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Visual Novel Translation Status (12/10/2016)

This week’s header image comes from our lone release: Himawari -a pebble in the sky-! (MangaGamer) which you can check out here!

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:  Well, Himawari‘s out. Judging on the amount of messages I’ve received about it, I’d say a lot of people are interested in this one. If you want to check out the game, you can do so (and buy it) here. Decay’s trying to play it, for one. And then he spent a bunch of time tinkering with his config file. And then, just as he sat back down to play it, I got on Skype and started VNTS. Taypls.

The Short Version: Only the New Stuff

New Releases!

Removed from the List This Week

All the Game Updates:

Fan Translation Projects

Fan Translation Projects

12/10/2016 Addendum: A few Luna TL updates are incorrectly listed in the table below. They’ll be fixed next week. Here are the correct values:

[wpdatatable id=248]

JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Updates; Archive)

[wpdatatable id=249]

MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=250]

Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

[wpdatatable id=251]

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

Misc. Projects

Other Projects

[wpdatatable id=252]

Funny-Commentary-Section

— Commentary Section —

Zakabox™ Commentary

Once upon a time there was a Dutch weeb named Asonn. I mean, an actual weeb, he literally owned a katana what the fuck. After a series of poor life decisions such as being born, reading Katawa Shoujo, joining Fuwanovel, and so on, Zaka became friends with him.

Asonn had a visual novel dream: to translate Koiseyo! Imouto Banchou. Unfortunately that went down the shitter because he’s way too lazy, so now he’s the head of a translation project for a nukige where you make love to some tsundere redhead idol. In the end though, despite us trying so hard and getting to 60% translated, Deccy didn’t even see fit to add us to the actual tables. I cry every time.

Anyway, the Maki Fes project is going to be interesting, and not just because Maki is fully voiced and partially animated!

First of all, to try to keep the work required manageable for everyone involved we split the 8 ~300-line h scenes between 7 translators; one translator per scene, plus this one guy said he was gonna do two. 300 lines might not seem like much, but I believe two people have already noped out and me and Asonn are both not done with our scripts. I’m the one with the lowest linecount done. Fuck. Anyway, it’s a good thing we have a decent TLC and editor.

Second, liberal translation and meme insertion was encouraged, though some people still chose to not add memes for whatever reason. As such, you can look forward to lines such as these (warning: very lewd):

“My excalibur is now completely soaked, shining with the intensity of a thousand suns.”

“Don’t mind me exaggerating shit and my memes too much.”

“So it be! The suffocating stricture of violating virginal vagina may have its endearments, but spelunking a cavern molded in one’s own shape, shewing perfect proof of personal possession, excites one’s nethers MOST magnitudinously!” (with original jp) (Conjueror approved!).

…Yeah, it’s going to be glorious.

I’m in charge of the “Piano scene” script, so if you don’t see it move for like a month on the tracker, you know what to do. I’m not sure what it is that you know to do, but I’m sure you know it.」

Decay’s Musings

Hey everyone! I’m just a few hours into Himawari so far, and I’m already liking it quite a bit. It’s starting off with a fairly uneventful slice of life scenario. If you’re among the people who dislike the first half of Steins;Gate, or the common routes from Grisaia no Kajitsu and Key’s games due to their uneventfulness, you’ll likely dislike the first chapter of Himawari as well. I’ve always enjoyed these kinds of preludes, though. Practically every single time I’ve seen someone say “but the first half of this game is real bad, nothing happens!” I have a weird reaction. Like, what are they talking about? The first half of Steins;Gate is hilarious and cozy!

Am I weird? Japan keeps making stories like these by the dozen so it seems like my mindset is closer to the audience for these games in Japan. But I feel like the general western audience is largely averse to that style of storytelling. We want a constant string of events from start to finish. I almost don’t like that kind of fast pacing. In a serious and tense thriller type of story that may work, but for many stories I prefer more laid back and relaxed pacing. I often find that romantic type stories that try to cut the fat tend to overtrim and end up rushing things. What do you guys prefer? Neat and tidy stories, or relaxed and cozy?

Naturally, I expect shit to get real at some point in Himawari. It seems like it eventually becomes a pretty dang serious drama. I wonder how many of you know what this game actually is. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Himawari one of the most successful doujin VNs ever released in Japan, yet western awareness for it is tragically low. r/vn/’s Fuwante wrote a pretty good post explaining what Himawari is and isn’t here. I strongly suggest anyone who enjoys character-focused dramas to check it out, and I suspect that’s quite a few of you. Himawari is the type of VN a large chunk of the community would enjoy quite a bit, I wonder if it can reach everyone.

Anyway, it’s pretty neat that Dal Segno is already at 100% translation and editing, that happened much faster than I expected. I was under the impression that it was somewhat lengthy and was billed as a successor to the Da Capo series, although maybe I was mistaken. Looking at the writing pedigree on it, it has one of DC3’s writers, a writer for a bunch of DC fandiscs, and then Koisuru Natsu no Last Resort’s main writer. Which, eh… Koirizo wasn’t very good, was it? I suppose I shouldn’t expect DS to be as good as DC3, but hopefully it’s at least somewhere in the same ballpark. It seems like we may not have to wait long to find out, DC3 and DS could be releasing rather close together. It’ll be interesting to see how the community compares the two.

Anyway, that’s it from me this week. I’m going to get back to reading Himawari. I aim to have a review up for it sometime next weekend. See you all next week.

 



TAYsteful™ Thoughts

Have a good week, everybody.

Tay

I'm the Fuwanovel community admin and a big fan of Visual Novels. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via a PM on the Fuwanovel Forums, by twitter (@ArchmageTay), or by email.

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Mr. Poltroon
Mr. Poltroon
7 years ago

Hmm… It’s looking like I might actually like Himawari. That’s good. I thought it was within a realm I didn’t care much for, but maybe it mingles a bit and I’d enjoy it.

Decay
Reply to  Mr. Poltroon
7 years ago

Oh, you would for sure. Play it, Tiag.

wyldstrykr
wyldstrykr
7 years ago

it appears that dal segno will be released first than princess evangile….

Solifar Estude
Solifar Estude
7 years ago

Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm (Aokana) – Added to the list this week
guys please, my heart can’t stand another breakup ; w ;

> “What do you guys prefer? Neat and tidy stories, or relaxed and cozy?”
Mmm. I eat both sides of the dish, but it highly depends on execution.

I personally believe to make a good fast-paced story-line work, you need to establish the characters first, and make the readers connect with them before throwing them into the train-without-breaks. This is usually achieved by the comfy SOL setting, as readers can easily relate with. Otherwise, you might have a solid story, but you risk the characters to easily forgotten.

Now the problem is usually the reverse, where you want to tell a relaxed tale, but you need to add that drama to spice things up. Poorly written VNs just.. shove it there, and expect us to eat it. Eg, the main heroine in one route is totally butchered up in another because the MC isn’t with her (looking at you Chisato). It kinda leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

So uh, neat and tidy stories, or relaxed and cozy TLDR:
Preferable the first, as the second while the character buildup might be good, with poor execution it’s no good. At least the first you have decent story.

Dan
Dan
7 years ago

By the looks of it, barely anyone has bought himawari. Depressing, as usual.

JJ
JJ
7 years ago

“What do you guys prefer? Neat and tidy stories, or relaxed and cozy?”
Honestly, I think the skill of the writer/translator/editor is more important than that choice. But if it is well done, I’ll pick relaxed and cozy. If it is an interesting world filled with likable characters, I want to stay there and enjoy it for a while. But I have a limit when it is too slow. There are numerous visual novels where I have thought that I would never get to the end of a chapter because nothing was happening. The reader was just being barraged with empty words that didn’t advance the plot or deepen the characters.

littleshogun
littleshogun
7 years ago

This week VNTS Review from mine, and forgot to said this but have fun for playing Himawari to anyone else who already owned that.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1575-twilight-of-the-miracle-witch-review/

Ralph
Ralph
7 years ago

Not really sure how to put this without getting too wordy, so…

… I like KEY VNs. In general. If it’s a KEY VN, I’ll try to get it no questions asked; even if it’s Kinetic (which is not something I like in itself).

… In other words, as has been written lots and lots of times in all sorts of places: authors, scriptwriters, whatever you want to call them, must first establish some sort of rapport with their audience. If within the first five minutes of a piece starting the girl dies then it won’t have much of an impact; if on the other hand within the LAST five minutes the protagonist’s girlfriend dies on him (and on us-the-audience) that’s going to be an entirely different story.

OTOH, there’s such a thing as overdoing it. Muv Luv suffers from this if you’ve never heard of it before and start out with ML:E and then continue on to ML:Unlimited; basically any works that can be referred to with a “Genre Shift” tag toe the line here: because what these works usually boil down to is that you establish yourself a connection, a link, a relationship to your audience and once that’s done… you kick both it and your audience where it hurts the most. NGE also comes close I’m told (Belldandy in particular).

Forewarned is forearmed, and I for one concluded, well, in that case I’m not going to bother.

Funny thing? If one discounts Muv-Luv Extra from the story line – or at least didn’t read that first, regardless of enforced playing order there — ML is actually great in terms of connecting to the audience and then dragging them by the balls through places audience had never meant to visit, voluntarily or not. Of all the VNs I’ve read, very few have come close: Cross#Channel comes to mind immediately. Steins;Gate does as well. Little Busters comes close. I’m not sure yet about Grisaia, having only read Fruit; but I wouldn’t be surprised to find something similar there.

But ultimately, as I see it, a certain level of… mastery… is required to successfully pull a /moving/ story.

Which, in turn, means just this: if you have yourself a VN that’s slow-paced in front and fast-paced in back and the author(s) actually pulled it off then you have yourself by definition what might well be a *great* VN (everything else aside, of course).

Neat and tidy stories? ANYONE can pull one of those.

Ralph
Ralph
Reply to  Ralph
7 years ago

NGE? Man, I’ve been drinking too much /delicious water/ lately. I was thinking of A!megami-sama, of course.

ChaosRaven
ChaosRaven
7 years ago

Now that Dal Segno reached 100 % TL, wouldn’t it be funny it would be released before Da Capo 3? Well, I guess that would be too humiliating for the poor DC3 though…

lostn
lostn
7 years ago

I don’t like slow starts or excessive slice of life where nothing consequential happens. I want them to start quick and never slow down.

That’s why I tend to avoid romance VNs, and even serious VNs that have too much SoL or take too long to get going, such as Grisaia.

abc
abc
7 years ago

you missed yesterday update on Denwatls secret project:
DSP#3 Weekly Status Update -10/12
Weekly progress complete! Image editing nearly complete, due for a release next week!

Decay
Reply to  abc
7 years ago

That was posted after we posted this week’s VNTS but we’ll be sure to get it next week, thanks!

Katie
Katie
7 years ago

I need something interesting to start to get me into it, and then it can have it’s slower moments but not so slow the plot just stops. Don’t just make it overly drawn out like the first part of Umineko. Good lord, that was tough to get through.

Castrix
7 years ago

still no info about subarashiki 🙁