Today the developers of the renewed edition of the legendary visual novel Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien announced that development is complete.
We also hear on the Ubgoe crowdfunding page of the project (made by Team Leder Kouji Morimoto) that the final title will be Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien: Enhanced Edition. Of course, the English title may be different.
The “Enhanced Edition” bit is due to the additional content like the episodes from the FanDisk.
If you’re unfamiliar with Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, it’s a beloved visual novel released originally in 2001 as an eroge for PC, and then re-released with the removal of the adult content in following years on multiple console platforms.
Its developer, Âge, is well-known for the Muv-Luv series, which is partly set in the same world. Many consider Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien a prequel, and several of its characters appear in Muv-Luv Alternative and its extended universe.
The popularity of “Kiminozo,” as its fans affectionately call it, exploded and extended to the West with the release of the anime TV series, titled in English “Rumbling Hearts” and aired between 2003 and 2004. It’s currently available via streaming on Crunchyroll.
Last year, a crowdfunding project was launched to create the definitive “all-ages” version and publish it on Steam. The campaign received 57,892,199 yen from backers, which translated into $409,000 at that time’s exchange rate, almost double the initial goal of 30 million yen.
There are many reasons behind the game’s popularity, including its beautiful story that ranges from comedy to tragic (and at times pretty crazy) romance, certainly worthy of the developers of a masterpiece like Muv-Luv.
We also hear that backers will receive their Steam codes on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, at around 6:00 pm Japan Time. The developer has previously mentioned that the English translation should be included at the same time, albeit we should likely wait for a final confirmation.
At the moment, the public release on Steam has not been announced, but considering today’s announcement, we can probably expect it to be soon. We’ll keep you posted when it happens.
Incidentally, if you’re interested in the Muv-Luv series, the Steam version of everything that has been localized in English so far is available via a Humble Bundle for a really affordable price for only 9 more hours at the moment of this writing. The original trilogy has also just been released on Nintendo Switch.
Full disclosure: the author of this article has backed the Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien crowdfunding project.
