A picture of Yuuko giving the V sign currently adorns minori’s overseas facing website along with a caption of “Hello!! minori’s overseas expansion has started.” Below it was an image that featured the logos of the three parties involved with cross marks between them. Clicking on this logo brought the visitor to the MangaGamer post about the collaboration.

According to the MangaGamer post, the first two games tackled will be the two parts of ef – a fairy tale of the two, which spawned several other derivative properties including the two animated adaptations ef – a tale of memories and ef – a tale of melodies. The game itself is essentially a modern fairy tale told in five chapters. Things that set this apart from many other games include using full frame images instead of character sprites and having different protagonists for each arc. The game featured writer mikage and illustrator Naru Nanao, who happened to have also worked on CIRCUS’s Da Capo and Suika, both of which currently have been released by MangaGamer. The videos in the game were created under the direction of Makoto Shinkai, also well known for his animated features Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and 5 Centimeters Per Second. Any other games from minori are currently a possibility, but nothing is solid yet. The mention of eden* in the press release (replicated below) has now been confirmed to be an error by MangaGamer staff.

The website for No Name Losers has a more comprehensive description of the upcoming release, including details about how this differs from their previously released “fansubbed version.” Essentially, the game will be split up again into two parts, esoteric references used by NNL in the translation will be removed, honorifics use will not have exceptions for Chihiro and Mizuki, wording will be changed to impart that all characters are over 18 and the extra bad ending added by the group will be removed. For those curious, the full script of that ending is now available in a link from the website. Lastly, because engineering for the engine is no longer a big hurdle, some of the things missing in their original release such as the feature to replay scenes/movies and the configuration screen will now be added back in.

The official press release was as follows:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: John Pickett, Head Translator/Marketing Manager, john@mangagamer.com

---

TOKYO, Japan, 27 September 2010 – Visual novel licensor and distributor MangaGamer.com is proud to announce a new partnership with studio and developer Minori, Inc. and No Name Losers (NNL) to officially distribute Minori’s titles in English.

This deal will see Minori’s titles on sale in their original, unedited form for the first time via MangaGamer.com with translation provided by No Name Losers. All releases will be use Minori’s original game engine. The first titles to be released under this partnership will be ef-The First Tale, and ef-The Latter Tale, which provided the basis for the the two anime ef – A Tale of Memories (2007) and ef – A Tale of Melodies (2008), as well as Eden*, one of minori’s other releases.

In addition to its elaborate story, the ef series features astounding visuals with a vast array beautiful CGs created by Naru Nanao, the illustrator for the original Da Capo, as well as animation by Makoto Shinkai.

ABOUT minori:
Formed as the software division of CoMixWave in 2001 and independent since April 2007, Minori has created a series of stunning and engaging set of visual novels including the highly popular Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two series. Their catch phrase, “We keep minority spirit”, reflects the studio’s independent mindset and creative desires.

ABOUT No Name Losers:
Originally created as a fansubbing outlet, No Name Losers are now working together with minori alongside MangaGamer for the purpose of officially translating and localizing minori’s games into English.

ABOUT MANGAGAMER.COM
MangaGamer.com is the world’s first legal download site for English translated visual novels, sometimes also known as bishojo games. Since its launch in July 2008, MangaGamer.com has offered services where fans can download and enjoy popular games, often with anime spin-offs, such as CIRCUS’s Da Capo, 07th Expansion’s Higurashi: When They Cry, and NAVEL’s Shuffle!. Our parent companies are some of the biggest names in visual novels, including CIRCUS, NAVEL, NEXTON (including the BASESON and LIQUID sub-labels), and OVERDRIVE, providing a varied catalog of both All-Ages and Adults Only titles.

No Name Losers originally started out in the old heyday of digital fansubbing, having released many fansubs of opening movies to visual novel games, such as Baldr Force and Family Project, as well as Wind -a breath of heart-, which is apparently the first one they did. They then teamed up with game translation group insani to fully translate minori’s game Wind -a breath of heart-, with insani handling the initial translation and coding and No Name Losers handling the editing and the rest. Meanwhile, they also fansubbed several episodes of the animated adaptations. The translator for insani, gp32, finished the initial translation in a few months and handed off the materials to No Name Losers for the remainder of the process. Before release, there was some debate as to whether minori should be contacted about this project. However, in the end, it looks like minori was not contacted, according to the README file that came with the final release, stating that “to [their] knowledge, minori has no idea that [they've] done this.”

When it became time to release the final patch, things became a bit hot. This release took place about a year and a half after insani noticed that despite providing easy-to-use instructions for obtaining one of their previous releases, planetarian, the vast majority of people using their translation patch did not pay for the game, resulting in their policy to no longer take on any more such projects. It was decided amongst the project staff that the patch would be initially released to people who bought the game by asking each person who wanted the game to reveal information about the packaging of the retail version, meanwhile a fully public release would come later. The attempts by many to game the system brought out hostilities on both sides, and soon a system was instituted where a person would be required to present physical evidence of having broken the extra disc with update patches that came with the CD release of the game. Thus spawned the meme, “break the support disc.” This had also resulted in a scuffle between NNL and the predecessor of this site, VisualNews, because of the latter party’s reluctance to fully redact a story on this issue after the corresponding entry was removed from NNL’s website. In a recent interview, No Name Losers stated that this was the reason the meme spread like wildfire. However, despite the drama, a full version of the Wind translation patch was eventually released to the public several months later.

Approximately a year later, No Name Losers announced a project to translate minori’s latest game, ef – the first tale. This announcement was made controversial by the fact that this release would be made a standalone package that did not require the original game to install. At the time, according to at least one of the people involved in the project, engineering for the game engine in the full version became an issue; the use of the trial version game engine in one of the public releases was most likely a result of this. The staff also issued statements that a standalone release wouldn’t really be all that different from an anime fansub and that minori wouldn’t benefit financially from a patch since their games had short runs. This spawned heated discussions in a lot of places and some animosity from No Name Losers’s GipFace toward this site due to the mods not wanting to close a thread on the attached forums that had gotten quite heated. The ef project itself had its ups and downs, including periods of time when it was stalled due to lack of translators. Eventually, however, several releases were made, including a complete one most recently.

The next game from minori, the experimental work eden* was not without drama either. After failed negotiations, there ended up being two groups of people working on the game — No Name Losers and a collaboration involving Sekai Project. The latter had hosted their files on TLWiki, which became the setting for a heated edit war and debate involving minori. That project was dropped, but minori had also contacted NNL, asking them to stop what they were doing. NNL had refused to cooperate at the time.

However, eventually the two parties started talking after a second email was sent to NNL and posted on minori’s website. OVERDRIVE’s bamboo came into contact with minori and ended up discussing the issue with minori’s nbkz Sakai over a meal in late July. NNL leader GipFace had also sent MangaGamer head translator Kouryuu a polite private message a few days later after the initial contact by minori to start a conversation.

Things were winding up that it might’ve been possible for the three parties to announce a collaboration during MangaGamer’s Otakon panel. However, due to last minute communication issues, the plan fell through, although Kouryuu hinted at the collaboration at the end of the panel with an “anyways — just — you know, as you guys all go home tonight, just remember: ‘keeping the minority spirit’”. Tweets from MangaGamer also hinted at this minori catchphrase as well. No Name Losers eventually updated their website to reflect that they were now a subsidiary of minori and posted a message to the effect that they have discontinued their fan translations and that they would not want their works to be distributed any further.

Eventually, the three parties got their acts together and realized it was time to make the announcement. Strangely enough, before the announcement sequence started, a copy of ef – the first tale. had appeared on J-List’s shop. For the announcement, minori posted a sequence of images of Yuuko carrying a bottle and flying from Japan to Toronto first and then to the Netherlands, where MangaGamer.com resides. When Yuuko flew through Toronto, No Name Losers posted a hand-drawn image of Miyako having received a bottle in the mail. MangaGamer translator Kouryuu posted as sequence of five messages (one for each chapter of ef) on the official blog while he tweeted in character. The first message about a sore wrist did bring up a few jokes amongst the readers.

Finally, the official announcement was made by the three parties after some furious F5-key pressing by many, bringing the story to a close(?) with a certainly eccentric finish.

UPDATE: More details and links added to writeup and certain statements were removed at the request of our source. The article has also been reordered and NNL has issued a comment, stating that:

[W]e appreciate the summary of events that [have been] written up — and that we’d prefer that everyone: the community, Gemot Encubed, and No Name Losers, move on from the bitter events of the past, as the minori/Mangagamer/No Name Losers partnership demonstrates so beautifully.

To start the stage, let’s take a look at what 0verflow and Sekai Project had been up to before this year’s Anime Expo. Sekai Project had started in April of 2007, announcing the start of a translation project for 0verflow’s animated branching video game School Days. They are currently finished up through chapter three of the six chapter game. Meanwhile, as an April Fool’s joke for 2008, 0verflow released the trial version of the sequel, Summer Days, translated into Chinese, Korean and English using their new multilingual game engine. They had used this to see what kind of demand there was for the different languages, and English was on top by a wide margin. Then, in 2009, one of the staff traveled to Anime Expo and helped out with the HOBIBOX area in the MangaGamer booth. Furthermore, there were a few mechanized sex toys on display in conjunction with Summer Days. At this point, no contact had been made between the game company and the translation group.

Now Anime Expo 2010 came around, and the situation started moving. When the 0verflow representatives arrived on the first day of Anime Expo, one of them, Mathers Numakichi, wrote an email to Sekai Project. In it, he said that they had received several inquiries from their users about the translation project’s website. Apparently these users thought the project had received an official license from 0verflow. Since at that point, one of the posts on the top page was talking about the cancelled eden* project, Numakichi noted in the email that he was aware of the TLwiki issue beforehand. Apparently, there was a public lecture held at Tokyo University last year that talked about, amongst other topics, sites hosting translation projects undertaken without the original creators’ permission. This was a large lecture, with even member(s) of the Diet present. Thus, Numakichi said that the hardball response from minori was not unexpected and that many game makers had become overly sensitive to the issue.

However, according to Numakichi, 0verflow didn’t believe that hardball responses are the only way. They wanted to find some way for the game company and the fan translation group to coexist, if possible. Apparently, the game engine for their latest game, Cross Days, and their upcoming game, School Days HQ, ran on a multilingual core, and if it were possible for the company and the translation project to coexist, then insertion of translated scripts would be very simple. The prototype build of the engine was apparently used in the Summer Days translated trial version.

According to the email, 0verflow was apprehensive of their games being illegally distributed for free, but they also wanted to see if they would be able to answer to the demands of fans who want to see their games in English. In closing, Numakichi said that they would be at Anime Expo for the duration of the convention and invited the project members to visit their booth. They were not part of MangaGamer, but had borrowed a section of the booth from them. Numakichi then apologized for his English skills and said that another staff member who was better at English would be present at the booth.

In response to this email, the project leader of Sekai Project, Kanna, wrote that they would like to do everything they can to help get an English version of School Days and other games from the company out the door. However, the project group was done as a hobby and thus might not be able to adhere to a rigorous schedule. Lastly, due to residing in Canada, Kanna could not come to Anime Expo but offered to send representative(s) in the area instead.

At Anime Expo, a representative from Sekai Project met with the 0verflow staff, and it looked like 0verflow was willing to allow the fan translation project to move forward as an unofficial translation. 0verflow also wanted to talk to the project members about the legal framework needed in order to release their games overseas as well as using their scripts for an official release, should that be possible. Due to discussions being rather short at the convention, the project leader decided to put the translation project on hiatus until more discussions can be made. In a follow-up email, the project leader thanked 0verflow and made it clear that they would not distribute the actual contents of the game and that they had already implemented a disc checking system to make sure people playing the patches had the game disc. The reasoning for this was not just because they wanted to avoid copyright infringement, but mainly because they wanted to encourage fans to buy the actual game. Therefore, they did not want to become an obstacle to an actual official release from 0verflow and wanted to hear more about 0verflow’s plans.

0verflow, in their reply email, stated that they would actually officially recognize Sekai Project under two conditions — that they made it clear on their website that the project was done through voluntary interest and that 0verflow is not involved in the endeavor, and that they make it known that 0verflow is looking for information on what is considered inappropriate or obscene, how it may be considered that way and in what regions or countries do these rules apply. Once these two conditions have been fulfilled, 0verflow would officially recognize the group and link to the group’s website from their website. With regards to an official release, they currently had no concrete plans but are having discussions with interested commercial parties.

In response, Sekai Project agreed to implement the changes and then suggested that putting up a survey would help 0verflow’s goals as well as some additional survey questions with regards to pricing and copy protection. The project group also informed 0verflow that their stance has garnered a lot of positive responses. 0verflow then thanked the group for their efforts and agreed that a survey would be a wonderful idea.

And thus, after roughly one months time, we’d reached the point where Sekai Project had released a translation patch for chapters 2 and 3 as well as a survey. 0verflow stated that they wanted to use the fruits of their discussion with Sekai Project to suggest more optimistic dialogue to game production companies who are currently wary of the overseas market. Apparently 0verflow is also looking into the ability to custom tailor content for specific regions. As an example, Numakichi brought up a scene where Makoto was having a bath with his little sister, which was supposed to bring up the notion that even though Makoto was such an unfaithful person, he still cherished his family. This new system was intended to allow the game to skip that scene in regions where having brother and sister bathe together was forbidden or if displaying a small child in the nude was prohibited, should such regions exist. They also wanted to make it so that these content changes could be changed quickly should the law get changed. Therefore, they would be really interested in what types of contents are banned where. In closing, they hoped for more development with this cooperation and noted that they will post a link to Sekai Project’s website, which is currently up now, under the “officially recognized fan activities” section.

Let us first look at the sales of the first game on English DLsite compared to the sales of the rest of the series:

As you can see, in the one month after the patch release, download sales of the first game has increased by roughly 40%, while the other games have had pretty much no sales. Keep in mind that the first game has been around on English DLsite since September of 2006.

However, to keep things in perspective, the cumulative sales on English DLsite are actually pretty abysmal compared to sales on the Japanese side of DLsite:

Of course DLsite, is not the only place where this game can be purchased; as of this writing, fuguriya offers games for download through ten different stores, and packaged versions exist as well. By the way, games 3 and 5 (featuring the couple in which one person is tsundere) seem to be doing better than games 2 and 4…

Lastly, let’s take a look at the total amount sales for the series on DLsite in the time period between February 16, 2010 and March 14, 2010:

The large amount of sales for the 8th game on Japanese DLsite is probably due to the fact that the 8th game was only recently released. Outside of the first game, the only other game in the series that actually made a sale on English DLsite was the latest game with a measly 1 sale.

For those of you who haven’t been paying close attention to J-List’s catalog, they now stock untranslated Japanese PC games ranging from shooters to full-blown visual novels. Their pricing is roughly equivalent to what Eroge Shop offers. For eroge, J-List currently offers preorders for Illusion’s Real Kanojo and KEROQ’s Subarashiki Hibi as well as two games which have translation patches: CROSS CHANNEL and Fate/stay night. Since owner Peter Payne is also in the business of eroge localization, we decided to ask him about his ideas behind stocking untranslated PC games. Mr. Payne commented that they want to stock games with “high visibility, and also games that are written by people whose games [they've] published before, e.g. Romeo Tanaka.” He also indicated that part of his strategy was to “carry games that have translations so [that they] can help encourage people to not [pirate].” Lastly, Mr. Payne notes that “sales are slow since they’re unfortunately so expensive, but [they'll] keep at it.” During the conversation, we provided him with a list of other high profile translated eroge that J-List may possibly want to carry.

So is Mr. Payne’s strategy sound? A look at the stats over at his competitor in the realm of eroge imports, ErogeShop.com, shows that at least some of the games with translation patches are selling. Their current top 10 bestsellers at the time of writing are:

1. Fate/stay night
2. Kanon (Standard Edition)
3. Dengeki Hime -March Issue-
4. Fate/hollow ataraxia
5. Sengoku Rance
6. School Days (Renewal Package)
7. Taimanin Asagi DVD-BOX
8. One -Kagayaku Kisetsu e-
9. Witchcraft
10. Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shoujo

Items 3,7 and 9 (crossed out) are not actually eroge, so out of the seven eroge in the top ten, five have completed translation patches (bolded), and the other two have had some work done on a translation patch. Now, obviously this does not imply that having a translation patch means that the game will sell; one could say that popular/high-profile games are the ones that get further along on the road of fan translation. However, it does show at least that some people are buying games that happen to have completed translation patches, regardless of whether the reason is collectability, playability, popularity or morality.

And for those curious about non-adult PC games, HimeyaShop.com’s top ten as of writing were:

1. Umineko no Nakukoro ni Vol.4 (Doujin)
   
2. Healing Theater Umine
   
3. Clannad Full Voice
   
4. The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Doujin)
   
5. Higurashi no Nakukoro ni (Doujin)
   
6. Mountain of Faith (Doujin)
   
7. Megami Magazine -March Issue-
   
8. Room Palette Skyrium
   
9. Dengeki G’s Magazine -March Issue-
   
10. Subterranean Animism (Doujin)
    

Umineko does represent an interesting point on the curve. According to one of our sources, while 07th Expansion and HOBIBOX wanted to see an official release of Higurashi in English and thus contacted MangaGamer, they were actually fine with Witch Hunt’s translation of Umineko and decided not to pursue an official localization because of that. In fact, if they had heard about the Higurashi fan translation beforehand, they might have not gone through with approaching MangaGamer, either.