You’ve probably already heard this news, but here it is again: The Oregairu LN has been licensed by Yen Press.
This is not necessarily happy news for everyone, hence the graphic at the top of this post. Not everyone will have access to the official release when it is eventually published in 2016. There are fans who are very upset over this. Just take a visit to Kyakka if you want see evidence of this for yourself.
Here’s the official statement we released on the Nano Desu Oregairu site:
Today, we have some momentous news! Oregairu has been licensed by Yen Press!
Here at Nano Desu, we support the official release one hundred per cent and we recommend that you buy it when it becomes available.
So what does that mean for the fan translation project here? Because the official translation won’t be released until 2016, we have still not worked out what will happen over the next few months. It is also in our interest to keep translations accessible for those who may not have access to official releases, so we are trying our best to work through this matter.
Please stay tuned for further updates in the weeks to come.
If that statement sounds vague, that’s because it’s supposed to sound that way. There’s been a lot of talk behind the scenes at Nano Desu, and not all of us agree about what to do. We’re not taking down the content from the site right away, but in all likelihood we will take down the translations before the first volume is released officially. Whatever happens, I will keep you posted on both blogs.
As for my personal reaction to the licensing? As long as Yen Press’s release is nothing like the abomination that was the No Game No Life translation, I’m all for it. I look forward to purchasing the professional translation and seeing where I can learn from it. I particularly wonder how the cultural references and Hachiman’s “voice” will come across in their version.
(There’s an elephant in the room here, and that elephant is called ETHICS IN LIGHT NOVEL TRANSLATION. There’s an interesting conversation to be had here about Yen Press’s conservative business model and the limitations of intellectual property laws in the digital era. But that’s a post for another day.)
In other news, I have started working on Qualidea seriously, so expect a release very soon!
In other other news, who else is watching Wimbledon?
