Preface: “I have left the entire thing unedited.”

Thank you very much for contacting me, Aaeru. I would be glad to answer your questions.

1. On erogamescape, Some of the user comments say that if one was to enter Never7 from the perspective of someone who has played Ever17, they will probably be disappointed. Do you agree with their view?
To be honest, I haven’t actually finished Never7 yet, but I’m on the final route. If I were to be honest, then I would say, yes, if you played Ever17 first, you probably won’t like Never7 as much. But you know what? I still love this game. When I first got the game for the PSP, I was initially more curious about what further light this game could shed on Ever17, what with the origins of Cure being covered in this game. So in other words, I didn’t really have any expectations. But because of that, I fell in love with the game. So will Ever17 fan love this game as much as that one? Probably not, but I expect that even so, they will still enjoy this game. It still delivers great plot twists, a mostly likeable cast, and I think any Infinity fan will like it. My current ranking for this game would be a 9/10.

2. You have translated the Ever17 drama CDs, you are working on Never7 and 12Riven and you want to do I/O as well eventually. I think you are quite the lover of games created by that company, KID. Do you know what happened to them exactly after the bankruptcy? It says on vndb that the rights have been acquired by CyberFront but does any of the team that worked on the Infinity series actually still make games?
Yes, I do. After KID declared bankrupcy, they had two games still unfinished: 12Riven and Memories Off 6. After they were acquired by Cyberfront, the teams were allowed to continue working on the games until they were finished. However, Cyberfront is nothing more than a publisher, so all that the KID team really has been doing that I know of is working on the remakes of their games. The two writers of Ever17, Takumi Nakazawa and Kotaro Uchikoshi, have both left the company. Nakazawa actually left KID after Remember11 and joined another company, Regista. He wrote two games after that: I/O (which I will discuss later.) and Myself;Yourself. He also assisted with the ports of the Infinity series on the PC and PSP. Uchikosa, on the other hand, finished 12Riven, then became freelance. He recently directed and wrote an adventure game for the Nintendo DS: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. It came out at the end of last year in Japan and is expected to come out in English this November.

3. Since you are probably the number one KID fan in the world, it is strange to see so few people involved in your projects yet so many on the Remember11 project. Have you considered joining theirs (for its duration)?
I think the reason the Never7 project is so small right now is that the others are busy finishing up the R11 patch. I don’t plan on joining the R11 team because I don’t want to spoil the game for myself, and there’s nothing I can really do right now: my skill lies in translation.

3. As the R11 project draws to a close, what would you say to convince the ex-members of Remember11 to join your cause? In other words, why is it you think Never7 is worth translating?
What I would say to ask them to join, huh? Well, if I had to say something, it’d go like this:
Members of the Remember11 translation team. Thank you very much for over two years of hard work on translating this game into English. It’s thanks to your hard work that Infinity fans like me will be able to play even more of the series now. As I’m sure you all know, most, if not all of you, worked on this project for a common reason: you once played and fell in love with one of the greatest games of all time: Ever17. We all have fond memories of playing that game, and I’m sure all of you, myself included, can remember how you felt as you played this game, how utterly shocked and impressed you were by the final route, and that bittersweet feeling we all felt when we finished it. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think we shared a common thought as the game ended: “This is it. It’s all over. I will never play a game as amazing and so mind twisting as that ever again.”

But eventually we learned that there was more. We learned that Ever17 was in fact one of several games in an entire series. I’m sure we all got excited when we learned that there were more games out that that might be able to grant us the same experience that we gained from Ever17. We wanted to feel surprise, wanted to be confused, wanted to see what amazing plot twists awaited us. But there laid the problem: Japanese only. With Hirameki out of business, we all felt we would never get to experience those titles that lay just ahead of us, that the Infinity series would just be restricted to Ever17 for us.

But then you all proved us wrong. You all banded together, and through over two years of hard work, you all have brought us Remember11 into English. This is the greatest hope to us fans. You are our greatest hope. You’ve shown us that with hard work and determination, we can see more than just Ever17. Even if it’s not the exact same experience, we look forward into diving into the many mysteries that undoubtfully await us. You’ve all done such an incredible job in bringing this game into English, by showing us that if there’s no one who will bring these games into our own language, then we’ll just do it ourselves. And now, Remember11 is on the verge of release, and we are all one step closer to seeing the entire Infinity series into English.

However, it’s not over yet. There remains two other important titles that we need to complete the Infinity series. One of them is Never7: The End of Infinity. I’ll admit it, I haven’t played Remember11 yet. However, I have played Never7. And I can tell you all, it is worth it. It does not match up to the greatness of Ever17, but it’s still such an incredible experience, a great game that still provides use with plot twists, mysteries, intriguing characters, and an entire jigsaw puzzle of a plot. Even if you don’t end up liking it as much as Ever17, there’s still so much in this game that replicates that whole experience. I’ll say that I love this game. And that’s why, when the translation project began, I jumped at the call and became a translator. However, there’s something I must ask you all.

I need your help. This is something I can’t do on my own. I hate to admit it, but this is my first fan translation ever, and I don’t have nearly enough skill to bring the full experience of this game to the English fans. But you’re all different. You’re all better than me. You managed to do an excellent job with the translation of Remember11, and for that, I am grateful. But we’re not done with Infinity just yet. We still have much work that remains to be done. And I say this with honesty: I am not the person who can do the great amount of work that you’ve all done. That’s why I ask for your help. In fact, I’m practically begging you for it. Let’s all work together to bring the rest of the Infinity series into English. Let’s show just how much our love for one game can do so much. Please help me. Thank you, and I hope we can all work to bring Never7 into English.

4. What is I/O? It says that I/O takes place in the same setting as Ever17. But bizarrely, the game was not made by KID. It was developed by Regista. Can you tell us a bit more about I/O?
I/O, huh? I actually bought I/O for the PS2 while I was on a trip to Japan this summer. I haven’t played that much due to Never7, but I can tell you what I know about it so far.

I/O is a game that I like to call “the unofficial 5th game in the Infinity series”. I say this because it takes place in the exact same universe as the Infinity series. After Takumi Nakazawa left KID, he founded Regista, where he directed and wrote this game. This game is notable not only for being a part of the Infinity series, but for being a collaboration from several big names: In addition to Nakazawa, the game was co-written by Romeo Tanaka (the writer of VNs like Cross Channel, Yume Miru Kusuri, Family Project.), and music by ONOKEN (who Ever17 fans may now from his song “QUININE”, which was used in a well known Ever17 MAD, “Strangness”.). The game was released on the PS2 in January 2006, and was later given a PC re-release in August 2008 as I/O: revision II. If I do manage to translate I/O, I wish to translate the PC version.

I/O takes place in 2032. A lunar eclipse has occurred, which results in a series of bizarre incidents, as several people investigate what’s going on in different ways. Unfortunately, I don’t know any more than that. However, one unique feature about this game is that there are three playable protagonists. At the start of the game, after a brief prologue, you are allowed to play one of four different routes. The routes are as follows:

Route A: This route focuses on Hinata Aoi (voiced by Michihigo Hagi), a young, ordinary boy who goes to high school. He deals with some emotional issues from what I can tell.
Route B: This route focuses on Ishtar (voiced by Chiaki Takahashi), a woman who’s a freelance programmer that’s the head of a hacker group. She’s strong willed.
Route C: This route also focuses on Ishtar. Yet for some reason, she seems to be a completely different Ishtar from the one in Route B.
Route D: This route focuses on He (voice actor obscured.). He is a complete mystery, yet looks dangerous.
After all four routes have been finished, a True Route is unlocked, revealing the ending.

That’s all I know about I/O.

5. Currently your team is small, just you and Pengvado. Tell us what kind of background do the either of you come from. Is Never7 your first visual novel translation project?
I’m not working with Pengvado, I’m working with Roger Pepitone, the project’s hacker. He’s the one who uploaded the scripts for this game. He’s also a member of the Remember11 team, and is the one to thank for making the patch.

As for me, I’m just an ordinary college student. I’ve been into anime and video games for a long time, but it wasn’t until one year ago, one week from this very day, that I played my first Visual Novel, Tsukihime. I loved it, and as a result I became a huge VN fan. In November, I played Ever17, which was ironically only my second VN. I was completely hooked onto it, and I finished it one week later. Today, it still remains as my favorite VN of all time (I’ve played 22 VNs as of this writing.). After I finished the game, I thought to myself, “I want more”. So I went to the Animesuki forums, where I found the board, with the Drama CDs for Ever17 posted, but not translated. Since I had 4 years of independent study of Japanese under my belt at the time, I told myself “I should do everyone a favor and translate these, since it looks like no one else will.” So I did, and I was pleased to find the Ever17 fan community was very friendly.

For the first time in any fandom, I became very active around the entire community, posting my thoughts, discussions, and other things with the fans. I learned about the other games in the Infinity series from that, and I grew very interested in them, and I was very happy to find out there was a Remember11 translation in progress. However, I never had any plans of translating Never7 back then. It was a trip to Japan this summer that changed that, as I went I got the entire Infinity series on the PSP, along with I/O. After thinking about which game to play first (Ever17 and Remember11 were out of the question.) I decided to try out Never7. And as I mentioned, I fell in love with this game, to the point where I desired to share my love for this game with the rest of the community by translating it into English. However, I didn’t have the means to do so, so I planned on waiting until December to get Never7 for the PC and see what I could do. However, Roger saved me from all that trouble by doing it himself, and so I jumped at the call.

Yes, this is my first fan translation, unless you include the Ever17 Drama CDs. That is why I’m so inexperienced, and why I need help with this project. Otherwise, I will not be able to provide everyone with a perfect translation, and you all won’t be able to experience the entire greatness of Never7. Still, I will do my best to make my translations as accurate as possible for now.

That is all. I hope that one day, you will all be able to play Never7 in English thanks to my efforts, along with anyone else who may help me along the way

Thank you GundamAce for such a beautifully written love-letter.
If you are a translator or an editor, please apply for a position for Never7. GundamAce and Roger Pepitone would appreciate it.