We at MangaGamer are proud to announce that Cum on! Bukkake Ranch! ~Rear Elementals Into Wet, Horny Girls!~ is now up for pre-orders!

Cum on down to the peaceful Bukkake Ranch, a good old farm out and away from all the commotion and hubbub of the town, a place where you can relax and enjoy a quiet life with your four elementals: the salamander girl, Sara, the slime girl, Myil, the kobold, Korin, and the harpy, Papy. Life is good on the farm when you don’t have to worry about heroes running around and getting themselves killed by some Demon Queen who decided to take over the land. Besides, her rule’s no worse than the last King who decided to run the country, and none of that matters to a simple farmer like yourself.

That is, until she shows up your front lawn, blasting your fence to pieces and trampling your crops as her army marches to see you. But what does she want with you? She wants you to create the Slut’s Stone–a legendary item that she hopes will finally give her big breasts.

Well, shucks. Have sex with the elementals or watch the Demon Queen burn your ranch to ashes? Nope, not a hard decision to make there – especially not when all the girls seem excited about it. Looks like you’ll be enjoying a few rolls in the hay before harvesting this year. Better get to work! You’ve got hard days ahead, and those girls aren’t going to pop out a Slut’s Stone by themselves!

Can you guess each girl’s sexual archetype?

Today’s Babbles are brought to you from NekoBabbles!

I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up here.  As a longtime friend of Kouryuu and another beta tester, I had been a booth bunny and helped out with MangaGamer previously at Otakon.  My exposure to visual novels consisted of Kara No Shoujo and Deardrops.  So, of course, when I was asked to beta test, I figured it would be fun.

….. I need better friends.

Eroge!  Sex and Games Make Sexy Games! has a cute title screen.  The gameplay is fairly straightforward and the choices for each girl happen a few times through the game to generate an ending for the girl you favor most.  CGs are nice and graphic with some strange Japanese fetishes I did not know existed.

STORYTIME –

You play as Mochizuki Tomoya, who has this dream of making hentai visual novels after fapping off to them your whole life.  In fact, you are so competent on your eroge that you have a line where you brag about your mental encyclopedia of hentai games.  As a failure in almost everything else in life, you stumble upon this flyer for an eroge company called “Flower”, where you land yourself an interview.

Maybe they do job interviews differently in Japan?

Well, in any case, you land this job as a public relations officer and website designer only to realize… you don’t get paid.  As a completely logical man, you decide that it is worth it to work with four attractive women in a tiny room that looks like it is used for shady dealings- Oh wait.

The more you become acquainted with your estrogen-blooming co-workers, the more you realize that they don’t know anything about how to make good hentai games.  As the only human in the office with an actual penis, you “sacrifice” yourself as reference material to teach them about sex.

Let the CG gallery fill up begin!

After I had become committed to being a beta tester, I was told that there were a lot of sex scenes in the full game.  THERE ARE OVER 50+ SEX SCENES IN THIS GAME.   We have fetishes of all sorts that cover masturbation, consensual rape (?!), bondage, cosplay, swimsuits, cheating sex, and of course, regular sex with modification twists for each character.  Every other mouse click was a naked scene.  These scenes were twice as long as the text and, surprisingly, a lot happens in each one to keep your mind occupied.  The more committed you become to one girl, the more you learn about her sexual prowess personality.  For a virgin, Mochizuki-kun’s awesome penis makes women come multiple times in one session (unrealistic expectation of men strikes again!).

As I mentioned before, the game allows you to have choice selections of the girls you want to experience in the first half of the storyline.  After that, the only choices you make are where you will shoot your multiple loads on the screen.  With some pretty graphics and love-music, combined with the VA’s work on making many, many erotic sounds through your speakers, Eroge appeals to your most basic instincts in a visually appealing way.

Placing aside the sex scenes, the in-between interactions that you have with each character are also very amusing.  There are instances where you are verbally and physically abused by the women you come in contact with mixed in with the invisible AXE-like attraction every girl has to you.  However, once you become an official couple, you two are very committed to each other- with a possible twist.  This twist will result in you progressing in a Bad Ending or Good Ending.

Overall, this game was enjoyable (though I was getting tired of the moaning coming from my computer every night).  Did you know that this game also has a two episode OVA?

TL;DR

1)  Lots of sex.

2)  Positive progression of relationships (mostly).

3)  Learn about how hentai visual novel industries work.

4)  More sex.

Today we’re introducing the gameplay in Bukkake Ranch–item creation!

As you play the game, you have a chance to act during morning, noon, and night. During each period, you’re free to choose whether to visit one of the three areas around the ranch, train your elementals in sex, create items, or rest. The three areas you can visit are Pussy Lake, Penis Woods, and Boob Mountain. Each area offers different types of items for you to gather, such as Big Boob Stones, Penishrooms, Labial Oysters, etc. You choose which of the four girls you wish to gather items with when you visit the area, and that affects which items you acquire. For example, you won’t find Flat Chest Stones at Boob Mountain unless you take flat little Korin with you. These trips are also important since they allow you to build up stores of Jizz as well (Jizz being a key ingredient needed to perform every item synthesis).

If you choose to train your elementals, you will then select which girl to train, and in which area. The menu will display each girl along with a number next to each area, indicating how much Jizz you’ve expended on her training thus far. By expending more Jizz on training in a specific area, you’ll progress to the next level of training in that area, with each area consisting of three levels of training. It’s important to train your elementals in every area, as each area provides different items specific to the elemental which are used to synthesize items as well, such Harpy Feathers or Salamander Spit. Also, you don’t know which area will cause the elemental to produce her eroment, a key item needed to forge the Slut’s Stone, and meet the Demon Queen’s demands.

Lastly, there’s the item synthesis itself. Here you choose which item you wish to create, select a recipe to use, and then consume various items and Jizz to create the new item. Some items are used to keep the Demon Queen happy, some are key ingredients in more powerful items, and others are special items with secret effects that help lead to a special ending!

Resting will allow you to recover your elementals’ stamina, or HP, which is spent on gathering items and training.

Then, at the end of each day, you will be visited by the Demon Queen, come to demand tribute in return for her continued patience and not destroying your ranch. Choose from the items you’ve created to offer up as tribute, with different items improving her mood by a greater amount. Of course, you do have the choice to refuse paying tribute, but this might make her angry, and who knows what she’ll do then. Another thing to keep in mind is that the longer you take to produce the Slut’s Stone, the faster her patience will start to run out.

So, now that you know the basics, it’s time to git her done!

We at MangaGamer are proud to announce that Cum on! Bukkake Ranch! ~Rear Elementals Into Wet, Horny Girls!~ is now on sale!

Ruby Striker releasing on October 25, 2013, is now up for pre-orders! We would like to share a few comments received from its enthusiastic developers!

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Hello, Konnichiwa. I am the chairman of Hentai Industries, Alamar Chinkokusai.

Hentai Industries are here to bring you the exciting and eccentric world of Japanese Hentai games featuring tentacles, body modification, crossbreeding, and bearing.

First up, we are planning to release Ruby Striker and then a title called Asuka. If they caught your interest, you can start by trying out Ruby Striker’s trial version.

What? Why is it censored?

We have to release it with mosaics for now because it is an extension of the Japanese version, but we will consider the uncensored version if there is a good demand for it! I’m sure you want to see it uncensored, right? Then please click on the “Buy Now” button to motivate us to do so!

Huh? Oops, it hasn’t been released yet, has it? But it’s right around the corner!　It goes without saying that even if you purchase it now, you can still download the uncensored version free of charge.

Hentai Industries localizes the games mainly from the site below.

http://msrush.com/top/

Since the page is in Japanese, it might be difficult to understand what it says, but if you see a game you want to see in English, please don’t hesitate to contact MangaGamer about it. We’ll be sure to read though all the requests forwarded from MangaGamer, and promise to prioritize the games that have higher demands. Also, if you could give us feedback or submit fanarts of our games, it will be an encouragement for our developers.

We hope you will have a fulfilling Hentai life with Hentai Industries’ Hentai games!

Alamar Chinkokusai

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(link NSFW)

Hi I’m Jacky, the artist.

In this work, we have pursued the filthiness of tentacles, and because it lacks erotic situation with ordinary humans, it may put off some people. But in return, it features the wildest tentacle rape that can’t be seen elsewhere. It is most recommended to people who are seeking tentacles in slimy action.

Jacky

————————

Nice to meet you, I am “assault” who wrote the story of Ruby Striker.

Ruby Striker is about doing what I want to a girl wearing a battle suit with a neck tie, using tentacles. It’s a rather honest expression about my fetish, and there are full of brutal situations that are loyal to my desire. I hope you can try it out as it features hard and dark scenes from beginning to end.

assault

————————

Hi, how are you?

My name is Ayana Sumoto.
I play the role of Ruby in Ruby Striker!

Hello everyone in the English speaking countries, I am Ayana Sumoto.
Since I heard that Ruby Striker is getting an English release, I felt that I needed to be here to say hi!

Ruby Striker is a very simple to understand tentacle rape Hentai game for tentacle fans where the heroine of justice, Ruby Striker gets such things and such things done by tentacles.

For those of you who don’t understand enough Japanese or feel that Hentai games are too expensive, sorry to make you wait! The game you were waiting for is finally here! Featuring H-scenes from beginning to end, without anything unnecessary – A role model of Hentai games, Ruby Striker!

I am on a screaming spree as Ruby Striker to the limit of my stamina!

Please look forward to its release!
Bye bye!

Ayana Sumoto

Korin wields the bug squashing mallet!

An update has been created to address some issues users have been experiencing with Bukkake Ranch. The patch changes are as follows:

1.03 Changes

- Incorrect item requirement checks on the synthesis recipes for the Year’s Supply of Boob Balls and Fluffy Helm of Wind could allow you to create the items without all the requirements, putting your item counts in the negatives. You can now only create these items if you have the proper items available.
- If you’ve managed to put your item count to negative, the game will self correct next time you go to the synthesis screen or perform gathering.

1.02 Changes

- Corrected incorrect item requirement check on the Directionless Compass.
- H-Scenes triggered by obtaining the Holey Bikini, Pheromone Lure, and Directionless Compass will no longer fail to play if you’ve obtained more than one of the required items. Players who were stuck unable to complete the ero-armor requirements should be able to do so now.

1.01 Changes

- Fixed the Holey Bikini H-Scene appearing in Japanese.
- Fixed an issue where the game could sometime crash during play and corrupt save games.

Download Now

Users downloading the game October 22st 2013 or later should already have the latest version (you can check your game version while playing in the Help->Version Info menu).

We are pleased to share a few comments received from the developers of Kara no Shojo!

——

Hello everyone.
At last, the English version of Kara no Shojo has been released in its perfect shape. This work is finally completed as a whole with the voice and voice acting included, so even if you have played the game once, I would appreciate it if you can give it another play-through.

Please enjoy the splendid performance of the carefully chosen voice actors to the fullest!

Sugina Miki – Artist/Director

——

Thank you for taking interest in “Kara no Shojo”
I worked on its music (including composition and lyrics) throughout the project. Since I am a fan of mystery games and novels myself, it was a fun job, and I believe it was a turning point that had an effect on all my works that followed. Especially the theme song, “Ruri no Tori” (Bird of Lapis Lazuli) has been appreciated by many people and I am pleased.

Prior to this work is “Cartagra”, which gave me an opportunity to work with Innocent Grey in the first place, and the sequel of “Kara no Shojo”, “Kara no Shojo 2″, also has been released. I’ll be more than happy if you will take the opportunity to experience these other works when they are available as well.

MANYO – Sound Composer
http://manyo-portal.info/

At long, long last, we at Mangagamer are finally proud to announce that ef -the latter tale will be available in English on December 20th! Pre-order your copy now!

Otowa, a city once razed by a devastating earthquake and the resultant fires.
A beautiful European cityscape now marks the present, as if it were from a fairy tale;
almost as if to mask the memories of that calamity…

The second half and amazing conclusion to minori’s ”ef – a fairy tale of the two.” series featuring avant-garde cinematic techniques and a peaceful, sentimental story which has met critical acclaim!

We’re proud to announce that Demon Master Chris is now on sale! Come buy and download your copy today!

We at MangaGamer are proud to announce Touma Kojirou’s Detective File is now available for pre-order!

This Thanksgiving, come enjoy a hearty bit of drama with a nice helping of sex on the side!

The mystery starts when a local theater begins receiving threat notices, but things escalate quickly when one of the actors is murdered by the phantom of the opera!

Pre-order your copy today for 10% off!

Tuna Salad with his long overdue report from everyone’s favorite ranch!

Let’s get one thing out of the way, despite this game being called Bukakke Ranch, there is no actual bukakke in it…at least not ‘bukakke’ that we’re use to–you know, the one where a mommy and a daddy and a daddy and a daddy, etc…This is the Japanese definition of just ‘splashing’ stuff, albeit a variety of stuff, so you’re going to be disappointed if you were hoping for that other one…

When I first heard of Bukakke Ranch, it was over a year ago at a friend’s party where an overenthusiastic Kouryuu was talking about “work” to a group of our friends, all of whom were thoroughly enraptured despite usually mocking him for his occupation. At that time, I was stuck with Boob Wars (which was not terrible) and I couldn’t help but think that Bukakke Ranch sounded like fun. Now let me be clear, I’m not into monster-girls, in fact, I didn’t know monster-girls was an entire genre of its own until a month ago. That being said, I still don’t understand the infatuation, it’s all nukige to me…

As much as I enjoy walls of text in the typical visual novel, I’m all for games with actual gameplay. Manga Gamer doesn’t exactly have the most extensive repertoire in this field, but Bukakke Ranch is an interesting subversion of the standard click and read format in favor of some strategy and actual interactivity. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘gameplay’ but when I have to take notes in order to acquire endings, then I like to think it’s moved beyond just being an average VN.

For starters, there are four endings to Bukakke Ranch: you make the slutstone and satisfy (in that way) the demon queen, you make the lustaments and defeat (and enslave) the demon queen, you win over the demon queen and marry (and bed) her, or she kills you. Now, three of these endings require that you make use of the item crafting system which really just breaks down to finding raw materials and making the items, but when you add onto that training the elementals so that they produce other needed materials, only being able to pick three activities in an in-game day (with only 100 days to make the slutstone), all the while finding and making things in order to keep the demon queen’s favor up (or else she kills you), suddenly it doesn’t quite look like a courtesy fap anymore…

On the storytelling front, Bukakke Ranch is amusingly palpable. Sure a lot of the scripts get recycled when you run through the scenes over and over to farm materials, but on a first-run there’s plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor to keep everything entertaining. From the slime-girl’s inability to stay standing when penis comes into view, to the harpy opening up a TV shopping network to sell her own golden eggs (that she lays in front of the camera), everything is silly enough to at least warrant a chuckle. As far as the H goes, everything is quite tame, a fair amount of vanilla with some “experimenting” when it comes to eggs and golems, nothing too far out there. It’s an all-around silly game, worth a few aimless hours spent laughing if not…other things…

Today we’re introducing the girls around Touma Kojirou in his office.

One of the main girls around the office is Natsukise Youko. Not only is she Kojirou’s assistant, she’s also his childhood friend. She’s quite helpful around the office, but not very useful on the case. Calling her an airhead would putting it mildly, but sometimes the wild ideas she gets are precisely the clue that’s needed.

Youko is voiced by Katakura Hina, a voice actress who’s featured in over 140 different roles including Geronimo in Eiyuu Senki, Sawashiro Nanako in Kara no Shoujo 2, and two others in Boob Wars 2.

Next is Touma Reina, Kojirou’s little sister. Though very intelligent, she’s also fairly emotionless. Still, she loves her brother, and loves it when he dotes on her.

Reina is voiced by Konoe Yuzuko, a voice actress who’s featured in over 64 different nukige from a variety of brands.

Today we’re introducing the members of the theater troupe who’s asked for Touma’s assistance.

First there’s Minase Tomoe, Touma Reina’s friend. As the daughter who inherited the theater, she’s the only one with a key to the theater. When the theater receives the threatening letter from Phantom, Tomoe is the one who calls upon Touma for help investigating the case.

Then there’s Minase Kaori, Tomoe’s older sister, and one of the theater’s greatest actors. Well, not so much for her acting ability, but for her unique aura and charisma. She’s the kind of woman who knows what she wants, and gets what she wants.

Minase Kaori is voiced by Ooba Jun, a voice actress with over 180 different roles including Kawano Harumi in To Heart 2, Nanao Nana in SSSS, as well as Cattleya in Zero no Tsukaima and Izumi Ako in Negima.

One of the other theater’s big actors is Nanase Ako, one who’s acting talent is top notch.

Nanase Ako is voiced by Iino Shiori, a voice actress better known by her other name, Kimura Ayaka, and one we’ve discussed before with Toutaku from Koihime Musou, and Usui Yukihi in Sexy Demon Transformation.

The other main actor is Sanjo Naoya, a handsome yet narcissistic man who’s also a womanizer. He’s playing one of the leading male roles in the upcoming performance.

Lastly, there’s Sendo Tatsuya, one of the backstage staff, and Hayami Yuuichi, a reporter there to cover the performance.

One of these six is the culprit, but who?!

Today we’re proud to announce Warrior Princess Asuka is up for pre-order, releasing on November 29th! We’d also like to share some comments from the developers at Hentai Industries!
Hello. I’m Alamar Cinkokusai, a hentai industry chairman. Have you already enjoyed Ruby Striker? Well then, this time we have a work for you where a princess with huge breasts is raped by monsters, with a feast settings which have been staples in past titles, “Warrior Princess Asuka.”
By the way, the Japanese title was “tou_ki_rei_jou asuka.baku_nyuu ou_jo ni karami_tuku syokusyu to slime”. If I convert each word into English…

tou=Fight
ki=Princess
rei=Slave
jou=Maiden
asuka=Asuka
baku nyu=Huge tits
ou jo=Princess
karami_tuku=Coil around
syokusyu=Tentacle
to=and
slime=Slime

It would probably turn out like this.
(In the event I’m mistaken, I’m sure the staff uploading this to the web will correct it.)
You may be able to more or less get the entire meaning when you read it word for word, but while the initial “tou ki rei jou” has its own meanings for each word, this is a term the scenario writer Honda coined by pulling them all into a single vocabulary, so I believe it will actually be quite difficult to translate. For these sorts of reasons, the English localization staff named it “Warrior Princess Asuka” so it would be easy to understand.

This work’s CG artist, Amamiya Tsumugi has fairly eccentric tastes, so even now he is creating outrageous titles which other authors would not adhere to even now. Kairo Honda and I are in charge of the scenario of his latest work, “sin_nyuu_sei_bo_sin arrya.sei_bo_sin sura in_tyuu_bou_nyu_zeme de dametu suru!”

You can see a short introduction if you hit the play button, so I do hope you will watch.

Changing the subject, I had the pleasure of reading all the comments users left back during Ruby Striker. Both the positive and negative opinions are being used for reference and increase the staff’s motivation, so please keep them coming!

Finally, the reason for the lack of voice actress Honda Shiori-san’s voice commentary is that unfortunately she has already retired from being a voice actress, so we could not receive her comments. Her retirement was sudden, so it temporarily became hot news amongst fans, but the reason hasn’t yet been made clear. That’s basically the situation, so asking her to do so now was deemed difficult, and we gave up on it.

We intend to dispatch the creator’s messages to the entire world as much as possible, but there are things that can’t be helped, so I hope you can forgive such situations.

Well then, see you next time!

Alamar Chinkokusai

————————

I’m the person in charge of the scenario for “Warrior Princess Asuka” Kairo Honda. In this work, a fighting princess is raped by all sorts of grotesque creatures. Amamiya Tsumugi-san, who worked on CG, and I scrutinized which monsters would be appropriate to face the princess with, and the ones we chose wound up in the game. I had the privilege of writing a setting which conveyed the beautiful princess’ voluptuous body being stubbornly tortured by monsters. By all means, please enjoy Princess Asuka’s lewd story!

Kairo Honda

Today we’re proud to announce a couple things regarding our hard-copies. One of which is pre-orders for the Limited Edition Hard Copy of Kara no Shojo!

It’s taken us a long time now to get things set up, but we’re proud to announce that we finally have a date for the launch of hard-copy orders on our website! Starting December 9th, we’ll be opening the doors on our sale of hard copies through the website. After this launch, all of our fans will be able to order both old and new hard copies directly from our website. (We will be accepting order from the EU, Australia, etc., however orders will be shipped from California.)

So make sure to stop by and order some hard copies yourself before Christmas!

Next though, we’re proud to announce that pre-orders are now open for the Limited Edition Hard Copy of Kara no Shojo!

This Limited Edition release features the full, voiced edition of Kara no Shojo along with a special 11 track CD collecting many of the great tunes featured in this wonderful game of mystery and suspense. As with all of our Limited Editions, it’ll contain a special slip case to house both cases and it’s all available for $44.95!

All pre-orders will be shipped on Dec 9th when the hard copy section goes completely live!

We at MangaGamer are proud to announce that Touma Kojirou’s Detective File -Murder at the Opera House- is now on sale!

Today we’re proud to present the first Tester’s Corner for Touma Kojirou‘s Detective, a short piece by Linktriforce007!

Touma Kojirou’s Detective File ~Murder at the Opera House~ is a murder-mystery visual novel that uses The Phantom from “The Phantom of the Opera” as its main villain.

After the first murder occurs, it gave me a feeling of suspense like I feel when I watch some of the crime shows nowadays, and I immediately wanted to guess who was the Phantom. What person would do it? Why would they do it? Is it just me or is it something more than a series of random killings? Are they connected somehow? I didn’t really expect all of my questions to be answered out of nowhere, and really thought the most interesting part of the game would be the little sister romance.

In the end, however, the plot was what grasped me most, and how the main protagonist, albeit a pervert, is actually a true genius when it comes down to it. His cleverness is something that I could never have matched as his ideas were ones that I never caught on to, and I kept on switching who was really the bad guy all the way through.

Deep down, the h-scenes were memorable, and the fact that an actual movement motion occurred during sex was a very nice touch, one that I’d never seen before in a visual novel.

Touma Kojirou’s Detective File ~Murder at the Opera House~ is quite a great visual novel, and I would recommend it to any person who likes mystery novels.

- Linktriforce007 (Beta Tester)

Today we’re proud to present the second Tester’s Corner for Touma Kojirou‘s Detective, from Neko Len!

And here we go with another of SHS’s nukige: Touma Kojirou’s Detective File -Murder at the Opera House-. This one is a murder mystery centered around and opera troupe. The titular detective is approached by a young actress (who just happens to be a classmate of his younger sister) who has received threatening letters from the “Phantom”. Hmmm…I have heard this somewhere before.

Ah yes, that would be why

The letter basically threatens tragedy if they continue with the production. Something about burning in the fires of hell. Perhaps a fate worse than Macbeth. Being a eroge protagonist detective in need of funds, he takes the job. As for the letter…

Is this a Cease and Desist from hell, or a suicide note? Only The Shadow grammar knows! At least now we know where the villain got the idea.

With Andrew Lloyd Webber’, Gerard Butler, and Tuxedo Mask out of the country at the time, Our Hero Touma now has a mystery to solve. Thankfully he has the assistance of his childhood friend, albeit dimwitted assistance.

At least she has a nice rack…

Once working on the case, the first murder does not take long to rear its head.

This one reeks of being a staged murder to me…

Our intrepid detective thoroughly investigates the case, as more bodies start piling up, and is taken on a ride of intrigue…and surprise blowjobs.

The best part of waking up ain’t Folger’s

On to the actual testing. Surprisingly, this turned out to be one of the more fun nukige I have tested thus far. The MST potential alone was worth it. Oddly, this was also one of the more frustrating ones as well, and took a lot longer than expected, due to varied bugs (then again, that’s the point of what we do, to catch issues so they can be fixed). As is traditional with SHS, the H scenes are aplenty. They are even animated! (for some reason, this amused me greatly). Overall Touma is a decent sexfest worth a look if you want fap material.

Normally we cap off pre-release coverage with a translator’s corner the week before release (if available), but this time, I wanted to handle things a little differently. Before introducing you to the new (or more heavily involved) characters in the second title of the series, let’s explore why this release took so long–and why it was worth the wait.

Since we’re coming down to the end of what has been quite a journey, I thought I’d delve into a rather extensive write up of how I and the rest of the people who worked on this title, which originated as a fan project, got this far. If you don’t care about that sort of thing and just want to see what’s new for the official release, scroll down to the “AND NOW, THE CHANGE LOG!” header (in red).

From Fansub to Official: The Whole Story
A while back now, when I was reasonably new to VNs in general, I took an interest in Shuffle! (the first VN I played all the way through, naturally, the Japanese version at the time). As this came out well before MangaGamer was founded, I at one point got involved in its now doomed fansub project by #gamepatch. (It may be a bit of fate that I eventually wound up doing Tick! Tack! and the soon to be released Really? Really! for MG.) After it became clear that project wasn’t going to pan out due to a variety of reasons I won’t get into here, I lazed around for a bit before stumbling upon NNL’s translation project for ef – the first tale. Seemingly just as quickly, they announced that the project was cancelled, and I was pretty bummed about it. Since they announced that the project might be resumed one day if a new translator stepped in, I kept an eye on it, hoping, but nobody ever stepped up.

This brings back some old memories…

After about half a year of the project being dead, I emailed NNL myself, hoping I could at least finish Miyako’s route of first tale. A few days later (if I recall, it may have been Christmas Day of 2008, but I’ve long since lost my emails from back then) I heard back, and it seemed as if everything was a go. The only condition (which seems laughably easy in retrospect now) was that I had to keep a minimum average of 150 lines/day, and in exchange, Dave would arrange his contacts and we’d get a release out. I was pretty fresh out of high school at this point in time, so back then, it was exciting to be working on something that seemed to have a real chance of ever being appreciated by the denizens of the Internet in some small way.

Of course, the project was a success and a build of just chapter 1 went up. At the time, there was a second fansub group working on a release of all of first tale (more on this later), so we decided after everything went so well to begin work on latter tale. Originally, we were only going to do chapter 3 (Chihiro) and chapter 5 (Yuuko). I was going to do Chihiro because I appreciated how her VN ending was quite different from the anime adaptation’s, and Sean would do Yuuko as it was his favorite part of the game, and my finishing Miyako seemed to inspire him.

At this point, my recollection of the order of events may be a bit muddled. Looking back, it seems like one huge blur that took up more than a year of my life. After I finished the translation for Chihiro’s route, a series of… we’ll say “interesting” events unfolded that some older NNL followers might remember, and it got delayed quite heavily. Yuuko’s route, on the other hand, went fairly smoothly for Dave and Sean. I can’t remember which happened next, but at some point past this, we got in contact with the other group that was working on first tale, and I decided to work on Mizuki’s chapter (which, truth be told, was a hell of a lot more fun to work on than I originally expected. I translated her chapter in under a month, which is an impressive number when you consider I did this all for free in my spare time while attending college.)

And now, a random cute shot of Mizuki! This totally embodies the feel for her character, heh.

After some discussion, the other group’s translator decided to give us all the scripts he had done, which included the vast majority of Kei’s route from first tale. This was the point at which we decided to go all in, and release the complete first and latter tale.

Click here for the “ef – the first tale” product page.

Click here for the “ef – the latter tale” product page.

Not long after, we finished the translation for the entirety of ef. There was much celebration that day! But, that was when the game entered a sort of development hell where it was tested over, and over, and over. When we got near release, our fansub group received a cease and desist letter from minori. For the next few days, we had a lot of internal discussion on how to proceed. It was definitely a huge concern, and quite the issue both ethically and legally. Looking back, it may have even been possible to contact MangaGamer at this point, but hindsight is 20/20, after all.

Ultimately, we decided to release the fansub build. Whether this was right or wrong ethically is something I’m not even going to touch. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I don’t want the comments section to get flooded with comments about it. For a while after this, we honestly just sat back and enjoyed seeing how fans took the game. Both positive and negative comments were amusing in their own way. But, after a while, we decided to take on minori’s next title, “eden*”. Within the week after we publicly announced this and put up a webpage for it, minori sent and put up their second C&D letter publicly on their foreign-facing website.

Since we’d been through this before, we had some more internal discussion. As minori had decided to go public this time around, we decided that talking to them about why we were doing what we were doing (again, ethically debatable, let’s not get into that), and sent them a heartfelt letter. I remember we spent a good couple hours collectively writing it, trying our best to show our intentions in a good light, but still not expecting the best. The response however… was honestly a shocker! Against all expectations and odds, minori got the ball rolling and contacted MangaGamer about an official release. It was at this time that Dave (and by extension I) got talking to everyone’s beloved translator: Kouryuu. After the paperwork was settled away, the partnership was announced (pretty much to universal disbelief)!

But, that was only the beginning… We took this opportunity to revise and check the script all over again. While we were doing this, minori was updating their engine to support English text. Thousands of lines have been changed across both releases compared to the fansub version, among other things which I’ll discuss in the change log. Suffice to say, both sides may have been a little too focused on perfection, and as such, the releases have taken quite a long time. Nonetheless, I believe the end result will be worth every second.

This release is ultimately the culmination of effort which spans across approximately 1/5 of my entire life thus far. Seeing it finally end is… exciting, but also a little sad. To all the people who have come, gone, or still work together with me and others at MG today, and who may or may not read this, I just have one final thought. No matter what terms we may have parted on, or how we feel about each other at this exact moment. Whether our last exchange was on a good note, bad note, or somewhere in between. I’ll never forget the journey here. Know that ultimately, no matter what role you had: small or large, positive or negative, you had an impact on something special. At least in my eyes.

With all that said, to all the fans reading this article: even if you did play the fansub, I hope you’ll consider buying the official release. I don’t know if this will matter to some of you, but to the end, NNL did this solely as a labor of love, and received none of the proceeds. No matter how you all feel about how we acted, don’t let that influence your decision. Your purchase of either ef title fully and directly supports MangaGamer and minori, period. Who knows, if they sell well enough, you may one day get the ef: Angel’s Holiday fandisc we so wanted to translate. I know I’ll be pushing for it.

Believe it or not, me shoving the ad in here wasn’t coerced! It just seemed the right image for the spot. Click to be taken to the ef – the latter tale product page and preorder~

AND NOW, THE CHANGE LOG!

So, that was a hell of a read, wasn’t it? So, what’s new in the official release, and why did it take so long? Glad you asked! As with “ef – the first tale,” the Japanese engine has been completely updated to support the official English version, bringing with it some additions to the Musica engine that were made after the original Japanese release, such as support for full screen at your native resolution with AA instead of being forced into 800×600 mode. Additionally, there is a toggle on the settings screen which will allow you to play with the speedier transitions and styling we opted for in the fansub release, or minori’s original vision.

This little option you probably didn’t even notice in first tale.

As mentioned before, the entire script has been combed over. This by itself took quite a while, and is probably responsible for about half the time spent between the first and latter tale releases. And, finally, the CG! We went way out of our way to make sure all the prominent text on CGs was translated. These range from fairly obvious and simple…

Like this…

To pretty nice surprises that definitely add to the immersion…

Like this!

To downright insane details a lot of you won’t even notice (and frankly, we were surprised minori actually did in the Japanese release!)

Like this. Yeah, that letter he’s holding is an actual, in-character letter relevant to the scene. And we translated it.

I would argue this is one of the most ambitious English visual novel releases, and I do hope it will all make for an excellent experience. Enjoy “ef – the latter tale” when it comes out on December 20th, guys! And for maximum effect, be sure to marathon it so you can finish it by Christmas~!