Decay

Are they treating entire pages as "lines"? Either way, it doesn't particularly matter since lines can be of any length. There's also more to read time than word count. Word complexity means something, as does what the work actually asks of the reader. By the latter, I mean Umineko actively engages the reader to try to solve the mysteries for themselves and to stop and think about everything that's happening. You may not exactly be spending hour and hours agonizing over the mysteries but you will generally take longer to read it as you try to reason things out in your head. By comparison, something like Clannad asks little of the reader. You can usually easily comprehend what you're seeing and understand what's happening. This makes it a much simpler piece to read. edit: Why did the people responsible for the Chiru tweak patch not include name plates above the text box when someone is talking? That was a pretty nice feature of the first one's tweak patch. That's kind of a disappointing omission.

He posts everything to http://tenka.seiha.org/ but unfortunately it's scattered across multiple categories and not easy to keep track of amidst the anime fansubbing. Here are his last two posts: About Romanesque and Seinarukana, and about mysterious side projects. As far as I can tell, it's standard nukige fare. CG variety is lacking, usually only one per scene with minor variants. But even still people hail it as the best nukige MG has put out yet and it's selling very well. I could see Moonstone saying something like "You can license ImoPara but only if you license one of our moege as well" because MG seems pretty averse to the genre in general, and all of a sudden the game they pick up was Evangile?

Well, if you combine all 8 into one single VN then I imagine it has to be the longest ever. But the first four and last four episodes are meant to be considered separate, right? Even still, those first four episodes took me 9 days of steady reading, 5+ hours of reading per day, sometimes much more. Usually when you see >50 hours on VNDB, it's just barely scraping past 50 or is just poorly assigned. The first set of Umineko episodes blew past that and kept going, cackling all the way. Chiru's PS3 update patch is twice as large as the first's, I wonder if this is a sign. Will I be able to finish this before the month is over... ?

Well, I don't fap to hentai, so... Anyways, Umineko is so. FREAKING. LONG. I just finished episode 4, finally. Those first four episodes may comprise the longest VN I've read to date. It took me less time to read through rewrite or Grisaia, at as far as I can remember. And this is just half of the story. Only four more episodes to go!!! It sounds like I'm complaining but I've thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I honestly can't wait to crack into Chiru. I really should have read this a while ago. It has probably become one of my top favorites.

Steins;Gate would be more popular if you could buy it outside of j-list and JAST's own store, I think. They've talked about bringing it to Steam but there's some holdup with 5pb, apparently. edit: This is a bit off-topic because we don't seem to have a general translation industry thread or anything, but MangaGamer recently mentioned that Moonstone is happy with ImoPara's performance and is looking forward to working with MangaGamer some more. I guess they're easy pickings, but outside of maybe Princess Evangile, do they even have anything worth licensing? Princess Evangile seems to be their best title and even that doesn't seem particularly great or anything. I hope MangaGamer doesn't waste too many resources on more average moege. There's a whole mountain of great titles out there waiting to be licensed, let's leave the average stuff for last.

JAST just put Romanesque up for preorder on their web page several days ago, and the translator says that there is very little left to be done on that project (just some credits images). So there is definitely still activity there. Also, Seinarukana appears to be in the wrapup stages as well. This is just based on Arudoc's blog. It's hard to say what the status of JAST's other products are. Hanachirasu was meant to be the next game released after Steins;Gate but the My Girlfriend is the President fandisc was released and now Romanesque appears to be coming out soon, so... Django and Sumaga are still total mysteries. Both of them should have finished a long time ago but we've heard nothing.

I loved Kamidori too. Sadly, a tragedy occurred and I lost all my eroges. Anyway, my second playthrough was 78 hours and counting, while the first was 73 hours. It's really fun.

Making games is hard.

Koestl is out there trying to keep people hopeful though. Who knows what's going on. Dovac is blaming NDAs but I can't imagine why this would be NDA'd. He's also blaming an NDA for why they can't talk about the Clannad translation but again, I'm not sure how an NDA could interfere with them clearing up their intent when they already said some stuff about it... The whole thing is a confusing mess and if they really are unable to talk about these things I wonder if they should have waited longer to announce them.

I am very sorry if you're the real deal but your understanding of english seems to be poor and the way you talked about VNR combined with how you offered to translate so many games so quickly makes me think you use a machine translator. So let me say it here. If you do not understand Japanese, stop applying to fan translation projects. Stop offering to translate games for people. You are not actually helping anyone. Anyone can use a machine translator, the people who are working on translating these games are very serious and are not using machine translators, but are manually translating the games by hand using their own knowledge of the language. If you cannot do this, you should not be offering to help. If you truly want to help the scene so badly, actually learn Japanese or some other applicable skill. Help is always appreciated when people who are serious about it offer it.

I think the first comyu h-scene is there to help establish Akihito's character and to maybe shine more light onto the falsity of his "feminism". Well, obviously the scene itself isn't necessary, but I don't think the fact that it happened at all is pointless to the story. Akihito is kind of twisted and mentally a mess and that's important in some ways.

I actually like all of the character building around maria and the new character and all that. They did a good job making Maria's story simultaneously really cute and sad.

I like the handful of jazzy tunes they introduced in episode 4. Also some decent piano ones. Episode 4 is going to be much longer than the previous three, isn't it? It feels that way to me.

Very few eroge are dating sims, especially nowadays. An incredibly small percentage is, actually. I guess the main issue is that the term "dating sim" gives off a feeling that the experience will be superficial and little more than a substitute for the real thing so that fat nerds can experience it. At least, that's what a lot of people think when they hear the words "dating sim". So it's sort of derisive when used to describe a romantic story that tries to be more serious. Hatoful Boyfriend actually DOES have some sim aspects though, doesn't it?

Finished Episode 3 in Umineko. And I continue to applaud the music. There is SO MUCH OF IT and it's really good! Really, it is just absurd how much music is here. They never stop introducing new tunes in dramatic or important moments at any point throughout the VN and it really adds a lot to the experience, I feel.

My parents really wouldn't have given a shit if they found out about this when I was under their care and they especially wouldn't care now, but I still like to keep this separate from not only my real life but I also keep this completely separate from the rest of my internet interactions. I use a totally different handle and email and all that on VN communities than all other communities. Dunno what to say, I guess I just feel a certain amount of shame for my hobby. I've mentioned eroge to them in passing but I would be ashamed if my long time internet buddies found out just how much of this stuff I read. I guess I'm weird in that I'm more afraid of them finding out than my family...

Otakuboy, the issue isn't whether or not VNR works, it's whether or not the translations it provides are actually worthwhile. I would not say that VNR consists of the best way to read these games in english like you originally stated. Also, while your enthusiasm is appreciated, if you can't actually fully understand Japanese then you shouldn't be applying for a translator position on translation teams. Using software to translate the language for you is something anyone can do but those translations aren't actually good enough.

The VN is excellent. I've never seen the anime, but everyone always says the adaptation was terrible. I'm playing Umineko now and it's incredibly entertaining and isn't letting up. However, I also can't attest to how much you'll enjoy it if you've spoiled the whole thing watching the anime.

I'm not really turned off by it. At first it was a shock and I thought things would take a bad turn because of the fantasy stuff, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit now.

Honestly you seem WAY more sensitive to that than most people. Makes me wonder if you've suffered some sort of trauma in the past...

I was going to suggest Umineko. Sometimes they go into first person narration, but a very large part of it is third person. Lots of perspective switching happens as well.

OriginalRen said that he was working with someone else to translate the Miu route.

There will almost certainly be an 18+ version of Kajitsu available for sale somewhere outside of Steam and if Meikyuu and Rakuen get licensed, it seems likely that they'll do the same for those.

Somehow, that second Cross Channel translation is even worse. You'd think that an obsessed fanatic who attempts to break down the game by writing an entire book about it would care for the work enough to properly translate it. But it's kind of a mess, unfortunately.

This doesn't really bode well for his offer to be a translator on several projects...