PCCB-00120: V V (V Five)

[CHz]

The album doesn't say "V-Five" in English, but... "V-V" isn't particularly readable. The second V is stylized as a Roman numeral on the logo and tray sides, but I'm not sure we have a good way to replicate that.

[Secret Squirrel]

The furigana says "V Five", so I'm sure that's how it's meant to be pronounced.

[CHz]

Yeah, a recent edit changed the title from "V-Five" to "V-V." The exact characters "V-Five" don't literally appear on the album, but "V-V" kind of sucks. They're distinguishable on the album, but it's not clear at all from the plaintext that the second V is actually a Roman numeral, pronounced as 5.

[Despatche]

That's obviously how it's meant to be pronounced, but that doesn't mean they take precedence here. Should we start changing all the Final Fantasy albums to "Final Fantasy Ten" etc?

[Gigablah]

"V-Five" should be on the romaji line, at the least.

[CHz]

Originally Posted by Despatche

That's obviously how it's meant to be pronounced, but that doesn't mean they take precedence here. Should we start changing all the Final Fantasy albums to "Final Fantasy Ten" etc?

How is it at all obvious from text alone that the first V in "V-V" is the letter V and the second is a Roman numeral? My whole point is in this specific instance, using the plain letter V doesn't adequately capture the title. I don't really like rewriting it as "V-Five," but "V-V" doesn't work by itself either.

Maybe a better solution would be to use the romaji line as a pronunciation guide?

V-V
ヴイ・ファイヴ
V-Five

I'm not really sure how clear that'll be to people, and it won't help at all in places where only one title is displayed, like search and artist profiles (where pronunciation is probably of lesser importance anyway).

[Despatche]

It does adequately capture the title, because it's the title!

I completely agree with putting V-Five in the romaji line.

[Cedille]

Originally Posted by CHz

The second V is stylized as a Roman numeral on the logo and tray sides, but I'm not sure we have a good way to replicate that.

It's Ⅴ, so technically, the original title has to be V-Ⅴ.

It's a matter of preference, but honestly, I often hate to see those characters used in VGMdb, even if they're a more faithful choice to what's printed and valid at least as part of the original title.

Beside the fact it's been seen preferable to replace Ⅰ, Ⅴ and Ⅹ by more universal ones like I, V and X for decades, they look just craps to me. I don't mind using a double space slash or wave, though.

[Secret Squirrel]

Well, it doesn't say V-V on the Obi. It says ヴイ・ファイヴ. The Obi often (though not always) takes precedence for the title format.

V-V doesn't feel right as the title for this. I agree with Cedille about not liking the special unicode Roman numerals either, as they aren't used much in our Western typeset here. In fact, V-V (and V-∇) feel more like they were treated as Kanji here.

[Despatche]

Reviving this. The issue is that's Japanese, and a pronunciation, when an English title is called for. Were we to completely go by "the kana", the name of the album would be something like Vee Five or even Vi Faibu/Vui Faibu/Vi Faivu (romaji makes less sense than the kana, I swear), and I don't think I need to explain just how ridiculous any of that looks.

It's far better to go with V-V because of this, and because "V Five" or even "V-Five" is simply nowhere to be found in any official writing, at least not on this album (I wouldn't mind some scans of the Grind Stormer Genesis manual). Confusing as it may be, I don't see how it's any more confusing than the English trappings that make the phrase happen in the first place. Of course, I don't see the issue of having "V-Five" as an alternate title for aid. We really need that hyphen, though. About the "proper" Roman characters thing... We simply don't do that. I don't know why we would ever do that.

This all comes down to consistency. It's "FINAL FANTASY X" is "Final Fantasy Ten" versus "MEGA MAN X" is "Mega Man Ecks" versus "V-V" is "V-Five".

[Despatche]

I'm sorry, but the way it's done now is a serious inaccuracy.

Again, "V-V" is not Japanese, just like "FINAL FANTASY X" and "MEGA MAN X" are not Japanese, so the katakana only serve as a pronunciation for native Japanese speakers, because this title is nothing more than a loanword/s like Hellfire or Zero Wing. (I'm not so sure that "furigana" can be applied to a Japanese rendition of a loanword, unless some other factor comes into play, but maybe it's just something that no one talks about)

To help English speakers who come to this album specifically, we could use "V-Five" as a related title, even if it does conflict with the aforementioned Final Fantasy X and Mega Man X (they are just as "unreadable", technically speaking). Actually, it might be better if we put it in the notes. Either is entirely your call, of course.

[Despatche]

Wrong section, I know... The addition of Grind Stormer reminds me: I hope there will be a day where a regular search also looks in products represented (maybe it should even grab all aliases) etc so we don't have to add the various regional titles of the represented product (because they aren't related to the album we have here)... or is this going too far?

edit: Oooh, that reminds me, something for the theoretical product page: I think Grind Stormer was released before V-V, but the game was developed with V-V's mechanics in mind (the way Grind Stormer works is too odd... boxed words as powerups?). I wish I could rely on more than a dinky MAME date, but V-V also has Grind Stormer as "BOMBER VER.", which may or may not mean anything about this. Does anyone have some better release info on the arcade versions themselves?

[Cedille]

So how many title candidates we have...?

a) V・Ⅴ (On the spine)
b) ヴイ・ファイヴ (On the spine and the Obi)
c) V・V (replacing "Ⅴ" by "V" for Macintosh users)
d) V-V (replacing "Ⅴ" by "V", "・" by "-" for Western users)
e) V-∇ (suggested by here)
f) V Five
g) V-Five (adding a hyphen)
h) Grind Stormer (Western name)

[Despatche]

I think we can get away with this. This title is so stupid, I wish they just stuck with Grind Stormer.

[Despatche]

I've come to the conclusion that there should be no hyphen; an interpunct simply denotes an forced space.

If it helps, the MD port uses "V FIVE" in the mode select (obviously this can be used against me)... I can't find a manual.

[Cedille]

I came late, but why Grind Stormer had to be removed? It's our established stance to use a Western title at least for an alternate title.

[Secret Squirrel]

It does look cluttered if there are more than 4 titles on an album, so I let that one slide. More realistically, I probably just gave up reverting that edit.

[KAI]

Mame lists this games as V-Five, it should be easier for the users to find it under that name.

[Hellacia]

I kind of... a little bit... don't understand what the issue is here. On the back spine it says V・Ⅴ and ヴイ・ファイヴ, which says "vui faivu". So, the title is quite literally V Five, as said by BOTH of the titles on the spine. As for the delta thing, well... it's obviously not a delta because of how it's so blatantly spelled out as ヴイ・ファイヴ on the spine, and the whole Final Fantasy roman numeral argument doesn't even make sense because in kana those names are still written with the roman numeral. For example: ファイナルファンタジーV オリジナル・サウンド・ヴァージョン. As you can see, there is still a roman numeral there; they didn't write ファイナルファンタジーファイヴ, did they. That is a very distinguishing feature about this soundtrack's name: that it was expressly written by turning the roman numeral into a pronounced word. Thus we should do the same because... that's what the title is! It's ヴイ・ファイヴ, V Five!

[Secret Squirrel]

You could make the case that V・Ⅴare kanji characters, and that V Five is the reading for them. If that's the case, we would Romanize it as V Five. Has there ever been a case where Western characters have been used in this manner (or a case where they invented new Kanji)?

[Despatche]

Using MAME standards for anything simply doesn't work.

What Square has specifically done means nothing because the Roman numerals are still pronounced out; if you worry so much about the kana, we should either use the actual kana as the display title (not going to happen?) or use romaji as the display title (which isn't necessary).

You couldn't make the case that Ⅴ is a kanji character, because it's not. Toaplan chose to use a particular character for representing this Roman numeral to make "vee five" a little more obvious, aside from this simply being standard. There is no romanization to be done, because V・Ⅴ isn't Japanese; that's what the kana are for, they romanize out to what they do and that's it.

The main title of the album and the game is supposed to be "V・Ⅴ", and "ヴイ・ファイヴ" is to serve as a guide. We really do need all these titles, for the sake of the database and for the sake of being accurate. Since every title can be searched, the display title can be whatever and may as well be V・Ⅴ; then you just put in "ヴイ・ファイヴ" and "V Five". "Grind Stormer" really doesn't need to be in there, because no unrelated title does.

I only considered "V V" because it's the closest possible writing with the use of "normal" characters.

[Hellacia]

So basically, the argument is "kanji is the only thing you should ever write a different way and nothing else should ever be transliterated or written differently to make vastly more sense in regard to what it's trying to say."

Cool, gotcha. Actually that's a really non-sensical argument.

[Despatche]

I don't think you read all of that.

Kanji shouldn't be "written differently" in the first place; the only things that matter are what the album provides. The only "sense" is in staying as accurate as possible and explaining the situation.

[Hellacia]

Yeah, this combined with your "their shouldn't be English tracklists" policy means we literally shouldn't take any single thing you suggest about how we should do things seriously because you're obviously only concerned with one thing: writing everything exactly how it appears character for character. I'm not dissing you, I'm not trying to troll you, your opinion is just quite literally worthless because you basically think that every way we come up with any sort of title is incorrect. I battled for like... days about romaji in the Hatenkou Yuugi thread, and finally lost, and guess what? I accept it. We don't do romaji that way. It's fine, this is a website, and everyone has to decide on how to do things here. So, my opinion on how to do romaji is absolutely worthless because it's just flat-out not how we'll ever do romaji, as agreed upon by concensus. Well, guess what? Your opinion on ONLY WHAT'S WRITTEN EXACTLY IS THAT EXACT CHARACTERS WE SHOULD USE WE SHOULD BE EXACTLY EXACT OH EVERYTHING MUST BE SO EXACT is equally worthless because it is also overruled by consensus.

If you have some actual good reason we shouldn't write out what ヴイ・ファイヴ says other than WE NEED TO WRITE EVERYTHING EXACTLY, cool, let's hear it. But that's just not what we're concerned with here and (like me) you'll need to learn how to accept it. I know it's hard, I had to learn the hard way as well.

EDIT: Here's the Hatenkou Yuugi thread so you can see me argue something you probably think is pretty stupid.
http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9190
I still believe in it because it's real romaji, rather than hybrid romaji mixed with English translations (might as well not call it romaji almost at that point). But as much as I still believe I'm right, I'm wrong. That's not how we do it here.
By the way, I feel similarly about adding all that stupid extra information shit in tracklists, like the track is named The Brave Ones and then you see this in brackets on the side:

Stage 1 ~ The Battle Against Epic Boss ~ Good Guy Theme ~ Also Just Random Stuff in the game

and we add that shit to the tracklist. Stupid. But guess what: we do it! Gotta go with what we do.

[Despatche]

We need to be as accurate as possible. There isn't really an issue with romaji, but some of the same reasons to throw out translations can be used against romaji too. There's nothing wrong with having "V Five" as an alternate title for searching, but it's simply not good for a display title.

[Hellacia]

God dammit, am I really that easy to troll?

Anyway, I'd like to have a vote on this, just to see what other people think. I'm pretty confident that I know the way we do things at VGMdb, but that collective image of how we operate could have some holes. So, I would appreciate people chiming in with how we should name this based on our naming conventions, not based on how worried they are about being "accurate". If you think V V fits our current naming conventions, your response would be greatly appreciated. If you think it should be V Five... or anything else, really... please, speak up.

[Secret Squirrel]

Ultimately, I think that V V does fit our naming convention. Lately we've been giving a high priority to any English text found somewhere on the album, and "V V" is the only English text on the album. The only out was my query about whether these are considered borrowed kanji, but there apparently isn't any tradition for that.

Now I've been hesitant to hammer down an official guideline for titles because I thought that such rigidity would force us into using some display names that nobody liked. Is this such a case? I don't know. It's clearly a troublesome case even in Japanese, where they take the unprecedented case of providing a reading for a roman numeral.

I'm starting to lean towards a compromise:

V・Ⅴ(V Five)

as the display title. The extra V Five seems to always be present in the title. It is also interesting that it is in Katakana, and not Hiragana, which (to my understanding) are usually used when providing readings.

[Hellacia]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

It's clearly a troublesome case even in Japanese, where they take the unprecedented case of providing a reading for a roman numeral.

This was my reasoning as to why we should use V Five. The name of this soundtrack differs from any other name you'll probably ever see because of this, and not to honor it would be the true inaccuracy, I think. It's not *just* a roman numeral so to speak; V・Ⅴ is meant to be V Five as spelled out by ヴイ・ファイヴ, which as you pointed out is in katakana and not hiragana, further supporting it not being furigana or simply to help with the intended "reading". It is the intended name; it is the name.

But if I'm outvoted, I'm good with it, I actually couldn't care less about this soundtrack and am just interested in the debate of the naming convention.

[Hellacia]

Double post but I guess I should clarify that I would rather leave the V・Ⅴ out of the title for reasons similar to what Cedille stated, and because it's just doubling up. For example, we wouldn't write Tengai Makyou Daiyon no Mokushiroku The Apocalypse IV Original Sound Track. We currently have Tengai Makyou The Apocalypse IV Original Sound Track. Where did the "Daiyon no Mokushiroku" go? It's 第四の黙示録, and the booklet actually writes it without "The Apocalypse IV". But 第四の黙示録 is "The Apocalypse IV" according to other places, like the cover, and writing it two different ways in the same title would just be redundant, because they're the same thing, just written differently. However, if this discussion has made everyone consider writing stuff like Daiyon no Mokushiroku instead of The Apocalypse IV, then I really suggest that we move back over to the handy old submission guideline thread.

[Efendija]

Display title V・Ⅴ(V Five) isn't in sync with the display title requirements - V・Ⅴ - monospace character and all monospace characters must be replaced except the decorative ones, right?
So display would really be V V
In the original title, it's OK to put V・Ⅴ
In Romaji V Five, as the furigana suggests (and yes, sometimes katakana is used for furigana: in extremely rare cases when it's usually needed to give the intended reading for non-japanese word.

Treating that Roman numeral as a new Kanji seems off.

So eventually in the alternative title line, furigana could be put - ヴイ・ファイヴ

So it would be
V V <- again, no monospace characters in display title, no matter what
V・Ⅴ
V Five
ヴイ・ファイヴ

and title guidelines are all good in this case too.

V is a good replacement for roman numeral as any, after all, Roman numerals were letters used as numbers in Rome...... they just used regular letters I, V, X, C, M, L to create numbers.... that was the whole point.... Argument if one can't really recognize that other V is five is fine but one has to wonder - when someone sees Final Fantasy X and isn't really familiar with the FF games, what's stopping that person from thinking that X (aka number ten) is really just a letter X without ever thinking it is the Roman numeral ten?

This all may seem useless, but I personally don't really see anything so special about this title, or the need to rewrite the guide just because of this.

And that's it, repeating - just a personal opinion.