Hey all! Let me just get this out of the way right away: there will be absolutely no April Fools stuff in this blog. That’s actually why I’m posting this on March 31st instead of the first day of the month like usual. I don’t want you guys to go into this thinking there’s any possibility of me laying down a sick prank on you. Let’s get right into it, shall we?

On the Summer Pockets front, you may have noticed we have translated our first short story, for Shizuku! You can find it in the Summer Pockets section of our “Projects” tab on the main page. We’ll be slowly but surely uploading more as we finish them, but they’re a bit lower on the priority list for right now. I’d also like to take this moment to formally announce our intent to translate Reflection Blue once it’s out. There’s a few things that went into this decision, a decision that I will say now for clarity’s sake can change at any moment in the future. One, is that VisualArts has said that the performance of Summer Pockets on Steam will decide whether Reflection Blue gets localized or not. And if they do announce they plan to localize it at any point between now and release, then just like the original Summer Pockets, we will cease our efforts to translate it. And this time it’ll likely stay that way, as we’ve learned they can be speedy when they wanna be! The other factor is that, well, we’ve already got our own translation for the main game. And as Reflection Blue is a re-release with extra content (think Little Busters EX) this means we effectively already have a 50% complete translation of Reflection Blue. All we’d have to work on is the new content. And just like with our work on the original Summer Pockets, we’ll have our “ear to the ground” so to speak for any changes on the official front, and we won’t be as bullheaded about it this time around.

Now, onto the segment most of you are waiting for. Angel Beats! We only total our line count at the end of the week so while I can’t get you an exact one right this minute, I can tell you we’re over 75% of the way there! Common Route testing is as much of a nightmare as we thought it’d be, but it’s still progressing smoothly. Right now, as I type this, the Yui route is all done and testing & editing on it shall begin tomorrow. Optimistically, we’ll have our patch ready to go at the end of this month. Realistically, expect the first couple weeks of next month to be the release window. I’ll either have a firm release date in the May post, or a surprise release if it’s done sometime this month.

Something I’d like to note about our translation of 1st Beat is the quality of it. Those of you who kept up with our Summer Pockets patches know that aside from the occasional bumpy spots that all translations come with, fan or official, we tend to put out some pretty good work. The same can be said of our 1st Beat translation. The difference here though is that Common has so many different ways it can go that even with like six different people combing through it, I daresay you should EXPECT us to miss a few things. So when the patch comes out, feel free to send any oopsies you find our way on Twitter, and after a week or two of feedback, we’ll update the patch. It will still be 100% readable and very very good, I’m only putting this out there because the sheer magnitude of Common has shown us that there is a much bigger room for error, so your guys’ help would be tremendously appreciated.

The other thing I want to address regarding Angel Beats is I’ve seen this question asked a few times both on Twitter and here on the site: Will we be just patching the game or providing you with a patched copy of the game? We will not be providing the game in any way, shape or form. Just like Summer Pockets, this will merely exchange Japanese text for English. You are still responsible for acquiring the game yourself, preferably in a way that supports the creators. Alka Translations will not provide anyone with a copy of 1st Beat no matter how nicely they ask or no matter how dire their situation may be, nor will any individual member of the team do so.

The last thing to cover this month is our little secret project that was mentioned in the previous blog post. As it’s not a main focus, the best I can say is “it’ll be done when it’s done” and whether that’s before or after our 1st Beat patch is anyone’s guess. No, I’m still not telling you what it is. I suck at keeping surprises, don’t tempt me.

That’s all! See you in May, or when our patch is released, whichever comes first! Bye bye!