#proseka fan tl

[2500ji]

4koma fan TL i did!!

DISCLAIMER

i do not speak japanese. i used google translate and then context clues to figure out what it was saying, and then put it into the text boxes. if i got something wrong, i’m sorry.

( thank you to @/anena-enthusiast for correcting my TL! )

original under cut

[gigai-translations]

(Project Sekai) Yoisaki Kanade Side Story - Trial! Mouth Piece

I don't have this card so I don't have a recording myself. I took the script from Sekai Best. This one is cute so I'd be happy if y'all could give it a read! I might do Touya's card for this event next.

Anywho, transcript under the cut!

Side Story 1

[Kanade's Room] 

Kanade: Phew, a lot happened today. 

-Flashback-

Young boy: I'm really sorry. I've bothered you ladies…

Young boy: I only keep playing weird noises… That's why I was excluded from participating in the ensemble.

Young boy: Why am I so bad? I feel so frustrated…

Touya: If you just want to be able to sound stable, I might be able to teach you. 

Touya: If you keep holding onto that feeling of wanting to play a sound that's beautiful, then please, I don't want you to give up. 

Touya: One day…music will surely meet you halfway. 

-End of Flashback- 

Kanade: A sound that's beautiful, huh…

Kanade: (For me, a beautiful sound would be something like that day when dad played for us.)

-Brief Flashback to Kanade's family picnic- 

Kanade: Being able to make a nice sound is difficult but… 

Kanade: I'm glad that boy didn't quit trumpet-playing. 

Kanade: (When we parted, that boy seemed relieved.) 

Kanade: (It's as if something he thought he lost came back to him…) 

Kanade: …I just thought of a nice melody. 

-Kanade fiddles with her computer- 

Kanade: (It's a bright melody so I won't release it as a niigo song but…) 

Kanade: (Following this direction, I might get an idea for our next song) 

-Kanade fiddles more with her computer- 

Kanade: It sounds a bit too much like pop. If I slow down the tempo and lower the sound then…

Kanade: Rather than something that sounds trendy, let's bring out something like innocence and child-likeness. As well as have that instability slip in and out. Then…

-Kanade fiddles more with her computer- 

Mafuyu: Kanade, what will we have for dinner? 

-Kanade’s too focused on her computer- 

Mafuyu: …Guess she's already on work-mode. 

-Mafuyu leaves the room- 

Kanade: I think it was able to take form but… 

Kanade: (Compared to our songs, this feels like it has a refreshing vibe to it.)

Kanade: (Right now, I can listen to it as a draft. I could stop here–)

-Mafuyu comes back in- 

Mafuyu: Kanade, dinner is ready. 

Kanade: Eh? You prepared dinner by yourself? 

Mafuyu: You were so focused working it seemed like you couldn't hear me.

Kanade: Ah…sorry. I didn't notice. 

Mafuyu: Are you working on the next song? 

Kanade: Oh, no. You know that boy we met today? I wanted to try making a song in his image. 

Kanade: Wanna take a listen? I'll lend you my headphones. 

Mafuyu: Sure. 

-Mafuyu is given the headphones- 

Kanade: I suddenly thought of a nice melody, so I wanted to try my hand in composing it. I don't plan on releasing it as a Niigo song but–

Mafuyu: ….light…

Kanade: Eh? 

Mafuyu: It has that feeling of finally finding that light, holding onto it so you won't lose it. 

Kanade: If that's how you interpret it, I guess the song really brought out that image I had in mind. 

Kanade: (An image is really important after all…) 

Kanade: (If that kid wasn't able to smile in the end, I don't think I could come up with this melody.) 

Mafuyu: ….

Mafuyu: Thanks for letting me listen. 

Kanade: No problem. 

Kanade: Oh, right. As for dinner? 

Mafuyu: Nitsuke. It's already heated. 

Kanade: Thanks. Then let's go have dinner? 

Side Story 2 

[Central Street]

Mizuki: This upload celebration was fun!! We went to the cake fair and ate lotsa cake!

Kanade: There was a lot of assortment of cakes. Each of them were bite-sized but they were stacked up like a pyramid cake. 

Ena: Right? I took so many pictures! I'm so glad we ordered them! 

-Bell sound-

Mafuyu: Ah… There seems to be a lot of people there. 

Kanade: Yeah. I could hear something like the sound of a bell. 

Staff: The Renewal Opening Celebration Lottery is only until today! You can enter with your shopping receipt!

Mizuki: Oh yeah, that building was under construction for a while, right?

Ena: Yeah. Originally, it had a lot of established food places but now it seems like everything's been changed to apparel shops. 

Kanade: Huh, that so…

Ena: Though…could they actually draw in customers just by lottery draws? 

Mizuki: Oh? Though Kanade got tickets to the Shibuya Instruments day from a lottery, no? 

Kanade: Yeah. But we didn't go shopping just for a lottery. We rarely do these sorts of things so I guess I wanted to try my luck. 

Ena: It's a break from the usual, yeah. Though without great prizes–

Ena: …Ah! 

Mizuki: Wait, Ena?!

-They run after Ena- 

Mizuki: Hey, why'd you run off all of a sudden?

Ena: Look at this! Look! Second prize! 

Kanade: Uhm… fruits parlor: "Eden" course menu pair tickets? 

Ena: That store…my mom and I have talked about wanting to go there once! 

Ena: The course menu is especially super popular that reservations were booked all year round! 

Kanade: Eh? All year? 

Staff: Oh!! Got interest in the Eden tickets? 

Staff: By getting these invitation tickets, you can make special reservations within three months! 

Ena: Eh!? Ain't that too good to be true!? 

Mizuki: Uwaa, that's some huge bait. 

Mafuyu: And she said earlier how they could expect to draw in customers through the lottery. 

Kanade: Ahaha…..

Ena: Say, since we're here, how about we check out that building? I feel like walking off the cakes we just ate. 

Mizuki: Sure, sure. You wanna take a chance at the lottery so we'll do some shopping, yeah? 

Kanade: How about you, Mafuyu?

Mafuyu: I'm fine with anything. I don't think we'll be able to win that lottery though. 

Ena: Hey! Don't will that thought into existence before we make our pull. 

Ena: Geez… Just watch, I'll definitely win! 

[Several hours later]

Staff: Alright! We verified the receipt. You have two chances. Now make your pull!

-Ena makes a pull-

Ena: Parlor, parlor, parlor parlor….!

Staff: Out it goes! We got white, a participation prize! You won a shop discount coupon!

Ena: Nooo….! 

Mizuki: Well, today's the last day. Can't imagine getting the second prize would be that simple. 

Kanade: You still have one more chance though. 

Ena: ….

Ena: Kanade was able to pull for the Shibuya Instrument Day tickets, right? How about you lend me your hand. 

Kanade: Eh? ….me?

-Ena grabs Kanade's hand- 

Kanade: Wa–! E-Ena?

Ena: So that I could get the parlor tickets, I need you to pass off your luck! 

Kanade: Uh- sure…

Mizuki: Passing off her luck… Grabbing her hand just to pass off her luck ain't gonna fly. 

Ena: Shut up. Just be quiet and watch. 

Staff: Well then, please make your last pull!

-They pull on the lottery machine- 

Kanade: (If the ball that comes out is blue then that's the second prize…)

Kanade and Mizuki: Ah…!

Ena: I…

Ena: I got it!! 

Staff: Congratulations! You got the second prize: fruit parlor "Eden" course menu pair tickets! 

Mafuyu: Looks like that luck actually shows results. 

Mizuki: Y-yeah.

Mizuki: I wonder… I could also grab Kanade along the next time I apply for an event lottery. 

Kanade: Ahaha…

Ena: Kanade! 

Ena: Thank you so much! I can finally go to that parlor! 

Kanade: I don't know if I did anything but congrats, Ena. 

Ena: Luck was at our side thanks to you! As thanks, I'll buy you lots of souvenirs from the parlor! 

Kanade: Hehe, You seem to look forward to it so have fun! 

[emotsper]

Hi!!!!!!!!

You’re like the szai person on tumblr, and even tho I’ve been playing proseka for like two years, I still don’t read a lot of the stories………

So as the certified szai tumblr person, since you kinda own the tag, would you like to explain to me why szai is such a popular ship? I really didn’t read much of anything…

Have fun!!

let me be brief (1/350) (no bc its actually gonna be a long ramble. apolocheese.) (also sorry if formatting is awful im a mobile user and I literally just type whatever)

FOR REAL THOUGH. PLEASE JUST DO ME A FAVOR AND READ MMJ MAINSTORY...... not only its a good source of szai cocaina you get to experience the entire mmj mainstory. i was normal before mmj mainstory and i was less normaler after mmj mainstory.

it simply went even more downhill when i read tenshi no clover. genuinely the one event story that first made me cry (second one was ice drop event but thats a bit biased)

okay now lets get to the main meat of it. szai.

admittedly i was kind of normaler early on but one of my tipping point was Chasing the radiance event especially chapter 7. please read/watch it. please. this specific chapter sent me into my trip of insanity when it comes to szai. it also opened my eye to specific scenes in their side stories/mmj mainsto that i skimmed early on especially bc im a jp only player so fan tls may not be super accurate back then 💔

to start off, airi was a girl that was often made fun of for being tomboyish, and seeing idols for the first time made her feel a glimmer of hope that maybe she can also bring hope to other people. she finally manages to reach her goal and became an idol after several of failed auditions (very deserved especially after her hard work) while shizuku became an idol purely out of luck from the idol grand prix context her friends convinced her to join 😭😭 From the start their relationship feels a little bit doomed with how jealousy is kind of unavoidable from airis side. but against all odds, you get to see airi go to shizuku and cheering her up by giving shizuku her towel and telling her to wipe those tears especially with such a pretty face like hers (MACHINE CLANG CLANG RACK SFX) they are so crazy for this. especially when you realize that shizuku kept the towel until now. (the towel is her area upgrade item)

from this point, airi thought nothing much of shizuku yet other than her being her new rival (and that shes rly pretty) but shizuku sees airi as her main reason to keep going in this idol stuff at that time, and that was enough.

(okay purely for this next part im forgetting a bit so do remember it may not be fully accurate 🙏)

after training minori for awhile, szai went thru a mini divorce arc where airi was telling minori that being an idol isnt all fun and games and that minori should consider quitting, continuing on with how she flopped in the industry bc she was more popular as a reality show figure. but shizuku disagreed and kept saying how airi was an idol through and through and that she shouldn't have quit, but that just tipped airi off and she shouted at shizuku, unloading all her pent up jealousy that she had for awhile now. iconic as hell scene in the most angsty way possible.

u can easily tell this wasn't received well by shizuku. at all. airi you done fucked up. shizuku left her idol group the next day.

(addendum i forgot to add. shizuku truly believed that airi was the first and if not, the only person who sees shizuku as shizuku hinomori herself, without all the idol filter that people plastered on her. so when airi admitted that she was jealous w shizuku getting everything good in the industry, that basically broke shizuku. (color of myself is a nice one to read when it comes to this 🙏 also the i am we are event is a crazy good conclusion to shizukus current arc))

at this point airi realizes just how much shizuku was influenced by her past actions without her fully knowing about it. girl you done fucked up.

this scene is still one of the biggest and strongest kryptonite for szai fans. especially with what happens after.

after confronting shizuku about her choice knowing full well its airis fault, airi, angry at herself, goes immediately to cheerful*days training place (she knows the place since theyve kinda shared the spot iirc) while the rest of mmj follows. she started threatening arisa and almost threw punches but she held back and told the rest of cheerful*days that shizuku is more of an idol than everyone in the room (i may be hallucinating this one. do lmk)

they finally leave the place, and both apologies to each other. at the same time, they both admitted that they were each others idol

and then shizuku goes to tackle hug airi. what the queer

that only concludes the mainstory section btw. upon realizing it may be too much of a recap instead of actual explanation ill be brief w the rest of it (keep in mind i dont read EVERY szai story, just ones i was made aware of bc im playing on jp and story content is a bit harder to see/consume)

Main szai crazies for szai fans

1. chasing the radiance ch7. airi yet talks again about how shizukus hands are slender and elegant while hers are short and chubby (she compared her hands to a manju) and shizuku was mad at her about this and went on a long tangent about how airis gentle hands were the ones who pushes minori and shizuku forward when they think they couldn't.

this is probably the fifth time ive read this story and it still gets me. i hate these fruitsssss. please read the full chapter ive linked it near the start this chapter is so special to me.

2. my ideal idol (airi 5, jp only event for now)

Bro i Dont Even Know What Else To Say. Just Look At This Card

but if we're being serious . lets talk about this one specific card and the story shall we.

this card was a blast to the past; pre-mmj szai again.

we start off with present mmj getting ready for their turn in the joint performance with a new junior idol group that they were paired with. airi was a bit nervous and shizuku noticed it. so she offered to do something that would hopefully lessen the nervousness for both of them. shizuku softly puts her head on airis back and whispered several word of encouragements. shizuku reminisces to the past.

pre-mmj szai. shizuku was very nervous as she was waiting for her first performance ever as an idol. airi was also there, and it was going to be her first too. airi shows up to say hi to shizuku but she noticed that shizuku was really nervous and at the verge of crying. airi knew she had to do something and told shizuku to turn around, shizuku did. shizuku lets out a little surprised yelp as she feels airis hands and head pressing against her back. she could hear airi muttering some encouragement but we never get to hear what the words were, only that shizuku thought about how warm airis hands were. (i need to be euthanized)

back to the present, shizuku says that she hopes that this gesture can somehow "repay" for what airi did to her back then. i think im losing it. sorry

OKAY IM DONE IM DONE ITS ALMOST 1 AM MY BRAIN IS NOT GOING TO WORK ANYMORE IF I KEEP TYPING..... my brain can handle so little. anyways i hope this wall of text ramble can convince u to read mmj mainsto and consume more mmj stories........ i admit its not perfect or whatsoever bc i haven't read the mmj mainstory for awhile and i have a wee memory issue thats paired with my deafness so. yeah. enjoy. haha.

[bismuthwisdom]

I think I need to get harsher with blocking people who complaining about proseka tls. If you hate it that much, why tf are you even reading it?? Just read a fan translation and move on with your life. Youre just ruining the event the moment it gets announced.

[project-sekai-facts]

From the 3rd anniversary Denfaminico interview.

(rough TL)

Denfaminico:

There is a sense that between the 2nd and 3rd year of the game that the stories are reaching a climax. The development in some stories, such as Saying Goodbye to My Masked Self, was particularly shocking. In a previous interview, it was mentioned that proseka's storyline was decided far in advance, but were key development such as Mafuyu running away from home also decided in advance?

Kondo-san:

The development in Saying Goodbye to My Masked Self was also decided in advance. Obviously, as we work on the story, we come up with new ideas that we want to draw out, but we always have a general idea of what we want to do with the story. At the 3rd anniversary, the characters have moved to a higher grade. The timing of this advancement is the "turning point of the story". To put it another way, it's the "halfway point". What happens when that second half is done... that depends on the situation at the time. Whether there are fans who want us to continue or whether we, the development team, still have things we want to write about. We'll be thinking about those aspects as we write future stories.

Denfaminico:

You're quite focused on the ending of the story, including key developments.

Kondo-san:

The story of Proseka is still working towards an end. The ending has already been decided and everyone's story is progressing towards that. I do think it's possible to write a never-ending story. But, when we thought about things like "would players want it" and "would we want to write it", we found it's a difficult question to answer.

Denfaminico:

Because of the way the game progresses with an ending in mind, there is an aspect of "character development" written in.

Kondo-san:

Some people may feel sad that the characters are getting closer to graduating, but because the story is told in a step-by-step fashion, it's only natural that it will happen at some point. We hope players can accept this as a characteristic of Proseka. Our policy with Proseka is that once we have started the story, we will complete the story we have wanted to tell from the start. And I think that once we have finished that story, we should think about what happens afterwards. If we still have a lot of fans supporting us at that point, then we will think about what we want to do. On the other hand, stretching out the story just because it's popular is something I don't think anyone is looking for. The story of Proseka is characterised by its gradual progression of characters and time, and if we were to stop that, I think we would end up with something that neither we nor the fans want.

In an interview with Denfaminico Gamer regarding Project SEKAI's 2nd anniversary and planned updates for the 3rd anniversary, Yuichiro Kondo (the CEO and president of Colorful Palette) was asked about the process for ageing the characters up and why the writers made the decision to have the characters grow older. He explained that they have had an idea for what kind of ending they want for each unit from the initial planning stages, and ageing the characters will help them grow and reach that ending. He also pointed out that there are pros and cons to ageing characters, but since the characters in Project SEKAI are living as humans, it makes sense to have them get older.

Also refer to the article screencaps above (Google translated) or interview transcription below (TL assisted by DeepL/Google translate).

Denfaminico:

In many popular manga and anime works, the age of the characters remains the same throughout the entire story, even if decades have passed outside the work. In contrast, in Proseka, while time may progress differently to the real world, the characters still age gradually. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Kondo-san:

We don't want to force the characters to get older.

Right from the initial conception stage of each unit, I've always had an idea of their endings. We can only reach those endings if the characters grow as human beings. When I thought about it, I decided that it would be more natural for them to grow in terms of age [rather than just characterisation].

As for character content, I think there are both pros and cons to characters getting older. But when you consider that the characters are living as human beings, I think it's absolutely natural for them to grow older.

[romijuli]

There’s a certain caliber of proseka fan that doesn’t seem to have any understanding of how translation works and acts like it’s a 1-to-1 find-and-replace-word situation and that anything that isn’t the fan tl/machine tl they saw is a deliberate attempt at changing things. I mean this goes for the population at large but proseka fans are especially annoying about it. You add an “a” to an already-English event title to make it more grammatically accurate and everyone throws a fit.

“Oh my god they changed it in the translation and now it sucks, yet another example of the translation being bad” and it’s slightly different wording that like. barely changes the vibe, and even then it changes it in a way that more clearly drives home the severity of the situation,

[project-sekai-facts]

thanks so much for the addition!! i hope you don't mind me adding your tags on ^^"

as someone who has played multiple other games in this sort of genre, prsk definitely is that game which has the most cnesorship by a mile. Like that parechu example from bandori honestly isn't that bad? I think the JP part for the second sentence is better, but EN made the I love you part honestly even more shippy than it was in the original text. And although I haven't played bandori for a long time now, I really don't recall them trying to work around every single usage of the word love or whatever like proseka does.

D4DJ doesn't really do it either, I can maybe think of a couple instances, but the fandom is very small so fan TLs and JP content is pretty hard to come by. Also it's literally like one or two poorly translated lines, you can very much still tell where there's romantic feelings written in because it's left in like 99% of the time. Maybe it's not the fairest comparison considering how explicitly queer D4DJ is, but still, proseka does have quite a bit of shiptease and sometimes outright subtext, and only occassionally does it actually make it to the EN server.

I have no clue why it's just proseka (i don't know enough about enstars to comment, i know there's issues with Arashi, but idk if there's any subtext between the boys that has been edited). Maybe they think it's too controversial or something? But come on, shipping is a big thing in idol game fan communities - worldwide - and especially the slash and femslash pairings are very popular and a big selling point. D4DJ literally got more popular after they added Hayate and Kokoa (who are canonically dating). Especially in online spaces (where y'know, the game gets free promotion via word of mouth) idol games are incredibly popular amongst queer people, a lot of people get into project sekai for things like that, and are incredibly unsubtle about it in twitter interactions, so it's... definitely a strange decision being made by staff.

Even weirder that An/Kohane content is rarely being altered (and maybe it's because some of their interactions can't be altered for various reasons, but also they're like, the only characters in the game to regularly get daisuki translated as i love you from what i remember). As a counter point to the an/kohane thing, me and some friends discussed that maybe they give them a pass because An is very affectionate and because of that then maybe it could be read in a platonic way when she says "i love you", but as a counter-counter point her relationship with kohane is outright described as them "seeing each other" in her Peak Excitement card story. It's... odd.

what's most surprising is that ensekai is definitely the highest budget out of the main idol games on the market rn. as far as i know, the en server is primarily operated by SoA, and I assume they're doing the translations because i don't think clpl has a branch for that and uh, why would they remove stuff they wrote in the first place? I dunno what sega's deal is either, considering some of their other franchises have queer characters. Obviously this game has a specific branch working on it, but you get my point - what the fuck sega?

i mean the en server is probably the most poorly managed of the bunch, which really. says something. censors aside, the translations can generally be pretty crappy. constant typos that never get fixed, even to the point of literally giving false information about a character and then contradicting that in the same sentence because they fucked half of it up. not to mention "that's showbiz baby" which you might remember if you've been here since launch, and also the fact the writers often struggle with rui's more poetic ways of speaking (good example here if you ignore the actual fact and just focus on the official vs fan TL). there was also the struggle with translating aibou in the earlier days too, which... might've been because they wanted to avoid the possible romantic connotations of the english word "partner". ensekai is just really poor for something presumably really high budget and something this popular.

i kinda steered away from my original point a bit there but ensekai just disappoints me a lot. there's always been censorship or otherwise "toning down" of queer subtext.

take this example from the mmj main story. admittedly "having feelings for someone" kinda makes this more shippy, but you'll never fucking guess what she says in the original text (suki. she says suki. "feelings" is a roundabout way of them saying "love"). like sure i could excuse the examples from the main story at the time because the translation was still Fine i guess, but it's at a point now where it's very obviously intentional. as you said, it's malicious, and it's erasure. sure the writing is ambiguous in the original version at times, but the fact that EN isn't even trying with the ambiguity and is just straight up getting rid of even vague things is, and i'm gonna fucking say it plainly, homophobia.

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.