Frontmatter

Now here is a piece that has a long and storied history with us at al|together. It has been officially attempted no less than three times by three different translators. The first time around, the translator in question grossly underestimated the amount of work it was going to take, and dropped off the face of the earth shortly thereafter. The second time around, the translator in question grossly overestimated his free time, and dropped off the face of the earth shortly thereafter. And ... well ... I guess third time's the charm. The curse of LEAVEs is now over.

This was a piece that received considerable hype during its development phases, but unfortunately it did not appear to live up to expectations; aggregate reviews at erogamescape peg this piece with a median score of 60 and an average score of 53. Perhaps part of this is because the fans expected a substantially different piece than the one that was actually released; the story of this piece has more in common with pieces like ユメミルクスリ and 天使のいない12月 than with, say, a heartwarming high school romance. User reviews of the piece generally comment on the warmth of the art style, odd nature of the writing, and weird plot twists in the story.

I'm not quite sure that this is fair to BEKKO.NET or to LEAVEs, though. There are many things to praise about this piece; the art direction, the customized menu system, and the way the multithreaded story is woven together in short time are just a few of the reasons I can think of off the top of my head. Best for me, in any case, to let you decide for yourself if you like what you see.

Just don't turn away.

This localization utilizes a customized build of the GPL'd NScripter clone, ONScripter-EN.

2 December 2008
Seung Park
Festival Coordinator, al|together 2008