[Studio Frisay] Imasugu Onii-chan ni Imouto datte Iitai! Translation Project [Released]

[Tooko]

Imasugu Onii-chan ni Imouto datte Iitai!

Release

Download the patch (ver. 1.00, dated September 9, 2022)

Description

This is an all-ages game by fairys, the sister brand of Sprite. It takes place before Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate.

Rikuto had a new younger brother Ayumu after his father’s remarriage. However, little did he know that Ayumu was actually his younger sister and it was under her mother’s orders that she pretend to be a boy to him. Every day, his heart beats a little faster around his overly cute ‘brother’ (sister), while her heart aches in having to hide her true identity from her kind brother.

With the arrival of spring, Rikuto and Ayumu begin attending the popular private school Asaoka Academy, with Ayumu dressed up as a girl. As he became friends with his classmates, he noticed that they all had something missing. His friend from middle school, Matsuri, has lost sight of what it meant to be a girl. The cool-mannered Mao dresses as a boy even though she is a girl. The extremely shy class rep Kimika wishes to change herself. With Ayumu by his side, he sets out to help them seek out what they are missing.

VNDB: https://vndb.org/v7766

Where to purchase

The game can be purchased legally from DMM (https://dlsoft.dmm.com/detail/fairys_0001/), but this requires the use of a Japanese proxy to access the website. Not that hard to do, just annoying. That is where I obtained my copy.

Project

The English localization project is taking place under the banner of the newly established Studio Frisay, of which I (Tooko) am the sole member. That means I am doing all of the translating and editing of the script, in addition to the image editing, and at least all of the (major) engine hacks (there are one or two things on that front I may need help with in the future). I actually have extensive experience translating and editing text and images, although this is still my first ever visual novel translation project (I was previously a scanlator for a number of years in another life).

Studio Frisay Discord server

Progress

Programming: The game is built on the BGI/Ethornell engine, and after an extensive combination of research, testing, trial and error, and just plain dumb (beginner's) luck, I've managed to solve all of the major programming issues, including dumping and re-encoding scripts, dumping and editing of images, altering system images/text, repackaging of system files, and changing how all fonts are handled in-game, including sizing and positioning. I still want to figure out how to incorporate Locale Emulator natively and one or two other things that will improve usability, but none of that will prevent the patch from being completed at this point.

Translation: The translation officially commenced on April 4, 2022 and was completed on June 27, 2022. The game has 44,837 lines across 460 separate scenario files split up between the common route and four heroine routes:

Common: 8910 / 8910: 100%
Ayumu: 12045 / 12045: 100%
Matsuri: 8168 / 8168: 100%
Kimika: 7719 / 7719: 100%
Mao: 7995 / 7995: 100%
Total: 44837 / 44837: 100%

Images and videos: Aside from minor tweaks, the 164 images in need of editing for text, including 31 for the UI, are now completed. Editing of images is shared between me and nReus, who is also translating and typesetting lyrics onto the OP/ED videos.

Editing: The editing of the game's text officially commenced on July 6, 2022 and was completed on July 30, 2022.

QC: The quality check phase will commence in two phases: pre-QC and then the actual QC. Pre-QC involves the engine work and recompiling the patch files. The actual QC involves testing the files by playing the patched game. Overall, this phase will take at least a month, so the patch is scheduled for release on September 9.

Progress link on Google Sheets

Notes

Special thanks goes to arcusmaximus over at GitHub for developing both VNTranslationTools and EthornellTools which were absolutely essential in making this project even possible. Also, another shout out goes to Perturbed Pangolin over at Operation Bellflower whose blog posts related to the BGI/Ethornell engine were crucial with the programming in this game.

Edited September 9, 2022 by Tooko
Update

[rimvydasm]

Good luck  to you! This vn has been on my wishlist for awhile, looking forward to updates and finally the release.

[Erogamer]

Interesting......there is a manga based on this focusing on Ayumu. Good luck with the project. It is nice to see more people take up games that have an actual story rather than all the nukige we see getting pumped out.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Erogamer

[littleshogun]

I see that you already has some nice progress on Imaimo there, so good luck on the project there and hopefully you'll see it through until the end.

[Tooko]

Today I've hit the first major milestone by completing the translation of the common route, a full 20% of the game's content. I even managed to complete it a little sooner than I expected, although I'm leaving all the editing for after the entire translation is complete, so it's not done by any means.

Thank you for the support I've already received. Next, I'm going a little out of order and I'll be working on Matsuri's route.

[Tooko]

The second major milestone has been hit with the completion of translating Matsuri's route, bringing the total content translated up to 38%. Translation is going well without too much in the way of setbacks, and I hope to continue at this pace for a while longer.

I'm happy to see others are looking forward to playing this game eventually. If all goes well, I might even be able to finish the patch before the end of the year, but that's still a long way away with tons of work left to do. Speaking of work, next I'll be working on Kimika's route, the shortest of the four heroine routes, and the only one not written by Katagi Kou. Kimika's is written by Tanizaki Ouka, probably best known for Uki's route from Chaos;Child. Kimika's route is also more compact, with just over half of the 70 scenario files being over 100 lines each. In comparison, Mao's route is almost exactly the same length as Kimika's, but Mao has 82 scenario files, and Matsuri's which isn't that much bigger than Mao's has 84. So the overall pacing and feel of Kimika's route is bound to be pretty different compared to the rest of the content.

By the way, I update the totals in the first post weekly every Sunday morning, so come back and check to see how things are going from time to time.

[littleshogun]

I see that you're just past halfway on translating this, and so good luck on translating the remaining halfway of Imaimo there.

[Tooko]

Two more milestones have been met in the past week. The first is that over 50% of the game has been translated as of June 2, and also that Kimika's route is now fully translated, bringing the total translation up to 55%.

Last time, I had mentioned that Kimika's route is the shortest, and although that's technically true by line count, I looked over the individual character counts again and I realized that Kimika actually has about 150,000 characters (kanji/kana), which is almost exactly how many characters the common route has, despite the common route being almost 1,200 lines longer. At first I wasn't sure what to make of this, but now that I've gone through Kimika's arc, I can say that Tanizaki Ouka tends to be more verbose and descriptive than Katagi Kou, and although this can really enhance the story at certain times, other times it can be a little too much since Tanizaki can also be very repetitive. Either way, it was interesting seeing how different their two writing styles are, and how they also mesh well together when the game is taken as a whole.

So, if it wasn't obvious already, I'll be working on Mao's arc next, which by both line count and character count is almost exactly the same length as Matsuri's arc, with just slightly less lines and less characters. I've been leaving Ayumu to do last since her arc is the longest by far, taking up almost 27% of the entire game's content with 131 individual scenario files, so yeah, that'll be interesting. So until the next status update, I'll just keep plugging away at it.

Edited June 6, 2022 by Tooko
Typo

[littleshogun]

Congratulation for reaching two milestones there, and good luck on working on the remaining files there.

[Tooko]

Finally a quicker update than usual. I actually managed to finish translating Mao's arc much faster than I expected, but that mainly lends itself to Katagi Kou's relatively straightforward writing style that I've gotten quite used to over the course of translating the common route and Matsuri's route that he also wrote. But also, I confess, I had a lot of fun reading through Mao's arc. Like, a lot of fun. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed the entire story thus far. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't love the story, obviously. But each arc has its own unique attractions and charms to them, which should be the goal of any visual novel. Can I just say that I think it's a shame that Katagi Kou only ever (primarily) wrote Koichoco and Imaimo? The whole reason why I even picked up the project was because I loved Koichoco on the whole (it wasn't perfect, but no game is) and wanted to read more of what the author wrote, only to find he wrote only one other game.

But enough of my ranting. The total translation stands at 73.1% complete with one route left, the behemoth herself, Ayumu. But knowing that hers is the only one left makes it a little easier mentally, even if it's just over 12,000 lines strong. So I can finally see the light as the end of the translation tunnel, but there will still be a ton of work to do after that, meaning the patch won't actually be out for many more months, but at least I'm nearing the end of that major hurdle. Hopefully I'll have made a good chunk of progress through Ayumu's arc by the Sunday update. So until the next update.

[nReus]

Hey, Tooko. Amazing job with the translation speeds, it's about around the level of Tsurezure Scans speeds in their prime, if not, faster.

Gonna rehash what I said on the discord server since that place is essentially a ghost town. Coincidentally, the two of us began translating Imaimo within four days of each other (me informally announcing my attempts in the koichoco patch server), but after discovering this publicly announced project that blew my translation rate out of the water, I decided to stop.

Now, I still wish to have some sort of involvement. If you haven't already, I can provide typesetted OP (which I have translated) and ED (not translated yet) movies, which can be distributed optionally. I did this for the Koichoco HR patch as well.

Again, thank you for tirelessly translating Imaimo, and as a one-person team at that!

[Tooko]

Finally, after 12 weeks of daily work, the translation is officially complete as of today, June 27. But all of that will have to be edited later on this summer. In the meantime, image editing will commence immediately, starting with the UI images, of which there's 33 individual images that have text that needs to be translated/edited. Then there are a bunch of other background CGs with text that have to be done, too. I'm not sure how long the images will take.

Also, thanks to nReus for offering to translate and typset the OP/EDs. I wasn't originally planning on doing them since I've never done that sort of typsetting before, so I'm really thankful that the patch will have that little bit extra bonus. Also, it's crazy that we had coincidentally started translating the game independently of each other at almost exactly the same time, but I appreciate being allowed to translate the entire game on my own. nReus has also kindly offered to help me edit some of the images, so hopefully that will speed things up a little on that front.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Tooko

[Tooko]

Thanks largely to nReus for his help on some particularly difficult images, image editing has been going a lot faster than I had previously anticipated. Of the 152 images in need of editing, about 90% of them are now finished, with most of the really time-consuming ones out of the way, including the entire user interface. It shouldn't take too long until the remaining images are done so I can get to editing the text.

Speaking of the text, the game's official website also included four short stories, one for each heroine, which I've also translated and will be distributing with the patch as a sort of bonus. The stories are a mix of both scenes from the early part of the game from the heroines' perspective, and also a few other scenes not featured in the game. As such, they really only make sense after reading the common route, but are a nice extra to the overall story.

Editing of the game's text will commence sometime later this month once all the images are done, and it could take a while, but getting the patch out before the end of the year is still currently on the table. So thanks for the support for the project, and I'll get back to editing those images.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Tooko

[littleshogun]

I see that we reach yet another milestone with the game is finally fully translated, and no much I can say other than good luck on finishing the editing work later.

Edited July 4, 2022 by littleshogun

[Tooko]

Finally after a lot of work with the images, nReus and I have gotten through basically all the images that needed editing, with some tweaks not withstanding during the QC phase later on. But for now, that's basically done. Work on translating and typesetting the OP/EDs is still ongoing in the meantime.

As for the next phase, I can now finally get to editing all the text I translated over the last three months. It's a daunting task, but I've been looking forward to polishing up the script, especially for certain lines I'll have to rework. I'm not really sure how long the editing process will take, but I'll probably be done with it before the end of the summer, so sometime in August or September, I'm hoping. That's why I think I can still get the patch out before the end of the year, since it would take around a month after that for the final QC phase when I recompile and test everything. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the progress thus far, and I'm looking forward to seeing it all come together with the completed patch.

[Tooko]

Two weeks on in the editing process and I've now gone through the common route along with Matsuri's and Kimika's routes to get over 50% of the editing done. As a result, I'll probably finish up the editing sometime in early August, and then there will be around a month of the QC phase along with tweaks, adjustments and testing. So I can now finally give a definitive release window: The English patch will be released in September. So if you haven't already, go buy the game on DMM (Japanese proxy required to access and purchase via paypal) or you could also buy the physical copy if you can find it in a second-hand store or distributor. I actually purchased both (mainly because I wanted a physical copy after I had already bought the game from DMM), but the patch will work on either one, so no need to worry about that. My physical copy:

Spoiler

So thank you for all the support, and I'll get back to editing.

[Tooko]

At long last, the editing is now done, including going over the previously mentioned short stories, so the pre-QC phase can finally begin. I'll be doing some preliminary testing and once again going over some of the images to update them from any changes done during the editing phase, in addition to applying engine hacks, translating system text for the UI, and also recompiling the scripts and images back into the engine. All told, this will probably take a week or two, and then the actual QC process will begin when I play through the game with the patch applied. All told, this process will take at least a month, which is why I've set the release date for sometime in September.

So the home stretch is finally here. I literally can't wait to finally get the patch out so more people can enjoy this game. It's been a joy to work on over the past four months.

[juliodion_12345]

On 7/30/2022 at 3:10 PM, Tooko said:

At long last, the editing is now done, including going over the previously mentioned short stories, so the pre-QC phase can finally begin. I'll be doing some preliminary testing and once again going over some of the images to update them from any changes done during the editing phase, in addition to applying engine hacks, translating system text for the UI, and also recompiling the scripts and images back into the engine. All told, this will probably take a week or two, and then the actual QC process will begin when I play through the game with the patch applied. All told, this process will take at least a month, which is why I've set the release date for sometime in September.

So the home stretch is finally here. I literally can't wait to finally get the patch out so more people can enjoy this game. It's been a joy to work on over the past four months.

I created an account just to thank you and @nReus for this. I'm a waiting of this novel since 2014, so I'm really excited.

[Pinkman]

Have you received any offers from a local publisher, let's say Nekonyan for example, about selling your team's translation to them and joining their team?

[Maya]

@Pinkman Even if that was possible, it is possible that the writing for the VN would be rewritten/scraped to their writing pattern. 

Because you would not know the Fan translation's writing pattern unless the work was complete by then. 

It was either for us to judge by that time comes of how quality the translation will be.

[Tooko]

On 8/14/2022 at 12:50 AM, Pinkman said:

Have you received any offers from a local publisher, let's say Nekonyan for example, about selling your team's translation to them and joining their team?

No, and I don't expect there to be any such offer. If Koichoco never got officially localized, the possibility of it happening to Imaimo is even less likely, just based on the niche nature of the game and that it's not even an eroge. For what it's worth, I know I'm putting out a quality translation, but I'll let it speak for itself once it gets released next month. Percentage wise, I'm currently 38% through the QC.

[Tooko]

Hello to everyone who's been following this project over the past several months. I'm now over halfway through the QC at 55%, having completed the common route, along with Matsuri's and Kimika's routes. So far I've fixed over 500 lines (out of around 25,000), which amounts to about 2% of the lines on average that need fixing. About half of those involve some sort of typo, grammatical error, or a word that needs to be added or removed. The other half has to do with a quirk with the engine where punctuation hangs over a line, being placed onto the line below it instead of the whole word its attached to automatically being bumped down like it normally does for long words at the ends of lines, which are easy enough to fix by just adding a line break, but those are definitely the most annoying bits of the QC.

Also, on my way through the QC, I noticed several mistakes/bugs the devs didn't catch when they released the game. Two of which were problematic when recompiling the script, but I found a solution for them. Another 2 had to do with voiced lines, and there is at least one obvious sprite that should have been something else.

Other than that, there are some stylistic decisions I've found a bit odd at times, like parts of certain scenes where I would expect there to be music but instead there's silence, or how that Rikuto isn't voiced throughout the entire game. Oh, and there's no video playback option in the extra menu, sadly. Speaking of videos, it's likely that the subtitled OP/EDs for the game won't be done by the time the patch is released, so they'll be released later as a kind of bonus extra. They'd have to be released separately from the patch anyway, since the videos make up 1.32 GB in the game folder, whereas the patch will be around 450 MB.

And so, this will probably be my last post here before the release, which I can now give a definite date: The English patch will be released on September 9. And I even managed to get it out before the game's 10th anniversary in December, so that's at least something, seeing as how I originally thought it was going to take me until next year to release it. So until then.

Edit: The subtitled videos were completed on time and will be released with the completed patch.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Tooko

[Satsuki]

So...ugh...no offence to you, but I would like to ask, given that this is a solo project, are you confident with the quality of the final translation? I mean, 45k lines in less than 3 months is REALLY fast, and then 2 months for both editing and QCing. Most other teams would probably spend at least a year for a VN of this size.

[HataVNI]

I would be volunteering for another QC run if I find the time once you are through. I'm an experienced QC that has worked for JAST USA and some fan TL projects before. Hop on the fuwanovel or VN.Info discord and we can talk. I pretty much find everything typo and cleanup wise. This game looks super interesting. 

[Tooko]

7 hours ago, Satsuki said:

So...ugh...no offence to you, but I would like to ask, given that this is a solo project, are you confident with the quality of the final translation? I mean, 45k lines in less than 3 months is REALLY fast, and then 2 months for both editing and QCing. Most other teams would probably spend at least a year for a VN of this size.

To put it bluntly, I'm staking my reputation on this translation. I wouldn't have started such a huge project if I wasn't confident I could release a quality product, and I wouldn't release it unless I was sure of its quality. I didn't just start translating yesterday. As I mentioned in the first post above, I was a fan scanlator for manga for a little over 10 years. I am very meticulous about the translation, editing and QC process. All I can say is if you're wondering about its quality, play the game yourself once the patch is released on Friday.