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Visual Novel Translation Status (01/21/2017)

This week’s header image comes from our two releases: Black Wolves Saga: Bloody Nightmare; and MangaGamer’s release of Da Capo 3 R (18+ Edition)

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:  The release of Da Capo 3 R (18+) has been a long time in coming, and has a special significance to our community. Some of us were around when the DC3 fan translation patch was started in 2012-13, only to go down in legal flames shortly thereafter. That it’s finally coming to market is a bit surreal. I’d like to congratulate everyone who worked on the game for their hard work. I also raise a glass to Aaeru, wherever she may be. The day’s finally come. Cheers.

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

[wpdatatable id=292]

JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Updates; Archive)

[wpdatatable id=293]

MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=294]

Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

[wpdatatable id=295]

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

Misc. Projects

Other Projects

Note: We missed “School of Talent” until after the tables were finalized, it will be added next week:

[wpdatatable id=296]

VNTS Commentary Section

Zakabox™ 「This is the place where Zaka occasionally shares his wisdom. Will he show up this week? Will he have anything to say? Only time will tell.」

Decay’s MusingsHey everyone. Not gonna lie, I just straight up forgot about commentary this week, whoops! It’s improvisation time! So, that Himawari, huh? My extremely late Himawari review is finally live, and it sparked more discussion than any of my other reviews, even the 1/5 No One But You review. I suppose I don’t like Himawari as much as a lot of people do. I expected more pushback than I got, but I actually ended up receiving a lot feedback from like-minded individuals.

I don’t hate the game, 3/5 is a perfectly decent score any way you look at it, yet at the same time I hesitate to call the game decent. I don’t know what to call it, truth be told. It’s sometimes fantastic, sometimes quite mediocre, a “mixed bag,” if you will. What’s interesting though is the diversity in opinions from the people who agree with my overall assessment. Many of us agree that Himawari is inconsistent and a little bit messy, but we all seem to disagree on why. I really liked chapter 2 but disliked the Aqua route, while someone else who commented on my review loved the Aqua route but hated chapter 2. Another disatisfied reader really liked the side stories, while I found them to be lackluster and a bad inclusion.

Overall, I’m still glad I read it. And I’m definitely not alone in that. It’s getting pretty crazy ratings on VNDB and has been very successful in Conjueror’s GOTY polls (he admits a likely bias among his followers since he’s one of Himawari’s translators). It’s so popular, that I wish I could have included a bit in my review where it says something like “But it does this thing right so check it out if you like that,” or “definitely give it a read if you like these kinds of games,” but I legitimately can’t figure out any way to recommend it to anyone at all. It’s strange, because the overall product isn’t bad, per say. It’s just that it doesn’t do some things right and some things wrong. In a way, it does everything right, and also everything wrong, all at different points.

Yet there are definitely people out there who unabashedly love nearly every aspect of it. I can’t really wrap my head around that mindset, truth be told. I’m not saying they’re wrong, and I respect their opinion. But if they’re not wrong, wouldn’t that make me wrong? Ah, huh, hmm… Nah, impossible.

Anyway, I’d like to go out of my way to mention this strange thing that popped up on Steam recently: School of Talent: SUZU-ROUTE.

  1. It’s developed by a new Japanese studio.
  2. This studio was founded as a VR studio, this VN contains no VR elements.
  3. These total greenhorns decided their debut product should be a quadrilingual international release, entirely self-published.
  4. They actually pulled it off, the English translation seems competent at first blush. I’m now curious as to the quality of the Portuguese (Brazilian) and Chinese (Simplified) translations.

And although it’s hard to tell from the screenshots, it seems like it might not be an entirely shallow, overly horny cash-in, either. At least, it doesn’t seem to be going after the Sakura crowd. Just what is this VN? For just $5 during its early access phase, I’m somewhat tempted to try it and see. I’m at least happy to support developers who take translation at least somewhat seriously, and aren’t releasing what looks like bottom-barrel pandering trash.

Anyway, that’s it from me. See you all next week.

TAYsteful Thoughts™My copy of Da Capo III is downloading in the background (MangaGamer’s downloads are usually pretty good for me, but at the moment it’s moving at a snail’s pace), but I’m very much looking forward to playing it. Once again, congrats to the team for their hard work and finishing the patch.

I mentioned it in the various lists and tables, but I want to thank Mochisato, again, for the head’s up about the Black Wolves Saga: BN release. These VNTS posts take a lot of time to write, and often I have to rely heavily on Decay and the comments section for direction to new projects. If you know of a project and want us to consider it for the list, please speak up in the comments! Other than that… I guess that’s it! 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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littleshogun
littleshogun
7 years ago

I’m gonna be late for my VNTS Review here, but may I give comment to some insight there?

1. To Decay, well at least your review wasn’t as ridiculous as 5/10 Tokyo Babel which said there’s no gameplay was the downside or certain Higurashi review as well which complained about no choice. After all, even best games as Chrono Trigger (Or popular VN such as Fte Stay Night) was bound to face some critic of course ie overrated, so don’t worry too much about Himawari review there. Although perhaps there’s some aspect that I need to keep note of it in order to enjoying Himawari. Just saying.

2. To admin Tay, yeah I’m downloading it too right now and it was quite slow there. And speaking about Da Capo 3, we couldn’t separated it from Fuwanovel history if we could trace it to the past. Oh, and speaking about project once again there’s Mahou Shoujo back at the forum (Chronopoils’s project) and Sono Hanabira 11 which admittedly quite hard to trace.

That’s all for my early comment here, and I’ll post mu VNTS Review here as usual later.

JJ
JJ
Reply to  littleshogun
7 years ago

I have bought many games from MangaGamer in the past, and Da Capo 3 was the first one I ever had any problems downloading. It was really slow for me, too, and timed out/stopped the download about five times. I wonder if Amazon was having a problem (since they host some of the MangaGamer files) or if Da Capo 3 was popular.

Mochisato
Mochisato
7 years ago

lol your welcome Tay ^^ its good to help specially the otome stuff that sometimes pass noticed, and i’m glad to see one of my favorites otomes ever in the banner
now if only someone translated BWS: Last Hope that would be perfect

Katie
Katie
7 years ago

Take that, Rejet, you xenophobic, nationalistic, douchebags!

Mochisato
Mochisato
Reply to  Katie
7 years ago

Rejet is pretty nice since they don’t really seem to care about fan translation, considering Honeybee when after a fan-translation group and sent them a cease and desist for a game series that JAST said it cost way too much so acquire the rights to it and it would be hard to anyone localize,
let’s hope fan translation of other Honeybee games don’t suffer the same fate, specially Ayakashi Gohan that is on 92%

Lambda
Lambda
Reply to  Mochisato
7 years ago

Well, even with Honeybee, we should remember that it was a random e-mail that the head got, and they didn’t wanna push their luck, basically. The initial sender didn’t reply to any of the e-mails. So we don’t actually have any idea if it WAS Honeybee being awful, or a random person being utterly awful.

Black Wolves Saga is very exciting, in general, though. Looking forward to playing it when I get Norton to stop hating/start ignoring VNR…. (I’m also tempted by Da Capo so this is a good week for VNs, bad week for the ol’ wallet).

Katie
Katie
Reply to  Mochisato
7 years ago

Rejet wants nothing to do with foreigners, so don’t ever expect an official localization.

Mochisato
Mochisato
Reply to  Katie
7 years ago

erm idk, their shop ships internationally tho

Katie
Katie
Reply to  Mochisato
7 years ago

They’ve ignored many emails sent to them about officiating fan patches or any emails in general from the west, even if written in Japanese.

Decay
Reply to  Mochisato
7 years ago

You should never expect a Japanese company to ever respond to anything about fan translations. Often they accept fan translations, but cannot come out for them for a variety of legal and business reasons. Fan translation patches are illegal to produce and distribute, so even the companies that accept them generally wish to do so by staying quiet and preserving the status quo. That Rejet doesn’t actively try to stop fan translations despite being aware of them should be taken as tacit support.

Katie
Katie
Reply to  Mochisato
7 years ago

You guys are right. I’m sorry for lashing out like that. I had a really bad day yesterday and this was all misplaced anger from that. I know it’s not an excuse, but I hope you can forgive me eventually. =(

zaidk
zaidk
7 years ago

and her i am…
waiting for the translation of chaos;child and soukoku no arterial

*sigh* why must great Visual Novels like them be left alone and stupid H visual novels get translated? (although arterial isn’t focused on story that much but the characters and gameplay makes it great)

Michael
Michael
7 years ago

Some good updates this week. Although still no word on a release date yet for Princess Evangile w Happiness, or Imouto Paradise 2.
Sometimes I think MangaGamer, and others like Sekai Project, take on too many projects at a time, and that’s why they seem to take a long time to release.
But, I guess they all have different teams working on different projects. I dunno.

JJ
JJ
Reply to  Michael
7 years ago

Well, they have to finish them before they can announce a release date. 🙂 I really want to buy those two games, too.

Most of the contractors who work for any of the companies have another job and/or attend college. So, they only have a limited number of hours each week to make progress on the localizations. Sadly, the industry isn’t at the point yet where a lot of people could work on localizations full time.

Alchemicalhaze
Alchemicalhaze
7 years ago

Libra of the Vampire Princess has been fully translated and edited. The mini episodes are completely translated and need edited.

You can check out Mikandi Japans translation status bar @: https://mikandi.jp/libra-of-the-vampire-princess-updates-and-faq/. Here is a quote from their page: “***Important Update: January 20th, 2017*** As destiny would have it and without even realizing it until after the fact, we finished translating and editing Libra, one year to the day from when our campaign ended. Congratulations to the translators, editors, and to everyone in the Vampire Princess Army who has fought alongside us over the course of this past year! What’s the next battle? Mini Episode editing is forging ahead like a full-on sneak attack. Onward to VICTORY!***”.

By the way, is there a way I can put a link in comment just as “link”, or Click “here”?

littleshogun
littleshogun
7 years ago

My very late VNTS Review, and yeah I’m quite late to noticing that Hatsukoi was getting translated (I ignored this last weeks because I think it’s just another otome game). Although maybe it wasn’t as good as Gin’iro Haruka or Hoshi Ori (Namely the protagonist was too dense so much that the company need to made the video on Nico Nico in order to apologize in regard of MC), I’ll keep my eyes on the project.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1631-sakura-ga-kureta-yokan-review/