Seinarukana, JAST USA’s upcoming RPG/Visual Novel hybrid, was confirmed for an all-ages Steam release last week. And just today JAST announced that its predecessor, Aselia the Eternal, has been submitted to Steam Greenlight, Steam’s program to determine which games do or don’t get accepted onto their service. For the unaware, Aselia the Eternal was an epic RPG/VN translated and released by JAST in 2011. Not long after its release, JAST announced plans to localize its sequel, Seinarukana, and it entered into a long and troubled development period.
With this news, we have some insight on what was taking so long. Not only is Seinarukana getting a Steam release, they’re porting over and translating all of the PSP-exclusive content meant to replace the 18+ scenes. The game’s translator, Aroduc, has recently claimed that him turning down the job to translate that material may have caused some of the delays. Now with news of Aselia’s Greenlight campaign, it seems JAST may be waiting to release Seinarukana until Aselia makes it onto the platform.
This news raises several questions, some of which we have the answer to, others we do not. To start, yes, Seinarukana will still be receiving physical and digital 18+ versions. It is unknown if these versions will receive the extra PSP content, but my gut says no since they were meant as replacement scenes. There’s also the question of Greenlight for Seinarukana. JAST has not talked about submitting Seinarukana to Greenlight, and has instead claimed that they are in the process of setting up the actual store page, implying that they are skipping that step. It first appears pretty odd that Seinarukana can skip Greenlight but Aselia cannot, but remember that in 2011 before Greenlight was a thing, JAST attempted to submit Aselia to Steam and were denied. This may be a consequence of that.
And of course, the ultimate question is “when”? There is still no indication of when they plan on releasing these games. The Aselia Greenlight page has no estimated release date listed, and Seinarukana is still in the nebulous “soon” state it has been for a couple years now. My suspicion is that they will want to release Aselia onto Steam first. They still have also yet to print the discs and packaging materials for Seinarukana, and JAST’s printing facility is closed for the winter, so expect a wait of at least a few more months. Or possibly more, this is JAST after all. Don’t forget to vote here for Aselia if you wish to see it on Steam!
Update: JAST has launched Seinarukana’s official site, link here. Go there to find information on the story, characters, and gameplay. Still no release date.
I have always wanted to play the original uncensored version.
Will the 18+ version faithful to the original ?
To be clear, there will still be no english 18+ release of Aselia. So if that’s what you’re referring to, you’re out of luck.
As for Seinarukana, the 18+ version released by JAST will be the full, uncut version of the original game.
isn’t this game made for raping the girls after you beat them up…
(never played the game, I could be so wrong)
No, Seinarukana is very light on H-content. The route I played (catgirl’s) had only a couple consensual scenes with that route’s heroine. By comparison, the original Eien no Aselia a variety of H-scenes including a number of rape scenes, many of which were part of the evil route. Even that wasn’t defeat rape though. The heroines were part of your squad.
Not even close, sorry.
JAST time best time. I had hopes Seinarukana would be released during spring. But now my summer is in danger I think. Oh well.
Being on steam will be great for them since the community there can enjoy the butchered game some of us played (yeah I’m bitter). As for the translator that’s fine and all but the link provided claims also that he/she may of purposely mistranslated some lines in Seina… and the reasoning given is ridiculous. Hopefully JAST, if they got a TLC will correct such nonsense no matter how minute it was to that person.
“Purposely mistranslated” is an odd choice of words from him regarding what he did. From what I understand, he basically took some liberties in localizing the script to make a few things more easily understandable for us westerners. Which is a thing good translators do all the time.
How does somebody read what the person writes to mean something else entirely? Let alone defend it when the comment is obvious why the person chose to purposely do it that way. I’ll quote it since it may seem to me there’s some misread on your part “I do have a post in my pocket about a few things in Seinarukana that I grossly mistranslated on purpose, since I enjoy talking/reading about localization stuff, especially the stuff that makes me titter like a schoolgirl, and if you’re going to mistranslate something, go big or go home.”
Buddhism is nothing like Christianity. Taking liberties is ridiculous in this instance. I put it on the same level as translating Tsundere to Bipolar towards a character ruining the presentation of said character and making light of a situation towards people who have those conditions i.e. it’s a bad choice. So purposely mistranslated is the correct choice of words, so it isn’t one of those instance where taking liberties is called for. This, however, isn’t one of them so it’s strange to read that from you and the stuff you’ve written along with the reviews. Baffling.
It’s hilarious that the translation in question hasn’t been released yet, and all you have is the author alluding to some deliberate mistranslations he may or may not have made, and yet you’re already in full rustled jimmies mode.
There are any information about a special edition?
For now, I hesitate to order a preorder because at the moment it is only normal edition.
I hope you will write another news as soon as you know something more;)
JAST USA drop some comment on Steam page about revisit Aselia and its H-contents after they dealt with Seinarukana … any comment on those removed contents? I mean, is it even worth the wait?
Well, no. Even if they would add all the H scenes without removing anything else, they aren’t connected to the story and they’re not so good.
Some people have been pretty dismissive of the h-content in Aselia. I haven’t played it so I don’t really know either way. I know some people who hated the “evil route” that was cut entirely (basically, a protagonist-rapes-everyone route), and some people who liked it. I probably would hate it. There’s also a very early h-scene that some people said was important for setting the mood that was cut, but I feel like the early game pacing didn’t suffer much at all when I played the all-ages version.
There’s a mish-mash of other minor cut content. The rest of the h-scenes seem entirely extraneous. There’s some censored ecchi content like panty shots, but I really don’t care about those. My personal verdict is that the all-ages version is more than acceptable.
sanahtlig mentioned that “Seinarukana is very light on H-content”, so is it better to just skip the 18+ version and go for the steam version? Heck, do the ero scenes in Seinarukana actually contribute anything to character development or story progression? In fact, should I just go for the pre-order since it contains the steam activation key?