Forum - View topicNEWS: Seven Seas Addresses Mushoku Tensei, Classroom of the Elite Light Novel Localization Changes
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Rogural
Posts: 47 |
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I wasn't entirely sure myself, but doing the extra research and comparing them against the fan translations (which admittedly sucks because I want a fully legal method for reading these in English). However there is a thread on reddit now which is apparently documenting further changes, even those from an upcoming physical release novel here. https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassroomOfTheElite/comments/ll6p5x/other_than_volume_7_do_any_of_the_other_official/ I can also confirm that comparing volume 1 and volume 7, the staff on translation, editing and adaptation are the same. However more staff have been added for vol7, perhaps that's the issue here. I think the bottom line in any of this is ABSOLUTELY DO NOT SUPPORT SEVEN SEAS AND THEIR BUTCHERING OF CLASSROOM OF THE ELITE I was pretty mad over the past few days when I learned this was happening, but now I'm downright livid. |
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That's Big!
 Posts: 20 Location: Japan |
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Speaking as a JET who's had to deal with people in all manner of JP → ENG fields, I'd be wary of any translator that tries to sell you on the fact they're "improving" a work. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5873 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Will have to disagree with you there. I personally believe we are their core consumer group. I find it hard to believe that mainstream America or Canada reads more manga and light novels than the anime/manga/light novel community. If Justin Sevakis says differently, I will believe him. Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, and Dragon Ball could be outliers, but for most everything else the fan community should be their core consumer base.
Sure there are some people who could care less, but I think that the regular and continuing customers of manga and light novels do care. I think most would like the choice to choose whether or not to buy a "edited for content/censored" version. It is quite telling that Seven Seas hide the fact they were doing this, probably, because they already could guess the answer. Seven Seas honestly might have thought they could get away with it, since it is much harder to compare the Japanese text against the localized English text. It is very easy to directly compare a Japanese manga against the localized English manga. Short term, it might have made a lot of sense, but now that the truth is out, a shadow is cast against their entire catalog, and many are wondering if there is more out there.
Seven Seas basically threw their editors and translators under the bus. They didn't apologize for the censoring, but rather cast it as heavy handed localization. They hid the fact they were censoring for content (a no no in the anime community), effectively lying to their consumers on what they were buying. They deserve the heat coming to them, because they already know what would happen they got caught. I am not wishing for Seven Seas to fail, and I am not calling for a boycott. Boycotts are usually useless anyway. I want the companies that support our fan communities to survive and thrive as best they can. The more of them out there, equates to more titles of anime, manga, and light novels being released. Seven Seas made a mistake, they need to own that mistake, but that hasn't happened yet. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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I think what Scytalle means by "we" here is the handful of people currently discussing it here on anime news network dot com, not people who regularly watch/read anime/manga/light novels more generally. The wider group features people with a pretty wide range of views; not everyone is going to be as worked up about strict faithfulness to the original text as you. |
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OtherSideofSky
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There obviously aren't enough people in this thread to constitute a profitable core audience for anything, but I'd question the idea that the vast majority of LN readers aren't "plugged in" enough to hear about this. In the case of Mushoku Tensei, there's an obvious reason why the known changes were made, and its possible that a lot of the people buying them would be OK with that. I don't think that applies to Classroom of the Elite, however. Those cuts appear much more extensive and much less motivated. I have a hard time imagining readers who regularly buy books in a series but don't mind that large chunks of internal monologue are missing for no clear reason. (The cuts shown in the Reddit posts clearly go beyond an issue of lacking "strict faithfulness to the original text.") I also have a hard time imagining a person who regularly buys books in an ongoing series but never looks it up online. I think it's probably safe to say that most regular readers of Classroom of the Elite will at least occasionally check reddit, or social media groups, or even just Twitter hashtags for it, and it's now pretty likely that anyone doing that will bump into this topic. I'd guess that some portion of people thinking about starting the series would do the same. The other thing to consider is that, while people who obsessively follow this kind of new aren't the majority of readers, a lot of them post actively across a wide range of sites. I can easily imagine that every article, forum thread, or social media post about a new Seven Seas LN release will now have at least one person in it asking if there are any cuts and reminding people of this whole thing. Over time, that will tend to make a lot more people at least peripherally aware of this. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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I might otherwise have been inclined to agree, but when Tokyopop went out of business some years ago, a staggering number of people who regularly buy manga were unaware of it when they came in trying to buy new volumes of series they were in the middle of. For quite some months. |
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Dark Absol
 Posts: 813 |
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Not related to the article, but SSE's colorful translation on Peter Grill manga made me feel dumb. The fan translated version of Peter Grill is better one.
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Catseyetiger
Posts: 779 |
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Censorship is alive and well in America. Though to be honest I stopped reading the light novel when I figured the main character was a total child chaser! Found it disgusting honestly. The anime can tone it down some I hope! But censorship is never a good thing and completely changing a authors work is flat out sue able by the artist one would think!
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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In other words... do what you're criticising the light novel translators for doing? |
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Rentwo
 Posts: 184 |
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A lot of companies have had their translations complained about for decades now and they show no desire to change. I don't think they ever will apologize for censorship because they have no reason to. They're not trying to hide the changes, rather I think they're quite proud of them at the end of the day as they tend to mock the people who complain about them on social media. Or at least the translators and writers themselves do whenever their work is criticized. I don't really care about "boycotts" in an official sense, but I personally don't pay for works by these companies and it's why I mostly pirate these days as more and more companies do this kind of stuff. For LNs I generally stick to fan translations either way. |
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realsmart987
 Posts: 9 |
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After reading the article and the comparison of the LN fan translation to the official translation here's my guess on what happened internally at Seven Seas. Seven Seas looked at the bullying scene in Classroom of the Elite and thought something along the lines of the bullying being too intense, and therefore triggering some readers' anxiety so they took it out. When fans got upset they put the scene back in because it didn't matter as much to them if the scene was taken out.
With Mushoku Tensei, I assume it was the more usual reason of being too sexual for a non-hentai series. When I first watched the anime I thought the studio took it too far. Now I learn it was apparently the same in the light novel. I mean, REALLY?! Practically showing the male MC fapping on-screen in episode 1 and actually showing a loli girl fapping on-screen in episode 2?! You could use the weak excuse that episode 1 establishes the character, but Roxy (the girl in episode 2) has no excuse. She's a freakin loli (don't give me that "she's actually X years old" bs) and it hasn't been relevant in 11 volumes of manga or her spin-off series. I discovered the series through the manga and liked it despite it's ecchi scenes. Now I'm learning the manga was the least ecchi between it, the anime, and the light novel. |
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That's Big!
Posts: 20 Location: Japan |
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I believe that's why the American localization of Ijiranaide, Nagatoro-san was changed to avoid using the word bully. Although it's still strange given the amount of untouched series that have bullying in them that this series in particular got put on the chopping block. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Was happy that, when I expressed disappointment on Twitter, the SS account did reply and spoke on the update for Classroom of the Elite. For awhile, I've been on the fence about picking up the LNs, and just when I had decided to, heard about the issues with volume 7.
Now I'm waiting for when they update everyone on the 2nd print run of volume 7. I'm still on the fence on things now, so 1-6 will have to wait. 
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realsmart987
Posts: 9 |
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Maybe what separated Nagatoro-san from Classroom of the Elite was that in Classroom you saw the victim's inner mind had a suicidal thought. From what little Nagatoro-san I've read it's mostly been played for laughs instead of getting serious. Like a little girl teasing a boy she secretly likes. Hence the official English title saying teasing instead of bullying. But I'll need someone that's read more of the series to confirm that. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3461 Location: Finland |
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As it's not mentioned here yet it's worth bringing up, but in volume 8 of Mushoku Tensei SS went scissor happy in a few instances;
https://imgur.com/0XtP7vK Volume 8, a monologue about dwarves heading too far north and falling into slavery because of poverty, removed. https://imgur.com/OWSgWPv Volume 8, suicidal thoughts, removed. Images originally from @Cynigami on twitter, these above had the fan-translation stripped(covers the excised parts), you can find the originals here; https://twitter.com/Cynigami/status/1367434064693706756 Seven Seas has only made announcements about re-edits to volumes 1&2 https://sevenseasentertainment.com/books/mushoku-tensei-jobless-reincarnation-light-novel-vol-1/ https://sevenseasentertainment.com/books/mushoku-tensei-jobless-reincarnation-light-novel-vol-2/ As far I know there's nothing similar mentioned about volume 8 on their behalf; https://sevenseasentertainment.com/books/mushoku-tensei-jobless-reincarnation-light-novel-vol-8/ |
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