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If you can also take untranslated ones, the Motto! Haramase! series is just pure gold. Insane production values, tons of heroines and sub-heroines, all of which have "big oppais." Then there is Hoshizora no Babylon. This game has everything from AA cups to a Z-cup. Tons of heroines with huge tits, and they are actually very well drawn. (Something I feel certain artists fail at when drawing giant boobs.) A must play if you like big tiddies. Translated, I really only know of the "mainsteam" ones, that you have probably played already. Ultimate Boob Wars and Funbag Fantasy.

I find it so fascinating how big of a difference there is between prices of VNs in the west and here in Japan. 7000-9000 yen for a new game is completely normal here, (so between 70-80usd). In fact, you don't really see them go much cheaper. Usually "older" games are dropped down to 5000-6000 yen. (45-55usd) If you want to buy a big game like Baldr Sky for less than that in Japan, you'll have to wait for some massive sale, and even then you might be out of luck*. The fact that people even find 30usd to be fairly pricy for a standard VN is just crazy to me. Over here 2500-3500 yen is only really standard for shorter titles, like 2-10 hour nukige and stuff like that. There is of course production costs and such to consider for Japanese releases that western ones usually don't need to factor in, but between license costs, translation, editing, programming and everything in between, western releases are far from cheap to make, so it's honestly amazing a profit can be made at these prices. * Assuming we're talking digital. There's always second-hand games, which are a bit cheaper. Most people, myself included, usually go for those, as second-hand is basically good as new in Japan. But even those won't be that much cheaper, unless there's actual damage to the box etc, which is rare.

Love Letter and Shirogane no Soleil. Both fantastic games that are hardly ever mentioned. They deserve way more hype than they currently have in the west. Most people have probably never heard of them. (Unless you follow me on Twitter and heard my rants on how much I like them )

Maitetsu has that disclaimer too. It’s obviously just bs to avoid legal trouble. There’s a reason why these games avoid stating the age of characters directly unless it’s above 18.

Hat me up baby!

Not sure what you are basing this on, but as someone working in the industry I disagree. Sure, some companies pay low rates, but there's equally many, or more, who pay pretty good. Some pay very good. You obviously can't get too much information about specific rates as an outsider due to NDAs and such, so whatever information you have to go on is probably just from specific cases of drama etc in the community, which can hardly be used as the actual industry standard. It's absolutely possible to make a good living working in the VN loc scene. Many people do. Just know your own worth and have the guts to say no if you get offered a terrible rate. Uh, once again I must disagree. In fact, most of the big names in the translation industry right now came from fan translation, and did so thanks to loc companies offering very nice deals bringing them onboard. I myself got started with a fan translation, and I know many others who did too, none of which were "screwed" by loc companies. Tbh, if you are good at what you do and you have a partial translation for a game, contact a loc company, chances are you will "get lucky." It's... not as hard as people seem to think. Very little screwing involved / 10.

Just to nitpick a little, you can definitely find games with one heroine that has several routes/ endings.

First of all, watch your language, that's the second time you've done this in this thread. If you want to actually explain your point, go ahead, but if you're just here to insult people, you might as well just refrain from posting. To reiterate my point, Harukaze wanting to create an all-ages brand does not change what they have already released in the past under their current label. So, them releasing an old IP, Noratoto, in the west 18+ would not change anything. It's exactly the same game, and anyone actually googling the game will find the 18+ content anyways. It's an eroge, after all. In other words, their all-ages re-brand and their release of Noratoto could absolutely have been separate things, done under the two different brands. And since it has already been stated directly by their partners that the reason for the censored release was voice license costs, it's very obvious that this was just a move done to save money, not specifically a move done tactically along with this re-branding.

They did make a new company though, at the end of the day. There was no reason for them to release one of their eroge IPs under that new brand in the west. They could have used Harukaze, which is already an 18+ brand, which won’t change. So, they absolutely could have done an 18+ release here, and chose not to to save money, simple as that. That doesn’t really show much care for the west if you ask me

Yeah, that’s Clock Up for you. Tbh, I feel like MG were trying a little too hard to sell this game to... with the lack of a better word, "normies," lol. I mean, it’s a fetishy porn game, at the end of the day. Yes, it has a great story, characters etc etc, but these are still all elements built around a fetishy porn game, and one with lots and lots of porn at that. While I love Maggot Baits, I think trying to market it as a serious story where extreme H comes second is a little misleading. It’s a serious story, don’t get me wrong, but it’s hard to deny that this is also pretty much a porn game aimed at people who love twisted H content. Like me! I actually feel like Euphoria’s H is a lot more plot relevant 90% of the time, while Maggot Bait’s H feels like, just like you said, fanservice for the readers to get off to. (I don’t mind this, but I can see why the... "normies" reading this would, lol.)

I don't know wtf is going on with the quoting right now, but uh, gonna have to leave this one like this too. Actually quoting breaks the whole site it seems :thinking: Infernoplex quote 1: Definitely true, and I wish it wasn't like this. Noratoto deserved more than a lackluster translation and a butchered all-ages release. Fair, I can agree on them partially being at fault for that. I just feel more angry at Harukaze than Fruitbat regarding all of this. I see them as the main party at fault here. Yup, it's a shame. Crossing my fingers you guys get the fan patch done one of these days, so people can at least enjoy the full game. Good luck on that, by the way. Right. Yeah, the whole Moenovel thing is... really weird. They just went for that 12 year old French girl money and never looked back.

Does this fix the borked formatting? Just think of this as a quote... Yeah, of course, there are companies that can be convinced to mend their ways. But for every such example, there's another counterexample. To this day, nobody managed to convince PULLTOP/Moenovel to give us 18+ releases of their VNs, and it's widely speculated that Sekai didn't manage to convince Giga to give them a license for the 18+ release of Baldr Sky. There are likely more examples that I can't recall right now. Yes, to many a fan's frustration, this is very true. Though, granted, Pulltop just self-published, and never reached out to anyone for help, outside of platforms to sell on. This is going back to speculation, but yes, that is one possibility. Another is that they simply didn't know anything about the English market, (happens often,) and they either A) got contacted by Fruitbat, or B) knew someone who had a connection with them, (seeing as they have done obscure doujinge like Seabed, this could be possible,) which got them in touch with Fruitbat. Do note that I have always specified them being partly to blame. At the end of the day, Harukaze made the final decisions here, but I personally feel like Fruitbat's involvement most likely had some hand in that, and as such, I see them as partly responsible. Of course, if there's actual proof out there of Harukaze just being like "fuck, nope!" then that's fair, but based on the situation and what we have to go off, I'd say the criticism is fair.

Sure, but this is all just speculation at this point. Meanwhile, there’s other examples of "very stubborn" JP devs changing their minds based on these dealings, such as Akabeisoft with both Sharin no Kuni and G-Senjou no Maou. They were dead set on not doing 18+ releases at first, but changed their minds after being persuaded by western fans/ partners. Light too was sceptical at first with Dies irae. Clearly talking with the right people in the west helps change companies’ minds on these matters. While there is always the chance that Harukaze was just completely and utterly unwilling to even consider the idea of an 18+ release, I find it highly more likely that the need for one wasn’t pressed nearly as much by Fruitbat as it would have been by a company like JAST, and that this had an effect on their final decision.

Actually, these meetings can, and have in the past, changed companies minds about 18+ versions, so it absolutely is fair critisism in my opinion. Ninetail weren’t going to release an 18+ version of Venus Blood Frontier, but after getting in talks with JAST, (who only worked as advisors and not licensors, just like Fruitbat,) Ninetail changed their minds as JAST stressed how important the 18+ content is to many consumers here. Meanwhile, Fruitbat is a company that has never even once released an eroge uncut, and so it’s fairly obvious this isn’t very important to them. So I feel like it’s fair to blame them to a certain extent about the lack of a full version, as it almost certainly would have been a thing had a different company been the advisor.

Like I said, on their Discord channel. The second part, I don’t know. But seeing as the licensor is the JP company itself, it seems irrelevant. There was no deal made with anyone, they licensed their own game in the west, and used Fruitbat as an advisor.

They have also stated on several occasions that they were involved with dealing with Harukaze directly, and that they were involved in meetings and the likes. Had this been a company actually willing to push for 18+ releases, it almost certainly would have gone differently. So yes, they are partly to blame. They did not license the game, but were in talks with Harukaze as sort of advisors about the English market. In addition, they stated in their Discord after 1 released that they would try to fight for an 18+ release for 2. Looks like that was either bs, or they didnt fight very hard.

They also handled QA, and were directly involved in making the license deals. They were the ones speaking with Harukaze about the English version. So they absolutely could have changed things like censorship, had they actually tried.

That is a shame, but not surprising, tbh. With the cost of 1 probably not having been that high due to the voice fees they cut, they almost definitely made a decent profit off the Steam sales. From the JP side, who probably did not even see much of our complaints as they all just stopped at Fruitbat, it was a big success. So why not just censor the next one too for some extra profit, right? I quite enjoy these games, so it’s a shame to see them censored, but at least the second game is being released quickly for the people who are okay with censored versions. There’s a lot of text missing from these versions, (think 8k+ lines worth,) but if you’re okay with that, I guess this is good news.

That is a trade secret I'm afraid.

Right, because as we all know, the prophecy states: Once The Dorg stops reading VNs, the world shall perish. So let's hope VNs continue keeping me interested, for the sake of the world and all the anime tiddies in it

Just have a bucket nearby. You'll need it. Well, unless you're a freak like me.

Definitely. I read VNs a lot less frequently now, but still get very hyped about the ones I do read. I think starting to work in the visual novel translation industry made me a little less excited about the idea of then also spending all my free time reading VNs. In a way I "read" VNs all day when I translate, after all. So, it's still a hobby I love, but I definitely spend less time reading VNs now compared to when I first got introduced to the medium.

Welcome!

This is because translation isn’t a science. It’s not math. We don’t have just one correct way of doing things. Each translator will have their own style, and each one will be equally valid. Of course, some approaches will be more/less common, but you won’t ever see a point where translation turns into an exact science where every single thing has only one stock translation. That just isn’t how localization works.