Hey Hey Blerdy Tribe, I’m back with another Behind the Games post! For those of you just joining the party, Behind the Games is the interview series where I chat with the folks ‘behind the games’ I review. Giving you guys a chance to get to know the developers and publishers that spend so much time carefully crafting the games you enjoy.
Mary Borsellino, Director of JAST Blue
Kitty-tama, Quality Assurance
Good Haro, Freelance Translator
I’m super excited to be chatting with three of the folks who worked on the localization of the boys love classic visual novel, Masquerade Hell Academy! I have Mary, the Director of Jast Blue; Kitty-tama, one of the Quality Assurance team members; and Good Haro, the Freelance Translator who worked on Masquerade here to share their insights into what it was like working on the game and some behind the scenes info on the upcoming title!
Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me! I absolutely love the work JAST Blue does bringing BL game localizations to Western fans! Most folks are familiar with JAST Blue the publisher, but not so much the folks that work tirelessly behind the scenes. Tell me about yourselves and your roles at JAST Blue.
Mary: I’m Mary Borsellino and I’m the Director of JAST Blue. I do translation editing, social media, project management, and various other roles – Masquerade is my first try at being a Producer on a commercial game, which is pretty exciting.
Kitty-tama: Hi, I’m Kitty-tama and I do quality assurance for JAST Blue among other localization companies. I playthrough games like Masquerade to check them for bugs and the like, as well as making sure there aren’t any typos and such! It can be quite a meticulous process, especially for a game with as many choices as Masquerade.
Good Haro (GH): I go by Good Haro online and I’m a freelance translator. I’ve worked on a handful of JAST and JAST Blue titles in the past.
JAST Blue has brought us a number of BL game localizations over the years, and PIL/SLASH’s Masquerade Hell Academy will be the latest to make its way to the West. Could you tell me a bit more about the story?
Mary: Masquerade centres around a group of students, a teacher, a reporter and a police officer who are all taken captive inside an academy overnight. Their captor forces them to perform increasingly depraved acts in order to survive, and so the visual novel is about the choices you make as one of the students – who you choose to get closer to out of the other captives, how submissive or defiant you are against the demands, whether you can outsmart the captor.
Masquerade Hell Academy is an older title, originally being released in Japan in 2007. What made an older title, like Masquerade, a contender for localization almost 18 years after its initial release? (Compared with more modern BL games) What are some aspects of the story that will appeal to modern BL fans?
Mary: I’ve actually just written a piece for bl.buzz about this—short version is, I think it’s a really important stepping stone in understanding the early days of bl visual novels, and also what the genre evolved into later. Anyone interested in how BL has grown and changed over the last two decades absolutely has to include this game in their library.
Kitty-tama: Funnily enough, I’m actually a bit newer to being a BL fan myself! So I don’t quite have my finger on the pulse for what’s a hit or not with older fans versus newer fans, but I do have an everlasting fondness for older visual novels in general. With Masquerade in particular, one of the hugest charm points, from my lens at least, is the sheer off the rails nature of the erotic content. It gets particularly creative with how the captor makes use of everyday objects in a confined space—in this case, the academy. Also, a particular plus is how Hiroshi can be either the top or bottom in particular endings, so this can give variety for people who might prefer their protagonists to lean one way over the other.
GH: I think Mary covered it pretty well, and I agree that it’s interesting from a historical perspective, particularly as Pil/Slash’s first title. The game features switch mechanics for the protagonist (allowing the player to decide if he tops or bottoms in a given scenario) which was a reasonably common feature during this era of BL games, particularly for P/S, that has since fallen out of favor—I imagine because it doubles the work for something with limited appeal that may even upset a certain subset of the audience—so I think that alone gives it a pretty unique flavor compared to modern titles.
Masquerade is an older title and it has some tropes and subject matter that may seem a bit dated in the current BL landscape in the West. How do you feel Masquerade fits in given the changes in the BL fandom over the years?
Mary: I think Japanese titles of Masquerade’s era, like Enzai or Togainu no Chi, still hold up for a huge number of players – there are a lot of BL fans who like the more classic types of genre tropes, and I think players who prefer the tone of current Western OELVNs have a wide variety to choose from, including through the JAST USA store. We want everyone to be happy!
GH: Personally I don’t really feel like “dated tropes” is really the right way to describe Masquerade’s content. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that it’s not full of plenty of content that modern audiences may find questionable, but that’s clearly a major objective of the game (at least I think so)—I think it was fairly extreme for its time too. It’s trying to be dark and shocking. I don’t think the game is unaware of what it’s doing in that regard. Now, how successful it is at doing something interesting with those elements is obviously debatable, but it’s not just thoughtlessly following old school tropes. And I’d just like to echo what Mary said, I think BL is a much more varied genre both in terms of content and its fans than a lot of people realize.
I had the opportunity to play Masquerade and the content can be a bit graphic. What are some content warnings that you feel fans should know about before playing?
Mary: There’s a scat toggle in the menu to turn off that if you prefer. If you go down the extreme sadist route, there is a scene that could be considered bestiality, though no animals are harmed. Coercion makes up a significant part of the plot, as does threat of violence.
Kitty-tama: Mary covers the bases really well, but I also want to note the scat toggle also accounts for depictions of vomit—they’re not frequent at all, but the toggle removes both textual and visual representations of it. If you’re emetophobic, do consider switching this toggle on if you’re interested in the game but feel iffy toward that specific content.
I have noticed that many of the titles JAST Blue localizes tend to lean more towards angsty and/or traumatic. Is this more a preference for JAST Blue and the localization team or indicative of current trends in BL in Japan?
Mary: I think that’s just the way BL tends to be. We certainly don’t do it intentionally! Even a title like DRAMAtical Murder, which has a very bright pop-art graphics style, has a lot of very very dark content in the plot. I think the same is true for a significant portion of the otome genre.
GH: I’d argue this is just a tendency among Japanese BL games in general since about the mid 00s when the genre really peaked (in terms of release numbers). The genre is incredibly niche now—just a handful of games get released every year, if that—so I think the small, but dedicated player base (in Japan) is typically looking to BL games for stories that are, let’s say, uniquely adult.
Otome games kind of ended up edging out BL in the all ages space which is where a lot of the lighter titles thrived in the past, and with live service mobile games eating up a lot of the audience for visual novels in general it’s difficult for developers to justify developing in that space. I think it’s also just that the surviving brands just have that tone as part of their identity. For example most of Nitro+’s non-BL titles have a very similar general vibe, and I could say the same of most other developers that also produce male-targeted eroge under a different brand.
Localization and translation are two very distinct practices. There are usually some liberties taken when adapting a work for release for an audience outside of its original country. This is especially important for a title like Masquerade. What were some changes your team made to the translation for this new release? How faithful is your localization to the original text? (any specific examples from the game?)
Mary: Since this game is set in Japan, it required very little in the way of changes – the government is still called the Diet, for example. My key concern whenever I’m localizing a game is that I want the player to have an experience as close as possible to someone playing in the original language – so if a character speaks informally, I want that to be reflected. If the narration is more visceral than usual, I want that, too.
GH: Not to be pedantic, but I think that’s bit of a faulty distinction. The difference between translation and localization isn’t that one takes “liberties” for its target audience and the other doesn’t. Translation is
simply what happens to the text, while localization is that and everything else happens to put the game into the target language (inserting the translated script into the game, ensuring the game can even display text in the target language, editing Japanese text in menus and images to their English equivalents, recording audio in the target language, etc).
People seem to have this misguided impression that translation is the same as deciphering a code—simply replacing each word with its precise, singular equivalent—but that couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s simply not how language works. Technically, we changed every single word of the script since it’s in a completely different language now. I always strive to do my best to represent the author’s intent and, like Mary, the experience the original audience would have had reading the text, but that’s inevitably going to be filtered through my interpretation of the work.
What were some aspects of the story that were more difficult to adapt for a Western audience? Easiest to adapt?
Mary: I think themes like bullying, crushes on your kind classmate, and being afraid in dangerous situations are pretty universal, so there was nothing from my perspective.
GH: I think the most difficult aspect of the script for this title was much more technical than anything—there are a lot of choices leading to many, many variations in a large number of the game’s scenes which could sometimes make keeping track of continuity a little difficult. There are even some paths where certain characters never join the group, so I always had to pay attention to how many people were supposed to be in the room and what characters had been involved so far in a given scene variant.
Additionally, Japanese grammar is somewhat uniquely equipped to leave certain types of phrases a bit more open-ended than is permissible in English while still sounding natural which, as you might imagine, is really useful for creating reusable segments of scenes with a lot of options, but this actually poses something of a problem in English.
As a very simple example number isn’t grammatically required in Japanese, so you can very naturally have one sentence that could just as easily refer to one person or multiple people being in a place or performing an action, but you can’t really do this in English, at least not as easily, and if that line happens to be a common line shared between scene variations involving one or potentially more characters you have to get a little creative to make it work in each possible context.
What were some of your favorite scenes to adapt in Masquerade?
Mary: My favourite scenes are some of the ones involving Takaura, the police officer. He’s very good hearted and brave but makes extremely impulsive decisions that cause a lot of problems.
Kitty-tama: Of the heroes in Masquerade, Shin is probably my favorite—kind, warm, and does his best to endure the awful situation at hand. It was quite a joy QAing his scenes in particular, though I honestly loved working on the more intense scenes overall as well. I’m very much a “no limits” kind of girl when it comes to what I’ll work on, so this game fit the bill perfectly.
GH: Most of the specific scenes I can think of are toward the end, and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything there. Generally speaking, I actually think I enjoyed working on lines for Oizumi, the arrogant and cowardly TV personality, a lot because he really, really sucks, but he has a pretty satisfying arc in the end. Actually, odd as it sounds, I often find I do my best writing for the characters I don’t like very much personally—I guess my strengths in that regard don’t match up with my taste very well!
Recently JAST USA/Blue has reached out to the indie developer community with opportunities to list their titles through the JAST platform. This is a great opportunity to increase visibility on indie visual novels and creators. What prompted this push? Is there the potential for JAST to take part in helping publish upcoming indie titles currently in development?
Mary: We’ve always embraced third-party games, from the earliest days of JAST Blue – people don’t always know that, so it’s worth repeating! I go through itch.io pretty frequently looking for devs to reach out to. As far as helping with publishing titles, that’s something we approach on a case-by-case basis.
So what’s next for JAST Blue? Are there any hints/teases your team can give for any upcoming localizations? (If not: What are some dream titles you would love the opportunity to localize/work on?)
Mary: As far as dream titles go, I said in a meeting recently that if I won the lottery, I’d immediately localize Shingakkou – one of my co workers was like “Well, I’d buy a house, but you do you!” haha. I’d get Haro to translate that in a heartbeat. I wish we could tease what we’re working on next, but all I can say is that they’re titles that have been asked for.
Kitty-tama: For me, a particular dream title with regards to BL games is one I’ve had my eye on for quite some time due to its rather adorable art style: Shinkon-san ~Sweet Sweet Honeymoon~. It’s an older game, though, and as mentioned previously I have a particular softness for older titles. I would also love a chance to QA Shingakkou, as I’ve heard fantastic things about it! The premise speaks to me as well. Beyond that, I’m basically down for whatever, content-wise.
GH: I can’t speak to plans, but Shingakkou has been a dream title of mine basically since I read it—it’s a really gut-wrenching story with beautiful late 70s/early 80s throwback art and some very strong voice acting. Also it’s just interesting to see a Japanese title engaging with the Christian faith beyond pure aesthetics. Unfortunately, it seems vanishingly unlikely though given how long it is, and the nature of its content would probably make it a difficult sell on some platforms. I also think it’s a bit of a travesty that no one has localized Gakuen Handsome yet!
So, the main protagonist, Hiroshi, is pretty hung and because of this in the game you can choose to be a top or bottom. If you were in a BL would you be a top or a bottom? Within that choice what type would you be?
Mary: I’d wanna do like Hiroshi and switch it up – why not try the variety on offer? I’m a big fan of Mo Dao Zu Shi, and its author is big on people never making the top bottom or the bottom top, but I like it when characters are versatile.
Kitty-tama: What a tough question!! But honestly, I’d love to be the bottom in a BL dynamic. I mean, mind you, I do enjoy yuri/GL quite avidly, and in such visual novels and other media, I regularly fantasize about being the more submissive one in the dynamic. If I were the bottom in a BL dynamic, I’d for sure be the more meek type—eager to obey what the top asks and doing my utmost to please them.
But while that is my gut feel, it makes a girl a little curious about being the top in a BL dynamic too! Kinda like Hiroshi—a sweet, non-assuming appearance, then BAM, topping commences! In that situation, I think I’d lean a little more playful—a sweet playfulness. Think soft S, perhaps? Wanting to see the bottom squirm, see their adorable reactions all the while. The joy of BL (and GL) is seeing sexual dynamics you may not get to typically see in more heterosexual media. Whereas with man/woman pairings, you’d typically see the man depicted as dominant and the woman submissive, you get a bit more versatility with same-sex pairings. I adore the ease of access to variety I can get through BL/GL!
GH: I wasn’t sure how to answer so I consulted (a reproduction of, as it has since been lost to time) the long forgotten oracle from SemeUke.com, and apparently I would be a “Romantic Seme.”
Learn more about JAST Blue and Masquerade
