RikiSanic

They've certainly run into problems over the years that have kept them from releasing titles in a timely manner, but more recently they laid off several employees (non-translation staff) and went through a restructuring that delayed things further. Apparently they're aiming for Q1 releases of Nanairo Reincarnation and Majo Koi Nikki so we'll see if they can keep to that schedule. They released several smaller VNs in 2018 but larger titles are definitely their bottleneck. This year will probably be a proving ground for whether or not they can rebound from all of their issues. If 2019 is another weak year for them—or even worse, they have any more big fuckups—then I'd be worried about their continued existence.

Funny how they're able to afford these exceptions for themselves now that they want to use crowdfunding but never gave anyone else this benefit. No localization companies are relying on crowdfunding as a default funding method. The two big users (SP and Frontwing) have been using crowdfunding primarily for physical goods recently. Nekonyan using crowdfunding at this time suggests that the Japanese developers they spoke of don't even have a correct impression of the western localization industry. No one is using crowdfunding out of lack of confidence or because they don't care; it's the reality of this volatile market. Nekonyan wanted to position themselves as "above it all" and capable of operating more appropriately and in line with Japanese devs' preferences. It was a PR move to shape the narrative and make themselves more favorable with fans. Fans gave SP and Frontwing the same go-ahead by backing their projects every single time even with their issues. Nekonyan is asking for fans' approval so they don't come across as hypocrites. I don't even have a problem with crowdfunding, but I do agree that Nekonyan deserves flak for trying to capitalize on people's dislike for Kickstarter and certain companies by finger-wagging and making it seem like crowdfunding is off the table for any reasonable company because the Japanese side has wised up on the issue. Sol Press proved that this isn't the case; the success of Newton's KS apparently opened up many devs' doors to them and they managed to license the highly sought-after Irotoridori no Sekai even though they need to crowdfund for it (and the sequels are even behind stretch goals). Crowdfunding absolutely still has a place in this industry and Nekonyan shouldn't have implied otherwise. This market is still full of risks and that doesn't go away by pretending crowdfunding's only done because of improper business practices.

Working with a developer once doesn't equal exclusivity and the only reason it ever seemed like that is because there were so few companies that agreed to localizations. At this point I don't think Sekai Project particularly cares whether or not someone licenses a title from a developer they've worked with. Their Sekai Games initiative seems to suggest they don't want to focus on only releasing visual novels anymore and I don't think the remaining members are all that committed to the medium on a personal level. Who knows, maybe the reason Nekonyan didn't get Irotoridori is because Sol Press offered to do a Kickstarter and Nekonyan has a strict no KS policy. (Kidding, but I do find it ironic that Nekonyan wanted the license for a while now and Sol Press swoops in and gets it somehow but needs a Kickstarter in order to make it feasible. Curious how their approached worked.)

I actually don't mind Itaru's artwork (except maybe pre-Clannad) but I'd agree that in this case it doesn't look great. The coloring in particular doesn't look well done. As for the project, I'll probably at least go for the digital game tier even though the artwork isn't a selling point and I don't have much confidence in the writer. Unlike others I don't see a problem with MangaGamer doing crowdfunding for an original project and I might as well support their first outing—it's not like they can be that much worse than some of the other projects I've supported in the past.

This guy, the other co-founder of Sekai Project.

Dovac hasn't been the CEO of Sekai Project for over a year at this point.

Yeah, according to VNDB the official 18+ patch released at the same time as the main game on June 27th, so there's no way Imouto Works could've distributed the patch before Sekai Project did. This isn't true, either. In fact, it's impossible. Corona Blossom Vol. 1 was released by Frontwing in July 2016 and its Indiegogo campaign was launched before Karakara even came out. Considering that Corona Blossom was localized by an in-house team and months of preparation would've been needed, that means that their going independent had already been decided long before this happened. Also, going independent isn't reason to believe that they "cut ties" with Sekai Project. SP licensed Grisaia, which means they never had an exclusive partnership with Frontwing (unless explicity stated), and they never made any indication that they were planning on licensing more Frontwing titles. Their relationship with Frontwing started and ended with the Grisaia trilogy. If you want a real example of a Japanese developer cutting ties with a localization company, look at what happened with Muv Luv and Degica. Ironically, Frontwing adopted the same pricing scheme for Corona Blossom ($10 for the base game; $10 for the patch) and have only recently changed their tune.

I think what finiteHP was getting at though is Nutaku might not be the publisher at all. At least, that's what it says directly on the store page. Rootnuko INC. is listed as both the developer and the publisher. In fact, I don't think any of the translated titles on Nutaku currently are actually published by them (excluding the browser games). They're not much of a localization company, and a cursory glance at their social media reveals that they're not even advertising this anywhere but the storefront itself. I don't think Nutaku's involvement with this title has been made public—did they license it, were they involved in the translation, etc.—so they could certainly be at fault here. But I don't think it's unlikely that Rootnuko censored it themselves, either.

So I haven't read Chrono Clock yet but wouldn't the whole point of having a British girl normally speaking English and then throwing in Japanese here and there be to accentuate the fact that she's bilingual? Why would the intent be to make her seem like she's literally Japanese? If a British girl goes to Japan, she's going to speak Japanese and any English she says will accentuate her British-ness. If she goes back to Britain, she'll speak English and any Japanese she says will accentuate the fact that she also knows Japanese (and as someone else said earlier in this thread, it'll also accentuate her weebness). I feel like that's pretty cut and dry. Now, of course, the execution could've been done poorly but the idea behind that translation decision makes total sense to me.

It's being developed by code:jp, a brand of Sekai Project's. The creative staff in their last game were all Japanese. This new one seems to share the same artist so it should be considered as a regular Japanese VN, just funded by an English publisher.

I honestly have no idea which version I should start with. I don't think the H-scenes are all that important, but I'd like to be able to play in 4:3—but then again I don't know if I really care about that either. Anyone able to convince me to just go with the all-ages version first?

Well, seeing those sample sentences has turned me off from even playing the VN, to be honest. I supported the Kickstarter because the team seemed passionate about bringing their first visual novel over, not because I thought Libra looked all that interesting. But it seems like they didn't care/weren't competent enough to handle the task. The end product is all that matters to me. All the PR speak leading up to it is pointless if I can't enjoy what I'm paying for (and at the end of the day, I couldn't care less about the people involved. I'd throw out the nicest translator in the world in a heartbeat if he was trash at his job). I've read poorly translated VNs before but Libra looks like it might be the worst (I purposefully avoid the infamously bad ones), which is pretty disappointing. I'll accept plain, overly literal translations as a last resort at times, but I don't know if I want to read dozens of hours of translated English from people who can't even construct a proper sentence.

You actually can most likely get it cheaper through Backerkit if this note I mentioned in the Acen thread is any indication. I'm assuming that's only if the stretch goal is hit because it's the complete box but I think the likelihood of reaching $75,000 is already pretty likely.

They're not really advertising it that much but I noticed this note on the stretch goal section. If I'm interpreting it correctly, it looks like you'll be able to get the complete box for $60 without any digital items for those who are interested in that.

Yeah, I remember the characters being unlikable and the story being drab and uninteresting. I'm usually generous with my scores but apparently I dropped it according to VNDB (I believe I gave up on the last route I played) and if a VN's boring enough for me to drop it I'm probably going to give a lower score than usual. I'll definitely wait for a sale if I feel like giving it another shot. I liked the rhythm game portions but that's about it.

I'll probably check this out at some point because I read it over three years ago and remember not liking it that much (it's currently sitting at a 4 on my VNDB, so I must've really not liked it for whatever reason). Anyone else have a similar experience, or was the me three years ago totally off base? Anyway, people seem to hold Symphonic Rain in high regard so maybe my opinion will change after replaying it.

I'm a backer of the Clockwork Ley-Line campaign, and the physical standalone add-on caught my attention in the backerkit as well. However, there's some context here that's needed. First, people asked during the Chrono Clock campaign if there'd be a standalone physical option, and Sekai Project said that they would consider it (by the way, I've never seen SP dismiss anyone's request for this option like you suggest), but they didn't end up adding one, so anyone who wanted that option was out of luck. As for Clockwork's campaign, the limited items will definitely be limited. Suggesting that the backerkit will be some infinite store is ridiculous. It's going to be locked down eventually, they're going to produce a specific number of goods, and then ship those goods out. If there are reprints, they won't be anytime soon since Sekai Project has yet to reprint any of their limited edition items from their Kickstarters, and they have never made any plans to. In terms of cost, the Physical Limited Edition tier includes the physical games + physical OST and digital copies of the games, the OST, the artbook, and the light novel. In order to match that price with add-ons alone, that'd cost $175, or $40 more than the price of the Physical Limited Edition tier on the Kickstarter (and after experimenting with the add-ons, if you got the Physical Limited Edition + Physical Artbook tier during the Kickstarter, it costs more shipping to recreate that tier with add-ons in the backerkit, so that tier was a better deal for Kickstarter backers). I think the one complaint you can make is that we didn't know exactly what add-ons would be made available after the campaign other than the physical artbook. If you are interested in digital items, you saved a good bit of money by backing the Physical Limited Edition tier during the Kickstarter. If you're not interested, you could try to get a refund or change your pledge in backerkit to the $0 tier and only go for physical add-ons and possibly get more physical items with your money than you could before. As for Clannad being less expensive than later physical releases, Sekai Project has said in livestreams that they lost money producing the physical versions and that it was something special for that campaign. Given that they've never had a more successful visual novel Kickstarter since Clannad, it's understandable that physical editions aren't as cheap anymore. The SP vs Frontwing Grisaia physicals situation is an interesting discussion to have, though. Clearly both companies are working at different paces in order to reach different objectives with the Grisaia property. The one thing I will say is that while Frontwing's complete box is better in quality, it's also quite a bit more expensive than Sekai's. It is a bit of an awkward position to put backers in, though, since Sekai won't be shipping the last of the physical items until possibly the middle of this year. Can't believe I wrote this giant response but hopefully it's more concise than OP's, at least.

Looks like it's 20% off on Nutaku now, as well as on Steam. Not a bad price for those who don't want to wait until the release on Denpasoft.

It'll most likely be the same price, but there might be a launch discount since it'll have been out for a month on Steam and Nutaku by then. There's no official confirmation about that but I know that The Labyrinth of Grisaia came out with a discount when it launched on Denpasoft, so it's possible.

Taken from their Kickstarter FAQ.

Hey, that's me! I remember thinking of ChuSinGura 46+1 when I wrote that post because of the travesty of a localization that received. It really does hurt to know that some Japanese developers license their titles to questionable companies and we as consumers suffer the consequences. Of course, even experienced publishers are capable of producing a bad translation here and there, so there's always risk on our end, unfortunately. But does inre, the developer of ChuSinGura 46+1, even know that I can't bring myself to play their VN in English because the translation was so abysmal? Are they aware that there's practically no discussion of their VN in the communities I frequent because the awful release (and a train wreck of a Kickstarter campaign) turned off so many? Does Lump of Sugar care that they're allowing a Chinese company to localize their VN into English even though there are more qualified options? Do they care that the title of their VN has been bastardized into some dumb shit about elves being smart? Does none of this matter because there's still the chance people will buy these VNs anyway? (Probably.) TL;DR: Sometimes official localizations are my greatest motivation to continue learning Japanese.

I had a fun(?) time reading through the English website they launched. Luckily, I'm not interested in this particular title, but for anyone who is, well, I can't see the final product being anything worth paying for if the translation quality is anywhere near that of the website. If Lump of Sugar is interested in releasing their titles in English then maybe next time they should partner with a publisher that has a bit more familiarity with the language they're translating to. Until then, I guess English-speaking fans will have to look forward to more "Smart Elves" in the future.

I originally couldn't think of anything specific to suggest but then I remembered that there are quite a few developers that MangaGamer has partnered with already that I would like to some more titles from. With that in mind, the three license suggestions I chose were: Evolimit from Propeller, Semiramis no Tenbin from Caramel Box, and Sakura no Mori † Dreamers from Moonstone. I probably would've chosen some nukige since my tastes aren't often represented but I decided these were more important. Personally, I'd really like a separate nukige survey because it's not as much as a priority for me but I'd still like to suggest things that I want to see licensed but often aren't.

First impressions: they've done an amazing job at addressing any questions/concerns I could've had with the project. From the resolution changes to the restoration of non-ero censorship, even the minor details are touched upon. I just hope they're prepared to get the word out as much as possible. I feel like $160,000 can be a challenging goal these days, even with the hype surrounding Dies irae. This prefundia has done a lot to clear up some confusion, but they still have to overcome the fact that this project was completely shrouded in mystery up to this point. It'll be interesting to see how this works out. I wish them luck and am quite pleased that I can back this without any qualms.

Sekai Project was able to sell an adult physical version of Chrono Clock simply by saying that the physical version was the Denpasoft edition of the game. So it is possible to sell adult goods on Kickstarter, you just have to be careful with the language you use.