fayrinferno

[fayrinferno]

Hello,

I have a question: are Hitomi's tarot cards... True/ispired by real tarot ? I mean are called Merlin's Oracle or something, I'd like to know them better. (Even italian names! Nice touch).

Hi, Sorry for the belated answer. I had to take some time since I didn't know the answer right off the bat and I'm definitely not an expert on tarot. But I had some time today, so I brought the cards out to play.

Much like other "real life" references in Escaflowne, such as the places, Hitomi's tarot set is a very intentional mix of several existing things. Escaflowne Compendium said that the Major Arcana (the "named" cards) in her set is similar to the "traditional" tarot sets, while the Minor Arcana (the cards with certain number of symbols or suits) was much like the newer Merlin tarot set.

Obviously, it is made that way so that it looks believable but at the same time, is something original that can only be found in this production. If it was a real tarot set, I think it would feel pretty "bootleg" since some of the cards are named different (or even wrong), but my imagination lets me believe this could be true for a tarot set bought somewhere in 80s/90s Japan. One artbook I know just says they were "bought in Yokohama", Compendium says that Hitomi's grandma bought it for Hitomi there, when she was a child (so I assume some other official material says the rest of it).

I don't think tarot was big in Japan at the time. And much like Christian symbolism for example, these things are not treated "as seriously" in Japan. That's probably why grandma had no scruples buying it to a child. Might have even been that Hitomi begged her to get the "pretty cards" when she saw them, who knows? I'm inclined to believe Hitomi was there with her, when she bought them.

Anyway, I don't think Hitomi is that much of an expert (having studied tarot into great detail or her readings being "by the book"), it's just her intuition that makes it her predictions accurate, rather than her having memorized all the possible meanings exactly. Whatever material she learned from might not have even been accurate in the first place. To put it simply, guess I believe more in her powers than the power of the cards, haha. I never tried to learn anything about reading the cards, either. But here, I laid out some of the more notorious ones (or simply my favs) for you.

So what I have on the table there is the limited edition PSX game set... and in the row above it, an actual Tarot set I bought on a whim few years back! On my package it says "The Original Tarot" and indeed, it matches with what is listed on the Compendium as "traditional" or Rider-Waite set, originally from 1909, when it comes to the Major Arcana cards. And you can clearly see when you compare the two that Kimitoshi Yamane, who designed the Escaflowne cards and painstakingly drew them on an ancient Apple computer, must have held a set that was similar to mine. The main elements of the cards are usually there, even though he drew them anew.

At the same time though, he probably also had the much newer Merlin set from 1988 as a direct reference, because, as an Easter egg, in episode 1 the edge of the card that is otherwise known as Hierophant or Il Papa appears, but it has the Merlin set name (Innocent) and number (XV) right next to it. Basically, the card name looked exactly as it does in the Merlin set. Later on, it reappears as episode 21 title card, already fixed with the Italian name and without the number, much like Hitomi's other cards (her Major Arcana cards are not numbered, unlike either of the sets they were inspired by). Checking the link above, you also can see that the back side of the Merlin cards looks kind of similar to Hitomi's, at least in colors. But the motive of a circle in the center is present also on my version, except it's not as colorful.

So the only ones of the printed Escaflowne cards that are significanly different are Il Fusco/La Luce (Ace of Serpents) and several other cards, observe:

First of all, you must know that none of the officially released Escaflowne sets is a complete, functional tarot deck. It is just the Major Arcana with a few extra cards from Minor Arcana that appear in the series. There was a fan project few years back that remedied that and provided free files to print her complete set (which was pretty awesome ngl) but I don't have them, so you would have to do your own (re)search there.

Anyway, back to what we have on the table here, the first three of these are the aces of three of the four suits included in the Minor Arcana. The Minor Arcana suits behave much like hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades suits in the playing card sets (no surprise, since those developed from tarot). Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, everybody plays cards here occasionally but I don't really know how common it is to play with cards at home elsewhere (unless you are a poker or magic tricks enthusiast). In these parts, the 32 piece German-suited set is always brought on trips and such even to play various games with kids. One of the most popular games is a variation of Uno played with these generic playing cards.

So, in the traditional tarot sets you have suits starting with one sword, two swords... all the way up to ten, followed by the Page of Swords, Knight of Swords, Queen of Swords, King of Swords, and Ace of Swords (or cups/wands/pentacles). And those Escaflowne cards with the two names (Il Fusco/La Luce, L'Aria/La Vita, La Terra/La Legge) really correspond to the aces above them, except, my traditional set does not have serpents, beasts, birds, and fish like Hitomi's... because those come from the Merlin set that looks like this:

You can definitely see the similarity with the way the minor cards (such as the Attention card) are drawn, right? They also have original names (not just Five of Beasts, Five of Pentacles or whatever) and that principle is used on Hitomi's tarot cards as well. Here is how the Ace of Serpents looks in the Merlin set (sorry, the single image I could found of it all over the internet was a bad and skewed photo), compared to Hitomi's Ace of Serpents:

Also, please note the Merlin dragon contains a wand, not a guy (lmao I couldn't resist), probably because the equivalent in the traditional set is the Ace of Wands. I put the matching aces over the Escaflowne cards just for illustration. The L'Ambizione guy is a Knight of Beasts (with a special name inspired by the Merlin set), the only Knight level card included in the Escaflowne set. He actually comes not from the episode cards but one of Hitomi's readings.

I guess that's it for now, hope it answers your question and thanks for asking. I learned a lot again, researching this. It was once again somewhat mind-boggling how much research and work the creators put into this in the pre-internet times, learning the basics of tarot, actually looking up a set that uses dragons as suits to match the series imagery, using early computer graphics, translating stuff into Italian etc. I guess a year or so of the production must have been spent in the library. And the nerd in me finds it pretty neat, ngl.

[fayrinferno]

Found in the 1888 book, History of Harrison and Mercer Counties, Missouri: “The early settlers of Harrison County were of this class; poor, but honest yeomanry, brave, industrious and generous. A new country is generally a poor place for a lazy man, a dude, or a thief.”

As such…

(Please reblog this, I never do polls, and am stupidly proud of this one. 🙏)

[fayrinferno]

Have you ever translated the escaflowne doujins called kago no tori by Minato tojima? The art is amazing and I know it's NSFW doujins but the story is so good!

As a matter of fact, I did! I mean, I did one of the books back in the day (15 years ago), when both my Japanese and machine translation were in diapers. It was an unholy amount of work then, even for a doujin. I remember using some sort of software keyboard for kanas and then several dictionaries looking up each kanji. I don’t think the result is much better than what you can get by machine translation today so I’m definitely not gonna post that.

EDIT: Here's a proof I wasn't lying (I looked for it on the old drive backup):

Anyway, I'm a big Tajima stan, but it was a different time when these doujins were produced and I think we all can see that they are problematic by today’s standards. I was intrigued by the story myself, but I think something like that (which btw. was not uncommon in vanilla shoujo manga of the time) would today put it straight into porn category, without regard to its attempt at a serious story... which is leagues above actual porn but... yeah. I still think it is an interesting and unusual work (especially for an adult doujin) and I would relish the NTR/melodrama but I don’t think I’m gonna translate it at this point. Maybe try asking in the #escaflowne tag? I know there are other people who have done/offered doing translations in the fandom.

This has also to do with my changed attitudes towards translation in general, tbh., as you can see on my stickied post, I’m not doing any new translations currently, just trying to complete the few remaining projects I started. I’m not going to bother you with all that but if anyone cares, more under the cut.

Translating is an ungrateful job for me I found. You struggle for hours between two languages, neither of which is your native tongue, to be, yes, thanked and praised, but also lowkey doubted and compared, accused of attentionwhoring, or straight-out mocked for your language skills. Or you bother people about beta-reading to bring a better-quality product, feeling bad for wasting their time as well. You do this for free, but the product can get freely reposted in groups and websites you have no idea about, edited, or further discussed without your knowledge, nobody would even pause at that. And at the end of the day, no matter how poor the translation is, you spent hours of your time on it, hours that you will never get back. Last thing I need is to be confronted about the contents of the translated work or to see my translation on an 18+ doujin site.

In fact, I don’t need to do or post any translations for myself, my Japanese level after a decade of learning is just about enough to understand what is talked about. I don’t need to exert myself to do anything else, sorry. It’s not like there are no other options in this day and age. But sincere thanks to those who have helped or appreciated the work, even imperfect as it was. I’m grateful for the support and I hope to have another translation up for you, soon (there is less than a handful of things I started translating but idk how many of them I’ll manage to finish).

[fayrinferno]

Sorry from me too, but since you framed it sort of as a refutal of what I wrote instead of simply presenting an alternative headcanon, I now have to defend my shitpost ramblings from seven years back.

>you wouldn't want to overlook centuries of relationship btwn japan and portugal

Since I wrote a whole thesis on foreign influences on Japan, yeah, that would be kind of embarrassing. But you may note I said "variation of João," not that they used the literal, established transcription of the name. Much like Eries can be seen as variation of Elise and Balgus as Vargas with a fantasy twist, changing a letter or two. Even then, I knew enough of Japanese and Portuguese to be aware that it's not pronounced with hard G (plus, the very first thing that I did was googling the kanas to see what comes up, so what you're explaining was revealed to me rather quickly). Still, transcription of foreign names can be pretty wild in Japanese, and may not always necessarily match the original pronunciation even roughly. So I was just trying to think of what existing names could have inspired it, since we do have existing names in the series and it sounded so randomly onomatopoeic, as you say. But besides the Fanels we have a handful of other canon Fanelian names (Balgus, Luva, Asona, Hurisen, even Naria and Eriya) and none of them seem simply onomatopoeic, you see that only with the beastfolk, in fact.

Anyway, the post is really old and it was not so serious in the first place but I don't think it was so unfounded and foolish of me to assume that the name could come from Portuguese. You know, the language the mangled version of which Van literally speaks in episode 1 and that was, on a related note, confirmed to have been used for some names and geographical terms in the TV version. We have another confirmation that Gaean language is similar to Latin-based languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese etc., which is likely also the explanation of why the characters from different countries understand each other; they possibly speak the dialects of the "same language"). And from the one sentence we have, in Fanelia at least, it resembles Portuguese the most. I'm not saying it 100% had to be the inspiration but it's not without a sense either.

>Bon

Maybe Jojo sfx also revealed to you that there is a similar kana difference between バ and ボ so if you used the very same argument against João, I'm not sure why it works here? From what info we have, bo was never on the table, they were deciding between ヴァ (like in Varie) and バ that we ended up with, then they were experimenting with the elongation, deciding between バァン and バーン. I think that already proves that they were not about the onomatopoeia but creating an original name, down to how it would be spelled.

So while I like the explanation you used and it works quite well for the movie (yes, movie Van is compared to an asura more than once), I can't say I'm convinced either. The pictures are great btw., thanks for sharing. But I don't think the movie can be taken as an argument for the series either. In the movie, the name of Van's father isn't even confirmed to be Goau, he appears only as the "Dragon King" in the credits and all official materials. And it doesn't make much sense to me that they would use "intended" things only for the retelling that they had no idea would ever happen at the time instead of the original thing that they were creating practically from scratch in the first place. Sure, they may have used some alternatives they were thinking of during the series production but never used, I think there was a mention of something like that if memory serves. In any case, playing with the names, coming up with their origins and alter-egos is a game I have enjoyed a lot for my writing, so I understand where you're coming from.

Okay, long time no Esca shitposting, right?

This time about the names of the characters. You know what name intrigued me the most? Goau. Because what kind of a name is that and why would you choose it? In Japanese it’s written just “Goou”. And after years it hit me a few days ago; it was probably meant to be a variation of

João. 

Which is Portuguese mutation of John. You know, Gaean and Portuguese and all that? I’m gonna go with that. So yeah. King John.  

More “shower thoughts” under the cut (I think we had a post about this already, but I cannot find it).

Keep reading

[fayrinferno]

The Terror of the Franklin Expedition (in my head)

So, a while back I watched The Terror and... there were warnings that it was a rabbit hole but I did not specifically mind them. Boy oh boy, was I wrong.

So I started watching this, knowing it was only one of the most critically acclaimed series of the recent years, strangely popular with both men and women, and that it was based on a true story. I haven't heard the story before, in this land-locked country, the naval exploration just isn't a huge thing even for history buffs. It's funny how the geography forms you.

Tell you truth, my first watch was rather lukewarm. I am no stranger to Hinds, Menzies, or Harris, so their acting did not floor me, I knew what to expect. I wasn't hanging onto every word and I only vaguely realized all the people with sideburns probably weren't just one guy. The creature felt kinda far-fetched although yeah, the atmosphere of dread it contributed to felt very real. But I guess what really cemented my interest was looking at the historical stuff. About halfway in, I carefully started searching, almost immediately finding out about the discovery of the Fitzjames' mandible, discovering the findings of the tumblr fandom, soon after, I got to see the frozen mummies of Beechey island, read about the archaeological discoveries, few and far between... and yeah, suddenly I was intrigued and it got my 100% undivided attention. So much that I watched the show again, back to back (that never happens). Mostly to catch the details and the real story references, ngl, but I did pay more attention to the little guys as well.

In the last few weeks, I did the expected run of documentaries, videos, articles and news, and a question has got stuck in my head: why is this whole matter so fascinating? I know, it was the most tragic Arctic expedition, it was a huge mystery, it was a race to discover what happened... but is it just that? I got to thinking: would it be the same without all the elements? I think this legend of a story wouldn't be the same without any of the following.

The huge, altruistic goal and the sense of adventure. Obviously you can (and should) think of it in terms of colonialism and finding new, or easier ways of obtaining wealth by discovering possible new trade routes. But it isn't just that. They go where (almost) none has dared before. It was the space exploration of their time! The environment will give them practically nothing, they need to have all that they may need on board of their ships. And they do, they have everything their age can offer. They still know it may kill them, many of them firsthand. And yet, they dare. They present it as this greater goal, a possible victory for humanity. And it feels almost Verne-esque.

The almost literary quality of the story. I mean, just looking at the story, at the names, at the background of the protagonists... it feels like fiction! It literally feels like someone named these characters, thinking of "what name would fit the vibe of this character?" Yes, I'm aware that Simmons probably plays the nominative determinism, since so does the show. I know the characters of The Terror do not need to match the actual people (nice of the writers to sort of absolve the real Hickey btw., but his name truly sounds villainous). But these names felt almost like they couldn't have been just accidental. And even beyond the names, they are like fictional characters, starting from Sir John Franklin... a dignified name, though he once "ate his boots" already... and it did not cure his hubris any! Who the hell is named James Fitzjames and has a backstory like that? Doesn't Francis Crozier sound like the most reasonable of the three? The person responsible for the well-being of the crew of all people is called Goodsir? And so on. Everyone whose name should sound pompous DOES, and the same goes for plain ones. I almost don't feel the irony that the real life usually brings with itself. And then, the names of the ships. You sail into this deadly area with your metal bands ships called Paralyzing Fear a.k.a. The Terror and Personification of Darkness., a.k.a. The Hell. Brutal. Not like a cartoon villain naming his lair at all. I know British navy had many ships at the time. I know they would have been named all kinds of names, both glorious and silly. But names of these ships would make sense in reverse; if they were (nick)named later on by some historians after knowing the horrific fate of the expedition.

The tangible horror. Going through all kinds of Franklin content and reading the comments of the people (which I admit is my bad habit), I lost count of how many times I've seen one like: "I saw the Jon Torrington mummy at (preteen age) and I never forgot it again/became obsessed about the story." I think about the mummies a lot. Like, would it be the same for the contemporary "fandom" if we had never seen those faces? If there were only fragments of bones? If we never knew how emaciated they were but still treated with (for the situation) unexpected level of care for their final rest? An unimaginable number of the nameless people historically, even their contemporaries, died of similar causes, in much milder environment, right within civilization... of disease that had no cure at the time, of the long-term effect of harmful substances that people were not aware of or did not/could not care about, of violence, of overwork, of starvation, of exposure... many of them younger, possibly more pitiful than these sailors. Many of the Franklin expedition would be a more pitiful sight on their deathbed. But you never saw their eyes, knew the exact colour of their hair. You never bridged those centuries of decomposition; not only of their bodies, of memories, of feelings. So many people died facing hardships so that we could be here, with the knowledge we have. But nothing gives you the sense of empathy like seeing someone's face. The mixed feelings of empathy and horror (the uncanny valley is a strong thing) upon seeing the bodies for the first time are indeed unforgettable. And you can imagine just another almost literary paradox: the Beechey survivors would look with pity at Torrington, Hartnell, and Braine. But it is very likely that none of the over hundred other men would have had a better fate than those three. Just, insane levels of foreshadowing and stuff.

The tangible desperation. There is still so much we don't know about the expedition. But even knowing nothing about its fate besides the bare fact of getting stuck where they did, you could imagine the level of desperation. Their only means of transport, immobile, and being slowly crushed, with no one knowing for how long. Even spending that winter on the ships having everything they needed must have been a trial for the psyche already. And then, the insane walk. You can barely imagine how much they must have steeled themselves for that. Did they know the distance they would have to walk or was it just kept from them like the fictional Crozier tries to keep away everything that may affect the morale? Everything would have been becoming worse and worse... the malnutrition, the diseases, the cold... And I can just see it leading to the grisly end. Imagine how much, as one of the last survivors, you would have gone through until that point. How physically and mentally resilient you had to be, how strong your will to live had to be, how hard you had to convince yourself that it was not hopeless. It would be impossible to get as far without it. And then you realize it was not enough. You got that far, went through it all, and it was all for nothing. It's chilling to think of the state of mind like that... breaking, or just continuing to walk that survival mode slope? I'll leave the cannibalism discourse to the anthropologists, but you just know there are people capable of that and worse, and it doesn't require such pressure and time spent under it. I couldn't help but wonder who the last survivors were, whether they were Darwin's biologically fittest, the Hobbesian wolves of humans, or if it was those who could best cooperate... we will never know. It's way too deep. It's...

The mystery and the irony. It wasn't even that long time ago, and yet we can only piece together a few archaeological sites, Inuit oral history, random items, hearsay... and it's unlikely to get much better. Most of the crew's many handwritten notes are gone with hopes of finding more waning. Even what was almost perfectly savoured is so sparse. I cannot understand, for example, why these tubed notes in two(!) separate cairns that preserved them for decades had to be written on page margins. Was there no more paper left? Was there no time to record the fate and cause of death of Franklin himself at least, if not the other people who died around that time, especially when you compare it to the Beechey victims? And then, the sheer irony of the silly, very human, poems surviving, shielded by a dead body of a man who did not even write them. And the passing mentions of some, probably more telling, handwritten materials given to Inuit babies to play. The role of the Inuit in the whole story, even... fascinating. Coming back to the first point, I can only applaud the author of this story. I'll remain curious to read the next instalment about the lead level in Fitzjames' teeth or whatever. I'm sure the scientific community and tumblr will deliver it to me eventually.

Oh yeah, and go watch The Terror (season 1). Beware, but, watch it.

[fayrinferno]

The Escaflowne Movie CD Dramas

Time to share some thoughts about the CD dramas I recently posted (one, two). There’s so many topics I will just make a few sections. This is insanely long and... just insane again. So I'm putting a cut right here.

First of all, this was such a different translation project than I’m used to! Meaning, it was spoken word instead of written and there was no official transcription. That is the difference between these two movie dramas and the series drama (Thought of Jeture). ToJ had the whole script in the booklet, so that would make the translation MUCH easier. The only thing we have for these are the summaries in the movie Newtype Artbook. Anyway, it was a fight but I’m pretty confident with this translation.

Speaking of booklets, sorry about the quality of the pictures/scans. For some reason, these booklets are really deteriorating, dunno if anyone who has the same CDs can confirm, but they are yellowing pretty badly and what is worse, in an irregular way where one page is totally different color from the other. I don’t think the environment I store it in is too bad, there’s not a problem with humidity or anything and most of the other materials are fine but ofc, I can’t speak for the previous owner. Or it’s simply a feature. The booklets are printed on some textured, off-white (possibly recycled?) paper in the first place, so they were never white, but then there’s the yellowing. I tried to fix it a bit in Photoshop but when it’s irregular AND in color, my editing skills come short. BTW, I had a similar problem when I scanned Escabible, I just gave up and made it B&W cause the print was originally green on pages that yellowed with time. Anyway, these cd drama booklets have sparse contents compared to some others (there are only the song lyrics and credits and some non-specific artwork), so I included the scans more or less informatively.

Finally, to the contents. This is definitely more complementary to the movie than the novel which takes some different paths. I believe this one was made so that it doesn’t contradict anything in the movie, although some things leave you guessing. We’ll get to them later. Which may be one of the reasons why it's kind of hard to be in the drama setting and not to feel like “this is just another Escaflowne AU” but realize it is an actual prequel/prologue to the movie. It has all the scenes that you would have in yet another Escaflowne retelling, such as:

sketch of Hitomi’s relationship with Yukari

Hitomi’s suddenly getting isekai’d and realizing it by observing Earth from Gaea

Hitomi meeting Van under dramatic circumstances (though I must say this is probably their most civil first encounter, there’s practically no fighting!)

meeting with other characters like Allen and Millerna (the Van and Allen fight is practically a copy of the movie fight… even bears resemblance to their first series encounter)

introduction to other characters like Folken, Dryden, and Dilandau

I get it, I get it. This was a case of amnesia in the end. But we are just more used to AUs in this fandom, haha. I also get you would want cameos to every character with a semblance of a fandom in a new franchise material. But I can’t shake the feeling they weren’t trying all that hard to tie things into the movie perfectly, although the cd drama is described as its prequel.

For clarity, I still consider the cd dramas and the movies the same universe and the things that happened in the drama as canon for the movie. There is also the movie novel, which I will publish in the future, but that one is another beast and I wouldn’t necessarily say things that are true there are some secret lore for the movie that was just never mentioned. It’s more up to the decision of the reader whether you accept them into your movie headcanon (because some of the novel lore contradicts the movie so how much can you believe the rest of it?) The multiverse is quite insane already but yes, this happens, with other titles as well.

BTW, it is neat they included Dornkirk’s seiyuu in the voice of Orm. This is a pretty mysterious character but he fulfills the role of the deus ex machina for the whole thing, never to be mentioned again in the actual movie. It is through him we learn more about Folken and Van, which would otherwise have to be spoken about by themselves in a voice drama/movie, and yeah, we all know the odds of that. Anyway, he is not human. He is not Dragon Clan, because that’s people like Van and Folken. And yet, he changes into a dragon. Is he actually a dragon god? One of the two who created Gaea? I guess not if it’s the two princes who decide the fate of Gaea instead of him. Perhaps he lost his power or there were lesser dragon gods? Or he’s not a dragon at all; it’s just sorcery of some sort. He says he’s just a sorcerer, after all. But he looks like a goblin. It took me a while to realize and you may not remember either, but the movie also has madoushi or sorcerers, except they don't look exactly human.

Rather, they resemble the series Ispano and their work with on Alseides confirms this. So now I believe this Orm could possibly be one of these guys (maybe before whatever it is that got done to them?) and he shows his true form to Hitomi. And when you think of it, much like Ispano, Orm acts as a sort of “insurance” against world destruction. The topics just keep recurring it seems.

Anyway, I just made some notes about these cd dramas and grouped them according to the topic.

Physical descriptions of the characters

If you introduce a character in an audio drama like this, you have to introduce them through the narrator’s voice, similarly to a book. That’s why Hitomi has to spend more time describing Orm’s shiny eyes, protruding teeth, etc. than she does with the known characters with a known design, who, all with the exception of Van, get just about one sentence. She spends some more time describing Van and although she observes how “beautiful the two look in their fight” (I had to make a note of that), she never spares a second thought to Allen, or any of the other handsome men she sees. No more love triangles, the soulmate game here is too strong! 

Anyway, in this material, Hitomi describes Van’s eyes twice with a word that literally means “see-through”. It felt odd but it is apparently a set expression, unless they tried to involve some double meaning. It’s apparently a synonym of clear/shiny/sparkly/pure/beautiful eyes… you can buy contact lenses that promise to do this for you in Japan lol. I translated the novel as well and there are more strange descriptions of his eyes in there, maybe that’s why it felt so significant. There is also a bit of a difference compared to the series materials, where they would just describe the color in a way you would describe a specific shade of blue or any other color. In any case, however literally or not they meant this, Van has pretty eyes, as we already knew. It was also funny when Millerna described him as cute and connected it to whether he would want to join Abaharaki. Like a cute face was a prerequisite or something lol. But she’s probably on about him being too tsun despite the face.

Another thing we discussed during editing was this “sign of the king” that was shown already at the time of Van’s birth… and wasn’t at the time of Folken’s. At first, I thought very simplistically that it may have something to do with the tattoos (or would they be markings then)? But that doesn’t seem to be the case and they are confirmed to be tattoos for the novel, although it doesn’t seem anyone else from the Dragon Clan would have them there. In the movie, on the contrary, young Dune and even Van’s mother are shown to have them as well, so the meaning of them could have been different. Back to the “sign of the king,” I returned to that part of the translation later and it seems it was something that the seers saw in their prophecies after all. Some symbol of the dragon king that was not specified. Sidenote, I pitied and blamed Dune’s mother at the same time. Poor guy.

This got all about Van again but I don’t think anyone else was given enough description to even discuss? It’s clearly obvious who Hitomi’s love interest is. I would say it makes it clearer than the movie itself, because it has these inner monologues and it’s pretty romantic already despite the two barely knowing each other. I would even say Van’s behavior is gentler than any other iteration (?) But when you think of it, the cd dramas are usually THE fanservice materials, aren’t they? So obviously, they would give most attention to the popular characters and ships… but let’s get to the more pragmatic stuff.

When do the Prologues take place?

The two prologues obviously happen before the movie but how long before that? Let’s check some placeholders and see what we can figure out.

“the winter of my sixteenth year” “not even a spring break yet” “soon, you’ll be a third year”

High school in Japan is three years with the school year starting in spring. So I believe this is happening at the end of Hitomi’s second year. Her age of 16 fits. In the movie materials, her age is described as 17, so somewhere between the two, she also has her birthday. Could it be in December, same as in the series? That would make the window for the drama very narrow, because it’s winter but not yet 9th of December. We can't probably take that date as a reference, anyway.

“is the way to the Mystic Moon closed now?” “yes, for now. But once the moon is full again…”

This is something Folken and Sora speak about in cd 1 when Van deflects Orm. But then it is Van who reaches out to Hitomi first before they can do as they plan. At the end of cd 2, Folken asks Sora to open the path again so I assume these conditions still apply. Then the movie may be one or several months after the events of the cd drama, since they need the full moon. Well, if the Moon works and time passes the same on both planets…

I believe this takes place in a range of one to few more months before the movie. Why? Folken asks Sora if the way to the Mystic Moon is closed. And Sora says, it is, "but once the Moon is full again..." Unclear which moon, but we could assume their moon, the one with the eye. Looks similar to our moon, and if it was the same, it would have been one month. But then, the movie is definitely not taking place in the winter, like this drama. So, when is it?

Let’s look at the placeholders from the movie directly. First thing we have is Hitomi’s watch, which says, SA 18th, 16:15:28. Normally, SA would stand for Saturday, the screen of her watch (or the information on it) even looks pretty similar to existing models of Casio Chronograph/Illuminator:

You may wonder why she would be at school on Saturday afternoon but it was normal at the time of the movie production, Japanese students only had Sundays off. They talk about some plans next day on the train right after the rooftop scene and Hitomi asks Yukari to give her a wake-up call in the morning, which would fit. You see them having a bit of fun and it doesn’t seem the next day yet, they are still in their uniforms. Later at the stairs (although it is not in the subs I had), Yukari says they will see each other at school tomorrow. But shouldn’t it be Sunday next day? Or is what we see already the next day, the thing they made plans for? But why not dress casually, then? And aren't they on the train to/in Tokyo already when they discuss this? I guess this theory is not too likely, then.

It’s actually baffling. Because the scenes also do not follow in a linear way; you see them on the train, there is a shot of Hitomi at the stadium already, then they walk around Harajuku/Omotesando, and back on the train where they are held-off because of an accident at Yoyogi. Yoyogi station is on Yamanote line, the circular line going around Tokyo. That station, Harajuku, Omotesando, Meiji Jingu, National Stadium… it’s all in the same wide area but maybe it’s a bit too much for walking, unless they had a lot of time. I mean it would take them almost two hours just to get to that athletics stadium if they left their school right after the roof scene at 4 pm (according to her jersey, the school is still in Kamakura). But they don’t even have their school bags, Yukari just has a small shopping/gift bag it seems. Did they put them in a coin locker on the station or something? In the novel, they just run away from school (or rather, from an angry teacher), so that would make sense with the bags if they at least had some money on them but it seems too late in the day to do that. But I guess it’s still the best explanation. The sun sets around 7 pm at that time of the year in Tokyo. But that still doesn’t explain why Yukari says “see you at school tomorrow” when it should be the weekend. If she meant cram school, guess she would say that and not school. Maybe there’s something I’m missing that puts it all together. Or they are doing this on purpose. EDIT: I just reread this for possible typos and it came to my mind that the plans Yukari and Hitomi have could be for Sunday AND at school. Yukari says, "you promised, remember?" which made me feel like she was worried Hitomi would just cancel but it may actually be something of a favor to Yukari? IDK, for example, helping her cleaning the club room or something? She DOES use "kureru" which means that she hopes Hitomi will do this "for her". That's a thought...

Anyway, I researched the watch a bit and if the display was really like a digital Casio Chronograph, we wouldn’t know the month from looking at the screen (some models have the full date but this type, only the day of the month). But what can we guess about the month from the movie itself? It's not full-blown spring, otherwise we would see at least one blooming sakura tree, I guarantee it. In similar vein, if it was the height of summer, there would be sound of cicadas (June to September). Late spring/early summer or early autumn is my best bet based on the greenery we see, plus Hitomi and Yukari wearing the summer uniforms (the school uniform would have a version for cold and hot days) and people wearing tshirts and summer dresses in Tokyo. Then it would be about half a year after the cd drama.

But here’s a crazy thing: Hitomi’s watch is shown once again on Gaea and it has SA 19th 17:05 on it. It is the next day compared to the roof scene where it's 18th but also it's still SA… This confused me so much I even checked the settei but I didn't learn much besides that it's her favorite watch and the pattern you see above the screen is an image of an angel that can be backlit in the dark and that she only checks the time once while on Gaea. The settei uses the time from the roof scene btw.

So does the SA stand for month after all? SA for sangatsu (March)? It doesn’t look like March in the scenes with Yukari, I mean, March is the graduation month, remember? Sakuras would be everywhere and they would wear jackets. Could it be then they simply forgot to change SA to SU? That would be the smoothest explanation in fact. Or is there some significance to this? Something something her watch has stopped like that time at the Tokyo Station when she was a child? Anyway, let’s recap the options, since, as usual with the franchise, there is a hole in each and every one of them:

If the roof is on Saturday 18th and the stadium are the same day, then next day we see her watch on Gaea and it’s “SA” 19th… then where did they leave their school bags and why is Yukari telling Hitomi she’ll meet her tomorrow at school if it should be a day off?

If the roof is on Saturday 18th and the stadium on Sunday 19th evening… then why are they wearing school uniforms on Sunday and why are they on a train to Tokyo on Saturday and why should her watch show the “SA” 19th 5 pm after she came to Gaea and slept for some time at the caravan?

If SA is not for Saturday but for the month of March and the roof scene could be any weekday… then why is her watch different from regular Japanese digital watches and why doesn’t it look at all like March outside?

And if SA is neither for Saturday nor sangatsu... then WHAT? I think it could be a subtle “Stop Asking” by the creators, lol.

Or, you know what, her watch did not take the interplanetary travel and the liquid in Escaflowne cockpit too well and broke. That’s my best explanation offer I guess (besides an animation error).

Why does Van not remember Hitomi in the movie if he has already met her?

I consider this the elephant in the room: okay, Hitomi went to Gaea before but Orm used his magic to bring her back and make her forget. But what about everyone else who met her, back on Gaea? Which would be Van, Allen, Millerna, Gaddes, Jajuka, Sora, and Folken? I believe some of their reactions in the movie, but especially Van’s in the beginning, confirm that they don’t remember that encounter.

But how can you erase someone from several people’s memories at once? Even if you erase the memory of her, her actions on Gaea leave some impact… Folken literally swears to bring her back again and he does in the movie. Moreover, in the cd drama, the location of Escaflowne is revealed to Folken through Hitomi’s ancient memories (as Sora spies on her telepathically). The first scene of the movie has Van stealing the armor from Black Dragon Clan’s ship. I believe this ties nicely to the “Escaflowne is discovered underneath Torushina” from the ending of the cd drama. Basically, some time has passed, and BDC dug out Escaflowne, now transporting it to Folken. Meanwhile, Folken is trying to summon Hitomi back because with her and Escaflowne, he apparently has all the ingredients for his plan.

When it comes to Abaharaki, apparently, the cd drama gives us a scene of their first meeting with Van. So, it has not been all that long that he was with the Abaharaki. But since he is with them in the movie, this event from the cd drama is also something that did not get reversed by Orm sending Hitomi back. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around. Allen, Millerna, and Gaddes come across Hitomi and Van because they were apparently in the vicinity and “saw a light”. This is all happening in a “holy land” that bears the name of Arzas, btw.

But if Van wasn’t summoning the Wing Goddess, why would he even go there? Why would Allen come check if there was no light from her arrival from Earth? Of course, the meeting of Van and Abaharaki might have happened anyway, by pure chance. After all, Merle in the movie says they “met on the battlefield”. For the Abaharaki, they “could not take a better look” at Hitomi before she was snatched away by Jajuka and they’ve never seen her again in the drama. So I guess their movie reactions would be plausible even if they did remember Hitomi’s first arrival in the cd drama. But Van is just a big question mark and either their meeting “never happened” or his memory got erased.

So Orm changed into a dragon and took Hitomi, her memories, and apparently Van’s memories away. Then what, was Van just left standing there, wondering what happened and why he even went out there? How about Merle, who went with him to rescue Hitomi? She would remember that the Wing Goddess was there, wouldn’t she? Even though she hasn’t seen her in the cd drama. This adds Merle to Allen, Millerna, Gaddes, and Mole, who form a group of characters who knew of the Wing Goddess coming to Gaea but wouldn’t know her face.

Then we have another group formed by Van, Folken, Sora, Jajuka, who had also seen her. Out of all these, Van is the only one who is confirmed to have forgotten. Others may as well remember everything, because they go retrieve Escaflowne and eventually Hitomi. Interesting. So I guess the first group may remember her arrival, they just don’t know how she looks. The second group, minus Van, could know everything. Van was apparently made to forget by some effect of Orm’s sorcery. Either he forgot her face or their whole encounter. That, or it never happened.

Another variation is, only Folken and Sora remember Hitomi. I guess that would make some sense, since Sora seems to be the one ‘in the know’ about everything, together with Orm, and to some extent, Folken. Then again, Van is a pretty strong magic user himself as we discover, so why would Folken and Sora be able resist Orm’s magic and not him?

I guess this could be explained by Orm’s final scene, where he sounds pretty mad at Van. Which is interesting. He’s not cross with Folken who wants to destroy the world, he’s angry with Van cause he is using Hitomi as a tool for his revenge which will just cause her more sorrow. So, does he in fact only seal her away from Van or erase only his memories? Because Van is not ready to lift Hitomi’s spirits and ease her loneliness? It seems Orm puts some hopes of saving the world into Van and is disappointed that he doesn’t realize what he needs to do. Then again, how would sealing Van away and leaving the path open for Folken help? Perhaps Orm meant to seal her away from both brothers but Sora overcame that magic? It’s frustrating that they just won’t.let.us.know.

But I believe Van having no memory of their encounter could be why (besides the obvious resonance of their depressed souls) Folken is the one to bring Hitomi to Gaea in the movie. Van isn’t even trying to reach her anymore like he does in the cd drama, it seems he is 100% focused on obtaining Escaflowne. Which I guess was his mindset in the first place even as he, on his own volition, went out and whisked Hitomi away from Earth, which coincidentally made for a pretty romantic scene but you can still see he’s all about obtaining the armor. I mean it is logical, once he knows BDC has Escaflowne, it means everything to take it out of their hands. It is also sort of parallel to the series when he asks her pragmatically and logically to help him against Zaibach without considering her feelings.

But really, nothing like, “You’re the Wing Goddess? Few months back, I tried to summon you from the holy land of Arzas, using all the magic taught to me by the beast clan but you left me on Read?” Ahh yes that would be uncharacteristic to disclose by this particular character, I get it.

So what do you think? Did Orm make him forget or did he revert Hitomi’s whole first visit to Gaea?

“Ancient Gaea”

What is also pretty blurry is this whole “Wing Goddess lived on ancient Gaea and she met Van then… but she has forgotten.”

Okay, what do we know of this “ancient Gaea”? We know the Wing Goddess as well as “Van” in some form lived there and then. And they were “alike” in some way. Orm calls them “twins” or “gemini” which I do get may sound problematic (I translated it as “two of the same kind” in the end) but I don’t think he means they are related. Also, “dragons” lived on this Gaea. I don’t know, as I listened to this part with the series soundtrack in the bg, I suddenly got the feeling like they talked about the series. Which makes not much sense of course. There is no proof of that. Movie Escaflowne is different, the series one didn’t destroy the world… it doesn’t work. But I still got a nostalgic feeling like that.

Then the last thing we know is Escaflowne actually destroyed some major city… I guess, likely in battle with the movie Alseides, they just laid ruin to this ancient Gaea civilization, whatever it was. In this battle it seems, Escaflowne could have been buried by rubble of what could have been the predecessor of Torushina, which itself could have been gradually built upon the ancient city ruins. That’s all we know. Anyway, I kinda hate when Sora teases like “could we bring back the ancient memories of the Wing Goddess?” Don’t give us hope if you’re never, ever gonna deliver, dammit. Maybe I should deliver in fic form haha (no I will not start another project).

Random thoughts after watching the movie after having translated the drama

Now that I think of it, the movie actively avoids any direct reference to the events of the cd drama. But after giving a proper attention to the CD drama, you see echoes of it in the movie, echoes of Hitomi remembering on some level after all. Like, when they are frolicking with Yukari, and she hears Sora’s song… she immediately understands someone is calling. It’s not “I hear a song nobody else seems to hear” anymore, it’s her immediately understanding that Yukari doesn’t hear it and that she’s being called.

BTW, what I humbly believe the movie subs/dubs could have done a little better was the scene with Yukari at the stadium. Hitomi tells Yukari she’s annoying for meddling in her life. She says “annoying” and “just disappear” repeatedly and there is this transition from when it seems like she’s really calling Yukari  “annoying” and muttering she should “go away” to when you understand that she is talking about herself. Hitomi is the “bad guy” and she’s the one who should “disappear”. If you use “fade away” it doesn’t click so much because you don’t tell another person to “fade away”.

Also, in cd 1, when Hitomi sees Van for the first time and the dragon fossil in the face of the mountain. I got this weird feeling it could be Van just before he takes off to kill everyone on the Black Dragon Ship and steal Escaflowne in the very first movie scene. Because yes, we see the mountain with the dragon fossil in that movie scene (presumably one of the twin gods Van prays to), he prays for the death of his enemies (that he does massacre in the movie opening scene), even the music is the same... because Bird song is the first part of First Vision, the OST for the first scene of the movie.

Or perhaps, for Hitomi's “first vision”, and it refers to this scene from the drama? Of course, nothing gets confirmed here either. Anyway, if she sees Van in real time, what would he be doing at the time she’s under Orm’s spell on the train? Well, apparently, he is aware of Orm’s actions, and with support of the elders from the wolf village, he is trying to intercept him. Which he does later, in the cave. But would his preparation for that be this? Wishing death upon his enemies with the sword drawn and then flying off… idk, it fits the movie scene better.

This post got really speculative so I’ll just stop here but I think I’ll make one or two other posts. One will just have the movie trivia without as much of my speculation. Another will be a bit critical because while I like Escaflowne in all its forms, I did get a bit frustrated here and I should let it out.

[fayrinferno]

Escaflowne Movie Audio Drama CD: Prologue 2 GAEA (EN)

Here comes the second part of the Escaflowne movie audio (voice) dramas translation, it continues right where the first one left off. There are two CDs complementary to the movie that take place several months before its events. This is not the first time they are translated, you can still find an older translation online. I'm posting just the text but the audio can be found online if you look hard enough. Big thanks to @coverteyes for proofreading!

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

Recent animo-mangoid experiences in elderly (a blog post)

In case you forgot I am a huge nerd, I shall remind you with the latest updates to my not insignificant power level. I finished some long-running series and then the curiosity and boredom got the better of me and I watched/read some of which the kids do these days. Here are some haphazard thoughts on all that.

SNK

First of all, I finished what there was to finish of Shingeki no Kyojin and as it was a story I followed for a decade, guess I could say a few parting words. I wanted to say it when the manga ended already but the anime ascertained it: it had a decent ending. A fine ending, especially as far as long-running manga goes. It was pretty realistic; warping your dreams and spitting them out into something lacklustre and problematic like life or something. I'm glad to say some of my favs survived the gruesome ride and got some semblance of happy ending, although things are not perfect. In such a story, I don't think they can or should be. Even standing on the sidelines, I understood the series got quite controversial reputation after the years but I didn't see it that way, personally. Sure, the topics and themes covered were controversial but if you can differentiate between writing about and endorsing something, I guess there's nothing more to talk about.

By the way, back when I was in Japan, I visited a SNK exhibition titled "Shingeki no Kyojin Ten: FINAL". Part of it was a room where you could "hear the sound of the series finale" (reminder this was back in 2019). It was taken quite seriously, we had to enter the room one by one and were forbidden from using phones/cameras there. And we heard some sound... that I guess could be part of one of the final scenes? Anyway, if there was some interest in that, I could put together a post about my visit there, there was some interesting stuff for fans of this series! I have no idea if there is someone who did that already but if someone would like to see that, let me know. I don't think I'll do it on my own accord, anyway.

2. KNY, JJK

Up next, I started some two of the 'shonen big three' of the last few years (as I identified them with my perception of the fandom places I frequent). To see what the fuss is about, obviously. First off, it was Kimetsu no Yaiba, I started watching the anime on Netflix in 2022 and am currently caught up with the anime. This year, I did the same with Jujutsu Kaisen anime. I grouped them cause the experience I had felt somehow similar. First of all, they are both entertaining and enjoyable. You can easily find characters to like. And remind yourself once again of the appeals of battle shonen. It's kinda comfy falling back into old shonen and thinking like, "ah, this is like my baby's first shonen!" While some older people would be like, "*baby's first shonen* is just like this 80s/90s shonen". It never dies and the things that work, work. Anyway, superficial take but the designs of KNY ad JJK work so well (both in their own rights). I can imagine how they fuel fanwork, although I have been too scared until now to check out the tags until I was caught up. I understand KNY is finished and JJK is ending, too. I decided I will stick to the anime for now with KNY and I will catch up with JJK manga that I'm currently reading. And I caught up, five chapters before finale, at a very satisfying point. After that, I'll take a peek into the tags. It's not like I see either work as perfect but I can see how even some of the flaws make it more enjoyable. Survey question for those who've read until here: are you trying to understand the "logic" of the techniques and attacks as they explain it in battle shonen? I feel like I gave up on that, I'm just like, "naruhodo" and I don't even try to wrap my head around it :'D That 6-8 year old who yelled "domain expansion!" in a as he ran by at the swimming pool may actually understand better. I was already shocked that he is watching (or rather, streaming) this in foreign language at his age, then thought about what kind of rating JJK would have... and then I remembered us watching DBZ at an age or not much older than him, tried to remember how violent it was and pondered things like whether the topics in JJK are somewhat heavier anyway although people got holes in their torsos and cleaved in half in DBZ too and how he might as well yelled 'bankai!' or something instead... and yeah, I'm thinking I'm old. But KNY and JJK are still enjoyable haha.

3. HAIKYUU!!

When I was deciding what to watch after this, I was reminded of that volleyball anime called VOLLEYBALL!! that I had started watching in Japan. I think I only got as far as one or two series but I started from there and man, I hadn't expected I would enjoy it so much! This is, hands down, the easiest thing to watch for me from all that is mentioned in this post. If there were 900 episodes out, I would just keep watching it every day after work. Part of it surely is that I played volleyball in middle school/junior high. It felt so nostalgic to reminisce about. We had felt so serious about it too, representing our school, although, since I never continued with in high school, I never got to the more technical volleyball stuff. It still made me miss playing, the atmosphere is depicted SO well. Maybe it's also nostalgic cause my first anime was also a sports anime. And yes, ngl, gimme the cute boys playing sports, getting all emotional about it... it's so pure haha! I'm sure the fandom is not just that but I think I will enjoy the fanworks just as much once I'm caught up. BTW, the new movie surprisingly made it into mainstream cinemas here so yeah, I should watch it soon. It was another thing that made me go 'hmmm' like, I get Ghibli but are the kids actually coming to cinema to see this? Was this a calculated choice on the distributor's side to play this at the major cinemas all over the country; an anime movie that takes place in the middle of a long story and works only so much as a standalone (I assume) if you haven't followed these characters? Whatever the case, I guess anime is becoming more mainstream than ever before. And yup, Haikyuu is turning out to be something close to my kokoro, I would compare it to Yuri on Ice I suppose... (yeah my kokoro has another tiny crack in it now that the movie was cancelled).

4. DUNMESHI

Yep, we come to this one. I heard so many good things about Dungeon Meshi and when I read the synopsis, I was even more intrigued. I tried the manga, then few episodes of the anime, then manga again and I stuck to it and finished it a few weeks back. And yes, BRAVA, Kui-sensei. I had a hunch that this one would work better as a manga and I think it does. It was absolutely refreshing to me! So much brilliant thought that is considered taboo for some reason? And Kui's writing makes you think, "but why (is this taboo if people are like that?)" The art is very good, too. So neat, well-thought out and technically great. The ending felt satisfying to me, too. I have no complaints about this little series. You don't even need to ship anyone; it is funny, intelligent, and enjoyable without all that.

5. THE REMAKES

One last category I wanted to shortly mention are the recently announced remakes. It feels crazy to see Ranma 1/2 getting remade! I caught that, then I caught news of a new Rose of Versailles project?! And then came news of the Rayearth remake??? The first two I guess are something that could have been expected with the popularity of Takahashi and Lady Oscar BUT it was with Rayearth that I realized that anything can happen now. It doesn't mean it has to be good, but it CAN happen (first such shock I remember was the Netflix adaptation of 7SEEDS which was miserable but I am still shook that it even happened). BTW, I never even watched/read Rayearth. I brought the manga from Japan to read it in original because I was always intrigued by it and Clamp (and let's be honest, it was also because it was just a handful of tankobons). I still haven't got around to it but I want to do it before watching it, whether the original or the remake.

[fayrinferno]

Escaflowne Movie Audio Drama CD: Prologue 1 EARTH (EN)

I've been working on several translation projects more or less simultaneously in the past few years, so next up, I'm bringing you the movie audio (voice) dramas. There are two CDs complementary to the movie that take place several months before its events. This time, I'm also not the first explorer, there is an existing English translation from many years back that you can still find online on the translator's (David Jao's) website. I had it open as I went for reference but I have hopes this new one will make things a little clearer. After all, the movie lore is sparse and these dramas expand on it some. The advantage I had was the existing technology, plus, I'm well-versed in the specific terminology of Escaflowne materials by now (heh). Moreover, I had the help of @coverteyes who kindly polished this translation and made the work on it more fun. Thank you so much!

I'm posting just the text, for now at least. However, as @ruinsoftime made me aware, the audio can be found on Youtube (with Spanish translation, too) if you prefer that or if you'd like to play it as you read. Second part will follow.

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

I think lot of it can be explained by ~UNRELIABLE NARRATOR~

The word Leon uses in his journal really means untrodden/unprecedented. As someone who was studying the mysteries for years and had never heard of anyone who had actually been there from his part of the world, he thinks it true. It's the "discovery of new land" kind of situation, obviously, you don't think of ancients and cultures you don't know much about having been there. You think of your part of the world and your historical experience that may be a few decades, maybe centuries, if you have good records.

Also, it's his journal, not memories. On the day he arrives, he believes to be the first. When he meets Isaac, he may reconsider but he wouldn't come back to edit his journal and we only hear snippets of it anyway. What we know is that Leon wandered the continent for several months, part of it alone, part of it with Isaac. I too think it makes most sense that Isaac followed him there, keeping low profile at first because he wanted to obtain Leon's trust but also keeping the soldiers at hand. We get confirmed that it wouldn't be hard to hear of Leon in Asturia and there is a considerable Zaibach presence in Asturia before the war so that's one way of how Isaac may have known. It is also a way Leon might have known his attackers were Zaibach although he doesn't say it (Allen does as he sees them, Leon might or might not have realized).

Anyway, busy as he was dying and saying goodbyes to the women of his life, Leon probably didn't manage to scribble "Zaibach soldiers just stabbed me!" into his journal. So Hitomi's company doesn't know about the soldiers, only about Isaac, who they learn is from "Mystic Moon" so I don't think they would suspect Zaibach. Only Allen sees the killing scene (and the soldiers) in his vision in the Mystic Valley. Whether he tells the rest later is not shown I think but likely he would, as it's relevant information.

(I'm regularly pulling some specific scenes up so I might be in a constant state of a very slow rewatch lol)

I was scrolling through some of @fayrinferno 's posts and... If Leon was the first to set foot on Asgard, there's NO surprise or commentary that Isaac, then later (Zaiback) guards are there. Aslo, I don't recall, does Leon know they're Zaibackian? Does the Esca company know they're Zaibackian? Is Hitomi seeing Dryden's diary reading? Is it only us the audience that knows the truth?

Plothole much?

Personally I like to think that over the how many thousand years, at least a few people were passion-driven about Atlantis to attempt the trip to Asgard. Leon is the current 'crazy' who tried it.

🤔... Now I'm wondering if Dornkirk followed Leon. That makes logical sense.

I need a rewatch.

[fayrinferno]

Alright! My thoughts about the final part of book one...

I really liked this finale! I may even like it a little more than the actual anime scene. Look at Hitomi fighting for Van (did Merle faint or something? not complaining, tho…) Also, Hitomi seems to have close bond already with Van, clearly understanding his feelings? I know, it may simply be for convenience as the novel would like to show things that she as the narrator can't really see from her viewpoint (like Van's face inside the guymelef), but it's certainly interesting to know they wrote her having this level of empathy when it comes to Van at this point already.

I realized I could have done this by the earlier chapters already but this time I also checked how the lines compare to the series. Well, maybe the reason I had not done this before was that I wanted this to be my translation rather than sticking to the expressions that the series' translators used. But it looks like the novel lines are significantly different! I mean yes, same things get said, same facts are revealed, but using different words.

I appreciate knowing Hitomi's thoughts about Allen, even. She does feel quite guilty even towards Amano. Or rather, she blames herself for being fickle. But yes (and this was confirmed elsewhere, too) her crush on Allen is basically a continuation of her crush on Amano and she would not have not been so smitten with him if the two weren't so alike.

It seemed there was a bit more to the talk between Dornkirk, Folken, and Dilandau but then I realized the novel scene conjoins two series scenes, one from episode 3 and one from episode 4. In the novel, it also looks like the two Dragonslayers who let their guymelefs be destroyed were killed in the process (in the series, Dalet and Chesta just receive a scolding and a slap from Dilandau).

I haven't noticed any other significant differences besides that; the other changed or moved stuff was understandable considering the medium and keeping the consistency. For some reason, minor details were different again, as footnoted: in the novel it's febilus instead of felibus, guaral instead of glar/glaar, and Breeden instead of Reeden.

Speaking of; Breeden, Ort, and Kio also seem to be the only three named Allen's men at this point. In the previous chapter, Ort (bald knives guy) who speaks of the Mystic Moon curse more or less has the same role as in the anime, and so does Kio (the big guy who pilots the melef) who brings in Merle. But it seems in this chapter, Kio, who is piloting the melef but unable to defend the entry to the tunnel in the anime, is replaced by Breeden.

And still no explicit Gaddes here, so I briefly wondered if this Breeden is actually meant to be him. Then I remembered I saw some messed up Crusade Crew names before so I checked the Nobuteru Yuuki concepts and there is pretty clearly a sketch of Gaddes where he's named "Pyle". Meanwhile Pyle is named "Burdon" (Baadon) on another concept sketch. But Reeden is still Reeden on the same sketch. This kind of proves that the Crusade Crew names were unstable pretty long into pre-production, so I assume the novel situation also could result from that. Needless to say, I still believe the novel precedes the actual script. And no worries, I believe Gaddes appears next book, guess once he existed for the anime, the novel had to reflect that as well!

And it also explains why the following novels are already much closer to the anime counterpart, they probably were written when all the major stuff was already decided. I continue reading them and while it's been fun to do that (and translating this), I also dread the moment a bit when I'm done and know that this is it, there's probably not much more lore to be discovered. But hey, we can always create more!

Regarding translations, I will switch to movie materials next. It's been a while but I translated the movie audio drama and most recently I finished translating the movie novelization, too (thanks to @coverteyes who kindly helped me by proofreading/editing both, you won't have to suffer by my ESL as much). As to when, hard to say; I wanted to post all of this book very quickly but as it happens, I blinked and four months went by since I posted part 3. So I'd rather not make any promises. There are updates on other fronts I want to bring but I guess I can't just force it. On a related note, I'm also sorry I continue not to be very present these days for various reasons that have me feel overwhelmed way too often.

Escaflowne Novels: Book 1 Part 4 (EN)

Once more, sharing all that I've translated of the Escaflowne Newtype Novels. This is (finally) the final part of the first of the six books of the series novelization and with this, I'm putting the project on an indefinite hiatus as I had mentioned before. Next up to be posted are the movie CD drama and the movie novel translations. Sorry for any mistakes, this one was not beta-read. Title picture is edited from the novel cover illustration by Hiroshi Osaka.

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

Escaflowne Novels: Book 1 Part 4 (EN)

Once more, sharing all that I've translated of the Escaflowne Newtype Novels. This is (finally) the final part of the first of the six books of the series novelization and with this, I'm putting the project on an indefinite hiatus as I had mentioned before. Next up to be posted are the movie CD drama and the movie novel translations. Sorry for any mistakes, this one was not beta-read. Title picture is edited from the novel cover illustration by Hiroshi Osaka.

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

Shower Thoughts on AI Art

I think my aversion to AI art is not a secret and there's ton of posts that I agree with and I could not have put better. Still, I will try to collect a few thoughts of why it's so shitty and depressing for me. No, it's not even because I draw and write a little and I feel threatened by it and the art theft it entails (at my level I just don't). This is more of a consumer standpoint.

AI art for me is like watering down the same teabag 20 times, yeah, you got the ingredients correct and you got some result out of it. But is it still tea? Anyway, you don't care, you water it down the 21st time and the water doesn't even color, so what now? You figure out you just need to put some artificial colorant into hot water and you can call it a tea. Like they do it in the food adverts. Replacing actual food with delicious-looking chemicals. You can make so many cups of tea-looking liquid with just one tiny bit of colorant. You can skip the whole growing the plant, picking the leaves, drying them and whatnot, even something as minor as unpacking the teabag each time... and you get a nice looking cup of tea without all the effort! It's easier, quicker, cheaper. People will eventually get used to the new definition of tea. Except it's poison.

But before you even started slowly poisoning people with it, you devaluated what tea should be. You watered it down till all the taste disappeared and it became colored water that you could replace with... well, colored water.

You can pop these "works" out like microwave popcorn. You can post 20 of them online in an hour. You and everyone else. You are making trash out of a rare and precious good, to be sold at dumping price. In all human history, people who created masterpieces had honed their skills for months, years, and enjoyed the respect of people, sometimes good money (or at least some of them did; more deserved it). Even those who would create forgeries of their work had to train for years to be able to do that. You will just render that effort useless, stupid, laughable. So why should anyone bother and waste their time, train for years, and yet beggar themselves with a worthless trade? The pool of talent will get smaller and skills will deteriorate so I wonder what would the AI feed upon then? Upon itself? Or will it just rehash endlessly what was created before this cursed decade?

And so, we're quickly getting to the poison point. If something is not done to limit it, AI will stop making those dumb mistakes it does now. You will no longer be able to identify it, discern it from human-made art, from real photos, videos. You will be able to not only create flawless masterpieces; you will render your own reality. Manipulating the masses will become even easier than it is right now.

And this is happening to art, you know, the thing that always had our backs and souls in time of crisis. Like the one that is already here. Instead of helping with the crisis, helping us to better lives, AI targets one of the last pillars of hope. One that should inspire us to imagine a better world.

When I saw an amazing piece of art, I used to feel admiration and inspiration, imagining the mind, talent, skill, effort, training, time, energy, emotion that went to it. The artwork itself was just the tip of the iceberg. Now, I squint at it like, AI or not? I will never trust a newcomer artist again. Digital art makes many things easier already, that can't be denied. Combined with AI, it will just make creating great artwork laughably easy. Even if it IS an artist that has (and is willing to train and use) some skill, AI can make it so much easier for them. Soon, there will be no telling between a real artist and a total hack. I can look at the artwork and even like what I see, but guess I will never feel that genuine wonder, genuine emotion again. Maybe I'll only find those feelings in the galleries. I will only trust the artist of ye olde, before 2023, who I know could create those amazing things with their own skills. And same goes for writers, I assume. Luckily, there are tons of human-made writing I still haven't read, human-made art I haven't enjoyed. If I can't find something to entertain, I still can create something to entertain myself. I'll find and pick the herbs myself, dry them, make an infusion. But I know I won't have to resort to poison laced with theft.

tl;dr I'll never support something that ruins human motivation to create. Because that leaves us only the other human thing, which is the opposite.

[fayrinferno]

Again, I will add my comments on this chapter:

I feel this chapter is already significantly closer to its episode counterpart. I mean, sure, the lines and details are a bit different, but the events are the same.

I loved that a "yellow-beaked" or "baby bird" analogy was used for Van. I used it once or twice myself in the past.

It is confirmed at this point that Hitomi calls her pendant an energist. It was used in some latter parts I translated and people were wondering why. It was never explicitly stated in the anime that what the pendant is made of is energist stone but I suppose it makes a lot of sense. I feel like it might be an energist with possibly even more density and concentrated power than a drag-energist.

Finally, I get a confirmation on something I wondered about for years: why did Allen randomly mention Balgus during their fight? And this kinda confirms my headcanon: Allen knew Balgus trained Van... and he does not say it to surprise him and throw him off, he says it to scold Van. It's eerie when the line I used in my Allen analysis "did you even learn anything from him?" practically appeared right on the page. So yes, there's that senpai-kohai dynamic, although Van does not even realize that. I think things are way clearer here in the novel.

OTP moments: (1) Hitomi notes Van's expression is displeased at Allen's ministrations... ha, I thought the Allen effect would have clouded her mind enough not to notice. Cute. (2) She grabs the hem of his shirt while climbing the Mole Man’s tunnel, which is kinda normal in the situation, yet cute. (3) When Hitomi finds out Van actually managed to land a blow on Allen, she rushes to tell him to cheer him up… then she’s interrupted by the vision. Not cute. (4) She's not just any woman ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Now, to the differences:

Allen doesn’t have Natal (the owl) :(

Anime Allen just punches Mole Man, the novel one “puts away his sword”. I think this makes sense, if Allen drew his sword on a culprit who appears to be assaulting a young girl, he would be dead, probably. Remember when he says he doesn’t “draw a sword for games”? It likely has also to do with the fact that Allen recognizes Mole Man in the anime and knows he’s just “a petty thief” who isn’t really dangerous.

The soldier blocking Hitomi and Van from leaving the room should be Gaddes, even if his name is not mentioned. Hitomi as the POV character doesn’t know the name yet. But by his lukewarm approach to guarding them, and having even a disguise ready (lol), I think I’ll just decide it’s Gaddes, whether intended or not.

Meanwhile, there are introductions between Allen and Dilandau happening, which the anime skips upon following Hitomi back in the room with Van and Gaddes. In the novel, Dilandau says he “heard Allen’s name before” in their introduction, which may be connected to him knowing of his “reputation”.

In the anime, it’s Mole Man who brings Hitomi’s bag to her again. Guess in the novel, she just had it with her. I think the implication in the anime is that he tried to steal it but since he unexpectedly came across them, he is sort of forced by circumstance (and Van having a sword) to return it. I swear that bag’s like a boomerang, always finding its way back to her in some way.

Van actually blocks two attacks in the anime, it’s not over by first. Also, the part he manages to hit is different, in the anime, it’s Sherazade’s arm, in the novel, the hilt of the sword.

Okay, last part of the book incoming!

Escaflowne Novels: Book 1 Part 3 (EN)

As I mentioned, I'm going to share all that I've translated of the Escaflowne Newtype Novels. Here comes the third part of book one of the series novelization. Sorry for any mistakes, I decided to just start posting it as it is. Title picture is edited from the novel cover illustration by Hiroshi Osaka.

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

Escaflowne Novels: Book 1 Part 3 (EN)

As I mentioned, I'm going to share all that I've translated of the Escaflowne Newtype Novels. Here comes the third part of book one of the series novelization. Sorry for any mistakes, I decided to just start posting it as it is. Title picture is edited from the novel cover illustration by Hiroshi Osaka.

READ HERE

[fayrinferno]

Hello, how would you describe the house in which the family Kanzaki lives? I have the impression it’s a mix of Japanese and western architecture and interior design. Would you agree to that? Background: I am writing on a story about Hitomis early childhood, how her father discovers her powers to predict the future (in the show she says she always had this ability) and how he tries to take advantage of it by playing in the lottery.

Note: it may sound like a fun story, but it’s actually pretty traumatizing.

Viele Grüße

Miri

Hi Miri. I'm not sure if you are asking me to do a research or for my own opinion.

In any case, I believe the "Western" and the "Japanese" house shown in the anime (if you are referencing that) may be two places and that's also the idea I used in my writing so far.

I recommend checking out this post but to fully see what I mean, I guess you would have to read chapter 4 of Vis Arcana.

Anyway, you don't have to accept my headcanon. If you think it's one house with a traditional and a modern part, sure, many houses in Japan combine the two somehow. But I wouldn't say western, it's basically how majority of modern Japanese homes are nowadays. Or were even in the 90s. I don't think a kitchen or a room like Hitomi's as we see it in the anime was anything special even at the time. It's a regular modern Japanese house, not some unusual place that went out of way to imitate a European or American house, I think it matches the image of the house in that location from what I've seen there. Even if it may look familiar, if it was an actual place and you went there, you would see the Japanese quirks that other countries don't have. But I guess that's the case in any country, a house in Germany wouldn't be the same as in the UK or in Norway, not to mention US. Even if it may look similar on the first sight, some construction features and details would be customarily different.

I think your idea may be just as plausible as mine, because the conclusion of my research is eventually that you cannot take the real place as a reference, and my arguments rely on that a lot, so they are in no way rock solid. In other words, it's up to you.

I would also say her family is upper-middle class, they have a house like that not far from Tokyo and Hitomi goes to a private school. I would normally hope they didn't pay for it by Hitomi's child labor predicting the future though which is kind of dark for me but I understand it may be a good fic inspiration. From what little Hitomi said, I would personally say her dad is just the typical hard-working Japanese professional of some sort who secured the family financially at the cost of being absent most of the time.

Hope this helps somehow.

mfg Rin

[fayrinferno]

REALLY NEAT!