Andrew Hodgson (Steiner) becomes Head of Localization at PQube - Here is his story.

[HataVNI]

I'm very happy to see that Britishman Andrew Hodgson aka Steiner, who has followed a steep career path through the localization industry and might count as one of the more visible individuals in the western localization sphere, has now been promoted to Head of Localization at PQube. If you guys are not aware, Steiner has been an important person even back in his fan translation phase and today counts as one of the most accomplished translators in the scene. I need to get some words of gratitude off my chest, so I will retell his story as much as I know while following his - hopefully updated - portfolio.

The Dark Ages of the Darkfiend

While Steiner is indeed one of the most accomplished visual novel translators nowadays, he was not always an uncontroversial figure. Veteran community people might remember some unfavourable 4chan threads of him beefing with people over Sengoku Rance's fan translation's choices leading into a breakdown of sorts. Back then, he'd gone under the name Ludo-Rathowm working on Rance related fan translations. On the Alicesoft Wiki he is credited as a fan translator for the game Little Princess from AliceSoft, together with TulipGoddess Maria and Aten Gnu.

Many years have passed and Steiner completely pushed back and converted his love for visual novels, Rance and the Science Adventure Series into a drive to provide more translations of side stories and other content to the community. He is also the guy who translated the Steins;Gate version that JAST USA released, together with Blickwinkel. His name on Twitter (DistantValhalla) actually stems from a Steins;Gate Side Story Light Novel he translated. (has a fan-made VN adaption by @NoBirdcage, too!)

The Distant Valhalla is not so distant

Beloved and an important figure in the SciADV-community, he provided a lot of side material translations for them. Among his projects was a rumored - but effectively open secret - translation project of a game that was long believed to keep remain victim of futile localization efforts: Chaos;Head NoAH. The translation of the game that he did was supposedly held back by MAGES. non-compliance and stalled because the game was quoteunquote "too old". Afterwards, he moved on to greener pastures. Namely, Visual Novels and Light Novels in official capacity with Sol Press and J-Novel Club. Around the time when I got into the scene, Steiner was already working for Sol Press LLC., on Ryuukishi07's Harem Royale (Manga) and Why should a detestable Demon Lord fall in Love?! volumes, but never finished them due to Sol Press being a joke of a company. Sol Press's demise came swift, but is not part of this article.

Valkyrie Drive: BoobhiKuni

2015 was his second official video game project called Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkuni which has unfortunately never seen the light in Germany/Australia because it had been banned. So after Steins;Gate, he got hired for a super raunchy project next. Why is this important? Well, it marked the time when he started working for PQube. 

Inside the Trichiliocosm of the Divine 

In 2016 there is another big project that still creates ripples till today: Dies Irae. This project was done by multiple translators of which Steiner did Marie's Route and Common Route, I believe. Why do I know this? Well, later more. His partners were people like the late Conjueror, Qaenyin, Garejei and J. Hooper. To this day, the game is beloved and cherished by most of the community (except a couple folks who don't know what an "extra" is) - but I digress. Either way, Dies Irae: Amantes Amentes was completed and followed two years later by the spin-off Dies Irae: - Interview with Kaziklu Bey-, a story that tells Dies Irae villains' Wilhelm Ehrenburg's backstory.

Setting a foot into the J-Novel Club

2017 marks another change in Steiner's portfolio. He started doing multiple Light Novel series that are STILL ongoing to this day. Among them Patora Fuyuhara's "In Another World with my Smartphone" and Sakon Kaidou's "Infinite Dendrogram". These Light Novel series were his humble beginnings with J-Novel Club, the localization company he still works at like a madman to this day.

A game that will never see the light of day

On the 29th of November 2017 Steiner announced a secret project at PQube, a very titty titty game called Omega Labyrinth Z (Z stands for maximum cup size, yes) which unfortunately got axed by 25th of June 2018. Yes, axed. Indefinitely. The game did not see an English release in the west to this day and will not do so.

Our World is flopped

In 2018 he translated "Our World is Ended" for PQube. This game carries low reputation among games that PQube localized. People seem to not vibe with the game's over-the-top content, the sexual innuendo and general silliness of the cast and how a bunch of characters just feel like Steins;Gate characters if you dropshipped them from China. Either way, the translation also couldn't save the game (imo). On the light novel side he began work on the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: The Wayward Journey light novels, which hit their closure in 2020 and could be then checked off as his first dropped light novel series.

More Projects, give me all the Projects!

2019 was a big productive year for Steiner and it kind of showed that this man either has magnificent time management skills or he just works his ass off unhealthily. Games like Baldr Sky, with a long history (of failure) in the VN scene, he completed at Sekai Project. Baldr Sky is an approximately 120-hour game with intense mecha-fight gameplay sections, science fiction vocab up the ass and a lot of technobabble, so very tough to translate even if another Andrew states otherwise.

In the same year, he also completed Raging Loop for PQube, a werewolf-like folklore setting game with a mystery plot and murder and shock here and there. Lastly, there is also the start of his work on another medium for side materials: Artbooks, one is Dragon's Crown: Official Artworks and the other Shigenori Soejima & P-Studio Art Unit: Art Works II (a Persona series artbook).

Carrying on the Scepter

In 2019, a sad event disrupted Steiner's life, which is the suicide of his fellow Dies Irae translator and great friend Conjueror. Conjueror, who was known as one of the key translators to MangaGamer, Fruitbat Factory and SekaiProject left behind several projects unfinished and it was Steiner's job to carry on his legacy and finish translating the games. This began with SeaBed, Seven Days and closed with Mamiya - A Shared Illusion of the World's End - all of which have been translated and released in 2020 and 2021. Nevermind, there is still Rewrite+, but later more about that.

When Dies Irae: Interview with Kaziklu Bey was released, another special stage in Steiner's life began. After his participation in Dies Irae's localization he eventually got in charge of the western PR account for the eroge company "light". He had a lot of fun tweeting there, but Kaziklu Bey was not exactly a bestseller. And when it rains it pours. Because light (or their mother company Greenwood Ltd. had to close their doors, the short English light PR saga ended as quickly as it began. Don't do Gacha, kids.

(2020 was so full of productivity though and if I get the timeline wrong, then the fact he doesn't write "[Beginning year - ongoing] on his profile page is to blame... well, here goes!)

More work and some VTuber thingy

In 2020 there was also a short interlude with an anime game project - which is uncommon for him. He worked on the game Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris for Bandai Namco. Also he quickly finished his part in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Isekai which is a meme novel in reference to the Douglas Adams book. Around here, he also stopped working on Orphen, did the artbook Mikulife: KEI's Hatsune Miku Illustration Works and finished his work on My Dad's the Queen of All VTubers, a very zeitgeist-supporting manga series that dropped right when the VTuber craze began. He also picked up Loner Life in Another World and Shed that Skin, Ryugasaki-san! with Kaiten Books.

From Ludo-Rathowm to T(rance)lation Darkfiend.

MangaGamer took many years to release Rance Quest and people were guessing what would happen to the rest of the Rance series after previous translator Arunaru (familiar face, huh...) dropped out of MangaGamer's ranks with a manifesto trashing the company and leaving the projects behind. Steiner then got appointed to the helm and they announced him to be the translator for Rance X, the BIGGEST video game script of all time. But how did he even get into this position? Well, next to his experience and passion for the series he officially translated the artbook for Sengoku Rance that MangaGamer added to their Sengoku Rance Limited Editions. 

He still works on Rance X to this day (currently 52% finished translating) and will probably keep doing it for at least 2 more years. Unless he discovers cocaine.

WWX and putting a lid on Conjueror's legacy.

In 2021, after DMM's controversial Johren Store had opened its gates, he was one of the several people working on the PC-Client-Gacha-Eroge Eiyu Senki: WWX (Eiyu Senki: War Wonder). Unfortunately, this fame lasted only a short while because this game had been axed already a year later and is now unaccessible for everyone - unless you know some tricks. Either way, the game was massive, with a lot of character quirks and uniqueness in the script. (I'm one of the ppl who worked on Eiyu Senki GOLD and people like translator Bango helped them working on WWX which meant that a lot of character quirks and terminologies had to be made consistent across games.) A great challenge!

Here he also finished Mamiya - A Shared Illusion of the World's End - the last Conjueror title- which I already mentioned earlier. But this was did not mark the end of Conjueror projects yet, because during his lifetime he also worked on Rewrite Plus for Sekai Project. After his death, Steiner was put in charge of finishing Rewrite Plus together with Meru, another known translation scene individual. In 2021, he got also put in charge of Steins;Gate Zero's Manga and the Street Fighter Memorial Archive: Beyond the World.

Evenicle II Drama & Chuunige.

In 2022, there were the veeeeery delayed releases of Evenicle II and Hello Lady!

Evenicle II became entangled in a lot of drama which began with Alicesoft taking matters in their own hands and straying from MangaGamer in order to pursue a self-publishing effort that was quickly reprimanded by half the community and members of the publishing industry, too. The self-publishing venture was first announced in 2020 with Standstill, Steiner and Quof being in charge of the localization. The release was preceded by a cool demo called Clinical Trial Edition, but already had to be censored indefinitely, due to kids boning in a flashback. This shouldn't have remained the only roadblock though, because Steam soon banned Evenicle II entirely. For two years, the game was kept in limbo until it found a storefront (or all of them.) in 2022. The game released in a completely healthy state, but somehow not many people talk about it at all. Maybe because it is overshadowed by the first one?

The chuunige I mention is Hello Lady, a localization that Steiner made for NekoNyan since 2018. This game deals with a lot of military vocabulary and rich people. The protagonist is an absolute dork poser complemented by his cynical downer-kei maid. You had to get a lot of characters voices right for this game and this proved another challenge to overcome.

Striving towards Head of Publishing

In 2022 a couple of non-VN related games like Maglam Lord, Metal Max Xeno: Reborn and Super Bullet Break were released. For the latter he was actually appointed as Localization Lead! Later the same month, he also finished the My Dad's the Queen of All VTubers?! Manga and the Steins;Gate 0 one also found its closure. There's also the release of the last artbook he has listed on his site: the Rance Quest: Magnum Booklet that was part of the hardcopy content. The newest Manga he is working on is Tokyo Interstellar Immigration, by VAST_Visual, JAST USA's Manga publishing arm.

What will the future bring?

So, what do we have now in the future? It looks like that Steiner still has multiple unannounced projects while he is chipping away at Rance X slowly and also deals with Rewrite: Harvest Festa. Among his visual novel projects there are still two unannounced ones of which I don't have a clue which they could be. There is also another artbook that is yet unannounced.

So, why did I do this?

You could think now, well Hata... what's the point? You simply told us what his projects are and added some additional trivia... What is it to you? Well, you could say I'm feeling a bit indebted to Steiner because during my rather dark times last year where I was really not feeling VNs and generally got tangled up into a lot of trouble that made me anxious for the first time in my life (getting fired from JAST, more and more ppl accusing me of things I had never done and obviously my year-long feud with Gambs).

When I talked to him about a possibly fake screenshot which people wanted to gaslight me with, he gave me very encouraging words and planted one of the first seeds for my reformed state. But warm words were not enough, because after asking some of my contacts at JAST I actually learned that he was the one who vouched for me to have reformed which allowed me back on the JAST USA Discord and some other places I was banned from. And for that, I just needed to express my gratitude. I wouldn't be here (in the scene, no worries!) anymore without him. 

Hopefully, he'll help bringing over great games in the future.