Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 3
Translation notes:
So, uh. Elliot's name is rendered with two t's in the og game, but a single one in the GBA version. I had never paid attention to that at all until I had already edited all these pages, and I don't care enough to change it.
Cain's sword causes an explosion here. In the game, it is indeed capable of summoning flames.
This is a perfect illustration of how I feel about these names, but I do wonder what the actual intention was, since Cain is supposed to be already gone. The original image is even cut off weirdly in the middle of the text, and i don't think it's a problem with the scan, since every scanned page has a black border showing that the paper itself doesn't cut there. I wonder about the production of this thing, but i'll wait until i translate the author's comments before saying more.
The map in the previous chapter was very accurate to the beta map of the game. The smaller map here showing Rindo however looks off, the coast is different, and there seems to be a river directly to the north of Rindo, as opposed to the path to Shade Abbey. Perhaps fitting since Shade is skipped here.
Metaphaluna, huh? Needlessly to say, the country of the gods/Ancients is called only Metapha in the final game. Also, in this panel, it pops up as an alternate reading for 前世紀 (ancient times), not the name of a country specifically.
I chose to romanize the last part as "luna" for three reasons. One is that the continent of Rune is actually rendered as Lune in at least two guides. I take romanizations from JP guides with a grain of salt since they sometimes look bad/unnatural, or are inconsistent (Pelle's name for example has been romanized as both Peil or Payle depending on the book). I checked though, and town names however are consistent in both the books I've seen romanizing things.
The second reason is that the beta map used at this point has a fairly noticeable crescent moon shaped island right in the middle. In the final game, we can't know exactly where Metapha is, because you only teleport there. But I wonder if this island had something to do with it at some point.
The third reason is simply I saw no better reason. Metaphalna and Metapharuna would be just as valid, but don't have any meaning to them.
The biggest equation next to Tao as she explains the magic types is very clearly a E=mc². Look close.
I've retranslated Elliot's scenes from the game thinking it would be relevant to these notes. Now I feel it really isn't, but you get more content so you should be happy.
My main point with that is that Elliot does not say anything about Cain in the game. In the GBA version, Balbazak does try revealing Max, Cain and Darksol's identities before dying, but that's not a thing in the og. So yeah I really translated a bunch of stuff for nothing this time! Except not because Darksol is awesome in that scene and everyone should get to see it.
Now let's talk about Otrant. I have mentioned before that Otrant's gender is never explicitly said, and they speak in a mostly gender neutral way (I feel like there's a few masculine patterns in some lines, but I'm not confident enough to say for certain). What I hadn't noticed is that they also use lipstick in the games, which is probably what sparked these observations to begin with, but i'm uh, occasionally not smart.
In any case, if any of these aspects were done at this point in development the artist here sure ignored them, and drew a regular old man who gets called an old man. They hate to see an androgynous boss winning.
I don't recall Otrant's third eye being called "Eye of Truth" anywhere else, but the manual of the game does say it can see the past and the future.
Otrant's naming of the Shining Force is a bit more elaborate here, but the wording is very similar to the actual game.
Finally, let's play spot the cameo!
We've got Gong, Zylo, one of the birds, and probably Anri. Easy.
Here, besides the obvious three who were actually introduced in the story, we again have a bird, Anri between Ken and Hans, Gong to the right, and Mae and Gort behind Luke. If you read the pre-release page you know that Gort was meant to be Mae's servant at some point, so this might be why they're together, or it's just coincidence because they still join around the same time in the final game.
More importantly, to Ken's left we have...
Some guys. Who are these. They could be made up by the artist (there will be another case of this), but I find it curious that the artist had to do that when there are so many character to pick from, and he clearly wanted to depict official characters here. For one, there's evidence that Earnest was already designed at that point in development. However, that link also shows that Vankar didn't have a portrait by that time at least, and Vankar would have already joined by this point in the story. So could the bald centaur here be a beta Vankar, or the artist's interpretation of Vankar via unfinished art? Maybe, but just a guess in the end. Mostly I'm just fascinated by how detailed this guy is compared to even Mae and Gort's cameos. The other guy isn't so i don't think about them nearly as much.
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Ooh if I can send silly stuff have this silly puffin beanie baby!
YAY THANK YOU FOR SENDING THEY'RE SO CUTE!!!!! SILLY THINGS ARE ALWAYS APRECIATED ,ESPECIALLY PLUSHIES! Do they have a name!?!
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Jonny, I stumbled apon your blog on complete accident and it may have been the best accident of my life. I have but one burning question I must know-
What is your favourite animal?
Oof, what a question - there are some real bangers out there in the ol' animal kingdom.
As a kid I was very into tigers. Loved those big stripy fellas - my grandmother used to cut out pictures of tigers from magazines and present them to me in a manila folder when I visited. I never asked her to do this and didn't have any use for the pictures, but she gave me a lot of them.
Penguins are also up there - waddling around having a good time. Feeding time at the penguin habitat is always a highlight of any zoo visit. Sure, maybe they make houses out of their own shit, but who are you to judge?
Seals as well, especially when they're fully in orb mode. Just wobbly ocean friends!
Plus, if I'm down the aquarium anyway, I always make a beeline for the pacu fish. Big, dumb motherfuckers just swimming about like idiots - they bring me a lot of joy. Plus I recently discovered they have human-like teeth, so that's a win for team Your Nightmares.
Also sharks. Every week is Shark Week if you're not a coward.
In the end, though, if I had to pick a current favourite, the one that brings a smile to my face even in its crudest doodle rendition, why, 'tis none other than the humble crab. They come in a plethora of shapes, sizes, colours and flavours, and every one of them is just a silly little guy.
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