Read Japanese?

[Tony Irwin]

Here's what people are saying about Shoujo Story!

Those of the title,Shojuo Story were found. Being the Shoji ・・ being the mistake, or it does and the ・・・・・・ Virgin Story?

Http: //www.apricot-ink.co.uk/

Free play test version is put. 1.7 PDF of Mega.

Temporarily, it will try reading.

(Postscript) this, just a little, is a destructive power, passes, is. PDF the instant which was opened, it removes and scared is.

(Postscript of postscript), the air which is does any which conceal similar destructive power even in Japan. Such exceeds the country, it is the shelf. As the world is at peace.

I'm glad that the world is at peace, despite the destructive power of my scared pdf. I translated it from Japanese with Babel, from someone's blog here. I'm guessing its a discussion of how the author had problems getting the pdf to open (on that hunch I just checked the link on the lastest version of my page and as it turns out it's broken and won't be fixed till the weekend). Can you do any better at translating? Please let me know!

[Mike Holmes]

Andy Kitowski is your man, if he's available. Which isn't likely actually. But try him, you never know.

Mike

[greedo1379]

Did I miss a link to the blog?

Edit - yes, yes I did.  :)  I'll take a look.

My Japanese isn't so hot (I've been here two years and still sound like a caveman) but that first part is him trying to figure out what you wanted the title of your game to be.  He thinks its either "Virgin Story" or "Those Japanese style paper and wooden sliding doors Story".  Shojuo isn't coming up in my dictionary.  In my books, it looks like you are close to "Rifle" and "Virgin" but not quite there.  Did you just make up a "Japanese" word, use some obscure Japanese word, or did you misspell something?

Then he says there's a PDF up for downloading and then he says he's going to give it a once over.

Beyond that I can't give you anything definate.  I agree with you in that the first postscript was him having trouble opening it.  the second one I'm not so sure about.  Sorry I can't be more (any) help.

[Tony Irwin]

My Japanese isn't so hot (I've been here two years and still sound like a caveman) but that first part is him trying to figure out what you wanted the title of your game to be.  He thinks its either "Virgin Story" or "Those Japanese style paper and wooden sliding doors Story".  Shojuo isn't coming up in my dictionary.  In my books, it looks like you are close to "Rifle" and "Virgin" but not quite there.  Did you just make up a "Japanese" word, use some obscure Japanese word, or did you misspell something?

Ah... I used an alternate spelling for shoujo, but changed it a few months ago to match the more commonly used one. What lovely confusion it caused - I gotta laugh though!

Then he says there's a PDF up for downloading and then he says he's going to give it a once over.

Beyond that I can't give you anything definate.  I agree with you in that the first postscript was him having trouble opening it.  the second one I'm not so sure about.  Sorry I can't be more (any) help.

No, that's a great help! Thanks for spending the time looking at it.

Tony

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey man, don't sweat this.  It's just some guy (looks like a big console RPG fan, of the totally otaku-geared "Shin Megami Tensei" series, though he does drop links to the CoC RPG and the like) who saw your product and scored a few subtle jabs on it.

Beyond that I can't give you anything definate.  I agree with you in that the first postscript was him having trouble opening it.  the second one I'm not so sure about.  Sorry I can't be more (any) help.

Yeah, actually that wasn't a PDF problem, that was just him describing in cute terms his initial "jaw drop" reaction upon opening the PDF. See below.

============================
Translation:
"I found something called "Shojuo Story" on the web. I'm not sure if this was a misspelling of "Shoujo", or if they really meant "Shojo" (AndyNote: Shoujo = Shoujo as you and I understand it.  "Little girl" and all that.  "Shojo" means "virgin".).

LINK

There's a free playtest version there that weighs in at 1.7 Megs.

Well, let's give it a look.

PS: This... This... woah. W. O. W. ("What destructive power!") The moment I opened the PDF, I was freaked out.

PSPS: I have a feeling that such an item of destructive power is hidden in Japan as well. This kind of thing is just too much for one country to bear ("could destroy our country", said tongue-in-cheek).  I pray for world peace.

=====================================

In other words, he saw it, was floored by it (I don't know in what way, he didn't say.  I think it was the sickeningly sweetness of it- He didn't say anything specific like "bad art" or "bad layout" or anything like that, so I'll just go with sickeningly cute), and now he's throwing a little jab at it.  No biggie.

Thing is, we have an expression for this "Omae nanki ni iwaretakunee yo" (sorta lit: "I don't want to have that said about me by SOMEONE LIKE YOU").  It's basically a setup for an ad hominem attack. That is:

1) Coming from a country where, despite the fact that there are enough foreigners working in Tokyo or in the media business that a quick double-check would cost NOTHING, songs with *English* lyrics like "BODY FEELS EXIT" and "SHAKE! SHAKE MY SOUL!" regularly stay in the Top 10, I don't think a Japanese person has the right to judge the spelling of an elongated O sound. :)

2) "Destructive Power". You wanna talk Destructive Power, then let's point fingers at the people of a country which produced the likes of Shinohara Tomoe.
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~kenao/ShinoMir/www.klisis.net_phoechan/shinoharasama.jpg
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~kenao/Shinora/images/wallpaper/butterpix/S5.jpg
Shinohara Tomoe is a weapon of mass destruction. And don't even get me started on Morning Musume or its offspring cults. :)

So yeah, "Hey, look at this funny thing I found on the net. Jab jab. Hah hah. Wow." That's about all the post amounted to, and it's all in good fun.  Unfortunately, I can't find much else about the person who runs this Hatena Diary (Jpn equivalent of LiveJournal). [/url]

[greedo1379]

Japanese sarcasm?  I didn't know it existed.  Its one of the things I've missed most these last two years.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Japanese sarcasm?  I didn't know it existed.  Its one of the things I've missed most these last two years.

Yeah, totally. Not to go too far off topic, but I always thought (in the four years I lived there) that the closest we got to sarcasm in Japanese was ...er... "being subtle" when you hit the other guy on the head with the giant red plastic hammer, ala manzai. There's comedy to be found, great comedy too, but sarcasm isn't something found in many places outside of internet chat rooms and the like. It's the latest tool of the otaku.

There's some great subtle "net humor" to be found on 2-Channel, which is pretty much the epitome of fun Japanese net culture.  Or, as the regulars ask folks they meet, "channeru?"

One last minor on topic bit regarding Japanese and RPGs: I talked to Ralph Mazza about it a bit to hash out the idea, but will probably start gathering resources for it in a few months: I plan to advertise some Indie games with brief PR and reviews/background from my site. This will be for Japanese RPG gamers interested in something new (and whom can presumably read some English, as I won't go as far as to translate entire RPGs into Japanese... well, not yet anyway, I've got other things on the menu right now).

Oh, and check out my new sig.

[Tony Irwin]

Thanks Andy and Greedo for the translations! I really appreciate it. I'm still chuckling over this - the whole episode seems incredibly funny and surreal.

Tony