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Hey all, I just wanted to drop by to let you know that a VN I translated has just been released~ You can buy it at the following sites: JAST USA Mangagamer DLsite Enjoy! And let me know if you have any questions :3

There was a major pun around Koto's name that features in one of the earlier choices, which I had to work around. It was connecting コトコト煮込む to cooking classes, so I changed it to a reference to the koto instrument and music classes instead. There were also references to Japanese urban legends like Kuchizake-onna, but I left those intact since they're important for the Japanese horror flavour of the game. But I don't think there was anything especially obscure. Really, the biggest challenge with translating this writer's work is their prose which tends toward the more "literary" and "ambiguous" side of things, which can be hard to render nicely in English. The game is actually more plot-focused, so the yuri isn't super strong, but it does permeate the game and has a nice pay off in the epilogues. Sakuya is definitely a big gay

Nekonyan's next release will be Riddle Joker on the 18th of December, so we'll have something new to play over the holidays which is always nice. More Yuzusoft Moeges . Havent completely finished Senren yet though lol. Blogpost: https://nekonyansoft.com/blog/aokana-extra1-riddle-joker-release-date I wonder if they are having issues with Hello Lady's engine or something since the base game has been done for months now and i believe even the fandisc is almost done (already TLed/Edited), hopefully thats their February release

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1204 ... ories_Die/ How stories die Time travel, assassins and one demonic magical gangster bunny. Description: "The perfect story... I will do anything to create it" - ??? The kingdom of Alteria is under threat from the demon king. Luckily, there was a prophecy that when a certain child(called "The Hero of Fortune") will reach the age of 18, he will eat a golden fruit and gain enough powers to defeat the demon king and his army. One day, Prince Horace receives a letter from his father saying "The Hero of Fortune is now in the eastern market, escort him to the castle where he can eat the golden fruit". When Horace goes to the market he meets 3 different girls, each claiming to be the Hero of Fortune. Now Horace must look into the girls and determine who is the real Hero of Fortune, who are the impostors and what do they want. But his adventures won't end there... Features -Three unique routes with different atmospheres, each based on one of the classic RPG roles: The mage, the warrior and the rogue. -350,000 words (which roughly translates to 25 hours of gameplay based on what I read online). -Multiple route mystery! -About 12 endings + true ending. That doesn't count short bad endings, for instance deciding to have sex with the demon princess in an active volcano(which can happen in the story btw). Characters Nozomi Nozomi is a cheerful and energetic girl. She lived in the forest most of her life with her demonic magician gangster bunny mentor(there is an explanation for that), so she doesn't know a lot about civilized society and gets excited about every little thing(with a lot of funny misunderstandings). Nozomi has an endless supply of sexual jokes and has a talent to use them exactly in the worst time. She isn't the sharpest tool in the shed but she has a great affinity for magic.(magic is mainly used by demons) Riko Riko has a short fuse and quite a lot of ego. She won numerous gladiator championships before with her amazing agility. Her ego is quite fragile, and with her childish and stubborn attitude that's quite the explosive combo. She loves drinking and speaking high language. Riko's former family was a family of gladiators, but they disowned her for being too weak. Now Riko plans to beat her father in the finals and take revenge on him. She also possesses a drawing of Horace for some reason... Haruka Haruka is a shy and insecure girl. She is a genius that solves riddles in the blink of an eye and predicts what others will do based on cold logic. She lives in the slums of the Capital and is very physically weak. Although Haruka is insecure most of the time, when she faces an intellectual challenge she transforms into a strong woman with a lot of confidence. She holds some very strong political views regarding the royal family. Contrary to her innocent looks, she is an avid fan of torture. Horace CG3 Final.jpg (43.26 KiB) Viewed 1278 times Horace is the next king of Alteria and trains everyday to become a better king. He is a little spoiled, but he understands how big his responsibility is. He cares a lot about Alteria and will even risk his life to keep his kingdom safe. He is not a genius, but he finds some creative and crazy ideas to solve hard problems. He is a huge gladiator fan and an otaku. He is also quite handsome.(which does help him in some situations...) Some screenshots

this image gave me some Utena vibes

Absolutely not. What I listed will get more than half working. Some videos require quartz enabled, others want it disabled, others want ffdshow installed others want lavfilters installed and others just won't work at all. There are a million different ways to playback mpeg1 internally on windows and because of this clusterfuck you have to do a special song and dance with wine to get them working. If you want 100% of mpeg1 videos to play back, for god's sake stay on windows.

Well I finished Asuka's route. I'll expand more later but I'll just say I'm really glad I saved the route last. This route was arguably the simplest, but most fun and exciting and feel good route of em' all imo. Helps that Asuka herself encompasses that very well. So that means I'm done with Aokana. Overall I definitely considered it a good time. Flying Circus was a nice way to introduce a new type of fictional sport, keep it interesting without infodumping a lot, and finding ways to have twists around it. I suppose some people call it a moege cuz it's lighthearted but I thought there was enough character development and plot/goal consistency to definitely have an edge over other VNs. I'd say the characters were mostly likable, and it helps characters outside the MC + main girls actually mattered to a decent extent. That said, some jokes and some of the timing of them got a bit overdone which hurt a few characters for me. But I liked each route, they brought something unique to the table and I was more than fine with some being FC focused vs romance focused. I suppose there were some weird route detail inconsistencies but I've just gotten used to it due to different writers and stuff. Visuals were obviously very good, and BGM was solid with a handful of standout songs. Can't complain too much on the presentation aspect. But here's the fun part, route/character rankings... Funnily enough I'd say they're exactly the same. Asuka > Rika > Misaki > Mashiro Asuka- Her route felt like it branched from the common most naturally based on how things were going. But more importantly, it was the FC route that focused on the future of FC and many characters' futures and was just a lot of fun. It was also the route that had the involvement of almost every major character compared to every other route consistently, which I liked. This was the cheesy battle shounen route as expected, but I eat that shit up if done well and I definitely think it was done well. I've seen slight complaints of Asuka's romance/first H-scene being rushed but I thought it was... fine? Like the route writing the romance was very cheesy diabeetus inducing but I thought there was just enough to have me satisfied. Though it helps Asuka clearly was in love with the beginning so that helped smooth things. Speaking of Asuka, she's clearly the most simple character but I'm fine with that since she was built to be the unpredictable but innocent and honest deredere type which I enjoy well. Rika- Outside a few details, I legit don't see what's wrong with her route. Were those details really enough to ruin a solid character oriented route? Both Rika and her route were nice and comfy and relatable and I like that. She had a goal, and while the villain was a bit edgey and probably got off too easy, I thought the way it was built up with how Rika was training was nice. The romance was decent enough. Misaki- It's unfortunate, cuz I really see where the love of this route comes from. It's very unique, and develops the 'dark side' of a few characters in the most interesting way by far. The route has by far the most 1 on 1 time, which works out for 2 mains to develop more. However, I thought the romance was by far the most rushed, even with Misaki's 'chad' confession. Also having lots of 1 on 1 time with Misaki meant.... a lot more of her obnoxious joking which was very hit or miss for me. Mashiro- God I really did not like Mashiro outside her route much... which sucks because part of why I like her route is that they made her so much better, especially when you get halfway through Ch 7. I wish this Mashiro was more of her standard personality in more of common/other routes. As it stands she's probably below a bunch of minor characters on my ranking. Anyway, her route was the most romance focused which made sense her liking Masaya made the least sense so they had to develop it the most so it worked out. Involving the development of more characters besides her was nice and she had some nice feelsy moments. If I had to rank the minor characters since enough of them are relevant Madoka > Minamo > Shindou > Satouin > Saki > Aoi > Shion/Prez > Masaya > Shirase > Arika > Irina > Minori So yeah I generally enjoyed myself. I didn't consider this something that blew me as like king of moege potential or something but I did enjoy it. 8/10

Were there any particular challenges in translating the VN? Wordplay, obscure cultural stuff, etc etc. How strong is the yuri? I imagine it'll be good enough but you never know...

Hey all, thanks for the replies and encouragement! I realize that if one only uses this forum as their information source, the progress on this will probably have seemed rather scarce And I admit, I haven't updated the thread at all to create any additional hype or expectations, but that's kind of been on purpose - I'm the sort of the person to typically walk the walk before talking about it. That way I can't let anyone down, heh. Actually nothing in particular prodded me to post this update either, and I don't have a grand announcement to make right now, I just thought I'd pop in to say hi while coming to the forum to answer a few PMs. So, how's it going? Well I'm not dead and the project certainly isn't either, all in all it has chugged along very well. I've been pretty active on a few big VN Discords and received a ton of help from a ton of absolutely awesome people, but for the past month or two I've unfortunately been very tied up in some other responsibilities. Such is life! However, I'm trying my darndest to get back to the Manakashi project right about now, so don't worry. I will, also, actually create a new teaser video of some sort soon to show off the quality and progress we're working with, as well as how I solved certain technical challenges. I don't like talking line counts - and actually I don't keep or know exact line counts, either - but while there's a whole ton still to translate, I can at least say that I am rather proud of the quality of what has been done so far. So anyway, I guess all I wanna say to you lovely people is that if you want to see this project happen, please don't hesitate to keep letting me know Reply to this thread, talk to me on Discord (yumi#0163), PM me on Fuwanovel, whatever - It does help me gauge interest and thus my own time allocation to the project, and actually means more to me than I'd like to admit. I might've started the project for entirely selfish reasons, but due to the sheer volume of material alone it's not going to end that way. So, in addition to the previous paragraph, I guess I'd like to put out a lazy call for reinforcements. Translation (and the editing that follows) is the job I'm most picky about, but if you happen to be a proficient translator/writer and would want to help with this project, don't hesitate to get in touch. I also periodically need a few trusted people to QA/test the project while it is in progress. If you'd like to do that and think you'd be good at it, feel free to DM me on Discord, preferably. Additionally we will need a real TLC down the line, but that's actually not very critical right now. So yeah, alright, that's the Manakashi project right now! Talk to you again later Maybe I should ask for a developer role on the forums to create one of those dev diaries...

This are just my personal opinion that should be treated as a grain of salt rather than taken as it is. 1. It is evidence that moege is actually quite popular, despite how a part of the vn community thinks that it is just a lump of diabetes. (I mean look at Nekopara) 2. Because moege has simple story. Meaning, it is easier to translate. Hence, for translators who are still lacking in translating experience and would like to get that experience, moege is a very tempting choice, rather they can't go wrong with it. (I mean you can't expect a rookie translator to translate something like Dies Irae right?) 3. Just general assumption, most fan translation are made by translators who are still new because they want to get experience. We should expect larger portion of veteran translator to not be involved in fan translation projects because they want to get paid jobs because they want to make a living.

By the way there's a trick to getting Japanese locale within wine apps, but you have to start it on the command line or create a shortcut of sorts somewhere that calls it. LC_ALL=ja_JP.UTF-8 wine app.exe where app.exe is the game's executable filename. As for getting videos to play within visual novels under wine, you need to use winetricks to install ffdshow, quartz and wmp9. When ffdshow installs and the configuration window comes up, you have to enable mpeg1 playback from it which is disabled by default (many VNs use mpeg1 for video).