Tooko

The English patch for Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete is out! Download via either Google drive or Mediafire. There really isn't much else to say beyond what I said in my previous post last week, but I appreciate all the support for not only this project, but also the previous projects, which thankfully have all seen completion, even if this one took longer than I had originally anticipated when I picked it up a year and a half ago. But as a long-time fan of visual novels, it's always nice to give something back to the community. So please enjoy the game released on the luckiest day of the year, Friday the 13th!

There is no other way to purchase it digitally. Physical copies would have to be purchased from second-hand sellers like Suruga-ya, and those would also probably require an additional shipping company like Tenso to act as a middleman to ship it outside Japan. It's unfortunate for such an old game like this, but DMM really is the most convenient way to legitimately acquire a copy.

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates since April, but it's all good because the patch is just about ready for release. At long last, the full patch will be released on Friday, June 13 at 22:00 UTC. Considering all the delays the project has had over the last year and a half, it's somehow fitting that it would end up getting released on Friday the 13th...not that I'm superstitious or anything, but it's still very funny. An absolutely insane amount of work by nReus went into this, including almost all of the image edits, subtitling and rendering of the videos, and even editing an animation sequence the game uses for the right-click menu to make it look as professional as possible, not to mention drawing up the Studio Frisay website, where you can see all of our projects to date. So I know you'll appreciate all the extra work that went into the project beyond the translation. As previously mentioned, the patch will work for either the original disc version released in 2010 or the version purchased from DMM; only the patch files will be different, as specified in the patch upon release. Any troubleshooting will be offered through the patch's readme, as well as on the website, and on the Discord. We've tested the patch on Windows 10 and 11, so any fixes are provided based on those systems. Sorry for the late reply to this, but I was planning on writing up something like this anyway, so this works out just as fine. First, why I picked it. I was trying to find a game that used the Kirikiri engine at the time since I wanted to try working with that engine for the first time, since it's pretty popular and knowing its ins and outs would be useful for any later projects that use that engine. But as to why Waremete specifically, I had watched the anime adaptation years ago, and I had wanted to read the game for a long time since, but just never got around to it. So it was a title that was kind of in the back of my mind, and I had wanted to revisit it to see if working on a patch for the game would be worth it, or even possible. Early work on the game's engine was a massive headache in terms of trial and error, since although the game uses Kirikiri, the developers had some really unconventional choices when they were using the engine, so I had to work through that, in addition to my own inexperience with the engine at the time. But once that was done and I started translating the beginning of the script, it wasn't soon after that I fully committed to the translation and to see it through to its end. My main impression of the game is that it was a good first (and ultimately only) title for Trumple to produce back in 2010. Remember that this was 15 years ago, and even back then, there were plenty of other bigger studios producing longer and more fleshed out visual novels that they had to compete with. So is this a AAA game? No, but it never really needed to be. I find the story interesting and engaging, the characters are endearing and I quickly became attached to their personalities and idiosyncrasies, and to a large degree I feel like the main appeal of the game are the characters themselves. I did enjoy the story. I wouldn't have worked on the game if I hadn't. But the characters really make this what it is in the end, in my opinion. Nagisa was my favorite character, but Airi is the true star of the story. No character in the game is more complex than her, and I feel the story shows that Saitou Kenji really took his time to develop her character. And it should come as no surprise that he also wrote Nagisa's route. Some of my favorite scenes were in Nagisa's and Airi's routes. The main thing I disliked about the game was that it felt kind of underdeveloped in places. All the routes seem kind of short, and the game itself is "only" 35,000 lines long, so pretty short as far as visual novels go. I do wish there had been more romantic scenes between Sou and each heroine, and in general just more interaction between the characters. The game's structure is also a little unusual since it doesn't have a separate common route, so maybe it could have been better had they done something like that instead. If nothing else, it would have provided more of those character interactions I already mentioned, if not also further developing the overall mystery of the story before getting into the heroine routes, but it's a relatively minor grievance I have with the game. There also aren't all that many supporting characters, and the few that exist are almost entirely underdeveloped except for one, and even that is not very much. Other than that, no real glaring disappointment. Stylistically, the art in the game is very nice, and the animated sprites are a really nice touch that adds to the game's overall esthetic, and makes interacting with the characters all the more enjoyable. The music is also very well done and I never found any of the tracks annoying to listen to over and over again. In the end, the game was a joy to work on and experience, and I hope others enjoy it as much as I did, if not more, once the patch is released next week.

The main thing is that the script is 100% done. Unfortunately, some real world things have taken some time away from the project, but progress on the user interface is still ongoing. There were some additional unforeseen issues with it that made it more complex and time consuming than we would have originally hoped. A lot of the coding and rendering in this game was kind of unusual, in addition to some issues with running the game on modern systems (specifically the most recent version of Windows 11). Hopefully, we can get this all done and release the full patch in May.

Yes, just move the patched scenario archives out of the game folder, and reinsert the original archives. Then just load whatever save you have. The scenario archives are the 12 files from data01000.arc to data01011.arc.

Just a quick update since I haven't done one in a month. The QC of the script is currently at 63% with Kaori's and Airi's routes already complete, and Nagisa's route nearly done, too. The QC should be done by the very end of March, so we're currently aiming to release the full patch sometime in early April. There's still a lot of testing that needs to be done, but it shouldn't be too long now.

Finally at long-last, the script is now fully edited! Thank you to everyone who has been looking forward to seeing this patch get completed, which looks to be very close on the horizon now. For the time being, editing of the game's UI, in-game images and video editing led by nReus is still ongoing, but will hopefully be concluded soon (as in, before the end of February). Then the QC process will start where I play through the whole game and test the patch for bugs, along with any fixes to the script I may have missed during the editing process (which usually amounts to 2-3% of the script getting altered, if the last two projects are any indication). And as coincidence would have it, the game is currently 50% off on DMM until March 10, so please consider buying the game if you can and haven't already. The patch will still work with whatever version you have available though, only the encryption for the patch will be different (which will be as easy as copy/pasting the correct files in the patch, which will be specified on release). So I'll be back on the next update.

I'm now done with editing the first Yui arc at 89% complete with the whole script, and less than 4,000 lines left to check in the final arc, which shouldn't take that long hopefully. Finishing up the editing of the images will then be the next priority so a beta patch can be compiled and tested.

I won't lie. Burn out is a very really thing, and I believe is the main reason why most VN fan translation patches never see the light of day. But that's something that should almost entirely encompass the translation itself, since (from having already worked on two previous projects) that's the most tedious process, especially if the script is very long. But since I edit my own translations, I am constantly editing as I translate, which makes that process take even longer, in addition to what I'm doing now which is editing the entire script for consistency, typo/grammar fixes, checking translation accuracy, etc. I've been doing stuff like this for a long, long time (even before Studio Frisay was a thing), so I would say I'm used to it, but that doesn't make it any less of a thing I have to put a lot of dedication into. I do it as a hobby, but I still want to put out the best product possible. Sometimes, time off from a project is necessary to finally complete it. And I can say this, once the translation was completed last year, there was no way I wasn't going to see this patch to completion eventually. On a lighter note, everything surrounding Trumple seems to be cursed in general, seeing as how the studio only produced this one game almost 15 years ago. But I'm glad that the game still lives on currently, and will pretty soon live on in English, too.

And now with the editing of Nagisa's arc complete, the script is about 66% of the way done with about 12K lines left to go. Not much else to say other than I appreciate the comments and encouragement to finish this project. It's already been a year since this project began and I'm looking forward to sharing it with others.

Yui 2 is the true ending and directly continues from Yui 1 storywise. Since it also focuses on Yui, I just called it Yui 2 for simplicity. No poll, only because (if there is going to be a next project) it would have to be something I would already be interested in working on, considering how much time and effort goes into producing these patches. You're still free to make suggestions if you want, since there could be some game out there I'm not aware of that I could deem worthwhile to do a patch for at some point. For now, I'm just trying to focus on getting this patch out.

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates since October. I had to pause the project for a bit, but it is still very much alive and I have been making steady progress on it recently, even finishing the editing for Airi's arc and I'm about a third of the way through Nagisa's arc currently, with 51% of the script edited. I will be aiming to complete the editing process before the end of next month, and then the QC process will begin. So at this point in time, I believe a release of the full patch by sometime in March is very doable and is a goal I plan on achieving, especially considering the extended break over the last few months. I'll be aiming to make some more frequent updates as I complete the editing for each arc in the coming weeks.

It took almost 2 weeks longer than I had originally hoped, but now the translation is finally complete after nearly 7 months of working on it. Granted, I had taken a more leisurely approach to the translation this time compared to when I did Imaimo and H2O, but I feel I still managed to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. Suffice it to say, I'm relieved the biggest and most tedious portion of the patch process is now done so I can now move on to editing the game's images, of which almost all that require editing are for the UI, so not that bad really in comparison to the previous two projects. It always feels wonderful when the UI gets done because it feels like an official localization, which is generally what I'm striving for each time I've worked on these projects to make playing the game as seamless and enjoyable as possible. Anyway, in the meantime while I'm working on the images, I'd also like to point out that the game is currently 50% off on DMM for the next two days, and if possible, please consider buying the game. So, I'll be back for another update either this or next month.

It took a bit longer than I had anticipated, but now Nagisa's arc is finally complete, bringing the total script to just about 66% complete. Her arc in particular has 3 lengthy H scenes all in a row right at the very end, so that was partially the reason that it took me a bit longer. But anyway, there are just about 12,000 lines left, and it all revolves around Yui split into two parts, Yui 1 and Yui 2. I'm still hoping to get the translation done by no later than July, so it shouldn't be that long before I get into editing the images and then the script. So I'll probably have another update next month sometime as we approach the grand finale.

About a month later, and now another arc is complete, this time with Airi. That brings the current total to about 45% complete for the entire script. Although there's still about 20,000 lines to go, it always feels better once I get over the 50% mark, which I should hit sometime next week in Nagisa's arc. Funnily enough, Nagisa's arc is almost exactly the same size as Airi's, even down to the amount of text itself, with only 482 characters separating them. Both arcs were written by the same author, Saitou Kenji, so that may have had something to do with it. So I'll get back to working on it and have another update next month.

Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete (In Search of the Lost Future) Release Download the patch (Google drive, Mediafire) (ver. 1.00, dated June 13, 2025) Description The school festival at Uchihama Academy is almost here, and with it, tensions at the school are at an all-time high. Not only because of scheduling disputes, but also due to rumors of mysterious incidents that have occurred lately on and off campus. Plus, this will be the last festival held at the old school building before moving to one newly being constructed. Akiyama Sou is a member of the notorious astronomy club, which has been tasked by the student council to both resolve these disputes, and also to calm any fears that have cropped up from those rumors. One evening after an incident involving the judo club, Sou is recuperating in the infirmary when the building shakes and he hears a loud sound from one of the upper floors. Concerned, he investigates the fifth floor only to discover an unconscious naked girl who upon awakening seems to know him, later introducing herself as Furukawa Yui. The next day, she seeks out the astronomy club, expressing her desire to join. VNDB link: https://vndb.org/v4880 Where to purchase The game can be purchased legally from DMM (https://dlsoft.dmm.co.jp/detail/tin_0002/), but a Japanese proxy/VPN may be necessary to purchase it. In addition, there's an extra layer of DRM which requires the installation of the DMM Game Player software which then allows you to download and install the game. A Japanese VPN is necessary to use DMM Game Player, both to download the game once purchased, and also to launch the game, although once launched the VPN can be turned off. This is the copy I have obtained, but the patch will work with both the DMM version and the original disc version released in 2010, although the only difference will be in their encryption and the addition of one extra file to get the disc version to work on modern systems. Project The English localization project is being conducted by Studio Frisay as its third project following Imasugu Onii-chan ni Imouto datte Iitai! in 2022 and H2O √ after and another Complete Story Edition in 2023. As before, I (Tooko) will be doing all of the translating and editing of the script, and working on the game engine. Also as before, nReus has agreed to help with the rendering of the game's videos and also most of the image editing (you can largely thank him for the design of the logo above). Studio Frisay website Studio Frisay discord server Progress Programming: The game uses the Kirikiri engine, one of the most popular and versatile engines around. I've already taken care of the preliminary engine hacks necessary to construct the patch after a lot of trial and error, and also received some help to streamline the patch creation process once the project is complete. Translation: The translation took place between January 19 and August 10, 2024, and I had already translated about 25% of the script by the time I announced the project in March. The game has 35,416 lines across 180 scenario files split up between the five heroine routes: Kaori: 8519 / 8519: 100% Airi: 7368 / 7368: 100% Nagisa: 7356 / 7356: 100% Yui 1: 8334 / 8334: 100% Yui 2: 3839 / 3839: 100% Total: 35416 / 35416: 100% Relatively uncommon for this type of game, it doesn't have a separate common route and instead incorporates elements similar to a common route into the beginning of each route. There is also a set order the routes must be completed, which is the same order they're listed above. A full walkthrough will be provided with the patch to view all CGs and endings. Images and videos: Of the 150 or so images that require editing in the game, almost all of them (134) are part of the UI, so it probably shouldn't take that long to finish them up. As for the videos, there are 4: 2 for the OP and 2 for the ED that will require typesetting for the lyrics and a few lines of other text. The images and videos are being edited by nReus. Editing: Editing the script began on August 13, 2024 and concluded on February 12, 2025. Image and video editing continued until their completion in early June 2025. QC: The quality check phase occurred over about a month involving a normal playthrough to check for any problems with the patch files and their rendering. The patch is scheduled for release on Friday, June 13, 22:00 UTC. Progress link on Google Sheets

At long last, I can finally release the English patch for H2O √ after and another Complete Story Edition. Download via either Google drive or Mediafire. A lot of work went into this project over the past year, but despite the game's flaws (nothing's perfect, after all), it was still well worth the effort of translating this game into English. As a long-time fan of visual novels, I first heard about H2O way back in 2007 shortly before it had its anime adaptation the following year. However, like most anime based on visual novels, it was severely lacking and even changed some of the story. Fast forward about 15 years, and no one had ever translated the game, despite a couple of efforts (that I'm aware of) fizzling out years ago. So I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do, and also that you too fall under Yui-sama's spell (but don't worry, Yui won't hold it against you if she isn't your fav). There was also a lot of work and time put into subtitling, rendering and upscaling the 9 videos in the game, all done by nReus. This was very significant to the project, and also addressed an issue that came up with the videos due to the game's age and how it interacts with modern graphics cards. You can read about the issue (and how to fix it, if it affects you) here, and this is also mentioned in the readme file provided with the patch. A walkthrough is also provided with the patch, since the choice progressions that lead into the individual routes is a little unclear, and there are at least 2 routes where to unlock them requires multiple other routes to be completed, so if you get stuck on how to get to a specific route, you can read that. And if you encounter a target module error, edit config.json included in the patch on line 4 from BGI.log to BGI.exe.

Finally after 5 months, the editing phase is complete! It's been a long time coming, since I first thought about creating a patch for this game around a year ago. Now that the QC phase is about to begin, it's a relief to know it's 90% complete, and for all intents and purposes, is a complete (beta) patch for the first time. Based on my experience with doing the Imaimo patch previously, that game had about 2.5-3% of the text changed from before and after the QC phase, but about half of that had to do with formatting, so it was closer to 1.5% that was altered (fixing typos, rewriting lines, etc.). That might not seem like a lot, but it makes a big difference when the game is actually played, and obviously results in a better patch. So the QC phase will be starting as soon as I recompile the game files, which is much easier this time around since there's only about 1/3 as many scenario files, and the other files are even quicker to deal with. So I'll get to work on that and go from there. PS: The game is once again 50% off on DMM until August 17.

Okay, so it's been 3 months since I've been editing the script, and it's currently done up through Hinata's arc, bringing the total to 56.7% complete. With around 30K lines left to edit, I'm going to try to get done with it sometime around either late June or early July, so hopefully less than 2 months from now. Then I can finally start the QC phase, which should last about 2 months. What that means is that I'm currently shooting for a release of the patch sometime in September, which I'm very much looking forward to, and I hope you are, too. So with that, back to editing.

Just a quick update, since it's been almost 2 months since the last one (and I didn't want to do it yesterday for obvious reasons). The editing of the script has been going at a slow, but steady pace over the past 50 days, with now both the common route and Hayami's route fully edited, bringing the total up to 38%. I'm still not sure how much longer the editing phase will continue, but I'm hoping to get it done by June if I can so I can start the final, QC phase (which itself will probably take at least a couple of months). I still fully expect the patch to be released sometime later this year, but I won't know a more definite release window until I'm at least partially through the QC phase. The whole process has been daunting from the start, but it's been a lot less demanding once the translation was completed. There's not much else to say, other than that work on the videos is still ongoing, but otherwise all the image editing is done, at least preliminarily. I'll probably post another update sometime next month. PS: The game is still 50% off on DMM until May 8. so please purchase the game if you can so as to support the original creators.

I'm back for another update, this time to announce that all the in-game images (and at least a portion of the UI) have now been completed. The vast majority of the images were pretty simple in terms of typesetting and editing, although there were a certain amount (around 25-30 or so) that required extensive editing, but I'm very pleased with the end result. Even the more challenging ones were fun to go through, if not a bit tedious at times, but there was nothing too difficult, at least. On the video side of things, all the lyrics for the 7 songs have now been translated (a shout out goes to Shinyyyjoke#1112 from the Moekko Company discord for providing the lyrics for 2 of the songs that I couldn't find anywhere online), and that was the last thing I had left to do before moving on to the text editing phase. Speaking of which, that's what I'll be doing now for a while. There was a certain amount of self-editing I was conducting on my translation as I went through the script just as a general side-effect of the translation process itself, but there still requires a fair amount of editing the script now that the entire thing is translated. I'm not really sure how long this process is going to take, but I'm not going to rush it by any means. Preliminarily, it might take me anywhere from 2 to 3 months, but I really don't know. As I've commented on previously, this game is wordier than the previous project, Imaimo, not only in terms of its sheer length, but the lines themselves and the overall writing style lends itself to be more verbose than what I encountered in general when I had worked on Imaimo last year. As such, I can already anticipate the editing phase for this game to take longer, but how much longer exactly I probably won't know until I'm around 50% through the script. So thank you for your support, and your patience in this long process. I want to put out the best quality patch I can, and 90% of that has to do with the script, so that's why the editing and QC phases are so important to ensuring the quality of the overall product and experience when playing the game. So until the next update. PS: The game is once again 50% off on DMM until March 7. Now would be a great time to buy the game in anticipation of the patch, if you are able to do so.

For now, I'm focused on getting this patch done, so I'm not really thinking about the "next" project beyond musing what I would do if/when there is a next project. I'll have to make that decision once I get closer to the completion of this patch.

Now the update many of you have been eagerly awaiting: the translation is now 100% complete with the completion of Otoha's arc. The translation took just under 6 months to complete from August 10 to January 28, a period of 171 days. To put this in perspective, that's around 400 lines per day on average. I say around, because a certain amount of the 73,547 lines were repeated across various arcs, and in two instances, there were scenario files that had identical content (one shared between Hayami's and Hinata's arcs, and another shared between Hinata's and Otoha's arcs). In addition to this, large sections of other scenario files were duplicates of lines already translated, and although I don't have an exact number, it's at least 3,000 lines, but it's probably closer to 4,000 or perhaps upwards of 5,000 lines. But let's just say we can estimate that about 70,000 lines of the game were not duplicated elsewhere. That would bring the average number of lines translated per day to about 410. On average, I usually could translate about 80-100 lines per hour, meaning that it would come out to be around 4-5 hours per day as an average. Obviously, some days I did more when I had more time, and some days I did less when I had less time, but I'm giving the average to give you an idea of just how many hours it took to translate this game over the past 6 months. I translated at least some of the content nearly every single day during that time, mainly because I was eager to get the patch complete and out as soon as humanly possible. That said, it will still take a long time before the patch is released, although if all goes well, I still assume it will be out sometime later this year, but I won't know an exact time frame until at least the editing phase begins, which probably won't be for several weeks. In the meantime, work on the game's images will now be the main focus. This process is being shared between me and nReus, same as with Imaimo previously. There are around 110 UI images (not counting some duplicate CG thumbnails) and roughly 335 other game images, almost all of which deal with the SD images that pop up throughout the story. Many of those 335 images are themselves duplicates, or at least are otherwise minor variations on each other, meaning the exact number of unique images is much less than that. Plus, most of the images require relatively little image editing, so I don't really anticipate this process taking that long, although could still stretch into several weeks or more, at least for my part. As it is, I won't be starting on the editing phase of the text until the images are finished, and this process will give me some time to take a break from the script for a little while. But with the translation now complete, the project can now finally move forward with the rest of the work. I'm looking forward to getting the patch complete, and I hope you're also looking forward to finally playing H2O after all these years, this being the 17th year since its initial release back in 2006 (although the Complete Story Edition didn't actually come out until 2009, so it's been 14 years since that release). So thanks for the support the project has received thus far and I'll see you at the next update.

I'm back once again for another update, this time the penultimate translation update with the completion of both Hamaji's arc (about 10 days ago) and now Maki's arc, bringing the total lines translated to 65,246 at 88.7% complete. That also makes it through 22 of the 26 H scenes, and all of the content that was from the sequel, Root after and another. Hamaji's arc was especially interesting mainly because of how different it felt compared to the rest of the arcs. That's because at the time, it was a sort of preview of what would later become Sakura no Uta, which was originally in development at the same time as H2O, but because the development of that game took so long (about a decade), it basically shows the direction that Sakura no Uta was going at that time around 2006-07, and it features some of the characters from that game for that reason. It was also the densest part of the script. To put this in perspective, Hamaji's arc is 4,973 lines and 98,503 characters long. Maki's arc, despite being 464 lines longer, is only 87,214 characters, a difference of about 11,300 characters. In addition to that , Hamaji's arc has no H scenes, so there's none of those typical H scene lines where it's just spamming "Aaaaaaah" over and over. So if Hamaji's arc was the most literary, then Maki's arc is the most focused on sex and is basically the nukige arc of the game. So kind of a weird contrast between the two. Now there's just one final arc to translate, Otoha, at only 8,301 lines. It's been challenging, but also a lot of fun reading through and translating H2O over the past 5 months, and you can imagine that I'm looking forward to finally being done with the translation. But after that comes image editing (of which there are plenty), video editing (of which there are 9), in addition to editing and QCing the text over the period of many months. But the light can be seen at the end of the translation tunnel at least, so that's something to be pleased with for now. So I'll get back to work and see you at the next update.

I did see at least one of those reviews, and I can understand why someone would feel that way based on Yui's character in both the common route and Hayami's arc. But one of the themes of H2O is really about looking past our prejudices and finding ways to coexist, and maybe even make some friends along the way. Friendship is such a strong backdrop to the entire story, so it was actually in Hayami's route that I really came to initially like and then love Yui's character compared to the others. She definitely deserves the route she got in Root after and another.