Today’s post is a personal curiosity! After seeing the differences (or mistranslations) between the regions of the various epilogues of FE7, such as Guy and Priscilla, or Bartre and Karla, I decided to go through all the epilogues (paired and unpaired) to see if there were any other differences to find that may not have been noticed yet.
There were some differences indeed, but none as major as the ones this blog has already covered.
Please be wary of spoilers as we go through many character endings.
This post is part of a series on reader requested (and personal curiosity) comparisons between Fire Emblem games’ Japanese and English scripts.
Today’s post concerns a reader question via twitter regarding Guy and Priscilla’s A support ending in Blazing Blade:
@maikantopia Guy gets a rough ending in the US version so I did a JPN run. In one of the wikis it says the Japanese version has him getting eloped with Priscilla is that true? Id like to think he gets a happier ending in some version. pic.twitter.com/tnARgkq3w2
Short answer: Yes, it appears Guy did indeed elope with Priscilla in Japanese!
I had been unaware of this, but it was mentioned on Priscilla’s Fire Emblem wiki page under trivia, though with no source. So while this information may already be known to some, I write this mostly for posterity for those interested in taking a deeper look or wondering about its validity and wanting the original Japanese.
It contains some fun tidbits for the first Fire Emblem game to come to the west (The Blazing Blade), and FE in general, so I encourage you all to read and share.
This post is part of a series on reader requested (and personal curiosity) comparisons between Fire Emblem games’ Japanese and English scripts.
Today we look at a conversation from FE7 (BlazingBlade) chapter 14:
A friend brought up the following:
“Remember that recruitment convo with Erk? Where Erk says Serra is the last person he wanted to see and she’s happy he wanted to see her at all? How did that work in Japanese?”
Short answer: The content is actually similar, but localization tweaked the original joke slightly but managed to convey close intent thanks to clever word choice.
A reader brought this nifty easter egg that reddit user PeppersJacks noticed in English to my attention. It involved items you trade while getting the Two-Toned Whetstone to either Shamir or Catherine, and whether the item names are actually references to previous games in the series.
The main items people point to are the Whetstone referring to Fates, the eyedrops referencing Awakening, and the book Path of Dawn being the Tellius games. Is this also the case in Japanese? Are there references that weren’t fully translated, or is this just a little nod by the localization team, or is it all a coincidence?
I took a look in Japanese as requested, and it turns out they most likely are intentional references when looking at the Japanese! But whether the localization opted to convey these (or realized the references) is up to interpretation. They do not seem to reference individual titles per se, but rather the sagas seen over the series …with one exception.
PeppersJacks got most of it, though the Tome of Comely Saints left them a little unsure. However it and the others are made more obvious in Japanese.
Today’s post comes from a thread on reddit which concerns Hector and Eliwood’s A support conversation. u/Dragoryu3000 posed a question:
Hold up, is Eliwood and Hector’s A-Support majorly mistranslated?
They pinged me in a thread and I looked into it. The issue revolves primarily around Erik Laus and vague wording in the translation being potentially misleading as to what occurred. You can read their thoughts and the rest of the thread in-depth on the thread before reading this post if you want to get a better idea of the issue, but I’ll try my best to explain it as we go along, too.
As part of a request from a friend on twitter, I decided to look into the original Blazing Blade commercial. I translate what’s going on, an excerpt from an interview regarding the commercial, a design document, what song is playing, and some other fun tidbits.
So let’s take a look!
First, here is the commercial itself, starring former actress Maki Horikita.
And below is the translation. I try to go in order and specify what is said by the voice, and what is just text. The song is afterward. Please note the translation is also to express intent, and thus, is not completely literal.
出会い Encounters…. 仲間 Friends… 戦い Battles…
(Voice) 仲間と一緒にどう戦うか・・・ How will you fight alongside your friends…?
(Voice) みんな、どんどん強くなる・・・
Everyone grows stronger and stronger…
別離
Partings 会えない
For the last time
(Voice) 失った仲間には、もう・・・会えない・・・
The friends who fall…we shall never see again…
(Girl): さようなら Goodbye…
(Voice): ファイアーエムブレム烈火の剣 Fire Emblem. The Blazing Blade.
Next, the song lyrics. Title: “LIFE IS…~another story~” by Ken Hirai. Specifically, the chorus:
答えなど何処にもない 誰も教えてくれない でも君を想うとこの胸は 何かを叫んでるそれだけは真実
There’s no answer anywhere Nor will anyone tell me But my heart shouts at the mere thought of you That much is the truth I do know
Note the song cuts off before the final two characters 真実 (truth). This is the third paragraph of the song. The rest of the Japanese lyrics for the song can be found here.
The song in full (or a cover of it, anyway) can be seen below. The original you will probably have to purchase:
The TV commercial for Binding Blade featured a song that was reminiscent of the Shadow Dragon commercial. However, the Blazing Blade commercial had a different kind of appeal with casting Horikita Maki along with Ken Hirai’s song playing.
Narihiro: Yes. That was one of many ways we sought to widen the gates [to make the game have more widespread appeal].
It was presented with this design document:
The above document has the same flow as the final product. The minor differences are the lack of “goodbye,” as well as a slightly different word used for “parting” (they wrote “separation” instead). Another subtle difference is that it seems Kent is the character dying instead of Heath in the commercial, a tidbit I point out just a silly point later. Also, the title seems to be “A girl’s murmurs.” The music is simply “Ken Hirai~” but not what song of his, either.
This article is mostly straightforward and a reference point, so I’ll summarize any thoughts/analysis/silly trivia in bullet point format this time around:
From the commercial, interview, and documents, one can see that the intention was to broaden the appeal of the game by using a known actress, popular song from 2003, and a change of style in presentation among other things.
Most notable is how the commercial is more emotional and focuses on meeting allies, growing with them, and eventual partings via mechanics like perma death. Compare this with previous commercials that are more opera-like with an operatic flare (links provided in the interview segment above).
“LIFE is…~another story~” is a romantic song (as the excerpt may have implied already) by the famed Ken Hirai, so was likely used for its popular appeal rather than its literal meaning. However, the themes of friendship and bonding share similar themes to love and longing, so it helped set the intended mood beyond it simply being a popular song in 2003. The song was not written for the game, but was actually the theme for a TV drama known as Black Jack Ni Yoroshiku.
Speaking of the US commercial (linked above), you can see the difference in intended marketing between the two versions. The US commercial goes with “build an army, trust nobody” as its central theme, rather than the themes of “meetings, growing, bonding, partings” that the Japanese commercial aimed for. Considering it was the debut game for the US (and west) too, it’s an interesting approach!
I believe that’s all that really needs to be said for this commercial! I hope to cover the Japanese commercial for Sacred Stones down the line.
Over the past several weeks (and months), I took a look at an old character poll conducted around 2003-2004 for the Elibe games (FE7 Blazing Blade and FE6 Binding Blade) for Japanese players. The results for the top 30 characters of each game were published online with Japanese player comments. The rest of the results (and some more comments) were published in the Character Book. As such, the data presented here is consolidated between the two sources.
While this poll was of course known to fans for a long time, the Japanese comments were never translated in full (for good reason, there were quite a few). As such the objective of this post (and project) is to serve as a resource in both presenting the poll data all in one place as well as giving English-speaking fans some insight on what Japanese fans thought of these characters those years ago. It’s become one of my objective to help bring the fandoms together in some way, so this is a part of that.
Altogether this was 49 pages of data on word that I translated on my free time during the last few weeks, so if you’re feeling generous consider donating to help support me continue to build an archive of Fire Emblem (and other) resources here on this blog! (I’ll do it anyway regardless of the donations, of course!)
This post is part of a series on reader requested (and personal curiosity) comparisons between Fire Emblem games’ Japanese and English scripts.
Today’s post concerns a reader from reddit’s curiosity regarding Karel. To quote:
Could you possibly take a look at Karel and Karla’s supports to see if they are strictly referring to the art of the sword or if there actually is a physical sword passed down in their family? I argued once that their English supports establish there is a physical sword (which is not named in game and in particular is not the Wo Dao).
They mention the quote (in the screen shot above) which is the line in question. One would likely assume it is indeed a physical blade as opposed to any sort of “way of the sword” as a result. It may be worth noting that Karel holds a bloodied sword in his official artwork too that some assume may be said sword.
Upon researching it, it’s an interesting case that leans toward mistranslation, and that the sword is actually meant to be a style and not a physical blade. But let’s take a thorough look at the matter.
