Video descrption:

Happy 2023! This is a video I've dreamed of making ever since last year... Wait, no... 2021 of two years ago. But, what is this?

Nano Devil is a Japanese mobile phone game developed by Magitec (which may or may not be in business right now), and published by... Fromsoftware?! Yes, that Fromsoftware, who used to have a subsidiary in releasing mobile games! Yes, for real!

One of my main reasons for making this video was because around November 2021, DoCoMo's i-mode games store was closing down, and preservationists were scrambling to save what games they can. One of the leading organizations behind this was Game Preservation Society (but huge shoutouts to RockmanCosmo as well), and while they managed to save over 500 games... Nano Devil is not one of them. Fromsoftware did say that Nano Devil was one of the games to be delisted with the end of the i-mode store, but perhaps it went down long beforehand... We'll never know. And now, just like that, our only way of playing this game is by finding a mobile phone needle in a haystack. Effectively, Nano Devil is lost media.

So, this video? I guess this is my way of preserving what remains of Nano Devil, by showcasing its beautiful theme song and this one promotional trailer, found on an archive of its official page on Fromcapsule.

Both can be found here. https://web.archive.org/web/20090227112733/http://www.fromcapsule.jp/nanodevil.html

There's also an older link that shows a slightly longer version of Tsuki no Kotoba, only that it's... Encased in a Flash media player. LMAO. Will be making another video with that fuller version eventually. https://web.archive.org/web/20070516043922/http://www.fromcapsule.jp/nanodevil.html

The reason I titled this video "Tsuki no Kotoba" rather than "Words of the Moon," was because the original title itself was in katakana. Such an interesting choice - it could be words of the moon, or perhaps it might not be. The song was composed by Hideki Sakamoto, a very famous video game composer. He composed "Lifelight" for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and composed for Echochrome II, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest video game track in history(?)!

And yet, this beautiful track is not listed on his works page. Such is the life of Japanese mobile phone games. If you want to contact him to maybe somehow get him to post this track in full, he actually has a contact page. (I tried.) https://hideki-sakamoto.com/profile/#contact

Transciber/translator's notes:

This is probably the biggest thing, but me and Janelle had differing opinions on the ツキノコトバ line. It was actually originally transcribed as 月の古都が, and she gave a good explanation as to why that made sense:

Personally, no matter how many times I listen, I hear "古都が” and this does seem to make more sense as in Japanese folklore and mythology there is an "Ancient City" on the moon (Where Kaguya-hime comes down to Earth from). But my husband says it could be 言葉 (words). I really can't hear the "ba" of "ko-to-ba" though, I definitely hear "ko-to-ga."

The second big thing is that there's an, uh, random "shi" on the fourth line and neither of us were able to decipher where it's coming from. Maybe kizutsuku was supposed to be kizuguchi, and the chi sounds like shi, and.... I don't even know.

[...] I too heard the "Shi" after "kizutsuku", but my husband and I discussed this and it doesn't make any sense context-wise so we simply omitted it when we typed up the lyrics for you. You can pop it in there, but it just doesn't fit...could be the transition from "kizutsuku" to "tsubasa" in a dialect kind of way.

And, you might see a slight difference between the English translyrics. There are a few choices Cargodin gave me with the lyrics, and I requested that one line refer to "tsuki no kotoba" more directly. If you can't tell, I really pushed everyone for those moon wordy bits... I also added a filler word on a few lines so that it'd match the syllables in the Japanese lyrics. That one was a personal choice.

Credits to the people who worked on this:

Janelle Bowditch was a pleasure to work with. She has done translation work for Nintendo, Pokemon, DeNA, and even BBC and NHK. It was an honour having her help me with this project, and like, isn't that perfect? A mobile phone RPG! Thank you so much!!!

Hiroki Mori is Janelle's husband, and assisted greatly with the transcription as a native Japanese speaker. We may never know what that stray "shi" was, though... He's also an animator, so go check him out! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkMbeWcbKyA4-7CfJIcjgUw

Cargodin is my friend and a translator for many game fan-translation projects. Games like …iru! or Planet Laika or b.l.u.e. Legend of water. Or perhaps, you may know them from their help on the Evergrace 2 comic scanlations. They went above and beyond for these beautiful translyrics (I DIDN'T EVEN ASK FOR THEM TO BE SINGABLE BUT IT'S SO GOOD), so thank you so much!!! https://twitter.com/Cargodin

Alayna is me. I like to eat peanut butter and honey on toast lately.

And, this video is dedicated to all the game preservationists around the world, PLUS the English speaking Fromsoftware fans on Twitter and beyond who appreciate a good obscure mobile game that we may never get to play. All five of us.

Let's have a good 2023!