#originally i'd been putting off editing the translation in for quite a while

[transtranslations]

Empty by 小梅むすび (Koumemusubi)

(continued from part 1 here)

Please go and make sure you give the original creator some likes and bookmarks at the link above!! They deserve it!

Thank you for reading!

[tashaj4de]

A random ramble about Royal Scandal's Mermaid Theater

BEFORE READING FURTHER

If you're actually reading this- this is a comment I originally put on the official upload of Mermaid Theater on the Royal Scandal channel that I just wanted to put into my blog as well. This is more of the rambles of a fan who likes the series a lot, so I apologize to anyone reading this! You might get a little confused since I was typing off the top of my head.

Now for my ramble

Alright, time to type down the new MV impressions! First things first though, I said it in the song release but I love how Chima sounds here! Her voice really suits what I imagined Nina sounding like~ I wasn't sure it would since in her other covers, her voice felt too high, but here it sounds just right!

Now for the actual thoughts aaaaa the new story and MV were certainly worth the wait! I had a feeling the "Prince" for Nina would be Albert, and now that's confirmed… hooboi… her heartbreak… on to more of my long block of thoughts!

I was surprised to see Alam here! Which means this song takes place before Magic Ring Night, before he was taken over by the ring. And the latter half of the MV takes place during Bittersweet! So now we have a bit more of a timeline of when each song takes place in their world- or at least, the timeline we've been following so far? Which also means Beast in the Beauty takes place after Bittersweet! (And I'd say that since Bittersweet's story mentioned that Chelsea had already confessed to Lewis, thus her forlorn and "muddled" singing in the halls, I can assume Cherry Hunt is before Bittersweet! …assuming that's the song the confession is in, that is)

And since we're on the topic of characters! I already knew that Nina's story would be based on/referencing The Little Mermaid, so seeing it put out so nicely in the MV? Aaa…. but I wanted to talk about the crew aboard Albert's ship! We saw quite a few of them with visible faces/eyes this time around, so I wonder if we'll see them around again sometime? And I love how we can see how well-loved Albert is because of how his own guard outright cried with relief upon finally finding him in the village HAHAHA

Now, on to talking about the story! Since the story clarifies that Nina did not kiss the prince to resuscitate him, just sang to him instead- (Editing because maybe auto translation made me misread the story, but rereading it made me realize that she likely DID give Albert the "kiss of life" but she thought he wasn't waking up so she started singing) it makes me think… is this why Albert was attracted to Chelsea's singing? Because it reminded him of Nina's singing, which awoke him after being rescued by Nina? I'm a little sad that he didn't even catch sight of her within the village though… and I gotta love how supportive the village was of Nina ; v ; And Alam was the one who gave the dress? Honestly, it doesn't feel like Alam was a "poor" merchant at all if he was able to travel so far to a village that didn't allow anyone under 15 out of it! I love how much more this makes all the characters connected to each other though… and now, to talk about another aspect of the story!

Since Alam was specifically looking for "divas", could it be that this was Albert's way of searching for Nina, but he just ended up encountering Chelsea and heard her while searching? But for Nina's heart to be broken when she saw Albert staring at Chelsea when she was on stage… the poor girl… then she cried in the garden alone, only to encounter the same girl who attracted the one she herself loved… I don't blame her for running away, honestly. I can imagine the thoughts that ran through her head being something like "She's so pretty and kind, no wonder the prince fell for her" and being unable to stand the thought, she ran away- leaving a (broken) slipper behind. Which is interesting to me because it's just like a Cinderella reference- which again makes me think that the reason why Alam was sent out to invite Divas/Singers was to search for the one whose voice Albert heard (Nina's voice).

And with her heartbreak, seeing Albert's attraction to Chelsea and even briefly meeting the woman herself… falling into the ocean but not wanting to try to save herself despite it being an accident, wanting to just "become foam bubbles"? Definitely a Little Mermaid reference right there! After all, she must have thought that rather than see him be with anyone else, she'd rather not see it at all…

But then! Silence… and the moment where her eyes burst open and there's an intake of breath, seeing that someone was reaching out to her. And of all people it was, it was her Prince (Albert)! Could the reason she opened her eyes- and became startled- be because she heard him calling out to her, or was it instinct? Did she sense his presence and that's why she opened her eyes? She's a really good swimmer after all, and she's someone who even had dolphins help her bring Albert out of the water, so it wouldn't be surprising to me if she had that kind of senses while underwater.

Also I'd say that her being a good swimmer, someone who was able to rescue Albert amidst a storm, really emphasizes how not swimming out after she fell off the cliff really shows how much she was heartbroken and possibly wanted to die in that moment…

So! Since Albert was there to rescue her, I'd like to think that THIS moment is after Chelsea leaves with Lewis (since on Bittersweet, we also had a moment of "silence" before Lewis comes and declares he's there to pick her up). I can imagine he must have been walking around after Chelsea left with Lewis, and he saw Nina's fall- no idea if that would be within the palace, or on the beach, but either way we can see the results of that walk!

And since Albert rescued her… we see Nina, despite her heartbreak, falling in love with him all over again. So even if this is "her only chance", she took up the courage to confess to him--- and the MV ends. So we don't know how Albert responded! Whether he might've recognized her voice, or rejected her, or made her a singer in the concert halls of the palace… we won't know the answer until the next MV that continues the storyline comes out, I suppose!

And that's it for my blocks of text! Thank you Royal Scandal Team and Machita Chima for this lovely MV and song! I can't wait to see more of the Royal Scandal story, as well as what new things we might see in the Vocaloid version of the MV if/when it comes out!

Subtitles

I also would like to comment once again that I'm sad there's no English subtitles HAHAHA if only because I barely know any Japanese, though I can decipher some words (and I did see a translation of the song previously when it came out as part of one of the Royal Scandal Albums). I wonder if Royal Scandal would hire or find anyone to translate the song to add subtitles to not just this song but previous MVs (coughMagicRingNightcough) anytime soon? I'm mostly just thinking that because I like watching them on the Royal Scandal channel without trying to find other sources of translation…

[astranauticus]

post mortem for my orv animatic bc i have lots of thoughts and yall are gonna hear all of them (that is a threat)

first is the obligatory special thanks/plagiarism declaration section but a lot of the shots in this are inspired by the original changgwi lyric video which like. please watch it there's a reason this song is a classic animatic song on bilibili like the music is good but the video definitely helped. also speaking of bilibili, special shoutout to this arknights chongyue animatic that introduced me to the song that will haunt the next 8 months of my life!

the original inspiration was the thought that the verse of the spirit telling the story of its own death felt very yjh coded but it took like another week of stewing on it to have the idea of using the final chorus for the dkos arc which was the moment i decided i have to actually make this thing

going strictly by when i started putting pen to paper (pencil to ipad screen? whatever) this took almost exactly 5 months since i created the first drafts in february but the first 3 months ish from february until may were also my school semester so. most of the progress (id say about >60%) was done in the last two months of me working on this every moment i wasnt at work (or playing project sekai, for some reason)

also! funny little detail but counting the drafts and some discarded frames my procreate stack for this thing has exactly 49 artworks in it! neat little easter egg i guess (yeah 51 wouldve been more fitting but whatever)

this fully slipped by both me (at 2am) and my friend whom i sent the finished version to (fighting the flu) but in the final edit i didn't actually include the second half of the last lyric?? it's 'i will take you to the mountain god' i apparently just wrote 'i will take you' and never finished the rest LMAO

speaking of the lyrics i dont speak korean and im not a huge fan of most english translations of this song that exists so on multiple occasions i was so tempted to just use the chinese cover someone on bilibili did because then i'd at least be confident i know where the fucking line breaks were (there's one line at the end where im pretty sure i didn't edit on the line breaks correctly but that was more of an intentional compromise because the timings would've been off otherwise. anyway) tbh the only reason i didnt do that is the atmosphere and delivery of the original song is. really unbeatable like the cover's also pretty good but it doesn't quite achieve the same effect

also speaking of things i fucked up im aware i drew sys in the wrong outfit for the dkos fight but like. ok full disclosure my orv reference folder is a complete mess (theres like 400+ images in there. for some reason) so on net ive gotten character outfits wrong while working on this thing like at least 3 times bc id just grab a random webtoon screenshot from my folder and go w it. it's just that by the time i realised i fucked up i'd already finished drawing all of sys's frames and i was too lazy to go back and change all of them LMAO

anyway yeah some other random things i wanted to whinge about:

there's a lot of effects i wanted to do that didn't quite come across due to. lack of skill/time/patience/all of the above but the one im really annoyed about is the yhk postchorus bit with the 3 circles bc. first off i think i drew those while halfway dozing off on the train to school once because uh. yeah

anyway poor drawing aside id really wanted to recreate the sort of. drawn-in effect on the circles and lines that the original lyric video had but i could NOT for the life of me figure out a way to execute that in capcut so. here we are (also you cant put transitions on overlays in capcut so that's why those also looked so bad. youre welcome)

honestly my timeline for this in capcut looks pretty ridiculous bc if you want to do word by word animations/effects you need to pay for the pro version so my workaround was just to have like five thousand text layers with 1-2 words on it each (do not recommend btw)

speaking of the text im a moron so i kinda forgot to account for the text when drawing frames and wow you can tell. yeah next time im just hand writing the text fuck this

and i have some more thoughts that are. mild to moderate webtoon spoilers so past this will be the spoiler warning line

__________________________________________________________

actually my original plan was to upload this the day dkos dies in the webtoon but a. i genuinely did think it was gonna be yesterday like i dont pay for the early access episodes so i was just kinda going off orvtwt LMAO b. i could feel myself burning out on this like the last few frames i drew for this were fucking dogshit so i figured either i finish it soon or i wont finish it at all

i will probably still draw something for dkos' death day though for those who celebrate (basically when i was thumbnailing for one of the frames in this i ended up with one that didnt fit the video aspect ratio at all but still looks pretty good so im promoting it to a full drawing. so look forward to that)

like for an idea of how fucking sick of this shit i was by like. last week pretty much like for the last few frames of the dkos fight i straight up forgot to draw dkos' wings and had to add them in halfway through editing last night. like that's how fucking out of it i was by then lmaoo

looking back its actually kinda funny cuz the whole put this up when dkos dies thing was my plan since february but i had literally no way of knowing when that would be especially since the webtoon stopped going with the novel chapter numbers exactly (i could.. guesstimate but my original estimation was in june so yknow. real useful) but like i can find evidence of me panicking about that deadline since may. why did i do that

given that deadline i knew i cant really include stuff from the novel past the dkos arc but man. the amount of times i wanted to use something from later (ESPECIALLY 1863 arc). i actually have another idea i want to test out thats like full epilogue spoilers partially because working on this for so long made me realise i really want to make more epilogue content <- what

yknow how i mentioned discarded frames yeah i had to draw dkos' death 3 times because the first two compositions just never quite panned out. i mean the current one is also pretty unreadable with the colour scheme but trust me the previous ones were way worse christ alive

[kitsu-katsu]

On kiribaku becoming canon and their evidence:

So I posted this on reddit earlier, but wanted to have it here where more KRBK shippers are, since I just ended up compiling a lot more than I thought I would.

Fair warning: A pretty big text with a compilation of kiribaku moments ahead.

We would all love kiribaku being canon, and I think it's not as much of a longshot as some may lead you to believe.

Honestly, if one of them was a girl, this would most certainly be canon, like, just in the anime we have:

Them becoming friends slowly in the background, leaving us with good development between them that is so seamless it can hit you hard once you notice how close they've become if you hadn't noticed before.

Them arriving and leaving the pool together while walking in the sunset.

They support and compliment each other (both on personality and quirks, like come on).

Kirishima can just lean on Bakugou or side hug him all the time and Bakugou lets him with no problem, which considering who we're talking about is a pretty big thing.

Kirishima can seem even more agitated than Deku about Bakugou being taken, and Deku is the one who idolized him since childhood.

The whole "It has to be you" thing and the precious hand holding (including that little scene after the rescue, where Kiri tries to grab Baku's hand again).

Kirishima bought expensive night vision googles in case they were useful for the rescue even though they had Yaomomo with them (this boy goes through extremes just to ensure his boyfriend's best friend's safety)

Kirishima is officially the one Bakugou considers an equal, and considering his conflicting inferiority and superiority complexes (making him perpetually place people as above him or beneath him) is vital information.

Kirishima is esentially Bakugou's first real friend (as Deku was considered more of an incomprehensible nuisance and his childhood troop seemed more like his followers who just put him up on a pedestal and followed what he did).

Kirishima has jumped in front of danger for Bakugou's sake quite a bit of times (including a time in the movie).

Kirishima is a central piece in Bakugou's character development.

Bakugou was the one who told Kirishima he was strong and gave him his confidence back, reminding him of what he said at the start of their friendship.

Kirishima unlocked fucking UNBREAKABLE because of Bakugou's encouragement.

Going to extra stuff:

Bakugou's favourite hobbie is hiking, and we're shown he takes Kirishima with him sometimes, thing he doesn't seem to do with other characters.

The whole festival thing, with the narrator outright assuming Bakugou must have given his coat to a pretty girl who was cold, only for it to be revealed in another picture that he gave it to Kirishima because as usual, he didn't have a shirt on.

On the movie Bakugou could have taken anyone to I-Island and took Kirishima as his plus one. They share a room. Kirishima bought suits for both of them, with the most detailed one with white roses being for Bakugou, and they decide to go to the party together.

In a BNHA Smash connected directly to the movie, Midoriya notices the white roses in Bakugou's suit and notes that they mean deep respect and "I'm the one for you", which prompts Bakugou to send an explosion his way (not to Kirishima who gave him the suit, mind you), which makes the flowers turn red (from blood), after which Mineta appears to say that red roses mean "beautiful and passionate love".

They are usually seen together in merch stuff.

There's this tumblr post talking about japanese fan's reactions to one of Horikoshi's drawings which I find at least hilarious:

https://exbrodokills.tumblr.com/post/187710597637/here-it-is

There are discussions regarding Kirishima's character sheet and the translation of him liking "tough guys" (here's a podt by aitaikimochi explaining the meaning of the translation: https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171127708911/amp) where even translator such as aitaikimochi have gotten into, and they have mentioned that there's a japanese stereotype of a type of gay guy who is obsessed with "manly behaviour" and usually stay away from women, prefering tough guys instead, which is interesting to say the least.

Some of the light novel episodes which show more slice of life moment feature some good kiribaku moments, with a prominent one being this one wich details their study date (it seriously seems like fan fiction, not even kidding, and this is supposed to be sort of canon):

https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171236111166/amp

Also there's a chapter where Kirishima tells Fatgum about Bakugou being extremely happy, and another one where they are arm wrestling between classes and they cheer for one another heavily.

(Honesly, just go through aitaikimochi's whole kiribaku tag, there are some pretty interesting things there)

Here are some analysis on their possible coding, if you guys are interested:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dxO6Y0yK_wxOJDmRsBYvsVWKwsH7tKc92skxJ--R1m4/edit?usp=drivesdk

(Bakugou's one link can be found at the end of that one)

And in BNHA Smash, there are quite a lot of things, and we must not forget that the whole thing still gets approved by Horikoshi before being published, some of my favourite things are:

Kirishima inviting Bakugou to spend christmas together, with the translators noting christmas in Japan to be a romantic holiday in the same panel.

In one issue, Jirou falls for Kiri and him being oblivious just leaves her for Bakugou.

Once Bakugou becomes a shoujo boy after being his with a quirk and just involuntarily talks in flirt, and in one moment Kirishima outright flirts back.

Bakugou works his ass off to repay Kirishima for the night vision googles they used in the rescue.

Kirishima is literally described as the chicken soup for Bakugou's soul!

An interesting thing I found out is that in the chapter where all of 1A minus Bakugou turn into animals, one scene originally had Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous of Kaminari and Midoriya petting Tsuyu (as a cat - yes I know, a cat) and giving all their attention to her, however, Horikoshi himself changed that scene, noting he didn't think their character relations worked well in that scene, and made it so that the one that ended up in smash contains Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous because Todoroki (as a koala) has climbed up Bakugou's torso and won't let go. I saw this all in a tumblr post a few months ago, which showed the original scene in a book (I think it was in italian and was translates below) but I can't currently find the link, sorry, if someone finds it, It'd be appreciated if you could reblog with said link.

And in regards to meta stuff, the show already has some LGBT characters in it, with Magne and Tiger being trans and Toga being bisexual, so it's not as much of a lost cause to hope for this as it would initially seem.

(Please kirimina shippers, don't take offence because of this, it isn't my intention to insult your ship, I simply want to analize what has been given to us, so please try to take this lightly):

We should also take into consideration Krishima's first version in the sort of "beta" for the manga (where Midoriya was Yamikumo).

His character sheet mentions he's quite the delinquent and entered UA to impress a girl. Obviously his character evolved tremendously since then, but the girl was most probably intended to be Mina's equivalent. This was later changed to him liking "tough guys"/"hard liners" and his thing with Mina became more of an "I admired your bravery and heroic spirit when in middle school even if I hardly knew you", later seeing each other and establishing more of a little friendship. However, it hasn't really moved further from there, and Kirishima has already established much stronger bonds with our favourite exploding boy. All changes in characters are made for a reason, and Horikoshi clearly changed his mind on Kirishima's motives for wanting to be a hero and his relationship with Mina.

So yeah, all in all, this ship is great, it's precious, adorable, helps both characters grow, is balanced and has good chemistry. So even if after all these things they don't become officially canon, we still have so much canon material for them in the present I'd honestly still be happy, these dorks make me smile and melt my heart, so I hope they both have good endings.