Which VN localization company do you prefer?

[ChaosRaven]

MangaGamer is certainly the most professional and established VN localization company right now. There's is no doubt about that, it's simply a fact.

However, the comparison isn't exactly fair, since Sekai Project is still a very young localization company. And I dare to say that Sekai Project looks a lot better after its 2 - 3 years of existence than MangaGamer looked at that time. And they certainly had a very strong impact on the market as a whole in the last two years. If they can keep their rapid growth up, continue to get spectacular license deals done and also manage to translate them in time, then they might be able to surpass MangaGamer in a few years. But they are not there yet.

Biggest disappointement by a mile are Jast. They are around for the longest time, had the best financial possibilities with their J-list connections, and still managed to completely miss the train. Maybe they'll manage to recover in the future, but at least at this time I don't consider them a serious contender anymore.

[wyldstrykr]

sekai project because i like hitler.

edit: sory i mean mangagamer because dc

[VirginSmasher]

22 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

MangaGamer is certainly the most professional and established VN localization company right now. There's is no doubt about that, it's simply a fact.

However, the comparison isn't exactly fair, since Sekai Project is still a very young localization company. And I dare to say that Sekai Project looks a lot better after its 2 - 3 years of existence than MangaGamer looked at that time. And they certainly had a very strong impact on the market as a whole in the last two years. If they can keep their rapid growth up, continue to get spectacular license deals done and also manage to translate them in time, then they might be able to surpass MangaGamer in a few years. But they are not there yet.

Biggest disappointement by a mile are Jast. They are around for the longest time, had the best financial possibilities with their J-list connections, and still managed to completely miss the train. Maybe they'll manage to recover in the future, but at least at this time I don't consider them a serious contender anymore.

The thing with Sekai Project is they get a lot of hate and it's not unwarranted hate either. I don't see Mangagamer getting as much shit as I have seen for Sekai Project.

[Tyr]

1 hour ago, Rooke said:

MG have only recently started releasing titles I'm interested in, and have only recently stopped being focused mainly on nukige.

I don't think that statement is fair. Even though Mangagamer does everything to look like a porn company only selling nukige, they actually aren't.

Back then, when MG was still uncool and visual novels weren't popular yet, they released an all-ages visual novel, Higurashi, even though it was pretty clear that it wouldn't be very profitable. Of course, they got hate because there were licensing issues with the soundtrack and because they didn't use the Alchemist sprites. But still, without MG, we probably wouldn't have gotten an English Higurashi release at all.
Since then there was always an "All-ages" in the MG store.
Also, even though they were advertising every game as a sex romp, people who actually played their games know that most of the time this was false advertising. I remember playing Edelweiß expecting a nukige because the summary very much implied it, but then I got one of the funniest love comedies I ever played. You only need to think of the gay ghosts to notice that they are still doing this, but nonetheless the games are actually not as porny as MG tries to make us believe.

I don't think you can criticize MG for focusing on nukige. If you ignore all nukige in their portfolio, you still have a great list of mostly interesting games. And I think this list is possible, because they release also a few nukige (most of them actually quite good if you compare them to JAST's nukige for example) to make cash, because we all know that it's the porn that sells.

[ChaosRaven]

40 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

The thing with Sekai Project is they get a lot of hate and it's not unwarranted hate either. I don't see Mangagamer getting as much shit as I have seen for Sekai Project.

lol You should have seen the MangaGamer (and other) forums when they announced Haruka instead of a Rance title. That was quite the shit storm.   And it got even better when it was clear that they killed with that move the fan translations for Rance 5 & 6 forever. Even I could understand that people were pissed about that.

And yeah, when the E-mail addresses of all their customers were hacked and posted on Twitter because they had stored them in plain text also wasn't exactly stuff for a popularity contest. And then there were the death threats they got from homo haters because they 'dared' to release a BL title. Let's just say, Sekai Project has to stay a bit longer in the business until they can begin to compete with what MangaGamer has received in 'love' over the years from their 'fans'. 

And nobody forces anyone to back a Kickstarter. The big Kickstarters from Sekai got much fewer anyway. You shouldn't forget that most of the big Kickstarters recently were not from Sekai like MuvLuv, Sharin no Kuni, the vampire VN I've forgotten the name, etc. So Sekai Project slowly seems to be able to finance their titles themselves. Naturally, they could also have tried the MG and Jast way of releasing lots of short crap nukiges for financing...

[VirginSmasher]

2 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

lol You should have seen the MangaGamer (and other) forums when they announced Haruka instead of a Rance title. That was quite the shit storm.   And it got even better when it was clear that they killed with that move the fan translations for Rance 5 & 6 forever. Even I could understand that people were pissed about that.

And yeah, when the E-mail addresses of all their customers were hacked and posted on Twitter because they had stored them in plain text also wasn't exactly stuff for a popularity contest. And then there were the death threats they got from homo haters because they 'dared' to release a BL title.

Compared to the hate that Sekai Project has gotten in their short existence, this isn't much.

The whole email addresses issue was pretty dumb on Mangagamer's part. Can't believe they'd actually do that. 

[solidbatman]

Sekai Project because I'm a shill apparently 

[VirginSmasher]

3 minutes ago, solidbatman said:

Sekai Project because I'm a shill apparently 

That would be what you'd be considered by certain people.

[ChaosRaven]

14 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

Compared to the hate that Sekai Project has gotten in their short existence, this isn't much.

The whole email addresses issue was pretty dumb on Mangagamer's part. Can't believe they'd actually do that. 

If your join date is an indicator how long you're around in the VN scene then no you didn't see much yet. I was a lot longer active in the MG forums before I joined Fuwa. Do you remember the mosaic scandal around ef? Or the countless bashing threads about their titles with bad translation and/or crappy nukiges of their earlier times?! MangaGamer exists a bit longer than just 1 - 2 years and the VN scene ALWAYS finds something to hate.

[VirginSmasher]

3 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

If your join date is an indicator how long you're around in the VN scene then no you didn't see much yet. I was a lot longer active in the MG forums before I joined Fuwa. Do you remember the mosaic scandal around ef? Or the countless bashing threads about their titles with bad translation and/or crappy nukiges of their earlier times?! MangaGamer exists a bit longer than just 1 - 2 years and the VN scene ALWAYS finds something to hate.

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been as big of an outrage at Mangagamer announcing more physical copies of VNs than actual licenses.

[Darklord Rooke]

2 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been as big of an outrage at Mangagamer announcing more physical copies of VNs than actual licenses.

MG save their big announcements for AnimeExpo, I think? A lot of people tend to know this.

[ChaosRaven]

11 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

I'm honestly surprised there hasn't been as big of an outrage at Mangagamer announcing more physical copies of VNs than actual licenses.

I think only people who aren't around a long time could have been surprised about that. MangaGamer usually never announce anything of value before AX and Otakon, since those two where always their big announcement cons. It's already an improvement that they've announced one big title per con this year with ImoPara 2 and Kyonyuu Fantasy. Though they seem to stick to their tradition that only nukiges or smaller doujin are announced. They will hold back their bigger story and moege titles for the two main cons.

[Fred the Barber]

Well, I guess I'll chime in to support the unpopular opinion - SP is my favorite at the moment. MG is close behind, and JAST USA is a distant third.

In terms of # of games released (a few months ago I crawled through the data for the three companies, so this should be roughly correct): SP is releasing more games per year than MG and JAST USA put together (not that the last one is helping much...). Both SP and MG are accelerating their number of releases recently, especially SP, while JAST is flat and much lower than the other two. Now, of those, the rebuttal will go, most of SP's are random doujinshi nobody has ever heard of, but replace "doujinshi nobody has ever heard of" with "nukige" and the same argument applies to both MG and JAST USA. If you remove both of those from the list and look at the remaining, I expect SP is still in the lead, though I didn't look at this data point. Now, granted, if you're a nukige fan, more power to you, and you probably don't care about the last thing I said. But this is about who I like, and frankly I'm more likely to enjoy a random doujinshi I've never heard of, but which SP decided to localize, than I am to enjoy a random nukige.

The claim that only MG releases stuff in a timely manner is, I'm pretty sure, bunk - I honestly don't know where it comes from. JAST USA is the only real laggard in the industry (I find this post hilarious, since it shows the translation was done three years ago, and we only saw the release last month...). The other two are getting things done in a reasonably timely manner, for the most part. There are outliers like WEE for SP, but there are far more things like the complete retranslation of Clannad that got done on schedule in a year, or the rather punctual release of Root Double, which people nonetheless cried bloody murder about because it was a month late. If you're going to kick and scream about them releasing something at the end of April after predicting a March release, you're setting the bar way, way too high; that's just not how the world works when you're talking about a half-year (or longer) project involving tens of people. If you think differently, I'll eat my hat if you've ever actually been involved in such a project (but if you actually have, then the joke's still on you, because I'm not wearing a hat).

And a point in favor of all three: they've all caused big changes. SP's happens to have been the most recent, but JAST USA has been around and kicking forever, and proved that there was a market here at all. MG found a way to substantially broaden that market and upped the volume substantially. And now SP is changing and broadening the market yet again. We benefit from all three of them. Even if we make jokes at the expense of one or all of them from time to time, they're none of them causing us any problems. Be happy for what you have, and if you think you can do it better, in all seriousness, go do it. This is the place to find people who are passionate about VNs; maybe you can build a crew to found the next big VN localization company that changes the market yet again. It's already happened three times. That it will happen a fourth time is practically a given.

[VirginSmasher]

10 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I think only people who aren't around a long time could have been surprised about that. MangaGamer usually never announce anything of value before AX and Otakon, since those two where always their big announcement cons. It's already an improvement that they've announced one big title per con this year with ImoPara 2 and Kyonyuu Fantasy. Though they seem to stick to their tradition that only nukiges or smaller doujin are announced. They will hold back their bigger story and moege titles for the two main cons.

You're right on that one. I only started paying attention to Mangagamer's announcements back in March.

[Godskrieg]

Currently Mangagamer, they just tend to release things a lot quicker, which for me is a deciding factor as my Japanese is very much on the "meh" side. Ask me again after all 3 Grisaia games are released though, so basically, 2025, with luck and my opinion might change. 

[sanahtlig]

JAST, again because of their library.  They tend to license the games I'm actually interested in, especially gameplay titles.  They also tend to promote their titles a bit better than the other publishers.

Not to mention I know people at JAST and they're genuinely interested in my feedback (and the feedback of others).  MangaGamer just regarded me as a nuisance.  I've had no significant interaction with Sekai Project either way, but denying me a reserved seat at their Anime Expo 2015 panel soured me a bit towards them.

[littleshogun]

To OP here, might I suggest to put a poll here? Although the winner was Mangagamer, but I also saw that some people here also choose Sekai and JAST. Thanks in advance.

[solidbatman]

17 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

If I recall correctly, the topic was asking for impressions and not unbiased arguments to convince others.  People like others who like them.  Is that so surprising?  Are you somehow an exception to this basic rule of human nature?

I really am sorry you didn't get your reserved seat  But hey, at least you could go right?

I'm also sorry, but it angers me to see a statement made of such entitlement. I should have just not bothered typing anything and leaving this a happy little topic but w/e. 

[Dergonu]

4 hours ago, Rooke said:

MG save their big announcements for AnimeExpo, I think? A lot of people tend to know this.

Yes, actually I believe they straight up said that at their panel when someone asked about new possible licenses. 

[kingdomcome]

7 hours ago, Rooke said:

and have only recently stopped being focused mainly on nukige.

This is why I started liking them a lot more, probably my favorite now. They also release heaps of hard copies.

[SilverLi]

Hmm that's hard. Mangagamer is probably my favorite at the moment. JAST are slow but whenever they release titles I think they are of quality most of the time. If they would be a little more active and perhaps announcing something and giving us some insight on what's on the radar for the next year I would be happy. I have no idea what's to come after that Sonico game.

But pros with MG:

-They are releasing some controversy titles and unusual titles

- Alicesoft partnership (waiting for that next Alicesoft announcement)

- They are releasing games on a frequent basis, I think they have released 10 games since the 23th of December. And the mix of different titles are huge: 

Gaktun Lightning, No One But you, Nukige (soon 3 titles), Kindred Spirit, Beat Blades Haruka, Tokyo Babel, House in Fata Morgana, Ozmafia, Club Life and Magical Eyes. No matter your taste you should be interested in something here.

- Overall a good support. They are listening to the customer. 

Cons:

- The security of the website. A lot of stupid things and leaking of information.

- Because their open view on nukiges they had some complications with the payment process.

- Because of their huge variety and interest of different genres the possibility of future releases of your liking could be smaller.

[VirginSmasher]

39 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Yes, actually I believe they straight up said that at their panel when someone asked about new possible licenses. 

I guess I can look forward to AX then. 

[Decay]

Most of the reservations people have with Sekai Project I have no qualms with, such as their use of crowdfunding. SP has licensed some interesting stuff recently, and are actually pretty transparent as of late, answering pretty much any question that comes their way with a good degree of honesty. They have been licensing a string of decent looking titles, but really the biggest problem is that outside of the Grisaia series, they all just seem decent, nothing more. Wagahigh, Chrono Clock, Maitetsu (well, I'm not a lolicon so that's to be expected), their Hoshimemo retranslation, 2236 looks interesting but I'm not sure I'm sold on it, and so on. Also their translation quality hasn't exactly been stellar.

MangaGamer has released some really great stuff lately, however, and have done a fantastic job translating it. Kara no Shoujo 2, Gahkthun, Tokyo Babel, and Fata Morgana are all great VNs with excellent translations. Purely from a results standpoint, I'll have to go with MangaGamer here. I really hope they keep things up with their polished localization efforts, as they also have some pretty exciting things in the pipeline, such as Himawari. This year's announcements thus far, though? Meh. This has been a great late 2015 and early 2016 for them, but at this point 2017 is looking pretty dire.

JAST never releases anything, and when they do it's usually a disaster. I can't in good conscious call them my favorite when you consider what they released in 2015 and the state it was released in

[Suzu Fanatic]

4 hours ago, sanahtlig said:

JAST, again because of their library.  They tend to license the games I'm actually interested in, especially gameplay titles.  They also tend to promote their titles a bit better than the other publishers.

Not to mention I know people at JAST and they're genuinely interested in my feedback (and the feedback of others).  MangaGamer just regarded me as a nuisance.  I've had no significant interaction with Sekai Project either way, but denying me a reserved seat at their Anime Expo 2015 panel soured me a bit towards them.

I'd like to say Jast, but their timetable leaves me questioning how serious they take the business - if it's a side project for them, or a fulltime thing~

MG is starting to show promise, I hold them in waaay higher esteem compared to what I used to think of them, in any event. So far the most professional appearing. (never met them live though, at a panel - I've heard mixed stories).

SP...well, not to start a hate parade...I have/had hopes for them, but they still often behave like the Mirc clique they rose up from, and tend to mouth off and behave with a lack of professionalism, seen as antagonistic - not very appealing. Time will tell though, hoping it's just growing pains.

 

I want to say MikandI, because I like their style - but that's still miles off, and heavily reliant on future sales (and how vested their interest is in continuing to pursue the market).

[sanahtlig]

24 minutes ago, Suzu Fanatic said:

MG is starting to show promise, I hold them in waaay higher esteem compared to what I used to think of them, in any event. So far the most professional appearing. (never met them live though, at a panel - I've heard mixed stories).

I attended both the JAST and MangaGamer panels at AX2015.  Peter Payne gave a very polished presentation and clearly knew the games he was presenting (JAST staff seemed unfamiliar with the larger Japanese VN industry, however, and were unable to field my questions).  MangaGamer's presentation was inconsistent and highly disorganized.  Each game was presented by a different panel member, and some of them were clearly out of their league giving a professional presentation.  I wasn't particularly impressed with any of the presentations, and the whole panel felt very slapped together.  They spent undue time on forgettable titles and didn't highlight their best titles (especially recent releases).  I brought along two people who were unfamiliar with VNs, and they both agreed that JAST by far gave the better presentation even though they had fewer games to announce.

I wasn't invited to the Sekai Project panel so I'm unable to comment on that one.