#japanese soldier

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

A mummified head of a japanese soldier. Battle of Guadalcanal, 1942.

[theside-b]

Do you feel something for me? Please, feel something... I like you.

PERFECT PROPOSE (2024) episode 3

[silvergreenseraphim]

So about that part in Ever Crisis where Sephiroth tries to call Genesis, I used Google Translate to try and see the actual translation of the original Japanese script. "頼む･･････出てくれ•"

Google Translate translates it as "Please...please come out."

I looked up 頼む(tanomu) and it translates as "to ask; to beg; to request" and 出てくれ(dete kure) translates to "to appear or to come out."

Is Sephiroth literally begging for Genesis to reveal himself?

Aaaa!! Yes, he is! I actually hadn’t translated this bit yet, but yes that phrase is very…pleading.

"頼む･･････出てくれ•"

“Please…please come forth…”

The second part of the phrase does indeed mean to “come forth, reveal oneself.” Sephiroth is pleading for Genesis to appear out of…wherever he is. The tone is desperate.

So yes, it works in context with the phone-call. Sephiroth wants Genesis to show up on the other end.

Yet knowing the deeper context of the current events, and Genesis’ desertion, it is almost like Sephiroth is saying,

“Please…please come back…”

He is terrified for Genesis. This is one of the few times I have seen Sephiroth express genuine anxiety and desperation as an adult.

[matchnightt]

If I was Logan Sargeant I would’ve immediately started crying and throwing up when i went to last place

[waitineedaname]

"Amestris is an allegory for nazi Germany" you fool. Amestris is not an allegory for just nazi Germany -- it's an allegory for genocidal, fascist, militaristic governments as a whole. Yes, it has parallels to fascist Europe, but it also has parallels to xenophobic militaristic US and imperialist Japan. The point is not "look at this outlier of a country committing atrocities," the point is that the country committing atrocities might be your country and you might be complicit in it no matter how morally upstanding you might think you are. To act like only one government is capable of committing genocide blinds you to the potential that any other government might commit genocide too.

[ginabiggs]

Moon Princess Serenity. This is a bonus illustration from my fanzine, Eternally Yours, featuring Serenity x Endymion!

[vettely]

as a both george and lewis fan i think i should get some type of a reward

[fferthe]

Valentine's Unknown Sender

A couple of people don't find the Valentine sender's speech in tandem with Gaster's, which I completely agree with! However, not everyone can see what we mean, so let me show you. But before we continue, I should clarify that I'm not a fluent Japanese speaker and am just going off of what little I know about the language.

Now, let me show you the two (out of three) Japanese writing systems: hirigana and katakana.

It helps me think of hirigana as 'squiggly' characters and katakana as 'stiff'. The last one, kanji, you'll recognize immediately, as they can be confused with Chinese characters due to their complexity (and, well, origin).

One of the points I've seen is that the style change is simply due to informality of the letter. Someone also said that it was written this way so we couldn't recognize who was speaking. To get the latter possibility out of the way: during the release of DELTARUNE, the name of the account was blurred out, making them appear as a seemingly unknown person (everyone knew it was our lovable silly goober). Though, they still had a recognizable.. style. They spoke in stilted kanji + katakana. No hirigana anywhere, which is a strange mix. Kanji + hirigana? Sure. But excluding katakana instead of hirigana is weird. Katakana is used for names, loan words (and can also be used to show a foreigner speaking Japanese), names for species, emphasis, and also to indicate unnatural speech, often used for robots (which is the case for Queen, by the way).

Now, the Valentine's person? No kanji. They only use hirigana and katakana. Excluding kanji is very weird, too. But JRPGs at the time (which Toby loved deeply, as there are countless references to them in the game) had hardware limitations, so this choice was somewhat of a tribute. This also applies to the Light World in DELTARUNE, which resembles Undertale heavily. However, in the Dark World, kanji is used. This stranger who people believe to be Mike would have to be a Lightner to speak without using kanji. Which makes me doubt that this is Mike at all. He has an affiliation with Spamton, with Tenna. They go a long way, before the fountain opened. And a Lightner can't enter a Dark World without one. More on that later. Back to the letter, the grammar mistake is not accidental. In the Japanese version the sender writes "サラ ば!" which should be either in full katakana (サラバ) or full hirigana (さらば), not a weird mix. Also, 'goodbye' in Japanese is one word and should not be separated like that. So, same thing with the letter. While we're not told who it is, their speech still has distinct features. 🎉 PRONOUN TIME 🎉🎉 Who uses what? (I've highlighted Gaster in bold where needed.)

I: watashi (わたし) by both You: kimi (キミ) vs anata* (アナタ -> あなた) [* -- kimitachi in Entry 17] We: watashitachi (わたしたち) vs ware-ware (ワレワレ -> 我々)

Watashi is a regular formal first-person pronoun. Kimi (+tachi for plural) is a more casual second-person pronoun, can either be used by a superior to refer to a subordinate or one's equal. Anata is a respectful second-person pronoun. Ware-ware is a first-person plural pronoun used by either ancient beings or just someone old and important. The download page for DELTARUNE in 2018, the SURVEY_PROGRAM itself, the SAVE menu, the GAME OVER screen -- all of them share these same speech quirks, mannerisms. Gaster isn't just "formal", he speaks very slowly, often separating a sentence in two parts by starting off a new line. He uses very peculiar wording and it's as if he's struggling to speak. Picture an alien trying to communicate in our language, or a human that knows this 🤏 much [insert language], trying to form a sentence.

Gaster's quirks are also present in Japanese, the localization reflects what I just talked about. He's unnaturally stiff. He also never uses commas, and it's not about formality -- it's a distinct feature of his.

(For the Love of God Can You Embed Like a Normal Video)

Also, there have been suggestions that it could be another piece of Gaster. We already got a glimpse of what he was like pre-accident, and it's ENTRY 17. It lines up with the Gaster that accompanies us throughout chapter 1. And that means we are dealing with the most cohesive 'piece' of him. Why would, then, there be such an opposing part of him? It doesn't line up.

Personally, if this was about Gaster, I wholeheartedly agree with carlyraejepsans's take. And the only case which I'd agree on is DR Gaster.

So, here's the "later". The person knowing about the DELTA RUNE could line up with them being a Lightner, since they do have it plastered everywhere in the town, don't they? Only the Angel is ever mentioned in the Light World, but I'm sure that just like in Undertale, it's called DELTA RUNE by the Lightners just as it is by Ralsei. It seems to me that only the contents of the prophecy are different, but the name stays the same throughout worlds.

Though, funny how the prophecy is inverted.. I didn't notice it until now. In Undertale the focus is on the triangles and their salvation, while in DELTARUNE the focus is on the winged orb and its condemnation.

"You free the banished" vs "You banish the freest" hehheeh Anyway, it's not about the game, but the prophecy, so the person doesn't have THAT much knowledge. And I doubt they know about Ralsei's version of the prophecy, because other Darkners besides the prince himself don't seem to be aware of any prophecy. All they know is the Knight, which makes sense, since Asriel's doppelgänger stayed at his castle in wait of the Lightners all alone, without spreading a word about it. Neither Darkners nor Lightners know of it. Though, the phrasing does feel odd. Waiting for what exactly? DELTA RUNE? Also, the Japanese version having the name merged kind of bothers me. So, is it DELTARUNE or DELTA RUNE? The translation team does distinguish the two. Why not here? Was it intentional or not? Well, I'll leave it up to someone else to figure out, right now I'm too tired for that.

tl;dr(?): It's not UT Gaster, nor Mike (it's not a Darkner at all). It's a Lightner and possibly DR Gaster.

[n64retro]

スターソルジャー バニシングアース  Sutā Sorujā Banishingu Āsu Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (Hudson Soft, 1998)

[thewingedwolf]

a lot of my free time is spent listening to a podcast run and researched by a professor of genocide studies who went into those studies specifically bc in an attempt to escape the violence of his angry, alcoholic father he signed up to go off to war in afghanistan only to realize that the whole war and war in general is a) stupid & boring and b) a series of horrific war crimes that had made the civilian population deeply suspicious of him even tho His Morals Were In The Right Place (tm). when he got home and threw himself into being anti violence, joining anarchist orgs & studying theory & trying to understand why he was sent to the other side of the world to be traumatized for no good reason while traumatizing the local population with his very presence, his shithead father died & he found out that his father was Like That bc their family was chased out of armenia because of genocide and it kicked off a cycle of violence & anger in the men of his family. he absolutely lost his shit, got his degree in genocide studies, and moved to armenia (do not ask me how he convinced his wife to do this with him. he’s really open about every other aspect of his life except his wife and kids which is imo very valid).

all that to say, he has this interesting perspective of war in that he has this cultural trauma of being the victim of a horrific crime while also himself being the perpetrator of imperialism & serving in an area that had recently been the site of several horrific war crimes (really similar to tim o’brien, who served in my lai several months after the massacre but didn’t know the massacre had happened & pieced together what happened from the horrified whispers of the civilians & brags from soldiers). it makes him both hyper critical of soldiers who do terrible things & empathetic to soldiers who are forced from home to do terrible things & angry on behalf of civilians who are victims of war crimes. i have ragged on him for being Very Midwestern about certain things but his research is interesting & sad & well done, & it’s really made me think about my own place in The Greater World & every time the internet loses its mind over some aspect of history i am violently reminded that most people just look at history and go “but MY SIDE was justified actually” when that’s such a BABY IDEA OF HOW HISTORY AND WAR WORKS.

[kaurwreck]

I'm reading a collection of tales recounting the early days of the Yokohama Foreign Settlement (Suribachi City, in bsd-verse), and the sheer amount of shenanigans deserves a list but I don't even know where to begin.

The noodle-makers' dispute over flour that led to the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture committing seppuku? The Japanese-government sponsored brothel with a moat? The two-sword wielding assassins in the swamp who kept killing foreigners? That the foreigners still went bird hunting in the swamp filled with two-sword wielding assassins? The Japanese soldiers quartered nearby bonding with the troops England sent to do something about the two-sword wielding assassins? The English merchant who had his American assistant illegally arrested resulting in a lawsuit against the English merchant in the English court that had to be litigated by the American Consul since he was the only American lawyer in Yokohama, during the course of which the salty editor of an English newspaper decided to settle a personal vendetta by publishing remarks about the American assistant so scathing that the American assistant then hid in wait only to pop out and horsewhip the editor in front of God and everyone, resulting in another trial, but this time in the American court, which meant the American Consul became the judge, a position which he used to imply the English lawyer, the now-judge's former opposing counsel, was worth a sum of 6 1/4 cents, with such insinuation sparking community-wide protests? Blood Town?

[thebeautifulbook]

NANSOU SATOMI HAKKENDEN [aka SATOMI AND THE EIGHT “DOGS”] by Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) [aka Kyokutei Bakin] and Yanagawa Shigenobu. Soft wrapper with stab binding.

This epic novel, entitled Nansō Satomi Hakkenden (Satomi and the eight "dogs") is a yomihon, or reading book, one of the popular genres of Edo-period (1600-1867) prose fiction. It consists of 98 chapters printed in a total of 106 booklets and is considered the largest novel in the history of Japanese Literature [more…]

His territory under siege, Lord Satomi jokingly offers the hand of his daughter Fusehime ("Princess Fuse") to whomever delivers the head of the enemy commander. Satomi is surprised when the family dog Yatsufusa (in fact the incarnation of a vengeful spirit) brings his master the head. The princess — bound by integrity and obligation — must go through with the marriage.

Two years later, Fuse has calmed Yatsufusa’s vengeful spirit but learns that she has somehow become pregnant with half-dog children. Soon after, Yatsufusa is shot dead by Fuse's former husband-to-be Kanamari Daisuke, and Fuse follows by committing seppuku. As she dies, the spirits of her eight unborn "pups" emerge from the wound as mist, snaring her crystal prayer beads and scattering to the winds to be born in different families.

Sixteen years later, Daisuke (now a monk named Chudai) wanders the land to find Fuse's lost children and assemble them under one roof as the "Eight Dog Warriors". Each bears the character 犬 (dog) in their family name, one of the crystal orbs from Fuse's necklace (each marked with one of the Eight Confucian Virtues), and one of Yatsufusa's peony-shaped birthmarks somewhere on their body.

Library of Congress

Wikipedia

[silvergreenseraphim]

Chibiroth often upsets me more than I expect with his mannerisms 🥺

Also slight updates on translations below

I am nearly done with the final part of the Angeal—Sephiroth chapter in Dissidia, but there was one part that I hit a slight snag with due to some contextual issues. My friend can’t always get back to me right away, so I have been in limbo.

However, good news! I have spoken with another Japanese student on Twitter who has also been translating the chapters. Our translations are quite similar, so I was relieved to see that my work wasn’t too lacking. However, this person is also moving ahead, so I may be able to ask them about the one spot I was struggling with. They were fine with this and I will credit them of course. If so, the post will be out soon!

Also good news, the few areas where I was concerned my translations were weak have been translated the same way by this person on Twitter, so I think I am relatively on-track for now.

I will do my best to get this post out soon! In the mean time, at least we have Chibiroth <3

[mega-magolor]

The bomb guys from Mario wonder are named "Hanabihei" internally. This means Firework Soldier. Compare this to "Bomuhei", the Japanese name for the Bob-Omb.

This leads me to believe the official English name for the Hanabihei would be something like a snappier version of "Firework-Omb" that rolls of the tongue better while still retaining part of the word "Firework" and the "-Omb" ending.

Also, look at this awesome and cute Hanabihei/ Firework Soldier/ Firework-Omb render from the Mario Wiki!

[dont-you-call-him-baby]

i love being insane about multple things cause it means im entertained a lot but jesus fucking christ is it hard to focus on two things at once. i do NOT have the mental capacity to look at the japanese GP media day stuff, or whatever those silly 20 men who drive cars are getting up to after THAT 9-1-1 EPISODE. i dont know if i can sit down on the same couch looking at the same tv i saw BISEXUAL EVAN BUCKLEY go CANON on and watch a race at 1am.

[shihlun]

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

- Tokyo Sonata

2008

Ryusuke Hamaguchi

- Intimacies

2013