Tales of Phantasia - Novels

[throughhim413]

Alrighty, I'm looking into buying some of the ToP novels in the near future.  Can anyone give me any information about how many there are total.

I came up with the easy one, Tales of Phantasia: Kataruzaru Rekishi.  I also found something called Tales of Phantasia: Dramatic CD Scenario Works.  I'm not sure exactly what that one is.  But after that, I was a little lost.  So far, most of what I'm coming up is by this author:  矢島 さら

Am I looking at the right ones?  I mean, are these the official novels?  The following are what I could find.

Tales of Phantasia: Harukanaru Jiku - Vol. 1
Tales of Phantasia: Harukanaru Jiku - Vol. 2
Tales of Phantasia: Kohaku no Kairou
Tales of Phantasia: Konpeki no Kizuna
Tales of Phantasia: Ruri no Yume
Tales of Phantasia: Shinku no Hitomi

Better yet, can someone tell me where the best place to buy these might be?  I only recently started buying books from Japan, and I need somewhere that can ship to the US, so I had just been using Amazon.co.jp, but can anyone recommend me a Japanese book site?  I think Cyllya knows a lot about these, and I'd just send her a PM, but I never know who checks their PMs and such around here.  In any case, I'll gladly take any information I can get about this stuff.  Thanks.

[Cyllya]

The ones by Yojimi Sara are on Namco's liscense page, which removes doubt as to their official-ness.

I believe you've listed all the novels except テイルズ オブ ファンタジア 魔剣忍法帖 (also on the above page). You might have trouble buying that though.

Harukanaru Toki is a novelization of the game; I'd say it's not worth your time to translate. But I have Shinku no Hitomi and I notice the back cover says it's a continuation of Harukanaru Toki, not a continuation of the game. So if you can read Japanese fluently and can find them cheap enough, you might want to buy them to read through real quick in case there are any notable changes from the game's plot.

I'm 98% certain that the Drama CD scenario works is basically the drama CDs in text form. I'm not sure if it covers all of the drama CDs or only some. Judging by the excerpts I've seen, it apparently covers the interesting Dhaos backstory bits.

Another book you might look into is the テイルズ オブ 大辞典, which has info on the first five Tales games (ToP through ToF), including plot info.

Oh, right, PMs.... >_>;

[throughhim413]

Yeah, I was considering that one Encyclopedia.  At some point that's certainly on my to buy list.  I think the Dramatic CD Scenario Works is probably one of the first things that I'll buy. 

I can't buy all of these at once (I wish I had that much money right now >_<), but I think I'll just work on it slowly.  Picking up the Drama CD script sounds like it'd be the most fun to work on.  Plus that has the nice end result of being able to to listen to all of the Drama CDs and know exactly what's going on.  I might also be interested in those manga.  When I found those on Amazon Japan, I wasn't sure if they were official or just doujinshi, but if they're official, I'll certainly need to pick them up.  gogs particularly mentioned that 4-Koma one to me at one point, so that may be on my to buy list in the near future.  So many options now it's almost overwhelming.

By the way, given that you've got it covered, I don't actually plan on working on Kataruzaru Rekishi, but what exactly is it?  I mean, what does it cover and such?

In any case, thanks for linking that page, that certainly cleared up most of my concerns very quickly.

[Leroy]

I've got that Encyclopedia.. I'd been meaning to list it on eBay actually, it's not of much use to me and I think I got it in a lot of other crap.

[Cyllya]

Katararezaru Rekishi is about what happened from 4201 to 4207 prior to the influence of Cless and Mint's time travel. The main character is the dead archer in ToP's opening.

Oh, by the way, I've heard the original edition of the encyclopedia has many errors, but I don't know the nature of those errors or how to tell editions apart. But I would like to know when you put yours on ebay, Leroy. ^_^

[Leroy]

Is there a way to tell which edition I have?

[throughhim413]

Looks like for the stuff I'm looking at it'll be about $100 just for the books.  That's not including tax and going by the price listed on Namco's site.  I suppose I'll have to hunt around Amazon Japan and see how I do, unless anyone knows of any alternatives for Japanese books.

[bungiefan]

Picking up the Drama CD script sounds like it'd be the most fun to work on.  Plus that has the nice end result of being able to to listen to all of the Drama CDs and know exactly what's going on.  I might also be interested in those manga.

Well, if you do that, you could possibly do what EChang did with the Guilty Gear Drama CDs and write up the script as an English text file, which you could post so that anyone with the Drama CDs could read while listening to them, since the effect is greater with the voice acting and sound effects. Granted, I provided him the audio CDs and he did the translation without having a text script to refer to, but he's also more fluent in the language.

[throughhim413]

Of course I'd want to post them up, I'd probably do the same thing I'm doing with my ToP PSX translation right now, which is to post it up on my blog as it progresses.  Given that will be useless when the real patch comes out, but in the mean time it was very worth doing.   In any case, what you said is exactly right, I'm not fluent enough that I could work with just straight audio.  I could get close to the meaning with most things, but using a script is the only way that I can be 100% certain.  But I'd definitely want my work on this to be something that anyone with the CDs could enjoy.  That's why I'm interested in working on something different in the first place.  My ToP PSX work is really just for practice and my own entertainment, but with the novels or the Drama CD script, I could hopefully offer something that would be of some lasting value to Tales fans.  That's my hope anyway.

[gyozilla]

矢島 さら is one of the more prolific Tales writers, churned out a lot of stuff. If you actually hope to own Daijiten, that should probably be your first priority. It's been out of print for ages, suppliers no longer have it (including Amazon jp's). Your best bet is used versions. And as far as I know, Amazon jp doesn't really do doujinshi (unlicensed stuff at least). You're usually on the safe side with Tales stuff; more often than not any search you do they're official (doujin is easy to sniff out anyway).

Yea, don't waste time with Harukanaru Toki, from what I've heard, you'll have more fun with the others like 魔剣忍法帖 or 真紅の瞳. Personally I suggest the 2 ToP 4Komas, but I'm addicted to 4Komas in general (thousands of plot ideas, each being told in 20 secs!). The 3 Comic Anthologies aren't bad (still haven't gotten vol3 out recently), but I would go either way between novels and those. I still like the SuperDash Narikiri Dungeon the most.

Info overload: If you don't mind translating stuff for contribution and your own enjoyment that's outside of ToP, I suggest doing the ToD 4Komas or the ToE manga by Yoko Koike (小池 陽子). I think Cabbit only scanlated up to ch23 (no idea how far Boku-Tachi went). I've read up through vol6 / 35 chapters (there are 9 vols) and it's a great adaptation of the game. It made a pretty bland plot exciting, which is better to me than say, one of the ToD manga series ([啄木鳥 しんき] Shinki Kitsutsuki's ToD: Ambition over the Eye of God [神の眼をめぐる野望]).

Is there a way to tell which edition I have?

ISBN 4-575-16358-9 is the shitty one, the first production iirc. I have not seen any "correct" ones (2nd production). You probably have the crap one like the rest of us do I haven't gone through it thoroughly enough to notice any errors.

[Leroy]

I checked the ISBN and that's the one I have. Why would it be considered "crappy" though? With how extensive the book seems to be any minors errors are probably too little to throw much of a fit over unless you're disturbingly obsessed.

[gyozilla]

I don't really mind whatever the errors are because the book is hardly important to the series nowadays nor has it been my go-to reference source. I'm not that anal to care about it; I'm only interested about where the errors are. It is what it is. Cyl said it's supposed to have many errors; I remember something about contextual/detail errors (if they were minor errors they probably wouldn't have been mentioned). Those things are pretty damn important to be right for something like an encyclopedia. But don't always go the "you have to be extremely obsessive to care" route whenever someone talks about "problems" about something. I'm just here giving info, what you do with it is up to you.

[throughhim413]

Personally I suggest the 2 ToP 4Komas, but I'm addicted to 4Komas in general (thousands of plot ideas, each being told in 20 secs!). The 3 Comic Anthologies aren't bad (still haven't gotten vol3 out recently), but I would go either way between novels and those.

Info overload: If you don't mind translating stuff for contribution and your own enjoyment that's outside of ToP, I suggest doing the ToD 4Komas or the ToE manga by Yoko Koike (小池 陽子). I think Cabbit only scanlated up to ch23 (no idea how far Boku-Tachi went).

I really love reading 4Koma as well.  The ridiculous nature of a lot of them is great.  Plus, there's nothing like having a medium where the whole point is to push the limits of where the original material wouldn't go.  So yeah, I may have to get those.

In terms of the overall scheme of things, I still haven't actually played all of Destiny or any of Eternia.  Just when I was getting a good pace going on ToD PSX, I started getting back into my translation of ToP PSX and that's kind of halted all other things.  But yeah, once I finish playing the games themselves, I'm certainly not opposed to working on the material.  Though, as far as scantilating stuff goes, I cant say I'm a fan of having to break the backs of my books to scan the pages...  Generally when I buy something, I try to take care of it.  But we'll see.  If there were any raw scans anywhere online, that would make things significantly easier for me.  Certainly there seem to be more than enough options for a Tales fan who wants to contribute something, which is always good to know.

[gyozilla]

Honestly if I were to translate any Tales manga I think it'd be more than fine to just do a text transcript, so I guess that was what I was suggesting earlier. The possible scanlation part can come later, 'cause it encourages fans to 1) buy the manga and indirectly learn a little Japanese on their own, and 2) nice people who are better at scanlating can provide for you. But yea, it would work better to finish those games first Translating the mangas has been something I've been trying to do for years; I've done chunks of written Tales material (like 4Komas) and some ToF scenarios but I'm usually bogged down by work and translating random non-Japanese stuff on the side for people. So yea, that's why you'd probably have more luck with it than I would.

[throughhim413]

Well, I just burned through my Christmas money real fast.  Picked up the following.

Tales of Phantasia 4Koma KINGS Vol. 1
Tales of Phantasia 4Koma KINGS Vol. 2
Tales of Phantasia Comic Anthology Vol. 1
Tales of Phantasia Comic Anthology Vol. 2
Tales of Phantasia Comic Anthology Vol. 3
Tales of Phantasia: Kohaku no Kairou
Tales of Phantasia: Konpeki no Kizuna
Tales of Phantasia: Ruri no Yume
Tales of Phantasia: Shinku no Hitomi
Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon Vol. 1
Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon Vol. 2

So at some point, I've still got all of these:

テイルズ オブ ファンタジア 魔剣忍法帖
テイルズ オブ 大辞典
ToP: Dramatic CD Scenario Works
ToP: Katararezaru Rekishi

I'm not sure if I'll end up buying Harukanaru Toki or not.  For now, I'm not going to waste the money.  But maybe someday, or something.

[supersonic1453]

Wow, good luck translating those.  Dammit, I gotta learn more Japanese.  I want to help with all this translating.