This week’s header image is from Maitetsu, a game which will receive an official localization per Sekai Project’s announcements last night at the Anime Boston convention.
Tonight has been a busy night. For those unaware, there are two large conventions going on: Anime Boston, and Sakura-Con. MangaGamer had three big announcements at Anime Boston, while Sekai Project had a total of six spread across the two conventions (of which I know three). As of the writing of this post, I don’t know Sekai Project’s Anime Boston announcements, so look for those in the comments, below. In the meantime, here are the six announcements of which I’m aware:
MangaGamer:
- A hardcopy of Free Friends (take a look/buy it here)
- Kindred Spirits Drama CDs!
- Imouto Paradise 2
- Please also be aware that due to a change in management over at Navel, Soul Link (download) and Shuffle (download / hardcopy) will be discontinued as of March 31st. You will still be able to download and play bought copies, but they will be taken off of their store.
Sekai Project:
- Companion (Game Site)
- Still, I Miss Her (South Korean VN) (Game Site)
- Sakura Spirit manga adaption
- Maitetsu (Game Site)
Update
- Sekai Project announced A Clockwork Ley-Line for official release on Steam! They will be using Kohaku’s translation. We will move the project to the appropriate table next week.
- SP also announced Just Deserts, a sci-fi military… dating sim? Yeah.
I’d like to thank Decay, here at the start, for all of his help. Not only has he been a great support tonight, but he’s carried VNTS for the last two weeks, and I ask that we all give him our thanks for his time and hard work.
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
- AstralAir – TL: 72.13 > 72.52%; Edit: 72.13 > 72.52% (47049/64880)
- Companion (Sekai Project) – Announced! Official game page, here.
- Fate/Hollow Ataraxia Voice Porting Project – Work is progressing well, look forward to more updates soon
- HaraKano – Ren’s Route – 8001 > 10,500 lines translated (Link).
- Hoka no Onna – TL: 11131 > 12584 Lines
- Imouto Paradise! 2 (MangaGamer) – Announced!
- KARAKARA (Sekai Project) – TL Progress: 46.42%
- Lovely x Cation – Overall Progress: 28% > 31.6% (more details here)
- Maitetsu (Sekai Project) – Announced! Game site here.
- Muv-Luv Series – Beta version of Muv-Luv Extra to be made available to Kickstarter backers in early April; Muv-Luv Unlimited and the public release for MLE/MLU pushed back from late April/early May to Summer 2016. (link)
- Re:Birthday Song – TL: 65% > 70% (details on the update here)
- Shin Koihime Musou – Character Events TL: 87.2% > 96.5%; Total TL: 73%
- Still, I Missed Her (Sekai Project) – Announced! Game site here.
- Witch’s Garden – Some common route re-translation is ongoing (currently at 29.75%) (link)
Removed from the List This Week
- Atom Grrrl – Buy the all-ages version on Steam here, or the 18+ version on Denpasoft here.
- Nekopara Vol. 2 – Get it on Steam!
All the Game Updates:
Fan Translation Projects
[wpdatatable id=92]MangaGamer (Updates)
[wpdatatable id=94]Other
- Rance 5D, Rance VI, and Rance Quest fan translations on hold in anticipation of potential official release by MangaGamer.
- Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish – Pre-Order is up! (Link)
- The translation of Kindred Spirits’ Drama CDs have been announced!
- Free Friends hardcopy has been put up for pre-order and is releasing May 20th!
Sekai Project (Update Page)
Important note: These percentages should be seen as vague indicators of progress, and are not entirely accurate due to a variety of reasons.
[wpdatatable id=95]Other
- Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link
Other Projects
[wpdatatable id=96]
— Commentary Section —
Zakabox™ Commentary
「Ahh, the sweet smell of announcements wafts into the community. It is time once again to nitpick and on occasion despair about licensing choices, the presence or absence of porn, whether or not Kickstarters are actually that dissimilar to actions taken by the third reich, and more! Personally maitetsu, henceforth lolitrains, doesn’t really interest me, but I’ve seen a decent amount of interest for it some places I frequent. Lose apparently lets you do more or less everyone no matter their age or side character status in their VNs, so we’ll see if the lolitrains will, uhh, keep rolling all night long in English.
What does interest me, apart from the Kindred Spirits drama CDs (I’m currently in the process of reading lesbooans), is actually Companion. A Taiwanese visual novel, the title (伴性) actually means “companion star” in Chinese (unless my internet friends betray me), which makes some sense given that a star’s apparently about to plummet back down to earth in a few months of time in-universe. It looks like it could be anything from a tragedy (and people mention Key’s planetarian, apparently?) or something more about making do with what you get like I heard Soshite Ashita no Sekai yori does. We’ve already had some nice Korean visual novels over (our esteemed global mod Nosebleed especially liked Lucy), so it definitely seems like Japanese won’t be the only way to go moving forward.
Otherwise, Shin Koihime Musou seems to be making progress whether we actually track it or not, and KARAKARA’s translation was either started before the actual crowdfunder ended or is going at light speed. It also looks like the F/HA voice porting turned out surprisingly possible… and now my parents are calling me and I have three minutes to get dressed. Write you again next week, hopefully.」
Decay’s Musings
And convention season has begun! As of the time I’m writing this, MangaGamer’s Anime Boston and Sekai Project’s Sakuracon panels have run their course, while SP’s Anime Boston panel is still about ten hours away. SP had a doozy for us in Maitetsu. It’s a VN about anthropomorphic loli trains. Really. The thing that’s surprising isn’t that SP picked up a loli game, it’s that they picked up THIS loli game. The lolis are… very young looking, to say the least. Maitetsu’s heroines makes Sweet Sweat in Summer’s heroine look like a granny in comparison.
SP is probably going to be selling this one on Steam, and even without sexual content, it is still toeing the line of what’s morally acceptable in the western world. You can bet that an 18+ release is unlikely. There could be serious repercussions depending on where they would decide to sell such a product. Which makes their acquisition of this title all the more surprising, I wonder if they’re trying to prove a point, and what that point is. While Lose’s games have extraordinarily young-looking heroines with plenty of h-scenes that will need to be cut, they also actually have a fair amount of story to accompany them, so it’s not like there would be nothing of value left after the cuts.
I wonder if it’s the kind of thing the Steam audience would go for. Another interesting aspect of Steam is how public and social it is. You can’t selectively hide games from your friends. How many people will want to admit to others that they’re playing this? There’s certainly those who don’t care, but a LOT of people do still care about that kind of thing. Your average VN reader on Steam may not care that their friends can see them playing Nekopara, but what about Eight Year Old Girl Kissing Simulator 2016? I’m very interested in seeing how it performs in light of this. And I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to the inevitable chaos that will ensue.
SP also announced two new doujin titles, as they like to do. A Taiwanese VN titled Companion said to have similar tone to Planetarian, and a Korean VN titled Still, I Miss Her, which has a pretty interesting plot summary, to say the least. The protagonist has his girlfriend “stolen” from him and he seeks revenge, and will attempt to steal the multiple girlfriends of the guy who NTR’ed him. This isn’t your typical “all-ages” Steam romance schlock, that’s for sure. It has more in common with a ’90s and early ’00s NTR eroge than anything else on Steam. So if you’re into that, maybe you’ll be into this, even though there’s no 18+ version? I always thought the sex scenes were supposed to be the payoff in those titles, so I don’t know how this VN will fare without those.
And MangaGamer surprised almost no one by announcing Imouto Paradise 2. I mean, it was time, right? I don’t have much to say about this other than if you liked ImoPara 1, this seems like more of the same? They also announced a Kindred Spirits drama CD. That’s cool, I guess. I really loved Kindred Spirits (check out my review here!), but I’m not really one for side-stories. I feel like my Kindred Spirits experience is complete. I’m not sure how much I can get out of some audio-only drama CDs.
These aren’t high-profile events, though, and these are the kinds of announcements we’ve come to expect from MangaGamer at these early conventions. If you were hoping for fireworks, then you got a taste from SP, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for MangaGamer’s. They’ll be at Anime Central in May with two announcements, including a new partner, so that’s cool. But the real big announcements typically don’t come until A-Kon, Anime Expo, and Otakon in June, July, and August respectively. Expect to hear of your Rances, Eustias, and Albatrosses then. Until then, enjoy the current blistering release schedule. Tokyo Babel releases in just a few days, get hyped.
Oh wait, two last things. 1) What the hell is happening with Root Double? It’s only a five days left until the end of March! Sekai Project, plz, you’re killing me here. Just say something about it already! 2) “There will be news on ley line soon.”
TAYsteful™ Thoughts
It’s been a wild night. Both MangaGamer and Sekai Project had convention panels, and we’ve got a lot of news to share with you. MangaGamer: announced three releases: 1) A hardcopy of Free Friends (take a look/buy it here); 2) Kindred Spirits Drama CDs; and 3) Imouto Paradise 2.
Sekai Project, on the other hand, announced: 1) “Companion” (Game Site); 2) “Still, I Miss Her”, a South Korean VN (Game Site); 3) a Sakura Spirit manga adaption; and 4) Maitetsu (Game Site).
If I get a chance, later tonight, I hope to share some thoughts about Maitetsu (with its loli content) and the lack of Otome support, but if that doesn’t happen, I’ll put it in the comments below. In the meantime, I need to hit the road and get home before midnight.
Have a good week, everybody!
Consumers of otome, and there are quite a few of them, will merely go elsewhere for their romantic fix. Hakuouki and Amnesia, two of the few high profile otome VNs released recently weren’t released by any of the traditional VN localisers, and plenty of EVN developers will look to cash in on a neglected otome market. If MG and Sekai don’t want to cater to them, that’s their mistake, imo.
Really? Imouto paradise 2!!!
Thanks!
Wait, Sekai Project is doing a lolige, and one with a ton of H scenes? I fear it’ll only be released as an all ages version, if backlash of the character’s appearances don’t get the game cancelled altogether.
Maitetsu’s routes contains zero hscenes for those unaware, the hscenes are things you unlock by either unlock them all in the menu or by completing character routes, you can then see them in the Scene viewer whenever you feel like it. And Total there is about 25 hscenes where 13 of them are lolis.
The only thing they basically gonna need to censor is the fanservice and that’s mostly nipples, then again there been steam games with loli nipples before so maybe they leave it intact. There is also Cameltoes and other fanservy scenes that you have everywhere already.
And that said, there already been as young looking characters in official English released eroges (Koihime Musou)
So what are the chances that Maitetsu will be uncensored by this Sekai thingy, even
if only as a download version?
50%? 0%?
With that kind of content I was surprised seeing that announced. But I do not want to
wait for their release only that in the end it was all for nothing, because censorship = in all cases they can keep it a shove it up their a****.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-03-26/sekai-project-adds-a-clockwork-ley-line-visual-novel/.100303
And that solve one of the mystery. At the very least I hope they do all of the trilogy.
Least Surprising News Ever. I was even going to put a snide remark about this possibility at the end of my post but left it as the link to shinitan’s tweet.
> It’s a VN about anthropomorphic loli trains. Really. The thing that’s surprising isn’t that SP picked up a loli game, it’s that they picked up THIS loli game. The lolis are… very young looking, to say the least.
> Your average VN reader on Steam may not care that their friends can see them playing Nekopara, but what about Eight Year Old Girl Kissing Simulator 2016?
I would get new friends with open minds instead.
Seriously, not everybody in Steam is a fucktarded pruddish asshole that is “OMG GUNS GUD BOOBS BAD LOLIS === TERRIRISM!”. And for those that are… well, GTFO, it’s MY money anyway, and I decide on which to spend it. Those idiots and soccer moms can stay bashing over their lovely CoDs and similar garbage.
But sadly we live in the age of SJWs – it will be Johyo Simulator all over again just because some pruddish asshole can’t distingush between a crappy game for lulz and “OMG CHEEZPIZZA!!!”.
It has nothing to do with SJWs, and this problem isn’t unique to this age. This isn’t about it being “the age of SJWs” but “the age of humans with human psychology.” I would wager that most people would in fact not want others to see them do things deemed as socially unacceptable, and this kind of behavior was never acceptable in the US and most of europe. Your mentality isn’t the norm.
I think MG’s waiting on Ozmafia to figure out if Otome is worth it. Frankly, the kickstarter appeared really poorly run and poorly advertised, so I am hoping that they don’t suddenly decide otome-ge aren’t good… Otome and BL fans are still in a state of “buy this if you want to support the genre”, I think. It takes something awful for them to not pay up to at least try a game at this point. I’ll only get worried for BL if Mangagamer doesn’t announce anything in the next two years, given NTY’s sales… Cause that would mean that they would truly have given up. I don’t think SP will try anything again soon. Because of their poorly run kickstarter for a vn that a lot of BL fans probably weren’t even too interested in. I think it’s partially this bad because there’s a huuuge divide in visual novels like this is for girls and this is for guys. They even hang out at different places, really. Aren’t a whole lot of otome game players on VNDB, haven’t seen many bishoujo-ge players on tumblr. This in and of itself is… okay…. unless you’re like me and part of both… but this is a niche. Makes otome voices seem tiny. Probably are quite small, in actuality. But mainly, the companies started out in male-catered VNs, so I have to wonder if they’re just not really sure about how to push their games to the female audience…? Especially since a lot of different players are in otome games, instead of there being three core ones in non-otome games. For example, Axsys and Otomate, as well as Mangagamer and JAST have all tried otome at one point. Nothing is necessarily a “household name” as part of the otome market. Which would make it that much more difficult for companies. At this point, rather than company names, they probably have to bank on the name of the game or genre itself. I actually think Mangagamer did a really good job at getting the hype for No Thank You going in general, there was a lot of support for it. Although some of it was definitely “show them we want BL games” based. I… haven’t been online for a while, so I have no idea what’s going on with Ozmafia. I will certainly be buying it, but I hope others do, too. I basically think that the companies aren’t certain how to really make something “boom” with the otome audience in the same way they do with the male audience, because they hang out in different places, they have to build a name for themselves again, and who can predict what’s going to be popular on something like tumblr anyway? But fans definitely want reasonable attempts at giving them something to succeed, so I do hope they try and keep trying.
…Sorry? I think this ended up kinda long with no time to edit.
I understand what you mean. It’s a shame that some of the more vn-oriented gathering spots are so hostile towards anything that isn’t strictly hetero-male centered. IIRC, reddit was flipping out that Gahkthun had the player as the fem protag for a while.
>Flipping out the player was female protag for a while
That’s just ridiculous. I don’t understand why guys shy away from stuff written from a female perspective. Weird.
Perhaps they were mad that Tesla wasn’t the primary PoV character? MangaGamer actually marketed Tesla as the main character and protagonist of the story, when it’s actually primarily told from Neon’s PoV. The fact that MG was afraid to actually market the game as it was and felt like they had to play up Tesla’s role in the narration was a bit troubling, though.
Now we can see why Tokeijikake no Ley Line stalled this much… Did they licensed whole trilogy or just first game?
Just the first game has been announced, but there’s no reason why they wouldn’t continue if people buy it. It would be extremely disappointing if they stopped, considering the first ends on a cliffhanger and is apparently only half as good as the following games.
when is imouto paradise 2 coming out? It didnt say anywhere that i saw from this.
There’s no word on Imopara 2’s release date yet.
does someone know the reason why navel suddenly decided that mangagamer cant sell soul link and shuffle any-more?
Nope. There are two possibilities: 1) New management at Navel want different terms than what the contract currently has and MG won’t agree to them. Contract is set to expire, renegotiation falls through, games get removed. 2) The terms are the same but the games are really old and may not sell all that well anymore, leaving MG to think that it’s not worth renewing an expiring contract.
I find case #1 far more likely, especially if I take what MG says about the situation at face value. This kind of thing happens every so often in publishing. In case #2, I actually suspect that Shuffle sells halfway decently for an old game, so I doubt MG would be the ones to call things off.
Tiny update on the Narcissu translation project: https://twitter.com/Aginyan/status/714240824763133954