the current price is $66.20 USD
I know this is completely off topic, but I thought I’d congratulate you on taking the plunge and beginning your journey to learn Japanese. It will be a tough road (as I can attest to since I’m nearly burnt out because of finals for my Japanese II class), but in the end it will be well worth it.
I’ve learned all my Japanese through self-studying at home and so far I’ve actually found it to be somewhat easy (with the exception of the Kanji), but it does take a lot of time and commitment. If someone wants to really be good, they have to practically sell their soul and devote themselves to it. I bring Japanese materials to study wherever I go, splurged money on various learning tools (audio, video, and books), and basically recite as many things in Japanese as I can when I’m bored. I work at Burger King and I kid you not I count out the burgers I put into the broiler in Japanese (in my head).
Even though I don’t understand a lot of the Kanji yet, I read around it and pick out the Hiragana and Katakana. Even if I don’t know some Romaji, I read it anyways. I also plug a TON of words into jisho.org. I think that’s what the language ultimately is… chipping away at it and being patient.
unless some of the rest of their stuff is good i don’t give a shit what manga gamer does till the new da capo or kira kira
Congrats! It does indeed do that. Don’t expect to be able to read untranslated stuff after one semester - or even a year. After three semesters, and after years of having passively absorbed Japanese by osmosis from subtitled anime, I can sort of kinda understand some decently-sized bits and pieces, but nothing with a lot of kanji.
But in my case, I’ve been sitting around for years going “Maaaan, it sucks I dunno Japanese …” – well, in a few years, I’ll know enough Japanese that this won’t be a problem. If that’s your plan, then great!
To be honest, it’s the same with any language not from the same linguistic family than your mother tongue: the path to multilingualism is a hard one.
But very worth it. Good luck, keep your motivation, and courage! You’ll be rewarded for your efforts one day!
Learning Japanese certainly seems to be something you have to dedicate, if not your life, at least a good slice of it to.
Indisputably worth it, though =P
I’m curious, have you been brave enough to try and tackle an untranslated title without a translation program? If so, how did it go? I was wondering since I’m planning to do so this summer (with the help of reference material of course). Back in October, you said this:
Since then, I’ve advanced to where I can recognize around 120 kanji (I think, haven’t been keeping a close count), and can write, with proper stroke order, about 90 of those I think (yeah, I know, that means nothing for reading game text). I’m getting fairly close to being able to recognize all of the JLPT level 4 kanji, though it will probably take me a little longer to get down all the (common) readings. Probably the thing that will be most challenging will be the advanced grammar (for example, I’m only starting to understand conditionals, which is something my classmates know nothing about yet) and the fact that there are a few conjugations I still haven’t learned (such as the passive form).
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Well, I can live with that. H-scenes in Suika suck anyway… but that game is about story, not about porn, which sure is a good thing…
That’s a very serious thing to forget to mention, as this market has come to expect that ALL games are uncensored. Mangagamer shows yet again that they really have no clue how this market works…at least with Suika they’ll avoid some of the backlash I suppose.
But really…how can their PR department be this incompetent? Does customer relations in Japan work drastically different or something?
I wouldn’t think it is the Japanese side of this enterprise responsible for bad customer relations, unless they have forsaken the general Japanese attitude of “Okyakusama wa kamisama desu” (literally, The Customer is God). Bad marketing, maybe, but most likely not customer relations.
Well, I’ve already realized that reading Japanese is a real pain in the ass. The grammar is quite easy to understand (although, I’m learning the basic grammar, it’s probably going to get tougher from now on), but learning the kanji is a completely different matter. I’m making some progress, but the rate is painfully slow.
Anyway, I’ve found out that knowing even a little Japanese makes the AGTH+Atlas combo work a lot better. You’ll get the engrish from the program, but knowing some stuff about particles, state of being, adjective and noun conjugation, etc. allows you to put some order into the phrase and work out something understandable. In fact, I’ve been playing the third game of the Sono Hanabira series (thank you DLSite 
)in these last few days, and I’ve been able to understand about the 90% of what came on to the screen. So far, I’ve enjoyed it, and it has been really helpful seeing the things that I’m studying used in an actual everyday context 
I get the distinct impression that the only side of the enterprise IS the Japanese side. Native English speakers don’t make the kind of mistakes they do, whether in their games, e-mails, or website.
It has been mentioned many times, that Mangagamer is made up of volunteers ( who get paid ) from the Japanese companies. Overdrive seems to be the main force, as they are the ones hiring people to convert the games to the engine Mangagamer uses.
One thing that I’ve always wondered, is why they based their operations in mainland Europe. Wouldn’t England, or if their sex laws are too strict, the United States have been better for their target market (English speakers)? I imagine it might have been due to the Euro value at the time?
Or maybe they fear the vast monopoly juggernaut that is JASTUSA and all it’s puppet companies. Thanks to Peter’s shady underworld connections, everyone who tried to challenge him, has become his property. :twisted: 
The US actually has some pretty strict obscenity laws, too. I do think there were better places to base the company at, like the “holy land” named Denmark. On the other hand taxation there is pretty high. I think the Netherlands are a good combination of relatively lax obscenity laws and not too heavy taxation. Plus, I heard bandwidth costs are rather low there too, but I’m not 100% certain about that.
Staffing a localization company with native Japanese in a country where English isn’t the native language seems like a recipe for disaster. At least if they were based in the US, they could quickly hire native English speakers to do quality checks on games, website, and e-mail. Also, running a localization business surely involves understanding your target culture as much as it involves understanding their language. Basing yourself somewhere else severely limits your ability to connect with that culture. They’re doing what they can I suppose, but I think they would have avoided many of their current problems by simply basing their company in the US–or at the very least by having a physical presence of some sort in the US.
That doesn’t stop the United States from being being one of the largest manufacturer, exporter, importer, and profiteer of pornography on Earth. :twisted:
The only things we don’t do are children, animals, and the dead.
The MangaGamer forum looks exactly like this one. 