Golden Week!

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note before Mion and I go to visit our parents in Okinomiya for Golden Week ^^.

We've just added a new feature under Acquiring our Releases: we're hosting a copy of the demo as a zipped folder that already includes our patch, for those who use Mac or Linux or are having trouble installing the program.

Meanwhile, we've made progress on the project. I've finished a rough translation of days 1-6, which corresponds to the first episode of the anime Watanagashi arc - they left a LOT out for the adaptation. That brings the story to a good resolution point, and I think it's worked well to translate a larger chunk to make sure that I understand where the earlier events are headed and get the important details straight. So far I've checked and fixed the translation for days 1-3, which we're considering covering for our first Watanagashi release, and am working on checking and fixing day 4 right now. Mion has been very busy with school-related stuff this past semester, as well as more onscripter fixes for the Umineko folks, but she'll be graduating with her masters this next month (yay!) and is raring to edit for the release! So our first Watanagashi release should be coming up "soon" - I'm declining to say just how soon because we don't want to make any promises we can't keep, but please be assured that the project is moving forward.

Also, thank you very much for the many kind messages! We do read and appreciate them all, but prefer to restrict our responses to cases where people need help (or else the comment boards will be really long), so please don't take lack of response as a rejection. The same goes for questions about our releases - we know you're looking forward to reading more, and we're looking forward to sharing more with you all, but again, we want to avoid making 'promises we can't keep', especially because we both have a lot going on in our lives as far as work and career goes - Mion in particular needs to find work now that she's finished with school, but she'll enjoy editing in the meantime.

Anyway, enjoy the nice spring weather, and look forward to summer vacation!

Shion

Important News

We'd first like to thank all of you for your interest and support for our project. It's been fun working on it for the past year and few months.
However, we recently heard back from 07th Expansion regarding our translation of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. We regret that we need to shut down the project.
We hope you enjoyed reading our Onikakushi adaptation, but I'm afraid this is goodbye. ;_;
Mion

Just kidding ^^. Sorry, the timing was too perfect to resist.

Update: the Acquiring our releases post has been updated with links to the new version1.1 of Onikakushi. Sorry about the wait.


Actually, we did get an email reply from BT of 07th-Expansion, which said that he's impressed and grateful that we're translating the Higurashi PC games into English and allowing them to be enjoyed by a wider audience, similar to the message that Witch Hunt got. So we basically have their approval to continue this project, and we're happy to be able to do so.

However, it turns out that we didn't really need their permission or official recognition to do this project. We found out from chronotrig, at the Witch Hunt Umineko translation project, that they actually consider translation groups like ours to be doing 'derivative works' (二次創作). They address groups who do such works at the top of the FAQ (よくある質問) page at the 07th-Expansion website. I suggest you check the original Japanese more carefully for the details, but in short Ryuukishi07 is allowing anyone to make derivative works based on his characters and story setting, within reason (he references an infamous Pokemon doujishi as an example of going too far). So long as you "do it with love" and take responsibility for what you produce as ultimately YOUR product and not theirs, they don't mind. Frankly, they've given a very generous gift to the rest of the doujinshi and fan-works community.

This goes beyond the usual idea of 'fanfiction' or 'fan-made manga' to also include use of the text and command script that he wrote, the character art that he drew, and the backgrounds that they devised - basically the parts that he owns the copyright on. This means that people can even make their own scenarios to use within the Higurashi game framework, like the outtakes we added ^^. Ryuukishi07 explains this in the second of these two forum posts here.

He also explains that this does NOT include the sound effects and music used in the games, which he used either by licensing or by permission of the owner/composer. He's not the copyright holder, so it's not his place to allow other people to use those. This is why we're particularly glad that our releases consist of small patches that contain only the translated script and a few translated images, which can be applied to the original game.

Please also note that all this only applies to the original PC games that Ryuukishi07 & 07th-Expansion have released themselves; the PS2 and DS games were released by Alchemist, and the images, music and voice effects used for those belong to Alchemist, not Ryuukishi07. That's why we are only releasing patches for the PC games, and not for the PS2 or DS games - I might consider making a 'PC version' of one of the extra arcs (like Miotsukushi-hen?) that only uses characters and locations that can be found in the original games, but that wouldn't be until after finishing the original PC games, and that's going to take a long time.

Anyway, if you want to translate Higurashi into your own language and make your own patch, go right ahead! You don't need to ask them for permission, though they might enjoy hearing from you about it if you're translating into a more obscure language - BT seemed pretty amazed at the possibility of it getting translated into Turkish ^^. However, they're very busy making the Umineko games right now, and their hands-off policy towards derivative works includes not getting involved with those works themselves, so you really shouldn't bother them with lots of questions about the game or requests for approval of changes you make. There are many sites maintained by detail-obsessive Higurashi fans that can answer questions you may have about the story, and it's ultimately up to you to decide if a change is worth making. If you want, feel free to use our translation as a guide to figuring out your own translation - we'll even send you the text file of the script if you ask for it.

One difficulty for most of you interested in translating to another language is that the game engine we use, Onscripter, doesn't work well with characters beyond the normal Roman or Japanese set - it can do ugly full-width versions of Russian characters, but no Latin characters with diacritics, for example. Mion is helping out with a version of the game engine that, when ready, will be useful for making your non-English game translations. Meanwhile, happy translating!

************

We have new links to the corrected versions of our Onikakushi patches, both full-game and demo. We made a new version of the demo credit scroll, since BT was able to answer some questions we had about the staff names. As for the script, one Japanese reader noted a few places that we'd made mistakes in things such as rendering a Japanese name. We fixed those, as well as the other grammar errors that observant readers pointed out for us [Thanks Nick!]. Nothing major was changed, and definitely nothing important for the plot, so you don't have to reread the story with the new patch unless you really want to ^^.

It's been busy for both of us recently, but we have made progress on Watanagashi and hope to make somewhat more rapid progress once things have settled down. We'll provide more details once we're closer to the testing stage.

Cheers!

Shion

Starting Watanagashi; thoughts on DS game

Hi all,

We hope you're enjoying Onikakushi! I've done a rough translation of the first few days of the next arc, Watanagashi, but there's still plenty left to the story, since it's even longer than Onikakushi. Not to mention the cleanup and adaptation so it makes sense and doesn't look like something run through Babelfish. Since we're planning to do just 2 or 3 total releases for the game, instead of one for each chapter, it'll be a while until the next release, but we'll keep you guys posted on how it's coming.

Along the way, I've also taken the opportunity to try out the Nintendo DS version of the game: "Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Kizuna". NOTE: we are NOT translating the DS games, just the PC games; I only mentioned the DS Kizuna game because I tried it out for fun, sorry if there was any confusion. The first game, called "Tatari", treats the first three original arcs as branches from a common 'dating game'-type scenario. One fun part of this are the 'emotion points', where you click on a wheel that has you react to the situation on a scale from 'serious' to 'joking' and 'passionate' to 'calm', leading to 2-4 different possible outcomes. They don't usually affect how the story goes, and often end up with you (Keiichi) losing badly in four different ways, but I had fun using the scenario tree to go back and find all the different possibilities. Once you get more into each story proper, you don't get any more choice points, but there are more voiced lines, which makes up for that.















I discovered that quite a few lines were changed from the original PC game for Alchemist's DS release (and PS2 release too, apparently). And I'm not talking about the alternative outcomes - I mean the exact same scene, just different lines. The first instance happens pretty early, when you first meet Mion. In the PC game, she talks about how Keiichi's even growing a beard... but she's not looking at his face, and it's followed by some crude banter that leads to him 'almost' opening his zipper. In the DS & PS2 game, she says she saw Keiichi buy a razor, and asserts that she knows everything, from what he had for breakfast to Rena's measurements. It's also funny banter, but definitely toned down. The same went for other instances of semi-crude humor in the PC game. They also cut the more blatant cultural references, one of which cracked me up in Watanagashi but comes off a bit, well, lamer in the DS game (you'll recognize it when you get to see it I'm sure.) But I can understand it as a requirement when doing a commercial game release instead of an independent doujinshi production.

Another thing I noticed was that, although it's interesting how they managed to fit the different scenes from the three games into different paths of the same timeline, this often results in you finding things out in a different order than in the original games, which I think lessens their impact somewhat. Still, when you already know the story, it's fun to try this version and see the different permutations. I'm not planning to get any more of the DS games, since all the other arcs apparently just run as straight read-throughs, and we've got our hands full with translating the PC material so I'm not really interested in the extra arcs yet either.




















I ordered this from yesasia.com, which has free shipping to the USA for orders of more than $39, so this game qualified by itself. I've also been inspired to order the drama CD's for Onikakushi and Watanagashi from there as well, since they have the same voice actors as the anime and games, and I'm curious to see whether the CDs stick closer to the original script *heh*.

Anyway, time to help resolve a tense stand-off with a biker gang. Later!

Shion