This is the animated opening sequence from the 2003.06.27 bishoujo game Aka (Scarlet/Cinnabar), made by the fine folks at NekoNeko Soft. They are the same people who did Mizuiro, so it's gotta be good... right?!

Getchu has given "the best game" award to this game. "the best game" is only awarded to games which they think are really good. English localizers, are you listening?

After asking the public on this site for suggestions on what to do, we got a few e-mails with some great ideas. In the end, we decided to do this little sucker, mainly because most of the suggestions had low-res or still ops, or had inappropriate content. Since madgat is a Nekoneko Soft fanboy, he was naturally excited all over!

Because Reikoku was in Japan at the time we started this project, Landcaster got someone else who was willing to take a look at it. He wished to remain anonymous. Little did he know that he was about to go through translator's hell. You see, the song used a whole bunch of archaic terms and locations. It didn't help that the official lyrics contained a bunch of Engrish terms. After tons of Google research, here were our best attempts.

ZI YEFUDA > SHEPHELAH: We think it's the Shephelah foothills, but we're not 100% sure. It was the closest thing we could find.

ABU GBOSB > ABU GHOSH: A small village in Israel about 15km west of Jerusalem. Music festivals are held there twice a year.

JERICBO > JERICHO: Oldest city in the world. Jericho is about 30km east of Jerusalem and overlooks the Dead Sea.

MAZURK > MIZINKE: (meh-zink-ah) It's a Jewish dance for parents who have just had their last child become married.

akaku chiru ka no nanhana hi no yui: The ultimate problem line, seen in screenshot 4 below. This was worded so horribly, the anonymous translator got a native person to look at it and even he couldn't figure it out. We also consulted rayearth from Miyuki-Fansubs (now MnT). Even after he played the game, he could only make a half-hearted guess at the line. In the end, we spliced all our ideas together and mixed up a "best guess" line.

Because of the difficulty of the translation, work was held off until Reikoku returned. To no one's surprise, he couldn't figure out the problem line either. We had an editing session with Reikoku and the anonymous translator, and worked out compromises for the remainder of the lines. The original Engrish romaji from the lyrics would be left intact. After all, it's official, isn't it?

Since I wanted to get this project done and over with, I quickly did some cheesy typesetting in half an hour. Landcaster did the best he could with the choppy and noisy raw we had.

NekoNeko Soft has provided the full-length version of this song (Sunagin [Sand Silver]) for free on their site. Therefore, we have mirrored it and the quick download link is right here. See? You get presents for reading this far!