Welcome Back!

Hi everyone, Mion here!

Sorry it's been a while. After a long month of thinking and discussing we can finally tell you guys what's been going on.

First of all, we want you to know that I did get an offer from MangaGamer to work on their Higurashi release as a proofreader (Shion works full-time so she couldn't join in), which I was considering seriously.

However, I ultimately realized that I work too slowly to give the project the attention it deserves within the required time limit. I've had fun editing for our project and enjoy doing good work, but quite frankly, I'm not a professional writer. That's why I decided to just keep working on our own project, even if we'd be the only ones who'd get to enjoy it.

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---But wait, there's more! See, while I was still discussing the job offer with MangaGamer and thinking about my decision, they investigated and confirmed what we'd been told earlier this year:

07th Expansion does indeed allow fan translation patches, similar to how they allow regular derivative works, even if MangaGamer is licensed to provide the complete game as an English version.

As a result, MangaGamer apologized and said we could go ahead and continue with our translation patches!

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Now, we don't harbor any anger towards MangaGamer for asking us to take down our patches earlier this month, because normally such a license would be exclusive. Heck, we certainly assumed that it was. This is a very unique situation, and dealing with it has surely caused MG no end of headaches, but they were cool to offer a place on their team, and were great about letting us know the recent news and respecting our decision to continue as Sonozaki Futago-tachi.

And so, we appreciate the support all of you have offered us during this past crazy month, and are happy to say that there's no longer any need to petition either MangaGamer or 07th Expansion about the situation.

To be honest, we prefer the situation like this, because now we don't have to bear the full responsibility for providing Higurashi in English, and can take allll the time we want for our project ^^. But we will continue it, so those of you who already bought the original games will be able to play them in English, in good time.

And if you don't want to wait, MangaGamer has a good-sized team getting the games ready for October and December, with a true Higurashi expert on hand to help make sure the translation preserves the important details. We've even provided a link to MangaGamer's website (just beware that it's for ages 18+).

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For now, I plan to work on the Unicode-enabled version of ONScripter and make a Unicode version of the demo script for those groups who want to try their hand at translating Onikakushi into their own particular languages - if you're interested, please email us at sonozaki{dot}futagotachi (at some site called) gmail{dot}com (take that spambots! ;P )

We'll also get back to plugging away at Watanagashi, which we plan to release once that arc is completely translated - probably sometime early next year.

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So to put it simply, MangaGamer will be releasing an English version of the game, but we can still continue to make and release translation patches! Pretty nifty, huh?

We'll have the patch downloads back up in a jiffy, but in the meantime I'll leave you with the immortal words of Bill and Ted:
Be Excellent to Each Other, and Party on Dude!

Mion