Ixrec began his translation of A Profile on August 13, although he did not publicly announce that he was working on it until ending the group’s cooperation with MangaGamer at the beginning of September. He finished the translation on September 24, which was followed by editing and quality check during the following week. The team included an option in the patch that removes the H scenes in the game for those who wish to play without these scenes, however even with this option it remains obvious that such scenes occur. After the initial release, the patch was quickly updated to fix an issue dealing with a line that was suppose to be commented out but was instead viewable to the player.

A Profile was originally released by AKABEiSOFT in 2005, and a remake was later released by AKABEiSOFT2 in 2006. The scenario was written by Looseboy, known for writing the scenario for G-Senjou no Maou and Sharin no Kuni. It is a heavy romantic drama that follows the main character Masayuki, with a story route for each of the three heroines.

Amaterasu started working on MuvLuv and MuvLuv Alternative in early 2010 and released a full translation patch for MuvLuv at the end of July. Meanwhile, MangaGamer brought âge to Anime Expo 2010 to let them have a glimpse at the Western fandom in an attempt to persuade them to pursue expanding their properties overseas. In fall, Amaterasu started working on MuvLuv Alternative. Eventually, the translation group announced in January of this year that they were pursuing an official release of the MuvLuv series. After a leaked MuvLuv Alternative patch in late March, the group decided to “‘go silent’ for a short while” until the most recent announcement. They stated that going silent let them “avoid drama” as well as helped keep the Liar-soft negotiations a secret.

According to the group’s statement, they found out roughly a month after they instituted the silence policy that MangaGamer was unable to secure rights for the MuvLuv series and was offered Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. Negotiations for the latter were said to be in progress during MangaGamer’s Anime Expo 2011 panel.

As part of Amaterasu’s announcement, they have stated their new policy towards working for official translations, stating they are more than happy to work on official translations of games they like for free as long as they can be shown “concrete evidence” that “a deal has actually been made [with the Japanese company].” They also state that they do intend to back out of deals if their finished translation isn’t released in a timely manner.

In light of this news, we asked MangaGamer for their thoughts on the matter as well as how this would affect their future game releases. In response, they sent us an official statement regarding the matter in English as well as one in Japanese. In their statement, they express disappointment in Amaterasu’s actions and concern about the state of current and title negotiations. They also hinted at current market issues in Japan as a possible cause for delay. Both statements are reproduced below:

We at MangaGamer are extremely disappointed by this turn of events given how we have been trying our best to extend a hand to fan translators to help bring great games to western audiences. We are doubly disappointed as what we discussed with Amaterasu in regards to the negotiation progress was said in confidence as a sign of trust.

To get facts straight, though:
1) For the time being there are major hurdles in negotiations for titles in the MuvLuv franchise, and this turn of events will definitely cause the companies involved in the Kima ga Nozomu Eien production committee to take a very serious look at whether they wish to continue negotiations that have been months in the making for a western release.

2) We had also approached Liarsoft in good faith, hoping to demonstrate that there was a viable fan base for their games in the west, and that said fans were willing to work with them instead of against them. With the market situation in Japan, they have been hesitant about making a decision. Since negotiations here are at a much earlier stage than Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, we are unable to assess how Amaterasu’s actions will affect their decision and their opinion of the western market.

Since not all the fan-translators we have worked with have taken such rash action, we continue to hold hope that we can still work with them in future. However, we do wish both fans and fan-translators would show more patience and more commitment to seeing games officially released than has been shown here today. Most VN companies in Japan are devoting 100% of their resources to surviving in a market where domestic sales have plummeted by 30%, and the western market is only showing slow growth.

We are committed to developing the market for Visual Novels in the west, even though it means diverting resources away from operations in Japan. Regardless of what happens, we will continue our efforts to negotiate with companies that fans have a strong interest in. We intend to see all negotiations through to the end, so long as the Japanese companies see there is an opportunity for licensing their games and are willing to continue talks.

私共はファン翻訳者と協力して素晴らしいゲームを英語圏のファン
に届るのを目
標としているのにこのようなことになり、非常に残念です。Amaterasuのグルー
プを信用して内密に交渉内容をお話したのですが我々としては裏切られた形にな
ります。

ですが、事実だけを述べますと
①マブラブの英訳権はすでに非常に困難にあり、この事実を知った先方の捉え方
によっては我々が数ヶ月かけて進めていた「君の望む永遠」の交渉に悪影響が出
るとも限りません。

②ライアーソフトにも英語圏のリリースについて話を持ちかけていました。ファ
ン翻訳者の協力も含めて話しをしていますが、現状日本のマーケットに集中した
いということでまだ承諾を得られていません。また、こちらは「君が望む永遠」
ほどの深い交渉を進めていた訳ではないので海外のユーザーに対してどういった
印象を持つのかは分かりません。

ファン翻訳者すべてがこのような暴挙に出たということではないので、
将来的にはまだ協力して行きたいと考えています。
ですが、ファンにもファン翻訳者にも辛抱強く協力して頂くことが不可欠になり
ます。日本のほとんどのメーカーは縮小傾向にある国内のマーケットにリソース
を注力していますし、海外のマーケットはまだまだ成長過程にあります。

我々はそんなメーカーの貴重なリソースをお借りしつつ、海外のマーケットを開
いていくことを目標としています。この先も海外ファンから要望の高いメーカー
に対して交渉を続けていきますし、日本のメーカーがちゃんとした形でタイトル
をリリース出来ることを望んでいます。

EDIT: Amaterasu leader Ixrec clarifies over Twitter that they were more upset with the dearth of information concerning the agreement as well as receiving “blatantly false” information.

Sekien no Inganock is one of several Liar-soft games that take place in an advanced steam-punk setting. This game in particular revolves around the bizarre city of Inganock, originally an aspiring arcology and was brought to ruin ten years ago by an event known as the “Revival.” The protagonist, Gii, is a wandering doctor with an ability very similar to the magic that evolved in the city of Inganock after the incident. The story starts with an encounter sparked by Gii’s inner voice directing him.

The patch contains a complete translation for the game, and according to the accompanying text document, does not contain (inline) translation notes, since they were considered to be hard technically and did not fit with the translation. The document does contain a list of honorifics as well as a note about how the terminology in the game was handled, and a link to the forums for suggestions on the terminology or other problems with the translation. Lastly, the document describes a drinking game concocted by the editors, although the group disavows any responsibility for anything bad that may happen.

Amaterasu translator Ixrec started a poll to see what would be the next game he translates after Sekien no Inganock. Unlike TakaJun’s non-binding survey, this poll’s intention was to determine the next candidate for translation. Just like Amaterasu’s previous poll, the entire process consisted of three stages: nominations, preliminaries and finals. However, unlike the previous poll, there were a lot more “rallying” and campaigning for the various options this time around.

No Name Losers offered to give away a few prizes should minori’s eden* win the vote, and asked people to submit their vote confirmation IDs as proof. However, they did not realize the polling process had multiple stages and confused the preliminary vote with the final vote, but they continued with the offer since eden* managed to make it into the finals.

Fansubbing group gg decided to also join in the fray, promoting BALDR SKY Dive1 as their main (and later to be claimed as a joke) option and Kara no Shoujo as their joke (and later to be claimed as the real) option for the preliminaries.

After the dust settled on the prelims, the top ten to be used for the finals were: BALDR SKY Dive1, MuvLuv Alternative, Swan Song, 11eyes, Kara no Shoujo, eden*, Rui wa Tomo wo Yobu, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, My girlfriend is the PRESIDENT, and I/O. However, before the final voting started, Kara no Shoujo was replaced with France Shoujo, Swan Song was replaced with Katahane and My girlfriend is the PRESIDENT was replaced with Narcissu 2nd&3rd, all due to already existing (public or not) translation project groups for those games wishing for those options to be removed.

For the final vote, fansubbing group gg decided to do a massive promotion for Rui wa Tomo wo Yobu, stating that they would translate two new upcoming shows should the game win. At one point, their website went down and was replaced with a site that solely directed visitors to vote for their option in the poll. They even convinced various anime related groups to post the message on torrent comments. In retaliation, the poll was coded so that redirects from gg were sent to a YouTube video about a cat playing a keyboard.

One forum-goer decided to do some of his own campaigning on various forums for Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. Favorites BALDR SKY Dive1 and MuvLuv Alternative also received their share of rallying in such places as 4chan. One person even posted an ad on TLWiki, asking people to vote for MuvLuv Alternative, and there were rumors of an offer for an XBOX 360 as a prize.

In between 6PM PST 2009/11/23 and 6PM PST 2009/11/24, a total of 2648 votes were cast, with 83 of them determined to be illegible due to proxies. IRC channel #ammy was alive with activity during the voting and had gotten so hot that it had to be moderated. There were many complaints about gg’s involvement in the voting process, especially as it looked like gg wasn’t in the least interested in the game they were rallying for. The final vote placed Rui wa Tomo wo Yobu with a strong lead in first, followed by MuvLuv Alternative in second with appreciably less votes and BALDR SKY Dive1 a not-so-close third. After seeing the results of the poll, the staff decided that the poll did not “accurately represent the will of the VN community” and thus the game to be translated will be determined by the staff themselves after Ixrec has played them.

CROSS CHANNEL, published in 2003 by FlyingShine, was written by famed eroge writer Romeo Tanaka, who has worked on games including Yume Miru Kusuri and Saihate no Ima and is rumored to have worked on Family Project. The story talks about the main character, Taichi, and the shocking situation he found himself in after the broadcasting club he was in fell apart. TYPE-MOON writer Kinoko Nasu praised this game shortly after release, saying that this game reigns as an unsurmountable wall in terms of works in this genre. However, what gave many people a brief, if not unrepresentative glimpse into CROSS CHANNEL was a certain addictive flash game called NANACA CRASH!!, wherein one of the characters slams into Taichi at high velocity in order to launch him into the air.

It has taken Ixrec, the translator, and the rest of the Amaterasu Translations staff a little over three months to translate this game, and there are interesting statistics on the whole translation process available on their project page. The current patch contains translations for the entirety of the game, and barring any new bug reports, will be the final patch.