Jump to content

ChuSinGura 46+1: Is it worth it?


voidpointer

Recommended Posts

Between people I've talked to and one particular thread I've read parts of, I'm getting mixed signals about the quality of this VN. The biggest complaint I've heard is the censorship.

Does anyone have an opinion on the TL of ChuSinGura? VNDB shows 17+ and 18+ all over the place, I'm not sure what to think. Scores are high, so I feel pretty confident I'd be interested in the story. Just not sure if I should put money down on it if the TL work was shoddy (especially if there's rampant censorship at MoeNovel levels).

Would appreciate recommendations and thoughts from others.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scores are high because the game is fantastic.

Sadly, the TL is absolute hot trash. The English release was censored, cutting out all H-scenes, + all the lewd jokes and nude CGs, sprites and so on. The translation also completely ruins the good writing. It's close to Moenovel level.

(As an example, in the beginning of the game, Suguha is woken up by three young girls poking his penis. No CGs and no sprites of this is shown in the original, it's just narration of it, so it should be "safe for steam", and yet this part was just completely cut out in the TL. Instead you just have them pinching him once or twice in places not specified, then the scene ends.)

Any kind of lewd joke etc, which happens a LOT in this game, has been cut out from what I could tell. Basically Moenovel level stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, voidpointer said:

Between people I've talked to and one particular thread I've read parts of, I'm getting mixed signals about the quality of this VN. The biggest complaint I've heard is the censorship.

Does anyone have an opinion on the TL of ChuSinGura? VNDB shows 17+ and 18+ all over the place, I'm not sure what to think. Scores are high, so I feel pretty confident I'd be interested in the story. Just not sure if I should put money down on it if the TL work was shoddy (especially if there's rampant censorship at MoeNovel levels).

Would appreciate recommendations and thoughts from others.

 

It's an abomination, sadly.  Even setting aside censorship, the translation and the grammar of the writing is pure shit.  It feels at times like it was written by a third-grader.

Edit: The original material was great though.

Edited by Clephas
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are two issues to consider about the English release of Chusingura: The translation and the cut content.

If you're sensitive to weak translations then this could be a real problem for you. Personally I found it readable, but I'm also not particular damanding in that regard. I care more about 'what' and less about 'how' it's written. It would be also a bit hypocritical for me to complain, considering I'm reading Japanese VN's with a text hooker and what they spit out is certainly much worse than that.

But the first chaper of Chusingura is free on Steam, so you can also just give it a try.

The second issue is the cut content. Usually I'm not too happy about that, but in Chusingura's case I was actually fine with it, because the content isn't just some vanilla H-scenes, there's also hardcore stuff like bestiality which might no be to everyones taste and certainly not mine. Besides that, whenever the game got even close to sexual related stuff and jokes, it was usually at its worst, so I can't really say that I miss that content. The strengths of Chusingura certainly lie in other areas: story, action, atmosphere and characters. If you care about H-content there are certainly much better titles than this.

I can understand the dissatisfaction to play something incomplete though. It's a pity that they didn't release at least an unofficial patch that re-adds the missing content. Though you should be aware that the missing content doesn't necessarily make the game better for you.

Edited by ChaosRaven
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ChaosRaven said:

I can understand the dissatisfaction to play something incomplete though. It's a pity that they didn't release at least an unofficial patch that re-adds the missing content. Though you should be aware that the missing content doesn't necessarily make the game better for you.

The problem is though, it would make the game better. The issue is not the H content that was removed. Fair enough, some people don't care about that. That's fine. The problem is though, that the lewd jokes, sexual humor, nude sprites and so on in ChuSinGura is riddled all over the game, even in scenes with important plot developments. When you go into the game and pick out all of these parts, you are slowly but surely picking out pieces of dialogue and narration that's meant to be there in the first place. Things that aren't meant to be removed at all.

After picking the game clean of naked sprites, sexual jokes, bath scenes and all the other content they removed, you are most likely looking at hours worth of reading time gone from the game. If this content was literally just H-scenes, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but the issue is that what is cut is mostly dialogue and narration that's actually relevant to the story most of the time. That's how well integrated the sexual humor is in this game, and that's why removing/ re-writing all of it harms the integrity of the original writing. Like in the example I made above, in that one short scene alone, you already lose a decent chunk of lines that was meant to introduce you to Sayo, Muku and Kinu. Sure, you get more details about them later, but do you see the problem? When this is repeated over and over and over, you start to lose important information, and it just keeps snowballing.

Sure, no one really cares if a boob joke was cut out. But, by re-writing or cutting the lines around those jokes every time they occur, tons of relevant content gets lost in the process.
(And the reason a patch was never made, is because the company who handled this terrible TL actually went out of their way to edit these parts, Moenovel style. Even though they were working off what was already an "all-ages port", by Japanese standards, they still edited it heavily.) They had an all-ages port, but still fucked it up. Good job, guys.

And that's the problem. (On top of the terrible TL that butchers the writing, the bad engine and so on.)

Honestly just a terrible, terrible localization.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

Like in the example I made above, in that one short scene alone, you already lose a decent chunk of lines that was meant to introduce you to Sayo, Muku and Kinu.

I guess it's open to each individual interpretation, if abusing a bunch of little kids for some cheap sexual jokes contributes to or... lowers their characterization. <_<

The thing is, it still took me about 116 (!!!) hours to finish Chusingura despite its cut content. So there was certainly more than enough time to teach me the basics. VN's are the entertainment media with the by far biggest amount of excess information I know of - their ratio of plain filler text to actual relevant information is usually about ten times higher than in any other media. Usually you can even skip huge parts and still don't loose any relevant information because it's either just slice of life filler text or dozens of times repeated afterwards. We're talking VN's not theoretic algebra where you have to know group theory inside out to even have a chance to understand the concept of galois groups.

I'd go so far to say that about 50% of VN's I've read would have been twice as good with half as much text - the biggest offenders being slice of life heavy VN's. That's not to say that slice of life would be a bad thing - I even consider it a very important part for characterization and relationship development. It's just like eating a few chocolate bars tastes great while having to eat 4 kg of it will make you puke.

So I certainly agree that everyone should be given the choice to experience a translation as close as possible to the original, but I don't agree that it's a bad thing to give readers at least the choice to experience a work with questionable content altered. You're very open to questionable content of sexual nature, but many are not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

So I certainly agree that everyone should be given the choice to experience a translation as close as possible to the original, but I don't agree that it's a bad thing to give readers at least the choice to experience a work with questionable content altered. You're very open to questionable content of sexual nature, but many are not.

But... then you're reading the wrong type of games. This particular work has tons of this, and it's meant to be there. That's the author's intent. Having it removed isn't a good thing, that's just plain censorship. If you don't like it, you can skip it, but saying it being removed is a good thing is just endorsing censorship. Having an option to remove it on the side of the original is fine, I guess, but that's not what we have here. We have censorship, simple as that. It's cut, removing parts of the story the author wanted to convey.

Your point that VNs contains lots of trivial information, therefore removing some of it is fine is also flawed. Ok, so there is information one can go without knowing. Does that mean people are okay with it being removed, just because? NO! You shouldn't be okay with a game having big chunks of information cut out, just because you can live without it. If you don't like parts of a game, that's fine, but that doesn't mean it's okay for companies to cut out these parts of the game. People want the original, not a chopped up version that butchers the author's work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Dergonu said:

But... then you're reading the wrong type of games. This particular work has tons of this, and it's meant to be there. That's the author's intent. Having it removed isn't a good thing, that's just plain censorship.

Am I? *Shrugs* I think you can't read Japanese VN's without dealing with censorship, since every Japanese VN with adult contents has mosaics and is therefore censored. Do I like it? No, of course not! But I don't really have a choice, have I?! The Japanese also alter their VN's by cutting out content the whole time to be able to release it on consoles. And I'm pretty damn sure that Inre was both aware and okay that NextNinja had to alter content for Steam. They might not be responsible for the translation issues but they definitely take part of the guilt for the cuts. So if you want to blame anyone for the cuts, then blame Inre and their great writer Hayama Coyote, who apparently doesn't care at all about the altering of his works as long as the money is right.

And I absolutely don't think that the released works are always what the authors really wanted to write. It's obvious that many VN's try to fullfill an 'H-quota' to increase sales. I've read too many VN's with absolutely nonesensical and unfitting H-scenes to even remotely believe that. And there are also release dates to apply where VN's have to be released in pretty much 'any condition'. I know several Japanese companies who stick to strict annual release dates - and it shows. A writer can also make mistakes just like a programmer or any person - just that his mistakes aren't called bugs - they are called plot holes, inconsistent writing, etc. And then there are VN's with multiple writers and their inconsistencies between them

And just take the case Dies Irae. Apparently the original work wasn't so great after all, then other authors modified it and then the original author Masada again. And most people say the later Amentes amentes version is the best version even if it's the one with the H content removed. So what exactly is the 'original' and 'best' work, the first one or the reworked one, and which reworked one?

But yeah, I guess you can discuss those things all day. The gist of it is still that you somehow have to deal with and tolerate censorship if you're into visual novels, regardless if you're reading translated or untranslated ones. Otherwise you have to boycott the whole industry.

Edited by ChaosRaven
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll just add, as someone who also read ChuSinGura in Japanese and loved it, that what I did was look at the Steam reviews and ask myself, "Of the people who read the localization, did they love it for the same reasons as people who played it in Japanese? Did they praise it just as much?" And the answer is... yes.

ChuSinGura may have a problematic translation, but what matters to many people is whether it's readable without being significantly disconcerting, and whether it conveys the greatness of ChuSinGura. Bar machine translated crap or glitches that make a game unplayable, most translations accomplish this, and ChuSinGura was no exception.

So the bottom line is that if you're not planning to learn Japanese anytime soon (which is definitely an option, because the difficulty of ChuSinGura is overrated, you'll get used to the antiquated inflections) and you want to play a truly epic, intellectual, hotblooded emotional rollercoaster of a VN, you should play ChuSinGura, because you will probably really enjoy it.

ChuSinGura is basically Muv-Luv Alternative set in Edo Japan. It has a pseudo-non-virgin heroine (she has a daughter, yet the writer deliberately never mentioned the father so it's like he doesn't exist), was from a completely unknown brand, and is full of competent heroines who constantly show up or berate the protagonist, yet despite that it only barely didn't win 2ch's yearly best eroge poll for 2013 (it lost to Navel's fanbase) and has an extremely high rating on EGS, in the past 5 years it's second only to Sakura no Uta when you consider the combination of sample size and median. The only legitimate reasons to not try the localization are that you're extremely peculiar and cannot make yourself ignore the localization's problems, you already know or plan to learn Japanese, you're just getting into VNs and have yet to run out of better ones, or reading VNs is purely a social activity for you and you don't think your Fuwanovel friends will approve of you reading a censored localization--otherwise why the hell would anyone overlook this knowing how big a hit it is?

Edited by MayoeruHitori
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, WinterfuryZX said:

98% of the time porn is added only to please the audience and the author either doesn't give a fuck about it or deliberately hate it. Notable exception are SCaJi works.

The author intent argument always sounded as complete bullshit to me.

Have you even looked at this game lol

At least 50% of the non h-cgs include nudity to some degree, plus super frequent bath scenes so they can show all the female characters naked constantly, and if that wasn't enough they created a fandisk for the game just for the sake of letting you fuck 10-15 more girls than in the original. 

I really doubt they'd do all this (especially in a very story-focused game) unless they wanted to. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Chuee said:

Have you even looked at this game lol

At least 50% of the non h-cgs include nudity to some degree, plus super frequent bath scenes so they can show all the female characters naked constantly, and if that wasn't enough they created a fandisk for the game just for the sake of letting you fuck 10-15 more girls than in the original. 

I really doubt they'd do all this (especially in a very story-focused game) unless they wanted to. 

This, lol. I don't think people realize how much of this is actually in game. 

I'm not saying people can't enjoy the game without this content, but it will without a doubt have some effect on the product in the end when it is all just pulled out forcefully. 

Of course people like the game for the same reasons when reading the bad TL. Even with a terrible TL, the game is fantastic. That doesn't change. The issue is still that the bad TL and the content cutting removes lots of stuff that's meant to be there, and this definitely has a negative impact in the final product.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Chuee said:

Have you even looked at this game lol

At least 50% of the non h-cgs include nudity to some degree, plus super frequent bath scenes so they can show all the female characters naked constantly, and if that wasn't enough they created a fandisk for the game just for the sake of letting you fuck 10-15 more girls than in the original. 

I really doubt they'd do all this (especially in a very story-focused game) unless they wanted to. 

Yeah, they wanted to boost sales, otherwise the game would have bombed.

JiVi6IH.png?1

Edited by WinterfuryZX
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Chuee said:

Have you even looked at this game lol

At least 50% of the non h-cgs include nudity to some degree, plus super frequent bath scenes so they can show all the female characters naked constantly, and if that wasn't enough they created a fandisk for the game just for the sake of letting you fuck 10-15 more girls than in the original. 

I really doubt they'd do all this (especially in a very story-focused game) unless they wanted to. 

Non-adult PC games (VNs) generally don't sell very well in Japan.  Having adult scenes is expected by the fanbase, and NOT having them will result in a large portion of your potential market ignoring you product.  So whether Iren wanted to have them or not, they were basically required to have them.  Same thing with the fandisk - the fans wanted to screw the rest of the cast, so those sex scenes had to be forced in there.  But if you notice, the vast majority of the fan disk wasn't sex scenes... it told a strong story covering a questionable plot whole from the original game without sex scenes for the dozen+ new characters.

 

On ‎2017‎年‎12‎月‎28‎日 at 6:38 AM, Dergonu said:

The problem is though, it would make the game better. The issue is not the H content that was removed. Fair enough, some people don't care about that. That's fine. The problem is though, that the lewd jokes, sexual humor, nude sprites and so on in ChuSinGura is riddled all over the game, even in scenes with important plot developments. When you go into the game and pick out all of these parts, you are slowly but surely picking out pieces of dialogue and narration that's meant to be there in the first place. Things that aren't meant to be removed at all.

After picking the game clean of naked sprites, sexual jokes, bath scenes and all the other content they removed, you are most likely looking at hours worth of reading time gone from the game. If this content was literally just H-scenes, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but the issue is that what is cut is mostly dialogue and narration that's actually relevant to the story most of the time. That's how well integrated the sexual humor is in this game, and that's why removing/ re-writing all of it harms the integrity of the original writing. Like in the example I made above, in that one short scene alone, you already lose a decent chunk of lines that was meant to introduce you to Sayo, Muku and Kinu. Sure, you get more details about them later, but do you see the problem? When this is repeated over and over and over, you start to lose important information, and it just keeps snowballing.

Sure, no one really cares if a boob joke was cut out. But, by re-writing or cutting the lines around those jokes every time they occur, tons of relevant content gets lost in the process.
(And the reason a patch was never made, is because the company who handled this terrible TL actually went out of their way to edit these parts, Moenovel style. Even though they were working off what was already an "all-ages port", by Japanese standards, they still edited it heavily.) They had an all-ages port, but still fucked it up. Good job, guys.

And that's the problem. (On top of the terrible TL that butchers the writing, the bad engine and so on.)

Honestly just a terrible, terrible localization.

The localization is terrible.  Fortunately, you can get the Japanese text and voices through the Steam version.

However, as I've said before and I will say again, there is exactly ONE adult scene in the entire game where the adult content is related to the story at all.  In every other scene, you could remove the adult parts without losing much.  In that one scene, the surrounding content was re-written a little to include some of what was in the adult scene, so you still get the gist of it. 

Unfortunately, they didn't do that for some of the slice-of-life nudity.  Does losing that bath scene mean that Sayo and the other children are missing some character development?  Sure.  But does that character development matter to the story?  Not in the least.  Same with the rest of it.

The 'censorship' isn't the problem with the English release of ChuSinGura.  The translation is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

2 hours ago, Toranth said:

Non-adult PC games (VNs) generally don't sell very well in Japan.  Having adult scenes is expected by the fanbase, and NOT having them will result in a large portion of your potential market ignoring you product.  So whether Iren wanted to have them or not, they were basically required to have them.  Same thing with the fandisk - the fans wanted to screw the rest of the cast, so those sex scenes had to be forced in there.  But if you notice, the vast majority of the fan disk wasn't sex scenes... it told a strong story covering a questionable plot whole from the original game without sex scenes for the dozen+ new characters.

Plenty of companies get by perfectly fine with 1/2 h-scenes per heroine in their games. If Inre didn't want to include a ton of sex scenes in their game, they didn't have to. Remember, the requirement only says that you have to have sex scenes, it never says anything about quantity, or nudity in normal CGs. 

But that's beside the point. Stop claiming to know what the creators did or didn't want to do. This idea that you're throwing around, that these people hate sex scenes put only put them in because they're forced to is dumb. This industry has been around in Japan for 20+ years, and a lot of the people creating these games are actual fans themselves. It's not such a silly idea that, maybe these people actually enjoy stuff like that... It's certainly why you see so many prolific illustrators in the scene constantly making porn doujins for comiket. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Chuee said:

But that's beside the point. Stop claiming to know what the creators did or didn't want to do. This idea that you're throwing around, that these people hate sex scenes put only put them in because they're forced to is dumb. This industry has been around in Japan for 20+ years, and a lot of the people creating these games are actual fans themselves. It's not such a silly idea that, maybe these people actually enjoy stuff like that... It's certainly why you see so many prolific illustrators in the scene constantly making porn doujins for comiket. 

While nobody can say for sure if Inre wanted H-scenes or not, there are examples that show that some companies were definitely forced to include H-scenes.

Let me tell you a little Christmas tale about a company called Minori who tried to release a title without H-scenes. :angel:

The name of the VN was Supipara, and initially they only released two chapters of the originally planned five, but it sold so badly that they almost went bankrupt of it. In a desperate action to survive, they cancelled the last three chapters and put all their remaining money into the infamous Natsuzora no Perseus which they made so full of high quality ero scenes that the title even won the Getchu Ero-award in that year. And we're talking about a company that was originally known for tragic utsuge VN's with very minor H-content - but they still managed to beat every professional nukige company for that award.

But it worked, the title sold great and Minori was back in business. And from then on, every following Minori title had a decent amount of H-scenes to satisfy even the biggest libido. ^_^

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, WinterfuryZX said:

Chusingura has 1-3 sex scenes per chapter. The fanservice is a bit heavy nude bath scenes, ridiculous outfits and such, but "ton of sex scenes" is definitely an overstatement.

Not including the sex scenes with side characters in the main game, or the ridiculous amount of nudity in non h-cgs, and overtly sexual nature in the game as a whole. Just to put this into context, this is the game where a "funny scene" consists of an eel accidentally finding it's way inside your little sister's vagina while she's playing in the river, or a loli emperor who's only pastime is having nonstop sex with dogs. Do you really think they added all this stuff because they felt 'required' to lmao 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Toranth said:

Non-adult PC games (VNs) generally don't sell very well in Japan.  Having adult scenes is expected by the fanbase, and NOT having them will result in a large portion of your potential market ignoring you product.  So whether Iren wanted to have them or not, they were basically required to have them.  Same thing with the fandisk - the fans wanted to screw the rest of the cast, so those sex scenes had to be forced in there.  But if you notice, the vast majority of the fan disk wasn't sex scenes... it told a strong story covering a questionable plot whole from the original game without sex scenes for the dozen+ new characters.

Absolutely. But, like both me and Chueee have said several times, the amount of H-content* and the way it is used in this game is very different from your normal "we gotta add some H guys!" content.

* H-content being any type of 18+ scene in this case, and not just H-scenes.

I swear, Magodayuu is naked more than not in the game. At least 50% of the non-H CGs in game still have nudity. The sexual humor used in the game is clearly intentional and not forced, and most of the time it is genuinely hilarious.

It's absolutely true that Japanese VNs sell better with H, and that is therefore a big reason many devs add it in their games. But, like we keep saying, that's not the case for ChuSinGura.

2 minutes ago, Chuee said:

Not including the sex scenes with side characters in the main game, or the ridiculous amount of nudity in non h-cgs, and overtly sexual nature in the game as a whole. Just to put this into context, this is the game where a "funny scene" consists of an eel accidentally finding it's way inside your little sister's vagina while she's playing in the river, or a loli emperor who's only pastime is having nonstop sex with dogs. Do you really think they added all this stuff because they felt 'required' to lmao 

^ This, lol. I get what people are saying, as it is true for many VNs. But for this particular VN, the content in question was not added just because.

There are literally scenes where Suguha breaks the 4th wall and talks to the reader during bath scenes, and sometimes his penis turns into a person and literally speaks to him. I could list silly examples all day, but it's pretty obvious that the writers had a fun time putting this stuff into the game. (I mean, they took the "dog shogun", one of the most important historical characters at the time, and literally made her into a dog fucking loli. Come on, do you need more than that?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...