This week’s header image features our three big releases: Loe’s HaraKano Patch (get it here); MangaGamer’s Tokyo Babel release (buy it here); Fruitbat Factory’s Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish (buy it here); and Staircase Sub’s long-awaited Dracu-Riot patch (get it here).
Before I start this week’s post, I wanted to recap the FuwaReviews team’s hard work last month:
- Strawberry Vinegar review review by Solidbatman
- Kindred Spirits on the Roof review by Decay
- Kindred Spirits on the Roof review by Tyrael
- Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator review by Solidbatman
This week’s VNTS post is brought to you by Oreos. I ate something like 300 calories of Oreos while writing this post, and I don’t regret a thing. It’s also brought to you by Nintendo’s Miitomo app, which was released this week. If you don’t mind a clunky friend-matching process, I’d really love to be friends on that app! Instructions can be found here. Just look at me: don’t I look like a fun friend to have?
[Now that Amazon Japan allows shipping to certain other countries, we’re going to link to where you can buy the Japanese versions of fan translated games. We will also link download versions where applicable. Please support the companies that make these games. – Decay]Anyway! Welcome to our weekly VNTS (Visual Novel Translation Status) series, in which we track visual novel translation updates in-house (we don’t rely on /jp/ posts on 4ch, for example) and post it for your enlightenment and enjoyment each Saturday. If you find any errors, or you think a project is missing from this list, please let me know in the comments.
The Short Version:
Only the New Stuff
- Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm – Still needs TLers; Looking for “N2 or at least N3” level TLers; Contact Ren if interested (link); TL Update: TL of Ch 2 from Azure done; ~950 lines edited by Ren; Watching and waiting second AoKana group to decide project’s fate
- AstralAir – TL: 72.52% > 72.75%; Edit: 72.52% > 72.75%
- Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- – Added to the list this week. TL: 303,5 kB/710 kB (42,7 kB); Recruiting: needs editor, JPN to EN TLCer, proofreader, QCer (more/contact info here)
- Bokuten (MangaGamer) – Editing: 50% > 70%
- Dracu-Riot! – Get the translation patch here, and you can buy the game here (download, NWS) or here (physical). All routes but Miu’s are done. Decay swears this is real. I still don’t believe him. Then he goes off and says other people are confirming this is real. And I still don’t believe them. I look to you, good people, to tell me whether or not this is real. – Tay
- Fate/Hollow Ataraxia Voice Porting Project – Voice files are recorded; no ETA for a patch or release timeline (link)
- HaraKano – RELEASED! Get the patch here, and buy the game here (physical). Guide to UI and buttons here. Congrats to Loe for all the hard work!
- Hoka no Onna no Ko to H wo Shiteiru Ore wo Mite Koufun Suru Kanojo – TL: 12584 > 13584Lines
- The House in Fata Morgana (MangaGamer) – Pre-orders are now up! Get the game here! Release Date: May 13, 2016
- Imouto Paradise! 2 (MangaGamer) – TL: 36.59%; Edit: 10%
- Koiken Otome – QC: 83.87% > 86.39% (35,169/ 40,710 lines);
- Koiseyo!! Imouto Banchou – Added to the list this week. TL: 4%; Edit: 2%; QC: 0%
- Kuroinu (MangaGamer) – TL: 35% > 40%
- Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish (Fruitbat Factory) – RELEASED! Get the game here! Congratulations to the team on this accomplishment!
- Musumaker – Added to the list this week. TL: 30.963%; Recruiting translators and help de-censoring images (more info/volunteer here)
- Muv-Luv Series – Game site is now live: link; Muv-Luv Extra and Unlimited will be released this summer, with Japanese language support; The team will be at Anime Expo 2016; Schwarzesmarken – Kouketsu no Monshou is now on Steam Greenlight
- MYTH (MangaGamer) – TL: 94% > 100%
- Princess Evangile W Happiness (MangaGamer) – TL: 25.36% > 32.58%
- The Shadows of Pygmalion (MangaGamer) – TL: 51% > 63.31%
- Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi – TL: 27.7% > 28.9%
- Tasogaredoki no Kyoukaisen – LICENSED! Sekai Project announced they’ve aquired the license for this game and will be releasing it sometime in 2016. Link: Official Game page
- To Heart 2 – Looking for a lot of help: TLCers, Editors, Proofreader, Graphic editors, Windows scripters (More info here)
- Tokyo Babel (MangaGamer) – RELEASED! Get the game here! Congrats to the team for their achievement!
- Wish Tale of the Sixteenth Night – Total Progress: 64% > 65.71%
New Releases
- Dracu-Riot! – RELEASED! Get the game patch here, and you can buy the game here (download, NSFW) or here (physical). All routes but Miu’s are done. Decay swears this is real. I still don’t believe him. Then he goes off and says other people are confirming this is real. And I still don’t believe them. I look to you, good people, to tell me whether or not this is real. – Tay
- HaraKano – RELEASED! Get the patch here, and buy the game here (physical). Guide to UI and buttons here. Congrats to Loe for all the hard work!
- Tokyo Babel (MangaGamer) – RELEASED! Get the game here! Congrats to the team for their achievement!
- Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish (Fruitbat Factory) – RELEASED! Get the game here!
Congratulations to the team on this accomplishment!
All the Game Updates:
Fan Translation Projects
[wpdatatable id=97]MangaGamer (Updates)
[wpdatatable id=99]Other
- Rance 5D, Rance VI, and Rance Quest fan translations on hold in anticipation of potential official release by MangaGamer.
- Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish – Pre-Order is up! (Link)
- The translation of Kindred Spirits’ Drama CDs have been announced!
- Free Friends hardcopy has been put up for pre-order and is releasing May 20th!
Sekai Project (Update Page)
04/02/2016 – Sekai’s Project Tracker is down, again, so this section has not been updated this week.
These percentages should be seen as vague indicators of progress, and are not entirely accurate due to a variety of reasons.
[wpdatatable id=100]Other
- Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link
Other Projects
[wpdatatable id=101]
— Commentary Section —
Zakabox™ Commentary
「Wow, Tay actually left a message rather than just “…” this time; he must be putting some faith in me again. My feelings are mixed.
I was actually considering the Dracu-Riot patch release fairly likely. The style of the announcement was (I think…) significantly different from the more bombastic style Insem had adopted for whatever else he’s said on the subject. I don’t personally care that much about the whole thing though, and the Yuzusoft curse was already broken by the Noble Works team last year, so there’s nothing very fateful about it either.
More importantly, while the plebeians below me haven’t finished Tokyo Babel‘s demo yet, I actually did! I really enjoyed it and can recommend it to anyone that enjoys some chuuni stuff w/ a decent bit of comedy added. Decay’s said that he’s a bit disappointed that the protagonist seems to be Setsuna (an edgy guy who did something terrible or whatever) and not Sorami (a pretty cool and kinda weird personality grill who’s the viewpoint character for quite a bit of the start of the VN). I agree. Burn male protagonists!
…I’m only half kidding.
The F/HA voice patch update this time looks a bit less optimistic than the last one; seems that they still don’t quite know how hard the work will be. The guy did said that he would be shocked if they didn’t have an initial release out in a year, so that’s something.
Having checked out Fata Morgana a while ago, it looks very interesting. 13 May, release eh? Sounds good. Preorders are up, if you believe in preorders.
Koiseyo!! Imouto Bancho is not going to be a super high quality project. There will be translation errors, unless they get a TLC. It’s probably not going to be… well, terrible, though. The current translator (well, one of them?) knows and doesn’t give a fuck, and let’s face it, it’s not like a moege about reuniting with your 365 little sisters after a long overseas stay is going to have a deep plot anyway. The prologue patch Coffee Translations released yesterday probably shouldn’t be considered indicative of the final product, but I can still recommend checking it out.
Also, was that final 6% of the MYTH translation really only done by this week? I could swear someone said it was fully translated months ago. I guess it’s possible that they wanted to go over the translation one more time as it’s (iirc) a mystery in the “dafuq is going on” vein.
Other than that, the second Aokana group is very likely to be bullshit; a lot of their claims are pretty ridiculous. I guess OriginalRun taking a balanced stance on the whole thing is nice, but honestly I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Aight then, let’s get this post properly updated before people actually read it without my commentary added or something.」
Decay’s Musings
Surprise! The release that has been foretold for months actually happened, and seemingly no one expected it! That’s right, this time the wolf is real, and that wolf is Dracu-Riot. The popular Dracu-Riot partial patch was something I played relatively early in my VN-reading career, and was greatly entertained at the time. Even if Staircase Subs’ reputation for translation accuracy is spotty, I relish the idea of coming back to this game and actually finishing it, years after my initial playthrough of it. I wonder how my impressions will change.
Well, the bad news is that I can’t actually do that quite yet. Because it’s a 90% patch. Every route is translated in full, except Miu’s which is at 50%. Staircase will NOT be finishing this. The good news is that there are people out there who are willing to finish the fight. Nothing is formally announced yet, but I can tell you that you won’t have to wait terribly long to get that last 10%. In the meantime, enjoy the other routes, it’s more Yuzusoft goodness!
In other news, Tokyo Babel is out, and it’s actually really good! I’ll be writing a full review once I finish the VN, but it’s off to a great start. I think there are a lot of people out there who aren’t giving this a fair shot, mostly because it’s “all-ages.” People get the impression that this is somehow childish or lacking something important. I can tell you with full honesty that neither of those are true. The action is great, the comedy is great, there’s action, there’s violence and gore, and there are dirty jokes. It basically has it all. Really, if you haven’t given it a shot yet, try the demo, it’s a good indicator of its quality.
While I’m happy to be playing Tokyo Babel, I was actually sort of hoping to be playing Root Double at this point, as were a lot of people. Sekai Project maintained that March date until the bitter end, when they announced on the 30th that psyke, it’s not coming out until April! I was annoyed last year when JAST pulled this with Shiny Days, and am still when the same thing is happening again with Root Double. I guess I still can’t understand what is holding these companies back from being just a little more transparent. If they don’t know if it will make a date, just say you don’t know! Anything is better than staying silent until two days before the deadline. People really value honesty in communication with companies.
And in case any of you were wondering about what was going on with Flowers, I got in touch with JAST and wrote an article about that whole situation on the Fuwazette, here. The big takeaways from this are 1) JAST is planning an overhaul of the way they manage and oversee in-progress translations, 2) They have hired multiple new staff just to get this script into an acceptable state before release, and 3) They plan to finish and launch in around May, although that’s still very much tentative. While I applaud JAST’s resolve to delay and hire new staff, as that’s no cheap task (and a largely thankless one on Steam), and while the updated scripts do look better, I’ll reserve final judgement for when the finished translation is actually in our hands.
With all that said, I need to get back to Tokyo Babel if I want this review to go up in a timely manner. They somehow found a mostly intact maid cafe in this hellish post-apocalyptic landscape, and are doing maid cafe things. I can’t think of a better use of your precious little preparation time just before your fight with the big bad. Wait, how long are they planning on holding this ridiculous pose for? It’s been minutes already, aren’t their arms tired? Aw, whatever, have a good week everyone!
TAYsteful™ Thoughts
For the VN neophytes among us, Dracu-Riot has been an ever-present and ever-elusive prize which has evaded many a translation group, and sat unheard of for great swaths of time. A few hours ago, after the VNTS post and tables had been finalized, Decay got back onto our skype VNTS Command Center chat and made the audacious claim that Dracu-Riot’s “April Fools” night patch was actually legit. I received that message while walking into a grocery store to buy my mom (who is sick with some sort of nasty flu-like bug) some Gatorade, and gave it all of a cynical grunt. And yet, he persisted. It’s real, he assured me. Its legit.
My response was to write the following warning attached to the Dracu-Riot news: “Decay swears this is real. I still don’t believe him. Then he goes off and says other people are confirming this is real. And I still don’t believe them. I look to you, good people, to tell me whether or not this is real.” Hours later, I’m still not sure what to think about this. I don’t have the game, so I can’t try it myself. What about you good folks out there? Is this real? And if so, how is it? How’s the patch?
I’m not one of the players with special memories of the earlier patches (sounds like it caught Decay early in his VN career, as it did many players), but I’ve always been interested in the game. For those of you out there playing it with this patch… how is it? What can you tell me about it?
My other thoughts to share with you this week:
- I’m tired
- Looking forward to trying Tokyo Babel (check it out here)
- Haven’t heard much about Fruitbat Factory’s Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish (get it here). Any of you playing it? What do you think so far?
- I’m proud of how Ren has chosen to handle the second Aokana team. Watching and waiting to see what happens (and the quality they deliver) is the right move to make.
- We added three games to the list this week: Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- (VNDB); Koiseyo!! Imouto Banchou (VNDB); and Musumaker (VNDB)
- I’m going to be going through and updating/purging VNTL-Moon (link). It’s outdated and needs a lot of work. That said, traffic to it is still climbing (steadily, albeit slowly), so that makes me happy. I think it’s a useful tool, and I’m glad others do, too.
- I hate April Fools Day
- I’m kinda proud of today’s header image. It took a lot of effort to make.
- Some of our more heartless readers skip the top section of the post, so I’m going to re-post links to all the FuwaReviews that came out in March in case you missed them:
- Strawberry Vinegar review review by Solidbatman
- Kindred Spirits on the Roof review by Decay
- Kindred Spirits on the Roof review by Tyrael
- Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator review by Solidbatman
Have a good week, everybody!
“Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- – Added to the list this week. TL: 303,5 kB/710 kB (42,7 kB);” – I believe there should be “%” in those brackets. 😉
OMG insem released it for real , unbelievable
Let’s see how legit it is …
If/when Magical Eyes gets a demo, I’ll leave a comment about it.
I commented on this VNTS here at my Fuwa blog. Here’s the link
http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1133-twilight-purgatory-review/
To admin Tay mother here hope she get well soon. And I’m also sorry if my thought there was not so entertaining. Anyway, guess I’ll try to joining commentary on VNTS here.
there is a few D3Publisher otome games that will come out in Steam really soon
http://otomesweetheart.tumblr.com/post/142088383780/d3publisher-will-be-adding-three-more-games-to
and a sequel for The Men of Yoshiwara http://grimoiredoll.tumblr.com/post/142393455846/httpstoresteampoweredcomapp447200snr-151
What about the Tokyo Necro translation project that was recently announced? Is there a reason for it to be completely ignored?
Probably Decay waiting until it actually produces something in the way of progress numbers. Really not sure though (I remember looking a bit at the thread / project blog but not really getting a lot of specifics on the project). That said, the man himself might answer you soon 😛
I tend not to add projects on first announcement. Anyone can announce a project, and it happens all the time where projects are announced and immediately abandoned. I don’t want to list any old announcement, otherwise we’d be constantly getting people’s hopes up over empty promises. With Tokyo Necro, I was thinking I might add it next week.
I can’t believe you finally added Bishoujo Mangekyou on here.
Many thanks and mu uttermost gratidute, as the translator of this project.
Still wondering why Yosuga no Sora hasn’t been added back to this thing.
The translation of tokyo babel in the trial was not that great, that’s the only but more important weak point…
I thought the translation was superb. What didn’t you like about it?
Dracu-Riot patch is working folks
tried and tested
well this is the current state of release for Dracu Riot for anyone interested:
====Patch Contents====
– Azusa Route 100%
– Rio Route 100%
– Bonus Route 100%
– Elina Route 100%
– Miu Route 50%
Total line count: 48596/53707 (90%)
Menus translations are not included in this patch.
i took it from the patch notes….
it seems there is a problem with http://staircasesubs.com/, chrome keeps sending me warnings about phishing in their website, so i can’t get the patch of Dracu-Riot.
Does anybody has the same problem?
u can ignore chrome press more details and click proceed to unsafe site if u wanna
yep hard to say it but insem april fools patch is real!!!!!
There is several problem about the tokyo babel’s translation.
1- Some sentences were totally different from japanese. And more than one or two. I could make a list if you want (for exemple in japanese “一緒に帰りましょう” meaning “let’s go home together” translated in english by “let’s sleep in the same bed”).
2- I am not a native english speaker, but I read a lot of VN and Light Novel (like haganai, oreigaru) and I am learning japanese since 5-6 years, but gosh… Reading this trial make me feel like my english really sucks. That’s the first time I see a translation this weird. The translation was too hard to understand from time to time, and I don’t think that’s the VN fault since the voices are really easy to understand. The problem is: why they choose to make such a difficult translation for something easy in japanese?
3- Here I will speak for myself but maybe you saw while playing that that the translation was not literal at all. I prefer literal translation for the sake of improving my japanese (and maybe other people do). Furthermore the translator had too much freedom. Now you have somes mistakes here and there, and hard sentences for thoses like me who aren’t native english speaker.
Well I complain about the translation, but tokyo babel is really worth to read.
Translations are generally aimed at native English speakers, and professional literary translation not aimed at academics is generally expected to be liberal (whether translators actually live up to that is another story). As a person with significant knowledge of Japanese preferring literal translations, you’re not really in the target audience. All in all, I would recommend reading it in Japanese instead if the translation bothers you.
I personally don’t think the translation is perfect in any way – I’ve spotted a typo or two already, and a few lines feel like might follow the original Japanese in diction a bit too much – but it has a lot of liberal translation that I can appreciate. I do think I’ve had to look up one or two words, but it’s not been too bad for me, and English is my second language (I guess you wouldn’t consider me the usual case when it comes to proficiency, though…).
Also, yeah, Tokyo Babel is p. cool 😛
1) When is this uttered, what’s the context? There isn’t really a home for them to go back to and the issue of sleeping arrangements comes up multiple times, so are you absolutely sure that’s a mistranslation?
edit: It actually seems like it was a mistranslation. A JP-knowing friend tells me that the Kanji are pretty similar, so if you’re sight-reading and not using tools to assist you, it may be possible to confuse the two and make a mistake judging on the entire flow of the conversation up until that point. Because, up until then it was about sleeping together, and then suddenly the non-sequitur “let’s go home together” popped up, and the translator most likely just misread the kanji. I guess these kinds of mistakes happen every once in awhile when you’re translating tens of thousands of lines.
2) Well, to be perfectly honest, your English isn’t actually very good :p. I agree that the translation is unusual in a lot of ways, but unusual in a good way. Most VN translations are bad, just as a baseline. Even stuff people deem as acceptable is actually pretty bad with stiff and unnatural sounding dialogue. To a native english speaker who doesn’t solely consume Japanese media, it tends to stick out. The main issue is that most characters tend to end up speaking in the exact same manner, with only minor gimmicky speech ticks used to set them apart. The characters’ personalities end up a lot less interesting. The Tokyo Babel translation sets itself apart from the rest of the pack by really going for that natural conversational English dialogue. It doesn’t always nail it perfectly, but it does a pretty good job, I think.
It’s probably more difficult to grasp for a non-native speaker who hasn’t spent much time consuming English media. I actually did a double take at “The proof is in the pudding and all that jazz” when I first read that. Not because I didn’t know what it meant, I did, but because I never expected to see that in a VN translation. Which is actually kind of sad to me, my expectations shouldn’t be that low. But it’s also the kind of line I expect a lot of non-native speakers will have to look up. It’s a combination of two different expressions that you don’t necessarily hear every day. “And all that jazz” is something you can easily infer the meaning of when it’s seen on its own, as “jazz” is just a slangy replacement for “stuff.” But when it’s immediately preceded by another confusing phrase, I’m sure the whole sentence becomes very difficult to read.
I’ve seen some people argue that you shouldn’t translate VNs in a way a large amount of your audience won’t be able to understand, and maybe from a business standpoint they’re right. But from a literary standpoint, I disagree entirely. The best translations are ones that feel like completely natural English. If this means that non-native speakers might have to step up their game and learn new aspects of the language, that’s all the better! It would pain me to learn if some translators intentionally dumbed down the language so some people may not have to learn as much of it. I can assure you that, in English, Tokyo Babel isn’t some super-difficult work only elitists can enjoy. It’s still on the level of young adult fiction, basically stuff aimed at middle schoolers and high schoolers.
3) This goes hand in hand with my points in 2. You have to take some minor liberties when translating if you want the dialogue to sound natural. One of the biggest downfalls of most VN translations is that they hold too strict of an adherence to the original Japanese.
I wonder, have you read Grisaia no Kajitsu in English? What did you think of that translation?
Wait, I never said that my english was great x). You may be right when you say that the translation is unusual in a good way. I would think exactly like you… if I were in you shoes… But don’t misunderstand something: I can assure you, when it comes to learn a language, I don’t think I am that lazy. If I have to learn new aspects of a language (in english or japanese), well so be it. But the problem is that the manner of speaking in this VN seems most likely something you’d only hear in “the street”. Even if I want to be able to understand this manner of speaking, I don’t think I can’t find any help with a dictionnary or tools. The only way you have is to ask directly to native speaker the sentences you can’t understand. Sadly I had to gave up on some sentences because even though I tried my best, I was clueless… That’s why I don’t approve this way of translation.
About Grisaia no Kajitsu, I haven’t read this VN yet, but I heard the translation was great, I’m pretty sure I’ll give it a try sooner or later.
If I can say, the best VN translation I read so far was probably comyu. The translation was not too much literal, and very natural. It was a great work with a lot of new aspects to learn, but I really had a good time. The dictionnary helped me a lot though. For the Toky Babel translation the dictionnary was useless…