Four Years of Kantopia!

Four years! Wow… I remember writing about the third year anniversary just…last year? Today I drew a new Lilina banner to celebrate:

This year was the first year that I didn’t do daily posts. I still managed to do weekend posting though, to which I’m happy, and, of course, when I had time, made sure to post in succession.

Accomplishments the last year include completion of the Tellius Recollection Volume 2: Radiant Dawn project! I’m very proud of how that turned out. The Shadows of Valentia 4Koma mini project was also a thing. The Valentia Accordion project is still underway, as is the ongoing Day in the Life of Heroes comics!

So there’s still quite a lot to get through. I gathered some nice books too, some Fire Emblem stuff that hasn’t been translated yet that I hope to get through when I get time! There were a few interviews here and there, as well as some more fun comparisons this year.

Speaking of comparisons, I finally got around to making a special page that lists all comparisons in one place. It serves as a neat hub. I wrote much more than I thought (especially about Fates!) WordPress has an inconvenient tag system on the right, so I hope this comes in handy for people who just want to read the comparisons and not dig through the rest.

I hope to add more special hub pages for things like interviews and trivia that was discovered in art books.

This post, by the way, is a little late too. It’s May 18th as of this writing, but the anniversary was actually April 3rd!

Thanks to all the readers who commented and shared my articles. It humbles me every time, and I really enjoy reading and replying to all your comments!

Here’s to the future!

FE Echoes SOV Memorial Book: Valentia Accordion Scan/Translation Compilation Post

 

This post is a compilation of all my Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia – Memorial Book: Valentia Accordion related posts in one neat place. Each section you see below has an individual post, too, which may share translation notes and other tidbits not present on this post.

This will be just like the Tellius Recollection Volume One and Two projects.

Thanks to your donations, I managed to unbind the book. You will notice an increase in scan quality as a result!

This post will be updated every time some new scan or information of interest comes to light.

Assisting me on this project will be VincentASM of serenesforest.net as well as some guest translators! Their translations will be noted/credited! (See credits at the end!) Some other wonderful people are helping out with other things such as scan quality adjustment. Please be sure to thank them in the credits!

As you can imagine, the process of doing all this (scanning, editing, translating, etc) took a lot of free time, so…

Please consider donating! It helps fund future projects!

Enjoy!

Breath of the Wild: How do those sand seal puns work in Japanese? [JPN vs ENG]

Screen shot from here.

This is part of a series of comparing the Japanese and English versions of the game. Read more about that here! And feel free to leave a request or curiosity on the comments here or on that page.

The section question regarding Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes from personal curiosity.

So in the Gerudo Town in the game, there is a woman who sells sand seals. She makes quite a few puns (as seen on the image at the top of the page), and so I’m sure many were curious at what that may have been in Japanese.

So let’s take a look!

Breath of the Wild: How do the “-son”‘s work in Japanese? [JPN vs ENG]

This is part of a series of comparing the Japanese and English versions of the game. Read more about that here! And feel free to leave a request or curiosity on the comments here or on that page.

This is the question a few people have asked me:

“How do the -son names (Bolson, Hudson, etc) work in Japanese?”

Well, let’s take a quick look!  Quick context: There’s a group of characters with names that end in “-son” in the game as part of a side quest. I was curious about this one myself so was glad someone asked!

Breath of the Wild: What was the “neigh” scene like in Japanese? [JPN vs ENG]

This is part of a series of comparing the Japanese and English versions of the game. Read more about that here! And feel free to leave a request or curiosity on the comments here or on that page.

The section question regarding Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild comes from a reader on twitter.

It is a very simple one. “What do the two boys (pictured above) say in Japanese?” They are found at the Dueling Peaks stable during the day, for reference.

It is a good question as the joke in English revolves around the English specific “neigh.”

So let’s take a look!

Breath of the Wild: How do the Gerudo refer to boys/girls in Japanese? [JPN vs ENG]

This is part of a series of comparing the Japanese and English versions of the game. Read more about that here! And feel free to leave a request or curiosity on the comments here or on that page.

The first question regarding Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild!

It is a very simple one:

“What do the Gerudo call boys and girls in Japanese?”

Well, let’s take a look!

Let’s Compare Zelda: Breath of the Wild!

I just recently beat Breath of the Wild (not to 100% completion, though), and found myself curious about some of the dialogue I came across along the way.

The Switch is a region free system, and as such the language is easy to change between Japanese and English. So this got me thinking: why not take a look at what may have changed between games?

From location names, sidequest names, or dialogue anywhere in between, it may make for some fun articles!

I want my readers to give suggestions in the comments, on twitter, or by email, about some things for me to look into. We’ll have a lot of fun seeing what may have changed, or what may have remained the same. The game is largely untapped when it comes to comparisons due to being a recent release.

Personally, I am thinking about looking into what the Gerudo terminology is in Japanese for starters! But I welcome any and all reader comments/suggestions/requests. I recall seeing some puns and rhymes that only work in English in some areas, so that’s another curiosity to look into (that lady selling sand seals, for instance…)

As I have completed the game I do not mind suggestions that may contain spoilers, but for the sake of other readers who may not have completed the game yet, please mention if your post/suggestion will contain spoilers or not. : )

Three Years of Kantopia & the End of the Daily Blog

Three years! Wow…it’s time for a little reflection.

What started off as a personal project and basically a portfolio grew to become a small, but hopefully informative site for readers. I simply decided to share my own curiosity and thoughts on some observations and found out there is a reader base for it out there somewhere!

Posting everyday for that long has been great for sure. I got to run through all sorts of topics, from comparisons to just good old translations. It was a self imposed rule that I would upload at least one thing every day. Be it big, small, short, long, a translation, a note, or whatever. Something, anything! It would be a great way to improve writing, translation, or just reaching out to people.

And it seems to have served me pretty well. I met great people along the way, and my twitter following continues to grow with people who are intrigued by all the trivial things that I also enjoy!

Among those achievements was being able to translate some interviews that even made it to larger game sites. Though, it was much less about the fact the interviews got linked to and more than it got out to more people. That’s my personal joy.

Another wonderful honor is being cited by PushDustIn as one of the inspirations behind the wonderful SourceGaming which I’ve seen from its beginning continue to grow and grow. It warms me that I was an inspiration to anyone, and hope I can continue to be with posting things I enjoy sharing.

It was also great heading a coordinated translation project that saw the Fire Emblem community come together to help donate/fund Tellius Recollection Vol 2. Namely, buying an extra copy that I de-spined and scanned for higher quality image and translations. It was a great success, and is still ongoing!

Speaking of Fire Emblem, it’s also been a blast using my favorite Lilina as an unofficial mascot. I heard it was pretty well received much to my delight, hehe. She got to share in my joys and sorrows along the way.

So much use out of one sprite!

The portfolio proved invaluable in my ongoing search for my dream job (to work officially in video game translation and/or localization). However, it simply is not enough for many companies out there. They require people like me to have actual work experience, which is a shame that none of this really counts for much beyond simply blogging in the eyes of human resources.

Not that it takes away from it for me. For me, it’s been valuable experience in translation and the pursuit of (trivial) knowledge.

However, it is important because it meant I still need that practical experience to help land that dream job.

So, I made a big move and am back in Japan for the time being (which is what I was busy with the last week or two), and will be here teaching English for awhile to lovely school kids while improving my own language skill. As such, my schedule will certainly get much busier, and my readers know I love to be diligent at what I do –and hence will prioritize that job first and this blog second.

If I tried doing a daily blog while working what looks like will be quite a time intensive job, then I’d probably reach that overworked point (like when I marathoned the Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates Revelation to write a summary in English for readers to enjoy).

So I decided I’ll finally listen to what a ton of users on serenesforest.net, twitter, blog readers, and even Nino have told me all along:

So I won’t! And you’re welcome! (And thank you for reading!) For once, as hard as it is to quell my OCD when that one day is finally missed. It horrifies me just thinking about it!

But!

This does not mean the blog is being abandoned entirely.

It simply means I probably won’t be able to do a daily upload! I do this all for free, after all! Not bound by ads or clicks for revenue, I feel it keeps it authentic in a way. Donations are simply tips or voluntary support from my readers, and certainly not expected!

As such, the Fire Emblem artbook scanlations, requests, etc will all continue! I still plan to do all that, it just may take a bit longer and come on a more sporadic schedule for when I get time to do them.

I will still do what I love to do with looking at game localizations and the like, so please continue to send requests and suggestions!

This message is so you don’t panic when you see there was indeed a day where Kantopia uploaded *gasp* nothing?!

It hurts me more than it hurts you, believe me!

You know, when writing this post, I realized just how much I love writing/translating/doing what I do on this blog. Perhaps even more than that dream career I’m aiming for..

But hey, when this teaching thing is all said and done and I’m back to being unemployed, you can be sure this blog will return to being a daily one until I finally land that dream job! (Where the objective of the portfoli-blog is ultimately complete).

And with that…

Aww, thanks!

Here’s to another year! Thank you all so much for all your support!

Fire Emblem Series “Choose Your Legends” Analysis – Final Summary and Recap

Over the last week, I took an in-depth look at the Fire Emblem Heroes “Choose Your Legends” poll. It is the first time there has ever been (what is essentially) a popularity poll of the Fire Emblem series conducted worldwide across every main entry in the series. For that reason I put a lot of time toward looking at the trends, characters, and other fun data that we can derive from it.

There are limitations to it of course, which I address on each individual post. I hope as a Fire Emblem fan you gain some nice insight form all this.

A big thank you to Elieson over on serenesforest.net for having organized the original graphs of data that I could then modify and format for purposes here.

I will be resuming my usual translations from tomorrow, but if you have any other suggestions on what sort of data you want to see formatted (such as “Chart showing Jagen characters lined up), let me know! I’ll happily add it.

If you feel generous, then I’ll happily accept any donations you may have (just click the orange button on the top right of the page!)

Below I present the findings in image format, and links to the more detailed article pages! Enjoy! And thanks again for all reader comments and support. : )

FE14 (Fates) “Choose Your Legends” Poll Results Analysis

Nintendo conducted a poll for Fire Emblem Heroes urging fans to pick a favorite character of theirs that they would love to see featured. Each fan could vote once a day for 13 days for almost any character from any of the main Fire Emblem series of games.

This is part of a miniseries I am doing on analyzing the vast amount of poll data available to us and what it means for the fandom and their favorites regarding characters.

Thanks to the tireless work of Elieson over on serenesforest.net, we can take a look at the break downs by game!

Today we will focus on the final Fire Emblem game on the poll: FE14, better known as Fates.

There are some general things to keep in mind before we get started, however.