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Visual Novel Translation Status (05/21/2016)

This week’s header image comes from this week’s singular release: The Leisure of Grisaia (Front Wing). Get it on Steam for 20% off (sale ends Tuesday)

Anime Central (2016) Announcements

VisualArts 

  • Official Release Planned (!): Angel Beats
  • (UPDATE 05/21/2016 06:15 PM EST) Official Release Planned: Rewrite+ (Remember: Rewrite+ also contains harvest festa!)

MangaGamer

Sekai Project

  • New Project: 2236 A.D. (Both adult and all-ages versions are planned.)
  • New Project: MAGICAL×SPIRAL, a doujin platformer, announced

Also, since I’m the guy writing the post (my words, my rules!), I’m going to shamelessly plug The House in Fata Morgana, again. It’s so good. Really worth considering. (Links: Game-only, and Game + Soundtrack)

House in Fata Morgana is Out!
I will continue to post beautiful game art until you click this link. You have been warned.

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

New Releases

 

All the Game Updates:

Fan Translation Projects

Fan Translation Projects

[wpdatatable id=132]
JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Updates; Archive)

[wpdatatable id=133]
Other
  • Starless – Script check 10%, added new mosaic to fix list.
MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=134]
Other
  • Rance 5D, Rance VI, and Rance Quest fan translations on hold in anticipation of potential official release by MangaGamer.
  • Free Friends hardcopy has been put up for pre-order and is releasing May 20th!
Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

These percentages should be seen as vague indicators of progress, and are not entirely accurate due to a variety of reasons.

[wpdatatable id=135]
Other
  • Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link
Misc. Projects

Other Projects

[wpdatatable id=136]

The Zakabox

— Commentary Section —

Zakabox™ Commentary

Zaka Zaka. burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry

– William Blake (Songs of Innocence and of Experience)

Decay’s Musings

Ahh… convention season. It’s always fun to catch all of the news from the conventions as they happen, even when they aren’t exactly what you expect. MangaGamer teased six announcements, and delivered us four hard copies and one announcement that was already spoiled by them earlier in the week. Funbag Fantasy is interesting, though. Dat title, for real. Known as Kyonyuu Fantasy in Japan (basically, Big Titty Fantasy), it’s actually an extremely popular nukige highly rated by Japanese and western fans alike. I’d say it’s one of the most highly rated nukige ever. I’m not really into the subject matter so I’m definitely giving it a pass, but you can still expect this thing to top the MangaGamer charts just like Boob Wars did. The nukige buyers love their funbags.

I was hoping for a bit more though, to be perfectly honest. MangaGamer has a knack for getting people’s expectations up, then letting them down. I’ve seen a fair amount of negative reaction to the way they hyped up the six announcements and only had one actual new VN announcement and another semi-new VN announcement. There’s something to be said here about fan entitlement and all that, but the fact of the matter is that people are bound to get disappointed when you aren’t giving them what they want, so it’s probably better for everyone involved if you actually set their expectations accordingly. Maybe just say “four hard copies and two new VN announcements!” next time instead of “six new announcements”? Is the hype buildup by keeping everything a super ultra secret really worth it if it only results in disappointment from a large portion of your fan base?

Sekai Project announced the most interesting new VN of the show, I feel. 2236 looks really unique, and although it’s apparently not mind blowing or anything, it seems pretty interesting. It’s not some mindless moe-fest, so I expect it to sell rather poorly, and so does SP boss dovac. But still, color me interested. I’ll definitely be giving it a shot when it comes out.

VisualArts also “announced” Angel Beats. To be clear about this one, they didn’t even announce it during the main panel, but instead their Q&A session after someone asked about it. And they said it was planned. When and how are still mysteries, perhaps even to VA. This feels much more like a “yeah, we’re probably going to do this at some point” than a proper announcement, so take that as you will. That said, I’ve always thought this was inevitable. Some apparently had different feelings about the possible timetable than others, and the current fan translators working on their own patch for it have suddenly been put into a tough spot. My heart goes out to them, but also wasn’t this kind of expected?

To be perfectly frank, I was always skeptical on the usefulness of such a project, and now that’s debate is being brought into the forefront with this news. It’s a tough spot for them, either they abandon the project now and feel that the last few months have been all for naught, or they keep going and risk making their work redundant in very short order, again making it essentially all for naught, just so they can please the especially impatient in the fan community. Or worst case scenario, they risk getting served a Cease and Desist order. I hope those guys can find a solution that everyone on the team is happy with.

In closing, buy The House in Fata Morgana. We at Fuwanovel are going to be hardcore shills for this one for quite a while. It seems everyone on the staff is loving it so far. I’ve only played it for an hour so I can’t make any real judgements, but it ain’t too bad if I say so myself. SolidBatman will be writing a review for it, and according to him it’s basically the best thing ever. You’re about to see the extremely rare sight of a zero-salt SolidBatman in the wild. This kind of thing only happens once in a lifetime, so don’t pass up the chance to witness it when it happens. And buy Fata Morgana, god dangit. It seems to basically be bombing right now, and that’s a crying shame.

That’s all for me, see you again next week!

TAYsteful™ Thoughts

(Paste commentary here). And yes, I did adapt William Blake for Zaka. We’re a classy bunch over here on the VNTS team.

Have a good week, everybody.

Tay

I'm the Fuwanovel community admin and a big fan of Visual Novels. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via a PM on the Fuwanovel Forums, by twitter (@ArchmageTay), or by email.

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littleshogun
littleshogun
7 years ago

My VNTS Review this week http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1232-yumiko-wanna-be-sachi-dog-review/. The announcement was quite letdown.

Katie
Katie
7 years ago

Do hardcopies even count as announcements? Man, this really bums me out.

Boyka
Boyka
7 years ago

Oh the “leisure” I almost fainted.

JJ
JJ
7 years ago

I hadn’t even heard of Leisure of Grisaia before. Instant purchase. Thank you for mentioning it!

I’m having a hard time with the MangaGamer announcements. Funbag Fantasy looks enjoyable and it sounds like a title I’ll pre-order. I’ll probably buy House in Fata Morgana – A Requiem for Innocence at some point, too. So if they had said “two announcements”, I’d be pretty happy. Or if they had announced “six games” and four had turned out to be Appetite-type games with mosaics that I would never purchase, I’d still feel moderately happy that 1/3 of their announcements appealed to me. I know that their bigger announcements are coming later.

But I’m one of the people who feel like making a product available in a different format isn’t a real announcement. So, I’m a bit disappointed. Psychology is strange! I have nothing against hard copies and I own several from MangaGamer. But I was expecting the announcements to be new games or other related things.

Yotek
Yotek
7 years ago

Fun fact, Funbag Fantasy they were going to call “Final FanTitty”… what a loss. There’s a bunch of other great gems in the mangagamer panel videos.

Anonymousposter
Anonymousposter
7 years ago

Too bad. I hope VA doesn’t issue a cease and desist to the group translating angel beats and harvest festa.
It sucks when we all waited for the Little Busters EX patch just for it to be in negotiation of localization. I pretty much own all those Japanese copies and won’t be able to use them unless I use a text hooker.

I am happy for games like this to be localized, but I really don’t want to buy the same game twice.

Decay
Reply to  Anonymousposter
7 years ago

Well, I’m of the mind that the angel beats group are largely wasting their efforts with what they’re doing anyway, so I guess I don’t really know what I want to happen with that. In the end, if they get served a C&D, they brought it upon themselves.

For Harvest Festa, the group behind that, Amaterasu, will actually be working with Visual Arts on Rewrite+. The patch isn’t releasing anymore.

Decay
Reply to  Decay
7 years ago

Update: Actually, something I didn’t realize when I was writing this, the fan project has been canceled: https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/4kiheg/visual_arts_exec_confirms_half_of_angel_beats_1st/d3f7eu0

Also apparently VA is already half done with their own translation.

Johan2111
Johan2111
7 years ago

Someone please translate princess lover and walkure romanze they are works of ricotta that even got an anime.