encubed

One of MangaGamer’s translators, kouryuu, has decided to have a chat with the denizens of 4chan’s /jp/ board about sales, translation, upcoming games and piracy. Dan88 writes in with a summary:

On 4chan’s /jp/ Otaku Culture forum today, MangaGamer translator kouryuu answered a number of questions about various topics. One topic discussed was sales, which as he has said in the past, had continued to be less than expectations. However, the back to school sale at the beginning of this month “helped a fair amount actually,” and he hinted that in the near future MangaGamer may do another sale with different games. Interestingly, during the sale, despite being 10 euros cheaper at 14.95 euros, the all-ages version of OVERDRIVE’s KIRAKIRA sold significantly less than the 18+ version which was priced at the significantly higher price point of 24.95 euros. The all-ages version of KIRAKIRA sold so few during the sale that kouryuu said that “you could count the number sold on your hands.” Also, it was mentioned that Navel’s SHUFFLE! had still sold nearly twice as much as the next highest title, and that Soul Link had been a poor seller, selling an amount not too different from the sex romp titles, and that the additional effort being put into each game now had not yet led to a significant increase in sales.

For future games, kouryuu said that it is very likely that MangaGamer will bring over OVERDRIVE’s upcoming title, DEAR DROPS, but it is unlikely that there will be a simultaneous release. In response to a question about Navel’s Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai, kouryuu said that, to his knowledge, MangaGamer had not heard much from Navel recently, and this is why they had not yet made any announcements regarding the sequels to SHUFFLE!, despite the fact that they are interested in bring over these titles.

Kouryuu also discussed some of the internal changes that have been done to help improve the translation quality of their games. MangaGamer has been focusing on using better translators than their old translators, and allowing more time for editing. The longer amount of editing was part of the reason why the Higurashi answer arcs had not been coming out at the rate originally estimated, which would have been a game a month. As for right now, kouryuu had been working on editing BaseSon’s Koihime Musou and also working on the edited/retranslated script for Edelweiss. In a post a few days ago, kouryuu gave an example of some of the significant changes in the Edelweiss script (double slashes prefix the original translation):

//He seems like he was annoyed.
Sempai sounded really annoyed as he lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and breathed out the smoke.

or

Rei:”No way! They ate my panties!! They’re perverts!”
//Kazushi:”We didn’t eat them!”
Kazushi: “Hang on, we didn’t eat them! Who the hell would eat panties?!”
//Rei:”What!? That’s exactly what you did!”
Rei: “Hah! That’s exactly what you did! I can’t believe we’re so unfortunate to be in the same class as these things.”
Fusen:”Doesn’t it smell bad around here? I need to disinfect it.”
//Husen sprays odor-eater on us.
Fusen pulled out a bottle of perfume and started spraying the air around us.
//Kazushi:”What is this!?”
Kazushi: “Uwah! This reeks! What is it?!”
//Husen:”This is an expensive perfume.”
Fusen: “Hah! Commoner! How can you say that Dior’s Poison reeks?!”
//Kazushi:”Smells like poison!”
Kazushi: “Oh, so it is poison! Are you some kind of wrestling heel now?!” *Cough cough cough!*

There was also some talk about piracy; he mentions that they wish that there were more legitimate sales of their games as their sales were still less than what MangaGamer would like, and that significant piracy continued despite all the internal changes that have been made to improve the quality of their releases. As to physical copies, kouryuu said, “The idea of a physical copy is being discussed pretty constantly. We know people want them, it’s a matter of trying to figure out if and how we can. There are a few ideas going around back and forth right now.”

We decided to catch up with kouryuu to see if there were anything he wanted to add. He replied with the following comments:

I would like to add, that I don’t know the numbers of my latest two translations: Eiden Fantasia and Curtain Call, so it’s possible a difference has started to show there and I’m just still unaware of it.