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Overlord Author Kugane Maruyama Expresses Frustration at Fan Translations

On May 23, a Twitter user tweeted at Overlord author Kugane Maruyama the link to an English fan translation of an Overlord novel titled Bōkoku no Kyūketsu-hime (The Vampire Princess of the Lost Country). This novel was distributed as a bonus item to people who purchased every DVD/Bluray volume of the Overlord III anime series. The English fan translation was posted on Reddit, although the text has since been removed.

The Twitter user, who identifies by the name "RainyCloud," wrote: "A translation appears to have been uploaded to a foreign site. Isn't there any way to take action against this?"

Maruyama responded: "Oh man, really? My motivation to write has been going down the drain. Maybe I should finish Overlord and go back to being a company employee... Well, for now, I'll cut down on the planned story content and aim to finish the series at volume 17!"

In 2016, Maruyama had previously announced that he was planning to end Overlord at volume 18, give or take some leeway. It is unclear how serious or literal Maruyama was being when he stated that he would "cut down" the planned story content in reaction to the fan translation.

Nevertheless, Maruyama indicated his frustration in his next tweet, which was posted two days later. He wrote: "Sorry, all of you bought with good money. Bad money drives out good. Anyway, it's going to be tough to conclude at volume 16, so I'm taking things at a moderate pace."

His tweet was a reference to Gresham's law, which states that if there are two forms of coin in circulation which are worth the same value by law, then the coins made out of cheaper material will drive the coins made of more expensive material out of existence. It is possible that Maruyama was applying this principle to fan translations, implying that freely distributed translations would drive the official product out of existence. The expression is also used in Japanese to generally refer to bad things spoiling good things.

Kugane Maruyama began the original light novel series online in 2010, and Kadokawa's Enterbrain imprint then published it in print with illustrations by so-bin in 2012. Yen Press licensed the novel series for North America, and released the 10th volume on May 21.

Source: Kugane Maruyama's Twitter account