Thanks for the input. I definitely wasn't trying to say that my read is the only correct one, but it was certainly my immediate emotional response to the ending and how it looked to me. I do think it is possible to interpret it more along how you outlined it.
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The main reason that I am somewhat hesitant towards this interpretation is that the personality change is so drastic. I wouldn't mind so much if she just dropped her mad scientist act (still not sure if that's the ending I would want, but that's a different issue), but it is the attitude she displays at the end that really bothers me. It is hard to explain, but I guess it comes across as almost submissive in an uncomfortable way? Again, I fully acknowledge that it is hard to say anything concrete from this and the change might be much less drastic when she isn't literally confessing her love and by definition being emotionally vulnerable.
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I might look into Tokimeki Memorial 2, it seems like a cool and interesting game. My only hesitance is length. As far as I understand a play-through is much longer than Tokimeki Memorial 1, right?
Nah, it's about the same length I think. I didn't time them but I reckon they each took me about 6 or 7 hours for one go around. Short enough to give it a try and see what you think without losing a whole week to it anyway.
@SU2MM#20939 if you watch the ova she designs a computer program that checks potential mates and finds herself typing in her own information before sighing and saying “what am i doing…” so there is some context to this, also outside of the game in the books there's additional bits and pieces. in the end though it sure is an early 90s piece of media out of Japan!
“Playing Tokimeki Memorial for Super Famicom before playing it for Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Windows, or PC Engine would be like watching a movie for the first time with the TV muted and two lines of subtitles displaying both the movie’s dialogue and the director’s commentary,” Rogers told Kotaku via email. “It’s not a Full Film; it’s a DVD bonus feature you throw on while waiting for your laundry to finish while also waiting for an important phone call.”
I think what makes it awkward is that it's a clinical-sounding word in English trying to translate a much more sentimental word in Japanese, and getting the obvious result. Further, there are other reasons to keep the title as Tokimeki: not just because the name of the series is very well established by this point, but it obliquely references the name of the high school in the game (Kirameki High School), meaning you could also translate it as something like Kirameki Times Memorial.
I should clarify that I don‘t expect fan translators to directly capture all these connotations in the target language. However, I do expect them to interrogate the original word choices enough to account for these concerns in some way, as that’s frequently what makes the difference between a good translation and a bad one.
I‘ve been thinking about it all morning, and keeping the original name really does seem like the only good option. Not only are the nuances and usages of “Tokimeki” and “Heartthrob” so completely different, as @Video_Game_King said, but the way the English word “Memorial” is used is also highly enigmatic, to the point where when you start asking us to literally interpret the title as if it’s an English phrase, it becomes absurd. Memorial connotates funerals and death, not memories of high school frivolity. Obviously it doesn't matter that much because most people accessing the fan translation are already aware of all the context, but to me that just gives all the more reason not to change the name.
I don't want to downplay all the hard work that went into the translation, though. Much easier to criticize from the sidelines than to actually make these kinds of choices. I'm sure it was a ton of trouble and it's great that they went and did it. But man, that new title is just so disturbing to me!
@wickedcestus I‘ve been thinking about the title a bit more throughout the day, too, except I was focusing more on the “Tree of Legends” part. It’s strange - while densetsu is the Japanese equivalent of legend, both words are also regularly used for relatively mundane, local stories, and it's this connotation the Japanese is evoking and which “Tree of Legends” misses.
I don't know. Given what's been discussed in this thread alone, the translator in me (or maybe the suspicious/perpetually anxious part of me) is worried about the quality of the *Tokimeki* fan translation.
