This week’s header image comes from this week’s 4 full releases. From left to right we have Campus Notes – Forget Me Not, Pub Encounter, Lucid9: Inciting Incident, and Taimanin Asagi 3.
Hello there! This week we’ve got another batch of new releases and updates for you, covering a pretty wide spectrum. There’s some pretty exciting stuff coming down the pipeline, if I say so myself. Big props to Tay this week who, despite saying he was taking a break this week, still ended up doing at least half of the work himself. The man’s a machine!
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 and editing up to 74.20% (48141/64880)
- Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- – Prologue patch released, get it here. You can buy the game from AmazonJP here (NSFW).
- Bokuten (MangaGamer) – Translation: 79% > 87%
- Campus Notes – Forget Me Not. – Released! Get it on Steam!
- Corpse Party – PC release date finally announced for April 25th! 3DS version announced!
- Da Capo 3 (MangaGamer) – TL: 83% > 87.5%, Edit: 79.3% > 80.8%
- Dare ka ga Koi Shita Hankagai (SekaiProject) – TL: 28.75% > 37.71%
- Immoral Little – “Dropped for the foreseeable future” (link)
- Imouto Paradise! 2 (MangaGamer) – TL: 36.59% > 41.5%, Edit: 10% > 14.4%
- Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning – This is a one-off announcement, Gahkthun has received an uncut Steam release! Check it out here. All previous buyers of the MG version will receive complimentary Steam keys.
- KARAKARA (SekaiProject) – TL: 77.22% > 95.98%
- Koiseyo!! Imouto Banchou – Translation up from 5 to 6%, editing up from 4 to 5%. Keep up the good work!
- Kuroinu (MangaGamer) – TL: 40% > 43%
- Libra of the Vampire Princess – Main Route TL: 80%
- Lucid9: Inciting Incident – Released! Get it for free from Steam here.
- Maitetsu (SekaiProject)– TL: 6.39% > 6.96%
- Muv-Luv Series – Crapload of news available here. The Extra beta is coming very soon, Schwarzesmarken was Greenlit on Steam, and the CODEX translation is at 75%.
- Psycho Pass: Mandatory Happiness – After a long period of me just sorta forgetting about it, we finally added it to the list! Releasing September on PC, Vita, and PS4.
- Princess Evangile W Happiness (MangaGamer) – TL: 32.58% > 38%, Edit: 10.6% > 17.3%
- (Otome!) Pub Encounter – RELEASED! Get it on Steam right now for a 40% discount!
- Root Letter – It’s a thing, we added it to the list. A “mystery adventure” VN releasing this Spring, more info available here.
- The Shadows of Pygmalion (MangaGamer) – TL: 63.31% > 73%
- Sukimazakura to Uso no Machi – TL: 28.9% > 30.8%
- Supipara (Ch 1) (MangaGamer) – In Scripting.
- Taimanin Asagi 3 – (NSFW AS HECK) Surprise, it’s 100% translated and released! The third mainline entry in the ever popular nukige series, translated out of nowhere. Get the patch here, you can buy the game from AmazonJP here (physical) or from DLSite here (digital).
- The House in Fata Morgana (MangaGamer) – Demo now available, get it here!
- Tokyo Necro -TL Demo Video released: check it out on Youtube.
- WORLD END ECONOMiCA episode.03 (SekaiProject) – TL: 41.66% > 51.23%
New Releases
- Bishoujo Mangekyou -Norowareshi Densetsu no Shoujo- – Prologue patch released, get it here. You can buy the game from AmazonJP here (NSFW).
- Campus Notes – Forget Me Not. – Released! Get it on Steam!
- Lucid9: Inciting Incident – Released! Get it for free from Steam here.
- (Otome!) Pub Encounter – RELEASED! Get it on Steam right now for a 40% discount!
- Taimanin Asagi 3 – (NSFW AS HECK) Surprise, it’s 100% translated and released! The third mainline entry in the ever popular nukige series, translated out of nowhere. Get the patch here, you can buy the game from AmazonJP here (physical) or from DLSite here (digital).
Removed from the list this week
- Beat Blades Haruka (MangaGamer) – You can get the game here.
All the Game Updates:
Fan Translation Projects
[wpdatatable id=107]MangaGamer (Updates)
[wpdatatable id=109]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)
These percentages should be seen as vague indicators of progress, and are not entirely accurate due to a variety of reasons.
[wpdatatable id=110]Other
- Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link
Other Projects
[wpdatatable id=111]
— Commentary Section —
Zakabox™ Commentary
「To be honest, I might have written my commentary on time if I hadn’t been reading Lucid9 yestoday (yes, that’s a word now). Fortunately I were, though, for now I can justify all the #effort I put into writing about it last week. I’m liking it so far and can definitely recommend you to check it out – it’s free as in free beer, which is inferior to the Pepsi Max I’m currently enjoying, but still free and on occasion delicious. My favorite scene so far is probably a certain freakout where the main character held a conversation with a pool of blood and some bones (and flowers, I think?). Please note that this is not indicative of the typical reading experience – at least up to where I am now :P.
As is my wont, I’ve been live-tweeting it with the tag #lucid9 – if that interests you for whatever reason, you can look here for a list of my tweets on the subject. Or you could just follow me on Twitter or something, but then you’d have to look at all my really shitty tweets too. Enjoy the minor spoilers and having to scroll all the way to the bottom for it to be at all chronological!
Anyway, updates updates updates. Bokuten’s getting close to fully translated by now. It’s interesting to see an utsuge from Overdrive – while Kira Kira has its moments, Dengeki Styker / Deardrops certainly aren’t in that vein. I haven’t read that much in the pure depression genre, and while I have read Narcissu, I’m not sure if it quite belongs there – if you’ve read it yourself, you can check out Zalor’s analysis for part of why I see it as I do.
I never did check out Corpse Party; while I could probably have played it using an emulator, that requires some real effort, plus for some people the text looked all crappy and that would suck too. Also, though I’m loath to admit it, I’m pretty bad with scary stuff. I quit Amnesia (the dark descent, not the otomege), and I don’t think I’m going to play it again unless someone gives me a wad of cash in return. I’ll be nice having it and Danganronpa finally ported to serve the master race. Though when it comes to Danganronpa, I’ll probably be using the fan translation of the first if I ever get to it; people say the official version has a worse translation. I think.
R.I.P. Immoral Little project. The good news (well, for some of you) is that Nosebleed might be starting a project for a less porny VN instead, apart from his work on Dracu-Riot. Not to mention being a global mod on the Fuwa forums and in uni. I predict a mental breakdown soon :P.
Gahkthun getting on Steam uncut doesn’t mean most eroge are going to make the, uh, cut; Liar-Soft VN sex scenes are a bit different from the usual porn we know and love/hate/ctrl through. I do wonder if Kikokugai’s remake could get on there – it actually got a 15+ rating in Japan (though nobody seems to know how the hell that happened), and from what I’ve read (yet another on my list of “in-progress” VN reads – I’d actually forgotten it until just now), it might be possible to have it rated M by the ESRB as MG did for Gahkthun.
KARAKARA’s at 95.98% translated. I wonder how long it’ll be – given the pace of the translation, maybe not very. Still, it’s not like being short is inherently bad, and it seems there are only two girls involved, so hopefully it won’t have shallow routes due to stretching the writing thin across too many characters. I wonder if they’ll do anything interesting with the setting or it’ll be window-dressing for yet another moege.
And with that, it’s eleven in the evening here and I really should get back to reading Lucid9 or something.」
Decay’s Musings
Four releases yet again! Well, none of them particularly excite me, but I suppose that excitement will have to wait for next week when DanganRonpa 2 PC releases. Oh, by the way, we don’t track that because it’s not a new translation and ultimately just a port, but that’s coming out in just a few days! The 18th, to be exact, you can access its Steam page here. I suppose I should re-read the first game, too. Partly to refamiliarize myself with it, and also to experience whatever the PC/Vita enhancements bring to the table, since I only previously played the PSP version. But I somehow have to find the time to play it, which I really wonder if I’ll actually have in the next few months.
There’s some more news that I’m sure some of you will like. Firstly, remember the Daito project from late 2014, early 2015? It seems that the project is being resumed, with the original translator back on the job. That’s great news in my book. I found the partial patch that was released to be really entertaining. Linktriforce007, owner of perhaps the silliest name in the VN scene and an editor who has been around for ages, posted about this on Reddit. We didn’t add it back to the table because for now, there’s nothing concrete other than a vague promise to resume work on it. The other bit of news is that the Sanarara R translation may also resume soon. We’ll keep you updated on both projects as things develop.
Oh yeah, and one more thing, Sekai Project started sending out functional review keys for Root Double, so I suspect that it’s not too far off from an actual release. The Fuwanovel reviews team received a key, so you can expect a review from us on the day of release… hopefully. It’ll be me reviewing it after all. And this game is FREAKING HUGE. I’ll try my hardest, but juggling VN reviewing with Dracu-Riot editing, Fuwanovel duties, VNDB duties, and occasional real life stuff is a bit exhausting. Guess that means I have to cut one, and we all know what that’s going to be. RIP real life (and also my VNDB duties too, pretty much. Sorry guys).
Onto the depressing part of the commentary, it seems Japan Content is at it again, attempting to reboot their ChuSinGura kickstarter. At least they’re posting a Prefundia first. And… yeah, it’s not pretty. The English is still pretty spotty, they’re still heavily misinterpreting the VN itself, giving incomplete information (such as the most important heroine not even getting a profile), and just seems to be botching it in general. Well, I doubt anyone involved with this campaign pays attention to anyone in the community so my complaining will fall on deaf ears, but really guys?
You’re just repeating the same mistakes all over again. Do you think the people who complained previously will change their stance just because you lowered the goal a bit? Your previous campaign utterly bombed, and that wasn’t because people thought the goal was too high. It was because they had zero confidence in you. And you haven’t done jack to instill that confidence with this new prefundia. If you launch again like this, you’ll bomb just as hard. 1) ChuSinGura is not some fluffy moege. Making its main selling point moe samurai girls betrays what that story is really about. 2) It’s a dating sim now!? It’s a linear VN in actuality with no real interactive portions. But they’re promising simulation gameplay… I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s actually against Kickstarter’s TOS and most country’s consumer protection laws. 3) For god’s sake, fix your English. Hire someone who is a native level speaker who won’t make a ton of typos, including spelling your own game’s name in EIGHT different ways. 4) Are you seriously going to release a PC port of a mobile port of a PC game? What? Why? What’s wrong with, you know, the original PC version? 5) Actually, just quit and hand the license off to someone competent, please.
Yeesh. I just felt like I had to get that off my chest (again), even if no one who matters will actually see it. I wonder, when this reattempt bombs, will they try a third time, or will Inre simply abandon any notion of localizing CSG? I certainly hope that whatever happens, Inre will keep an open mind in the future. Anyways, that’s it from me. Have a good weekend, everyone!
TAYsteful™ Thoughts
[Shortly after helping me with the VNTS, Tay went back to studying and is likely now out like a sack of potatoes. – Decay]
Other releases this week:
* Startlight Vega: http://store.steampowered.com/app/377690
* Narcissu 3rd (A Little Iris) released for Seasson Pass holders and KS backers: http://steamcommunity.com/games/426690/announcements/detail/968647236192631131
* Gahkthun of the Golden Lightning released last night at Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/458380/
Gahkthun was mentioned. Missed the other two though, sorry. Thanks for the heads up.
Gahkthun wasn’t put in the new releases section simply because it’s identical to the version that was already released. It’s simply being sold at a new store, so it’s not really a new release.
it is me or imouto paradise 2 will be release first before princess evangile W?
Probably from the looks of it. Anybody know if the same TL and editors from the first game are working on the sequel? It was done really well.
New visual novel from the creators of Tokyo School Life and E-mote Engine, responsible for character animation in Nekopara series.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/443330/
No e-mail for the second week. Pls fix kthx.
Assuming you mean a notification that the post went up – not sure what’s going on, got a notification email myself. Cliche, but have you checked your spam folder?
I got it later somehow, but for the previous two weeks I didn’t get e-mail notifications at all.
Sill waiting for Labyrinth of Grisaia 🙂
Here’s my VNTS commentary for this week http://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1162-the-lucid-note-review/
Eden of Grisaia 20% translated
I notice you still haven’t added the Tsui Yuri ~ project to this list. Any particular reason for that?
We tend not to immediately add projects to the list the moment they’re announced for a variety of reasons. It’s not malice or anything, don’t worry about it.