Visual Art’s, a company best known for their Key brand of visual novels, has sent out two cease and desist notices at fan translation groups that were translating their games. The first of these was Dote up a cat that was released under VisualArt’s 13cm brand and was being fan translated by Tengu Translations. The second cease and desist notice was supposedly for the well known visual novel AIR that was released under Visual Art’s Key brand and was being translated by the fan translation group Enter the Wired. A lookup of the IP address found in the header of these cease and desist notices indicates that the address belongs to Visual Art’s. While these two titles were being translated by two different translation groups, the same individual manages both of these fan translation groups and was the recipient of both cease and desist notices.
The cease and desist notices were sent in English, and the Dote up a cat cease and desist notice is reproduced below. The recipient indicated that he received a nearly identical e-mail for AIR.
Mr.TenguTrans
My name is Tomotaka Ichinomiya.
I am working for visual arts Judicial Affairs Division Ltd..The act that you are doing violates the Copyright Law.
It warns. Stop the translation of “Dote up a cat!” at once.When your violation continues, the visual arts Ltd. have the possibility of managing legislative measures.
Your sincere correspondence is expected.
——————————————
Visual arts co.Ltd.
Judicial Affairs Division
Tomotaka Ichinomiya〒531-0073
VA the first building
2-12-16 Honjonishi,Kitaku
saka Prefecture Osaka City
TEL:81-6-6377-3388 FAX:81-6-6377-3399
——————————————
Tengu Translations has indicated that their plans for Dote up a cat is to try and negotiate some sort of agreement with Visual Art’s, similar to how No Name Losers has been negotiating with minori this month. In the event that these negotiations fail, Tengu Translations has reminded people that they have another title they plan to translate, Niji no Kanata ni, a title which they recently received permission to translate from #define.
Dote up a cat is an eroge that was released in 2006 by 13cm where the male protagonist is a dog man in a hospital, and his patients are a number of cat girls with serious illnesses. A partial translation patch was released just this past week.
AIR is a well known romance/drama visual novel that was released by Key in 2000. The protagonist begins the game looking for a girl in the sky as the last wish of his deceased mother and arrives in a town just as summer is beginning. AIR was later adapted into a 14 episode anime by Kyoto Animation in 2005, as the first of several Key anime adaptations that have been produced under Kyoto Animation. A film was also produced by Toei Animation, which was shown in theaters shortly after the Kyoto Animation anime began airing. Enter the Wired took over the AIR translation last summer after progress on the title stalled for an extended period on TLWiki.
UPDATE: Tengu Translations claims that they have now received a response to their negotiations inquiry with Visual Art’s quoting millions of yen for translation rights.