Kind of hard to play VNs when many of the ones that are given anime adaptations don't have a proper English translation. So, it makes it difficult to understand or enjoy an anime adaptation of one. The same applies to light novels and mangas. I usually go into light novel or manga anime adaptations blindly, and then I fill in the holes later through posts here on AS or through wikis or blogs. I can understand some Japanese, but I stop short at Kanji since it's much more difficult to read and understand. Using something like AGTH or other text hooks to translate a VN doesn't help much since the translation isn't very understandable.
Simply put, I'm going blindly into this anime with little to no background on its story except from various snippets and short summaries posted on blogs and other websites. The same applies to Horizon currently in terms of anime shows this season.
I try my best to enjoy an anime as if I did not know its source of adaptation. However, I usually expect the anime in return to provide at least some semblance of an introduction, climax, and conclusion throughout its story with a plot-- if any. And, along the way, the anime leads me through that while being both enjoyable and entertaining to watch the characters go through the story. And, to also see their experiences and any various subplots that they face until the inevitable conclusion. (Then again, many anime shows tend to have an open ending and require you to finish reading the manga or LN to find the conclusion. When that happens, it doesn't help me at all.) That way the anime helps me along and prods me forward, in other words, to understand the story and enjoy it.
Whenever I read posts here or on anime blogs, I always wonder:
How does one get the VN and/or LN? And, how does one understand it to play it or read it?
The posters on these forums and blogs makes me curious when they say, "The VN was awesome, so glad it's getting an anime adaptation." How? How did you get the VN and how did you play it if it's in Japanese both in dialog and text?
One year of Japanese courses? Two, three years or more? I only have a year of Japanese language education on me but have been watching anime-- English dubs and fansubs-- for nearly 20 years now. I pick up certain phrases, sentence structures and grammar, and pronunciations whenever I watch anime, but not enough to make me fluent. I can watch most raw, untranslated anime shows unless the dialog and conversations are too wordy or complicated like in
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood or
Kara no Kyoukai.
Sooner or later, someone will eventually spoil the rest of the story on some place like Animesuki or Random Curiosity. That's when I'll go, "OH, so that's why they animated that scene in the anime" or "That makes a lot of sense now" or "I wonder why they didn't animate that scene then if it was in the visual/light novel/manga. Did they expect me to know that ahead of time?"
*sigh*
I live in California. I may be Asian, but I'm not Japanese. It's hard to find good translations of light novels especially ones you want to read-- scanlated or officially licensed translation. The same applies to visual novels that turn into anime shows. Fan translations are so little to rare. For example, I would have loved to find and read
Denpa teki na Kanojo after watching it animated into two OVAs. They didn't animate the second volume so my curiosity is itching to find out what that one was about. Even something like
Bakemonogatari or the upcoming anime adaptation of
Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai, I would haven't mind reading them first before watching the anime adaptation.
Again, I'm going into this anime blindly as I pick and choose which anime to watch this season. This first episode really threw a curve ball at me. It's so much stuff to comprehend in 24 minutes that I wonder why and what the characters are doing and saying.
Horizon was a little bit easier to understand. The start of the show looked like some kind of training sequence out of
IS or
StrikerS so it was easier to follow along. However, it lacked any semblance of a plot or what the story is about until the last few minutes of the show.
I'm pining my hopes that the second episode will help when it airs. Forgive me if I have made it look more complicated when it probably isn't.