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Visual Novel Translation Status (11/19/2017)

This week’s header image comes from Neko-nin exHeart +Plus, one of this week’s releases. Check out the other releases (Kuroinu Ch. 2 and Umineko When They Cry Chapters 5-8) below.

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:  Sup all? We have four new announcements this week, which is pretty exciting, and a ton of other updates! A solid week all around.

The Short Version: Only the New Stuff

New Releases!

All the Game Updates:

Fan Translation Projects

Fan Translation Projects

[wpdatatable id=503]

JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Blog)

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MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=505]

Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

[wpdatatable id=506]

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™ 「 … 」- Zaka expended all his energy on commentary last week so he’s back to hibernating through the harsh Swedish winter.

Decay’s MusingsIs it weird that I kind of want to play that Newton game? I hope that’s not weird. Wait, it is weird? Shit. Well, I still want to play it anyway. It seems cute and fun. I hope Sol Press does a good job with it, but I’m still a little guarded until they release something and prove themselves.

And it’s safe to say that we should be more than a little guarded with “A Sky Full of Stars.” Miagete Goran is a game I’ve been interested in since its release, but it’s hard to be excited about a MoeNovel release after what they did to Konosora/If My Heart Had Wings. I’m sure you understand if you played that. IMHHW’s translation wasn’t pretty.

Some people seem confused as to what exactly MoeNovel is and is not, so I’ll try to lay it out. MoeNovel is not a translation company. MoeNovel is a brand established and managed by Pulltop where they release their games in English. To do this, they hire an actual translation company, Active Gaming Media. This means that contrary to some rumors I’ve heard, MoeNovel is NOT an AGM front. The difference is murky, because in addition to translation, AGM does the web design and PR for MoeNovel, but in the end of the day they’re contractors hired by Pulltop.

So what is AGM? They’re an agency. Agencies are different from licensing and publishing companies as we know them. They don’t publish anything themselves, and are instead contracted to work on games for other companies, and then subcontract out actual localization duties to their staff. AGM’s staff is very large and varied in quality. In effect, AGM is like a localization slot machine. You get a different combination of results with every pull of the lever, with the odds of coming out ahead being heavily stacked against you.

Konosora ended up with triple duds. The weird LoveKami releases were more like triple cherries or something. They had some okay staff on it, but also some not-so-okay staff, and the results were mixed. Miagete Goran/A Sky Full of Stars may not be a total dud like Konosora was, but that’s the thing, we have no idea. It’s just another pull of the lever where literally anything could happen. I’m not too excited to see the results, knowing how badly weighted they are against us.

In other news, it’s pretty cool to see Hoshimemo’s beta go out to kickstarter backers. Apparently this is basically a finished and polished translation, as far as I know. I’m sure they’ll fix whatever text issues backers find, but otherwise this is a full release for them. The comparisons I’ve seen against the old fan translation have been pretty positive. NowItsAngeTime posted a spoiler-free comparison on Fuwanovel of the fan TL and the SP release, check it out.

And finally, SeaBed is getting a December 19th release. Fuwanovel got an early review copy, which we gave to Zaka (for yuri, who else?). He’s been tweeting about his experiences on Twitter, and will be posting a full review once he’s done with the game. I’m looking forward to it.

Hope you all have a good week!

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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DharmaFreedom
DharmaFreedom
6 years ago

Wonder what happen to grisaia no rakuen 18+ release, its been so very long. Since i haven’t completed the series [holding off on meikyuu till rakuen gets released], i can’t progress to phantom trigger.

Been following the grisaia kickstarter, it was sort of eye opening to how Sekai treats the backers of one of their older project. People have been waiting for years for their physicals, they go silent without updates for months. Ignore questions by backers so much that people have to plead and beg to be heard.

Before their Oct update, their last update was 3 months ago, before that 2 months if iirc. People were livid but it seemed like nothing could be down about reaching out to them. Their grisaia team should really treat people better.

PP
PP
6 years ago

Finally, ImoPara 2. Was hoping it’d come this month but I guess it’ll wait until Christmas. ImoPara 3 will be just a month after it too.

Dergonu
Dergonu
6 years ago

Unless I’m blind, I think you missed a release this week. The new version of Wild Romance came out a couple of days ago:

https://twitter.com/CherryKissGames/status/931610796521537536

Dergonu
Dergonu
Reply to  Dergonu
6 years ago

I plan on checking the TL quality of this new release, like I did with the first one. Hoping the TL has improved for this version. They said they have done a completely fresh TL for this version. This has all the original 18+ content, and HD assets, so I’m hoping the TL is decent.

Erogamer
Erogamer
Reply to  Dergonu
6 years ago

It is on the European app store. I have Amazon app on my phone and it does not support the DL of this game.

TamakiSakura
TamakiSakura
6 years ago

You missed that Damekoi went into beta.

Dan
Dan
6 years ago

After reading through zaka’s (Seabed) and that idiot’s skiddiks (CC) twits for interesting impressions, all I found is an endless trite stream of translation nitpicks. Varying from legit to pathetic, to be fair, but is this really what we have come to? I feel like people are pretty much obsessed with finding faults even in the decent work by now, more than actually enjoying the game and talking about it. I’m very dissapointed in people.

Zakamutt
Reply to  Dan
6 years ago

I think my response to this is twofold:

1. I really, truly wish for standards in localization to go up, both when it comes to capturing the right meaning and making it read smoothly in the target language. I want to be able to read a translated VN and get the same kind of quality I could get were I to read a professionally edited book, but we’re _far_ away from that right now. VNs are shorter and more niche; it’s understandable that less money would be spent on them. But I still think the gap is larger than it has to be, and pointing out the flaws like I have been is my attempt to lower that gap, as well as give notice to the people that really care about this kind of thing in their purchasing decisions (there must be some!). I also object to having to focus on “enjoying the game”. I’m there to /experience/ it, and report back what I found.

2. It’s much easier to nitpick than write anything substantial in 140 or even 280 characters (ShareX still hasn’t upped the limit…). If you want more substantial stuff, wait for the review. With that said, I agree that my focus has been a bit too high on script quibbles; I’m likely to tweet about different things from now on, and I’ll actually be starting from the beginning again (I didn’t get far) as I think I was a bit too distracted from the actual plot.

Dan
Dan
Reply to  Zakamutt
6 years ago

1. I fully agree with the sentiment, just not with the intrusive obsession. The game itself shouldn’t be some weird afterthought that surfaces only after all attention has been paid to every localization blunder.
Skiddiks is a good example of that when he hypes up an obvious game “idea” (which he could have easily noticed if he ever paid any attention to the things that matter the most) as a translation failure (those random “…”, “…” during the voiced lines at the end of the game). That “idea” clearly should have been adapted better but he completely misinterpreted the whole issue because nitpicking has become his end in itself. This is obviously the wrong way to go about it.

2. If people who play in japanese can make livetweeting interesting (likely because they aren’t distracted by every little thing) and give you a decent impression about the game then I’m completely sure that the players of the translated editions can do so too, it’s just a question of effort and priorities. You are not usefully /experiencing/ the game if all you do is reporting mistakes like a robot.

Anyway, thank you a lot for your time and answer, I didn’t intend to grumble all that much and I’m but a single person with an opinion. Maybe others do see the translation scrutiny as a more useful and exciting way of sharing the experience about the translated game. Who knows.

You-kun
You-kun
6 years ago

Too bad the vn moenovel picked up for butchering seems to be really good vn.

There is no an all-ages version amongst Japanese releases for Miagete Goran, Yozora no Hoshi o, just like konosora, so it is certain that they butchered it to certain extend. I also don’t have much doubt about they are going as far as censoring even kissing scenes and translating boobs as eyes, again. My only hope is, translation wise if they have improved at least a little that would encourage potential heroes like Pabloc because there would be less things to fix.

littleshogun
littleshogun
Reply to  Decay
6 years ago

It’s still censoring anyway if we didn’t see the H Scenes. But perhaps this time the censoring wasn’t as bad as Konosora, hopefully.

littleshogun
littleshogun
6 years ago

This week VNTS Review, and in regard of Miagete I saw that many people misblamed MoeNovel while it’s obvious that people should blame Pulltop lol. In the end, guess I would just wait and see in regard of Miagete. Enjoy.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/2080-the-black-hound-of-baker-street-review/

PS – For a little note, I actually hoping that Pulltop just making another astronomy goddess Lovekami VN so that Pulltop did less blunder compared to back when they localized Konosora.

Rhea
Rhea
6 years ago

never thought ImoPara2 release would be announced 2 days after I think about picking up the raw version of it, guess I will wait for a bit

invalidname
6 years ago