#ill post links to the japanese chapter when available

[wha-archive]

I must apologise for the person I will become in a few hours time.

[ID: A screenshot of a tweet from tongariofficial with the (machine translated) caption: The latest 77th episode will be released tomorrow! A quick glimpse of Mr. Olruggio 👀 SNEAK PEAK❗👀. The attached image is of Olruggio looking exhausted with a slightly bloodied hand against his throat, speaking.]

[masterdetectivexx]

So now that chapter 1102 is out, what are your thoughts? Could the old hawk man, along with the respirator man drom ch 1090, be Karasuma candidates? If so, that would be a break in pattern, since Rum's storyline isn't over, yet we are already introduced to the "next" set of suspects. How could this overlap in arcs change the rest of the series? And who do you think the first two candidates are, and an eventual third one? Sorry for all the questions, but this is an exciting development ^^

Exactly all these questions you brought up were floating in my mind as well. At first, my first suspicion and prediction for Gosho's introduction of "Vader" (File 1090) was that he was supposed to be a mislead character to build up the Rum plot suspense for the Rum arc climax, which I wrote about in detail in my File 1090 review.

Now however, It's looking very likely with the introduction of a second Boss suspect in File 1102, Falcon Elder (that is very likely another mislead), that Gosho has started setting up the Boss arc plot by already teasing the new arc suspects at this phase of Rum arc.

While it would be the first time that Gosho introduces overarching suspects before the story has shifted focus to the connected antagonist, it is not the first time Gosho introduces characters relevant to the following arc. During Bourbon arc, Gosho introduced Haneda Shuukichi and "Sister outside the territory", who ended up being very relevant characters in Rum arc.

Just as you suggested, I also suspect that we will get a third Boss suspect eventually, to follow Gosho's 3-suspect pattern at the very least (though it doesn't have stop there ofc).

Boss Suspects' True Identities

As I mentioned in my previous post about "Vader" below, I suspect that he is Haneda Yasuharu, since he has both reasons to find the police incompetent (File 1090), due to failing to catch his son's killer, as well as for him to recognize Mary and protect her from getting exposed publically through the news (File 1096-1097), since he is Tsutomu's friend.

As for the newly introduced Falcon Elder, who is clearly being framed to be Karasuma Renya through his Crow-resembling Falcon pet, he was revealed to have some kind of anger towards someone connected to the recent Kid Killer News with Conan & Jirokichi photo in it, since he used his staff to crack the phone showing it (File 1102).

After thinking through all the possibilities, I think it makes the most sense that Falcon Elder's true identity is the Ōoka retiree, Momiji's Grandpa who was acquainted with Haneda & Kuroda (who was also foreshadowed in File 1088).

He is the only mysterious rich old man that we haven't been introduced to. Also, in the M21 guidebook, Gosho revealed that the Ōoka family are a rich family just like the Suzuki's, only that Sonoko's uncle Jirokichi is slightly richer.

This could be setup and cause for some intense rivalry between Ōoka retiree & Jirokichi, where Ōoka retiree could be harboring ill feelings out of jealousy towards Jirokichi, who keeps getting more publicity and gaining more wealth. This would explain why he cracked his phone with Jirokichi's photo open out of anger (that is meant to mislead us into thinking his target was Conan).

If we also were to get a Rum twist in the upcoming climax where Rum ends up indeed being Iori Muga in disguise, then him appearing with Falcon Elder could be the ultimate misleading suspicion booster for Falcon Elder being the boss (when he could in reality be the head of the Ōoka family that Muga is a butler for).

Further speculations on Falcon Elder can be found in my review of File 1113-1115.

To summarize my speculations, we now have three silhouetted rich old figures, and their identities are:

[arsyirachie]

Yahoo~

Risu here XD

I've been inactive for quite long~

For now, I'm thinking about translating another otome game, but this time... I'm planning on doing this for the whole route, not only some scenes

And so, I'm gonna post rough translation of Photograph Journey ~Hiroshima & Kanagawa Hen~

As the title said, this series is featuring 2 ML (one from Hiroshima -Sera Karen- , and one from Kanagawa -Yuzurihara Takara-)

This game might be quite old already (2014), but it's one of my favourite.

Also, english wasn't my main language, and me also still studying Japanese...

Therefore, please kindly understand that this translation might not that accurate^^

I'm just doing this for fun~

I can't promise to update every chapter at once, nor when will I update the translation.

But I'll try to make some progress and update everyday~

(This is only introduction post, I'll post the translation later.)

Let's start with little introduction about the game first.

Game information :

Title : Photograph Journey ~Koi Suru Ryokou Hiroshima Hen & Kanagawa Hen~

Original title : Photograph Journey ～恋する旅行・広島編＆神奈川編～

Platform : Windows

Age rating : All ages

Developers : Dengeki Girl's Style & Honeybee

Publishers : Dengeki Girl's Style & Honeybee

Available Characters :

- Sera Karen (Hiroshima Route)

Description

A third-year student of Suzuo Academy Senior High School. Karen is a shy and fragile boy with a weak body. Due to his weak constitution that lead him to being absent from school often, plus his shy nature, he's often on his own. He's good at listening to others but not talking about himself. When Karen is healthy, he enjoys his only hobby- taking pictures while going on a walk.

Haruho met Karen when she was a sixth-grade primary school student. Around that time, Haruho became ill and collapsed, which required her to get hospitalised. When she felt better, she wandered around the hospital courtyard and met Karen. They became friends and swapped books with each other.

[Taken from vndb]

- Yuzurihara Takara (Kanagawa Route)

Description

A third-year student of Oumine Private Middle School. A fashionable, (over)confident boy who loves freedom above all else, and is skilled in language studies. Thanks to his tallness for his age and stylishness, he was scouted by an agent when walking around in town and became a model. Haruho met Takara when she was in her second year of junior high school. Haruho's family had just moved to Kanagawa Prefecture, and reading at her local park became one of her everyday pastimes. There, she met Takara, and gradually, they chatted more and more.

[Taken from vndb]

General summary about Photograph Journey series :

Until she became a high school student, due to the the protagonist’s (Hayama Haruho) father’s job, she had to repeatedly transfer schools. One day, she receives a single letter from a boy she met at one of the many places she had moved to.

Enclosed is a letter and a photograph of him.

Form then onwards, the nostalgic relationship between him and Haruho begins.

Accompanied by Richard, an English boy who loves Japan and is currently home-staying at Haruho’s, she journeys to the place where that boy now lives…

This is a travel romance story that began from a single letter…

Who will you choose to visit?

[taken from vndb]

vndb link :

https://vndb.org/v14700

Official website :

http://www.honeybee-cd.com/p_j/hiroshima-kanagawa/index.html

[hermanwatts]

(Today’s column is a reprint of Kevyn Winkless’s excellent and heart-felt introduction to German science-fiction hero Perry Rhodan, originally posted on the Castalia House blog on 17 August, 2017. Kevyn ended his heart-felt appreciation for the run of Perry Rhodan published in English during the 1970s with “by all reports, the modern Rhodan is rich and fairly sophisticated space opera.” Next week, we shall see for ourselves in a review of ARK OF THE STARS, by Frank Borsch, the first book in the Perry Rhodan: Lemuria miniseries.)

You know The Shadow. You may know The Spider. You definitely know Conan. And after this year’s cinematic offering you also know Valerian, even if you’re not familiar with the original comics.

But are these really the most beloved SFF heroes in print? Really?

Yes, they are definitely at the top – and a convincing case can be made for Conan in particular as a global phenomenon with incredible staying power. But let me introduce you to another hero who is sadly little known in the English-speaking world: Perry Rhodan.

I stumbled on Perry Rhodan the summer we moved to a tiny town of under 500 people when I was in high school.

The nearest book store with anything like a SFF section was 100km away and the local shops’ spinners were loaded down with romance novels and basically nothing else. The library’s collection of SFF fare spanned a set of five spinners off in the back. I was frustrated at the time, but in retrospect in that age long before Amazon and before I had the financial wherewithal to participate in things like the Science Fiction Book Club[1] the fact that such a small town had a library at all was good fortune at its finest.

Needless to say I consumed that pitiful collection of SFF paperbacks in record time, and as a result was introduced to a variety of classic authors I might never have noticed otherwise[2]. I’m sure that experience deeply influences my reading and writing habits today.

To be honest, though, I have only the vaguest memories of what exactly was on those spinners. Oh, I know I first encountered James Blish and Andre Norton and Lin Carter and  van Voght here but other than Blish’s print adaptations of Star Trek episodes[3] I couldn’t tell you what titles were actually there. Except one:

Perry Rhodan.

Perry Rhodan was first published in German in 1961 in a Romanhefte format – this is a slim, pocket sized format analogous to the digest pulps popular in the US at the time[4], popular for “disposable fiction” of all kinds. And disposable is what the Rhodan series was initially intended to be:

At the start, it was to be a limited run of a few dozen weekly issues of novella length, but it was quickly obvious that the initial authors K. H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting  were on to something big, and the series was continued. The publishers are no doubt very happy they decided to see just where Perry Rhodan would go because as of today there are more than 2,900 issues in the continuous main series, more than 850 issues of the Atlan spin-off series featuring many of the same characters, and a multitude of subsidiary products including comic strips, and merchandise. The series has been so popular that it has reportedly sold more than a billion copies just in its native German, with another billion in various foreign language translations.

It was of course the English translation I found[5] – organized by Forrest Ackerman of fandom fame in the mid-60s, and resulting in Ace publication starting in 1968. This English translation and adaptation[6] unfortunately was ill-fated:

Despite being well-received by readers and eventually being popular enough to justify producing three issues per month, Ace decided to end the run in 1977 – with just a few missing pieces sputtering out until the end of 1978. Demand was high enough, though, for Wendayne Ackerman to publish another 19 issues under her own imprint, Master Publications. These were distributed only to subscribers, however, so the majority of the Rhodan reading public in the English speaking world were left with nothing but the 124 issues Ace had given them.

This, frankly, is a crying shame. Quite apart from the amazing popularity Rhodan continues to enjoy in Germany and around the world in several languages[7] the story itself is fascinating.

I can hardly call myself an expert – I came on these books years after the English translations had ceased publication[8] and have had to make do with the occasional issues I’ve stumbled on since those first three in that tiny small-town library so many years ago. But I have managed to track down more than half of the original translations over the years, and can piece together what is obviously a remarkable set of storylines.

The premise itself is nothing remarkable to us in the modern SFF scene – just the standards:

space mission stumbles on a crashed alien spacecraft on the moon and discovers mind-blowingly advanced technology

ancient space empire is decadent and crumbling

multiple “rabid” species, less advanced, are worrying at the edges and threaten to destroy everything the peaceful space empire has built up

decadent space empire gives their technology to humanity as the last great hope when they demonstrate their ability to unify under threat

You know: the usual.

But what makes this series so remarkable – at least in the portion I have read – is the seamless way the arcs link together. This is no mean feat for this style of serial, keeping things coherent and flowing despite the hands of multiple writers pushing the cart. The continuing success of the series is a testament to the skill with which the publishers have managed their stable of contributors and curated their “bible” for the series.

Also interesting is the way the story, despite being explicitly high tech space opera, effortlessly weaves in metaphysics and curious references to occult esoterica. I suppose to some extent this sort of thing is to be expected in a space opera setting that invokes the psionics trope, but the number of alchemical and other hermetic symbols that get deployed is truly fascinating – and links perfectly with the setting’s conceit that there really are “layers of being” that species transition through on their way to perfect unity with the universe.

So why is a series that is so influential and has such a devoted following completely invisible in English?

Part of the problem is that the US market was only ever exposed to the opening chapters of the story, which are generally considered fairly simple, straightforward space opera. Many critics of the time panned it as being too simplistic, with empty characters and relying heavily on tropes of human expansion that many felt were best left back in the 50s.

The basic criticisms are probably fair – the opening chapters are full speed ahead space opera, with thrilling space battles and fairly stereotypical characters  who are motivated in direct ways – and while some of the issues in the early books are surely caused by rapid translation you can definitely tell these were throw-away space adventures aimed at a younger audience.

But it’s hard to see why Ace would choose to discontinue a series that was, by all reports, profitable just because it wasn’t as sophisticated as the books the reviews columns were gushing over, especially when the translations had just started moving into the far more sophisticated storylines being developed by William Voltz in the Atlan spin-off – and which he brought back to the main line when he took over as master storyline planner in 1975, slowly developing the series to aim for a more discerning older audience. Not to mention the fact that they killed the series right when space opera was enjoying a comeback via Star Wars.[9]

The only explanation I can think of is the self-consciousness of English genre fiction that grew through the 60s and into the 70s – a looming hunger to be taken seriously, to be viewed as literary equals in an increasingly consolidated market.  In this environment it’s easy to see the pressure Jim Baen (who was SF editor at the time) and Tom Doherty (publisher) might have been under to reframe Ace’s SF offerings to a more “high-brow” focus.

But this concern for respectability is a great loss – by all reports, the modern Rhodan is rich and fairly sophisticated space opera, and it seems to me that the English SFF landscape is poorer for having sneered this series off stage back in 1978.

[1] SFBC has changed since I was a member – it doesn’t look anywhere near as appealing now as it once did, but in those days I discovered real greats through their catalog, and several of my favourite authors I learned to love because of one of their editions.

[2] Mainly because at that point they were increasingly out of print.

[3] Co-written with his wife, Judith, under the pen-name J. A. Lawrence as short story collections between 1967 and 1978, these little pocket books by Bantam were sometimes better than the TOS episodes they were based on and I consumed them hungrily.

[4] Though actually literally the German market equivalent of the dime novel.

[5] I have assayed original German issues on a couple of occasions, but sadly my German is just not up to it – though it might have been if I’d been lucky enough to discover Rhodan when I was 13 or 14.

[6] Ackerman and his wife, Wendayne – who did most of the translation – repackaged the originals by combining issues and reformatting the English issue layouts something like the pulps they remembered from their youth.

[7] Currently: a Portuguese translation available in Brazil, and translations into Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, Czech, and Dutch – Italian and Finnish translations seem to have sputtered out. There was also a short-lived pirate version in Hebrew!

[8] And long before the two reboot efforts in the 1990s and 2006.

[9] And in fact, Lucas has mentioned Rhodan as an influence – less than Flash Gordon, but big enough to shape the design of some of the space ships.

published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/