TYPE-MOON’s Mahōtsukai no Yoru (Witch on the Holy Night) visual novel is getting a release on Steam on December 14. The release will support Japanese, English, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese text.
Oh right, interesting stuff. Yeah, I’m kinda glad most visual novel developers are so small that DRM is often out of reach, except for digital editions (DMM makes it easy). I thought Mirror Moon required proof of ownership before you could run their patches? I haven’t read any TYPE-MOON stuff, but that was my impression.
I don’t read ANN regularly but that was the source OP posted. And I corroborated it with several other news sources for the PS4/Switch game, as it’s the same localization. That being said…yeah, you’d expect them to have someone who knows Japanese on staff.
While I would love to buy Japanese visual novels directly from Japanese publishers, they’re often encumbered by DRM. The digital edition usually is. With physical editions, you just don’t know (hopefully the new VNDB DRM tag will change that; it’s now in Beta). Western visual novels that retain the Japanese text are often the best way to buy visual novels in Japanese. They are always clearly labelled as containing DRM or not and they rarely do these days.
Oh, well…even if you are biased, hey, at least it’s an improvement! One thing I’m glad about after deciding to learn Japanese is that I don’t need to worry about translation quality. Nonetheless, I’m grateful to fan translations because they were how I got into Japanese media in the first place. Even if most of them weren’t great (and filled with translation notes). I’ve yet to come across a VN writer who can write a good H-Scene…
I thought Mirror Moon required proof of ownership before you could run their patches?
Not with Tsukihime; if you have the CD (or more realistically mount the ISO) the installer just works, even from within wine. That said that was for an are where you’d still be able to realistically obtain the CD, nowadays the game is considered abandonware so some people took the translation; fixed it up (and by a lot) and provided easy access to western audiences) it’s a great way to read the original with all it’s rough edges. If you do want to support Type Moon in this endeavor; the best way would be to buy their stuff (whether it is a version of mahoyo, the Tsukihime remake (which is getting an official english release come 2024), or wait on a PC release (which Nasu stated he’s interested in if it got translated)). Personally I think I’m going to wait until the full game is out and translated if I’m going to read remake; there’s some interesting stuff that changes between the two that got me curious; but reading mahoyo was already challenging enough for me (largely because I did that on a 7 year old laptop)
you’d expect them to have someone who knows Japanese on staff.
you would; but then this is far from their first screw up and it really makes it look bad that it would have been easier to write an article correcting the misinformation caused by the whole incident rather than doing the same as everybody else.
One thing I’m glad about after deciding to learn Japanese is that I don’t need to worry about translation quality.
Good luck learning a language is hard (I know because english isn’t my first), know that it’s a long road but I can share a few tips:
- listen to japanese as much as you can; whether it’s movies, anime, music, … if it is made by japanese people for native speakers then you’re good (you can always get other material besides it; but it usually not as good for building an intuitive understanding of the language)
- try to avoid speaking/writing in japanese unless you feel comfortable forming sentences, premature output leads to you using broken japanese as reference for the language which builds accents, these are extremely hard to get rid of.
- kanji is a beast; but it’s not all irrational, most words are built by tying concepts together; what kanji don’t do is represent the way they’re supposed to sound.
- don’t use duolingo (this applies to any language) it’s method of learning is slow, it’s questions trivially simple, and it does not mesh well with the more flexible sentence structure in japanese leading to it telling you that a sentence normal people might use is wrong, it also forces premature output which goes against point 2.
I’ve yet to come across a VN writer who can write a good H-Scene…
same here; but I’ve read very few visual novels, I’m not really a reader and the things I have read are because either I knew it would be good (tsukihime, mahoyo) or where I just craved for more after loving it’s adaptation (Fate, Mushoku Tensei [Light Novel]).
Ah, so Mirror Moon themselves haven’t dropped that requirement, but another fan group intervened. I’m probably just going to wait until the 2024 version is out since I have such a big backlog anyway, but it’s cool that fans are preserving this stuff, putting copyright law aside. I could probably argue about this particular aspect of copyright law for hours, but I’m sure nobody is interested in that :P
I’ll definitely be reading Witch on the Holy Night first, though. I’ve been wanting to read it since watching Garden of the Sinners, which was years ago now.
Counter-point, though: is there anyone better at Japanese media reporting than ANN?
Thanks for the advice on learning Japanese! I’ve actually been at for about a decade now, though not consistently. I only started getting serious about it ~3 years ago (and I’ve been far too busy this year to give it the attention it deserves). I’ve got a decent understanding of the language now and can approach most media with a dictionary (and watch a lot of anime without). And yeah, production was never a priority for me. I don’t think there’s an easier language to immerse in. There are so many great options, and there are so many tools out there by all these different people you won’t see for other languages.
I’ve never had trouble with Kanji. I just learn words and get a feel for the Kanji as a byproduct. It’s not difficult to remember Kanji after you’ve seen them a few times, especially if you know some radicals. One thing I need to properly learn, though, is pitch accent. I’ve been very lazy about not learning it, but it’s pretty important to do so as early as you can, or you end up needing to correct a lot of misunderstandings about pronunciation, as you say.
And I have actually gone through the Duolingo Japanese course (right around release)! It’s pretty bad. I’ve also tried Wanikani, Jalup, Tae Kim, Imabi, Sakubi, iKnow, FluentU, Lingualift, KKLC, Genki, Tobira, various Memrise and Anki vocabulary decks, japaneseclass.jp, and Maggie-Sensei (this list is not exhaustive). Some of it helped; some of it not, but all of that adds up to still not enough to purchase Rosetta Stone. After all of this, I think the best way is:
- Learn Kana
- Read Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide (or Sakubi if you can handle it)
- Do a Core 1-2k deck while immersing
- Mine new words from native material
Everything else is unnecessary or inefficient.
I already know enough grammar to immerse nowadays (I guess I’m around N3?) so I only learn new words from native material. I consider this a general success because I’ve read lots of great stuff (my favourite is Munou na Nana) in Japanese and felt I had a better experience than I would have reading the localization.
Yeah, I definitely should not be this bad at Japanese after so long, but that’s what happens when you leave it for a year or two at a time. Key to learning anything is consistency, and every day, it gets easier. If I wasn’t so easily distracted, I’m sure I’d be almost fluent by now. My biggest regret is not committing harder and sooner. I made a lot of good progress when I committed every day from 2019 to the end of 2020, and I want to do that again! Alas, whether it’s programming, writing or video production…there’s always something!
I haven’t read too many visual novels either! I also still have lots of kamige to read, and I’m glad for it. I never used to be much of a reader, but things changed when I started getting into isekai web novels, haha.
it’s cool that fans are preserving this stuff
Video game preservation is always a plus and being able to read a 20 year old VN (on linux natively) is something that Type Moon would probably never concern themselves about. Granted their main source of income today is definitely Fate/Grand Order (it’s literally what made the remake possible in terms of funding) so it’s hard to imagine they’d go strike down stuff like this where they’d never see money from anyways, Type Moon has also been very lax when it comes to derivative works (I probably don’t need to mention that with all the fate spin-offs and doujins floating around).
I’ll definitely be reading Witch on the Holy Night first, though. I’ve been wanting to read it since watching Garden of the Sinners, which was years ago now.
Mahoyo is the indirect prequel to that (get used to not having any direct sequels in the nasuverse) it’s a really good introduction to the series’ magic system and gives you a good introduction to all the concepts Kara no Kyoukai is built on, it’s a lot slower than the Kara no Kyoukai movies and focuses a lot more on the slice of life aspects of being a magus; yet doesn’t pull any punches when there’s action, the battles are really diverse showcasing quite a bit of magecraft which is nicely accented by all the animations in this VN.
Counter-point, though: is there anyone better at Japanese media reporting than ANN?
not that I know of; although I have a couple youtube channels that cover anime news really well and while they do use sources like MAL; they’re often more accurate that what I’ve seen from ANN.
Otaku Spirit (Invidious: yewtu.be), some of the things he says can be a little confusing at times; but it’s pretty solid in general.
Espiritu (Invidious: yewtu.be), also debunks a lot of rumors going around alongside the general anime news.
For me that’s more than enough as I don’t really need to keep up with everything going on in the anime sphere.
Thanks for the advice on learning Japanese! I’ve actually been at for about a decade now, though not consistently. I only started getting serious about it ~3 years ago (and I’ve been far too busy this year to give it the attention it deserves). I’ve got a decent understanding of the language now and can approach most media with a dictionary (and watch a lot of anime without).
that’s already way further than I am, I want to start going about it seriously and actually get things done; but every time I start my free time gets eaten up by something else and I end up having to put it off.
Yeah, I definitely should not be this bad at Japanese after so long, but that’s what happens when you leave it for a year or two at a time.
everybody at their on pace; if I would seriously start immersing myself I bet I could form a pretty decent understanding of Japanese in no time (I went from bare knowing a couple english words to being able to speak in ~4 months; but that was after hours and hours every day watching youtube content in english and having luck in the fact that both english and my native language are germanic languages so they share quite a lot of similarities)
I made a lot of good progress when I committed every day from 2019 to the end of 2020, and I want to do that again!
I’m in the same boat with you, I would kill to be able to spend time like that again; but as it stands now I simply don’t and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do a sprint like that ever again.
I never used to be much of a reader, but things changed when I started getting into isekai web novels
Any chance you’ve read Mushoku Tensei? I remember devouring that like nothing else once season 1 of the anime ended because the story was that good, managed to read everything starting from volume 1 in 6 months; I never expected to be that much of a reader as I could barely finish any book before but with this I just went through them at incredible pace.
