#the kanji letters mean shinigami

[erasedvoice]

Death’s Captive

Inspired by Jim Tadder’s “Nothing to See” photography shoot :]

[kawarikisaki]

Im sure this is nothing new, but I’m currently overthinking the logistics of DeathNote for no real reason, it's just on my mind.

Particularly the fact the most basic mechanics of writing someone's name while thinking of their face.

Part of the rules is that it has to be their real name, but what criteria determines that? Is it their legal name? Is it what their parents call them? If you wanted to kill a trans person with the deathnote would you have to use their dead name or their chosen name?

If a baby were swapped at the hospital after their parents named them and then they lived the rest of their life by a different name; would the deathnote only acknowledge their original name that only belonged to them as an infant or would it accept the name they went by their whole life.

Also, what if the person writing the name has horrible handwriting? Thanks to the way the face part works we know that to some degree the notebook reads the user's intent. So would it work even if the name is completely illegible, or does the name need to be able to be read since spelling matters.

And since spelling matters what happens if you write the correct letter incorrectly? Does stroke order? Japanese is a complicated language, and different kanji can have specific orders that your strokes are meant to be written in. Would that play in? I mean probably not, there's no way to really expect Shinigami to intuitively know what the correct stroke order is for a given Kanji.

Back to the fact that you need the face and name, what if you want to use the deathnote to kill someone who you haven't seen in a while and their face has changed significantly since you saw them. Like if someone wanted to kill an actress but she just got a nose job and doesn't look like that anymore, or someone wants to kill their childhood bully they haven't seen in years something like that. Or sticking with Light' MO, he killed a fair number of criminals that were already in prison by using the information he could obtain from police documents; so what if a criminal were to lose a significant ammount of weight in the time between Light writing their name and the criminal having been imprisoned and now thanks to that weight-loss they are unrecognizably gaunt conpared to their intake photo?

...

Not saying that I have a deathnote or anything, I just have questions about the rules.

[littleeyesofpallas]

Considering I've been back on some of Kubo's word stuff (when have I ever been off it?) I figure I could stand to consolidate some of my old related junk into a hub.

The necessary primer on wtf I'm talking about here for a general English speaking audience, is,

Japanese is written with a mix of kanji[漢字](ideograms borrowed from Chinese) and kana(phonetic characters in one of two types; hiragana[ひらがな] as the standard, and katakana[カタカナ] used variously for emphasis/style and/or foreign words)

Some kanji have different meaning and/or pronunciation based on context

For this reason, in various children's publications a kind of superscript called furigana is used to indicate how to pronounce kanji for school age readers

Kubo utilizes furigana in an unusual way in Bleach...

So, typically when a foreign word is included in line with Japanese text it is phonetically transcribed in katakana, approximating the pronunciation thru Japanese phonetics. Or in some cases written out in roman letters with aforementioned katakana written as furigana. But they're still both the same word with the same pronunciation, just like how furigana is used with Japanese.

But when Kubo uses borrowed language words for the names of techniques and powers in Bleach, he frequently designs them to be written with one "meaning" in kanji, but with a pronunciation in another language. So, for example...

When Kubo introduced the term "Visored" what he actually had in text was the kanji [仮面の軍勢] meaning something like "Army of Masks" or alternatively "Masked Troops" and the pronunciation guide given is Va-i-zer-do[ヴァイザード]. (and the actual roman letter spelling was only confirmed as "Visored" later in the MASKED character book.)

So that's three different written forms for one word 仮面の軍勢, ヴァイザード, and VISORED, with two different meanings, "Masked Troops" and "wearing a visor." See how that got real tricky real fast? And Viz's English translations, with great frequency, did not address these tricky bits well, or indeed at all.

anyway, with that bit of trivia for context(and forgive me but some version of that block of text is going to show up in a few of these old posts too) here's a bunch of times Kubo did that thing I just mentioned, assigning disparate meanings and pronunciations to things...

Shinigami stuff:

[✖]: "Soul Society" itself is actually one of the earliest cases

[✖]: Renji using simple speech to try and communicate more complex ideas

[✖]: Rose's bankai moves, all named after classical orchestral compositions.

(There's generally less of of it here since most is just straight forward Japanese)

Arrancar stuff:

[✖]: A bunch of the names of places in "Hueco Mundo"(Hollow Area)

[✖]: Tiny dump of Chad's vaguely arracnar adjacent stuff

[✖]: a funky case with Gantenbainne

[✖]: That time Neliel referred to Hollows as "Beasts"

[0, 1] [2 & ½s] [3 & ⅓s] [4, 5 & ⅕] [6 & ⅙s] [7-9] [3, 6, 103, 105, 107]: all the named arrancar Resurreccion

[✖]: Tousen's Resurreccion, Grillar Grillo

Quincy Stuff:

[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]: a big list of Quincy terms

[✖]: Quilge's super weird censored speech in Vollständig

[✖]: The term Vollständig, plus the Vollständig names themselves

[A-E] [F-K] [L-Q] [R-V] [W-Z]: The Sternritter's Schrift powers

[✖]: Schatten Bereich and a few other Quincy locations

[✖]: Not really wordplay, just Cang Du being Chinese

Hell stuff:

[✖]: The new arc title itself

[✖]: The little hell jelly blobs Kyoraku comments on

[✖]: Akon's mahjong science attack

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 224 “On The Shores Of Lake Shikoku”

So we’ve a new chapter... and a new fairy tale character to meet.

Meet the new awesome guy who joins the cast and introduces himself in his elegant tattooed birthday suit, pirate Boutarou, real name Oosawa Fusatarou finally delighting our eyes with his awesome look!

But well, let’s not run ahead.

The chapter starts with the promised Ogata colour cover.

The awesome Tsurumineko discovered the text written on it is probably a reference to the Japanese postal service Kuroneko Yamato with ‘Sā ikau! Yamaneko Ogata no hitchū-bin’ (さあ行かう！ ヤマネコ尾形の必中便! “Con on, let’s go! Wildcat Ogata sure-hit service!”) being a put on their courier service (宅急便 “Takkyūbin”). Even the small text ‘Ippotemae e!’ (一歩手前へ! “One step ahead!”) should be a reference to Yamato’s slogan ‘Ippomae e!’ (一歩前へ “One step forward!”).

Of course, twisting the reading a little and adding the chapter’s title ‘Shikotsuko no hotori de’ (支笏湖のほとりで “On the shores of Lake Shikotsu”) to the writing you can have “Come on, let’s go! On the shores of Lake Shikotsu”) which can hint this will be where our characters will converge.

The sentence is also used as a meme due to this commercial ‘Sā ikau ikka o agete Nanbei e’ (さあ行かう一家をあげて南米へ “Come on, let’s go to south America”)

Now… the visual.

The art at first made me think this cover was meant to be part of a series of ‘Golden Kamuy’ early covers presenting the characters and their equipments, then discharged because Ogata’s equipment wasn’t really as noteworthy as the others (I mean, we got from Sugimoto’s presentation the info about the rifle, the bayonet and the belt with the ammunition so the most we could get from Ogata were new info about his uniform and nothing more).

The style of the colouring, has many have noticed, reminds of old manga from ‘60/’70… and, more specifically, reminded me of ‘Cyborg 009’ (サイボーグ009) a beautiful manga series from the great Ishinomori Shōtarō (石ノ森 章太郎) transposed in various anime and movies.

The series is about 9 cyborgs whose uniform is similar to Ogata’s but commonly in a red colour with an extremely long yellow scarf (in some transpositions the uniform is white or blue but the red uniform is the most iconic). Ishinomori has also some covers in which he couloured in yellow the characters, further connecting the visual of this cover to his works.

What’s more as I said ‘Cyborg 009’ is a manga about 9 cyborgs of the ‘00’ series (001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008 and the titular character 009) who were originally people kidnapped and forcefully turned into cyborgs by the evil Black Ghost organization, led by its tyrannical leader Skull (スカール) whose name can also be translitterated as Scar,

to undergo experiments that would allow him to use them as human weapons to promote the production of cyborg warfare. The cyborgs however escaped and rebelled to the Black Ghost organization.

Next to Ogata’s image there’s his name written in a peculiar way. Ogata Hyakunosuke’s name is normally written in kanji as 尾形 百之助 but this time Noda wrote it in Roman letters except for the kanji 百 which means “100”, and in short contains ‘00’ as if to joke he’s part of the ‘00’ series of cyborgs… and from this point is easy to see the parallelism between the Shinigami Tsurumi (whose face can resemble a skull) who’s planning to produce weapons and drugs to gain from war and Skull and his evil organization.

Of course, if we’ve to assume Noda wanted to establish a parallelism between Ogata and the 00 cyborgs we would assume he compared him to the titular character, 009, real name Shimamura Jō (島村 ジョー), a half Japanese, half American boy who was shunned by his peers because he was a half-breed, became a delinquent, escaped from a juvenile detention facility before being captured by Black Ghost.

However as @raggiodilunablr suggested, it’s also possible that Noda is thinking to a parallelism not with 009 but with 001 (100 in reverse).

001, real name Ivan Whisky (イワン·ウイスキー), Russian, a baby born with a severe illness on whom his father Gamo, a famous brain surgeon, performed numerous brain enhancement processes which allowed his mental capacity to far exceed that of a normal human. The implants were inserted against the wishes of Ivan's mother, Erika (who he even kills in the manga). Later on though his father went mad and discharged him in the care of the Black Ghost as he focused on creating other cyborgs. Due to all this Ivan is a highly intelligent, genius level child, talented in scientific analysis and can telepathically converse at an adult level, often working as the other leader of the cyborgs. He has an "ends justify the means" type of nature and he is willing to sacrifice the title character 009 to save the world (though 009 is okay with it). Considering how Noda likes to parallel Ogata to a child, it can be it’s 001 he had in mind.

Anyway I recommend everyone to go read the manga or watch the Cyborg 009 anime series as it’s awesome and a great classic (never mentioning the other characters in it can vaguely parallel our cast of characters in Golden Kamuy).

But now let’s move to the plot.

Ironically Asirpa too decides, same as Ogata, they would have swans for dinner and explains to Sugimoto how they would hunt him. When she explains they use the light of a fire to draw it close Sugimoto, whose arm is still in a sling, worry they would hit the swan.

Honestly the contrast between Sugimoto not hesitating in the slightest to maim or kill people for his goals but yet being shocked by how Asirpa would do the same to animals in order to eat them to survive never fails to impress me. Asirpa first says they wouldn’t hit them but grab them geeently, to then admit they would just bash them in the neck with a piece of wood… because really, Sugimoto, how would you expect just gently grabbing them would cause them to die so that you can eat them?

There’s a minor gag about a swan and Shiraishi both being lead there by the light then noticing each other, the swan about to attack Shiraishi (swans are pretty aggressive despite their beautiful look) before Asirpa clubbed the swan. The group then eat the swan, with another recurring gag of Asirpa offering the head to Sugimoto and Sugimoto not really eating it before we’ll move to the real plot of the story.

Shiraishi had been checking the gold dust that Heita was carrying and had noticed something. Heita had kept samples of the gold dust from every river he went. It turns out gold dust from different rivers have different looks so a skilled gold panner can tell where the gold dust was found just by looking at it.

Now, credits when it’s due, for most of the Heita arc I was assuming Heita was a charlatan, using the lie he found all that gold dust and all his talks about knowing how to find gold to draw there unsuspecting victims and robs them of their money.

It turned out the guy was genuinely an expert and his aims and problems were of different nature and this chapter remarks it.

Anyway we now get a summary of the whole gold story.

A long time ago the Ainu gathered up the gold dust in a single place, feared it would cause disaster and hid it. Time went by and eventually only few men knew about it. Shiraishi assumes those men were the ones killed in what he labels as the ‘Nopperabō jiken’ (のっぺらぼう事件 “Noppera-bou incident”).

Now… originally the men murdered and chopped to the point they were reduced to lump of flesh were assumed to have been 7, one of whom should have been Asirpa’s father. We know Asirpa’s father managed to escape but Shiraishi assumes 7 men were still killed. It’s possible the men were 7… albeit it’s also possible, since those Ainu were chopped into pieces, their remains scattered, that the men murdered were 6. I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s relevant how many were killed, we only know Ariko’s father was among the deceased.

Shiraishi suggests that it’s possible though that other people (in additions to the ones who died) knew were the gold was, which is why Noppera-bou and Co wanted to move the gold, so as to better hide it.

Shiraishi points out in the end it seems Noppera-bou did all the work by himself… which is a huge assumption. They could have moved the gold together and then those men could have been killed so as to keep the secret on where the gold was.

Anyway, no matter if the moving was done by 1 people or 8, Shiraishi’s theory that it shouldn’t have been moved far is solid enough as moving all that gold would be troublesome even for 8 people.

Shiraishi suggests if there’s Ainu who knew where the gold previously was, those Ainu should have ben residing near the previous hideout for the gold. Shiraishi says if they could find out which type of gold dust was hidden there they could figure out from where the gold came.

Sugimoto points out either way they can’t do it as the gold is HIDDEN, meaning they can’t check it to figure out where it was taken from and Asirpa agrees he’s being an idiot but Shiraishi proves again he’s all but that.

Shiraishi is awesome people, please, remember about it!

In fact Shiraishi remembers that Tanigaki told them Noppera-bou ran away with part of the gold but then his boat capsized and the gold dusk sank.

Sugimoto remembers this happened in Lake Shikotsu.

Asirpa wonders if Shiraishi is suggesting to drop searching for the skins as they had always done and start searching for the sunken gold dust.

Shiraishi points out since getting the skins might be completely impossible this could be another way to approach the problem but when Sugimoto sums up their new course of action...

Sugimoto states he thinks each step is too hard and, as to make matter worse Asirpa points out the very first step is impossible for them as Lake Shikotsu is the deepest lake in Hokkaido so they can’t dive in it and recover the gold Noppera-bou lost… and here it’s were Asirpa is missing a tiny yet extremely relevant detail.

In fact a flashback starts, reporting what happened one year ago at Lake Shikoku, hinting the convicts escaped around one year ago.

Heita went on a boat on Lake Shikoku with someone else. That someone else wants to dive in the lake and is employing Heita to get some help. Said someone else is the Pirate Boutarou, mentioned by Kadokura in the previous chapter and whose real name is Ōsawa Fusatarō.

We get some explanations on how this guy is an amazing diver, who can stay underwater for 30 minutes, has giant feet and palmed hands. As a child he was employed as one of the workers who ferries lumber down the rivers refining his skill in the water then moved to just pull people into the water, drown them and strip them of valuables, which later caused Ōsawa Fusatarō to gain the nicknames of ‘Kanbō no kaizoku’ (監房の海賊 “Pirate of the prison”) and ‘Kaizoku Bōtarō’  (海賊 房太郎 “Pirate Bōtarō”), taking advantage of how the kanji 房 which in his name is read as ‘Fusa’ can also read as ‘Bō’ when meaning “prison cell”.

As Boutarou surpasses the current world record for longer immersion and deepest diving Heita considers escaping, hoping he dies as he thinks it would be impossible to accomplish such a feat, a clear hint he wasn’t with him out of his own will.

We go back to our trio and what Shiraishi knows and spurred him to make such a theory and that Asirpa was missing.

Asirpa was wrong into thinking no one could dive deep into lake Shikoku and find the lost gold as, among the samples of could dust Heita possessed, there’s one belonging to ‘Kaizoku-san’ (海賊さん “Mister Pirate) coming from Lake Shikoku.

While the images show us Boutarou finding the boat Noppera-bou used in the deep of the lake, Shiraishi explains this ‘Kaizoku-san’ is one of the escaping convicts, a particularly tough guy… and then Shiraishi shows, turning around the package containing the sample, that Heita had already identified the gold. It came from Toppu River (徳富川), Saru River (沙流川), Sorachi River (空知川) and Shiriuchi River (知内川).

Long story short, what Shiraishi is suggesting is not that they’ll change their modus operandi, but that they’ll hunt that guy by checking those rivers.

The last page is cut in two panels, one shows Sugimoto, with his eyes white the way they whiten when he thinks at murdering someone saying they could catch a pirate if they’ll go to those rivers and, in the other panel, the flashback of the face of Boutarou, smiling underwater as he had found Noppera-bou’s boat, hinting to how Sugimoto and Boutarou will likely fight.

It’s worth to note Sugimoto’s arm is still broken so there’s to wonder if we’ll have a time skip in which it’ll heal or Sugimoto will have to face Boutarou while being at disadvantage. Hijikata also might be converging on him so we’ll see.

It’s also noteworthy how, through all the chapter, Vasily was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t really get Noda’s plans for him.

I take Vasily and Ogata will have a shoot down, but so far Vasily merely seems a character forcefully added to the group just for this, his contribute to the plot too small to be noteworthy (yeah, Vasily did something useful here and there, but it could be easily removed by the plot with very minor changes without anyone noticing) so his presence seems mostly forced.

Anyway as I’m a visual person let’s analyze the situation through a map.

You can see the 4 rivers Toppu River (徳富川), Saru River (沙流川), Sorachi River (空知川) and Shiriuchi River (知内川) Heita noted down in blue. Shiriuchi river is pretty far from the others even if, notably, the gold fever in Hokkaido started there. My guess would be the hideout for the gold should have been located around one of the other three rivers as they’re closer and it would easier to bring the gold there.

Now the river closer to Tomakomai (苫小牧市) which you can see in red and where the Noppera-bou incident took place, is Saru river so maybe the previous hideout was there.

Lake Shikotsu (支笏湖), in pale blue, is not so far from Tomakomai.

Now I left always in blue Uryu river (雨竜川), where the Sugimoto’s group is, while I coloured in red the other cities/places which are relevant for us.

Otaru (小樽市), where Asirpa’s Kotan is but also where Hijikata’s group is and where Tsurumi’s headquarters are located, Barato (茨戸), the last place in which Tsurumi was seen, Noboribetsu (登別市), the place near which Ariko’s village is (Ariko’s father was one of the men who died in the Noppera-bou’s incident) and in which Toni Anji’s men were, Asahikawa (旭川市), where the 7th division headquarters are located, Kabato Prison (樺戸監獄), which is actually located in Tsukigata (月形町) and from which Pirate Boutarou’s men come, Kushiro (釧路市), near which Kirawus’ village is and, although I think by now it won’t be relevant anymore, Abashiri (網走市).

I’m not really sure if all this can turn to be useful but I think it’s a good thing to have an idea of where everything is.

Now… unless the next chapter will deal with Tsurumi, the transitional chapters might have ended and the next one could start the Boutarou’s arc. As Hijikata has just learnt he’s on the move, he might try to converge on him. Now… there’s to wonder if Heita managed to pass the info about where the gold could be to Boutarou. I’ll go and speculate he did so, which would mean Boutarou would try and inspect one of the rivers Heita mentioned. As Toppu river is the closest to Kabato prison and, conveniently to Uryu’s river (where Sugimoto is), there are chances Boutarou and Sugimoto will meet there. It’s hard to say if Hijikata’s group will manage to get there before or after Sugimoto. We don’t exactly know where they’re on Uryu river but the distance both groups have to go through to get on Toppu river could be similar and if Hijikata equips himself and his men with horses they could get there faster… though Sugimoto could try to use a boat to run down the river so… hard to say who’ll get there sooner.

Tsurumi is currently the closer to Kabato prison, so there are high chances if he was informed about Boutarou’s moves he might reach him before the other two.

We’ll see.

What’s noteworthy though is that although Boutarou seems a vicious criminal he’s also one with a working brain and with a group of them below him. I honestly doubt he can become the leader of another group chasing the gold, it’s more likely he’ll end up joining one of the pre-existent groups searching the gold… if he and his men survive the meeting with one of those over mentioned groups.

This chapter also remarks who’s the other person who has a working brain.

Shiraishi.

Although assumed to be dumb right from the start, Shiraishi is actually quite intelliget and the proof is he’s the ‘Escape King’ a guy capable to invent always new and succesfull ways to escape from prison.

The trick that caused people to think Shiraishi is dumb wasn’t Shiraishi inability to think but Shiraishi’s tendency not too worry too much about things, causing him to act in a dumb way most of the time.

When Shiraishi thinks things through he’s actually amazingly smart and Noda hinted at it in many subtle ways. In addition to the various escape plans Shiraishi came up with, we see how Shiraishi came up with the plan to locate Hijikata and how he managed to trick him by handing him a fake copy of a tattooed skin, how well he can collect info (he’s the one discovering about Nihei and Henmi), when Wakayama proposes betting with dices he’s the one wanting to check the dices, he is the one to realize the nonsense of Tsurumi’s plan (it would be better to share the gold,), how Sugimoto has a person he loves back at home, how Hijikata planned to use Asirpa to promote his war by having a newspaper write an article about her, how he understood in Abashiri Kiro might have harmed Inkarmat and Ogata might have shoot Sugimoto, how Kiro lied to them, how Asirpa grew through her travel in Karafuto and what she planned to do when she escaped and how they do need a plan if they want to take part to the gold hunt.

While Sugimoto was just ‘let’s wait for Hijikata and Tsurumi to argue and then snatch the skins from them’ Shiraishi went and thought up to a strategy they could put into action.

Although Shiraishi can still act silly and careless, he’s starting to think things more and more, and proving he has a fine brain, a brain fine enough he could be a strategist.

Really, Shiraishi is awesome! I can’t wait what he’ll do next!

[13eyond13]

(1/2) ok so I have some thoughts about shinigami eyes and you seem to be a good person to ask about that kind of stuff so?? how important do you think it is to write a person's name in the death note in their native language's alphabet? I'd imagine it'd be important for japanese names cos of the kanji and their different meanings but technically could you write a japanese name in roman letters and would it still work? what about arabic or russian names? [...]

Hello! Boy, good question.

So I checked over the rules again just now, and seems like the only ones that pertain to this stuff are the following two about spelling the names correctly:

-If a Death Note owner accidentally misspells a name four times, that person will be free from being killed by the Death Note. However, if they intentionally misspell the name four times, the Death Note owner will die.

-The person whose name was misspelled four times on purpose will not be free of death by a Death Note.

Obviously being able to spell the names correctly is very important, but I would imagine the shinigami eyes would translate the names into whatever is most comprehensible for the person using them rather than anything else. They would be fairly useless as a hunting tool otherwise, and we don’t ever see any of the characters with shinigami eyes struggling to read each other’s names, even if they are of entirely different nationalities and languages. I don’t think the Death Note is really picky about anything like which human alphabet is used, it just wants the names to be spelled correctly and the person’s face to be pictured accurately at the same time. I agree that it would definitely be much trickier with things like getting the proper Kanji for the Japanese names though, so that would be like playing the game with the difficulty level set on expert mode, for sure!

[chouhatsumimi]

Words 11/20/17

Today’s words are from Black Butler volumes 21+22, with a splash of No.6 novel volume 1. I’ve finished four volumes of manga in the past four days, that’s pretty exciting!  (Also you can tell I have no social life right now)

from No.6 (the novels), volume 1

仰向け　あおむけ　face up Kinda interesting that the ‘ao’ kanji just means ‘face up’, when it sounds like 青, like looking up at the blue sky.

目がける　めがける　to aim at     (Shion threw a pillow(?) at Nezumi)

仇　あだ  foe, enemy, rival, resentment, grudge, harm, injury In context it was used as ‘this characteristic had turned into a weakness/con’ Looks a little like 尼 (あま）... or maybe not, just kidding.

敬遠　けいえん pretending to respect someone while in fact staying distant, keeping at arms length, giving a wide berth   What a useful word.

必需品　ひつじゅひん　necessities, necessary article  (Having a) bicycle was a necessity for Shion.

from Black Butler volumes 21+22

倅　せがれ　son (humble language); punk, brat Ciel’s dad’s kouhai was using this term for Ciel to his face, and the interesting combination of humble but disparaging language was readily apparent.

淑やか　しとやか　graceful; ladylike; modest; gentle; polite; quiet; well-mannered; refined (behavior) (Who doesn’t like Ciel in a dress)  Sebastian was telling Ciel to be more しとやか.

小バエ　こばえ　small household fly (e.g. fruit fly) Just in case you need to distinguish between your household flies.

旋回　せ���かい　turning (an aircraft or ship) This blog now has a search function in the menu because I know I’ve seen this word before in Karneval, but I guess it didn’t make it on the blog.

堪能　たんのう　enjoying; satisfaction; satiation; having one's fill (of) (Apparently this is also an ateji reading of the kanji.) Found in the sentence “ご堪能くださいませ”  Black Butler has so much fun formal language :D

えげつない　dirty, vulgar, nasty

棺桶　かんおけ　coffin, casket   The kanji mean “coffin” and “tub”

ちょっかい  meddling; interference; making a pass at someone I suspect this was the word that described young Satou in Ajin but I can’t quite remember.

奇抜　きばつ　novel; original; striking; strange; eccentric; fantastic​ Describing Ciel’s servants.

不精ヒゲ　ぶしょうひげ  (not ‘mushou’)  stubble; unshaven face; beard one has because one is too lazy to shave; 5-o'clock shadow​ Nickname for the cook XD

牽制　けんせい　check, constraint

未練　みれん　lingering affection, attachment, regret  I’m going to say it’s a good thing that I remember specifically that Ogura says “miren nado nai” in Ajin. I think the entire script is burned into my brain

渇望　かつぼう　craving, longing, thirsting A similar word to 未練

天職　てんしょく　vocation, life work, calling  (not to be confused with 転職） It’s sort of ironic because one character says that being a shinigami can’t be your calling; but the kanji sort of mean ‘heaven’s work’, so... that’s kind of what shinigami do ^^

寛ぎ　くつろぎ　ease, relaxation, comfort, unwinding Used in the sentence どうぞおくつろぎください.

忝い・辱い　かたじけない　grateful, indebted Aha, the kanji either mean ‘grateful’ or ‘embarass’  I swear I’ve heard this word before.

持ちこたえる（持ち堪える）　もちこたえる　to hold out (e.g. against an attack)   I assumed it was ‘kotaeru’ like answer, but the kanji is 堪える (usually just ‘taeru’).

目まぐるしい　めまぐるしい　hectic, bewildering, bustling, dizzy

いっそ　rather, sooner, preferably   I swear I’ve seen this recently too

晩餐　ばんさん　(fancy word for) dinner

腕が鳴る　うでがなる　to be itching to put one’s skills to use Literally ‘my arm is ringing’

採寸　さいすん　taking measurements (for clothes)

心機一転　しんきいってん　turning over a new leaf

素手　すで　bare hand Now that I think about it, this might be in Ajin too when Sokabe is saying that Tosaki always wears gloves. Nope never mind, I checked. 

言語道断　ごんごどうだん　outrageous; preposterous; scandalous; inexcusable; absurd; execrable

雁字搦め　がんじがらめ　bound hand and foot; hedged in (e.g. by restrictions); immobile It’s kinda funny because it’s talking about the character whose feet were bound, but it’s not speaking literally in context. Literally “wild goose letter bind” ??

生産性　せいさんせい　productivity WHERE HAS THIS WORD BEEN ALL THIS TIME  I want to use this always

幼気　いたいけ　innocent, helpless, tender  (sounds a little like ‘itai kei’)

冷血漢　れいけつかん　cold-blooded person, heartless (Literally ‘cold blood China’ >_>) should develop some 親身　しんみ　relation, relative, kind, cordial

貶す　けなす　to speak ill of (haha, it was also in Monster)

拝謁　はいえつ　having an audience with someone of very high social standing (e.g. the emperor)   (They were talking about the Queen of England).  (Actually that’s funny, today one of my teachers told me about how she served tea to the emperor when he visited my current town three years ago!)

非凡　ひぼん　prodigy, rare, unique, extraordinary

待遇　たいぐう　treatment; reception; service​

片田舎　かたいなか　back country; remote countryside​ (aka where I live, hahaha)  I wonder why it’s ‘kata’?