ittaku

This is a great article. It is missing one vital discussion though IMO - having translated lots of H scenes now - and that is a discussion about what to do about onomatopoeia. H scenes contain obscene amounts of onomatopoeia. Japanese love their sound effects and they read and sound perfectly normal in their language, but in English they are, for the most part, downright childish and stupid. I tried to translate them to meaningful sound equivalents in English for a while and then gave up in disgust after running out of sounds we actually use in English. After that I just transliterated the sound effects and these days I'm wondering if all of them should just be dropped entirely and only the dialogue and text translated, leaving only ellipsis for the sound effect only lines.

Why don't you get the ball rolling by telling us yours first instead of asking us to embarrass ourselves further?

My choice should be brutally obvious given I translated ToHeart2 for this very reason... Lucy Maria Misora from To Heart 2 I was intrigued, I laughed, I winced, I cried, I fell for her, I was satisfied. I was going to put a much longer post, but I know this is more a matter of taste so there's no real point trying to explain it.

Finishing all good endings. I can't stand bad endings - they're bad for my soul so it annoys me that there are always unique CGs to bad ending routes when all the effort to draw them could have gone to more unique CGs on the good routes.

I'm stunned at how few people (guys) chose "I only play games with H". I only read VNs because of the H. Finally someone who nailed how I feel, ironically also has played VNs for as long as I have it seems:

Well I wasted a lot of time on that I trained him up to recognise Lucy Maria Misora. He gets it right more often than not now

Have you tried looking through these: https://nipponsei.minglong.org/releases/F/

I doubt it... it's more like they've found their business model now. The eroge market in Japan confirms enough sex and you can sell an infinite number of titles no matter how meh they are.

Interesting information... but it doesn't change the fact that as executed, the anime ending was completely FUBAR making it the most frustrating anime I've ever watched. It's funny because I would have been happy without those last 2 episodes, and then even if someone said to me never ever watch the last two episodes, there is no way I could be restrained enough to do so...

You're right about what caused its downfall (the failed harem card). But to me it wasn't a matter of why didn't my waifu win. It was why didn't anyone win... neither the protagonist nor any of the waifus... I would have been happy with any ending instead of guaranteeing none. As you said the fans ragequit after how he ended it and that included me... Though it was too late by then since it had already finished and undone all the good it had done in the lead up to there. I'm curious what drama you speak of. I know his fans wanted an incest ending so was he trying to cater to them somehow and catered to no one as a result? I'm not remotely immune from feeling emotion from watching anime as you seem to be. Chocolatey goodness? Maybe if you include scat in your definition of chocolate... And sorry guys if this has gone into spoiler territory but I tried to keep it contained originally.

Really? That's odd... Naru ends up quite passionate. She also reminds me of my wife who I've been married to for 20 years. Maybe there's something in that..

I have to cheat and choose one from anime/manga too sorry, since no one has yet surpassed her. Naru Narusegawa from Love Hina, as voice acted by Yui Horie... She ignited my passion for Tsunderes.

Word do_od

Oreimo. Great series but WORST ENDING EVER with the OVAs that were added at the end to complete the story. I made it all the way through enjoying it till the very last 2 episodes only to have that shit dumped on me. So many possible ways they could have ended the series well, but no, they chose that direction...

All your came belong to us.

Another Days is a much more inconsistent game than the original was. Some of the routes are well worth reading while a few are somewhere between annoying and garbage. If I had to translate it, I wouldn't be able to do half of them they're so annoying or inappropriate. The game engine is different to the original too so I'd need a completely new set of programming tools to extract and reinsert text (it's unique and doesn't share anything with the original or any other game and I have no "team" to do such work any more). In the original game people like some girls and don't like others, but the writing is mostly consistent, whereas in AD it varies wildly. The game is much more linear - just pick the girl you want repeatedly. As with Star Was prequels - be careful what you ask for as you may well get it and regret it. This sequel is a bit like that... Without any real spoilers, the routes on Another Days are: The good: Harumi - good robot maid route Silfa - good robot maid route Charu - good route for a secondary TH2 character Yocchi - good route for a secondary TH2 char The neutral: Haruka - story with no H ending The bad/the ugly: Nanako - unnecessary loli route with no H ending Ma-ryan - extremely annoying nonsense of just endless drivel about absurd scenes with no real story that goes on and on Unlocked: Konomi/Tama-nee crossover- Nonsense story post Konomi friend ending from TH2 with an admittedly hot H ending Ikuno - Annoying reverse story telling from Ikuno's perspective post Manaka ending from TH2 with possible but questionable H ending

Although it was a true "dating sim" rather than just a visual novel, True Love 95... because it was the first I ever played almost 20 years ago and exposed me to an artform and form of entertainment that ticked so many boxes for me that it created a passion for VNs and Japanese media/language that has not stifled since. Its character trait point system has been copied thousands of times since. I still play it every few years since it's a short game and brings back good memories. Sure I've played VNs since that have moved me more since then, and To Heart 2 had so much appeal on so many levels that it created my desire to translate an entire visual novel myself so it would be the one that moved me the most, but I still have a soft spot for the now ancient TL95.

I'm not obsessed with reading the latest of anything. I just try to find titles that suit the styles I like to read, and older games are usually much cheaper 2nd hand. Currently reading the H heavy 幼なじみと甘～くエッチに過ごす方法. Have a soft spot for the later team B-Y games even if their production values are not on par with big companies since they do ecchi sexual tension well without just being a nukige. Before that I played one of their older games まほこい～エッチな魔法で恋×濃しちゃう～ which was below average and had lots of dark endings I skipped and I wouldn't bother with it. I think they changed direction after this since just about every other one I've played has nothing but variant good endings. The first game of theirs I read was School ぷろじぇくと☆ which was lots of fun. I'm guessing their earlier games were meh and their later games had fine tuned their style which suits me fine. I'm also concurrently reading Clover Day's since I'm helping translate that project.

Welcome! Do you have a gate? Maybe that joke's too old for you to understand it...

Wow, I felt Karin's whole blackmail thing was very tongue in cheek and lighthearted and the protagonist really went there by choice anyway... On the other hand I wanted to kill the protagonist in Sasara's route. That's probably the worst route ever for me but mostly because I was translating it myself which meant that I spent 100x longer doing it than just reading through it would have taken.

The answer to the rather open question is "wildly variable". Some spin offs set in the same world but with new characters far excel their original while others are somewhere between ho hum and an embarrassingly bad testimony to a company trying to make the most of a successful original. There are no rules as to whether a sequel is good or not. My staple VN project - To heart 2 was a much more comprehensive and better VN than To heart as a spin off with different characters, yet the sequel to that, To Heart 2 Another Days, was nowhere near as good as TH2, being average and inconsistent.

1) Handle: Ittaku 2) Positions you can fill: Translator 3) Types of projects (VNs) preferred: Comedy, Romance, Slice of life, Moe/Charage with almost exclusively happy endings and not too much drama - must have H and have an average rating of >7/10 on vndb. Would consider Nukige if there's a little extra story component (I translated Polygon Love 2 for example). 4) Availability: Employed, but still interested in fantl 5) VNs most interested in producing an ftl for: Anything like To Heart 2 or lighter, like the selection by Clephas here: https://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/4204-for-love-of-vns-chicken-soup-for-the-soul/? 6) Motivation for joining in on ftl: Enjoy translating and it keeps my Japanese moving forward 7) Conditions* (any additional conditions, under which you will or won't work): Lots of conditions, see below. Absolutely no rape, torture, humiliation, disgrace, loli, dark themes, violence. Don't like utsuge nor excessive drama either. Will only work on one project at a time. PC games only. Can translate up to ~1000 lines per week. Will not tolerate abusive criticism. Must accept limitations of my time availability and quality of translation without barrage of complaints. Will only work for an established team - either one that has made significant progress on an existing project or is starting a new project having successfully completed other projects. Team must have a coordinator that is responsive and communicative. I have a strong sense of responsibility for any projects I take on so I will not take on a project unless I intend to complete my allocated component so I expect a team that is also suitably motivated.