Aokana is a generally well-regarded visual novel within the community, ranking (at the time of writing) among the top 100 of the most popular and highest-rated visual novels on VNDB. Today, you can read Aokana in English with relative ease. A few years ago, however, an English translation of Aokana was a pipe dream for most. For a while, Aokana had the reputation of being cursed, with no hope of an English release.
Brief Introduction
Visual novels (VNs) are a genre of video games, where the ‘gameplay’ mostly revolves around clicking text and prompts, sort of like an interactive fiction. In a way, VNs are less of a game and more like reading a book. Some VN titles popular among mainstream English gamers include Nekopara and Doki Doki Literature Club.
Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm (shortened to Aokana) is a Japanese VN developed by sprite and released on November 2014. It is set in a world where anti-gravity shoes exist, with a sport known as Flying Circus that revolves around flying with these special shoes. The main protagonist (i.e. the player) is tasked with coaching the four main heroines of the game in this sport. Through branching storylines, the protagonist will end up in a relationship with one of these heroines.
There are tons of Japanese VNs released every year. Aside from learning Japanese or waiting for a possible official localization, the only way for international audiences to read most of these VNs is through unofficial fan translations. Unfortunately for fans of Aokana, the title was seemingly cursed.
Attempt 1
The first translation project was announced on December 2014, lead by OriginalRen. They had a website dedicated to posting updates on the translation progress. It seemed promising. Pretty soon, however, one of their main translators, astro, would leave the project.
He was apparently hired by Sekai Project (a VN localization company) and was also busy translating another VN. A bit of a setback, but the project slowly carried on, with regular updates on the website.
By January 2016, over a year since the project began, the game was reportedly 100% translated.
The Aokana anime was also airing around this time. People were hopeful they can hop right in to VN by the time the anime finishes airing.
Unfortunately, they had to wait a bit longer. The release was delayed to October 2016. They also talked about Sekai Project potentially taking over the project (this will be explained in a bit), but the bottom line is that the English patch is not here yet.
Oh well. Fans have been waiting for an English patch for over a year. A few more months won’t hurt, right?
On March 2016, an unexpected announcement was made. Apparently, OriginalRen was the only person who had the translated files. Those files were saved in Google Drive and were ‘accidentally deleted’. There was also no backups whatsoever. Progress is effectively reset to zero. Yeah.
Reactions were mixed. Some people believe this was a genuine accident. Those that claim to know OriginalRen say he is “the type of person who would empty virtual recycling bins for no good reason.”
Others were calling bullshit. How does no else have copies of the translated files? How do you not have backups? Was a translation effort even happening in the first place? The VN community is familiar with delayed releases and dropped projects, but nothing quite like this.
Attempt 1.5?
Sekai Project was mentioned a couple of times now. To explain further, Sekai Project (SP) is a VN publisher that officially translates Japanese VNs to English. SP and other VN publishers have been known to contact fan translators to use their work for an official release. There was apparently a conspiracy that the Aokana translation project was being sold to SP.
It started when SP mentioned Kio Nachi, a scenario writer for Aokana, in a tweet. This started rumors that SP might license Aokana. If you recall, one of the translator who was working on this project was hired by SP, making this rumor somewhat plausible.
In a now private Facebook group, someone accused OriginalRen of selling out the translation to SP, and announced an ambitious attempt to translate Aokana themselves.
While most fan translators tend to stick to one language, this group planned to translate Aokana in FIVE languages.
The common route would be released on April 2016, and the full release on September 2016.
If people weren’t skeptical about the first attempt, they were definitely suspicious about this one. Most people dismissed this as a troll. The person making those bold claims was reportedly removed from the Facebook group some time after.
Not much was heard from that group since, and Sekai Project also never announced anything regarding Aokana.
Returning to the main project, what’s done is done. OriginalRen intends to start over with a clean slate.
Two people from that ambitious “five languages” translation attempt are now on board. I didn’t think they had a team, to be honest. Updates were being posted again. Maybe some progress will be made after all.
Nope. The project was officially dropped on July 2016. And that website mentioned earlier? It’s still up and running, but most content related to any translation attempts have been purged and it has been re-branded as a fan site. Snippets of what the website originally looked like can be found on Web Archive if anyone wants to look deeper.
Attempt 2
With the dust settled and no further news from the first attempt, a second attempt to translate Aokana was announced on December 2016, this time by a group called Alei Translations. They also had a website to post updates on the translation progress. Unlike the previous attempt, there was proof that an actual translation attempt was being done. They had a working demo! A few were understandably doubtful, given the previous attempt, but it seems there’s finally hope for an English translation of Aokana.
LOL. LMAO, even.
Nope. Remember astro? He happened to friends with Kio Nachi. Remember Kio Nachi? He was one of the main writers of Aokana. astro was very critical of the translation quality, finding it to be “an insult to the years of sweat and blood [Kio Nachi] put into putting this story and world setting together.” Link to the forum post, which includes his comments on a few lines of translations.
The team promised to redo the translation, but it was clear that the criticism was a huge blow to the group’s morale. By February 2016, the Aokana translation project was stalled indefinitely.
Sort of. In a later update, they mentioned that they aren’t dropping the project, and were improving their skills before resuming.
With no other updates after a year, however, it seems this project was truly dead. The website went down at some point, and there wasn’t much saved in Web Archive.
Limbo
It was already a running joke before this, but these series of failed translation attempts cemented the gag that Aokana is cursed. The only way international fans can play the game is if they learned Japanese (Aokana is apparently an easy read for JP newbies), or hope that a VN company licenses the game for an English release. People were discussing which company would pick up Aokana, if it was even possible at all.
sprite, the developers of Aokana, released a fandisc titled Aokana – EXTRA1 in 2017. A second fandisc (EXTRA2) and a sequel (Zwei) were in production. However, it was announced on June 2018 that they were suspending activities. Development on EXTRA2 and Zwei were halted indefinitely. sprite would be closing its doors in 2019, with no hope of revival. I believe the VN fan translation scene was pretty dead at the time? It seems Aokana would never get an English release.
Lifting the curse
Out of the blue, sprite announced on August 2018 that Aokana will have an overseas release. Later that month, NekoNyan announced that Aokana will be released on Steam in Summer 2019.
What the fuck is going on? Wasn’t sprite shutting down or something? Who is NekoNyan?
Regarding sprite, I honestly have no idea. They made an ero gacha game at some point? There are rumors and theories here and there, but nothing concrete. What matters is that sprite is alive and well.
As for NekoNyan, they are a fairly new western VN publisher, tracing their roots back to a fan-translation group. At the time of the announcement, they had a few VN titles under their belt, with one title fully translated and released earlier that year. Aokana was “a license [they] have been fighting to get [their] hands on ever since NekoNyan was founded.”
People were hopeful, but also cautious. Is an English translation actually going to release this time? Will the translation be good? When is the curse gonna kick in? Fans monitored NekoNyan’s website with watchful eyes, keeping tabs on the translation progress.
On September 2019, nearly five years since it came out, Aokana was released to an international audience. The English translation is real. The curse has been lifted.
Present time
sprite seems to be doing fine. EXTRA2 resumed production and was released on May 2022. They also announced a sub-brand, FILMIC NOVEL, that will handle a few VN titles, including another Aokana fandisc. No news on Zwei, however. The sequel seems to be axed for good.
NekoNyan is doing good. They have licensed a number of VN titles since, including Aokana EXTRA1 and EXTRA2. They are a likely candidate to license future Aokana titles for English releases, and potentially other sprite/FILMIC NOVEL titles.
And they did! It took so long for me to post this write-up that NekoNyan has licensed another sprite title, Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate. An odd choice, since Koichoco had an unofficial English translation for a few years now. Either the fan TL is unknown/unpopular, or this was something that sprite requested (perhaps to cash in on the Aokana success). At least fans now have an easier way to support the devs.
I haven’t heard anything regarding Aokana If 01, but sprite released another VN, everlasting flowers. Interestingly, the EN translation seems to be handled by Frontwing.
OriginalRen seems to have moved on from the Aokana fiasco. As of writing, there doesn’t appear to be any recent activity on their Fuwanovel profile. I suggest not to harass them about this matter. It’s been years. We should all move on.
Alei Translations appears to have shut down, although there was another group also called Alei Translation that did Spanish translations for a few VNs. I don’t think these two Alei groups are related, but I thought it was interesting enough to point out. According to their VNDB page, this Spanish group was disbanded on May 2020.
astro seems to be active on Twitter, and is also streaming on Twitch as well. I’m not sure if he is involved in the VN translation scene anymore, but his Twitter bio mentions “JPN-ENG translator for hire.” I’m guessing he’s a freelance translator.
Ending Notes
This write-up has been sitting dormant in my Documents folder since January 2023. I meant to post it to r/HobbyDrama, but I wasn’t sure if it was up to their standards. Then came the Reddit API Controversy, and r/HobbyDrama restricted new submissions as part of the protests. It seems they’re back now, though I’m still unsure whether to post there. Then I remembered I have a blog. It then sat in my drafts since October 2023.
I purchased a Steam Deck some time ago and finally got around to playing Aokana Extra1 and Extra2. I decided it was finally time to post this thing.
I also found some interesting drama while researching materials for this write-up. Something about unfair bans issued by a rogue r/visualnovels moderator, with refugees migrating to r/vns. The “victims” include a few Nekonyan staff, among others. The bans have since been lifted, from what I can gather. Sounds like something worthy of another write-up, but it’ll probably remain as a draft for an entire year again, so I ain’t gonna bother with that.
Anyways, I will once again ask that nobody harass anyone mentioned in this post. This is old news, and everyone should move on. Thanks for reading.
