Finally got my hands on my childhood holy grail.

When the sequel to my favorite game didn't get translated back in 2005, that became my villain origin story. I convinced my parents to sign me up for Japanese classes on the weekend just so I could play it. But it turned out learning a foreign language was hard and I had too much actual schoolwork to keep up with, so I didn't get all that far.

But now that I'm trying to learn again on my own, I've decided it's time to tackle this one. Took me almost an hour and a half to get through the opening cutscene, but with the help of OCR and a dictionary I understood nearly all of it. Made 30 new vocab flashcards out of it in the process.

Unfortunately my old GBA SP is not holding much charge, I may need to find a new aftermarket battery replacement. And the game's signature gimmick gets in the way of OCR, it already takes several tries to read the pixel font and it's even harder to recognize while playing outside.