Joshuam303

VN Name: Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
VNDB link: http://vndb.org/v94
Is there already a translation project for this? It was but now it's long abandoned. Also:
"yes it is very much alive, there are 2 chapters to the game and the first one is completely translated and in the editing phase."
Hack/no hack: probably hacked (judging by the translation into Russian, which has been translated from English).
Why do you want it to be TLed: It's from the same setting as the Muv-Luv. I really like anime adaptation, plot, character development and "age" too. It was painful form to see KMGN characters in Muv-Luv, realizing that TL project was abandoned.

This is going to be long so take a seat.
And don't you dare skimming through it or not reading any of the linked articles.

1. Misinterpretation of Fuwanovel mission statement

I will start with this as it should be simple to explain.
The portion of the mission statement that is used in the forum logo (and forum logo only) is just part of the whole mission.
As you can notice on the main website, the main logo there actually describes the website differently.

"Fan translated visual novels repository"
And if you browse the website and visit the mission statement section, you can see the mission is actually different from what the forum logo says, it is:
"Visual Novels for the World"
As even included with the logo of the section:


Following up in the mission statement, three main objectives are mentioned there

There are three main objectives, they are:
1) Make visual novels popular in the West.
2) Promote fan translation
3) Create a community that celebrates fan translation and fan sharing.


When the forums logo was made, only the first part of the mission statement was put there, because otherwise it would be too long. And many people misinterpret "West" as "America", where as it just states the general mission statement Visual Novels for the World but with different words.
West in that case means outside of Japan (where Visual Novels already exist), so basically the rest of the world.

What I am getting at is that nowhere on the whole website it states anything about promoting Localized copies, ensuring sales of Localized copies or celebrating success of Localization companies and commercial market.
Instead it focuses on fan translation, fan efforts, fan sharing, fan creations and fan improvements to the original version.

The only reason Fuwanovel doesn't share licensed versions was out of Aaeru's "good will".
She decided not to include those releases as a gesture of friendliness to the companies.
How those companies responded to this good will and attempts to build a friendly relationship is a different matter entirely.



2. Piracy vs Sharing

The whole word "Piracy" is just wrongly used since the beginning of the internet.
If you imagine piracy in a pirate movie, they invade a ship and deprive people off their possessions.
But in the case of games, movies, music - that is never the case. "Piracy" on the internet just stands for "Sharing", but people for some reason needed a word that sounds evil.
Instead of taking away possessions of someone else, you are being offered a shared copy of what someone already has. You are being offered a flower seed out of unlimited supply to grow your own flower and ultimately build your love for flowers to the point you want to support the people who originally imported these flowers from different parts of the world.


Aaeru and Fuwanovel was always for "Sharing" and as so you could say also for "Piracy" since they are the same thing.

The stuff about flower seeds and building love for flowers is much better explained in the "Spreading culture does not decrease supporters. It increases it." part of fuwanovel About section.
Please read the whole article if you haven't already done so.

You can notice there the part of why true fans pay money.



"Your labour IS the scarcity not the copies, for it cannot be pirated."

And are you going to argue that it doesn't work? Even the mentioned Steins;Gate release says exactly the opposite, many of the fuwanovel staff bought the copy even though we still direct people to the shared copy.
It is not because they had to buy it, they wanted to buy it, partially thanks to the fact that the game is popularized thanks to Fuwanovel.

The article mentioned above wasn't directed at localization companies however, it was mainly directed at Japanese developers and why Aaeru decided to share the copies with the improvements of additional language version.

You can even see similar examples here of people buying a Japanese version if they liked the fuwanovel copy. I can even say it for myself - I am struggling to make a living and pay rent, but after finishing Iroseka (shared torrented version), I became true fan of FAVORITE, It is one of my dreams that once I solve my situation and get some more money, I will not buy some expensive food or a car or any other pleasure like that, I will buy the games with all the stupidly overpriced little perks in the box, because I want the companies to make more of it.
But in the meanwhile, all I can really do is spread the word of how good the games are, link people to the Fuwanovel Hoshimemo page, praise Iroseka and make more people try to play it in Japanese now, make more people interested in translating it for even wider audience - because I know that I can find people who will fall in love with those games just like I have and maybe they will have the funds to afford the support to the companies. I was able to talk to a Japanese FAVORITE fan yesterday in pso2JP, uniting together we can get more and more fame to the company that deserves it, even though the Japanese person can buy the game with earnings from an hour or 2 of his time, and all I can do is spread the word. But I am willing to spread the word for many hours, writing reviews and comparisons, because that is all I can spare, my time.

If I haven't "pirated" the games in the first place, I would never be able to do this, I would never be able to extend the fandom because I would never be able to play the game.



3. Localized releases vs Fan TL releases

So as mentioned above, we are still trying to carry Aaeru's good will of not sharing localized copies, a good will even after all the things the companies have done to her in response. The good will might weaken in times of controversy we can sometimes see, but since we believe that evil should not be repaid by evil, that eye for an eye is just the wrong approach, we still continue this good will and are not sharing English licensed releases of games.

But there was never such will for Japanese releases, as with those, following the points mentioned in point 2 of this post, the creator will have more success in building fandom and true fans.

And as such we are sharing Japanese copy of Planetarian, a game Aaeru added to the website, improved by a collective fan effort many years ago. It is the same version a lot of you (Including me) were able to enjoy for free, thanks to the original fan effort and Fuwanovel sharing service. And the same version, translated out of passion for the game, shared between fans of Key to make their games even more popular.
Without this fan copy and all the other fan translated Key games, most of us would not be able to enjoy them. Without the effort of fan subbing, lot of people would not be able to enjoy Key anime.
And without that the English Key fandom would not become what it is today, a fandom that is able to organize a giant project like Key 15th Anniversary Letter.
A project that will even be collaborating with Sekai project to deliver their letter, signifying their dedication.
A project full of TRUE fans who will buy the official Sekai release even though they have probably played Planetarian several times.

And you are asking us to simply remove all that from existence so only you and other people in the past were so privileged to enjoy it for free and become a fan. That new people cannot join the club anymore, become a fan of a free version to later potentially evolve into a true fan supporting Key by buying figs and games all over the place, just like many Fuwanovel members do.

And the same goes for Grisaia, we are sharing a Japanese version of the game improved by fan translation, a version that was able to build pretty big fandom of its own. A favorite game of many thanks to the free fan translation and the free availability on Fuwanovel (among other places).
A fandom built thanks to a collaborative effort of not only translators and other people on the project, but also seeders on the torrents, page creators, article writers, even people just saying "I loved this game" in a public place - all those efforts however important or hard they might be created what Grisaia true fandom today is and as such tons of them will be able to afford the steam release, while others can keep sharing the word and original fan project for free, to get even more people on the board to be able to spend their money, time or effort or combination of those to further support their beloved game.


And in the end by removing the original fan translation patch you are not only depriving newcomers of things you were able to have yourself, depriving them of the sun that used to shine on you.
But you are also undermining all the efforts of the people trying to share and make the game as popular as possible with the means available to them. Some people have money to import the game from Japan or later buy the game on Steam, some people only have words.
But power of the words might in the end turn out more powerful than power of money. By sharing a VN and making more people be interested in it and talk about it, you are essentially trading words for words - effort and words of the original creator for the good words and effort of review writers or simply people telling their friends to play it. And in the end this trade will result in a profit for the creator, as more and more people will be interested in the words the creator has to say in their games, more and more people will want more of those words and become a true fan, patron and supporter, trading their currency for more words.


4. Fuwanovel as a negative profit website

Since this was already said, I will keep it short.
But Fuwanovel, unlike many other sharing websites such as nyaa, generates ZERO profit of any of this. Quite the opposite, running website and fees connected to this actually costs money and we rely on charity of people, paying their money to host and run the website, offering their seedbox so we can spread the game torrents as quickly as possible.
And even the times when many of us together collected the money to buy the forum software, with whatever we could put aside at that moment.
And still there is not a single ad on the website, not a single cent was generated on Fuwanovel and that is how it is going to remain.
Efforts of all the people working on maintaining the website, work put into coding and additional features, forum moderation, creating new pages for newly released projects, maintaining good upload speed by seeding - all those efforts are done with 0 compensation and 0 profit.
And as such everyone can expect everything on Fuwanovel be equal to everyone, whether you came a year ago or now, you will have access to the same games for the same equal price, 0.
That's because 0 is the ONLY price equal to everyone in the world and even though $1 might seem equal to all Americans, it is not equal to everyone in the world, only 0 is.

And as the mission statement goes, Visual Novels for the World.

By offering a pirate version, we let more people who otherwise wouldn't be able to play them actually play those games, which increases the number of fans of that particular series which increases the number of people who will buy the game for support and the game's merchandise. If we hadn't hosted grisaia, a lot of people here wouldn't buy grisaia in the first place, for example. Those who pirate it won't start buying the games because we stopped hosting them, but hosting them can have some positive effects.
 
I'm only quoting Steve here, but:
 
 
"We are not a promotional website trying to help licensing companies make their money, if that was the case we could have ads on the website and earn tons of money ourselves, just like Nyaa and many other VN/Anime sharing websites do - and when I tell you that the money wouldn't be bad at all even if split between all staff, I mean it. But we don't do that because we are not greedy bastards and understand that the goal is larger than making money (I prefer my struggling to even make a living and pay rent than doing something like that - maybe it makes me a stupid person but at least I feel good about myself xD).
 
And the higher goal is making more people PLAY the games, NOT BUY them.
By taking the already available releases away from people we would be doing exactly the opposite.
There is no reason to bring up the arguments for why many people cant possibly ever afford to buy the official release.
 
In my opinion fuwanovel should bring the more positive light to the world that not everything is about money. Encourage fan translators to translate for free, make them feel like sharing the game they read and loved with others for free. Let everyone try and play those games however they want, everyone have equal changes to get into discussion about them. Not be like what elementary school used to be, when those rich kids were discussing their Playstation consoles and all that most families couldn't afford. Or like that high school where people were discussing their gifted motorbikes that most of us couldn't afford.
 
And so fuwa is different, everyone no matter where they are from or what school they attended can enjoy the same games and discuss the same stories. You can be a Chinese guy with some old PC connecting through a hole in a school firewall (although in that case they would probably choose from the chinese sites and translations, but we've had few chinese talking here on forums) or you can be a doctor in the US or you an be an average studying east European, maybe starting some new jobs. You can be whoever and still receive the same treatment here and same free games as everyone.
And same way you can be any of those and try to help to spread the games to more people, fan translating the titles from Japanese for more and more people to enjoy."
 
So yeah, I'm against removing those torrents. You may still be able to convince the people who deal with the main page, though.

I don't know anything about that actually. I don't remember that ever happening. Also, since I doubt that this is much of a spoiler, the ending scenes for each route in Unlimited is the exact same except with a different girl.

Especially in Amane's route.
 
   
I can't blame anyone for doing this; I did the same thing.  I will say that some routes have some foreshadowing for Alternative.  Ayamine's in particular.

i did them Meiya's was my favourite route, then sumika's to be honest, but marimo's route is quite fun to read too 

Hmm, rather than giving out plot details for the series, I will say that the story is wrapped up pretty nicely in the end of Muv-Luv Alternative.

And, no, you can't. See, if you skip, you could miss something important or interesting. And the images are only for perverts, most of the time.

Haha epic gif, good moment in the movie