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Visual Novel Translation Status (05/28/2017)

This week’s header image comes NekoPara Vol. 3, one of the two releases this week.

VNTS (Visual Novel Translation Status Updates Series) is published each Saturday and brings the latest updates from VN translation projects — both licensed and by fans — from around the net. If you find any errors, or you think a project is missing from this list, please let us know in the comments.

From The Team:  Hey everyone! Sorry for yet another late VNTS. Circumstances are hectic and a little confusing, but nothing can completely stop us! Hopefully things will settle down and we can get back into our Saturday morning release groove, though I can’t make any estimates as to when that will be.

The Short Version: Only the New Stuff

New Releases!

All the Game Updates:

Fan Translation Projects

Fan Translation Projects

[wpdatatable id=382]

JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Updates; Archive)

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MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=384]

Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

[wpdatatable id=385]

Other
  • Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link

Misc. Projects

Other Projects

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VNTS Commentary Section

Zakabox™ 「 Zzz… 」- Zakamutt expended a month’s worth of commentary energy last month and needs to take an extended break. Sleep well, Zaka, sleep well.

Decay’s MusingsThroughout the VNTS’s history, we’ve always tried to keep an air of neutrality. We’ll sometimes gush about VNs we’re enjoying, or will complain a little in our commentary, but we generally want the translations and VNs listed here to speak for themselves. This is not out of some sense of journalistic integrity or some such nonsense; this is merely because there’s no way to please everyone when you get overly opinionated, and we want these to be informative posts everyone can reference without having someone else’s standards shoved in their faces.

Two weeks ago, I broke this unwritten rule of ours when I issued a warning for Taisho x Alice in the list itself. That was a release of abysmal quality, not fit for human consumption. It didn’t matter what your tastes or standards were, Taisho x Alice was not a VN you wanted to buy. I would have felt guilty—almost complicit in E2’s scam, really—had I not issued that warning.

And coming up probably very soon, I will be tempted to do this again upon Libra of the Vampire Princess’s release. I’m sorry to say, but its level of translation quality is exceptionally poor. As in, almost If My Heart Had Wings levels of poor. The warning signs started early during their Kickstarter campaign when the translators declared that leaving the japanese word “desu” in the English script was a smart way to translate one of the heroine’s speech quirks. It is not, of course, and they eventually did change it, but it was still a concerning first showing from them. Then I started hearing all sorts of buzz about the translation throughout the last year from various sources. It was never positive, but I thought hey, it can’t be THAT bad, can it? And now the game is getting into the hands of Kickstarter backers, and hoo boy, it is “that bad.” It is actually much worse than “that bad.”

You can see me tear into the translation here, with example lines and explanations of what’s wrong. I don’t have anything kind to say about it at all. At this point, I have to very strongly recommend that you do not buy this VN. Mikandi Japan has done an large disservice to the English community by taking our money on good faith and then crapping out this abomination. If you purchase this VN, you potentially support the degradation of the English VN localization market.

Companies like E2 Gaming need to be kept as far away from the VN scene as possible. Mikandi Japan however doesn’t feel like a scam in that same way; it seems likely that they wanted to produce a decent product, but botched it along the way. In this sense, it feels like they have room to grow. Just look at where MangaGamer was when they started, and where they are now. However, the odds of this happening with any given negligent company is astonishingly low. And so throwing good money after bad at Mikandi in hopes of a grand reform is downright irresponsible.

There are also aspects of their business model that has always seemed a little scummy to me. They’ve yet to release any product to the public at large, yet they’re constantly hawking pre-orders and a whole mess of merchandise. They want your money for the game of course, but also for t-shirts, posters, keychains, blankets, the works. They’ll even take your money for nothing at all in return—they have a donation option, something they advertise quite frequently on twitter. And all that merchandise money for what? One of the worst official translations released since If My Heart Had Wings? Sorry if I don’t sound very eager to support these guys.

Do not donate to companies who are unable to do right by their paying customers, and definitely do not buy Libra of the Vampire Princess unless you want to perpetuate a culture of shoddy official translations from people so interested in nickel and diming you.

Decay

Hello, I'm Decay, an avid fan of visual novels and a regular poster on Fuwanovel. Also, I now review and write about VNs officially for Fuwanovel? Yeah, that started happening at some point. You may also see me on VNDB as dk382.

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Zag
Zag
6 years ago

Thank you for the warninf, I definitely won’t buy Libra after reading that thread on Fuwanovel. I just wanted to have something to read before Dies Irae comes out in the first place, so I guess it doesn’t even matter anymore.

Solifar Estude
Solifar Estude
6 years ago

Quite a shame to hear that about Libra. Here I thought another formidable VN player entered the game. Sigh.

How probable would it be for them to realize they fucked up and do some heavy editing? Hopefully it’s still salvageable without a massive redo?

SeiZui
SeiZui
6 years ago

Thanks for the update! In behalf of the community ~ We Thank you
. . .You guys are heroes (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

Honey_Badger
Honey_Badger
6 years ago

Am I the only one disappointed at the fact that there is still no news on 18+ ver of Grisaia no Rakuen?

pepperoni
pepperoni
Reply to  Honey_Badger
6 years ago

Profiting off the casuals over the hardcore VN players that helped Sekai get to where they are at. Typical treatment by them. I would expect the original unbutchered version of Grisaia no Rakeun to come out by Winter of this year or next. This is Sekai after all.

littleshogun
littleshogun
6 years ago

My VNTS Review for this week. Enjoy.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1802-neko-wars-v-the-empire-strikes-back-review/

No much I could comment in regard of Libra controversy after hearing both side other than I’ll just stay neutral here. Although at least I promise thay I wouldn’t buy Libra here or donating money to Mikandi here

ybeast10
ybeast10
6 years ago

After seeing the latest Libra screenshots that MiKandi posted on Twitter within the past week, I’m not at all shocked to hear that the translation has issues. I think all the ones before last week seemed fine, but the new ones didn’t read very well. Definitely had comma issues.

Are we sure that Dies is gonna release this week? I can’t find any page for it on Steam besides the Greenlight one. Plus, those gameplay videos Light posted recently were allegedly of an old version of the translation. It just doesn’t look like Light has its shit together, which is really bad this close to its supposed release date. I’ll be shocked if it isn’t delayed at the last minute.

pepperoni
pepperoni
6 years ago

May want to replace the url for Luna translation to https://cookie4.com/projects/

Alchemicalhaze
Alchemicalhaze
Reply to  pepperoni
6 years ago

Wasn’t Luna translation dead?

Fred the Barber
Fred the Barber
Reply to  Alchemicalhaze
6 years ago

Luna TL is dead—long live the individual Luna TL projects.

1) The cookie4 link is indeed the only current place for progress for all of those projects.
2) The teams don’t really have a name anymore, but probably (though I guess I’m ultimately only speaking for the Majo Koi project here…) would rather not be referred to as “Luna Translations” anymore.

dango-hime
dango-hime
6 years ago

wonder what that jast panel @phoenixcomiccon was about, like them first doing lots of propaganda and when it´s time nothing? been neither expecting jast to suddenly pull a sumaga at said convention, nor announcing kamige of sorts, but still… strange bunch *sigh

dango-hime
dango-hime
Reply to  Decay
6 years ago

yeah that thought did also cross my mind, but seeing stuff like this made me wonder:
https://twitter.com/jastusa/status/868606799766847490

https://twitter.com/jlist/status/868631422017220608