to each entry is the increase in the tag frequency compared with the average.



The common thread in the unnamed protagonist tags seems to be short, low-budget VNs (hence the lack of choices and photo backgrounds), where there isn’t necessarily much of a story so the protagonist never needs a name.

The homosexual protagonist tag isn’t restricted by gender, and yet the results are dominated by yuri tags. This must reflect how much more popular yuri content is to yaoi. I was a little surprised it was so unbalanced, but then the main market for VNs in Japan are heterosexual Japanese males, who tend to like both hetero and lesbian content.



As someone transgender, it was a little disappointing that “trap” protagonists are treated primarily as fetish fuel (hence the all-girls school setting) or as humorous (the comedy tag). While “trap” isn’t synonymous with transgender, it’s still nice to see how common it is given that visibility is the first step to acceptance.



It’s interesting that nameable protagonists are more associated with content catered towards a female audience, while faceless and voiceless protagonists are more linked with male protagonists (and their male audience). It would seem to suggest that women self-insert more through the text, while men insert through visuals. This would fit with academic research on erotica, with men tending towards visual stimuli, and women more towards written erotica.



For the protagonist selection tag, the increase in the increase of Shounen Ai and Shoujo Ai content is perhaps due to those VNs offering the same romanceable cast for either selection, therefore resulting in more same-sex options.

Translation for the non-weeaboos: “Kyonyuu” is a woman with a large chest, and “Netori” is where the protag seduces someone already in a relationship. Ahoge refers to a tuft of hair that won’t stay down.



The gender split in partial and full voice acting is quite pronounced, perhaps because female protag VNs are on average shorter, so less expensive to voice. It’s kind of ironic that fighting protags are so high up on the list, given their vocabulary consists primarily of grunts and screams.



As someone who wears glasses, I object to us being so closely tied to being fat and ugly. #NotAllGlasses

It’s curious that the ugly and chubby traits seem to be so closely tied with nukige (porn) content, specifically with acts that can be considered humiliating for others. Netori, urination, and public sex are all popular activities for such protags.



I find it kind of adorable that ahoge bearers are fated to be together, with heroines who have ahoges the most closely linked trait to protagonists with ahoges. Do the children of such couples then have double ahoges? However I object to them being linked to school life comedies, I can assure you from personal experience that dealing with an ahoge is no laughing matter, they’re a bitch to deal with!

Given the age of the characters, I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that virgin sex is so closely tied to student protagonists.



It seems almost poetic that university level protagonists are tied with multiple endings, what with university opening the door to so many options in life.



It’s cute that transfer students are linked to senpai heroines, I guess they’re the ones most in need of someone to take them under their wing. I’m not sure what the connection with super deformed CGs could be though.

Of all the unrealistic situations depicted in VNs, dimensional hopping, time travel, aliens, nothing beats how adult protagonists are portrayed. Sex, sex, and more sex? Where’s the “pays bill” or “worries about a mortgage” tags?

It seems the most noble of professions, teaching and healing, are both exploited for their fetish potential in VNs, with sexual content being so closely tied to them.



It seems appropriate that there’s only a single heroine for otaku protagonists, they know how to stay true to their one and only waifu.



Translation note: “Donkan” is someone oblivious to other’s romantic interest in them. “Hetare” is someone who has no will of their own, and constantly gets pushed around.



It’s kind of disappointing that proactive protags would waste their talents on mere romance and virgin heroines, surely they can put their energy to better use? There are worlds to save!



Nothing ever seems to go right for those suffering from mental illness. Madness, death, and suicide seem to be all that await them. It doesn’t even have any insane kinky sex to make up for it.



It’s somewhat ironic that strong female protags tend to be found more in historical settings, a time period where they’d be most oppressed by gender norms. But perhaps it’s more appealing to break gender roles in an era when they were more rigid.

It’s a shame that being in a relationship is used more as a fetish trait than a plot device. There are so many stories and relatable motivations that can be built on an existing relationship.

Perverted protagonists mostly engage in blowjobs and virgin sex? I’m disappointed. It’s like VN devs haven’t ever visited the internet.

I hope you enjoyed this little analysis. I had a lot of fun picking images for each category and wanted a few jokes, so I hope you’ll forgive a few indulgences as I picked a few anime characters here and there.

Thanks again to /u/8cccc9, Part-time Storier, /u/tauros113, and /u/Martin15Sleith for their advice and insights on analysing this data.



My next post will be delving more deeply into character traits. What activities are Western VN characters more likely to engage in? Are certain hair colours linked to murderous intent? Find out next time~

