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.
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.
I’m always on the lookout for cool new visual novels 😎
Yeah, it probably won’t even be DRM’d, with any luck. I don’t see myself doing any of that myself, but I’m happy about the Steam release!
Sounds like it’s going to be a good release then! It’s interesting that Aniplex appears to be the localizer. This is only the second game they’ve ever published on Steam, and I don’t think they’ve localized VNs before. But hey, it’s not Moenovel, and they’re retaining the Japanese script, so I can’t complain.
Oh, good to hear the KiriKiri2 engine has limited support for DRM. I’ve got DRACU-RIOT here with plaintext archives, so that might be part of the reason why they’re plaintext. I wonder if Ren’Py supports DRM very well…I don’t think I know of a Ren’Py game encumbered with DRM.
I don’t use emotes enough to go to that effort, but yeah, that’s definitely a good way to get them.
Aniplex is the only western company publicly listed for the visual novel in the ANN post and on the Steam page, so I have to believe they’re responsible for the localization. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the Japanese company just publish their own localization? That’s something that’s been happening more and more lately; Japanese companies directly publishing their games without going through a middle-man. Good and bad, I think. Western companies are far less likely to ship a game with DRM these days, but Japanese developers tend to have no such compunctions with digital releases.
That said, I’m happy to see more Western localizers who retain the original Japanese text. If Moenovel did that, I would buy their localizations…
It’s good to hear you thought the localization was good overall! I tend to hear bad things about localizations lately, though I don’t read them myself.
The OG Tsukihime didn’t have any DRM (aside from streaming the music from the CD which Mirror Moon patched out due to performance) the Fate/Stay Night VN also doesn’t have much in the way of DRM although it does need a patch to run (and even then a VN of this age has issues). The thing with KiriKiri is that it’s insanely extensible so you could theoretically patch in any DRM you want; but the time and effort required to do so far outweighs any benefits you’d see as a group making visual novels. Add to that that we now have things like AETools which can extract the archives kirikiri uses in no time at all and people write interpreters for the KAG scripts as hobby project so you can read the Fate/Stay Night VN in the web although it doesn’t have saving/loading and is definitely not something I’d recommend for a first read.
Ren’Py is in a very similar boat where it’s scripts are trivial to extract (even more so because you don’t need specialized tools) and once you have it’s assets you can dump those into a new project and be done with it.
I see; I don’t use ANN myself; they’ve sorta pissed me off a couple times with certain articles being inaccurate and reporting based on a mistranslated tweet from the Mushoku Tensei author (this one I only heard from and I can’t care enough to dig it up RN; but at least double check your sources and especially if they are translated from japanese with MTL as it is known to be bad at the best of times). As for the steam page I hadn’t looked myself yet because I already read it.
I personally don’t care much as most of the VNs I’ve read are community translated using a patch so I always had the original scripts; but it’s always good to see that we are getting options for this sorta stuff.
I should probably mention that I might be biased in that view as I read Mahoyo right after the original Tsukihime using mirror moon’s translation which doesn’t exactly put the bar that high (sometimes it was hard to tell where the translation stopped and Nasu’s writing begun; doubly so during H-scenes where things would get laughably bad); but it was one of the first translations of any of the type moon works (I think they got beaten by the Fate translation; but at least that wasn’t a complete mess that was passed down to multiple groups before eventually being finished by mirror moon). what matters the most to me in the translations though is that they use the same terminology (which is now pretty much standardized thanks to the type moon wiki) as otherwise you might get that they are talking about something like vampires; but it makes it hard to tell whether they’re talking about true ancestors or dead apostles which are two very different things.
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…
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 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.
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:
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:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
That’s definitely true. I don’t know of a Japanese company that has released a visual novel with a native GNU/Linux binary.
I’m aware of how uh, interesting, copyright law is in Japan, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get raked over the coals for a doujin. Is that something that actually happens? And, aren’t the Fate spin-offs authorized by TYPE-MOON?
Sounds like it’s just up my alley, then! I’m excited! I’ve been wanting to read Fate for a long time, too. I’ve seen the DEEN anime, UBW series and movie, but I haven’t touched Heaven’s Feel. I want my first experience to be with the visual novel. I think I mentioned I’m a fan of slice of life and not much of a fan of action, but a blend of the two is a nice cocktail. I like the “dramedy” genre for similar reasons; I can’t watch a pure comedy for too long but drama makes it feel grounded. BoJack Horseman comes to mind.
Anyway, it sounds like a good time. Animations are a plus too, because most VNs don’t have that kind of budget :)
I have a confession to make: I’m not too interested in keeping up with the latest anime. I don’t even have a Crunchyroll subscription. The only anime I watch tend to be 10-20 years old, though I was thinking of watching Kimagure Orange Road the other day…
That said, I am interested in VN news. Particularly localizations, because as I said earlier, they’re easier to get my hands on when I want the Japanese script. Thanks for providing invidious links though!
Feels like my life this year. Unfortunately, certain things have had to take a much higher priority, but about half of it was just me getting distracted by something else, lol. You don’t need to spend hours learning Japanese every day, though. Half an hour is good enough to form a habit and get acclimated. But I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that, since this isn’t your first rodeo :)
I bet you would! Take this as my encouragement to do so when you have the time! I never had any formal classes on Japanese, don’t know any Japanese people, and only really interacted with Japanese media, so I’m self-taught, you could say. I only knew English beforehand. It took a while to wrap my head around some fundamental stuff, but it feels natural now. It’d probably be easier for you, haha.
I have not. The kind of web novels I was interested in were the villainess kind. You know, Destruction Flag Otome (or Bakarina, whatever), Reika-sama, Evil God Average, Eliza, stuff like that. I prefer female protagonists (and somehow Saga of Tanya the Evil counts as that). I liked Ascendance of a Bookworm and really liked So I’m a Spider, So What? but have only seen the anime adaptations in any great detail at the moment. I’ve transitioned to reading the light novel adaptations of the web novels, mostly, but because Syosetu novels are free, I’ve downloaded a fair few. Mushoku Tensei was one of the few stories with a male protagonist I was interested in reading at some point.
I just remembered that the story that got me into reading was actually HakoMari. I think I read all 7 volumes in 3 days… I have no idea how I managed that and I have never read that fast again, haha!