#Reading online and having the Japanese manga online just feels different-

[enzina301]

Okay, bit of story time!

Sooo, two days ago from today, I decided to buy the first manga volume of Oreca Battle that's being sold by a vendor online. It's a secondhand product, but it's still something rare to see, like- How come did this didn't get any attention!?!?! I actually first know of this at 22nd of this month, obviously panicked and go to DC to tell N41R what I discoved there so there's double the panic than before as a result. Timeskip to today, the manga arrived to my doorsteps and here-

This is what the manga front cover looks like.

I still can't calm myself down on how I actually got the manga, especially since it's only available in Japanese as far as I know of. Heck, even pacing around or idea typing doesn't help much to calm myself down. If my reactions can be combined into one, it'll be something like this:

Aaaaaaaa, it's shocking, full-on awe, anxious, all mixed into one!!! Gonna be reading this with N41R soon, I'm way too nervous on reading the manga alone since it's way too important to just read it by myself. Thanks a lot on reading this post of me ramble on and on about this happening when I first found out, which led to this point- (T^T)

[mage-of-mip]

Half-Foots and Ainu Culture in Dungeon Meshi

It sometimes feels like I might be grasping at straws with this, but I do feel like it's not completely unfounded. Please note, I am a white woman living in the USA, I am by no means an expert on Japanese culture in general, much less a marginalized subculture. I have simply made limited attempts to educate myself out of genuine interest born from exposure to media about Ainu characters and culture. I am always hoping to learn more.

I think it's fairly obvious that many parallels can be drawn between Ryoko Kui's Half-Foot race, and more than one ethnicity or subculture in real life. Romani, Irish, and Jewish stereotypes come to mind immediately.

But I think there's another one that may be explored less in the text, and much harder to catch by a western reader, but nonetheless could be intended by Kui, or perhaps was at one point. That of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, Japan.

There's not a lot of translated information about the Ainu online, so please bear with my limited knowledge. In short, the Ainu are the indigenous people of Northern Japan. For generations, their way of life has been taken from them and they were forced to assimilate to the wider Japanese culture. There are not many who still fully practice the cultural heritage in this day, but there are movements to bring the Ainu culture back.

In Delicious in Dungeon, there are two instances that reference the Ainu, both relating to Chilchuck. This could, of course, be a coincidence, especially if there are more references that I missed. It may be flimsy, but it still feels significant that this is the case, and that Half-Foots are or were meant to be an allusion to the Ainu.

This is the first instance. A significant panel in the context of the story. To my knowledge, this is the only specifically Ainu dish that's referenced in the text. On it's own, its just an interesting factoid, and the same dark humor that's being used for all the other character deaths in this fight against Thistle.

This is the second instance. From the supplemental material rather than the main story, Chilchuck is discussing what Half-Foots are called across the languages. The one that caught my eye here is the one in the top corner. Koropokkur.

The Koropokkur are a race of small people in Ainu folklore, their name meaning "those who live under the butterbur leaves".

Again, in a vacuum, this could just be a Japanese person using a Japanese word in her manga. But I think it's interesting that the two instances of Ainu culture being referenced have to do with Chilchuck and Half-Foots as a whole. It could warrant a deeper read-through looking for other references, perhaps by someone more educated than myself.

I think this could have some interesting implications in the wider worldbuilding. Perhaps the Half-Foots have faced similar cultural erasure and assimilation attempts, which is why a lot of their customs and clothing are just "Tallman but smaller", and why other races regularly mistake them for the children of tallmen, despite having pretty noticeable differences in how they look other than just their height(their disproportionately large ears, for example).

This idea might be a tad more indulgent, but I also like the idea that Half-Foot children don't receive a permanent name until they are toddlers. At one point, in Ainu culture(this may not be practiced today, I could not find information on that), the Ainu would give their children "vulgar" placeholder names until they started forming personalities, as a ward against evil spirits. Perhaps the same is done for Half-Foot children, and their two part names are selected when they are a little older.

Again, these are just the observations of an outsider looking in, please feel free to correct any mistakes I may have made! And if I'm completely off-base or have said something offensive, I apologize and will delete or amend the post as necessary.

[saffron-words]

Introduction and UtsuKare Translations Master Post

Some of you might recognize me as that Russian translator of Utsukushii Kare books from Wattpad. I decided to revive my tumblr to compile all the links and explanations here for those of you, MBM fans, who can't wait for official English releases of the books.

I could never keep a blog, so for now here I'll just tell how it all came about, and you can find links to all my MBM translations at the end (feel free to just skip the wall of text). So a couple of years ago I finally bowed down and decided to read Utsukushii Kare series in Japanese for language practice, even though I found the summary unappealing and I'm generally suspicious of overhyped media (as far as BL novels go, these books seemed to be The most hyped-up series in Japan). Much to my surprise, I loved it so much it was hard to move on. And while I waited for a chance to buy book 3 and Interlude, I gobbled up everything else related to the series that I could. The manga was only just starting, I didn't like dramaCDs (but I'm in the minority), and the drama somehow revived my love for watching Jdramas, even though I thought that this part of my fandom life has been over for years. When the second season started airing, I made a new friend in the Russian-speaking parts of the Internet who was even more obsessed with MBM than I am, and we fangirled to our hearts' content. At some point I promised her to translate the big sex scene from the end of book 3 as a gift for all the talks. I did, and since back then there was nothing for book 3 in any European language, as far as I know, I decided to post it online and give a link to English-speaking UtsuKare fans too. And since Wattpad doesn't allow copying text, and the browser translator feature from Google Translate was really inadequate, I also put up a link to the translation made with Deepl. As far as machine translators go, it is noticeably more comprehensible, and I didn't have the time (or skills to do the book justice, really) to translate it to English myself. Anyway, after this excerpt I thought I could manage one more important scene from book 3, then one more, and then I finally gave up and started translating it properly from the beginning. I also started correcting mistranslations in Deepl-versions that I kept doing for English readers, so some parts of the book are now much more readable than others. Now the third book is done and I started to work on book 2, Nikurashii Kare. I also translated several stories from Interlude and plan to do at least one more, but that is put on the backburner for now since I want to do as much of the book 2 as I can before book 4 in the main series comes out. Yes, we're getting a new Hira and Kiyoi book! This year too, probably. And unless it completely disappoints me or something terrible happens IRL, I plan to translate it as well.

So here are the links to everything I've translated from My Beautiful Man book series:

Book 3 "Nayamashii Kare" which continues the story past the movie (completed). The text is in Russian, but there are links to decent machine translations to English at the beginning of each part (I've also run through most of them and corrected the mistranslations). Or you can use the in-browser translation feature, but the results would be less readable.

Book 2 "Nikurashii Kare" which was technically turned into season 2 of the drama and the movie, but the script has deviated so much from the book, at times it's like a completely different story (in progress; about 1/4 of the book will be done with the next update which I plan on posting soon). I don't make Deepl translations for this since the official English release will be out in a couple of months.

Stories from other books in the series. The first part is a short scene from Nikurashii Kare, and the rest are stand-alone stories from Interlude. One of them had also been translated to English by Mauli before, but I didn't use her version when working on mine. The rest of the stories have never been translated by anyone else, as far as I know. These, too, have links to Deepl-versions at the beginning.

Disclaimer: my Japanese is not yet really on a level good enough to translate fiction, and there are bound to be mistranslations even if you read the original Russian versions. But I'm cross-checking myself on everything to try and keep those mistakes to minor things. I also know how to translate so I made sure that the text flows well, doesn't feel choppy and retains the same vibe that I get from reading the original.

[kommandonuovidiavoli]

Mind telling us how the dynamics of duos within teen Sector V are? Like 1/2, 3/4, 2/5, 1/3, 2/4 and so on lol. Just to get to know them and how they are as teens a bit better!

AHHHH SO!!!

There's a lot to say here, so I'll start with Nigel and go on until everything is explained?? Before reading, I don't want hate or anything plz, this is what works for this AU but I pretty much can ship anyone with anyone!

Let's go!

#1/#2

Nigel and Hoagie like to work in tandem on new 2x4 tech for teen operatives to use. Hoagie has the ideas, Nigel refines them (and avoids Hoagie from making them too dangerous or unstable) and they build them together. Nigel hasn't always been one for manual work but lately he found out it helps him not to think too much. And Hoagie's more than happy to help "Big Boss" relax!

---

#1/#3

Kuki is Nigel's personal ray of sunshine (that's also why the whole school calls her that). She helps him to cheer up and see life in a different way, a more colorful and positive one. They don't even have to talk, Nigel just needs to sit next to her and plop his head on her shoulder and she knows it's time to work her magic on him! Also she somehow convinced him to have her test her "make up skills" on him. Don't ask why, that's how they roll. AND! Kuki's been in charge of taking care of Nigel's rainbow monkey plush since he left for GKND.

---

#1/#4

Because of something that happen to Wally years before (which, don't ask, none of them want to talk about it), these two are now really close. Especially Wally found a good friend he can talk to when life gets too hard on him, he knows Nigel will be more than happy to listen to him go off without judging or forcing a solution on him. Basically Nigel KNOWS the root of all of Wally's problems and understands his feelings. They don't like to show how close they are around, but if they find each other alone, it's feeling time.

---

#1/#5

They know EVERYTHING about EVERYONE around the school, no one is safe, not even professors or the principal himself. They could crush everyone in one move... but choose not too because were would the fun be? Sill best friends, if you didn't know their history you could easily mistake them for a couple. Well, they are in fact planning their wedding, been doing that for 2 years now, but it always gets delayed because one of them changes his mind about a minor detail. Do they even argue? Are they actually together?? What is going on??? Only they know.

---

#2/#3

Just a quick note: Numbuh 6 is still there and they still keep an eye on him, but he's been moved to another sector when they all turned 13. Because of his love for anime and manga, Hoagie is actually learning Japanese with her, because he thinks it would be cool to be able to watch anime without subtitles or worse, the... dub... EWW! Also they like to watch stuff together that Wally refuses to because it has romance in it, like Toradora! or even Sword Art Online.

---

#2/#4

Best friends forever. Kinda gay, but not all the way? Like IRL JD and Turk basically. They're so into anime and manga and videogames, they're NERDS but Wally usually hides it around people, Hoagie can't be bothered and you can spot him reading some manga no one even knew existed. They have a lot of inside jokes not even the others understand, especially the "chicken" one they've been keep going since they were 7. Also, they're meme masters.

---

#2/#5

How the heck are they even dating? Like, he's an OTAKU and she's the QUEEN of the school??? But it works apparently, and everyone is jealous and MAD at Hoagie because really, he's one of the LAMEST LOSERS in the school, just... how... WHY?? No one knows. But them. He makes her laugh and she keeps him with his feet on the ground. Been going for *looks at smudged note on the hand* 7 YEARS????

---

#3/#4

A ray of sunshine and the prince of darkness. Happiness and rage, rainbow and clouds, colorful and black. They seem like opposite worlds colliding, but the whole school knows they're dating now. Took a bit of time tbh, it has its ups and downs, but they look happy together, so, what else could they want? 2 years down, their whole life to go.

---

#3/#5

They have the love for make-up and fashion in common. Kuki likes to test her make-up skills on Abby, who's more than willing to let her go for it because she's actually good! They like to hang out at the mall, sometimes they drag Nigel with them for reasons (the boy needs some good clothes).

---

#4/#5

If Nigel's the one Wally can go to without expecting judging or answers, Abby's the one who can give Wally a solution for a problem he has. She loves the boy, wants all the best for him, it's just that sometimes... he's... really something to work with. Actually turns out these two are the best ones to put on a mission together. They know how to work things out.

---

Sorry I have no energy to do all the drawings for all dynamics, so I did the ones that inspired me the most.

Hope you liked it!

[saltydkdan]

Salty, may I ask which you recommend more: the one piece manga or anime. I wanna get into it but I also want a recommendation on which one may be better to start with depending on the pros and cons. Anyways I apologies if this is a dumb thing to ask.

Sure! One Piece is a really interesting beast when it comes to the difference between it's anime and manga, and at the end of the day it depends on your preferences- However yes, there are Pros and Cons to each! For this ask, I'll be trying my best to stick to the Official options available to you.

Also, this post specifically will be about how to best GET INTO the series, not necessarily a critique on the content of it! (I'll gladly do a separate write up on that eventually if anyone is interested in my thoughts on the Pros and Cons of the series itself)

Anyway, here are my personal thoughts:

MANGA

(This is my preferred way to experience the story)

PROS

-I'm not a manga purist by any means HOWEVER, the One Piece Manga is really good

-The pacing is really great (especially initially). In the first half, arcs are very quick and snappy! And even as they got progressively longer in length I didn't mind because by that point the story already gripped me.

-The art is wonderful in both black and white, and the official colored scans (which you can find online)

-This isn't really a "pro" per say, but it's something I enjoy doing. When I read, I like to put on some of the soundtrack from the anime. I usually find stuff like "Tense One Piece Music" or "Emotional One Piece Music" and listen to it as I read. It really enhances the experience for me personally. I also like to look up clips of arcs from the anime that I'm reading or already finished to see what they look like, and also see them in a fun new way. I feel like this sort of mixed approach is optimal for me.

CONS

-You have to read 😔

-There are many ways to read One Piece and in many different languages. There's black and white and colored manga- however just be careful. The best one TRANSLATION wise is the official release, and while you may find other options, some older "unofficial" translations are VERY outdated (I once saw one where Zoro casually dropped slurs)

-That also being said: Even though the official translation is the best, it is stuck in black and white. Many official colored scans were never officially licensed in English, and because of that aren't as accessible.

-Collecting it physically is fun, but can get VERY pricey. Like... hoo boy. Thankfully they sell compendiums that collect a metric shit ton of chapters, however the paper/print quality is noticeably cheaper. So if you want to collect them, the smaller volume releases are the way to go. That being said, I would just suggest using the Shonen Jump App by Viz Media. It's the best official way to support the series officially, as well as the cheapest for the average consumer! $3 a month for the entire library as well as other series + getting new chapters updated every week is great. I'm not sponsored or anything either, I just really like the model. So if you find yourself really enjoying the series, THEN you can go about collecting it physically if you want!

ANIME

PROS

-It's animated (obviously)

-You have a choice of either the Japanese Sub or English Dub. This also boils down to preference but from my experience they're both great options!!

-I'll get into it in the "Cons" section, but the One Piece anime is VERY long, like... kind of in a not so good way at certain points. However, I've heard that even though some parts are a bit too long, it's one of those things that if you really get into it, you'll love the fact that it feels like a never ending adventure! Not my experience, but it's what others have told me!

-This is gonna sound crazy, but Filler Arcs. A lot of people don't like these, and I get why, but they are very easily skippable if you want to look up a guide, and some of them can actually be really short and fun (as well as add a bit of extra flavor to the story). One of the best examples is an arc called "G-8". Even Manga readers recommend it, so you know it's good and gives each of the characters some fun moments!

CONS

-You may be aware already, but the One Piece anime has a very bad reputation of having HORRIBLE pacing. Now, to be fair, many people say that the pacing only gets truly horrible AFTER a very specific arc about halfway through the series (which is where a lot of anime watchers jump ship to the manga)

However, I'll be honest... I wasn't a super huge fan of the pacing from the beginning. To clarify, I STARTED with the anime. I don't have a super great attention span, so having to wait around 38 or so episodes for "Arlong Park", the arc that people suggest you get to before deciding whether to keep going or quit, was very difficult for me at first. I got through it, and I'm glad I did, but as soon as I did, I decided to switch over to the manga and had a much easier time.

-I find the show's music very repetitive at times. That's not to say the music is necessarily bad, I love the One Piece OST! It's just... over the years they have barely updated the soundtrack. Every arc you might here one or two new tracks, however a lot of the time you'll hear the same tracks replayed in the same sort of situations. ("OVERTAKEN" is an AMAZING track, but if I hear it one more time I'm gonna snap)

-This is a bit of a nitpick but I need to say it. One Piece's sound effects, while iconic, are also extremely outdated. When you start the series and hear the older-styled Toei Animation sound design, it is super charming because it fits with the older visuals. However in more modern One Piece, which visually looks incredible, THEY STILL USE THE OLD SOUND EFFECTS AND THEY JUST DON'T FIT.

TOEI, UPDATE YOUR SOUND LIBRARY!!!

ANYWAY...

Anyway, I hope my funny little list here helps!! Sorry it's so long, went a bit off the handle. But I think this is a fine enough starter guide and may help you get started!

[beansterpie]

ES21 japanese volumes - part 1/??

part 2 >>

Sooooo I recently got my hands on the complete Eyeshield 21 manga series in Japanese and as someone who's only ever read the story through fan-translations on dodgy websites online, I wanted to go through and "live" blog about it, so to speak. I thought it would be interesting to see the changes between the languages and where the fan-translations likely fail with mistranslations. (No shade btw, I think fan-translations are great both as a hobby and the fact that they're doing their work for free, but it's also a reality that the vast majority of fan-translators are amateurs, many of whom don't fluently speak the language they're translating, so there's bound to be mistakes!) Also, I wanna know what they're originally saying because I’m nosey <3

I know the official English translation by VIS is allegedly pretty decent, bar the toning down of some things (like Hiruma's language lol) so if you've had the chance to read the official version, feel free to chime in on differences with the fan-translation that I'll be referencing, or potential differences between the Japanese version too!

And finally, while I am half Japanese and grew up there, tragically my language skills are imperfect. I speak it, but my vocabulary isn't very robust, so I do look up the definitions for a lot of words and kanji, as well as more nuanced connotations or references that may go over my head. Bilingual problems <3 But again, it's good practice for me and I think it'll be kind of fun!

Right off the bat, this page. What it’s saying is essentially, “You better come out and play (in the) American Football match!” But because Japanese syntax is different from English, it’s structured like “American Football Match you better play!!” The translator was confused by the final line, because in Japanese a way to say ‘participating in a match’ is by using 出る which means to ‘go out’— sort of like ‘go out (into) the match’. Maybe a better option would have been ‘get the fuck out and play!!” or just “you better fucking play!!”. It still keeps the overall sentence structure which sounds awkward in English, but at least it gets the meaning across.

(I’m not gonna get into every little mistranslation btw, because that would take forever, but I felt that was a good way to explain how frequently there are little mistakes like this.)

Putting the rest under a cut because I imagine this will get long

Look at our boy <3 So as you know, we start our story with Sena Kobayakawa timidly seeing if he passed his high school entrance exam into Deimon High School, with his childhood friend/older sister figure, Mamori Anezaki lending moral support.

In the third panel, what Sena says is actually “I feel like I’ve been praised for the first time in 10 years—” (maybe they changed it because that was too pathetic 😭) Then in the fourth panel, what Mamori says is more along the lines of “And to think you were a total mess in math and English… It’s all thanks to Mamori-sensei!”

Also I want to point out that Mamori is a little cheekier in the first few chapters. Like obviously still kind and nurturing in personality (her name is literally ‘to protect’), but she teases Sena and feels more like an older sister than like, an overprotective mom lol. Miss that for her 😔

Then along comes our kind senpai to accost our clueless protag...

There’s no mistranslation, but I just wanted to mention that the way Hiruma talks in Japanese is so funny? Like in panel 1, he’s speaking with a dramatic affect, he sounds like some sort of npc in a jrpg giving the protag a quest. And then in panel 2, his ‘of course!’ is this shortened, slang version of the word that sounds almost cute and very modern after the previous line. Hiruma uses a lot of slang in general, though I can’t say if any of it is like, common or used by teenagers (of the time, anyway) or if it’s just Hiruma-isms.

(Look at Kurita doing the sign of the cross in panel 3 😂)

I can’t believe Hiruma managed to physically emulate the experience of contracting some shady internet virus…..

Something that’s done with Hiruma’s dialogue a lot (it’s done w/ other characters too, but most often with Hiruma) is where there’ll be a word/term in kanji that means one thing and pronounced in a certain way, but then the furigana (so the phonetic pronounciation, basically) next to it says something different. Now, in some stories (like Berserk for my pals out there), this is used to create poignant, layered meanings in the text. In ES21 however, it’s mostly used for sports manga flavor. For example, in the above page in Hiruma’s spam fax message, he uses the word 作戦, which means tactics or strategy, and is pronounced: “sa - ku - se - nn” さ-く-せ-ん. But the furigana next to that word reads タクティクス which is quite literally just the English word ‘tactics’ spelled phonetically in Japanese lol (aka a loanword).

He does this A LOT, most frequently with sports terminology, where the kanji are pretty dense, technical terms, and the furigana a loanword version of the same meaning. (though now that I think about it, it might also be because while パワー (power) and スピード (speed) are frequently used and well known loanwords to the average Japanese person, タクティクス (tactics) might be more obscure, so the kanji is there to like, clarify the meaning? 🤔)

Also I love all the early 2000’s tech we see in the early chapters— flip phones and fax machines galore! Even within the later segments of the series, the flip phones start to magically get more advanced, but in my heart ES21 takes place in like, 2003. If they ever do a remake of the anime (which is unlikely to say the least) I’d want them to maintain the early 00’s vibes. It just wouldn’t be the same if everyone had smart phones.

Skipping ahead a few pages, I remember this bit never really made sense, but I got enough of the general gist that I kind of shrugged and moved along. But!! the translation is just making stuff up here?

So for context: it’s Sena’s first day at Deimon, and Mamori (who’s a grade above him) advises him to make proper friends this year, since he has a history of only ‘hanging out’ with shitty bullies who used him as an errand boy.

In the English translation, Sena seems to get a text from a mystery number, telling him to pay up for a bet we never saw happening. He goes to meet up with the texter, who we assume at this point is a previous aquaintence, since he had Sena's number? Maybe one of those bullies that Sena hung out with from middle school? They make Sena go and get them an unspecified thing, but because Sena ran there and back so quickly, they don't believe that Sena actually went, and is lying when he says they were sold out. They drag Sena to a small shed to beat him up, and in the last panel of the third page, Sena says that he's been their errand boy since kindergarden?

So for a number of years I was under the impression that the Ha-ha brothers knew Sena from before the series, even though that never seemed to come up in the rest of the story.

But in the original version, Sena is actually getting a text from Mamori-- which makes sense because it was established earlier that his cell phone is brand new and he only has Mamori's number in his contacts. Mamori's text says: "If someone tries to make you run their errands, tell them 'let's decide by rock-paper-scissors!'" Sena is understandably kind of embarrassed by this, and mutters to himself that he's not a kid anymore.

Then it cuts to Sena being picked on to be an errand boy lmao. Presumably this is because Sena just looks like an easy target to bullies, not because of any previous aquaintence rip. The blond bully tells Sena to go buy them bread (which might sound weird, but Japan has a lot of tasty snack breads that they sell everywhere). In panels 2+3 of the second page, Sena timidly tries to bring up the rock-paper-scissors thing, but is intimidated into giving up and just doing what he's told.

Again, they don't believe that Sena actually went all the way to the school store and back with how quick he was, so they decide to beat him up in the shed. As he's being dragged, Sena says, "It really was sold out! I've gotten used to being an errand boy since kindergarden, so I've just gotten fast--!"

So yeah, if there were any other people who've only read fan-translations and were confused by this bit, there you go.

oh you just know it smelled like ass in here.....

(I never noticed the shotgun propped against the desk on the right before lol, idk why I'm surprised, but Hiruma really just left his Actual Guns lying around huh?)

(2nd pic - Kurita: "New club applicants!!?")

There he is!! Our boy Kurita!! I do miss when he occassionally had like, more human features lol. As much as I love his big ol' smiley face, it does rub me the wrong way when the fat characters (because Komusubi falls into this too) are the only ones with anpanman faces.

(anpanman, for the uninitiated)

(Kurita: "To literally clash with the opponent in order to pursue a goal together with everyone-- that moment is exhilerating!")

Aw look at Sena feeling inspired! Honestly I really love how Kurita is Sena's first friend he makes in the series, and that vibe in the early chapters where it's just Sena, Kurita and Hiruma is so much fun <3

(P1: Kurita: "Way to go Sena!" Imaginary Coach: "It's thanks to you that we could participate in the Christmas Bowl!" Mamori: "You're so cool Sena!"

P2: Mamori: "You have to make the first move!" Sena: "U-um!"

P3: Sena: "Can I... be the team shumu*?" Kurita: "WHAAATT!? O-OF-OF COURSE!")

*Ok soooo I don't fully understand what a shumu is lol, or how you'd translate it to English. The word itself apparently means 'person in charge' so? The fan-translation just calls it the manager, but based on something Hiruma says later, I get the impression that the shumu and the manager are technically different roles? But when Mamori becomes the manager later, she takes on a lot of what are allegedly 'shumu tasks', along with Hiruma, so idk. If anyone's read the official VIS translation, feel free to chime in on how they did it, because I'd be curious to know!

That being said, adorable of Sena to think he could have handled that responsiblity at all 😂 our boy has many talents, but being smart and organized is not among them.

Ok fun feelings are over, it's time for pain.

(Sena looking at his contact list, having just added Kurita's number, then wham D: )

The three bullies from before were waiting to get revenge. The dialogue is a bit different in the original. Juumonji (the blond one) actually says: "That fatso a friend of yours, Sena? Tell me his contact info-- if you do that, we'll let you go." To which Sena timidly and reluctantly agrees. Then Kuroki (the dark haired one) says: "But do you think one bat will be enough? With that brute strength..." In the final panel, Juumonji says: "It's better with just one, since we're gonna call the police beforehand." Togano (with the glasses): "The police?"

Juumonji: "As long as we get him wrapped up in the fight, it'll be fine. We'll say we got these wounds from being assaulted by the fatso with the bat -- We'll get him disqualified from the American Football tournament." One of the others: "Ooohh, smart!"

I guess the overall sentiment isn't that different, but knowing that the initial demand was for Sena to hand over Kurita's contact info with the promise that they would spare him if he obeyed-- and that at first he agreed-- makes his change of heart feel even more significant.

(Sena: "IF YOU'RE GONNA HIT ME, THEN HIT ME!!! I'LL NEVER TELL YOU (Kurita's info)!!!")

Tell 'em Sena!! A part of me sort of wishes the story maintained this serious story beat instead of undercutting it with humor in the next panel (not shown here) but at the same time, ES21 is overall a more lighthearted, comedic story which I love it for, so I don't think I'd like it getting too angsty. I'll always have Berserk in my corner if I want some actual angst lol.

(1st pic: various sounds of surprise or pain, and in the last panel: "Oi, don't let him get away!"

2nd pic: Sena -- "No way!!!" Hiruma: "Hm? Oh it's that guy" )

Lol I do love the little details Murata included, like Kuroki taking a swing at Sena as he's biting Juumonji's hand but then totally missing in the fourth panel because Sena's so fast. Also I'm always on the lookout for the kinds of stuff Hiruma buys, snack wise. We know he loves sugarless gum, obv, and drinks coke based on that one time he bought some for himself, Kurita & Sena, but what else are in those bags? I want to know!!

--------

And lol apparently I'm only allowed 30 images per post rip, so I guess I'll end this here. I guess I can.... reblog and continue? Or I might just make another post for the next part 🤔 Besides this got way too long, so I'll have to be more brief in future posts lol.

I'm honestly not expecting more than like, five people to interact with this lol, but if anyone is interested in specific points of the story they want me to look at, please feel free to ask!

[dropintomanga]

AI Can't Be the Whole Solution for Manga

So this week I found out out a Japanese start-up called Orange, who wants to be the Netflix of manga by translating a lot of manga with new apps and tools for the world to fight against online piracy. And to do so, the company will use AI to machine translate all of their manga into English. They also received $20 million USD in funding (one of their investors is Shogakukan) for their goal. This company wants to release up to 500 titles a month at some point.

I honestly don't know how to feel about this.

I read a more in-depth report from Deb Aoki of ComicsBeat and Mangasplaining about this whole startup. There's a lot of tout given by Orange about how this will help the manga industry overseas. Terms like deep learning, accessible content, influencers, reducing cost of localization, etc. are thrown around. Orange already has done some work for Shueisha for some of its MangaPlus titles. While it's apparent that the North American market only gets a small fraction of the manga published in Japan, there's concerns over whether this endeavor will end well.

A good number of manga translators and editors in the North American localization scene have commented on how bad this can be. AI machine translation is far from perfect. While DeepL (a Japanese language translation app similar to Google Translate) is arguably better than Google Translate, there's still errors abound. AI machine translation doesn't seem to be at a stage where you can just show it off to the world and have it translate something like a research paper with context. And even if the translation was good, there still needs to be people to fix errors AI will miss and the jobs to fix those errors don't necessarily pay well since they're the equivalent of "data entry" jobs.

And speaking as someone who reads up on mental health news, AI is not good for picking up nuances and differences that can help people for the better. It's only good for standardizing universal treatments. AI can not be open to the vulnerabilities of other people. One recent story I read last year was about a eating disorder helpline that created a chatbot to help those with eating disorders and how it bombed. There were complaints about how the bot didn't address patients' concerns that they were feeling down or bad about their bodies. Even worse, the chatbot gave some horrible advice by telling people to follow behaviors that led to their eating disorders in the first place. The support staff was fired in favor of the chatbot and while the chatbot was taken down after the complaints, it still left a bad taste in my mouth because mental health problems can never be solved without the human element.

I see this with what's apparently going to happen with manga. I don't see this creating a better world for manga readers. I'm well aware that there are a few professional manga translators in the scene who aren't doing a good job, but I feel they're doing fine for the most part. There's a glaring issue though that most people aren't thinking about - the amount of content we have out there.

We're in a golden age of having so much catered to us that it's ridiculous. Anime, manga, webtoons, video games, board games, music, etc. There's a lot out there. And to have a Japanese startup proclaim that they want to put out up to 500 titles a month, who realistically has the time to read all of them? I wonder if that's the point of these ventures - beat down consumers with so much material to consume that they become apathetic to what's going on behind the scenes.

I do want people to read manga, but I don't want them to become so overwhelmed to the point of burnout and numbness. That's the last thing any manga fan should want. I'm already hearing complaints from my fellow manga peers about the amount of manga we're getting here. It's nice to see bookshelves and libraries filled with manga, but which titles are really being read?

I also think there seems to be no universal standard that EVERYONE can agree with regards to localization. You have the professional side that knows a lot due to being inside the industry, but can be hindered by the Japanese publishing side and pestered by fans who think they know better. And you have the fan side that thinks they know everything because of scanlations and miscellaneous fan translations.

If you're a professional, it's a rough job and I applaud all manga freelancers who do it. Sometimes, I may not agree with the localization choices. But I'm not going to raise a pitchfork and treat them like they're witches. I know a few of those folks in-person and see the human in them.

If you're a fan, you can't expect a very casual reader to understand Japanese terms being spoken out right off the bat. It takes a while to get used to those terms. I'll use myself as an example as a riichi mahjong player. I throw out terms like suji, kabe, mentanpin, ryanmen, etc. to my fellow players. However, if there's an absolute beginner I'm talking to, they will have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

I know some fans are like "Whatever, understanding those terms make me stand out. Yeah, I'm different! Screw the normal world!" But that makes it sound like gatekeeping to a certain degree. It's fine to have that kind of knowledge, but binding it to the very fabric of your identity is not healthy when circumstances change.

Orange seems to want a universal standard for manga translation by incorporating a variety of people into their process, but the fact that people will only be involved AFTER the translation makes me skeptical and the company is being called out for some things on their website. Both professionals and consumers will be screwed here. AI is being pushed so hard by corporations because it can readily applied to real life jobs and regular people in many ways, compared to cryptocurrency/NFTs, which applies only to people with a crap ton of money to spend. I've seen instances of AI usage at the company I work at - some of it good, some of it bad.

But nothing will beat the will and heart of the people. I think that's what scares AI-promoting people. Turning us into total mindless consumers prevents us from being mindful people that want to do right by others. Sure, reading manga makes me happy. But I don't want to be the only one who's happy. I also want people to make informed choices about what to consume.

I also want some people to stop assuming that Japan is the most "anti-woke" country alive out of their rage against localization because it's totally not. Japan has problems and there's people living there speaking out against them. They're "woke" in their own way. I swear that almost everyone who thinks Japan is better than the West hasn't lived there at all and are basing things from a very filtered point of view. I actually feel sorry for them because their lives are just so focused on consuming without thinking for themselves - a perfect market for the AI-pushing crowd.

I'll finish by saying that this AI-powered manga translation venture needs to happen with the right kind of people already on the table through the whole process and where everyone benefits. Everything bad with AI, as far as I've seen, has left people behind with no compassion or empathy. Manga has taught the wonders of compassion and empathy for all and I don't see the Japanese business side of things preaching what their works speak.

[benkyoutobentou]

31 Days of Productivity Reading もう一回！: Day 8

Before: After a week solid of reading nothing but manga, I am feeling like picking up a novel, but alas, the wheel chose another manga (we were one off from 地球星人！). Luckily everything on my tbr this month was handpicked by me and so I'm really excited to read them all! Today I'll be reading 気になってる人が男じゃなかった volume two. I have read a few of the earlier chapters on Twitter but I'm just so bad at reading things online, so most of this volume is completely new to me.

If I have the time and desire after reading this volume, I might pick up a novel to read. The smartest thing to do would be to start one of my Japanese books, but what might end up happening is I start A Psalm for the Wild-Built since I have it checked out from the library. I always like sending books back early if people have them on hold after me. Also, I'm not much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader, but the premise of this book reminds me just a bit of キノの旅 so of course I have to read it.

After: Today was mostly a day of little tasks around the house, so I didn’t start reading until late. I (finally) built an extra shelf for my English bookcase, repotted two basil plants, and watered the gardens. Even with my day full of tasks, I managed to finish this volume! I had read a lot more of it online than I expected (at least half I think) but it was still enjoyable to revisit and, as always, I can’t wait for the next volume. Also, it was kind of shocking going from reading so many volumes of BASARA to immediately reading series like 光が死んだ夏 and 気になってる人が男じゃなかった, both of which are published online. You can really tell the difference between series that were made to be read physically and those that are designed to be read on smaller screens like phones!

I read 158 pages of manga today to finish my seventh volume of the month!

[titanrpg]

how i learned ttrpg design, part 3

you can check out part 1 here and part 2 here

as always, this is about my personal experience learning ttrpg design, and i claim no particular expertise or authority on what constitutes "good" game design

3

so far, i've discussed the games i drew on for the start of my ttrpg education. now let's talk about how to improve (when you need to/if you want to). now, i'll say i don't think "improving" is a great way to think about it. i prefer to think about it as "how to be aware of the tools you need to accomplish your design goals"

for some people, the three games i've discussed are plenty for them to get started. these people tend to like experimenting for themselves and then doing more research when they need help. (i fall in this category.) other people may want to read more before starting in earnest. this is also a smart way to go. (obviously you can go overboard with researching so much that you never actually start, but we are far from that place here.) either way, at some point you'll need more information than you currently have.

how do you find the wisdom you seek? the best answer is simply asking for help from people you look up to/trust. but i've never been good at asking for help, so uhhh this post exists

quick story time. i recently visited maryland to go to my partner's sibling's wedding. in a local comic shop's manga section, i saw this book. i was like, oh fun, it's a manga about kids playing a goblin slayer ttrpg.

but then, when i opened the book...

mechanics!!

it's a TTRPG!! i don't know anything about goblin slayer, but now i'm combing through this book for cool tech. of note so far: at the end of every round of combat, each player has to make an attrition check. fail that, and your fatigue score goes up. at 4 fatigue, you fall unconscious. at 5, you die. punishes long fights and incentivizes players to find alternate solutions. it uses only d6s. and there are sections of fiction illustrated with beautiful manga art. these choices feel old school to me, but it came out in 2019. now i'm really excited. i'll get to see what japanese osr is like!

to me, this pursuit of ttrpg tech feels like discovering an ancient library and searching through old tomes for the power i seek. and there's an online version of this that anyone can dig through for ttrpg tech: osr blogs

old school renaissance/revival, or "osr," as far as i understand it, is a ttrpg genre/design paradigm, typically along the lines of old school d&d. i'm not the best person to explain this, but the way i think about this school of design is it tends to prioritize player skill over character skill. it's the difference between solving a puzzle and rolling to solve a puzzle. because of this, they often make really cool mechanics for challenging players that don't just amount to "roll a 20, do the thing." they also tend to share their thoughts on traditional blogs.

here's an amazing, meticulously catalogued library of keystone OSR posts

by marcia b., @/traversefantasy on twitter, who has an OSR blog of her own using marxist and freudian frameworks for analysis

rise up comus

by josh mcCroo, who's working on a game called his majesty the worm. pretty sure i don't have to say anything else

permanent cranial damage

by ava islam, whose assertion that "Armour Class and Hit Points are the same thing" blew my mind when i was starting out

goblin's henchman

which is where I found the hex flower tech that i adapted for HEXFALL's main mechanic

and one non-OSR blog, that of jay dragon

yes i am a possum creek fangirl. this blog is bananas good. if you haven't read up on playground theory, oh boy you're in for a treat

final takeaway: you never know where you'll find new tools and ideas!

obviously credit people and don't use what's not yours. but have fun and share cool tech with others when you find it!

hope this was helpful <3

p.s. another place that apparently used to have a ton of ttrpg activity was google+. every so often i hear whispers of digital libraries filled with all sorts of salvaged g+ ttrpg treasures. never seen an invite link with my own eyes though. if you hear anything, let me know, will ya?

[jimahalangel]

Gelatin Skeleton

Summary:

Apparently the multiverse doesn't need your permission to Isekai you. It doesn't even have to give you the courtesy of letting you know it happened.

…

Undertale is gone, like it never existed.

…

You would know—you've looked.

…

"Wait- so you're telling me the void ate my universe? I'm living the weirdest 'I survived' book?!! Introducing to scholastic book fairs everywhere: 'I survived the destruction of the universe when the void decided to get all schlorpy schlorpy!?'"

…

"I am unfortunately fully aware of what information your universe had in the way of… fanfiction about my friends and family-"

...

Notes:

Formatting is better on AO3 (italicized font and such)

Update schedule: AO3 will get new chapters earlier (probably about a day) than Tumblr. (Aiming for once a week, on Thursdays or Fridays - not set in stone)

Link to read on AO3:

Chapter 1: Wikipedia, my beloved.

(read chapter 2 here)

Going to sleep in one universe and waking up in another sounds like the kind of thing people would write about in various types of fiction. Because it is . It's such a prevalent trope that it has its own genre: Isekai .

As defined by Wikipedia, "Isekai, ( Japanese: 異世界, transl. "different world" or "otherworld") is a genre of speculative fiction—both portal fantasy and science fiction are included. It includes novels, light novels, films, manga, anime and video games that revolve around a displaced person or people who are transported to and have to survive in another world, such as a fantasy world, virtual world, or parallel universe. Isekai is one of the most popular genres of anime, and Isekai stories share many common tropes…"

You'd think someone would notice being Isekai-d; that you might feel different upon waking up in a world where things are changed in new and mysterious ways—perhaps feel empowered? Surely when one is suddenly transported into another reality, they might remember the day it happened?

Apparently the multiverse doesn't need your permission to Isekai you. It doesn't even have to give you the courtesy of letting you know it happened.

Or, well, you think this is another universe, at least? Because an entire chunk of internet-culture/pop-culture was missing when you went to Google it yesterday.

Is missing.

Still.

Undertale is gone, like it never existed. You would know—you've looked.

It's not like years' worth of memes and fanfiction and fanart pertaining to a game that changed the entire gaming industry could just up and disappear out of nowhere, could it?! But you can't find any sign of it anywhere online or offline—and you definitely had physical evidence.

You'd stayed up all night last night searching for a single trace of the game and fandom you'd spent years of your life looking toward for comfort and entertainment. You’d looked everywhere.

But it's gone.

All of it.

Everything.

It's impossible.

There has to be an explanation.

Which brings you to your current Isekai theory: Maybe it's not gone— you are. You might be somewhere new where it never existed in the first place.

Either that or your brain is really majorly messed up and created an alarmingly huge chunk of false memories.

.... Actually… How long has Undertale been missing for you?

Has this happened before and you just can't remember it?

You check your search history. Nothing about Undertale before yesterday. Which is definitely strange because you'd been on AO3 looking through Undertale tags two weeks ago. And there's no need to delete your search history when you live alone. Your most recent search history from right before your rabbit hole yesterday is still the same Wikipedia article you remember reading.

Strange.

So Undertale being wiped from the face of the Earth must've happened sometime in the past two weeks.

You check the Google search trends for the words, 'Undertale' and 'Meglovania,' among several other words and phrases more unique to the game and fandom than 'Sans,' and 'Papyrus.' You want to get to the bottom of this, but you're pretty sure those character names won't get you any closer to an answer with how common they are to describe non-Undertale related things.

It's somehow not a surprise to you when search trends show that exactly zero people are looking for the answers you are.

Okay, so that kicks the possibility of finding anyone else who remembers Undertale.

You check search trends for 'alternate reality,' 'alternate universe,' and 'alternate dimension,' and you also open up a separate tab to the Wikipedia article for 'Isekai.'

It seems like there's definitely a good amount of search queries related to each term, but upon further inspection, they're mostly about isekai anime and tv shows like Dr Who.

Not really all that helpful, but maybe when you're not dealing with the real-world issues of dimensional travel you can take a break and watch the ones that seem interesting.

You bookmark a few articles that seem to be about actual science and not sci-fi media, but besides scientific papers and articles misquoting those same scientific papers, you've hit a dead end. You turn your attention towards finding discussion posts or forums on the topic —Maybe something on Reddit?

…..

Okay, nope.

You're not going to have much luck bringing in other people to help you with this unless you're looking to end up institutionalized. Not that there's any shame in that, but you don't think it'd help you much in this particular situation.

Man, you are really hoping for your Isekai theory to ring true. Otherwise, you're SOL with no way of finding out what's going on here. You feel like that guy who had to rewrite all the Beatles songs from memory in that one movie. What was it called? Yesterday?

Not that you think you could reproduce any of the content you remember about Undertale.

No, you definitely couldn't, especially not the game itself. You aren't a one-man game dev team, and the idea of trying to profit off someone else's ideas like that makes you feel slimy. Even if you're in an alternate dimension or if your brain actually came up with everything and created false memories, you couldn't bring yourself to claim what you feel is someone else's intellectual property. You'll just have to quietly remember on your own and create fan-content privately from now on. That thought makes you feel kind of alone…

You push that down and bottle it up for future you to deal with. Right now you need to determine how and why this happened through some gentle research. No need to end up on any government watchlists.

[dimdiamond]

Your dungeon meshi propaganda has worked I need to read about the living armor lmao. But I've never read a manga before, where/how do I do that? Can you give a noob some advice, please and thanks!

OMG I DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO MAKE PROPAGANDA (ok maybe I did but you know it wasn't really trying to, I am just bit of crazy about it) BUT I'M SO HAPPY YOU WANT TO GIVE IT A CHANCE!!!

Just preparing you, Dungeon Meshi is about food and monsters and AMAZING world building but is also dark and full of heavy themes and moments and its comedy is mostly based on black humour (and visual gags of course because that's what comics do) so if you're ok with these then absolutely go ahead 👏

So, if I understood correctly, you have never read manga and you're not sure how to read them or where to find them. Well, for starters, manga is the name we use for the comics made in Japan but nowadays manga has ended up being attributed mostly to the style of these comics (for example there are manga made in France). What makes manga unique though is the way of reading. Contrary to the western comics, Japanese are read from right to left and the speech bubbles follow the same logic. For example these are two pages of the first chapter of Dungeon Meshi, how they are originally and my guides so you can see them side by side:

As you can see there's no difference from the classic comics except the direction of reading. Years ago, when manga started to be distributed outside Japan, the publishing companies thought the best way to make them easier to read for the western audience was to print them opposite, like a mirror. Of course, this led to many misunderstandings and later the companies just added a reminder in the first page that "you reading the wrong way! Go to the last page!" and had guides similar to the ones I made now. Not gonna lie, at first it's kinda hard to get used to this way of reading but very soon you'll get so accustomed that automatically you'll read right to left once you spot a manga page.

As for where you can read it, there are many sites where you can read it for free (🏴‍☠️ is vital for all manga readers/anime watchers, believe me). You can google "dungeon meshi read online" and you'll get many results. Some good sites for manga are mangadex, mangahasu, mangakakalot, mangago etc. and you can even find apps (beware of adds and an app like that should be free, if there's charge either it's the official Crunchyroll or a fraud). However, I totally recommend buying at least one volume of the official release of a manga you loved, the feeling of the printed paper in your hand is something else.

Hope these help and if you need help with anything else or talk about Dungeon Meshi or even any manga recommendations, feel free to ask or dm me!

[alpaca-clouds]

I sure miss .hack/

One anime series - or rather multimedia franchise - I have an immense amount of nostalgia for, even though it was never as big of the thing, as some others, is .hack/

Given it has been a while, since the franchise released something new, let me quickly explain:

.hack/ is a multimedia franchise, that features stories set in a VR MMORPG called The World. Originally the story featured the conceit that some players for some reason got "stuck" in the game, unable to log out, while their physical bodies fell into a coma. Just as there was a mystery featuring the AIs, that for some reason had evolved in the game's mainframe - and a mysterious artefact called the Key of Twilight.

I honestly do not know what it was about this, that spoke to me so much. But I was early on very fascinated by the idea of a VR MMO - even though we of course know today that it is something that is probably not easily achievable. (In a weird way, franchises like .hack/ kinda had the right idea by having the physical bodies turn into a near comatose state while playing, which would probably help the motion sickness...)

It was one of the first anime I pirated back in the. xD Even though I did not get to play the game until I was an adult, given that I was not allowed to have a game console as a child.

I know a lot of people, who found .hack/SIGN, the first anime series of the franchise, rather boring as it has a really, really slow pacing. Like, wow, the pacing is really slow. But... to me it really worked. There was an intrigue about the series and how it explored The World. (Not to mention that from today's perspective the main character is easily read as a trans guy.) And yes, of course the Yuki Kajiura soundtrack played heavily into it.

See, one of my big first online memories is playing the browser based game, that Bandai was hosting back then. A game mostly frequented by Japanese players, so I was trying my very best to keep up with where the chat was going. And when we were "playing" (it was not so much of a game, really) together, it was always a headache to find a timeslot, where me and the Japanese folks could meet up.

Most of all, I think, the series weirdly captured that early 2000s online culture quite well. This is especially true for the more comedy heavy and cutsy "Legend of the Twilight" series. (Man, I need to rebuy that manga at some point.) Which just very much captured the feeling of just meeting online with friends from all over the world, who you might never meet, and... yeah. Just hang xD

But also the plot so often kinda had this undertone of "The World belongs to the players, not the company". Because especially in "Legend of the Twilight", but in the other entries too, one of the central conflicts comes from the company hosting The World trying to control the mysteries - especially the AIs. While the player characters are fighting against it and ending up siding with the AI.

Something, that feels strangely accurate to the modern internet, where the big, near monopolistic companies try control the user experience more and more, rather than letting users decide about their own experience.

The franchise of .hack// seems to be long dead and forgotten by Bandai and development studio CyberConnect2. The last game that released was .hack//Link, the last other media was the .hack// movie in 2012, that apparently passed everyone by either way.

To put it differently: It has been 11 years, since some new media released for that franchise. And it does not seem that anything is in the works to keep up with it. Especially as Bandai has taken the official international website off the net in 2020.

Technically, of course, a Switch Remaster of the .hack//GU games released in Japan last year for the franchises 20th anniversary - but it does not seem as if there are any plans to release it worldwide.

Maybe the franchise had its perfect moment in time in those early 2000s, when the internet really felt like an entire World that was there for us to explore.

But man, I miss this franchise. I had so much fun with it. And I just... love The World.

Also I need to leave this banger opening for .hack//Link with you. Because darn, I love this thing.

PS: If any of you went like "That kinda sounds like Sword Art Online" at this... Yeah, I to this day have the slight suspicion that Reki Kawahara was "lightly" inspired by .hack//. Because really, the entire SAO stuff to me is ".hack// but with less interesting characters and world building".

[elzphine]

𝄞⨾𓍢ִ໋ About me! ⭑.ᐟ

This post IS LONGGGG Hi I'm Ella, this page is mainly for me to rant and talk about things I like. Below is more about me as a person and my interests, I do like talking about my personal life to a degree without giving much information out just so you know. Ella isn't my real name either it's a nickname I go by on some of my socials.

Name: Ella

Age: I don't like going into specifics, but I do follow dnf's that restrict certain ages according to my actual age, just keep creepy things to yourself! <3

Just so you know I do tend to overshare on my posts, I try keeping an open mind most times, due to my personality and the way I was brought up I am relatively mean when talking about others even if I don't exactly mean to be. I don't necessarily trash talk people in specific but I tend to be overly honest with people which causes feelings to get hurt etc, etc. I speak what I perceive to be the truth so I lack friends irl..

Personality: It's changed almost every time I took the MBTI test, probably because I took it on 16p.. But I also self typed too and looked into how people who actually are the MBTI I call myself act and respond as a person and compared it with myself I so I guess it's self typing? I don't know. But INTJ is what I find most relatable to myself and how I perceive the world and interact with people. Not too sure of an enneagram I haven't found a free test for that yet.

Interests: Ani-manga, Horror genre things, JJK, PMM, Death note, tbhk, danganronpa. Drawing, Character design, Fanfic reading or writing, world building, character writing, Reality shifting, japanese folklore, I love using folklore when creating characters it is so much fun to interpret and create a design incorporating elements from history, or just irl things in general. I like hazbin hotel, don't come for me I hate the humor in it but I love the idea of the show being an interpretation of heaven and hell and the society in it. Harry potter kind of not really.. Never was much into it. give anime reccomendations pls I need more things to watch!!

Music taste: ANYTHING LITERALLY ANYTHING IM IN THE MOOD FOR I WAS ABLE TO LISTEN TO A 6 MINUTE SONG ABOUT CORNDOGS PERFECTLY FINE IDK HOW. I have bad hyperfixations when I comes to music genres so these are my tops, Emo claimed bands, female manipulator music, pop punk and some hardcore bands, I don't have any at the top of my head, but I was able to listen to black metal, death metal, parody songs the electro swing remix was fire! I can get down to taylor swift and baby shark, I can listen to drill, rap, phonk, songs in spanish or even swedish. country, folk idc. My playlists due to my recent revamp, Are more fixated on ariana grande, sabrina carpenter, mitski, lana, and very few taylor swift, I like alternative music too, I know I'm forgetting so many different genres but those were what I could list off best so keep that in mind. early 2000s-2016 music is top tier fyi. though frank Sinatra is a G oms.

Other random things: I'm all for self improvement and learning more about myself and other topics if I ever magically start liking something you know about by all means info dump, My fav seasons are fall and winter. I'm a winter baby <3 I prefer "cunty" music made by women rather than gay men or trans women (Love y'all too dw.) It just feels more authentic to me if you know what I mean, I can't properly like describe it for some reason but just trust me it's not because I hate that group of people. (I hate everyone equally !!!) I'm a medical NERD, my favorite medical dramas are HOUSE!!! HOUSE I LOVE YOU HOUSE PLS ADOPT ME AND TEACH ME EVERYTHING HE'S THE ICON PLEASE PLEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE. He's funny and I love his way of thinking. (I just realized we have the same personality type live laugh love that!!) My personality does kind of differ online due to the character limits on tumblr, because if it were up to me every one of these sections would have 5 different paragraphs per thing thank you. I'm an honors student idk if thats shocking to anyone but yea. This also probably will be more shitposting based just random takes from my perspective like reviews on starbucks drinks and just random events. the format is probably going to be more like, diary like idk? its just me posting my thoughts and leaving it out for you all more anonymously if ykwim? I was bullied all of my elementary years over a single unsanitary habit I had. (Picking my nose, like everyone made a point to leave me out due to this. EVERYONE collectively even when i stopped it still happened.) I'm insanely delusional not in a cute or quirky way like "omg he likes me guys" like no, I convinced myself for a month that I had schizophrenia even though I had 0 symptoms or auditory hallucinations or visual hallucinations. I did constant research and found myself on schizophrenia tiktok. Like dawg is trippin fr fr, overthinking and analyzing every little thing is my favorite hobby, so is daydreaming!! One time during a finance class I had I daydreamed that I was a single mom who lived a walking distance from the beach and I had the job i'm going for in the medical field. I loved that daydream so much, would've preferred to have a partner ngl.

Thanks so much for reading, apologies for it being so long my mind is so rampant and i have so much to say and so much input to give that it kind of gets hard to put it in simple sentences. If you're similar to me please follow and moot me or wtv yall do on tumblr I love people with similar mindsets and aspirations it makes me wanna do better in order to keep up.

[thejackofalltrades42069]

The parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Berserk. Is Griffith’s dream a fool’s errand?

Griffith and Guts in the Golden Age Arc.

*note: this post was incomplete when I first uploaded it, a lot of text was not copied correctly (it's corrected now).

Intro.

This post will be a bit different from my other posts, it’s for people who have watched, read, or are interested in Berserk or in myths in general.

Berserk, is one of the stories that has been more impactful and important for me, it is as important as for other people were the myths of their cultures, as the Bible is for some people (maybe not to that degree, but I’ll explain my point).

Many people don’t think about the old myths from our cultures or about the stories in religions much, I believe this is because we have too many new stories that occupy that need we have for tales, as Carl Jung said, myths and stories are of a therapeutic nature, that’s perhaps the reason we create and consume so many stories over and over in the form of movies, series, books, comics, music, and so on. They serve many purposes, the main one could be that we identify ourselves as a hero from the story, we learn things, and at least temporarily we feel empowered and are distracted from our daily lives that can be overwhelming at times. There can be many other uses for stories, for example, comedy can help us feel better, it’s proven that laughing often is good for health overall (I’m getting off track here, just making a point).

There are many things to be learned from Berserk, as there are many things to be learned from any good story, but Berserk is particularly impactful and important for many people. I’ve read online about a bunch of people who said they had depression and that reading Berserk helped them to fight their depression and feel better, same with other manga like Vagabond or Vinland Saga. Another example are the people who are going through bad times and find meaning and strength to go on in stories from the Bible (as mentioned earlier, stories can have a therapeutic nature and use. I remember a friend was told by his therapist he should watch and analyze the movie Batman Begins, it blew my mind, because for me that’s a movie that has many insightful teachings, best Batman movie IMO).

A Summerian representation of Gilgamesh (or believed to be so).

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The parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Berserk.

The brand of sacrifice from Berserk looks just like the cuneiform symbol that Sumerians used (image taken from Wikipedia, it seems that symbol can mean something like heaven, sky, or something related to the gods). Kentaro Miura was greatly inspired (in part) by Sumerian myths and culture for the creation of Berserk.

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The parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Berserk.

Recently I listened to a couple podcasts about the Epic of Gilgamesh (read it on Wikipedia), that same night and the following days I realized how similar the story and relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu was to Griffith and Guts (at least during the Golden Age Arc), this was intriguing to me. It’s well known that the author, Kentaro Miura was inspired by Japanese, American, European, and more stories and comics, as well as in myths and in many different cultures, he was also inspired by different philosophers like Nietzsche and Carl Jung. Anyhow, he knew a bunch of things and did massive research before and during the writing of Berserk.

I would say that he was directly inspired by Epic of Gilgamesh when creating the relationship between Griffith and Guts, I don’t think this was unconscious, there are too many parallels between the 2 characters that are not seen in many stories or myths in that same way, but I also believe in the possibility that he did this unconsciously after studying Sumerian and other myths, and as he created the characters and worked the story details, he drew a lot of inspiration from that specific myth without realizing it (the brand of sacrifice is obviously inspired by Sumerians).

Art created for the soundtrack of the 1997 Berserk series adaptation.

Similarities I found:

· When Guts meets Griffith, they have a duel, Griffith beats Guts and earns his respect, Guts joins Griffith’s mercenary band (same as Gilgamesh and Enkidu, Griffith being parallel to Gilgamesh, Guts to Enkidu).

· They become friends, and not just friends, Guts is the only person that ever mattered to Griffith, the rest of the people for Griffith were just means to an end (it’s my interpretation that Griffith first admired Guts and saw his potential to be his equal, at least in fighting, and then Guts became his friend. Because he was his only friend and the only person he was close to, Guts became essential to him), Enkidu was the only friend and considered his equal by Gilgamesh.

· Griffith changes after he meets Guts, he actually starts caring about someone (perhaps for the first time in his life), and even if he uses him to achieve his goals, he worries about Guts, he risks his life twice for him, and in one very interesting scene, Griffith asks Guts if he believes he’s vile, something he probably wouldn’t have even thought had he not met Guts. Gilgamesh becomes more humble after meeting Enkidu, and after learning new things from their adventures together, and then, his adventure alone (that happened because of the death of Enkidu).

Griffith asking Guts if he finds him vile after having him commit murder and killing more people in his way.

· Griffith and Guts battle together in the search for glory (the glory Griffith searched, just like Gilgamesh), and not only they fought together, similar to Gilgamesh and Enkidu, they fight a monster together, Zodd (Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight against Humbaba the ogre giant and against the Bull of Heaven).

· When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh is completely devastated, he holds Enkidu’s body for days until it starts to rot, and then he rips off his own clothes and hair and goes away from the city he ruled to become a vagabond. When Guts leaves Griffith’s side, Griffith has a tremendous breakdown, he never did anything dumb in the whole story until that moment, he commits something incredibly stupid because of what he was feeling that brings an end to his plan that he’d been working for years, he seduces the king’s daughter and has intercouse with her without the king’s consent, he’s then incarcerated and tortured for a whole year, to the point where he won’t be able to walk, talk or use his arms anymore, ever (later he agrees on a pact with evil gods to sacrifice his whole mercenary band and be reborn as a god himself).

Griffith after Guts leaves The Band of the Hawk.

Is Griffith’s dream a fool’s errand?

This last parallel is just my point of view (and my guess to the ending of Beserk), it’s not literally a fool’s errand, but it could be seen that way, we’ll see.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, after Gilgamesh becomes a vagabond for some time, he decides he will go and search for the man who became immortal, Utnapishtim (Enkidu suggested for him to do this before dying). Shamash, one of the gods that helped/ guided Gilgamesh, tells him he should go back to rule his city because this task could result dangerous and a fruitless, he’s told he might not find what he’s looking for, but he doesn’t listen and goes searching for Utnapishtim. Gilgamesh has some dangerous adventures, meets some people and monsters in the way, in the end he finds Utnapishtim, and finds out that there is no way that he can become immortal too, Utnapishtim had become immortal due to very specific circumstances that were not going to be repeated. Gilgamesh is told a few times in the Epic that he should go back to his city and live his life as a human, after all, he’s not an immortal being, and looking for immortality was after all an impossible quest (it turns out his quest wasn’t completely pointless because he learned many things in the way, and became a better ruler because of that).

Now, Griffith’s dream was to have his own kingdom eventually, he started a mercenary band, then he did so well that he was hired by an important king, and he was even made a nobleman, then he messed up his entire plan because Guts left him. Later on, he was reborn as a god, then he was reborn again in the human world, became the king of the demons that inhabited earth (to put simply), he became the savior of many people (a plan orchestrated by himself), and then he actually got his own kingdom, now it seems he’s on a quest to rule the whole world (Guts said that Griffith would not stop, having his own kingdom wasn’t enough).

For Griffith to achieve his dream, he had to kill thousands of people, endure awful things, sacrifice all of his mercenary band, lose his only friend, and for what? He will get killed at the end of Berserk, not only his sole friend wants to kill him now, everyone who’s not on his side want to kill him (I know Berserk’s events happen because of causality, almost all events are being manipulated by a¿the greater god of Berserk, but that’s beyond the point I’m making here).

Griffith’s greatest inner demon was probably having a dream that’s way too big. Even after having achieved it, he wasn’t satisfied, and he won’t be happy even if he controls the whole world. I can guess dissatisfaction is another recurrent touble in Griffith’s mind (as it is for people according to Buddhists, they say this is something we must fight, and learn to feel satisfied with what we have). If he doesn’t get killed at the end of Berserk, he will just be a forever miserable god-king with no friends (unless he has some sort of revelation that changes him, but that won’t happen in this story).

Falconia, Griffith’s kingdom.

Conclusion.

Gilgamesh learned his lesson when the tale ends, he became a better person, and a better ruler for his kingdom. Most of the time, we must leave our comfort zone, have new experiences and fail miserably in order to learn, that’s in big part how we learn things, as long as we dare to try again with the new knowledge we have acquired. But sometimes it’s too late, for Griffith, it is too late, he can’t take back what he did or apologize, he’s doomed. His dream was so huge, it had to involve hurting too many people and himself in order to achieve it, and, it will have a tragic ending (as many workaholics do too, they end up with high levels of stress, disease, and an early death).

This is why I believe it’s better to take small steps towards any kind of dream or goal, and we can stop if we see it’s not a good idea to keep pushing in that direction (I’ve stopped trying to learn Japanese for now, I do too many things and it was stressing me out a bunch). Griffith could have stayed happy having become a nobleman and live and enjoy the rest of his life with an important amount of peace and with his friend, perhaps even making new friends and doing whatever else instead of chasing something much worse than a fool’s errand that will only end badly for him.

I think many can learn and try and enjoy present life more and stop thinking so much about certain goals and pushing themselves too hard, after all, we won’t be here forever, we’re not like Utnapishtim.

Berserk is not all about tragic events (as many people seem to believe, perhaps they believe so because of the ending of the 1997 anime, or because of all the tragedy in the story), the main character Guts is a great tool that teaches us to keep fighting and not giving up, no matter what.

Thanks for reading 😊

Links.

I found a podcast on Spotify named Mythology by Spotify that makes an incredible work, there’s where I heard the Epic of Gilgamesh, highly recommended.

If you’re interested on Berserk, the 1997 series is on Netflix, it’s a great intro to Berserk. The manga is available online, it won’t be hard to find.

xoxo

[takeshitakyuuto]

Trigun Book Club update volume 2/3/who knows

One more week until Trigun Maximum! Then my volume numbers won’t be off :’)

I feel like every time I sat down to read this time around, I got interrupted. Anyways, this is a long one, so buckle up

Ch 13. get his ass cobbler-san

Yaaaaaay ice cream on Vash! Me too me too!

Quite the introduction for Mr. Collarbones

I’m sorry that it’s just kinda funny to me whenever characters call Vash by his full name. That’s Mr. ヴァッシュ・ザ・スタンピード to you

Knives! Your reputation precedes you

I love when Vash puts on his shooting glasses and immediately my spotify switches to FFXIV battle music

Okay so maybe I kinda spoiled myself probably not really, since the beginning I’ve had the question (that the reader is obviously supposed to have) of why does Vash have such a big bounty on his head, but I saw someone say that he’s the Jesus character of Trigun and like. okay question answered I know enough about Christianity to fill in the blanks here, anyways with that it mind it’s really interesting to see how Vash mentions that his goal is to send Knives to hell

This guy kinda reminds me of that guy from Yu Gi Oh. Kaiba? Yeah Kaiba

12 pieces of coin, twelve assassins, twelve disciples. im making big brain connections here (joking)

There’s a ...head in that bag? [insert “so no head” gif]

Ch 13.5 [I think this is an extra chapter] i like the little background we’re getting on Vash and the visuals with him standing over the mass amounts of crosses like a graveyard is really cool

Alright cut it out Nightow we don’t need to get weird here

Even though I rarely read manga digitally anymore, I feel so spoiled with how much manga is published online nowadays. These very obvious scans of paper volumes is so much harder to read, I’m sounding out like half the words I read

You know that chapter of Kino’s Journey (okay I know you don’t bear with me here) where Kino goes to that country where everyone is obsessed with this one guy’s painting of tanks and they’re all like “it says so much about war and society” and then Kino meets the painter and he’s all like “nah I just think tanks are really cool”. Yeah that painter is Nightow

Which is more elegant, this girl’s dress of Vash’s coat tails?

Has Vash always worn an earring? Have I just never noticed? I see but don’t look? How coquette

The interspersed English that Nightow uses always adds a bit of humor. I’m not even a translator but sometimes I think about what I would do with those bits. Would I keep it to make extra work? Would I translate it into a different language that’s more commonly understood than Japanese but not English (such as Spanish)? Translations are weird man....

Vash has the best pouting face of all time

Okay sorry I said a lot in that chapter but I don’t think any of it was serious. Not that that was a very important chapter anyways, other than the bits of world building we got at the very beginning

Volume three! Ch 14. Omg I see that big cross in the cover. Do we get to meet Nicholas Wolfwood himself? God I hope I’m right and he’s the one with the cross because I’m blasting this post for the Trigun Scholars to see. Blease be kind I know so little

Seems like this volume or at least this chapter is going to be a lot of Vash vs Kaiba

So we’re seeing Rem’s death scene and how it displays her love for humanity, sacrificing herself to save some, even if she can’t save everyone. And seeing that Knives has been a bit fucked from the beginning huh. And why Vash hates him so much (cue Losing My Religion by REM playing in the back)

Vash is typically painted as an angelic type of character (thinking back to chapter nine[?] with the angel/plant they met on the sand steam) so having him depicted more as a devil character is really interesting. They even called this his true nature, although that could just be this villain character giving him shit. I’m excited to see how Vash’s character is fleshed out in future volumes and how these seemingly two sides of him create a whole

Ch 15. I don’t know (yet?) if Knives’ plan was to kill Rem along with a bunch of humans but damn. backfiredddd

So this spirit/angel urging Vash not to kill must be Rem right? Since he said that if he kills here, she’ll be gone for real? I’m taking this to be more of Vash’s memory of her and not a literal angel or spirit

Ch 16. I was totally about to rag on them for having all this insane technology and Meryl still having to use a typewriter but then I remembered that this series is from what. the 80s? Earlier? Honestly who could’ve imagined the technology we’d have in just twenty years from then, it’s insane.

Oh that’s cool! Vash is called “Humanoid Typhoon” right? It’s usually written as 「人間台風」which literally translates to human typhoon but at the beginning of this chapter, Meryl calls him 「人間災害」with furigana instructing the reader to read it as “humanoid typhoon” (same as with the other times), however this translates to “human disaster” rather than typhoon

One coin part down, eleven to go...

We’ve finally officially established that Vash has a prosthetic arm, I was wondering when that was gonna happen

First of all what is Vash carrying with him second of all holy shit that panel of the person(?) nailed on the cross

That thing was set up specifically for him? Is this another one of the twelve assassins? I feel like I’m gonna get bored of this set up real quick if it continues on like this

oh man I’m struggling with the blurriness of this volume, I keep messing up さ and き in the furigana and if anything’s got a dakuten I’m a gonner

Ch 17. I bet these poor citizens see someone in an over the top ridiculous outfit and just think to themselves, aw man this bitch is about to blow up the city again. Good thing I renewed my insurance last month

Yaoi proportions are back!

Having the guy who’s pissing you off rip out his own still-beating heart with his own bare hands is pretty badass ngl

Is Kaiba (okay I know his name is Legato but this is funnier) trying to bring about the apocalypse or something? Or rather eradicate enough humans to be able to live peacefully, whether that means all humans or just the ones he considers “evil”? Right now he’s giving me a lot of Light Yagami vibes

Ch 18. Cross guyyyyyy hell yeah. You know, maybe you wouldn’t collapse in the street if you didn’t carry a big ass cross with you everywhere. Just food for thought

Wolfwood speaks in Kansaiben???? Help I’m falling in love it’s my one weakness in this world

I’ve decided that I never want to see Wolfwood written in katakana ever again.

Wolfwood just needs to say あかん and ホンマ and I’m already head over heels

I really like Wolfwood and I promise it’s more than just the Kansaiben! I love how nice he is and he seems to be able to read people pretty well and also he’s kind of a dork. But the Kansaiben helps too

Ch 19. Omg the one guy who I was immediately like 🫵 yaoi proportions ended up being Hornfreak. Yep that’s just how it is

Isn’t it so fun when words you learned from anime pop up elsewhere? There’s “human trafficking,” which I learned from Yona of the Dawn

Oh? It’s Dominique not Dominic? That explains the かしら. Honestly I do like Nightow’s style of “I can’t tell what gender this person is”

Nightow also really likes drawing Vash ass up this is not the time for a dirty joke

Oh my god hes going super sayan also oh my god im so stupid i just closed out of my trigun tab trying to switch jfc

Ch 20. The cat stepped on my laptop and flipped all the images omfg I am having such a time trying to read today oh my god I can’t get it back I guess I’ll just restart my laptop for now? holy shit

Yeah okay closing out of the site didn’t help, restarting my laptop didn’t help, all files were flipped, but luckily someone suggested clearing the cookies for that site and it actually worked. I am so bad with technology. What a ridiculous day.

I’m gonna be honest I don’t know how you all can read this in English, I could only figure out who was speaking based on the fact that Legato used だ where Wolfwood would’ve used や

Lol jump for your coin bitch (Vash I love you but it’s funny I’m sorry)

Wolfwood’s 「ちう」is causing me so much stress. What the hell does that mean, boy. Luckily I have friends in high places (Japan)

I’m so obsessed with the fucked up angel imagery here in Knives’ rebirth

Please no romance between Meryl and Vash please no romance between Meryl and Vash please no r

Guy who only reads shoujo manga: I’m getting a lot of shoujo manga vibes from this (no but really, there’s a bunch of artistic choices in Trigun that I mostly associate with shoujo manga, but I think it has more to do with the age of the manga. Probably Ikeda Riyoko’s influence)

Knives is such an overdramatic bitch, I love that

Angel Vash! The inherent danger of the divine! Although a god can be kind it can also be cruel! Power can be used in many ways and thus is its danger!

We’ve finally established that Vash and this power that Knives brings out of him is the reason why July Town was destroyed. This is probably also the reason why he’s got such a high price on his head

Also really enjoying the implications that these human forms aren’t Vash’s and Knives’ “true” bodies

Extra chapter. Thank god he didn’t shoot the egg oh my god. The irony of consistently taking the lord’s name in vain so much here (term used ironically but also because what else can I say) while reading Nightow’s bible fanfiction just now hit me

I admit it, I totally skimmed that. In my defense, it’s past midnight.

Final thoughts: Having officially finished up the original trilogy, that was pretty damn good! The ending was great (yes, I know there’s much more to go) and quite bittersweet. The pace really picked up for me in this last volume. My only main issue was just friction between me and the genre, which is no one’s fault but my own. I could definitely do for less action scenes, but again, my favorite genre is the “nothing happens” genre. I’m really excited to see where Trigun Maximum takes the series, especially in the ways that these angels/plants are developed. I’m also excited to see more of Knives and Wolfwood and especially how they both interact with Vash, since they obviously have extremely different perceptions of him. I’m not quite sure where the plot is going to go from here, since it seems like Vash took Knives along with him in his disappearance, but I’ll follow Nightow wherever he leads us in this series. What I’m not looking forward to is having to read more of Nightow’s handwriting. God. Even so, somehow it’s still not the worst I’ve seen from mangaka. Oh, also, there was significantly less of that black cat than I expected. I’ll just assume it comes back in Maximum. And (sorry these thoughts are so unordered) wow the art was so stunning, especially there at the end, that I definitely have half a mind to pick up the physicals for my personal collection. Especially with a fanbase revival due to Trigun Stampede, I’d be more shocked if it’s out of print than if it isn’t. Oh and one more thing, we went through three of the twelve coin assassins. Does that mean that we’re going to go through the other nine in Maximum? Also, I’m not quite clear on why Vash has to collect the coin fragments like this is Dragon Ball (disclaimer: never seen or read any of the dragon ball franchise). Was mystical object collection just a trend back then? What’s going to happen, or supposed to, when Vash gets them all? Hopefully this will become clear as the series continues.

[feekins]

and here are my thoughts and things and whatever translation weirdness I find as I re-read ch 6, finishing Trigun Maximum vol 7!

(NOTE: I'm reading the Dark Horse [physical] and the Overhaul [online] translations side-by-side)

(Dark Horse on left, Overhaul on right)

I like the extra layer of separation from humanity with Knives referring to the GHGs as "specimens" in the Overhaul's translation

another interesting difference in wording choice is how, in Dark Horse, Knives says "...if only Tessla...had had this power..." whereas in the Overhaul, it's "...if only Tesla...had gained this kind of power..."

...didn't consider before now that it could be Vash saying "your body" - I always thought that was Knives talking??? either way makes sense, but I guess with the visuals of Knives just CLONKING DOWN A MASS OF BODY-BLADES...yeah. 🥴

oh, Elendira 💕 never stop that sass 💕 also, the way she and Wolfwood interact throughout this pre-Arc bit gives off crazy sibling vibes imo and I love it

and then...we have that whole exchange between Vash and Knives that was used almost word-for-word in tristamp. and it's good the way they do it! but I will say...it hits WAY harder here in the manga. like...it's the difference between Spock's death scene in Wrath of Khan when you've followed Star Trek from the very beginning VS Spock's KIRK'S death scene in Star Trek: Into Darkness when you've only seen Star Trek (2009). Vash and Knives' exchange carries a different weight depending on whether it's early in the series or about 3/5 through it. also, there's a crucial difference in wording - "I'll run away"/"I'll carefully approach them again" in tristamp, while in the manga, it's "LET'S run away"/"WE'LL cautiously approach them again." 🥺

(Dark Horse on top, Overhaul on bottom)

...oops, untranslated onomatopoeia (understandable, tho)

interesting differences here. Dark Horse's translation thematically flows well with "can't do anything about"/"my hands still work" - but the Overhaul's more nuanced translation, once again, hits harder. especially with the "escape" bit, knowing how lately he's taken to day drinking to cope 😭

also in the Overhaul...uuuuuuugh gdi Vash with your martyr complex cjgxjgxhfjg do I need to get a spray bottle? to spritz you like a misbehaving puppy?? or something??? like. child. PLS.

interesting to note in the Overhaul - Knives' wording is much more active than it is in Dark Horse.

also NUANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!

this looks like another case of literal VS nuanced translation to me 🤔

Dark Horse's use of "flow" is...idk. I feel like I've kind of come to understand what they mean over time? so I SUPER-appreciate the Overhaul going with "gate" - I wonder what word was used there in the original Japanese...?