MX Media LLC Blog Archive

Greeting and Salutations. Here is a blog post from MX Media senior translator, Adam.

Hi all.  My name’s Adam, I do a bunch of the translating here at MX Media.  For my inaugural post, I thought I’d share a little bit of trivia that may interest some of you:  a bit of background on the title “Shin Koihime Musou.”  Obviously this is a topic of interest to a somewhat limited audience, but if you’re the type of person who’s both watching the show AND reading an industry blog, it’s probably worth at least a skim.

You probably already know that Koihime is based off of one of the classics of Chinese literature, a book called “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”  This book deals with the exploits of various generals during a period of civil war and upheaval in ancient China, around 400 AD if I remember right, and is rightly regarded as one of the greatest works of literature ever written.  At least the first two-thirds of it is.  Then all the interesting characters get killed off and are replaced by their loser sons.

Anyway, just know that the book and its characters, the honorable and noble Ryuubi, the brilliant Sousou, and the crafty Son family, are about as well known in Asia as say, Shakespeare.  Even if you haven’t read it, you know the general plotline and the character’s names.  There’ve been literally hundreds of TV shows, books, comics, and video games based off of the thing: you’re probably familiar with the Kessen and Dynasty Warriors series and the anime Ikkitousen, and if you’re a hardcore Otaku you might’ve seen the 80s anime adaptation of it.  Heck, I think there’s actually one running right now concurrent with Shin Koihime.

As they do with all things, the Japanese visual novel industry eventually decided to make a game out of it.  The idea of the game they made, at least in as far as I understand it, was that in some alternate history, all of the generals of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms are beautiful women, and somehow you (the main character) end up seducing them.  This is another one for the “Japan is odd” file; as I said above, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is practically one of the foundations of eastern culture as we know it:  this is somewhat akin to taking a major piece of the Western canon like Dante’s Inferno and remaking it as a budget action game where you kill demonic babies in the 3rd Circle…

OK, bad example.  But the point is, it’s kind of odd.  So you have your game about beautiful princesses who you fall in love with during the Three Kingdoms era.  What will you call it?  I’m not sure what your answer to that question would be, but Baseson (the creators), decided to take the name from another series: Sangoku Musou (Unparalleled Warrior of the Three Kingdoms, to use a rather loquacious translation): AKA Dynasty Warriors in the states.  Except since it was about loving princess, they swapped the first word for ‘Koihime’ (Loving Princesses.)  Thus was born Koihime Musou, and it sold fairly well; well enough to inspire a 13 episode anime and a sequel.  For this sequel, they took the title off of Dynasty Warrior 2:  Shin Sangoku Musou becoming Shin Koihime Musou. 

The anime was a success too, at least as far as I understand it, and so it spawned a direct sequel that took the name of the game’s sequel: Shin Koihime Musou.  And that’s what you’re watching. 

As an aside, this is why people don’t translate anime titles anymore.  What the heck would you call it?  True Ultimate Warrior Loving Princess?  If it’s ever released stateside on R1, I assume they’re going to change the name to something that sounds better in English.