2012.04.21. The streak ends

As of last night, Anime North 2012 sold out of weekend admissions. Longtime fans of No Name Losers will know that we frequent Anime North. In fact, we still have our 2011 con report on this site, which you can view here!

So is No Name Losers Toronto going to Anime North this year? Sadly, the answer is NO, thus ending our streak of consecutive Anime North appearances at nine, from 2003 to 2011. Why have we declined to go to this year's Anime North?

No guests
Over the years, Anime North has had a wonderful cornucopia of guests, ranging from Atsuko Enomoto, to KOTOKO, and Halko Momoi. And of course, GREG AYRES (for the supah Greg Ayres fangirl on our team xD) Now take a look at this year's guest list. While we're sure that many people are looking forward to some of the guests, there are no guests that interest us this year. Normally that wouldn't be a problem, except that it's one factor that adds up with everything else.

We've done (almost) every activity
Our paws have been all over Anime North. Here's an exhaustive list of everything we've done in the past 9 years:

- Attended panels
- Volunteered as panelists
- Participated in game shows
- Won at least one game show
- Volunteered to film game shows
- Participated in video game and card game tournaments
- Attended concerts
- Watched the masquerade
- Entered the AMV contest
- Won a prize in the AMV contest
- Participated in the idol contest
- Won first place in the idol contest
- Volunteered in the dealers' room
- Bought official Anime North merchandise
- Bought merchandise at the Artist Alley
- Visited Hirameki International's booth for both years that they were at Anime North
- Bought many hardcopies of visual novels in the dealers' room
- Bought a suspicious bedsheet from Hen Da Ne
- Bought a terrible ef h-doujinshi from Hen Da Ne
- Tormented Hen Da Ne for multiple years
- Sold over $500 of old anime belongings at the flea market
- Slept overnight in an expensive hotel room
- Slept with ten other men in a cheaper hotel room
- Participated in karaoke every year
- Had numerous people recognize our fansub group
- Attended the rave
- Attended 18+ hentai panels
- Raised our hands during a hentai screening inspection
- Attended the Gay Sex 101 panel
- Lost personal belongings such as a cell phone
- Had a picture taken with a blow-up sex doll

About the only two things we haven't done are 1) cosplay and 2) get a con girlfriend (maybe we should've gone to that panel). Oh well, can't win 'em all!

Reduced social network
We began going to Anime North while we were still in high school. Over the years we picked up many friends who shared the same interests as us. Sadly, time has taken its toll, and we've lost contact with virtually all of them. For the past few Anime North conventions, we've pretty much been by ourselves, and that's a drag in a social event such as this. It's rather difficult to find visual novel fans, though there was a room full of them last year at the visual novel panel.

ef isn't ready
Our intention was to use Anime North 2012 to distribute hardcopies of ef, perhaps with the co-operation of Hen Da Ne. We had thought ef would've been released sometime in 2011. However, things happened, and now that dream isn't possible anymore.

We may be headed to another convention in the USA!
Yes yes! Nothing is set in stone yet, but we're hopeful that we can attend a USA convention this summer. We don't know which one yet, but we'll tell you if it happens! And this time, we won't need donations! Thank you once again to all to who donated last year, by the way. If we do end up attending a USA convention, we'll try to cross those two "things to do" off our list!

MangaGamer has asked us to post all ef-related information on their blog. Since writing for MangaGamer is different than writing for our loyal fans, the articles we originally wrote need a little bit of revising. You'll see them over there very soon!

2012.04.20. Over eighteen

We apologize for not updating in a while. Our team includes people from a great many places, and all of us were just very busy this month.

ef - the first tale finally has a product page, which you can visit here! Yay! This means that it'll be out very, very, soon.

Now on to the details. MangaGamer has posted a blog entry regarding the issue of the game not being completely uncensored, instead having mosaic granularity reduced from 20x20 pixels to 5x5 pixels. One could spin-doctor this and say that the game is 94% less censored, as that's the percentage of 25 into 400. We'll spare the humor. Bureaucracy and red tape have been the cause of much of ef's delays, as explained in the blog entry.

For minori, this is the least granular mosaic level they have ever used. Their first two titles, Bittersweet Fools and Wind -a breath of heart-, contained a mosaic granularity of 10x10. Their current standard of 20x20 was first implemented in the Wind -a breath of heart- fandisc. Why did they change it at that exact moment? Perhaps some of you may discover a clue. Does this clue have to do with ef? No comment.

Did we know about 94% uncensored? Yes. None of minori's builds ever contained the uncensored images, so we have never had possession of them ourselves. (So don't ask!) However, we were forbidden from revealing the news, as MangaGamer is footing all legal responsibilities, not us. Our official stance is that we support whatever decision it takes to allow us to work on future minori titles. As most of you will agree, it's better to have the possibility of minori's whole library available, rather than a single uncensored game.

first tale is now locked in, so we'll have an update tomorrow about our final changelog from the fansub version. See you!

2012.03.11. Final check

We got what will hopefully be the last beta for first tale. We'll let you know once we run through it, which will hopefully only take a day or two.

2012.02.28. End of month status

There is still no response from minori. We have decided to begin testing the first tale beta anyway. Forgive us if there are any word wrap errors in the final release, though we'll try our best to prevent any from popping up.

Official development is about to enter month 18. Counting fansub development, it's been almost three years since ef Chapter 1 was completed. The honeymoon is all but over: re-negotiating terms with minori will happen after first tale is released. Not only is minori's apathetic attitude of concern to us, but waiting this long has been quite unfair to all of our fans. We'll make our best effort to not have latter tale end up the same way.

2012.02.23. Where's the effort?

The first tale beta is finally in our hands, which is pretty much the release candidate minus the installer. Once we hand in the beta report, MangaGamer will be able to finally announce a release date.

However, we can't work on it yet. minori lengthened the primary message panel text margins, which could re-introduce the possibility of wrapping errors. We've requested a code revert, which would take minori all of ten minutes to perform.

...It's been three days since that request. This isn't the first time we've had to wait for a critical fix. This update revealed that we were waiting for a fix on alpha build 2. The turnaround time for that was two weeks.

We've put our best effort into this localization. If minori wants to be respected, they need to show more effort on their end as well. minori claims that they are very busy with Supipara. However, the "Japanese market is our focus" excuse falls apart when we're only asking for ten minutes of their time from them.

2012.02.18. Read between the lines

nbkz of minori has declined to give us the rights to the Supipara prerelease fandisc, as they believe they can sell it for a low price via MangaGamer. In addition, he cited various reasons as to why ef is taking so long, but we feel it's not yet the right time to disclose what he said. However, what we said on our previous update stands: our chances of getting Supipara (or any other minori title) in 2012 look grim.

Negotiations will hopefully resume once first tale is released. That's all we can say, as we still hope for all sides to come to an understanding. All we wish for is to work on more minori titles as soon as possible. There are many minori fans that are still patiently waiting for something, and it pains us to make this update. Sorry.

(Katsucon update: MangaGamer has announced a release date for DEARDROPS: March 2nd. For those keeping score at home, DEARDROPS was localized from start to finish in just under a year, according to this update. Pretty good when you consider ef had a six month head start. What does this mean? MangaGamer is relatively quick when not bottlenecked. Please do not blame MangaGamer for ef being indefinitely delayed.)

2012.02.13. Calling out the prez

minori has announced a release date for Supipara. As you can see, there's likely going to be more than one part.

So where does that leave us? Are we doing it? MangaGamer staff has repeatedly explained to us the rigors of Japanese work ethic. It's not surprising that minori would prioritize the Japanese market. After all, that's their primary business. However, progress on ef hasn't been humming as smoothly as we had hoped. We're beginning to question whether minori is truly interested in English localization, or whether they contacted us to simply put a clamp on the eden* project. It should not take a professional company longer than a ragtag group of minori fans to localize (half of) a title.

Back in September 2010, we stated that we were only contracted for ef. The possibility of us doing Supipara has not even been mentioned. As for eden*? Nothing's been put on the table for that, either. No Name Losers has always wanted to bring the magic of minori to fans overseas. During our fansubbing days, we ended up localizing every single demo of minori's major titles: Wind -a breath of heart-, Haru no Ashioto (plus the tech demo), ef, and eden* (which was a one-day April Fool's surprise). In the case of ef, not only did we do the demo, but we also did the first fandisc and second fan mix teasers, the latter of which has never been released. Keeping minority spirit in English is still our goal today, and if we can't achieve it, then there is no point in us continuing. So we're putting minori in the hot seat.

Today, we sent an e-mail to nbkz (the CEO of minori) asking for permission to localize the Supipara teaser fandisc scenario, "Nice to Meet You!" which was released at the end of 2011. We want this to be released for free, because:

1) The teaser is under 600 text blocks. minori cannot possibly believe that they could charge for something that short.
2) The value of the fandisc was all the physical extras that came with it. The teaser by itself was only a small portion of the package.
3) We've done every other minori demo, as explained above, without any objections.

To make things clear, we're asking for only the teaser, not Supipara Story #01 itself. This request will give us some insight into minori's business stance and where we stand in their grand outlook. If nbkz declines the request, it will mean that minori hasn't learned a thing about us and our goal to make their works known to westerners. They'd be content with protecting their property, even if it comes at the cost of their western fanbase. If that's the case, we can no longer support them officially, and the likelihood of No Name Losers working on Supipara would be almost zero. We're not saying that MangaGamer will never license it; they may very well announce it in the future. But would our name be on it? We can't answer that with any certainty.

It's up to you, nbkz. Make it happen.

The ef - a tale of memories blu-ray review will be the next update soon. See you around!

2012.01.27. Still waiting for minori

Nothing much happening here. We're still waiting. minori's handling of ef has now officially taken longer than the revival of the fansub project back in December 2008. The fansub project took 16 months from start to finish, and that was for both first tale and latter tale. The minori deal was struck in September 2010, so we're about to enter month 17 of development. Well, at least when it's all over and first tale is out, we won't have to wait another 17 months, since converting the engine was the hardest part!

The ef - a tale of memories R1 blu-ray is out a few days. We'll have a full review of it, including translation comparisons between it and the game.

2012.01.14. OP movie notice

The cinematics for ef - the first tale are locked in. However, there is something we need to tell you. minori has told us that they do not wish for Makoto Shinkai's OP movie to be hard-subtitled in the game. The opening movie in the game is letterboxed widescreen because the game itself runs in 4:3. minori feels the black bars above and below the video should remain blank for aesthetic purposes. Obviously, this wasn't what we imagined would happen; however, it's minori's artistic decision and we respect that. We've requested that the lyrics translation be available in the help file, at the very least, as we believe that understanding them enhances the player's experience.

Will there be direct availability of a hard-subtitled opening movie? The answer is probably no, which is a little frustrating, since we know that more than a few people were drawn in by it. Most likely there will be a soft-subtitled opening movie available on MangaGamer's YouTube, which is the next-best alternative.

But what about the fansubbed HD OP movie that was available in the past? Well, it's outdated, as we have updated the translation. We also cannot distribute it anymore as part of our contract.

By the way, the OP movie will be played at the end of the game, as it was in the Japanese PC version, instead of right after the first scene, as in the Japanese PlayStation2 version.

2012.01.02. New year, new hope

Happy new year! Though we regretfully missed the Christmas target for ef - the first tale, we've got some good news.

The second "beta" report is now in the hands of minori. The only task left on our side now is subtitling, as we haven't received any instructions on that yet. minori's responsibility is handling the last remaning technical issues.

Thank you for your continued patience!

2011.11.26. Build two

On the 21st, we received a second build from MG and minori. While this build fixed a number of technical issues, it introduced some new, catastrophic ones, such as the main menu not appearing, and the message panel disappearing from time to time. We are unable to test under these conditions, so we reported these almost immediately. However, minori has not replied yet, so all we can do is wait again.

At this point, non-script development is largely out of our hands, so hopefully minori can shift gears in order to meet the Christmas target.

2011.11.19. Onscreen toggle update

Okay, word from minori is that the onscreen toggle will take too long to implement. We're going with yes, localize all miscellaneous onscreens.

Supipara is officially all-age, as minori's web site now has the all-age link pointing to it. Whether there's an ero add-on remains to be seen.

2011.11.15. Hello, guy with crutches!

The poll was SUPAH close. 39% said toggle and 32% said yes. minori has been contacted about the toggle suggestion, but don't expect any miracles. If they tell us that coding a toggle will take too long, the choice will be yes for now, but hopefully they'll consider the toggle for future SHINY and PRETTY titles. We don't want any more unnecessary delays!

2011.11.10. Onscreen poll

minori is currently in the process of modifying images for ef - the first tale. There are a number of miscellaneous onscreens such as Hiro's math assignment:

Our original localization only translated critical onscreens, mainly due to plot irrelevance and Photoshop difficulty. minori is now offering to modify the images that we couldn't. The question is, how do you, our fans, feel about this? Vote and make your voice heard! (POLL CLOSED)

YES: Localize everything. At least, everything in the foreground. The point of a localization is to emulate the original Japanese experience. Players should be able to take in every detail and nuance. (This will take some time.)

NO: They're Japanese, and the setting is in a Japanese (though European-looking) city. There's no point in trying to cover it up; doing so breaks suspension of disbelief. Include the translations as an omake on the web site. (This will take the least amount of time.)

TOGGLE: What if there's an in-game option to decide between the two? Then everyone would be happy! (This may take the most time because there's extra to code.)

One more thing. Karaoke and romaji from the opening movie has been removed. Karaoke in fansubs can be a nice diversion when the targeted audience can't read the Japanese credits. However, minori has removed all Japanese in the credit roll for the official localization, presenting it in English only. Grabbing the viewer's attention with romaji, karaoke effects, English credits, and lyrics translation, not to mention the actual video itself, is just too much. This was not an easy decision to make, but we hope you can understand that too much clutter on the screen isn't practical.

Until next time!

2011.10.24. Comically comical comics (or ef - the first tale, sneak peek 1.5)

As revealed in the 10/6 update, you're able to select any font. But why bother? The default font should be the best font. And that's what today's update is all about.

For the Haru no Ashioto demo, we chose a kindergarten-style font for *cough* aesthetic purposes. (All characters in Haru no Ashioto are over 18. Now we're covered.) This same font was used in ef Supah Preview, mostly because we were too lazy to find another font.

Eek! What an eyesore! It's hard to believe we actually used that font. Fast forward 1.5 years later to the development of ef Chapter 1. ef has many scenes where the text window is reduced to a mere two lines. A skinnier font was required in order to squeeze as much text as possible. We kept with a casual-looking font because chapter 1 mainly takes place in school.

What an improvement over the ef Supah Preview font! This font was also used for the rest of ef. So for the commercial release, we naturally wanted to keep it. However, MangaGamer was unable to contact the original author after multiple e-mails and phone calls. Legal obligations meant that a replacement font was needed. Our search landed on Merriweather, a font designed for readability, and the author of that font replied to us very quickly. We're pleased to announce that a tweaked version of Merriweather will be the default font for the commercial release of ef!

Look at how professional that appears! With this, most people won't bother changing the font! It's even sophisticated and refined enough for use in non-school settings, in case we get eden*...

The moral of the story is to beware of falling in love with what you think is the right choice. Other things might happen that are out of your control. Until next time, enjoy these useless bits of trivia, as Yuuko would say!

2011.10.07. The worst-kept secret is now official

After what seemed like forever, minori has launched their Supipara web site, just over a year after the opening movie was bundled at the end of the ef fandisc. Will there be any English coverage? Currently, minori.ph still redirects to the splash page. Hopefully that'll change in the near future!

Could we end up translating Supipara? Who knows?!

2011.10.06. ef - the first tale, sneak peek 1

Okay! With the ef - the first tale scripts shipped off to minori again, we can finally reveal some of the unique features that will be in MangaGamer's release!

Can't notice the difference? Try staring where the light reflects off Yuuko's hair.

MUSICA engine upgrade - MUSICA, short for "Media Unification System Interpreter and Compiler Authorization", has been minori's front end since Haru no Ashioto. As of eden*, MUSICA contains a subtle blur filter in case players wish to upsize the game window. This is now included, so English players get a feature that the Japanese didn't! Yay!

minori loves to take it slow and steady.

minori director's cut - When we worked on ef, we made numerous tweaks pertaining to fade and scroll speed. In addition, with your feedback, we removed control lockout in various scenes. But let's say you'd prefer minori's original Japanese experience. Now you can! With a simple toggle in the configuration menu, you may switch between our technical code and minori's technical code! Text remains the same in both versions.

No MangaGamer font syndrome with ef!

Font selection - Our recommended font is ef English, which is a tweaked copy of the original ef NNL font. ef NNL was the only font that worked on the fansubbed ef. But maybe you'd prefer a different font. Now it's possible! Choose whatever western font you fancy!

Playing ef in Wide Latin is only recommended for those who liked SUPAH Blink Mode.
(If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky.)

Flexible message panel - ef English is a rather skinny font, originally chosen in order to allow enough text to be displayed. But the font selection feature poses a new issue. What if your favorite font is wide and obnoxious? The text would stretch beyond the maximum four lines. Thankfully, the new engine allows the message panel to stretch an additional two lines in case of text overflow!

Picky picky...

Revised script - The most important job was improving the script to professional-grade. We can't be too specific because we'd spoil the story, but here are the highlights:

- Reduced profanity: Some people complained about the amount of profanity. We reduced it, mostly between Hiro/Miyako and Hiro/Yuuko. (Hiro now only swears once to Miyako in the entire chapter.) However, the text specifically mentions that Hiro, being a recluse, doesn't have the best of manners. Kei learned how to talk from Hiro, but also from the hot-headed jocks she is around with in school. Lastly, Kyousuke doesn't need to act nice around Hiro. So some of it had to remain. As for ef - the latter tale, it'll only have a minimum amount of profanity. The characters in those stories are more bubbly than Hiro/Kei/Kyousuke.

- 1-800 Troll Free: As promised, we've removed every throwaway translation we included for cheap laughs. (Why did we include them in the first place? As a hobby, it was fun to loosen up once in a while.) SUPAH is now SUPAH extinct. The pop culture references that remain (such as Unit-01) were in the Japanese text. And yes, in Miyako's ero scene, the Japanese text does indeed compare her breast shape against bowls.

- Smoother auto mode: Hearing a voice clip that's about a second long while reading a long line of text (and vice versa) was a concern of ours, especially when playing in auto mode. Also, there were pauses in the text where there were none in the voice clip. Syncing voices to text caused several hundred changes in the script. This resulted in an impasse between No Name Losers and the MangaGamer editor, who believed the changes were mostly trivial. Fortunately, we were able to come to a compromise. Chapter 1 (Miyako) will have our take on text syncing, while chapter 2 (Kei) will do things MangaGamer's way. We'll be listening to your feedback carefully to see what everyone prefers, and adjust accordingly for ef - the latter tale.

- Improved translation and localization: After some brainstorming, certain localized terms have been changed back to the Japanese counterparts, and vice versa. Plus, we found a few things that benefitted from an revised translation. One example was Miyako toying with... "something" during an ero scene and declaring that she loves it. Originally we had it down as loving Hiro!

As the release nears, the synopsis, character bios, and the presentation aspect (what everyone cares about) will likely be posted on the MangaGamer blog. For the nerds, the nnl1.com updates will be more like this one: focusing on the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes side of things. Hopefully we can update again soon!

2011.09.10. Sorry sorry

We apologize for not updating in so long. For reasons we cannot disclose at the current time, we're still working on the ef - the first tale alpha, but it should be done within the next week or so. Then we can finally tell you what you should expect from ef, and what took so long!

As for the MangaGamer/Amaterasu Translations news, Ixrec has never said a bad word about us, so neither will we. Call it mutual respect. In addition, we're not qualified to comment about it. However, we'll just bullet the following points:

- nbkz (the CEO of minori) and bamboo (the CEO of Overdrive and Mangagamer) are old friends, which helped things quite a bit. A handshake agreement happened perhaps one or two weeks after our first e-mail to minori. Our situation was unique in this regard.
- minori owns everything pertaining to the visual novel, so there was no subcontracting BS.
- We have a direct line to nbkz.
- We had to use this direct line in order to obtain the alpha build. MangaGamer had given us one story while nbkz gave us a conflicting story. After the miscommunication was cleared up, we got the build. See? Communication is good!
- No Name Losers also had a contingency plan in the event that we never received a build in a reasonable amount of time. Thankfully, we never had to put this plan into action, and we probably never will.
- minori has granted us full override on the scripts. Therefore, you will not see any text or replacement issues like those in Koihime Musou. We're bypassing MangaGamer (to a certain extent; we'll explain later) and sending the scripts to minori directly. If there's any text issues in the release, the blame will rest wholly on us.

Thanks for being patient!

2011.08.05. We got it!

We just obtained an ef - the first tale build from MangaGamer. We'll discuss things in detail, such as what features you can expect, as we work on it over the next few days.

Because we know all of you have been waiting so long, it's our pledge to finish the initial report in under a week. Wish us luck!

Should anyone fail to comply with the following terms, there is the chance that he or she may face legal action from minori Inc. In the event that this occurs, No Name Losers will not be held responsible.

・Distribution of old fansubbed work is no longer permitted
・All sites are to remove these works from distribution
・Releases obtained for personal use are to be deleted

下記に違反した場合、今後株式会社ミノリが何らかの法的手段をとる可能性があります。その際No Name Losersは関知致しません。

・NNLが過去にリリースしたものについて、以降の転載を認めない
・他サイトが転載しているものについては各自削除すること
・個人で利用中のものについても各自削除すること