Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 4
Translation notes:
This is the last boob joke. We're free at last.
Here's the retranslation of every scene with the Spring of Recollection in the game. Overall, her speech here is fairly close to what she says in Waral in-game, with a few details from her final appearance sprinkled in, like her care for Cain. It does misses a few nuances though, like the Legacy being more than just Dark Dragon.
I don't think I've ever seen art of the Spring, but notably, she gets a portrait in the GBA version, and it looks a lot like the manga design, with the slightly wavy hair and especially the blank eyes.
Obviously, the manga rushes through the plot since it's short, thus a lot of places are skipped. I didn't even feel like pointing them out before. However I will point out Waral not being here this time, because Waral happens to not be in the beta map either, and it has very contradicting lore between the ASCII guide and the World Book, meaning it might have not been well developed. Besides, Chapter 5 is very weirdly structured. You get two ship battles that are basically the same, you get to Waral by accident, you advance the plot by going to Ring Reef for no reason and everyone telling you it's off-limits while letting you waltz in anyway, and hardly anything happens in the shrine besides you hearing about the Manual, which is not even a big deal because you get to Rudo by accident later (two ship accidents!! why repeat this plot point!!) and would go to Dragonia anyway to help Bleu.
Basically, I obviously can't prove it, but it wouldn't surprise me if the ocean shrine was initially thought off as only a plot scene, and the battles/town added much later for gameplay reasons.
Perhaps worth mentioning, the GBA version also makes a point to mention that Max got lost in the shrine alone, and everyone was worried about him, which does remind me a lot of the ship scene here.
uh oh. i hit image limit for the first time and i don't wanna remove either of these pics. more notes on a reblog later.
Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 5
Translation notes:
All enemies so far were recognizable from the game, but here they seem to be original.
This might be Boken?? The only character in the game with a big backpack and hair. And he does show up in Dragonia in-game.
About the Ancient names. Mega Max is clearly alliterative in both languages. Giga Cain is almost that. K sounds in japanese become g sounds once you add a dakuten (ﾞ), so they're associated. And in english it kinda works out accidentally, because a G is basically a C with extras too.
Vega Darksol though? No link. The pattern is lost. I'm kinda mad about it.
From an author's comment:
"These two also appear in Tanuma-sensei's Shining Force (lol). Are they official members?"
Yuichiro Tanuma is the artist for another Shining Force manga, Descent of Great Intention, whose scans I only found today (warning for a lot of ecchi/nudity/nsfw, i'm still going through but what i've seen is pretty horny already). And yes, these background characters also appear there. This manga was published before that one, though, so this is their first appearance.
"But Claire you're dodging the main topic, Cain just did exposition of the whole lore" yes yes, the similarities between it and the GBA version are what made me interested in this manga to begin with, but I've decided there's so much to compare between all versions of Max and Cain I'll make a whole huge ass post about it instead. Look forward to that.
I will mention however that Cain's bodysuit here reminds me a bit of the manual picture with Max being brought into Guardiana for the first time.
I did say we had to talk about Prompt (and then promptly forgot it in the first draft of these notes). Like Waral, Prompt is not seen anywhere in the beta map. And here, it is depicted as only ruins instead of the country it is in the final game. That in itself wouldn't mean much, however, Chapter 7, where Prompt is, has a lot more weirdness in it. It has peculiar unused content implying a whole deleted cutscene with Cain, Adam, Chaos and Darksol in Metapha, and it freezes the Debug Mode's Battle Test any time you Egress (also, Chapter Selection won't even load it from a save file of another chapter, which doesn't happen for any other chapter). Of course, I don't know the actual code of the game, but this gives me the impression that this Chapter 7 had some other Egress point that got removed later. Basically, if there's one part of the game you can expect to have changed late in development, it's Prompt and Metapha, so it could have been only ruins as the manga depicts here, and as I mentioned in the last chapter, some place or machine called Tenochtitlan could have existed.
Oh boy I keep forgetting notes this time! The goddamn chapter title. Both times the Chaos Breaker is mentioned here, it is written with the usual katakana, but also the kanji 対暗黒魔法剣 (Anti-Darkness Magic Sword) as furigana. I felt it was too clunky to mention both sword names in the dialogue, especially when Cain was already pushing the limits of a lot of speech bubbles this chapter. But anyway, yeah, it's supposed to be a bit of a title drop there.
I. forgot. yet. another. note. When Otrant recognizes the robot using an explosion spell, the manga actually says 核爆烈, a mix of 核 (nuclear) and 爆烈 (explosion). However, I couldn't find this exact wording in dictionaries, only fictional works, so it might just dramatic flavor, since nuclear explosions Don't Work Like That. I kept it ambiguous in the translation to not raise questions in the middle of the action, but it's worth noting since both the aforementioned Descent of Great Intention manga and the UK Sonic the Comic version of Shining Force bring up nuclear themes at some point.
Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 3
Translation notes:
So, uh. Elliot's name is rendered with two t's in the og game, but a single one in the GBA version. I had never paid attention to that at all until I had already edited all these pages, and I don't care enough to change it.
Cain's sword causes an explosion here. In the game, it is indeed capable of summoning flames.
This is a perfect illustration of how I feel about these names, but I do wonder what the actual intention was, since Cain is supposed to be already gone. The original image is even cut off weirdly in the middle of the text, and i don't think it's a problem with the scan, since every scanned page has a black border showing that the paper itself doesn't cut there. I wonder about the production of this thing, but i'll wait until i translate the author's comments before saying more.
The map in the previous chapter was very accurate to the beta map of the game. The smaller map here showing Rindo however looks off, the coast is different, and there seems to be a river directly to the north of Rindo, as opposed to the path to Shade Abbey. Perhaps fitting since Shade is skipped here.
Metaphaluna, huh? Needlessly to say, the country of the gods/Ancients is called only Metapha in the final game. Also, in this panel, it pops up as an alternate reading for 前世紀 (ancient times), not the name of a country specifically.
I chose to romanize the last part as "luna" for three reasons. One is that the continent of Rune is actually rendered as Lune in at least two guides. I take romanizations from JP guides with a grain of salt since they sometimes look bad/unnatural, or are inconsistent (Pelle's name for example has been romanized as both Peil or Payle depending on the book). I checked though, and town names however are consistent in both the books I've seen romanizing things.
The second reason is that the beta map used at this point has a fairly noticeable crescent moon shaped island right in the middle. In the final game, we can't know exactly where Metapha is, because you only teleport there. But I wonder if this island had something to do with it at some point.
The third reason is simply I saw no better reason. Metaphalna and Metapharuna would be just as valid, but don't have any meaning to them.
Update: I didn't know back when I translated this, but it turns out the names "Metaphaluna" and "pseudo-magic" are also mentioned in Doom Blade, a spinoff manga done by Yoshitaka Tamaki himself (character design and one writer of the original game). This implies that these terms were really created by the game's staff, even if they are not mentioned in the actual game.
The biggest equation next to Tao as she explains the magic types is very clearly a E=mc². Look close.
I've retranslated Elliot's scenes from the game thinking it would be relevant to these notes. Now I feel it really isn't, but you get more content so you should be happy.
My main point with that is that Elliot does not say anything about Cain in the game. In the GBA version, Balbazak does try revealing Max, Cain and Darksol's identities before dying, but that's not a thing in the og. So yeah I really translated a bunch of stuff for nothing this time! Except not because Darksol is awesome in that scene and everyone should get to see it.
Now let's talk about Otrant. I have mentioned before that Otrant's gender is never explicitly said, and they speak in a mostly gender neutral way (I feel like there's a few masculine patterns in some lines, but I'm not confident enough to say for certain). What I hadn't noticed is that they also use lipstick in the games, which is probably what sparked these observations to begin with, but i'm uh, occasionally not smart.
In any case, if any of these aspects were done at this point in development the artist here sure ignored them, and drew a regular old man who gets called an old man. They hate to see an androgynous boss winning.
I don't recall Otrant's third eye being called "Eye of Truth" anywhere else, but the manual of the game does say it can see the past and the future.
Otrant's naming of the Shining Force is a bit more elaborate here, but the wording is very similar to the actual game.
Finally, let's play spot the cameo!
We've got Gong, Zylo, one of the birds, and probably Anri. Easy.
Here, besides the obvious three who were actually introduced in the story, we again have a bird, Anri between Ken and Hans, Gong to the right, and Mae and Gort behind Luke. If you read the pre-release page you know that Gort was meant to be Mae's servant at some point, so this might be why they're together, or it's just coincidence because they still join around the same time in the final game.
More importantly, to Ken's left we have...
Some guys. Who are these. They could be made up by the artist (there will be another case of this), but I find it curious that the artist had to do that when there are so many character to pick from, and he clearly wanted to depict official characters here. For one, there's evidence that Earnest was already designed at that point in development. However, that link also shows that Vankar didn't have a portrait by that time at least, and Vankar would have already joined by this point in the story. So could the bald centaur here be a beta Vankar, or the artist's interpretation of Vankar via unfinished art? Maybe, but just a guess in the end. Mostly I'm just fascinated by how detailed this guy is compared to even Mae and Gort's cameos. The other guy isn't so i don't think about them nearly as much.
Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 2
Translation notes:
The map in the first page is not the one seen in the final game, but the early version released during development. More info on my pre-release page as usual.
The enemies in that page are also enemies announced early before release: Rune Knights, Dark Priests, Dark Dwarves, Goblins, and the scrapped Mimic of course! That's fun to see.
Save for Lowe's odd age here, the training with Varios is very similar with how it goes in the actual game, with Lowe singing praises of how Max is on par with the knight captain. If none of that sounded familiar to you, you are welcome to hate the localization as much as I do.
Like, you think we're done with this? No way baby, Max's speech on memories is also a reference to a NPC in the start of the game! I legit got angry while doing the comparison on that one, it's a very iconic line that matches both Max's amnesia plot and the series' whole theme of forgotten evils resurfacing, it did not deserve to be replaced by generic slop. I'm glad I get to bring it back here and that it gets space in the manga as well.
Nova seems to have ears instead of horns in his brief cameo during the castle audience scene. Could be an old design, or the manga artist taking liberties or misunderstanding things. I find it curious though, because in the final version he's classified as dragonewt, however the GBA version will notoriously declare Elliot the last dragonewt on earth instead. This would make sense if Nova was intended to be something else at some point, and the GBA version tried to restore that, though it was nonetheless very badly explained.
Let's talk a bit about Max's speech patterns. In the original game, he obviously doesn't speak much, but the ending still shows him using the formal pronoun "watashi" for himself, and speaking casually to Adam, while more politely to the stranger they meet there. This continues in Final Conflict, where he's pretty casual to the team but sticks using watashi at the same time.
This changed in the GBA version, where he switches between the more casual and masculine pronouns "boku" (softer) and "ore" (rougher) depending on who he's speaking to. I'm not knowledgeable enough to discuss this in depth but I do get the feeling that the choice of "watashi" for him in the original was a bit unusual.
In any case, this manga just makes him use "ore" constantly. At the same time, he's pretty much always polite, even to his teammates. So he definitely doesn't come off as rough.
As example of this politeness, Max here also uses the usual "-san" honorific for basically everyone except Lowe, a literal child. I usually ignore those since they don't flow very naturally in english (at least for dialogue between friends/close teammates), but I did keep a couple instances when he has barely met Tao and Hans, because it felt fitting for a first meeting, especially with him being so notably polite in this version.
Let's talk about the rest of the team now! I've translated their in-game introductions in case you're not aware of how their personalities differs from the english version.
Hans was announced since the early coverage of the game, so every design difference you see here is the artist's choice. At no point was his personality touched upon however. So could it be that we were meant to have edgy rival Hans at some point? I find it unlikely given Hans' cute face, but my theory is that Hans had zero official personality at this point, so the manga artist just threw some elf stereotypes in and tweaked the design to fit that.
It's hard to not associate Hans' attitude here with Mae's in the final game though. There's a lot of evidence in the pre-release page I keep linking to for Mae and the other centaurs' prejudice against Max to have been added late in development. So could it be that at some point elves were supposed to be the arrogant ones? Maybe! Could it be that the artist just shoved Mae's personality on Hans instead to erase her instead? Also possible! It should be clear already that the guy is not decent about female characters, and mild spoilers but, Mae is simply not gonna be around for this one save for small background cameos, which is mind boggling when she was clearly the main female character at this point in development.
But could it be this has nothing to do with Hans and it's just a coincidence that his personality matches hers here? Also maybe! If it's not obvious I'm just rambling ideas at this point.
To close the topic on Hans, he would eventually be confirmed as a noble in Shining Force Gaiden, as his son is mentioned to come from a noble family in the manuals. Though this is just the standard background for most characters in this game.
Tao is a curious case. She is seen in screenshots since the game's announcement, but it took longer until her art and profile were revealed. Said profile also says nothing on her personality, so my take on her here is the same as Hans. I doubt she was meant as the spunky girl we see here, but it's possible that the artist isn't warping her final personality, and she was just a blank state at this point. But it's hard to tell for certain.
Ken, on the other hand, was announced from day one to admire Max, which is probably why he's very much the same as his game version here.
Luke is the only one of the starting team to not be seen in early screenshots, and there's some evidence that Gort was meant to be the first warrior of the team instead. So the manga here gives us a better idea of when Luke was worked on during development.
The fighting tournament Ken mentions is brought up in the ASCII guide book as a tradition of Guardiana. Always fun to see little worldbuilding tidbits like this were planned from the start. And while nowhere else mentions this as the place where Ken first saw Max, it makes a lot of sense.
Finally, the battle at the Gate taking place on the inside, so dark it needs to be illuminated by torches? That's how the place looked in early builds as well.
Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 1
First, a small preamble on what's this. This manga adaptation was published monthly by Shogakukan from March to August 1992. In other words, it started at the same time as the game was released. According to the artist, they began discussing the work in January 1992, and he got to play a in-development version of the game then, which gives us some interesting insight into things that might have changed before the game's launch, especially when it comes to Max and Cain's backstory. Really, if you like Cain you should read this, I'm doing this for you.
Scans of this complete book (only published in 1994) can be found on the Internet Archive. I did not find scans of the magazine issues it originally ran in. The artist is Toshihiro Ono, of the infamous Electric Tale of Pikachu. Thankfully it isn't as weird about women as that one, but that's a low bar. You will see a couple of boob jokes, alas.
I currently do not have the energy to typeset and clean up 130+ pages, so i'll be nevermind! i'm incapable of half-assing things lmao, will be cleaning and typesetting everything to the best of my ability (i've never translated a manga before. be nice to me).
Now, let's enjoy the story together.
Translation notes:
Even the title already requires some explanation. The way is it written in this book at least (シャイニングフォース正伝聖剣士MAX) doesn't make it clear which part is title or subtitle, so I've seen other places translate it as "Shining Force - Authentic Biography of Saint Fencer Max". I feel my version is more accurate though.
As for the "Saint Fencer" part, this english reading is given by the book itself, while writing it as 聖剣士, which I feel would be more accurately translated as "holy swordsman", especially when 剣士 is already the swordsman class in english. This is likely a case of non-english speaking artist picking out a random reading from the dictionary just for style points, just like Max's name also get rendered in latin letters just because.
So yeah I considered changing it, but you know? This manga is already so goddamn weird. Why not make that obvious from the title itself.
Cat panel!
Did you know that there are unused cat sprites in the final game, which show up multiple times in early builds of Guardiana? This is a deep cut reference! Or not, maybe the artist just wanted a cat independently, who cares I need everyone to know about the cat, we were robbed.
"Well, Claire, is Lowe being a small child some sort of scrapped content too?" Ahahahaha.
NO.
Lowe's design and role were announced way back in October, in the earliest coverage of the game. I have no clue why the artist decided to do this. I assumed for months that this was fanmade because of this. The same goes for Lou, I have no reason to believe a love interest was ever in the cards for Max in the game. The writer probably just wanted to fall into some common fantasy tropes of "man who fights to protect family".
Speaking of, Lowe usually refers to Lou as just sister (nee-chan) and to Max as just brother (nii-chan). This doesn't sound natural in english so I usually ignore it and use the character's names, however, there's little else establishing that he and Lou are siblings in this chapter and I wanted to get that across already. It will also be important to establish that Max is a big brother figure to him, but there'll be time for that in next chapters.
Max's "alright!/yes!" is meant to be kind of a catchphrase. According to the artist, it was inspired by a magical girl anime called "Yousoko Youko". I don't know about it to comment, though.
Runefaust's name being rendered as two words is also something that shows up in some earlier coverage of the game as well. It will already go away by the next chapter, but I wanted to point it out.
