FBCD-005: Ragnarok Battle Offline Original Sound Track "Adventurer's inn"

[Kaleb.G]

I'm pondering something. While Rag Offline is a doujin game, this album is technically an OST for the game. I mean, even if the game is arguably copyright infringing, etc., it's still a game, and this is its original soundtrack. We even got arrangements of these tunes from legit game composers (i.e. Manabu Namiki on Vol. 2). What do you think?

Actually, ignore this. I'm confusing release type and classification. I just got into the habit of assuming the orange doujin color was for arrangements. I'm dumb.

[Gigablah]

It's published by a doujin group, so I'd categorize it as doujin myself.

[Kaleb.G]

I made a mistake. Is there any way that we could eventually have symbols or something for the classifications like how we have colors for release type?

[Gigablah]

We could eventually have icons for that, yeah.

[Secret Squirrel]

I'd categorize the music from a doujin game as official release since, while the game itself is doujin, the music is (mostly) original composition for a game. The music is actually being released by its creators through an officially sanctioned channel, namely the doujin group's label.

[Gigablah]

That doesn't change the fact that it's fan-made, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doujins don't necessarily have to be derivative work.

This is more an issue of semantics; you can consider it an official release in the context of doujin publication, but can you consider it categorically equivalent to bona fide officials? (Note that the soundtrack is categorized as doujin among Japanese language resources).

Besides, there's the "original soundtrack" classification.

[Secret Squirrel]

I guess the difference comes from our use of Doujin to mean fan arrangement of someone else's work, without official sanction from the original creator. We're categorizing OCRemix albums as Doujins, even though they aren't Doujin by the Japanese definition because they aren't performed by Doujin groups.

I can see how one might not want music from a Doujin game to be categorically equivalent to music that comes from a copyright-infringing game. But from the pure composition point-of-view, the music composers are real composers, who are legally releasing the music to which they hold the copyright. The mechanism of release is just via the doujin group's label.

[Gigablah]

I see what you mean. I still have misgivings though -- it's one thing to stretch the definition of a borrowed term to cover a wider range of releases, but when this very act causes inconsistencies with the categorization of albums which are natively of that type, maybe we should rethink the use of the term itself.

Maybe this can be resolved by changing "Doujin" to "Fan-made"?

[Kaleb.G]

Has anybody thought over what was stated here further? Those icons would still be nice to have. I'll add it to the feedback site.

[Kaleb.G]

Found an alternate translation for disc 1, track 02:
"To the Other Side of the Dust Cloud"
Does this seem like an acceptable replacement for the romaji title that's in there now?

[Kaleb.G]

Actually, I changed it to "Beyond the Cloud of Sand" because that's the translation given on the FBCD-011 tracklist. The Japanese text is identical.