Hey all! I’m early again! I figured, despite having reasons behind it, the last two came out at the end of prior months instead of the beginning of respective months, that I’d just continue that as the trend! Makes it sort of a preview-for-next-month type of thing. So that’s what I’m gonna do from now on, expect Status Reports at the end of the previous month! June’s gonna be a bit of a big month for us, so let’s get right into it.
First off, I’d like to thank everyone for their support regarding the Angel Beats translation, and it makes myself and the rest of us very happy to hear how much you’ve been enjoying it. We know there’s still the occasional typo in there, but I’m here to say there will be no more patch updates with fixes. As much as we’d like the release to be perfect, Angel Beats is such a vast maze of text that committing to fix everything until perfection would mean we’d be working on this project until the end of our lives. But we appreciated all the help many of you gave us in identifying things for our update patch. It’s been a fun ride, a fun Beat one might say, and we’re happy to see it end with so many happy faces. But enough about the past. Onto the future!
June is going to be a month of “small steps” for Alka Translations. Summer Pockets Reflection Blue comes out on June 26th in Japan, and most, if not all of the team has copies already pre ordered. So we’ll be sure to dig right into the files and set up a system when it comes out, as well as keeping our ear to the ground on any word of an official localization. However, here’s where I want to make something clear. None of us have any affiliation with VisualArts, as most of you know. I only know a few people who know a few people, and they’ve all got NDAs regarding official work, naturally. So they cannot outright tell me if Reflection Blue is getting a localization. So I have to use my best judgment. If we stop work on Reflection Blue, do NOT take that as a confirmation of an official release impending. All that means is that something has us feeling like there’s a big chance for one coming. At the end of the day, all I have are my own conclusions to draw. I do not know any more than the rest of you. But until I draw that conclusion, we are still planning to tackle Reflection Blue ourselves, as we definitely want our translation of Summer Pockets to be experienced by everybody, and it’d feel pretty poetic. It’d almost be like we never stopped working on Summer Pockets, more like…we just took a break. And if you haven’t yet but are considering it, definitely pre order Reflection Blue! They’ve got lots of nice tapestries depending on the retailer, too. I myself jumped on the Sofmap Limited Edition, so I’ll soon be able to tearfully stare in adoration at Shiki and Umi. I can’t wait, I’m so excited.
But speaking of Summer Pockets, we plan on shifting a bit of focus towards the Summer Pockets Short Stories. We’ll hopefully have most, if not all of them done by the time Reflection Blue is released. The goal is June 26th, but if it takes another week or so, then that’s what it’ll take. Tsumugi’s will likely be posted to the site in the next couple of days, with Inari and Shiroha soon after!
Kud Wafter is still proceeding on, bit by bit, week by week. It’s almost a certainty at this point that a patch won’t be released by the time Reflection Blue is out, especially considering considering a number of factors that are, in retrospect, best left unspecified. But finishing the patch by the end of June was a long shot pipe dream anyway, so hopefully you guys aren’t TOO disappointed in that news. The translation will still be MOSTLY done by then, if not completely done. It’s just gonna be the testing and editing that’ll need to be done. And who knows! If myself and Kitaro have enough time on our hands while Reflection Blue is being worked on, there’s still a chance Kud Wafter’s patch could be out by July. But due to all the ever-changing factors, there’s not gonna be a date commitment at this time, or even a month commitment.
A Sky Full Of Stars: Fine Days is very very close. Miharu’s route just finished translation, leaving only Honoka’s route and Hinami’s DLC route to be translated. I’ve taken my old helm as an Editor for this project, and finished editing Orihime’s route just the other day, and have moved onto Saya’s route. Gotta say, editing H scenes is kind of fun. I look forward to our degenerate fans giving me some feedback on them, I think I did a pretty good job making them tasteful and not awkward sounding, which is rare for translated VNs these days. That means we’ve also successfully learned how to compile all the files and properly patch the game, thanks in no small part to our newest team member Infernoplex, who originally worked on an attempt at a Restoration Patch for the Steam version of A Sky Full Of Stars. Speaking of a Restoration Patch for the Steam version of A Sky Full Of Stars, we’re gonna try and do that once we finish Fine Days. Infernoplex has graciously agreed to use his expertise to handle the worst part of creating such a patch, so if we can get everything working properly, that’ll happen sometime in the future as well! But Fine Days comes first, and Fine Days is close. I’d estimate the patch being complete and released within the next 2-3 weeks. We plan on including the Hinami DLC with the patch. The way we see it, Hinami’s DLC was a timed-availability DLC, but it was free. It never cost money in the first place to acquire. So including it with this patch doesn’t harm any sort of sales, as there were no sales to be gained to begin with. In fact, it’s been years since you could even officially acquire the DLC from Pulltop themselves. It means the patch size itself is gonna be a bit of a bigger download, but I can’t imagine you guys are gonna complain when you’re getting a whole extra route out of it. However! In the effort of transparency, I’m gonna come out and say that we’ve sent an E-Mail to the folks at MoeNovel, the localization company owned by Pulltop’s parent company WillPlus. They’re the ones who localized the original A Sky Full Of Stars, as well as If My Heart Had Wings and the Flight Diary fandisc, Adventure Of A Lifetime, the LoveKami VNs, etc. We’ve informed them of the Fine Days translation and have offered to give it to them to use for an official localization. They’ll still cut all of the 18+ content from it (in which case, we’ll obviously include that content in a Fine Days Restoration Patch) but I think everyone would like to see an official localization of a visual novel released, so we want to present an opportunity for that to happen. I’ll keep you posted if that comes to pass!
Anyways, that’s about it! Like I said, mostly a month of small steps. Short Stories, fandiscs, some engine work. I know the majority of you are looking forward to Kud Wafter and Reflection Blue, but I hope you guys can get excited with the rest of us about these small steps too! So enjoy the month of June in the visual novel world, and I’ll see you at the end of it to tell you all about what July has in store for Alka!
Until then, sayonara! Here’s our version of Kud Wafter’s pull-up menu.
Hot damn! I hastily read fine days~ with my meager reading comp in Japanese I really didn’t think a patch would come outta nowhere and so fast aha thank you VERY much for the translation; will make a second read through much much easier! Keep up the awesome work.
Thank you really much for the hard work. Right now, I’m playing a Sky Full of Stars in steam, which is unexpectedly have a good story and charming characters.
I can’t say how happy I was when I found this translation for ASFOS: Fine Days and I really wanna play Honoka’s route so much lol. Keep up the good work guys!
THANK You guys, Miagete Goran means a Lot to me. You consider translate interstellar focus or bring a restauration patch for IFMHD Fandisc? Also, may i ask If Pulltop accept your offer the patch’s release can be delayed?
Thank you for your excitement! Those are definitely ideas, but we have no hard plans for anything just yet. As far as Pulltop goes, we’ve heard nothing.