#relying too much on his trickery and his wordsmith skills

[diligencekit]

Alright, Im always a little worried with replying on random posts., as I have a certain fear on it. Although I know  that is where this site is for can I  not shake off the feeling from it. You’re welcome. ^^ I’m no expert by all means, but I have studied it.  Zetsubou-teki can be translated to desperate or despairful(ly) too,  anything in that direction of the root word “despair” in adjective form. But I think hopeless does the job fine. After all, the message is clear, he feels so hopeless whether within himself or  the whole situation is so bad that it is impossible to deal with in his eyes. besides, don’t tell me I’m the only one who find it kind of eerie what he says after the black psyche locks? Its the equivalent of “I’m totally fine there is nothing wrong. I have a great life!” Saying  that to himself with a smile. While he just came out of some car crash. and everything is on fire. its depressing, really. Either way, I can understand your fears for that. Its actually one of the reasons why I wanted dive into the original JP version, with an other reason being for analyzation purpose on Kristoph’s Character. I wanted to see how different or how equal the localized version is towards the JP version. To my surprise it does not differ much. saved for jokes and some things are worded differently but boils down to the same things. Although there are some lines that gives  off a different feeling to me and there some small differences. and Of course the speech styles and how some characters come over, personality wise, is different to a degree. Personally I like your views on him.

You are probably one of the very few who doesn’t try to paint him as this oh so powerful evil figure  which I just really can not see him as.

To me its nothing more then a mere facade. He is mischievous trickster... at best,  who is good at his play on words.  He makes you want to believe he is this powerful and big being. But, the truth is opposite of it. Just as much as his “cool” title. Even the game describes him as “sneaky” and  the so called being the “best”  but not nearly as powerful.  after all,  In the end he just a mere defense attorney.

Not some second von karma or a mr. Extraterritorial rights. No matter what he is part of.. Even the judge treats him as one.

diligencekit said: Oh! I like to go in detail with this. Maybe I do make a post. But yes, the JP ver if I would roughly translate it, I believe it would go smth like this “its Dark… A hopeless, cold feeling..” the word that is used here is “Zetsubou-teki”, Zetsubou on itself already means “despair” However its more used as an adjective here duo the “ni” particle, more empathized on the ‘feeling’ part (not the cold one) However, JP sentences are often backwards duo to different sentence structure + order In compression to English. They also don’t nearly use as much additional words as english because often, most of the “mood” goes into the particles. Which can be confusing to languages who dont do this. Its a little too much too explain but.. I can see why local went with ‘full of despair’ here. As I do believe its what it indicates in a certain way. Its about the message after all. (Excuse me for throwing this on it so randomly, but I thought it might could use some Explanation

Oh no, you don’t need to apologize at all. I love learning these kind of things :)

And it’s good to learn the meaning of the scene is very similar in the original Japanese with very similar connotations (i.e. an emphasis on the *despair* within Kristoph/Kirihito). That scene and that line in particular is a very large part of my interpretations/head canons of him and I’ve always been a little scared that I was relying too heavily on a mistranslation/only seeing what I wanted to see in it.