#in JPN and ENG

[loosesodamarble]

The Truth About Marx's Magic

Tagging @luminouslion because Melissa is the resident Marx lover.

Memory Magic or Communication Magic? That is the question.

Now because Marx is a character that's pretty far into the background most of the time, he doesn't get many chances to appearance use his magic. Let's review what we know of Marx's Magic.

Marx can read/project the memories of others as well as force them to speak truthfully.

Marx's memory reading is infallible. (Do take the statement with a grain of salt since we've only seen this spell used to its fullest twice[-ish]. And the spell was only used on people who had their memories protected/sealed and not altered in some way.)

One of Marx's spell can erase the most recent memories of an individual (although the spell never successfully landed on the intended target [Yami] so we never actually saw it used).

Marx's magic can be used to project his visual image and his voice to others (primarily Julius!) in order to perform long distance communication without the use of a magic tool.

The image and sound projection isn't limited to one-on-one either. In episode 151 of the anime, it's called out that it's thanks to Marx's magic specifically that allows the whole kingdom to view the captains' battle. (Note: this is an anime original event and will be coming up later.)

So Marx's magic deals both with memories and communicating with others. It's been referred to as Memory and Communication (to most people's recollection from what I've gathered). But which is it exactly?

The answer?

NEITHER! It's neither Memory nor Communication Magic.

Let me explain.

The first place to look for information about Marx's magic attribute was the original manga. Luckily for me, I have both the original Japanese volumes as well as the English translations of the manga (up to volume 35 in JPN and up to 32 in ENG as of the writing of this post).

However... Looking through both the Japanese and English, I found out that while explanations and references to the powers of Marx's magic were made, there was never any instance of Marx calling out a spell name and with it his magic attribute (as is customary when a spell is written in the manga).

But then I remembered an ace I had.

Volume 16.5: Marque-page de Grimoire. It's essentially a databook for the series up to volume 16 (thus being 16.5). And in this volume we get profiles and information about various characters in Black Clover, which includes their place of origin, their likes, their ability parameters, and of course their magic attribute. And what is Marx's attribute listed as in his profile?

記憶交信。(pronounced ki-oku kou-shin)

Okay, I know most people on my blog don't understand Japanese so this means nothing to you.

記憶交信 isn't a singular word unto itself but two words put together. 記憶 means "memory, recollection, remembrance." 交信 means "telecommunication, correspondence." So essentially it's "memory correspondence" magic. And that tracks with what Marx's magic is capable of: it effects and interacts with memories as well as allows for long distance correspondence.

Or perhaps a better way to put it is that Marx's magic allows memories to be communicated. Memories are communicated when he uses the spell that reads them. So when Marx projects image and sound, it's as though he's sharing his immediate, in-the-making memories. If that makes sense...

Anyways.

I can further back this up with content from the anime. Specifically the movie. Remember how Conrad stole Marx's magic? Well look at what Conrad says about it.

記憶交信。

But that's in Japanese. So what's the actual English translation?

In the English subtitles, Marx's magic is referred to as Memory Exchange Magic.

See again the movie.

Or we can look to episode 38 of the anime.

As for why it's called "Memory Exchange" and not "Memory Correspondence" or "Memory Communication" Magic, it's simply a matter of some translation liberties. "Exchange" is a synonym for "conversation." You have an exchange when you talk with someone. And when you have a conversation, you communicate your thoughts with that other person. Thus the use of "exchange" rather than "correspondence/communication" in Marx's magic attribute to convey what it does.

But if it was always Memory Exchange Magic, why do people recall Marx's magic being just "Memory" or "Communication" Magic?

Is it a case of the subtitles saying "Memory Exchange" but the dub saying only "Memory"? No actually. If you listen to the dub of episode 38 and the movie, they will say "Memory Exchange" directly. (I'd share the sound clip myself but I have zero idea how to isolate a snippet of video and all that so anyone reading this will have to go see for themselves that I'm not making this up.) I think the "just Memory" recollection of the fandom is a result of the human mind making things easy on itself. Why remember two words when you could remember one and still get the same idea essentially? Thus, the fandom remembers only "Memory Magic" rather than "Memory Exchange Magic."

As for "Communication Magic"... Remember episode 151? Well within that episode, Julius refers to Marx's magic as 通信 (tsuu-shin) magic. Which is translated as "Communication Magic."

What created this discrepancy in the anime though?

The timing of releases.

Where was Marx's magic first named? In the 16.5 volume. Which was released on May 2 of 2018.

The next thing to be released was episode 38 of the anime. And when did it originally air? June 26 of 2018.

Episode 151 didn't air until November 10, 2020.

Now I don't know how far in advance Studio Piero was making episode 38 to the original air date. And since I'm not doing an in-depth research paper on this topic, I only took a cursory glance online to see that a general estimate is 2 months minimum. Could’ve been a longer period, can’t say for certain.

So... It's possible that Tabata was in the process of putting together the information for volume 16.5 while Studio Piero was in the midst of working on episode 38 and when it came to scripting the episode, they wanted to use proper names for Marx’s Magic rather than silently skipping over it like the manga. While Tabata isn't normally involved in the anime's production, the production team might've consulted him on the matter since they had nothing to go off of in the manga. And that's when Tabata could've shared the intended name for Marx's magic.

Then, later on, when episode 151 was being made, the content was an anime original. Tabata wasn't directly involved and the production team might not have consulted with Tabata during that time. Leading to the name of Marx's magic attribute being called the wrong thing.

And earlier this year, we got the Black Clover movie. And the movie does correctly call Marx's magic Memory Exchange. See, unlike the TV anime where Tabata wasn't really involved, he was the chief supervisor of the film. So while not directly in charge of the script, he likely would've been able to review it and make sure that Marx's magic was referred to by the right name.

With that, the post is over. I've officially explained the truth about Marx Francois' magic!

Sorry to make this so long and rambly. I just had a bit of fun solving this kinda sorta fandom mystery. But now we all know the truth.

Marx has Memory Exchange Magic~!

[ryllen]

nice try

[humbuns]

quick doodle of the sweetling seekers scout story where 3+ people saw rinne getting attacked and made no attempt to stop it lol

[sexybritishllama]

i find it so strange when people act as though the japanese ffxiv script is the only canon allowed. like yes it's a japanese game but a LOT of work is put into the localisations? it’s hardly some random fan translation people are putting stock in?

anyway i don’t care if it’s just a reference to monkey island the translators put in im going to accept that thancred can hold his breath for 10 minutes (or that he’s just exaggerating for dramatic effect)

[rocketbirdie]

i see it's that time of the year again where people start hating on the english localization of remake/rebirth despite having next to no understanding of how large scale translation projects work 🙃

[qualityrain]

college is making me go insane

[brodorokihousuke]

Small versions of the exclamations, used when activating the microphone/voice capabilities in the 3DS versions of Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice.

[nebuvoid]

I just found Yonah's story so compelling on a personal level. The struggle of chronic pain and wanting to do more, do things for your loved ones, but your own body always being in your way. Being left behind. Trying to cheer herself up with the small things in life. Always waiting, waiting for visits and waiting for the pain to pass and waiting for some sort of conclusion.

It reminded me of that post where someone discusses that 'girlpower-ing' classic fairy tale princesses to not be damsels waiting to be rescued is not necessarily helpful, as OP had become disabled and now saw themself in the princess in the tower awaiting visits and help.

Not once while playing did I feel like Yonah is just some damsel. The game does such a great job at solidifying her personality, place in the village and relationship to Nier. I wanted to save her, I wanted to get her all the vegetables she wanted despite the side quests being tedious, I wanted to cheer her up, I felt Nier's urgency when she has a pain flare up - because the game treats Yonah like a person worth respect and care. And that made the endings hit that much harder too.

She's just a little girl that deserves the world, and both Nier and you as the player know that. Peak writing.

[mewkwota]

"If he's so dangerous, then why does he look and sound so cute?" - Me, the idiot fly who is going straight into the venus flytrap

Another self-indulgent drawing of Juno doing something he'd probably never do. Whenever I hear him speak in Japanese it makes me want to do this to his face. He knows exactly what he's doing.

(And it's working.)

[kiyomitakada]

fun fact by the way: soichiro & the rest of the task force were not in on the lind l tailor plan. they're all watching the broadcast in their headquarters and one guy is like "b-but he's never shown his face before, right? w-why…" and soichiro is like "i guess it means he's serious about this case, too…"

this is insanely funny to me. for 0.5 seconds soichiro & co genuinely believed that L fucking died.

[ember-da-toon]

Some Tenebris-Draconia babies <3

I'm too exhausted to think of any lore of them right now, so just have them babies.

[rocketbirdie]

Arrrghh. People are finishing up Rebirth and looking up the different localizations, and the inevitable wave of hate for the English version is starting to gain traction again just like with Remake. I guess I just get super defensive about it because I have worked on large translation projects before, and it's not as straightforward as players seem to think.

It's not like the good ol' days of "This Guy Are Sick." They don't write the JPN script first, and then just send it out for translation anymore. Nowadays the different language scripts are all written simultaneously, with the teams working back and forth together, to check over each ofher's work and make sure that no one sentence is under- or overshooting a goal. Like it or not— everything is checked over and approved.

There's a lot more being translated than just words. There's so much to take into account— tone of voice, the cultural context, the lip sync and corresponding length of each line (which isn't allowed to run over by more than 0.2 seconds which is CRAZY). It's a messy process and it's a lot of goddamn work.

And then there's the audience, too. Different languages' audiences are often going to have wildly different interpretations of a character. A really good example from FFVII would be Yuffie. In the JPN version of the OG, Yuffie is written to be a confident girl who's dead serious about her ninja training. The ENG translation didn't do that justice... she instead comes off as a silly annoying kid pretending to be a ninja. Remake's DLC was testing the waters to see if they could write Yuffie in a way that's still faithful to both of the strikingly different regional perceptions of her character. And they nailed it.

The same thing happened with Cloud, and continues to influence the way he's written in the Re-trilogy. It's much more subtle than with Yuffie, but it's still noticeable, and I think it's why a lot of people get up in arms about his dialogue.

Cloud has always been written as having a stark disconnect between his tone of voice and his choice of words. It's just that the two major languages get it swapped! JPN Cloud has a harsh, mean tone, but his choice of words is polite and easygoing. On the other hand, ENG Cloud says a LOT of nasty shit out loud, but his true feelings are betrayed by his soft voice and gentle body language.

The difference goes unnoticed by the average player who isn't so invested to give a damn. But if you're actively searching for "bad translations" to get mad at, then you'll find them where one version's Cloud comes off a bit too strong. It's only natural that English Cloud is the one that pisses people off more often— after all, he's literally saying stupid shit to to piss other characters off constantly. His character is so convincing that players want to reach into their screens and wring his neck, and I think that's glorious.

But that's why it upsets me to see people turn that frustration at the localization teams. They didn't "ruin" a character's dialogue— they were just barely able to make something work, all things considered. Character, line length, culture, story context, facial animations, voice acting, for MULTIPLE languages, like... holy shit. It's a miracle that most of it is really really good, and that the bad is only a little bit bad.

Idk where this rant is going. Just... c'mon people. Have some respect for such an insanely complicated art form.

[lq-skz]

spotify

youtube

[thus-spoke-lo]

sometimes i wish i could mix and match anime sub and dub tracks. let me pick my faves in every language and have a multilingual party.

[rotyolk]

нoiнoiнoiнoi-san

[mewkwota]

I have even more shots of Juno saying things in Namco X CAPCOM pulled completely out of context, in addition to a few pose redraws from his sprite sheet. One of them I did a long while back but it was by crude memory and therefore without a proper reference.

I think a part of that is because I didn't understand the range of motions Juno was capable of, or willing to have. So I'll do it better. And that head tilt, I must perfect his sweet little head tilt. ( ;* v*);