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Frontwing to Offer Wheel Country, Sunflower Girl -Sharin no Kuni- Visual Novel in the West via Kickstarter
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Developer Frontwing announced on Thursday that it will launch a Kickstarter campaign with AKABEi SOFT2 to localize and release AKABEi SOFT2's visual novel Sharin no Kuni, Himawari no Shōjo under the title Wheel Country, Sunflower Girl. The campaign will launch in June, and the project's Prefundia page is currently under construction.
AKABEi SOFT2 is developing the release, while Frontwing is in charge of localization and planning the Kickstarter campaign. Tokyo Otaku Mode is in charge of page management and reward fulfillment for the campaign. The project launched an official Twitter account.
The visual novel's story is set in an unnamed "wheel country," where those who are considered criminals are given "obligations" to fulfill before re-entering society. These obligations take the form of absolute rules which, the violation of which results in the person's transfer to a forced-labor camp. The individuals that can hand down these obligations are "Special High Class Individuals," a distinct stratum of society. The game's protagonist, Kenichi Morita, is undergoing his final examination to be a "Special High Class Individual," which entails that he return to his hometown and rehabilitate three former classmates, reconnecting him with a past that he had left behind.
AKABEi SOFT2 released the game on the PC in 2005, before releasing it on Xbox 360 in 2010, on PlayStation Portable in 2012, and on PlayStation 3 in 2013. Usami Wataru published a manga adaptation of the game in Kadokawa and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Daioh magazine from 2008 to 2011. Kadokawa published three compiled book volumes for the manga.
Below are the promotional videos for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 releases:
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