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Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max

Cover of the manga, in black and yellow. Max is at the center, with dark hair, looking straight ahead to the viewer with a serious expression. A woman with a headscarf clings to his chest, her eyes closed. The 'Shining Force' title appears over Max's head, and above it looms Cain wearing his mask, and in the background, a closeup of Darksol's eyes.

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max (シャイニングフォース正伝聖剣士セント・フェンサーMAX) is a manga adaptation of the first Shining Force game, published by Shogakugan. It was first published monthly from March to August 1992, with Chapter 1 coming out in Shogaku Gonensei (小学５年生) and the others on Shogaku Rokunensei (小学６年生), magazines aimed at 5th and 6th graders, respectively. I could not find scans of these magazines so far.

However, all chapters were later gathered into a full volume, and that one is scanned at the Internet Archive. This is the scan I'll be using here.

The artist of the manga is Toshihiro Ono, of the infamous Electric Tale of Pikachu. Thankfully it isn't as weird about women as that one, but that's a low bar. You will see a couple of boob jokes, alas.

According to the artist, they began discussing the work in January 1992, and he got to play a in-development version of the game then, which gives us some interesting insight into things that might have changed before the game's launch, especially when it comes to Max and Cain's backstory. Really, if you like Cain you should read this, I'm doing this for you.

Navigation

Chapter List

Mega Max5
Castle of the Ancients15
Giga Cain35
Lost Memories59
Anti-Darkness Magic Sword87
Legacy of the Gods107

Afterword

Notes on the title

Even the title already requires some translation notes. The way is it written in this book at least (シャイニングフォース正伝聖剣士セント・フェンサーMAX) doesn't make it clear which part is title or subtitle, so I've seen other places translate it as "Shining Force - Authentic Biography of Saint Fencer Max". I feel my version is more accurate though.

As for the "Saint Fencer" part, this english reading is given by the furigana as you can see, while writing it as 聖剣士, which I feel would be more accurately translated as "holy swordsman", especially when 剣士 is already the swordsman class in english. This is likely a case of non-english speaking artist picking out a random reading from the dictionary just for style points, just like Max's name also get rendered in latin letters just because.

So yeah I considered changing it, but you know? This manga is already so goddamn weird. Why not make that obvious from the title itself.

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