ITEM: How could no one alert me to the fact that there is a new English-language Angelique fansite! Well, archive.org has it dating back to 2018 - but it's new to me, dammit, and I love it. Evidently, someone's decided to create a media gallery for the franchise (books/CDs/DVDs), along with personal notes for the books they have. It warms my heart to see someone putting in the effort to create an entirely new, big site in the English-speaking fansphere in this day and age. Or even the day and age of five years ago.
ITEM: I downloaded the Sparkle! CD of character songs for Angelique Luminarise. (Which you can do, too, through that Amazon Japan link, provided you go through the rigmarole of buying yourself an Amazon e-gift card in the exact denomination of the album price to get around credit card region restrictions - or you can stream the album on that page, if you must be so 2023.) It's actually awesome! The songs are top-class, with great variety, and they do a better job of showcasing the characters in an appealing way than all of the pre-release promo info put together. Way better than I was expecting given what had come before. Of particular note: Shuri's song, "Recollection," is not only a legitimate banger (blasting it and "Lovesick" from an open vehicle while driving down the Missouri banks near sunset is one of my fonder memories from earlier this year) but recontextualizes everything I've seen of that character and makes me really eager to learn his story.
(Also, yes: despite it being also two years after its release, I have not yet started Luminarise. It's been a strange two years, all right. Then again, this is all part of my typical Angelique game release cycle: follow everything assiduously up to the release, get the game shortly afterward, plan on doing an LP-type series of posts, fizzle out after a couple, not play the game again. I enjoy the franchise primarily through other media, it seems. If all goes as planned, I should be cracking Lunimarise open in the upcoming few weeks.)
ITEM: I've actually started pasting the lines from the Angelique translation into a spreadsheet with the corresponding Japanese text to facilitate a patch. For the Japanese text, I'm working from an incomplete online script compilation; otherwise, there would be a heck of a lot more Japanese typing than I would have to do as it is. Frustratingly, the online document is formatted in a completely different manner from the book - with text grouped by event, not character - but it's the only source of pre-digitized text I can find, and with what's looking like over 600 rows of cells per character right now, anything to cut down on busywork, however imperfectly. Even if it creates its own manner of busywork.
To engage in a bit of cynicism in an overall positive post: I frankly suspect that once I get the spreadsheet done, the goalposts will be moved yet again, and I'll be asked to do yet more of the patch work proper for none of the credit. I almost think we're never gonna see an English-language version of Angelique unless I myself learn how to put together a patch - which isn't a underestimation of the skill ROM hacking takes but a pragmatic appraisal of the extraordinary resistance this project has to movement on any front if I'm not the one directly behind it.
(Incidentally, if this beast of a project ever, ever gets done and Angelique does get patched, I'm moving to Requiem immediately and skipping Special 2. I don't anticipate a problem with introducing the new characters through Requiem, and there's no reason to delay the introduction of the series' most indelible villain or what's likely the franchise's most accessible installment any longer than necessary.)
ITEM: Recent reblogs reunited me with this Heritage Post by kathisofy, and it reminds me of how I miss fellow Angelique fans. I miss the jokes, the fan content, and the analysis of new material from the heyday of angemedia. I don't have anything deeper to say here. I hope everyone from that community's doing well, and I just want to note that I enjoyed our time together.
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