Visual Novel Translation Status (07/23/2016)

This week’s header image comes from this week’s release: The Afterglow of Grisaia (Front Wing) which you can pick up on Steam.

Howdy, everybody. Thanks for coming back around for yet another round of Visual Novel Translation Status updates. I just want to thank all of our readers for coming by each week — doing these posts can be pretty tiring, and seeing the sheer volume of weekly visitors (and the comments some of you leave) helps a lot in the motivation department.

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

• The Afterglow of Grisaia (Front Wing) – RELEASED! Get it on Steam
• Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo – New prologue patch released (link)
• Bokuten (MangaGamer) – Editing: 95% > 100%; Now in scripting
• Chrono Clock (Sekai Project) – TL: 25.97% > 26.31%
• Corona Blossom (Front Wing) – Demo now available on Steam
• Da Capo 3 (MangaGamer) – Edit 98% > 100%
• Eden of Grisaia (Sekai Project) – TL: 35% > 50%
• Funbag Fantasy (MangaGamer) – Pre-order is now up! (NSFW); Releasing on 9/9/2016
• Hadaka Shitsuji (MangaGamer) – TL: 17%
• Hanasaki Work Spring – Hikari Route: 32% > 35%
• Himawari -a pebble in the sky-! (MangaGamer) – Now in beta testing
• The House in Fata Morgana – A Requiem for Innocence (MangaGamer) – TL: 18% > 25%
• If You Love Me, Then Say So! (MangaGamer) – TL: 63%
• Imouto Paradise! 2 (MangaGamer) – Edit: 25% > 30%
• Irotoridori no Sekai – TL: 17% > 19%
• Japanese School Life (Sekai Project) – TL: 87.70% > 95.68%
• Kuroinu (MangaGamer) – Chapter 1 TL: 80% > 82%
• Labyrinth of Grisaia (Sekai Project) – Unrated (18+) Version: 35% done
• Majo Koi Nikki – TL: 23% > 24%
• Memory’s Dogma (Sekai Project) – TL: 97.07% > 100%
• Princess Evangile W Happiness (MangaGamer) – TL: 50% > 55%; Edit: 22.2% > 24.5%
• The Shadows of Pygmalion (MangaGamer) – Edit: 16% > 32%
• Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo (Front Wing) – Kickstarter has been cancelled. Plans to relaunch at the end of August (Link)
• Still, I Miss Her (Sekai Project) – TL: 5.66% > 5.82%
• Tsui Yuri – Total TL: 53% > 55%; Total Edit: 44% > 53%
• Tsuki ni Yorisou Otome no Sahou – Current: Luna’s Route: 20% > 22%; Overall: 32% > 33%
• Wagamama High Spec (Sekai Project) – TL: 15.23%
• Witch’s Garden – TLC: 7% > 8%
• Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na – 100% translation leaked, patch here. The script is outdated and largely unedited. A proper complete patch is still planned, work will resume “soon.”

New Releases

• The Afterglow of Grisaia (Front Wing) – RELEASED! Get it on Steam
• Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na – 100% translation leaked, patch here. The script is outdated and largely unedited. A proper complete patch is still planned, work will resume “soon.”

Removed from the List This Week

• Higurashi Retranslation (MangaGamer) – Released! Check out the games: Chapter 1 (Link), Chapter 2 (Link), and Chapter 3 (Link) have all been released.
• Koiseyo!! Imouto Banchou – Fan TL project by Coffee Translations. Dropped.
• Majikoi A-1 – Fan TL by Maji Translations RELEASED. Get it here.

All the Game Updates:

— Commentary Section —

Zakabox™ Commentary

「I’m currently playing rabi-ribi, so prolly no commentary until I wake up like a zillion hours later.

-Zaka, ~12 hours earlier

Okay, I’m currently writing VNTS commentary, so probably no commentary until I finish like a, uh, an hour later. Also, those guys put spaces between the Fapanese quotation marks and text. I can only shake my head and correct it – and resist the urge to play more Rabi-Ribi, because it’s a p. cool metroidvania.

It’s good to see Decay back on the edit-wagon; real life trouble is never fun. Though at least he didn’t fall down stairs to save an old lady or get deathly ill or get hit by a hurricane or… what I’m saying is, wish these guys a bit more luck because they need it. Dergonu, translator for Tsui Yuri, also seems to have had a lot to do, and with him applying for higher education, that might continue… uni kills many a project. I think he’ll be able to keep the slow but steady pace he’s set for himself, though. Faito!

Bishoujo Mangekyou’s first prologue patch was much maligned; perhaps this new version will be more pleasing as translator Arcadeotic claims it is much improved. I’ve heard the first patch was really bad, so it’s good to see it improved. With that said, it’s apparently a more plotty nukige, so I’m not really interested anyway. Rip.

Two MangaGamer titles have finally gotten somewhere good! Both Himawari and Bokuten are now out of tl + edit. Front Wing may or may not cause a few more million-year delays when it comes to Himawari. Speaking of MG, it’s interesting how far along Sukisuki (If you love me, then say so! – well, I know I ain’t writing the full title again) is. There was a lot of speculation regarding Chuablesoft’s president attending AX and maybe talking to loc companies there, so it’s kinda funny how far along it is. Chuablesoft’s president did reach out to the world in general when it came to localizing their VNs quite a while ago, so the deal might have been struck not that long after. I don’t know the script size for Sukisuki, but it didn’t strike me as particularly short from what I’ve heard.

On the Grisaia front, while Deccy’s review is finally out, the unrated version seems to be taking a while. This is probably mostly due to technical differences between script formats, etc. between the porn and no-porn versions. We’ll see exactly when it actually does come out, but I wouldn’t bet on it taking just a month from the all-ages release. Eden progress is decent though, so there is that. The Afterglow of Grisaia is priced quite a bit higher than the earlier spinoff, but it is also about 4 times as long. That only means a script of 120kb though – a “full-length” visual novel is about 2mb, and the original Grisaia was a monstrous 3.73mb (the two sequels combined are a bit shorter). Its price point is kind of interesting, as you technically get ~4 times less text for your buck. On the other hand, I’m sure some people would say half of Kajitsu was bloat anyway 😛

Other than that, it looks like the Sharin no Kuni campaign was finally cancelled. We can only hope its return in late August proves more attractive to backers. While people will say that it’s pointless since it’s already translated, the translation was apparently pretty bad – and in a work relying on mind games and piecing together subtle clues like Sharin, that’s something you really don’t want. if it really was that bad, though, I have to say the guesslation was admirably consistent. Then again, I really suck at noticing plot holes and the like.

I’m going abroad on 2 August and will be gone the entire month. I’ll probably have very spotty Internet access, so don’t count on anything from me until September rolls around. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch the Otakon news as they come in, so I can meh at the announcements yet again :P. If there’s enough stuff to talk about, señor Decay and Tay may record a special podcast episode again – and perhaps Verde will see you in hell yet again if there’s a significant otome presence. No pressure, you three 😛

To close this off, don’t mix elderberry squash with your rum & coke. It’ll only end in tears.」

I’ve been a busy beaver this week. Good news for Dracu Riot fans, after a period of only sporadic activity I’m back on the wagon again. I’ve edited a ton over the last few days and I hope to keep this up. Things got slow for us, and thus things have been delayed even further for a pretty wide variety of reasons, but now it finally feels like things are coming together. I hope you’ll forgive the delays as all kinds of real life issues happened to our various team members, and we’re really striving to deliver a quality product that we’re proud of. Considering the Staircase patch was completely unedited to begin with and contained numerous translation errors, this is not a simple process. I’m not Fiddle so you won’t see me throw out any overly optimistic release estimates, but soonish? Not very soon, just Soon™.

I’ve also finally published my Labyrinth of Grisaia review! That game’s good, ya’ll. “Good” might be sort of a downgrade from how fantastic the first Grisaia was, but still. I found myself entertained pretty consistently throughout the VN. For whatever reason, this review took a lot of time for me to write. The actual process of writing a review usually comes relatively quick for me. I spend several hours writing in a single day and call it a wrap. This one spent nearly two weeks in gestation, however. The game sort of rouses confusing thoughts in me, I wasn’t really sure what to think of it considering it’s not really a complete story on its own. The way it blueballs the player at the end is sort of cruel. But ultimately I decided to just review it on its own merits. I really did find it enjoyable for the most part, even if I wish they didn’t structure the sequels in this way. Oh well, they’re already halfway done translating Eden so hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for that.

That Yoake patch leak is quite the sticky issue. It actually sparked a pretty extended argument between the leaker, Linktriforce007, who was a pretty prolific editor/QCer back in the day, and Erengy, the tech guy and I guess additional QCer who was responsible for finishing up the patch. The patch that has been in this QC phase for over two years with zero progress. Seemed like Erengy wasn’t happy with how things went down and Linktriforce007 released a super old version of the translation despite apparently having access to a repository with more recent scripts. Reddit simply seems to be happy that a patch was released at all, proving that it’s not just Steam users who don’t give a crap about translation quality, it’s actually a community-wide phenomenon.

It’s just a messy situation all around. I say this all with full respect to the people involved, it’s a confusing and not great situation to be in for all participants, and you can’t really blame anyone for the actions they’ve taken and the things they’ve said. I suppose the good part about this is that it spurred Erengy to actually talk publicly about the project and he claims that he now possesses a large amount of free time he’ll use to actually finish the full translation patch. As for me, I’m patient enough to wait and see if this actually happens before jumping into the current unedited patch.

Instead, I’m using my free time to finally play Danganronpa 2. I haven’t gotten to the first murder yet, but I sense I’m close. So far, it’s pretty okay, but it’s off to a somewhat slow start. I was a fan of the first game but I didn’t love everything about it. I had issues with how the protagonist was just sort of along for the ride and never really thought for himself, always having the other characters solve everything for him. That’s one of the problems with having a cipher protagonist in a mystery story. I’m not yet far enough in DR2 to be able to tell if that and some other issues I had will persist, but even if they do it seems like it will be a fun enough rollercoaster of a story.

And if you’re wondering where the podcast is, well, you shouldn’t really expect an episode every week. They take a lot of time to produce and that’s time we simply won’t always have. Still, we’ll try to make them whenever we do have the time since the response has been pretty positive. Thank you everyone for your kind words, look forward to more podcasting from us in the future. See you all next week!

 

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TAYsteful™ Thoughts

I’ve had a bad week, so if any of you had to deal with me over the last few days, here’s a blanket apology. Fortunately, it’s basically over, and I’m ready to move on and focus on the positive.

Speaking of the positive: the VNTS podcast is getting a lot of downloads, so thank you for listening to it! Last week’s episode got ~700 downloads (which is just a bit behind the 800 downloads from two weeks ago). Cool!

This week’s post is brought to you by Dumbledore’s Chorus. Well, by all Wizard Wrock, I suppose. But Dumbledore’s Chorus in particular because I listened to “Save Ginny Weasley” several times while doing the post.

Have a good week, everybody.