Arlen

I see the chat log running all the way back to July 2008. Can you describe a little about how you all got started? Whose idea was it to begin with and why?
Well, first of all, if you’re seeing a chat log going back to July of 2008, I either made a mistake archiving something or you’re looking at something wrong. The project began in July of 2010, maybe towards the end of June actually, as for a few weeks it was only being done through threads on /jp/. As for HOW it got started, Anonymous of the Russian Federation posted his tools on /jp/ one day, and there seemed to be quite a bit of interest in it, although nobody acted like they were going to start translating. I’ve been studying Japanese for a (relatively) short time and I really enjoyed Princess Maker 2, so I thought I’d take a look at the scripts. There were some parts that I had trouble with, but I was able to understand the majority of it, so I translated a few scripts and posted them in the thread. I admitted that I was an amateur, but that if the quality of the scripts I posted was satisfactory, I would continue translating. Nobody raised any objections, so I continued to post scripts, and here we are two months later with all of the images translated and just over 10% of the scripts now.

I think many people would be unaware that Gainax was also in the market for visual novel. Normally people associate Gainax with, jiggling breasts and giant robots and especially EVA. How much of that Gainax-trademark sense of bizarity carries forth to their visual novel products as well?Well, I must admit that the only anime by Gainax I’ve seen is Evangelion, and besides PM2, PM5 is the only other of their VN’s that I have played. Some of their characters do get cameos by way of outfits for your daughter, and there’s even a movie in the game that’s a play on Evangelion. Speaking of the in-game movies, they almost all play off something else. There are references to Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Picture Perfect, Yojimbo, Kill Bill, The Inugami Clan, Godzilla, and tons of others.

I think trying to track down all the references drove me and the editor batty at times.
Another quirky thing about PM5 is that all of the major villains are named after some type of food, mostly sweets. As I hadn’t actually played through the game before starting to work on the scripts, that really threw me off at first. For example, some of the villains are: Gelato, Kenpi, Waffle, Alfort, Gateau. There are a few more, but it could be considered spoilers to post their names here, so I’ll leave them as a surprise.

So I am a new fan. It says on the vndb.org page http://vndb.org/v728 Princess Maker is a Raising Simulation. What do I have to do in the game exactly? Do I have to crunch a lot of numbers? Where is the fun bit of playing the game?
The majority of the fun in the game comes from the sheer amount of things that you can do. The goal that you, as the player, have in the game is to raise the girl into adulthood. Along the way, she’ll make friends, learn various skills, go on adventures, maybe she’ll even get a boyfriend! There’s literally tons of things to do, and depending on what you decide to do, there’s a myriad of different endings. Some of the endings can be quite difficult if you don’t know what stats and such are needed, but for the most part, it’s a game that anyone with some spare time can get into. The endings vary by things such as the occupation that she goes in to, who she marries, and so on. There is actually a goal beyond simply raising your “daughter”, but in the sake of not spoiling anything, I won’t mention it here.

How tame is PM5? If I was an ordinary Gainax-anime viewer, would I be abhorred by the contents in this game? Do I have to take my daughter home and have sex with her (or does the game imply a kind of sexual relationship in anyway)? Who can safely play this game?
The game is, for the most part, fairly tame. It does include some risque things, such as keeping up with your daughter’s bust size, which actually affects several event CGs as well as just the character images. Some of the clothes that your daughter can wear are also rather risque themselves. Your daughter can also work at the cabaret, if you choose to let her. There are some NPCs whom are more or less plainly stated to be prostitutes. However, there are no ero scenes and no forced incest (although I do believe it’s possible to marry your “daughter”). In general, while it may not be for very young children, if you can make it through a standard anime without being repulsed by what you see there, you can handle PM5.

Can you describe the background of each of your members (were they translating VNs before this?) and how popular is PM5 among Otaku in Japan?I’m not really qualified to answer the latter part of this question, as I don’t honestly know, so let’s start with the first part.First, there’s Ephyon, the editor. As far as I know, he hasn’t worked on any projects before this, and he was “recruited” in the same thread by Anonymous of the Russian Federation as I was. That aside, I feel that he’s done an amazing job so far. His wide range of knowledge has astounded me on several cases, and I’m always amazed when I look back at his revisions and see just how much he’s improved the scripts. Without this guy, I probably wouldn’t have gotten half of the references we’ve found so far, much less come up with a way to try to adapt them.

Next up we have Random Greek Anon. Again, as far as I’m aware, he hasn’t worked on anything before this. He popped up in one of the progress threads we had on /jp/ and joined us for some time on the TLWiki. I can’t say much more than that, as he was never that talkative, and he’s been missing for some time. I do hope he comes back sometime though.

Then there’s Ovo, who just contacted me out of the blue one day when I was about 30% through the images, asking if she could be the image editor. Since that was a position we were going to need to fill at one point or the other, and after seeing a sample of her work that she e-mailed me, I jumped on the opportunity. She has worked on a few projects before this. I believe the ones she mentioned were a doujin game called “Prince Maker”, which I would take as basically a game just like PM except with raising a male child, and I think the other game was Togainu no Chi. It appears that her laptop is out of commission for the moment, so she hasn’t gotten too much up, but I’ve been impressed with what she’s done so far.

And of course there Anonymous of the Russian Federation, who got the project started. I’m not too familiar with his work, but I believe he’s written the extraction tools for other games, including Idolmaster SP, and I believe he had some involvement with the Love Plus project. We haven’t been able to get in touch with him in some time though, which is rather disheartening, considering that we need him to revise the tools since the current version is missing a few script files.

That about sums it up. Those are the main project members so far, although there are a few other notable mentions. First, ogami666, who contributed a translation of the lyrics to the German lines in the opening, and then to Mizuko, who has offered to help test the scripts once we get enough translated to actually begin on it, although he’s already helped by pointing out a mistake in on the images, and clarifying a line in one of the scripts.

I think that answers all of your questions. Good luck with your project, and I hope everyone can enjoy it once we finish!

Thank you for the detailed reply Arlen. I was able to learn even more about the PM games than I had ever hoped for. They sound like super fun to play. I think I will try giving one for a spin.