Four years. After four fucking years I’m finally done with this game for the second time in a row. I don’t want to write a long post, but I’ll try to explain how this all started.

I randomly decided to start translating Akatsuki back in 2017 when I basically was a year into my Japanese learning, thinking that I was even good enough to translate the slice of life scenes (spoiler alert, I was wrong). I asked a guy that just came into a server of my friends who said he knew Japanese to join me as TLC for the project, and from there the first attempt started. Though things didn’t end up in a very good way, I will never forget how the first team of people unironically believed in me and spent so many hours into the production of a patch that was not of good quality.

Those members of the original team are: Chacha (the first guy who joined me), Zander, and Voko. The four of us worked together for HUNDREDS, THOUSANDS of hours in the first attempt and nothing came out of it in the end. Part of me feels guilty that I made them waste so much time into something that eventually got completely scrapped, but I am also glad because if it wasn’t for that opportunity I wouldn’t have made the choices in life that led me to improve in the language as much as I did ever since that first time.

To think that the second attempt would happen because I had a random conversation with a dude because I was salty about the project… Legit insane how we started as two team members in our discord server with some of my friends and now we’re over a hundred people!

I’ve invested four years of my life into this project, and after all the pain everyone involved went through, I think I can finally close this chapter of my life.

TLDR: I’m fucking done.

Also, to all of those who never believed that I could do this for a second time, suck it.

I want to personally thank:

• Chacha for being the first person who believed in my conviction to finish this and joined my team.
• Voko for making me realize that I was shit at Japanese in the first attempt.
• Zander for helping me improve my translation skills with your excellent editing prowess. Legit I still try to copy your incredible style of work. Hopefully we can work again soon someday?
• HMN for being in calls with me literally every day and helping me both emotionally and in the Japanese department.
• Hata for being the reason this second attempt ever happened. Yes, unironically Hata. Who would’ve thought.
• Zakamutt because he helped me improve quite a bit and because he’s finally accepting my work from time to time ( I shouldn’t get too excited about this lol).
• All of the new team members who decided to believe in me for this second attempt.

Anyways, now that this is out of the way, I’ll talk about what the future awaits for Daybreak Translations.

1. I’m going to take a well-deserved rest.
2. I’ll work again on the H scenes of game 1 at some point, I did low-effort them quite a bit.
3. Once I come back, I will start game two.
4. Meanwhile Editing and QA will progress on game 1.

IMPORTANT TO MENTION THAT I ALREADY HAVE FINISHED REIKA’S ROUTE AND THE PROLOGUE OF GAME TWO.

I think I could make this blog post longer, but I’m fucking tired and I just wanna have a good time with the lads now. So until the next time.

— Barry the Bee, someone who literally learned Japanese for this game.