With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. The first being from me, Kouryuu.

It’s funny to think about how little time five years can be, but when I look back over the past five years, I can’t help but be impressed.

Where was I five years ago? I was desperately cramming for the JLPT1 as I tried to finish final reports for my next to last semester of college, a year behind my graduating class because I’d chosen to study abroad. The US economy had tanked, taking a nosedive so hard nearly everyone I knew was unemployed and struggling to find a job–any job–that would support them.

I nearly failed the test too. An accident on my way to the testing center had left me panicked as I rushed into the exam with only a few seconds to spare before the first part began. But I did make it. And somehow, I managed to earn my certification despite all that. I knew I wanted to get into translation when I graduated 5 months later, but with the job market tanking at the time no place was hiring. Let alone anyone who didn’t already have 2-5 years of experience in the field.

I spent months desperately looking for a job, before one day I happened to stumble upon MangaGamer’s request for help at Otakon 2009 while looking though some visual novel sites. At the time, I didn’t even know what to think of the company. The English on the website needed improvement, the pricing was expensive, but dammit if they didn’t have some big name brands and titles, including Navel, and just after I’d been testing myself by translating Soul Link while studying abroad in Japan.

It was certainly a most interesting, and fortuitous meeting that Otakon. I was the only person who chose to respond to their advertisement, which meant I was going to be the only English speaker working the booth that year. That… was a fun thought. But it really was a lot of fun, and I’d at least read up on the games beforehand so I could try and promote them at the booth. It wasn’t until the convention was halfway over, when I finally decided to ask about Soul Link during a lull at the booth, that I realized I’d been working directly with the boss the entire time. My job search was finally over! (Talk about surprise job interviews!)

As I actually started working on touching up Soul Link for MangaGamer, I was growing steadily aware of how much they were lacking in certain areas, like communicating with their audience (that language barrier is a bitch!) For better or worse (better for the company in the long run, worse on me in the short run), my reaction to the state of affairs was “Well, if no one else is going to do what needs to be done, then I will!”

Those early years were such a mess… I’m not the only staff member that now speaks of them as our “dark years” with a smile tainted by horror. Few of us thought we’d be able to last more than a couple years, and I can’t even begin to describe the stress I was going through. So many arguments were had while I tried to get the company to change its ways, and I’m honestly surprised I didn’t get fired for some of the things I said even as I kept blowing a lifetime’s worth of deadlines while trying to fix Koihime Musou into something presentable (But it was worth it, Sousou, my Queen!)

When I compare the sentiments of those years to now, it’s incredible. Back then we were all worried about whether or not we’d make it to the next release. Whether or not we could hold out long enough for things to change before everything dried out. And now? Now we have over 65 different titles in our current and upcoming catalog of announced titles, more than any other visual novel publisher has ever managed to release in English. If you asked us in those first two years where we saw ourselves five years from now, all of us would’ve said something like “I just hope we’re still operating in five years!” But five years later, here we are, having single-handedly doubled the number of visual novels and eroge on the English market. It’s really, truly, impressive. And it’s all thanks to the support you guys have shown us over the years.

So thank you. To everyone who buys our games and supports our releases, thank you. It’s thanks to you all that me and the rest of our staff are able to make a living doing what we love.

–Kouryuu, now Head Translator & Marketing Manager

Hey again everyone! Time for some more “ef – the latter tale” coverage! Today, I’m going to introduce you to the lead characters of the first third of the game, Chihiro and Renji.

A disclaimer: As this is a sequel, there may be mentions of events that occurred in “ef – the first tale”. If, by chance, you’ve managed to avoid spoilers or the anime adaptation all this time and want to be totally surprised… well, I don’t know why you’d be reading anything about it to begin with, but you’ve been warned. Potential “ef – the first tale” spoilers ahead. That said, here we go!

Chihiro is the little sister of Kei Shindou from “ef – the first tale” but her personality is what you could call a polar opposite. While Kei was athletic, outgoing, and outspoken, Chihiro is very introverted. At the beginning of the story, she has no friends to speak of, doesn’t go to school (much to Renji’s surprise), and is being watched over by Yuu Himura for some reason…

One day while she’s reading at an abandoned train station (a very go-to spot if you don’t want a lot of passers-by) Renji happens upon her. After a brief exchange, they part ways, but will meet again…

Renji is also a bit of a loner, as his parents’ occupations have had him moving all over the place. At the beginning of the story, he has very few contacts (such as his cousin Mizuki) but nobody you’d outright call a friend.

Yup, the bubble-machine of a girl returns~ Is it just me, or does Renji look unamused?

His primary interest is novels, which becomes a bonding point between him and Chihiro. Her dream is to write her own novel, and Renji seems up to the task of helping her. How will the story proceed from here? You’ll just have to find out in the game!

You may take solace in the fact that at least once in the game, he puts a plush chick on her head. Clearly, this is what you’ve always wanted in a visual novel.

Chihiro is voiced by Maki Izumi, a well-renowned voice actress whom fans of Koihime Musou, Soul Link, and Da Capo 2 may already be familiar with.

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This second one comes from Evospace, our main English-speaking representative in Japan.

Hi all, EvoSpace here. 5 years ago was when I had just moved to Japan. I’d been living in the United States until then as an average Japanese American fan also translating for fansubs and such. When I came here, I first went to apply for CIRCUS since I always wanted to make my own game, but they put me in distribution instead so I could gain some experience about working in the industry. There I found myself capable of designing advertisements and such, but that’s when I heard about the MangaGamer project going on between a few game companies we were close with.

Although I wasn’t part of the team immediately, since I still had my main distribution job at the time, I attended their meetings to give some pointers and such. Then I was helping MangaGamer help sort out things for a while, but it was only February of 2012 that I officially became a member of MangaGamer after hopping between some companies. I’m actually surprised and glad that MangaGamer survived this long. It could have disappeared at anytime–if the higher ups back then had called it quits, if Kouryuu hadn’t joined, if Doddler wasn’t on the team today, etc.– The list could go on, but what’s important now is that MangaGamer is finally functioning as it should be (or at least on its way there).

There is still a lot we could improve on, but please give it some time, and we hope you can continue to support our releases!  I’ll try to keep the business running and negotiations going on my side!

–Evospace, now Project Manager, Acquisitions, and Support

Today we’re proud to announce the beginning of our Christmas sale! With the end of our 5th year anniversary in sight, our staff has handpicked some of our best titles and greatest hits to offer at 20% off from now until the end of the year! During this special sale period we’ll also be offering a special bonus to the return on all affiliate sales as well, so share the news! You can find the full list of titles on sale below the break.

All-Ages Titles:

Go Go Nippon
Higurashi When They Cry
Higurashi When They Cry Kai
World End Economic Episode 1

Adult Titles:

Boob Wars: Big Breasts vs Flat Chests
Conquering the Queen
Da Capo
Da Capo 2
DEARDROPS
Demon Master Chris
Dengeki Stryker
Edelweiss
Edelweiss Eiden Fantasia
Edelweiss Bundle Pack
ef -the first tale.
EROGE! ~Sex and Games Makes Sexy Games~
Harem Party
Harukoi Otome “Greetings from the Maidens’ Garden”
Kara no Shojo
Koihime Musou ~A Heart-Trobbing, Maidenly Romance of the Three Kingdoms~
Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling For Me
SHUFFLE!
Suika A.S.+
Tick! Tack!
We Love Master!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This third one comes directly from bamboo of OVERDRIVE and milktub fame!

What’s something you found interesting or hard over the past 5 years?

We had a lot of trouble with the differences in market for eroge abroad compared to the domestic market. Even when dealing with translation into English alone, there are different nuances in the language between America and Britain, and being Japanese, we didn’t understand that at all.

Every year the number of titles we have keeps growing along with the number of users on our site, so if we keep expanding to about twice the user base and sales we see now, I think we’ll start seeing even more developers joining in.

Also, the dinner with fans during AX was very memorable. I’d love to do that again!

What are some things you hope to see from MangaGamer in the future?

I think it would be wonderful if we can form a bridge between Japanese developers and fans abroad. I think it would be really interesting if we could create something to let the enthusiastic voices of fans abroad reach developers in Japan. Also, I’d like to try using crowd-funding to actually gather localization funds and use it to convince other Japanese developers.

–Bamboo, Producer

・大変だったこと、面白かったこと
国内と海外でのエロゲの温度差に苦労しました。翻訳ひとつとっても英国と米国では言語のニュアンスが違うので、それも日本人からする知らない事のひとつでした。

年々タイトルも増えていき、それにともないユーザーも増えているので、あと2倍ぐらいユーザーや売上が増えれば参入してくるメーカーも増えると思います。

あとはAXでのファンミーティングが印象深いです。またやりたい！

We at MangaGamer are proud to announce ef -the latter tale. is now on sale!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This fourth one comes from one of our oldest, earliest staff members.

What’s something you found interesting or hard over the past 5 years?

It was a lot of hard work involving mostly trial and error as I developed the website and the games, trying to figure out what kind of design and settings would be easiest for people abroad to use, but it was also a lot of fun too. As a project directed an audience abroad, MangaGamer offered me many precious new experiences. Out of all those experiences though, the one I remember most deeply is when I got the chance to participate in a convention in Los Angeles and had the opportunity to see just how Japanese games and other content were being accepted abroad with my own eyes.

What are some things you hope to see from MangaGamer in the future?

I believe the fact that we’re able to see our 5th year anniversary come around is thanks to all the support from our passionate fans. I hope that we can continue to act as a bridge between Japan and fans abroad, helping to introduce even more than just bishoujo games to fans abroad.

–Former Project and Operations Manager

・大変だったこと、面白かったこと、
ゲームとサイトに関してどういうものが海外のユーザーにとって使いやすいのか、といったことを考えながら、試行錯誤しながら仕様をきっていったのは大変でしたし、とても面白かったです。海外向けのプロジェクトということで、貴重な体験を数多くさせていただきました。その中でもロサンゼルスでのイベントに参加させていただき、海外で日本のコンテンツが　　どのように受け入れられているのかを直接見ることができたのが特に思い出深いです。

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas/holiday season! Are you ready for another round of ef – the latter tale coverage? Me too! Today I’ll be introducing you to the next couple, Mizuki Hayama and Shuuichi Kuze.

Just as a heads up, this post will be covering information in ef – the latter tale and there will possibly be mentions of events that occurred in ef – the first tale. If you’ve managed to avoid spoilers or the anime adaption all this time, please consider checking out the game (and the anime) if you haven’t already. It’s such a lovely VN and I don’t want you to get spoiled. ;~;

If you haven’t already read chapter four, you’re going to be a little surprised when you finally get around to reading it. With Chihiro’s emotional and psychological hardships obviously affecting her personal outlook on the world and what relationships she has/can remember, it makes for a sort of depressing read. After going through something like that, a cheerful pick-me-up is necessary, right? Well, never fear because Mizuki’s here!

Dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnnn!

Chapter four of latter tale begins with you meeting our next female heroine, Mizuki Hayama,  a Japanese school girl who attends the same collegiate feeder school as Kei Shindou. Like Kei, Mizuki is also a member of the girl’s basketball team and a shoujo manga fanatic. Having nothing to do and no one to play with back home over summer vacation, Mizuki decides to visit her aunt Sumire and cousin Renji. Unfortunately, neither can satisfy her craving for fun and attention due to the two absorbing themselves in their work and studies, so what’s a girl to do? Why, hang out with Shuuichi Kuze of course! Naturally their next door neighbor “volunteers” to be her summer break companion/caretaker.

As you can imagine, Kuze isn’t exactly the ideal babysitter.

Our male protagonist, Shuuichi Kuze, is a close friend to Yuu Himura and long time next door neighbor to the Asou family. Despite his sophisticated profession (as he is a world renowned violinist), he’s got quite the sharp tongue to support his witty personality, as well as his sarcastic and sometimes perverted sense of humor. With a combination like that, you’re not going to know what’s going to come out of his mouth next! Unfortunately for Yuu, he’s more or less always on the receiving end of said sarcastic comments and isn’t too thrilled with some of them.

Naturally, there’s more to Kuze than meets the eye. He’s got quite the colorful past and plenty of skeletons in his closet that he’d much rather forget. What could they be, I wonder? You’ll have to read to find out!

With that, I hope you all check out ef – the latter tale!

Mizuki is voiced by Mai Goto, a popular voice actress with quite a few popular titles under her belt. To name a few, some of her roles include Sakura Yae from Really? Really!, Sakuno Uryuu from Mashiro Iro Symphony, and Maya from Eden*.

Sup everybody. Neko Len here, one of the testers for NNL that has been on the ef project for awhile. It has been quite the long road all of us. Great fun, and frustrating as hell at the same time.

My introduction to ef was the anime, which I fell in love with. This was also around the time that someone first introduced me to the world of visual novels (most likely to just watch as I got hooked irreversibly, and so that said person could see my spiral down into VN after VN, but that’s an entirely different story for another time.). One thing I noticed was that almost without question, if the anime was based off of a VN, the VN was the far superior medium (save for the original Shuffle! for me, I enjoyed the yandere bit of the anime).

Now, I pretty damn quickly learned that ef was a visual novel. This was back when the first season (memories) was airing. I discovered that there were a few projects translating it, but progress was… sketchy. So I despaired for a bit, and tried to put it out of my mind, and hoped by some miracle it would get done. …This was also my first taste of translations getting stalled for whatever reason. So actually having managed to put it out of my mind for a bit (mainly as I was devouring many games at a shocking rate), I make an offhand comment to a friend in irc about ef’s lack of progress. Then I was told the first chapter was out…so I grabbed it, and noticed that NNL was recruiting.

At the time iirc, they were trying to assign different people to different chapters, and Chihiro’s was in need of a tester. Chihiro was just adorable and also had her little (understatement) condition, so I wanted to see the source material. I had zero idea of what testing VN’s would be like, although I did pretty much assume it would be a pain in the ass at times. I figured I’d volunteer myself to assist. So I sent the email and was contacted back… pretty damn quickly. Got a rundown on how things were done (which was thankfully well explained and clear). Seemed like although the work would be a rather obvious pain at times, it was also fun (you will have to excuse me, this kitty is an old, grumpy one. I bitch a lot). I said to myself “it can’t be all THAT bad, could it? I mean, a largely branching text, cg, sprite and sound format must be far easier than what some friends I knew did… right? Sure it will be taxing… but what could possibly go wrong.?

BEHOLD! OPTIC BLA…..oh sorry. Her beams are not /that/ big…

Then I remembered the last time I said that, I ended up singing Anchors Aweigh in -5f weather in formation. Right after a visit to the gas chamber… I really must stop using that phrase.

Yeah, thanks for the warning, Yuuko…

Chapter 3 actually went fairly smooth. It was a bit more text than I expected, and we had various constant issues with word wrap and such, but not that bad. As I went along, I got a bit better and faster. One part of what I did was grammar checking. Mind you, even though I passed my required college English classes pretty easy, I had no real knowledge of any technical stuff. Basically I’d just speak stuff aloud, look at the context, who is saying and to whom it is being said to. Basically if it sounded not quite right, I’d offer a suggestion for change. I do the same thing nowadays as well. Quality standards were… pretty high in comparison to some other fan translation groups, at least from what I was seeing. When things got too stressful, I would begin to snark in my reports. Not too much, but it was a decent outlet for stress over what needed to be done.

Well, eventually the chapters merged (as in everyone worked on everything). And it was time to go check over the demo (the first chapter, Miyako’s) DS55 began to comb through it, seeing what needed work, As it was done quite a long time ago by this point, and his skills had improved in translating. So he starts going over it…

Oh

Shit

At least her bowls are worth it….

Saying that it needed some work was a mild understatement. The whole chapter basically ended up being redone. This was the point where I got my first taste of just how frustrating it can really get. This was also the point where I started adding beer, whiskey, or rum to my list of standard testing equipment. Oh boy. It was rather hectic. One trouble spot, if I recall, was a scene involving Hiro chasing Miyako down the beach… I don’t remember the specifics of how much it needed work… but lets just say it was… a challenging section. Especially for DS. But it was done in the end. The general pattern of frustration and relief would continue, but almost nothing else noteworthy on my end. Almost.

So we are testing chapter 5, and for me it was on the emotionally draining side for various reasons. I finally had my report near done, about to be right under the wire….

Then my laptop caught a nasty virus and I lost everything.

So I ended up re installing my OS and everything else. Good thing I saved my work on a flash-drive right? Sure …except the flash-drive died.

Fuck.

Pic of me after I had to reinstall my OS. Yes live near the ocean….

So I ended up marathoning the whole entire thing again. In one sitting. That was pure hell. I wanted back in the tear gas training room. But, in the end, I got that done. Late as hell to be sure, but I got it. After this I started backing up everything on cloud storage. Do not want to go through that again. And after that, everything else went relatively smooth. (As in, nothing caught fire or got wiped. That I am aware of.)

One thing this rather long road has done for me is to develop the ability to find stuff that’s wrong very, very fast, at a quick glance. This has been useful for… like everything else I’ve tested here at MG. One spot that gave me trouble was some of the splash screens and the way English is used. Sounded strange to me (you will see in Chihiro’s route. Not incorrect English, but… intentionally unique.).

The whole way this became a legit project with minori and Mangagamer I won’t go into. I am just really glad it happened. It has been a long road… And now as Christmas is drawing near, I can breathe a sigh of relief on my nice boat at my computer, and relax. While grinning. So this is Neko, signing out, and I truly hope you enjoy the tale that is ef!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This fifth one comes from Kou, one of our current main translators who’s been with us since the turning point of the “dark years”.

I first joined Mangagamer three and a half years ago. My situation was not too different from Kouryuu’s: though I’d been working as a professional translator for some years, I came back from a joyous year in Japan only to find the economy in ruins and all my work contacts dried up.

I knew Kouryuu through a friend; we’d been in contact for some time swapping stories of professional misery and accomplishment, and he seemed like a pretty like-minded and professional guy. A good person to work for. I was never a particular fan of VNs, and I wasn’t especially overjoyed about the idea of translating porn, but I also wasn’t averse to it. Plus, I was desperate.

Of course, as is so often the case with stories of desperation, I started at the bottom of the ladder. By “bottom of the ladder” I mean “TL checker for some of the worst translations you’ve ever seen.” And by “worst translations you’ve ever seen” I mean “porn scripts that translate ‘hentai’ as ‘metamorphosis.’”

You get the picture.

It was pretty rough going at first. I enjoyed the (sometimes literally) balls-to-the-wall insanity of We Love Master, and the parts of Da Capo 2 I worked on were rather sweet and lovely. But by the twentieth or so completely-identical-but-now-in-a-different-outfit sex scene in Harem Party, I felt like I was going to scream. Let me tell you, those pretty pictures that go by like lightning when you’re holding down CTRL feel like ages when you’re working the script yourself.

Fortunately, the bosses eventually rewarded me for my hard work (or perhaps took mercy on me) and gave me a series of great titles to work on, with first-run translations I could call my very own.

First, there was Go! Go! Nippon: an all-ages travelogue produced specifically for overseas sales. It was a short, simple project that I knocked out in a month’s time. It was lovely and rather sweet, and it gave me a powerful sense of nostalgia for my own recent time in Japan.

Then, there was Dengeki Stryker: a hot-blooded journey into what it means to be a superhero. It had an OP by anisong god Masaaki Endoh and animation by Nabeshin, a ton of hilarious characters with highly distinct voices, and some truly ass-kicking ladies. I begged for this project and was over the moon when the bosses let me have it. I can only hope I did them proud!

Last, most recently (at least in the realm of what’s been published), there was Otoboku: Maidens Are Falling For Me!: a game that, despite the wacky title and goofy premise, betrayed surprising depth and sensitivity and some truly beautiful prose. I fell in love with the characters (particularly Mariya) and the care with which they were drawn and portrayed. A tight deadline made things a little rough going at times, but the game was worth it in the end.

The circumstances that led me to Mangagamer were desperate ones; I came into the job with a mixture of reserve, irritation, and detached amusement. But my time here has taught me the incredible range that visual novels have to offer, and even at the worst of times it pushed my limits as a translator and taught me many things. So even though my circumstances now are much less desperate (and much more busy), I plan to be here for a little while longer. I still have a lot more to learn, and I can’t wait to see what they throw at me next!

–Kou, Translator

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This sixth one comes from our previous editor of many years, sloanereinja!

A voice of doom emerges from the past…

Sloanereinja, your ex-editor here with a look back on a few years…

Five years ago, I was finishing my thesis and getting the final marks for my Master’s degree. I’d begun writing freelance over the summer and thinking I’d get an awesome job with a theatre company and… well, that never really happened.

Four and a half years ago, Kouryuu started at MangaGamer. We’d known each other for a few years at this point, he going to my old university’s anime society and us working together on fan-subbing some ancient 80′s robot shows. Once he went legit on Soul Link, Kouryuu would begin IM’ing me about how lines were phrased. This was fun at first, but when they continued coming in regularly after 10PM (I was, after all, living five time zones ahead of him), and this went on for weeks, I laid down an ultimatum: leave me alone after business hours or get me some paid work.

To my complete surprise, my first commission arrived three months later. I still don’t know how much arguing Kouryuu had to do with management to make them see an editor as worth paying back in the dark years, but he did it, and my first job was to rewrite the infamously bad script from Edelweiss 1.0 into something decent.

Little did I know it would subsequently be scrapped entirely for a re-translation.

My first title which I actually saw a paycheque from, however, was DCII, which would also be the first game I worked on to see release. For the next three years and change, I’d edit every game we put out, help Kouryuu launch the blog, set the template for our press releases, bring in new translators, take on some of the expanding convention duties, and work on the abortions that were to be the manga and anime lines. I’d also learn how to troll 4chan for fun and profit, and how to describe female anatomy in far, FAR more ways than I ever thought possible or desirable.

There are still an endless amount of stories – some hilarious, some horrors – which get me drinks at bars. How Koihime Musou made me start drinking again after abstaining for five years (or was it six?) was always a good one, especially when revealing how little we all got paid at the end (fun fact: I grossed more on that game than Kouryuu), as was the night when I broke a stand-up comedian during his show by explaining the plot of Magical Teacher. I still don’t get tired of talking about how we worked out the name Conquering the Queen, and will natter on about why Dengeki Stryker is the best action anime nobody’s made if given half a chance, and regret nothing about my time with the company.

That said, handling everything the company put out for so long (I lost count of how many titles it was, but it’s at least 20) became too much to handle, especially when I was still relying on other work to keep the lights on. When that other work began offering more money and needing more time, the burnout curve accelerated and I knew it was time to go. Leaving would also allow me to be more open regarding certain personal issues as well, something I’d always held back on for the sake of professionalism and sales, as well as to clear some blurry lines when pitching mainstream work proposals.

At Sakuracon, I took Kouryuu out for coffee, informed him I was leaving, and let him know I’d hired an old familiar face – one of our previous fansub editors – as my replacement. The company had stabilised, and the excitement of working for a start-up had burnt off like early morning fog from the hills. Everything would be in safe hands from here, and I could shift to more mainstream work.

It’s been amazing to see just how well MangaGamer’s been doing since I left – the OEL line is growing, the partnerships keep increasing, and 2013 looks to be another great year for everybody in finance. No regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just exciting memories, a CV full of titles guaranteed to get a response, and an open future ahead.

-Sloanereinja, former Editor (and half-jokingly, general intern)

Hello to all our nukige fans out there! Today, we’re going to introduce you to the upcoming title Valkyrie Svia.

Ask yourself, do you like Norse Mythology? Titles with a dark overtone? Lots and lots of naughty time? Then read no further, just go preorder it now! For those of you not already sold on the idea, Valkyrie Svia follows (who would have guessed) Svia and Sigurd, who protect the keys to the floodgates to the River of Wisdom which feeds Yggdrasil: the tree which acts as the support for the entire world. They just happen to have the keys… in their wombs. You read that right: this is going to be a fun time!

Yup, when creatures like this are a main character, you know you’re in for a ride. Doesn’t he look happy?

When Odin gets captured, they must make sure those keys don’t fall into the wrong hands… even if it means the end of the world. Our villains (depending on how you look at it!) want to get those keys back, mostly to conquer the world, but also so all life doesn’t cease to exist! But, forcing the keys out, or outright killing the valkyries would render the keys destroyed… They can only be released safely and in tact of their holder’s own will. So, how do you corrupt the soldiers of the Divine Forces enough that they would willingly hand over that which they’ve been tasked with guarding? You read the part where I said this was a nukige, right? Right?! I’m sure you did!

I foreshadowed the naughty time, you should have seen it coming!

Look forward to the game’s release on January 24th!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years.  This one comes from our programmer Doddler, who’s busy working on all kinds of different games for us!

Has it really been five years already? It hardly seems that way. I’ve been on with Mangagamer as a part-time programmer for almost two of those years now, and that time has just flown by.

I started in some capacity with Mangagamer a few years back. Mangagamer had originally come to market as the only company releasing real games, ones that I’ve heard of before they were released to English, like Da Capo, Suika and Shuffle. The earlier releases had issues though, and since then MG has been constantly working on improving the quality of it’s releases. But even with English translation and editing staff, there was still a technical deficiency. All the programming work had to be done by Japanese staff, which made for long response times to address problems, and often meant there was no one to take care of issues post release.

That’s the point where I first started getting involved; I figured there was a hole that could use filling. I made a number of small unofficial patches for some of their old games, fixing some reported issues, changing unreadable fonts, slowly working my way to being useful in an official capacity.

After constant pestering of MG staff in the official IRC channel, I finally got involved officially as a playtester. The first job I did was to help prepare Koihime Musou for it’s hard copy and voice added re-release. Even though the game was on market for some time, there were still a large number of issues in the game that needed addressing (I’m looking at you, ‘Anti-Toutaku Alliance’). It turns out I’m not the fastest reader out there, and my editing skills aren’t the greatest, so it took an incredible amount of time to get everything ready, but I finished it and not too long after the update was released. It was a long time coming, but I’m glad we were able to put out an improved version.

The true horror of this screenshot is the typo.

My playtesting role lead to new opportunities though. I got approached asking if I’d be able to help work on games under a new license for MG, Softhouse Seal. Unlike Baseson and Overdrive’s games who had their own staff to handle the coding, Softhouse Seal had asked Mangagamer to handle the technical work, but there was no one immediately available to do the job. Since working on titles in a technical capacity is exactly where I wanted to be, of course I agreed.

The first game I got a chance to work on was a silly but entertaining number, Sexy Demon Transformation. The game, like all Softhouse Seal’s titles runs on an open source engine called Kirikiri (krkr for short). MG hooks me up with original game scripts, a set of files containing translated text, updated images with uncensored CG and translated UI, and told to go to town. I merge the translated text into the original script, update the images, and then make the necessary system and script changes necessary to have the game work properly in an English operating system. Everything then gets packaged up into a nice installer, tested by playtesters, and then goes onto the store.

This scene in Greatest Inventions was the single greatest non pornographic H-scene ever.

More recently, MG has started getting the opportunity to license games where, due to various reasons, the game won’t run properly in English or with English text. A lot of visual novel companies use licensed game engines or their programmer(s) are busy on other projects, meaning we don’t always have the ability to update the games to work for us. Normally it would be impossible to bring these games over, but one thing I’ve been undertaking is porting games.

Porting a game involves taking all of the games art, scripts, and logic and rebuilding it in a new game engine. As you might imagine, it’s much more challenging than simply updating a game to work in English. It’s time consuming and challenging work, but the payoff is a working game that can be played by English users. In the past Mangagamer has had games ported through Overdrive to the BGI/Buriko game engine, but it’s expensive work and also has a hefty licensing fee that’s out of reach for the amount of sales we usually see for games.

So that’s where I come in. The first game I’ve ported was ‘Tick? Tack!’, a Shuffle sequel of sorts. I took the original game scripts and converted them through some scripting magic to a format that could be read on the krkr engine. With enough with work and a lot of custom code, the game was in a working order and ready for an English release. If I’ve done my job properly, anyone who’s played Tick Tack wouldn’t notice the fact that it wasn’t running on the original game system.

‘Really? Really!’ in the Unity editor.

Porting games is quickly becoming a bigger part of my job. I’m currently working on a port for the next Shuffle game, ‘Really? Really!’. Unlike Tick Tack, this game wasn’t a good fit for using the krkr game engine, so in the end I’ve actually written my own using Unity. Really Really is nearing completion, and I’ll be talking about the process about writing a new visual novel game engine here on the blog in the near future. Once that’s done, I’ll be moving on to working on porting D2b vs Deardrops, Higurashi, Cartagra, Free Friends 1 & 2, Kara no Shoujo 2, and Da Capo III (probably in that order). That’s a lot of work! I’m happy though that I have the opportunity to work on these, because without this these games might never see a proper English release.

Why panties? Why NOT panties?

In the year and a half or so since I started working with Mangagamer I’ve been involved in 7 titles that have been released so far. There’s 15 announced titles that are in the pipeline that I’m working on, 7 of which will be ports. There’s even 4 other titles that haven’t even been announced! At this rate I’ll have to give up the day job.

It’s been a fun ride so far, and it looks like it’s going to bigger and better places each year. It’s really amazing to see how far it’s come in the 5 years since it began. Mangagamer launched 5 years ago with a very rough start, and it’s taken a lot of effort from people like Kouryuu and Evospace to turn the ship around. There’s still a lot more to go, but the ship is slowly turning in the right direction, and if we keep working at it, we can get it going to places we can only imagine now. Mangagamer has given me a real opportunity to do what I love doing, and hopefully you’ll give us the chance to keep doing so!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This one comes from one of our convention staff members.

Hi. Tim here.  You may remember me from such posts as Go Go Nippon, Kara no Shoujo, Kotori Love ExP, and Guilty.

Welcome back! Valkyrie Svia is effectively split into a few routes that you can mix and match along the way to assorted results. Today, we’re going to talk to you about the first of those routes: The Denizens of Hel. When Hel itself looks like… well, the image above, just what will the creatures look like?

So, with a title like that, and knowing it’s in a mythological setting, you’d probably expect some pretty unique monsters, and if you know Lilith at all, you’d probably expect them to be grotesque at times, too. You’d be right! In the effort to break the wills of the valkyries, Loki will concede his own turn at them in favor of some… shall we say, more -peculiar- creatures! Some of which may be more or less consistent with Norse Mythology, to be fair.

So, let’s start with a staple: tentacles! But, no, this isn’t some ordinary tentacle monster… That would be too easy, behold!

There’s certainly more than one tentacle monster to be had, as well. Maybe this sort of thing will catch your interest?

Then, there’s creatures like goblins… SWARMS of goblins…

So, what other interesting creatures might you encounter in this route? You’ll just have to play to find out!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This one comes from one of our convention staff members.

Season’s greetings and a Happy New Year to everyone reading, or similar seasonal holiday depending on when this gets published. I’m Regris, one of MangaGamer’s primary convention sales representatives, and this is my first time meeting a lot of you I’d imagine, but for whoever goes to anime conventions regularly, you’ve probably seen me once or twice. Not just for this company, but for similar businesses as well.

Without going into too much detail, ah, I actually started as convention staff, working in the exhibitor’s hall at Sakura-con before I signed on with a company called Hen da Ne, whom I am sure many of you already know. Since then I’ve met plenty of interesting people from all sorts of walks of life with similar hobbies, and have been helping with MangaGamer’s west coast coverage. If you attend Sakura-con, Fanime, Anime Expo, or Anime Central, you will probably see me there!

I think what MangaGamer is doing with visual novels is pretty great, and I’m happy to help bring these titles to a wider audience. If you had to ask which was my favorite, I’d have to say it’s Planetarian. I hope similar companies (JAST, MoeNovel, DLSite) do well with this coming year as well, to help spread these knowledge of titles that would not otherwise have seen translation. With that said, I hope you all have a wonderful set of holidays with friends, family, or waifus.

If anyone would like to ask a question, feel free to leave it in the comments!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years. This one comes from one of our translators, YukkuriS.

“Hey, how about we do an April Fool’s gag about hard copies?”

Little did I realize that joke with Kouryuu would be the start of something that was anything but a joke. That was 2010. At the time I was working at Hendane! and decided it was good fun to join in the April Fool’s Day shenanigans online. The idea came to mind simply as a joke but also stemmed from my own personal opinion on how Mangagamer should sell their games.

I still remember when I first heard about Mangagamer and noticed them appearing at Anime Expo. Truthfully, I was skeptical about their business plan and what they expected out of the Western market. As an avid collector and part-time eroge peddler, I felt that selling physical copies, especially limited edition versions was a better plan of action. As the months went by after the success of our joint gag, there hatched a plan to actually do that. This collective effort lead to the first adult hard copy release from Mangagamer which was Da Capo 1.

While the packaging of Da Capo 1 did unfortunately leave a lot to be desired, I am willing to believe that what was an initial joke still bore fruit. Flash forward to the present and there’s plenty of hard copies to go around for a lot of Mangagamer’s games. I think things turned out okay.

Although none of the above has anything to do with my work as a translator, nevertheless I did get on board in 2012 to do translation work with them. I’ve been pretty lucky to get games I’ve enjoyed working on. Just give me some happy nukige and all is good in the world.

It’s been an interesting ride so far and I’m glad to be apart of this ragtag band of misfits. I’m looking forward to seeing what Mangagamer is capable from here on out.

Oh and remember to buy Guilty.

We’ve finally received the updated translation correction patch from spicy tails for World End Economica episode 1.

This patch contains many corrections to the original translation as well as corrections to several minor bugs that were present in the original version.

It is currently available for download from our website via the product page, but you can also Download it Here.

To install the patch, simply extract the archive and copy the two files therein into the game folder.

Hi again. Everyone excited for Valkyrie Svia to be released? Anyone get some laughs out of the MG Twitter posting an ad banner so illicit /d/ wouldn’t run it? Well, today we’re going to talk about more of the stuff that banner’s made of!
So, in addition to the Denizens of Hel and all the interesting creatures in that route, there are also the Loki and Jotnar routes. Naturally, the ringleader of this whole plan, Loki, was bound to have his way with the valkyries in some form, although he does seem to take a particular interest in Svia over Sigurd…

Just imagine what’s behind that censor circle!

Flungruni and his fellow Jotnar (sometimes referred to as frost giants depending on where you read your lore) don’t want to be left out either!

Like what you see? I’m sure you do! Be sure to grab it on release!

With our fifth year anniversary coming to a close, we decided to take a moment to showcase some of the thoughts and feelings of the staff that have been a part of MangaGamer over the years.

“You’re joking, right?” was my response to Kouryuu when he asked me to write a “5-year” post as I was confronted with a sense of surprise and confusion at his request. For starters, I have only been with MangaGamer for a little over three years, starting back in 2010, riding the adrenaline high after being picked up from NNL and their release of ef – a fairy tale of the two. Back then, MangaGamer had begun a large effort to improve the quality of their releases, which meant a significant increase in quality control and beta testing. Having beta-tested ef to the point of memorization, I and numerous others from NNL were offered to partake in the first game in this beta-testing effort, Da Capo Innocent Finale.

Scripts like this are why I butt heads with Kouryuu over forcing me to use MSWord.

To say that there was a rough start would be an understatement. Early testing was plagued with multiple problems such as the complete lack of scripts for testers, no defined format to reports, and an avalanche of overused commas. The game itself was fairly standard for a visual novel, with excessively mopey or cheesy moments here and there, and MangaGamer’s first beta test ended with little cause for concern. In the years since then, I have been able to beta test or otherwise contribute to over sixteen titles in MangaGamer’s library. Some games were an absolute blast to be a part of, like Dengeki Stryker, Koihime Musou, and Kara no Shoujo. Some games, such as Magical Teacher, were less exciting if not outright mind-numbing to complete.

Possibly my absolute favorite game to have worked on so far. TOKOOOOOOOOOOOO–!

Half the fun of working for MangaGamer isn’t what you do, but who you work with. One of the driving reasons why I continued working for MangaGamer is that the people I work with, Kouryuu, Café, Doddler, DS55, all of them, have developed into an entertaining and close knit community over the past few years. One of the more interesting things I found was how various people from the visual novel scene found their way around here. For one, I never expected Evospace of TYPE-MOON and Beast’s Lair fame to be my boss. Nor did I expect to be reading Tick-Tack translated by DS55, who I originally heard about as he was translating Tick-Tack for fan translation groups back in 2006. The addition of Tim and Ocharenja and the departure of Sloanereinja in editing has been marked with an interesting and bumpy period of adaptation as testers and translators, new and old alike, become acquainted with each other and their duties. Also with the advent of the Doddler, our entire programming “team” within one man, we’ve been able to dramatically increase the number of titles in progress at any given point in time. He has made great strides in simplifying and streamlining the work flow for all of us, and I’ve been really looking forward to beta testing one of the games that uses the new engine he’s been working on for the past year or so, as there are specific tools built in to make all of our collective lives easier. The staff room has been ripe with both casual banter from the translators as they spewed various lines from their current assignments to more interesting topics, such as advanced notice of upcoming licenses and acquisitions.

This is what our staff room is like, except with more translators (Kouryuu, I’m looking at you) randomly pasting lines from the eroscene they’re currently translating.

However, I don’t mean to paint all of these experiences as a picture of roses and sunshine. There are a few parts of the experience that have left a less than happy mark on my mind. For starters, with the constant influx of eroge to work on and having beta tested so many of them, I have simply stopped reading visual novels outside of work. The ero in eroge has lost its allure, and I often found myself pointing out anatomical or cosmetic inaccuracies in an ero-scene rather than enjoying it for what it was. At the same time, the amount of control and change one can propose at the position of a beta tester is very limited. It is frustrating to see errors and bugs pop up in games I have worked on, such as the infamous “Anti-Toutaku Alliance” mistake of Koihime Musou (I swear, I only asked for it to be replaced once!). It is enjoyable to see people praise and suggest games you have worked on one minute and defeating to see the community tear apart another title the next.

We worked hard to bring you priceless moments like this.

Having stuck around for so long, I’ve even gotten the opportunity to operate a booth and panel for MangaGamer at anime conventions. MangaGamer has made a push for additional convention attendance to better market their games and distribute hardcopies of their titles in recent years, and I had the pleasure of running the booth at A-Kon 2013. With my last convention of any sort attended being in 2005, I found A-Kon to be a massive storm of excitement, stress, and amusement. It was amusing to see so many people who would ask how to start beta-testing at MangaGamer and think that they would only work on the long story games, like Shuffle or Da Capo 2. It was also amusing to find people drawn to my booth purely due to the large and suggestive wall scrolls I had on display, unaware of what MangaGamer was or what we even did as a company. At least for me, the experience was enjoyable enough to repeat again for A-Kon 2014 this year, registration and details pending.

I believe that MangaGamer is growing, alarmingly fast in some ways and dreadfully slow in others. One of the better points is that MangaGamer is now acquiring and slated to release more titles each year. Less appealing to me would be the variety of games I get to work on. These past few years have been filled with excitement as I got to experience the changes and advancements from within the company rather than as a consumer on the outside, and it has been a pleasure working with Kouryuu, Sloanereinja, evospace, and all of the others during this time. As I draw my personal ramblings to a close, I will implore you to give MangaGamer and our games a chance. We’ve worked hard over the past five years to build up from a shaky start, and it is through your attention as a fan that we are able to continue as a company within this niche of a niche of a niche community.

Just another day at the office…

It’s been one hell of a wild ride so far, and it ain’t over yet.

-RaptorFB