The anime adapatation of the visual novel "Grisaia no Kajitsu" aired on Japanese TV this Fall, with great success, and anime adaptations for the sequals "Grisaia no Meikyuu" and "Grisaia no Rakuen" have been announced for March 2015. Probably inspired by this, Sekai Project announced a while back that they would attempt to bring the 3 visual novels these anime series are based on to the West via Kickstarter, much like with Clannad. This project was successfully funded yesterday, and the Grisaia trilogy will get an official English release, including physical copies, possibly sometime at the end of this year! ^^
But that's not the best news! What's really great and interesting about this is that the overwhelming success of this endavour (currently funding is at 475255$, way above the 160000$ goal!), and of the Clannad Kickstarter project, has caught the attention of other VN companies in Japan! This is both according to Sekai Project themselves, and according to Ryuichiro Yamakawa, the president of Frontwing, which is the company behind the Grisaia games!
Sekai Project has started a wave, and this could very well finally be the push that is needed for more VN companies to take a leap of faith, and go with the risk of trying to get some of their games published in the West! This could be the change/next step we've waited for! These days we do get officially translated VN's from companies like Mangagamer and JAST (and now some from Sekai Project of course), but many of them are download-only copies rather than physical ones, and the selection is still limited to games from a relatively small selection of companies. And 90% of them are nukige. Here's hoping bright days are ahead for us overseas visual novel lovers! ^^
