We Need to Talk About Taisho x Alice
Taisho x Alice is a very pretty otome game that was scheduled to release in English this year. And it did! Great news, right? Unfortunately not. The release, though finally, actually happening (which we were beginning to think it may not), is absolutely riddled with issues. Thoroughly plagued with them.
If you’ve missed the whole Taisho x Alice debacle, this might all sound pretty surreal, but, given the English release’s dodgy history, this was expected to a degree. Even so, it turned out to be worse than we anticipated. Some brave souls on Twitter have shared their experiences with the English Taisho x Alice release, and it’s really remarkable in a horrible, simultaneously hilarious and disheartening kind of way.
For a start, none of the menus have been translated into English. Instead, the game comes with a PDF, so you can actually, you know, read the menus. On top of this, the English translation for the game’s text is just terrible. Not only are there loads of grammatical errors and poorly structured sentences, sometimes it’s just blatantly wrong.
OK, so it looks… awful, but it’s readable, I suppose, even if not worth the game’s price. So how about the audio? Well, rather than just keep the Japanese voiceover and translate the text for us, as is usually the way for western otome releases, this version of Taisho x Alice comes with an English dub! Pretty unusual! In fact, it only comes with an English dub. One where all of the male characters are voiced by the same person, and not well. Here’s some videos of the dub, kindly shared by Twitter user @BishieCraft:
I want my 30 dollars back and also my time hahah #BishiePlays pic.twitter.com/jeImmuvJ5D
— Katakana Bishie~ (@BishieCraft) 9 May 2017
OK OK LOOK WHAT I CAN DO HAAHHA #BishiePlays CHECK OUT THE VOICES! pic.twitter.com/SJe7nfZ3ko
— Katakana Bishie~ (@BishieCraft) 9 May 2017
If the poor end result has you intrigued by the whole English Taisho x Alice mess, I highly recommend reading this wonderful post which documents the whole thing from start to ugly finish. We’ve been very lucky with the long list of English otome releases this year! There’s plenty of good stuff out there, and more to come! If you’re looking to play an otome game in English, please look elsewhere. In fact, I’ll take this moment to recommend the upcoming Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds — it’s an incredible game! Whatever you choose, don’t do this to yourself. This is just… ugh.
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