Taisho Alice Localization Fiasco

[Daydreamer97]

Has anyone heard of what happened with Taisho Alice's localization? It was a mess- English dub by this one guy, the translation's all over the place and the Hiragana/Katakana Alice/Arisu thing. Otome fans were really disrespected by this company. It was shady from the start but I didn't expect it to be this much of a train wreck. 

Please check out this thread detailing how bad it was. I believe several translators also commented on the issue.

 

 

[Miina]

What makes me wonder is...does Primula care or know about this? How did these....or....this....guy manage to get their agreement for a localization in the first place...

[Daydreamer97]

1 minute ago, Miina said:

What makes me wonder is...does Primula care or know about this? How did these....or....this....guy manage to get their agreement for a localization in the first place...

That's what everyone's wondering honestly. Taisho Alice really seems like a good game and it's a shame this guy got the license instead of Mangagamer/Sekai Project/Aksys. I want to see how Primula would react to this.

[exaccuss]

I cant believe i am saying this, but thank you bank account for not being able to afford this game. I probably would have bought it if i had the funds lol. It looked really promising as well. This reminds me of the sao hollow fragment trash translation for the vita lol.

EDIT: That voice acting though.. are they trying to create another arc rise fantasia?

 

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by exaccuss
need i say more?

[Akimoto Masato]

Well shit

[Infernoplex]

Thanks @Daydreamer97 for this thread ... I never heard of the VN before but I had a good laugh, this was truly comedy gold stuff xDDD

[DharmaFreedom]

[Darklord Rooke]

https://twitter.com/i/moments/862501282099191808

I'll just leave this here

[Daydreamer97]

2 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

https://twitter.com/i/moments/862501282099191808

I'll just leave this here

A lot of Otome fans suspected they were shady from the start. They handled everything really poorly, especially the way they engaged with the fans. But it's really saddening they managed to dupe Primula and JLOP. A lot of people suspect Primula would be wary of localization (and rightly so) and there might not be any chance of this project getting saved by another company. I hope E2Gaming gets exposed for what they did though.

[littleshogun]

My comment here would be that hiragana Alice was look silly. The reason I say this was because actually if the translator want they could just localize the hiragana Alice to Alicia. Simple as that, and beside it's just placeholder name anyway. As for the dub, nice effort I guess (I prefer that they just keep Japanese voice if they really get the license). Other than that, no comment and I wouldn't get this at all.

[Fred the Barber]

TBH, the Taisho x Alice thing (and maybe even all the stuff on that Twitter thread from the last few years) doesn't look to me like a con so much as, like the person in that twitter thread suggested near the end, absolutely gross incompetence. I just can't help wondering how these guys got the job in the first place. I can understand that JP companies will have trouble finding competent people when they have to establish new contacts and whatnot, but it's not like there aren't well-known localizers of JP games. Even in the super specific niche of otome VN localizations, surely they would know about and try to work with Aksys, and failing that, at least some other known entity like MG or Sekai Project? I just can't imagine these clowns from E2Gaming coming off as trustworthy business partners. Guess there's no use speculating about it...

 

Edit: As for the dub, I thought this would be obvious, but just in case some people don't realize: the voice acting for Japanese games is usually licensed out for a specific purpose (i.e., a release in Japan) by the voice acting agency, not by the license holders for the rest of the game. The agency will retain rights for, say, an international release. Moreover, JP voice acting licensing is expensive. In the case of most VNs, it would probably literally be cheaper, or at least break even, and would possibly even be less of a hassle in some cases, to record a completely new, fairly competent dub by voice actors from the the standard anime voice acting talent pool Sentai/Funi/Aniplex employs, rather than to license the JP voice acting for an international release. The reason we get subs only, rather than dubs only, for all VNs isn't a matter of cost efficiency: it's because the companies doing the work aren't required to provide dubs for their fans (because we're all weebs and prefer the original VA anyway), and because organizationally speaking, they're better at doing licensing negotiations with JP companies than they are at organizing an English dub recording. But keep in mind there are a lot of these JP games that have historically not been released with dual audio (look at the somewhat-niche Atelier series, which for a long time was dub-only), which a lot of us weebs complain about: that's a cost-savings measure, make no mistake, and it can be a pretty huge savings, depending on the relative size of your audience.

Now, imagine you're not going to do a competent job with the dub: no professional studio, no professional actors, just you, grossly incompetent E2Gaming, on your home computer with a mic you bought off Amazon and Pro Tools. You're talking about saving many tens of thousands of dollars on voice acting at that point. They make money, Primula saves money, you cut one more licensing negotiation out of the picture. Everybody wins... except the people who have to listen to it.

The thing that's hard to understand is how E2Gaming sold Primula on this being a good idea, since Primula's people are the very ones who shell out so much money for good voice acting. Obviously they understand how important it is to their own customers. Maybe E2Gaming somehow spun it as "Well, Americans will obviously want English voice acting." Dunno. We probably never will find out.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Fred the Barber

[Darklord Rooke]

52 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

My comment here would be that hiragana Alice was look silly. The reason I say this was because actually if the translator want they could just localize the hiragana Alice to Alicia. 

Haven't played the game but it looks as though both versions of the name are supposed to be pronounced the same yet spelt differently(?) If this is indeed the case, either Alyse or Alyce would be better, as they are both pronounced the same as Alice.

[Darklord Rooke]

"I'll be Alice spelt with an I and you can be Alyce spelt with a Y"

[Decay]

Especially since they're (poorly) dubbing it, they could have done whatever the hell they wanted. Anything but that abomination.

The most popular suggestion was "Alice"/"Arisu," especially since it seems like there actually was a difference in name pronunciation? Maybe? If I read the comments right.

[Darklord Rooke]

And E2 gaming have disabled their facebook page. It probably had something to do with all the negative comments piling up on it  

[Infernoplex]

10 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

And E2 gaming have disabled their facebook page. It probably had something to do with all the negative comments piling up on it  

Not a big deal, there are many screen caps floating around from E2's FB page xD Useless effort by E2 to hide something now.

[littleshogun]

If E2 was really serious then Alicia should be suffice (And we knew of how 'serious' E2 was), because there's a thing called localization as long as it didn't change the story much imo (I didn't had any idea of how much the story change though with katakana and hiragana thing) especially when they dubbed it instead of let Japanese voice intact. Nevertheless, maybe Rooke (I mean Darklord Rooke) solution maybe more viable to this VN though (I mean with 'i' and 'y'). Not that we could suggest it to E2 anyway, now that they disable their Facebook page.