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How one of the greatest visual novels got an English translation because of its fansMuv-what?
Muv-what?
Today bothMuv-Luvgamesare easily available on Steam, marketed specifically with this twist, and where they sit fully-translated and with Overwhelmingly Positive reviews. iOS and Android portsare apparently in development, and other Muv-Luv spin-offs continue to get translated. But the first time anyone experienced a complete English language version of Muv-Luv was in July 2010, when a fan translation group called Amaterasu released a patch localising the first game.
Muv-Luv Official English TrailerWatch on YouTube
Muv-Luv Official English Trailer
It’s also deeply flawed. Both Muv-Luv and Alternative originally contained adult content, but an “all-ages” version of both was put out later in 2006, and it’s version that’s persisted. In general, the series suffers from pacing issues, tonal shifts that don’t always work, and being needlessly, repeatedly crass. If you don’t already like visual novels, it probably won’t change your mind, particularly because the first and second game together span just over 70 hours. It’s not exactly puzzling why a business wouldn’t want to take the risk of localising it for a foreign market.
After eight months of silence surrounding what was happening, Amaterasu finally posteda giant statementto their blog covering what had happened behind the scenes. Mangagamer, a video game publisher that deals with English localisations of Japanese visual novels, was negotiating with âge on Amaterasu’s behalf. Despite months of discussions, Amaterasu were told that âge were not willing to licence the Muv-Luv games, and instead had offered the option to licence another game called Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (an older visual novel that has little to do with Muv-Luv).
Attached to Amaterasu’s statement was a free link to their finished translation of Muv-Luv Alternative, and a reupload of the original English patch for the first game. Mangagamer, as you might expect, were not happy, andissued a response in 2011saying as much.
I reached out to Amaterasu through a Facebook page to ask them more about this and, surprisingly, actually got a response from a member:
“We were uncertain about the future of securing a licence. A patch had already been leaked with the translation, even though we had declared secrecy on the matter," they said. “A combination of uncertainty in 2011 and with the patch being leaked led us to deciding to release our translation officially when we were able to get together a proper patch.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, in 2015,a Kickstarter campaignto officially localise Muv-Luv in English was launched. At the time, there was a precedent for other Japanese visual novels getting localised through Kickstarter;Clannad, for example, had raisedover $540,000earlier that year. But visual novels in general still weren’t commonplace on Steam — the first few had only started appearing on the platform in 2012.
I contacted Aalt, a fan of Muv-Luv who runs an English language blog that partially covers the series, to find out more. He was asked to join the translation team for the Kickstarter but couldn’t at the time, so instead helped contribute to other areas of the campaign. Aalt tells me that he wasn’t aware of how the Kickstarter began but that he does think “Alternative Projects was an instrumental part of it though, as their translations were high quality for fan translations.”
The campaign was being run as a joint project between âge and a Japanese software company called Degica (perhaps best known for localisingRPG Maker). In apodcastfeaturing Aalt, the leader of Alternative Projects, Degica’s community manager, and Degica’s global manager, it was clarified that Degica and âge had been introduced through a mutual client. But âge’s parent company ixtl was very enthusiastic about the idea of an English translation being funded through Kickstarter.
Over 13 years after Muv-Luv launched initially, on the 15th of July 2016, Muv-Luv was finally purchasable on Steam for English fans. Muv-Luv Alternative was later released in September 2017. Looking back at it, it strikes me that at every key moment in the history of Muv-Luv’s localisation, it was the involvement of fans that spurred everything on. Every step required volunteers who wanted nothing more than to share what they enjoyed with other people.
“Fan translations ultimately have to carry the torch before the official translations happen,” Aalt said. “Fan translations have shown that the market exists, it’s all about tapping it.” The Amaterasu member had simlar thoughts. “It seems localisation tends to be limited to titles that have already been translated, for the most part,” they said. “I do not believe (Muv-Luv) would’ve gotten to that point if no one had translated it, Amaterasu or anyone else.”
