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@indieslaw: Apologies for the late reply! I've been busy with work and stuff the last few days. Anyway, I'm not super familiar with what's available in English for general consumption; most of my actual studying was done with textbooks produced for universities specifically and I read most of my actual Japanese news in Japanese anymore. I'd say that probably your best bet for keeping up to date on Japanese business and economic trends is to just follow Japan-specific news sites with English branches. The Japan Times is probably as good as it gets in terms of dedicated original English coverage on Japan, but I also know that the English branches for the Yomiuri, Asahi, and NHK should also serve you well. As with all news outlets, different organizations have different leanings, but to my knowledge, all four of those places are good about keeping the pure facts and whatnot in news pieces clean. Hope that's at least some help!

@indieslaw: It was always somewhat of a myth to begin with. Having a stable corporate salaryman job is one of the tropes that used to make up "the Japanese dream," so to speak, but even during bubble years in the 80s, Japan's economy was never that strong to facilitate such a thing for everyone who wanted in on it. To be certain, Japanese employment laws are by design meant to make it significantly more difficult for people to be fired for arbitrary reasons, but the reality has still always been that such a future has never been a completely certain thing for most anyone; at best, if you make it to a managerial position at a well-run company, chances are probably pretty good you can spend your career just working there for the duration of your working years if that's your thing, but otherwise people working at the grunt level have always still totally had stretches where they've had to go find work and change careers like the rest of us.

I don't remember the statistics off the top of my head since it's been several years since I've formally studied Japanese business and economics, but I do know that even in the best of times, people with lifelong employment have never made up a majority of the Japanese workforce. Globalization and the general economic realities that Japan is facing as a result of its 20-plus year-long post-bubble recession mean that the numbers are just lessening more and more. People who don't focus on Japan for studies or work are only beginning to notice this trend actually happening by way of people like Igarashi leaving, but this sort of thing has been happening for a long while now. On the flip side, Japan's entrepreneurial business culture traditionally languished in previous decades because the political and economical climates didn't really favor startups, but things are improving very quickly on that front, as typified by all of these veteran Japanese developers striking it out on their and often remaining successful. It's a very interesting time to be working and living in Japan right now in a lot of ways and I definitely remain curious to see how things pan out in the future.

@brackynews: I'm deeply flattered that after having long gotten tired of the Bobrossfreak username on YouTube myself after coming up with it during my dumb non-sequitur high school humor years that there's still someone out there who likes it. ;D

@fluxwavez: Yeah, I was just mostly interested in hearing whether the character dynamics and whatnot came across naturally with just English knowledge to work off of, which seems to be the case. We translators will always have our differences with each other in terms of how to approach this line or that, just like how people interpret the same passages in literature written natively in their language differently, which is why I'll probably continue to just keep playing these games in Japanese as they come out, but as long as those localizations still make for a good time in and of themselves, that's what matters most.

You are right that there are some aspects of the characterizations that are a bit of a headache from a translation perspective, though. Calling Yamada a "fanfic creator" is an okay interpretation of the Japanese title since the original terms is somewhat nebulous and refers to a subculture that doesn't really exist outside of Japan. I think the original NISA announcement had him pegged as the ultimate otaku, which I honestly think better fits his character overall since his hobbyist authorial stuff doesn't really play that big of a part in defining his character outside the optional socializing bits. And yeah, Celeste is just a strange character to translate in general. The confusion about her nationality plays a lot more naturally in the Japanese version because she speaks in a pretty formal and stilted manner that is possible to replicate to a degree in English, but has to be handled delicately. The name plays a big part in Makoto questioning her nationality, but it's her speech patterns in Japanese that really make her stand out compared to everyone else and make her feel so distant.

Dangan Ronpa's a rough game to translate all around and good on anybody who gives it a shoot because, woof, it is very proactive about being an obtuse game to translate into any other language. It's a great experience in Japanese, but makes it basically miraculous in spots when the game is still just readable in English. Overall I'm just happy that the game is spreading outside Japan. It's always nice when I have more people to talk with about some of the more niche stuff I like when it comes to games.

As someone who just beat the PSP version of Super Dangan Ronpa 2 yesterday, let me tell you, brother: the crazy awesome train only gets started in that first game. Dangan Ronpa 1 is a hell of a game in its own right and, at least in Japanese, has some of the best game writing I've seen in a really long time, but 2 is one of those miraculous games that I feel like manages to improve upon what's already a really great, solid base. Just an even more confident work of prose in a game than even that first one and I hope everyone who isn't me indeed gets to play it in a language they understand sooner rather than later. Those two games combined with the Zero Escape series as a one-two punch have pretty thoroughly convinced me that Spike Chunsoft is definitely a developer worth paying attention to because of their writers alone, let along the unique gameplay mechanics they often manage to sneak in.

That being said, what's your take on the localization? You probably saw my post on GAF about how Dangan Ronpa is a ridiculously difficult game to translate well in a lot of spots because of how playful it is with the Japanese language as a whole, but I'm curious on what people's take on NISA's work is without that background. From what I've been seeing, hit-or-miss voice acting aside, it seems like they might have done a pretty solid job at making it all read and sound pretty natural in English.

I don't have the time to read the reviews to get more concrete details, but on Amazon Japan, both versions have the same user review averages, although the Vita version has more reviews overall. Having played the first game on the PSP, my impression is that the gameplay hasn't been upgraded in such a way that it really warrants touch screen usage, although I'm pretty sure the graphics aren't far and away better on one versus the other for this second game; I recall them having relative parity when Spike Chunsoft was marketing the game. If I have a Vita, I would personally go with that just for a more consistent experience having played that original game on a Sony handheld, but I have it preordered on the 3DS since that's all I have and I'm not too worried.

As it turns out, there were a few more pages of that interview that were missing from my original source, so I went ahead and translated those. They by and large are about the other games that they announced with Persona 5, but Hashino's a pretty chill dude with some interesting answers about the whys and hows a lot of these games exist, so I personally think they're still an interesting read. But I might be a little biased. Anyway, they're attached below, along with a slightly corrected version of the Persona 5 interview, which mostly just consists of removing references to Famitsu because I pulled a dumb dumb on that one. Also kudos to one Naotolan on Tumblr, who very kindly did the image editing work on the last two pages, saving me a good amount of work and freeing me to focus on just translating and typesetting stuff. Duder's a lifesaver! Beyond that, obviously just make sure to open the images in another window to read them. You all probably know that, but you never know.

Enjoy and thanks for all the kind words! It's been super flattering to hear people enjoy my work!

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Howdy! I don't like to post my own translation work on forums since it feels like very self-indulging advertising to a degree, so I'm flattered to hear you duders think it's worth discussing. I mentioned it on the Tumblr post, but just for clarification here, too, I bungled the source as being from Famitsu when it was actually the Japanese Persona magazine. Obviously doesn't really change the content of the interview at all, but I figure it doesn't hurt to mention either. I'm also pleased to hear it's apparently readable the way I've inserted the English text back into the magazine. I really like Japanese graphic design in magazines and wanted to preserve that aesthetic as best as possible, but I'm by no means an artist or a decent typesetter, so I wasn't sure how well things have panned out. If any of you have suggestions on font choices and whatnot, I'd love to hear it since I basically have no idea what I'm doing other than "try not to go with Times New Roman/Arial/Comic Sans MS."

Anyway, I think the translation mostly speaks for itself, but if there's any clarification I can provide on what I'd wrote, I'd be happy to elaborate on Hashino's original Japanese answers.

Had a great time with you all and am super glad this thread exists so I can catch up on some of the runs I missed that people have been hyping. Looking forward to doing this with you all come summer! Until then, keep on keeping on with Pac-Swag!

I have my regrets playing this, yet I don't because I got to hook up with the anime hostess of my dreams through lots of talking, drinking, and large amounts of dubiously programmed minigames.

And it was when we were drunkenly doing character together, her signing poorly and me mashing on the bicycle horn button in timing to the music that I realized I had found the digital woman I wanted to spend the rest of my digital life with.

I mean, just look at her. She's festive, she speaks the best Japanese dialect, her favorite drinks are cheap so it's not too expensive to get her drunk, she's basically perfect.

You and everyone else in the western gaming sphere may judge me and perhaps even rightfully so, but I found happiness and it found me, too, and nobody can ever hope to take that away from me.