Fred the Barber

The Karakara games are short and kinetic, and they have wonderful translations. Volume 1 is a pretty simple, pleasant read. Volume 2 ends on a cliffhanger, though... hopefully volume 3 will be out before too long. The World End Economica series. Each volume is medium-short length and kinetic, as well as self-contained. Mercifully, this one is now entirely released. The translation is... sometimes not as great, for this series, but pretty much anybody who isn't picky like me should be fine with it. It's from the Spice and Wolf guy, so expect a whole lot of economics talk, though. Kind of a niche game, I suppose, but I enjoyed the ride. The Grisaia: Phantom Trigger series (no, you absolutely do not need to have read any of the original Grisaia trilogy first); each volume is short and kinetic, and also self-contained. Also have very solid translations. It's nearly done now, probably? At least as far as I've read (through 5.5), you never feel like you're ending a volume on a cliffhanger, so you don't need to feel obligated to read them in a row or anything.

+1 for textractor - despite a whole lot of fussing, I wasn't able to get any of the other text-hooking programs working on my up-to-date Win10 machine, but Textractor worked right out of the box.

That's exactly what tiag said, Mr. Nobody.

Confession: I used to have a good ratio because of that... now everybody knows the truth.

For my first serious foray into reading untranslated stuff, I've been reading Koi-Kakeru Shin-Ai Kanojo for the past week or so. I've frankly been surprised at what an easy time I'm having getting through it; apparently years of osmosis through editing and the occasional grammar reading helped more than I realized. I like most of the heroines, though maybe not the main one, tbh, and I'm looking forward to seeing whatever ending the true route has that's made so many people angry over the years. The foreshadowing is interesting, and the first big hint at deeper problems lying under the surface immediately after they (finally) show the OP video set a pretty promising hook. The humor is great, and the writing is enjoyable even when the main character goes off on monologues talking about the definition of literature. The longest one of those so far brought back fond memories of a similar scene from Majo Koi—and it's almost shocking how many shared themes, topics, and just little quirks there are between the two. I guess Niijima Yuu really writes about Niijima Yuu-ish things. After this, I suppose I'll have to read HatsuSaku or Summer Pockets... though at this point I find it hard to imagine Niijima Yuu writing about any season but spring, so I imagine I'll find both of them a little odd. The music is nothing short of phenomenal. Mizutsuki Ryou has my undying devotion. My favorite track is probably Ayane's song, but honestly, all the music is so good that I get excited every time the BGM changes and I get to hear yet another beautiful song that I've somehow already grown nostalgic for.

One thing that's become abundantly clear to me from all of this is that people have different preferences. I've never yet met a localization professional who made a controversial decision simply out of childishness, or to try to stick it to part of the fan base. We just each have our own preferences and our own beliefs about how we think the work should be done. I already gave my explanation here, as to what we did in this case and why: The one thing I want to add to that is, a lot of people seem to have taken screenshots like the linked one out of context and misunderstood the nature of the translation decisions we made. It's my hope that people will read the explanation I provided earlier and maybe get a little clearer picture of the reasoning involved. My personal belief is that this decision went a long way to help capture the playfulness of the character. I'm obviously aware that not everybody feels that way, especially over on good ole 4chan... Personally, my ideal translation probably looks something like the work being done on the Dragalia Lost mobage, which is widely praised for the quality of the English localization and which takes often extreme liberties in the name of writing a compelling English script. I'm amazed at every aspect of the localization: the creativity, the consistency, and the sheer fun of it. It's the kind of work that I both enjoy to read and aspire to do myself, even if maybe it isn't the kind of work that a subset of the English-reading VN fan community prefers. So if you see something you don't like in something I work on, before you dismiss it as a "bad translation", I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt by first asking, "Is this an outright mistake, or simply a point where I disagree with their localization decision?" And if it's the latter, maybe consider that you can probably get over that and move on, the same way I get over it and move on when I'm reading the 95% of VN translations which are intent on making decisions I don't agree with, like keeping honorifics.

I've been avoiding commenting in this thread because I don't know Japanese and therefore can't judge Japanese voice actors. I'd recommend the same to you and to anybody else commenting without actual knowledge of the language. It's okay to enjoy hearing Japanese voice actors, even if that does smack somewhat of fetishism, but I just don't think people like you and I are really in a position to judge. I more or less agree with Kastel's take on this one:

Just chiming in on this thread briefly to vouch that the post by @Sena-chan above is from a representative of Sekai Project, since it's a new account and you all might understandably be suspicious of it. They contacted me just to clarify that for them, since they didn't have an established presence here.

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the Deus Machina Demonbane protagonist fits your requirements, and there is a romance angle, IMO... alongside a bunch of other stuff which is the reason for which one would normally play Demonbane. If you haven't played Karakara (it looks like you haven't, from your VNDB?), now is probably the right time. It's been a while here too, but I think the protag would meet your requirements? And you should play it anyway; it's criminally underrated. This is a super off-the-wall recommendation, but I Walk Among Zombies actually meets the originally specified criteria, albeit in a weird way (and you have to be patient on the romance angle, but it's definitely there). While it definitely does not meet the rephrased "characters with no sex drive" way of saying it, the MC is as far from the embarrassed and/or perverted protagonist mold you're talking about as one can get.

Mikandi and Libra... is a special case. They probably lost money because that's what happens when you hire absolute hacks with no clue what they're doing and no capacity to do the work and then pay them several times the industry rate. That aside, I think most VN Kickstarters even by the companies who knew better have at best broken even, and probably more have lost money than have broken even. TBH, the worst part about VN Kickstarters is how everybody ends up feeling like they lost... At least this one is through the rough part. Let's just hope the project turns out well.

Disclaimer: though yes I've done some contract work with Sol Press, I don't have any real insight into the financials. That said... Presumably they won't say that the sequels WILL be translated because they literally don't know if they'll be able to afford it. The stretch goals may be "astronomically high", but they're what it will cost them to license and localize the game. They don't have $80k sitting around to throw after a game that people aren't willing to shell out that same amount for, and thus they'll have to wait to see if the first game is actually successful enough (read: makes a lot more money than what comes in from the Kickstarter) to justify doing the sequels. I certainly wouldn't expect any real confirmation at this point, because they can't actually commit to throwing that much non-existent money after the game.

I didn't know about Fruitbat Factory, so thanks for sharing that. In addition, JAST also shared it several days ago. I don't know why so many people are talking about how MangaGamer saved the day... probably literally every other English loc industry player helped this thing out more by advertising it earlier in the cycle. I'm honestly doubtful whether MG's 3-minutes-before-it-was-over tweet did anything at all, except apparently buy them a lot of adoration. Edit: And I should have read the whole thread. FWIW, I don't think there were any bad intentions on anyone's part, and I think all the industry players who helped support this did Sol Press a solid (heh). I just think MG probably deserves the least credit, given how last-minute and likely completely unhelpful their support was. But then again, I should really wait until I see flying pigs before I start expecting an English VN fan to say anything positive about Sekai Project, I guess...

Fate/Stay Night is probably too obvious, but the Grail War certainly seems like it should qualify. How about Shadows of Pygmalion? The MC is a member of one of two warring factions. Also maybe Koihime Musou? Doesn't get much more competitive than a multi-sided national war.

This is actually the point of Kickstarter, you realize, right? And it's also how market valuation of goods ought to work. The same thing can be worth different amounts of money to different people. VNs are a long tail industry, and English localization of VNs are doubly so. If a small number of people want to chip in more money to see a shaky industry like that stay afloat, why is it "unreasonable" of them to do so, and why is it "depressing" to see companies willing to leverage that? There are no inherent victims in this setup; it's a win-win. Everybody involved (from the companies, to the people paying more, to the people paying less) end up getting something they want at a price they're willing to pay. To be clear, other complaints about Kickstarters, I absolutely think can be vaild—complaints about delays, especially. But I don't see anything to complain about in some people choosing to pay more (even a lot more) than others for something they're passionate about.