This is my complete translation of the Prologue of Dies irae – Amantes amentes. I did this purely for practice. Since the Japanese in this is bastard hard (probably on par with Muramasa), I wanted to challenge myself and see how well I’d do. Also, I apologize in advance for potential typos and the like. (Note: Additional Dies irae translations can be found in the “Translation” menu above.)
JP title: 穢翼のユースティア
Well, after a solid 2-3 weeks of reading, I’ve successfully reached the true end of Aiyoku no Eustia, August’s highly-praised fantasy VN. Despite coming from a developer that seems to specialize in moege, Eustia actually tells a serious story with several dark twists and turns, as well as a decent amount of food for thought that you might not come to expect judging only by the art style itself. I really wish they’d do stuff like this more often, though, we have more than enough moege on the market as it is. But I digress – here are my thoughts on Aiyoku no Eustia.
I’ve never actually read this VN. I plan to in the future, as I’ve heard pretty good things about it, but at the moment I’m occupied with other stuff so it’ll have to wait a bit. Despite all that, the opening lines were so powerful, so brilliantly delivered, and had such an impact on me (who doesn’t even know anything about the game, I might add), that I felt compelled to do a quick translation of my own.
This idea has been in my head for a while now, but I never really got around to actually putting it into words. Until now, that is. So let’s speculate a bit about a very basic question: what is it that draws people to visual novels, as opposed to various other forms of media including anime, manga, light novels, and so on? What characteristics do VNs share with the above mentioned media, and which ones are unique to their genre only? I’m going to attempt to reflect a bit on that.
