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Free sheet music here: https://endlessrepeat.com/sheet-music/

"Parting" from Liber Fantasia: The Stories of Mariel and the Fairies
by Chamy

Here's an obscure Japan-only PS2 game that nobody seems to know the real name of. It's often referred to as "Reveal Fantasia" in English, but since リーヴェル (riiveru) sounds more like "reavel" than "reveal," I did some detective work.

Japanese websites only seem to use the Japanese title, so I believe that there is no official English translation or romanization. (My Japanese is not good enough yet to play the game for myself.) I found a Japanese post online that quoted the strategy guide explaining that the name came from the Latin word "liber." I was curious enough that I ordered a copy of the book to verify it, and indeed it states (rough translation):

The Meaning of "リーヴェル"
It is spelled "liber" in Latin. It is a word that signifies a book or record, and unrestricted freedom. It was chosen for the game's title because to be a fairy means a free, unrestrained existence, and the word suggests the fairies' records.

[Note that they are technically two distinct words in Latin--"liber" with a long /iː/ means freedom and is related to the word "liberty," and "liber" with a short /i/ means book and is related to the word "library."]
Another quirk of this title is that it uses the Japanese character ヴ. Normally this represents the /v/ sound, which is not native to Japanese. People may pronounce it as /b/ instead, and indeed older loanwords in Japanese use /b/ sounds to represent the letter v. "Violin" is "baiorin," and "Vagrant Story" is "Beiguranto Sutoorii." My guess is that the creators chose to transliterate "liber" to リーヴェル instead of リーベル to make the title unique and because they expected many Japanese would pronounce the /v/ as /b/ anyway.

I thought that's that, mystery solved. I couldn't find high-res art online to include in the video, so I took a photo of the strategy guide's cover. And just when I was finishing up, I saw those little words along the border: "Reavel Fantasia ++ The Stories of..." [the rest is cut off]. So then I did google "Reavel Fantasia," but there were very few results and none were Japanese pages. I decided to chalk it up a mistake by the illustrator and stick with "liber" as explained in the guide. Let's see if I can make this translation catch on! (lol)

Of course there's no official English soundtrack release either, but the track title 別れ means "parting" or "farewell." Lacking any context from the game to make a more informed decision, I went with "Parting." In retrospect, it looks kind of silly to use such a cheerful picture with such a sad piece of music....

Liber Fantasia © Marvelous Inc. and INFINITY Co., Ltd.

#LiberFantasia #リーヴェルファンタジア #ReavelFantasia #RevealFantasia #LieberFantasia