Darklord Rooke

Meru's got a review up for Sakura Shrine Girls. The TL;DR is:

Trails to Zero WAS being quite badly fan-translated a few years ago. Badly fan-translated by a guy who is sympathetic to Nightwolve - Nightwolve being someone who has been chucking a colossal tantrum at XSeed for the past number of years over something he was never entitled to in the first place. There was quite a big blow up on the GBA forums. Arunaru also makes a cameo xD https://gbatemp.net/threads/legend-of-heroes-translation.366149/page-30

Oh please ... warfare isn't determined much by ground troops anymore. Who needs cannon fodder

Those words didn't originate with him. Also, Adolf Hitler was a man for the working people. Germany was being crippled under the debt they were being forced to pay back to Europe, and Hitler was the one who banded together the people to lead them out of it. Unemployment plummeted under him, for example. He didn't want to bully people, but ultimately there was not much he could do to get his country out of that debt without HOORAY ANOTHER WAR. (I should point out that people pointed to Hitler's actions as to why Greece SHOULDN'T be made to pay back the debt they've recently incurred.) He was also a Marxist, a very very KEEN Marxist, who may have paid a little too much attention to the rants Marx and Engels used to go on about Jewish people. His was a "Nationalist" socialism after all. EDIT: Engels pretty much verged on saying the Jewish people should be left behind, so to speak. They weren't nice to the Jews. I don't. I think you grossly overestimate the military capabilities of most of Europe. Here's a hint, the UK is probably the mightiest country in Europe militarily speaking. 30 years ago they SHOULD have lost a war to Argentina. I believe I said that most of the time America wouldn't need to because most of the time countries aren't lead by extremists. Russia was never an extremist nation, and in fact I quite like Russia. Quite a lot, actually. I should point out that the human race HAS dealt with every crisis, true. And they used to do it by being a lot more invasion-happy, so ...

Sure. It's because America is so many more time more powerful than anybody else, that what they say goes. In other words, if they brought their full military might to bear there's not a country in the world that can stand against them especially when fighting away from their home nation (which involves different military realities.) This means PEOPLE HAVE TO LISTEN. It's dictatorial yes, but I prefer that than 8 countries of similar power getting involved and it blowing up into a regional war. Don't worry, when China becomes a superpower they'll abuse their power more than America have. Observe how they're treating the South East Asian nations. So you'll have an awesome future to look forward to there, yes?

Syria is only a mess because it was allowed to become so. It started out as a popular uprising against Assad, yes? He's an evil dictator, let's remove him. Then others butted in (just because America doesn't enter doesn't mean no one else will. Do you think people are not opportunistic?) Turkey wants Assad out because Turkey was a Sunni Government in Syria, similar to how they backed the Brotherhood in Egypt. So now you have them supporting the Rebels. Saudi Arabia wants similarly, so now you have them backing the rebels. America want Assad out probably because they like democracy and that's what the people wanted, but also because it'd tick off Russia, and partly because for other reasons, but that doesn't matter, if they had entered HERE they are so powerful nobody can stand against them. Bullying? Maybe. Decisive and clean outcome? Definitely. But they didn't. So Russia, who needs Assad because of certain Naval realities in that part of the world (it's not like he likes Assad personally) needs to sure up Assad's Government, and Iran enters with them. Great, now you have countries on either side. And oh no, now Turkey has shot down a Russian plane. For what? Entering their air space? If Turkey is so concerned about that then why had they illegally entered Greece's airspace hundreds of times over the past year? Oh, because Greece is soft and just complains orally. Fair enough. But now you have tensions rising, and Russia will retaliate by bombing all those Turkmen in the north of Syria (which was why Turkey shot down a Russian plane in the first place.) And America who doesn't want to enter Syria because there's no appetite at home for such an action is backing the Kurds, who want to carve out their own state. But the Kurds are viewed by Turkey as terrorists. So now you have Turkey at America's throat for backing the Kurds, and America at this stage is probably wondering why they even let Turkey be a part of Nato. But America ignores Turkey, which infuriates them, and the Kurds have almost united all of Northern Syria which infuriates them more. So what do Turkey do? LAND INVASION, to get the terrorist Kurds, who want to carve out their own region remember, to BACK OFF. And America want to stay Turkey's friend, so they're finger waving at the Kurds and saying 'maybe you should retreat a little' but otherwise not wanting to get involved. And oh look, here comes China! Understand? This is why America goes in early.

I especially like how China has now entered and everybody's now crying WW3. Well, that wouldn't have happened if America had resolved this early, but if they had everybody would have been crying about how America shouldn't stick their noses into others affairs. When the actions of a country threatens the stability of others, it becomes 'their affair'.

Let's put it this way: If Syria had nuclear weapons, and the 'popular uprising' included a whole heap of tribal lords some of which have known terrorist affiliations ... oh, and ISIS (which want to create a nation, let's not forget.) In fact let's make this simpler, if ISIS succeeds in its goal of carving out a nation by taking over parts of Iraq and Syria, and these parts had nuclear weapons, then yes America needs to intervene. If rebels took over Syria, and these rebels had terrorist affiliations, and Syria had nukes, then America needs to intervene. If North Korea has nukes, they need to intervene. But normally America would not. Because normally countries aren't run by extremists of any sort. People tend to forget that everybody has to share a world, and that countries need to look after their own citizens first and foremost. America has traditionally done this by ensuring World War 3 doesn't eventuate. There are statistics which verify that the world is at it's most peaceful when America was at it's most powerful. In fact, the only international situation America DIDN'T intervene in has created more war time refugees than any action since World War 2. Let me be very clear here - the early intervention of America SAVES LIVES, because most of the time it prevents a lot of countries of similar powers squabbling. They SAVE LIVES by stopping uprisings, for example, from reaching their natural conclusion, which is a populace vs army scenario. If America had chosen a side and entered the Syrian conflict militarily, they would have saved A LOT OF LIVES. People are very soft hearted these days, they don't want America going invading. Sure, how did that work out for Syria and how is that affecting the rest of Europe? What's that? Millions of refugees and Europe is getting pissed off? Congratulations.

One of the few untranslated VNs I constantly keep an eye on to see if it's been picked up by a translator.

Also two examples doesn't establish a trend *rolls eyes*.

"Life is Strange", every Publishing company (bar one) the developers submitted the game to wanted to change the characters' genders to male. They found a single Publisher who would allow them to keep the genders as women and they were grateful. Was this censorship? No, it was a decision by the publishers that male protagonists would net more sales. To say when the genders are flipped that it suddenly becomes censorship is naive. Do you think the financial argument disappears? That political reasons are the only reasons to do things?

There was an example from the novel sphere where someone wrote a romance story between a gay couple and sent it for publication. It was rejected because the Publishing Company thought there wasn't a market for it. The writer did nothing more than change the gender of one of his characters, submitted it, and it was published. That COULD be viewed as censorship, it was made for financial reasons however and therefore shouldn't. Companies are a business first and foremost, after all. So yes there are examples where characters' genders are changed for political reasons, but IMO not enough to make the sort of generalisation you want to make.

Men are used to being catered to, then when you have that privilege slowly being removed there's always resistance. It was an ugly chapter, for sure.

Once again you've misinterpreted something. I said if you wanted YOUR EXAMPLE as being shown to have been censored for political reasons, then you'll need a quota. Saying I said something I didn't and arguing that is called a 'Strawman'. Something you haven't established.

What you don't realise was I was there for the WHOLE debate, and if you have a problem with Paul Feig's comedy you say "I have a problem with Paul Feig's comedy." Saying "Oh my God, they're fucking women" in no way translates to "I have a problem with Paul Feig's comedy."

To make a BLANKET STATEMENT like you did, you need a minimum quota to be filled. You are wrong, yet again. EDIT: Firstly you stated there was a trend in the gaming industry. Then you pulled out an example which was to represent that trend. For an example to represent a trend it would need to be representative of the likely reasons behind that trend, which means now you need a ‘minimum quota’.

Heh, do you know the likely reason why they wanted a female Ghostbuster reboot? Because a straight reboot would do nothing to entice a new audience to watch it, whereas a FEMALE reboot would likely net in the female audience while having a strong chance of maintaining the original (likely mostly male) audience. That was likely their thinking, a decision made for the chance of profit. Then came the fucking whinging. Honestly if you like the male lead Ghostbusters so much, watch the fucking male lead Ghostbusters. I have the DVDs, they’re still awesome! I liked it better in the good old days, when people voted with their wallets, not have a gigantic tantrum on social media.

Not at all. You haven't established that every time a developer swaps a male character for a female one, it's done for political reasons. And if you want to take that example as being done solely for political reasons, that's what you'll have to establish. Not that 'it's sometimes done for political reasons', but 'it's always done for political reasons'. If the game targets the female audience for than a male audience, than it would (for financial reasons) make more sense to have a female protagonist. Important semantics. People like to give topics more worth than they have by labelling it with a word that has powerful emotions attached to it. 'Censorship' is much more powerful than 'forced change', and so if someone wants to hype up an issue they'll attach such a word. Taking back that word and reserving it for situations for which it solely applies will keep the gaming community (like Deep Blue) from devaluing it and also stop them from hyping up issues which aren't as important. The overhyping of petty issues is irritating, and misusing words is partly how it's done.

A wild assumption which hasn’t been established.

You're wrong again.

It's not.

No. And if you think that's censorship you don't know the meaning of the word.

Once again, I'll bring up the Nier example where the main character's appearance was changed when launched to the Western audience. If this change were forced on the devs by the publisher, this would be an example of a change occurring later on that wasn't censorship. Why? Because the change wasn't made due to a perception that the original would harmful or objectionable, it was changed due to a perception of what would be more appealing in the Western world. Censorship is not forced change, it is forced change due to certain reasons. Your post was a blanket statement which was incorrect, which is why I brought it up.

No, often that's just a business reality. For example, if a publisher forces a dev to change something because of budget reasons, or because they don't approve of the devs vision of the game. Or if a publishing house editor forces a writer to change something because what they wrote was logically inconsistent. Neither of these examples is censorship. This goes back to what I said about actually understanding what censorship is. It's not about change, it's not about forced change, it's being forced to change for specific reasons.

Man, I LOVE the job the translators did with Ace Attorney. Sure, they might have taken the localisation too far with the 'set in America' thing, and a few jokes were censored, but the degree of talent it took to properly relay the quirky feeling of the Japanese version to the English audience is pretty special. Because of this, I'll forgive them some of the problems they introduced. I played the fan-translation of Investigations and it's not as good as the official localisations of the rest of the series.