(NanoDesu) A Translation of the Hai to Gensou no Grimgar Light Novel

This post has been edited to include a message from TOM. The original post has been pushed to the bottom.

Nov 20: All EPUB/PDFs will be removed.

Dec 20: All Grimgar fan translation will be removed.

Thank You

Working on Grimgar for the past few years has been an incredible experience and I’m glad that it’s been deemed popular enough for a publisher to pick up.

The majority of the credit would have to go to the original author Ao Jyumonji for a wonderful book series well-deserving of readers. I hope his works find the same success in the English world as they enjoy in Japan.

I’d like to thank NanoDesu Translations for the organizational support so that the only thing I had to worry about was the Japanese text. I would also like to thank Lono for covering for me for the past month or two while I was tied up with other things.

msirp was the supervisor who got this project off the ground and off to a smooth start and I couldn’t have done it without his help. I also need to thank Nano, for the administrative support and also ideas on how to translate some of the more tricky passages and characters (I’m looking at you, Ranta…).

Castor212 is so good, we purposely delayed the release of the color pages so that he could do them for us. I moment I saw his typesets for V1, I knew that I wanted him on the team forever. The professional-level typesetting and other image editing work is 100% his and he is often the most underrated member of the team. We get lots of compliments on how good Grimgar’s art is and while the amazing work belongs to Shirai Eiri, the presentation is all Castor!

hikaslap was the best project coordinator I could have asked for. Grimgal would have fallen apart at the seams pretty fast without him as he’d take over anything I didn’t want to do without complaint. To add to his work load, even after being promoted to supervisor from editor, I would still go to him for English help because he’s a miracle worker with those pesky Japanese puns! And those PDFs that look like they could have come from a professional publisher? Hika did 99.99% of the work on them!

Kuro-pi’s editing talent is wasted on fan translation. Yes, he’s just that good. Grimgar would be a much poorer read without Kuro’s eagle eye in spotting awkward grammar and guiding hand in fixing my badly phrased sentences. The Grimgar you read is as much Kuro’s work as it is mine or the author’s.

Ayumi had the hardest task of all: Making the text even better as the editor who got her hands on it last. She is a goddess with word choice and the unenviable task of finding solutions for problems that stumped Hika, Kuro, and me often fell to her. Even so, she’s never failed to come through for us! The high level of polish and quality in our releases are because of her!

hikaslap, Kuro, Ayumi and Castor are Team Grimgar and it’s been my privledge and pleasure to work with such talented people. While our time on this project has come to an end, I hope one day I will have the opportunity and honor of working with them again.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to all the readers. I hope you guys enjoyed reading Grimgar as much as I enjoyed translating it!

I haven’t managed to get proper words of goodbye from our thaumaturge translator TOM yet, so we might post that later, assuming he deigns to respond. The Ouija hasn’t really been moving lately, the incense is all burnt out. The magic circle is gathering dust, etc etc. Where are you, TOM?  He’s right above us; I got them after all. Incidentally, TOM is a name I invented, which he doesn’t personally use. Maybe he secretly hates the nickname.

In the meantime, here is the unrelease schedule.

As of November 1st, pretty much all of Volume 1 has already been removed! sorry! This includes the EPUB/PDF. We don’t usually do it so fast, but you see, we think that even if you haven’t checked out Volume 1 yet, you can just go read the official translation by real people who are really paid, instead of scary-ass horrormonger TOM-type things who I feed in blood and cattle. And love.

The rest will go as follows:

Nov 20: All EPUB/PDFs will be removed.

Dec 20: All Grimgar fan translation will be removed.

Cheers, everybody! Another licensing success!

hikaslap

Hi everybody,

On Oct 27, the Grimgal novels were announced having been licensed under the name “Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash”.

The distributor is  J-Novel, an digital, online platform for light novels. The company is hot off the press; their first releases were just a couple weeks ago! See: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-10-15/j-novel-club-publisher-launches-to-release-light-novels-in-english-digitally/.107695

Our procedure here will be old hat; we’ll follow an unrelease schedule, with details to follow. However it might be a little fast, since J-Novel in fact has already released the opening chapters to Grimgal! Check out the available parts here: https://j-novel.club/s/grimar-of-fantasy-and-ash/search  . Most are subscriber only but the Chapter 0 and Chapter 1 are free to read at https://j-novel.club/c/grimgar-of-fantasy-and-ash-level-1-whisper-chant-prayer-awaken-part-1/read. It’s interesting to compare styles between us; their translation is significantly different! Can you see how we each evoke distinct moods and tones?

Full book comes out December 16 2016. Preorder on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M2AEL8L?tag=jnovelclub-20

Again, more information, announcements, goodbyes to follow later. I will say briefly that it is always our hope that the novels we love get wide audiences in a way that directly benefits the creators, and generally the best way to do that is an official release. Thank you all for sticking with us.

hikaslap

And thanks for participating in the poll! People really like their romance, huh? I like love too. And no one likes Souma, but unfortunately for you guys, he’s on the front cover. (I have no idea how to lock the poll, so I posted the results as of 7/14.)

Project is currently being unreleased!!!!!!!

(I blog! Scroll down to read cute Grimgar posts and do cute Grimgar polls. Well, that is, if you have nothing to do after catching up to the main story. And yes, I know, cute is subjective.)

Hey, folks. My name’s hikaslap, and I’m glad to introduce to you our translation of Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, or Grimgar of Ashes and Illusion, by Ao Jyumonji. Grimgar is a book about kids stuck in an unforgiving story — which the author pumps as full of JRPG conventions as he can. Gold pieces? Yes. Instant learning of skills? Yes. Steady level growth, painless day-to-day life, grand epic plot?

From all the games we’ve played, you might think yes, but the answer to that one is no. These kids fight tooth and nail, agonize week after week, in a world where the only goal is earning money — or at least enough money to not sleep hungry that night. It’s a struggle without flair or sparkle, in spite of the fantastic (and blatantly game-esque) magic and weapons they wield. In this story, life plods on everyday, and between the deaths and drama, gradually they find out where they’ve been headed this whole time. They find out where it is that they want to go. Wasn’t it the same for you?

So if you like this story and want someone to feel grateful to, first of all thank Jyumonji-sensei and read the official releases should they ever come out. But second of all thank TOM for his hard work and weekly posts. He thanks you, too, for reading. It was apparently a highly rewarding experience to translate this book, even for him. (See our About page or this post for more info on TOM.)

–hikaslap, erstwhile Grimgar editor