Name Game

Eagle-eyed fans probably noticed an interesting detail about the Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town remake’s trailer and screenshots: Some of the characters have different names than we’re used to!

The reason is simple: These are the original Japanese names for the characters! As we’ve seen from XSEED’s past decisions, such as re-localizing characters like Reina and Cam back to their original Japanese names of Licorice and Kamil, this new localization is choosing to use the character’s original names for this version of Friends of Mineral Town rather than use translations provided by previous localizers. That said, I imagine that this decision wasn’t taken lightly; these are beloved characters after all! Ever since their original iterations were introduced in the Nintendo 64 game, this cast has been beloved for over 20 years by fans. Fortunately, I think Ran may actually be the best character to showcase why breaking away from tradition may be for the best going forward, assuming more remakes will come in the future. Allow me to demonstrate:

• アン (Ann) is an inventor from the original game on SNES, the GameBoy version of the same game, and Magical Melody. In the west, she’s named Ann, just like her original Japanese name!
• ラン (Ran) is Ann’s grand daughter. In 64 she’s a somewhat aggressive (or even violent) tomboy who also loves animals, in Mineral Town she’s a sweet-as-sugar waitress. In the west, she’s named Ann.
• アーフィ (Aafi) is a further descendant and can sometimes come off as a happy medium between the two iterations of her ancestor. Both a bubbly girl who helps out at Ruby’s Inn but who’s not afraid to get verbally aggressive sometimes. In the west, she’s named Ann.

Well, that’s not confusing at all. To be completely fair, I can easily understand the original choice: Ran isn’t a common name outside Japan, so Ann is a natural choice as far as localization goes. It’s close to the original name, but wouldn’t confuse late 1990′s video game players who might wonder why this girl’s name is a verb rather than a proper noun. This was also only the second game in the series, so who could even guess fans would be talking about the characters 20 years later?

Though things get muddled when DS re-uses character designs and had the localization also re-use names for everyone, which leads to a few instances of confusing interactions where a character might mention someone by name, but they’re actually talking about a character from FoMT/A Wonderful LIfe instead of someone living in DS’s time, or even things like this:

(His DS counterpart’s original name is Gusta グスタ)

So, while it’s not ideal for fans to suddenly have to remember a bunch of new names for characters we’ve known and loved for so long, it might end up being helpful to differentiate characters more easily in the long run. Especially since FoMT’s remake was an unprecedented success in Japan, having already sold 200,000 copies! Though nothing is confirmed at the time of writing, more remakes are almost definitely happening, which will also mean more characters will probably be returned to their original names in the future.