#sorry for any incorrect gramma or anything

[crabboytahomaru]

4am zool thoughts (not just Tora I promise)

Torao probs slept with people so much bc he was lacking in proper human connection and love and tried to satisfy it that way

He's used to having women hang off his arm, but now it's a 17yr old high school student whose rambling about the latest stupid thing his classmate did

He's used to taking people on classy dates in high end restaurants

He goes with minami to a local restaurant and watches mina happily scarf down like 5 bowls of ramen.

He foots the bill, as a gentleman does, but then mina nudges him and asks him, am I not a gentleman too? And so they take turns every time to pay for each other.

Instead of spending his nights in the embrace of a woman, they're all at toumas house watching one of minas horror movies.

'haru, are you scared? It's alright if you are, it's meant to be scary' touma would tell haru kindly and haru would reply: 'W-Who said I was scared!?', curling up closer to touma regardless.

Tora would mention to mina how cute he was as a child, to which mina would tease and say aren't I just as charming now?

He has his precious people now, he doesn't mind being used by them

He'd take them to amusement parks and buy haru the merch. He remembers one time where haru placed Minnie mouse ears on top of toumas head, claiming that it suit him.

Using fast passes, haru practically dragged them to every ride there, mina being the only person who could sit with him on every one. Touma got exhausted after the first 3 in a row (and to his credit, tried to stay with haru as long as possible) and Tora amicably sat out on every ride that haru would let him (oh my, do we have a scaredy cat on our hands? Mina would always tease)

When haru slapped his report card on the table in minas house, his chest puffed out proudly at his rising grades, Touma couldn't help but ruffle the kids hair affectionately. Haru blushed and announced he didn't need such childish gestures, but everyone knew how happy he was to be praised.

Sometimes haru would walk into their practice room, hair all disheveled due to pulling an all nighter for a test - which he did revise for properly by the way, mina would have killed him otherwise, he just wanted to double check the content.

Mina, sitting on the floor, would gesture for haru to sit in front of him and would comb through his hair, insisting that idols needed to stay presentable at all times.

Haru would be little apprehensive at first, not wanting it to hurt, but mina was gentle, taking his time with any knots.

Sometimes, after watching some of minas horror movies, haru would get just a little bit scared and would have mina read aloud to him whatever book he was reading at the time to lull him to sleep.

Zool, when sleeping over at a members house, would get out futons for each member, but half the time they never get used. Most of the time they'd pile into the members bed.

Whenever there's the possibility of sleeping over, more often than not it's toras house that's suggested first, solely bc his bed is massive enough it could probably fit 4 adult men no problem.

[lawleon]

Review of the Official English Translation of Touhou Suzunaan Forbidden Scrollery

Today’s the day! Well, 2 days from now technically, but I got my hands on a copy today, so today’s the day! I was fully prepared to write a scathing review of the official English translation, luckily I don’t have to do that. I very much enjoyed the translation and found it to be very good overall. There are a few minor complaints which I will address, along with some praise, but if you’d rather not read all that I’ll just say upfront, if you are a Touhou fan who was on the fence about picking this up I do recommend buying this.

Well, without further ado let’s start by addressing the criticisms.

Criticisms

Just to begin with, this is a rather minor one, but it was the cause of 95% of my unease before buying this book, the synopsis on the back cover. There is a specific word choice on the back cover of the book that had me quite worried. “Demonic books…” was the root of my negative expectations for this book. The youma books are center stage as a plot point throughout Forbidden Scrollery, so I was quite concerned that youkai was going to be translated as Demon, and youma was going to be translated as Demonic.

I am happy to report that “Youkai” and “Youma” are left as I spelled them. Yes you read that right “Y O U K A I”. It’s not spelled yokai, it is spelled in the book properly as youkai. Well, I’ll get in to that more specifically in the praise section of this review, but the back cover synopsis was a source of a great deal of unease in the months before the release, it was the synopsis for the series listed on all book retailers, and it was the only translated text available to read for quite some time. After that slow pitch, let’s get into the single worst Translation in this book, Akyu Hiedano.

I don’t get it, I just don’t. I don’t know how this translation was decided upon. You were even so careful to even spell youkai correctly, with the long o sound. The most egregious error must be Akyu. Her given name is Akyuu, with a long u sound. Akyu is incorrect, this spelling is more incorrect than where the “no” was placed. Speaking of the “no” in Hieda no Akyuu, there was quite a bit of discussion around it when this translation was first discovered. I decided not to say anything about it until I had the book in my hand, but now that I do have the book I can see that the translation answers this debate in the form of a TL note.

Spelled right there properly on the front gate to her house, Hieda.

The “no” in and of itself is there to make Akyuu sound important. The no is also not in a proper reading of the kanji making up Akyuu’s family name, it’s present, but it’s to add that societal weight to her name. This inconsistency in the translation makes it seem as if in Chapter 2 Kosuzu walks into the Hieda household to find “Akyu Hiedano” sitting around looking at books inside. I know that this is addressed in the first line on the next page with Kosuzu stating, “Your mansion is always so over-dramatic.”, but it needs to be said. This just doesn’t flow well in English. If the translation of Hiedano is to be kept, please be consistent translating all future instances of Hieda to Hiedano, though I hope this choice is reconsidered. Personally I’d like to see it translated as Akyuu Hieda. I feel that it is shown in Forbidden Scrollery that Akyuu is quite important and comes from a well-to-do household, therefore leaving the no out is an acceptable translation to me, since that societal weight is shown in a different way. Moving forward, there are a few other names this translation choice will change, Hata no Kokoro or Fujiwara no Mokou, should be translated as Kokoro Hata, and Mokou Fujiwara respectively. I do hope someone at Yen Press reads this or perhaps other fan reviews and reconsiders the overall translation of Akyuu’s name, it’s the only really noticeable blemish on this fantastic translation. Other than that, there are 2 instances where I feel that the translation is a bit off. The first occurs in the first chapter right here:

“But I have to say, my favorite book…” “…is this one!” You can see in the line prior Kosuzu is referring to all Imported Books from outside Gensoukyou, however in the next bit she refers to her favorite books, youma books in general. The subject should be plural, reading like this, “But I have to say, my favorite books…” “…are these!”

The second is here:

“…If you must use the picture scroll…” “…try to use it about once a month.” “You may end up summoning a terrible youkai someday.” The entire tone and meaning of these lines is off. Here Mamizou is coercing Kosuzu in a round about way, asking her to read the scroll once a month in order to avoid summoning a “terrible youkai”. In all actuality, she wants to buy the scroll to produce baby tsukumogami so she can empower them during a tanuki banquet. This is her way of forcing a compromise between between her will and Reimu’s will with Kosuzu as the middleman. Kosuzu keeps the scroll under Reimu’s orders, but once a month Mamizou gets her way and has the opportunity to increase the strength of the Tanuki. I don’t have my Japanese copy in front of me, but if I was to re-translate this panel it would be, “It should be okay to read that scroll about once a month. If you don’t, you may end up summoning a truly terrifying youkai someday.” This tone appeals to Kosuzu, she wants to read the youma books in the first place since she’s drawn to the danger of them. If she can read this book that Reimu has designated “off limits” once a month and stop a disaster from happening she’ll do so religiously. Final complaint and it’s a short one. The font choice for the out of bubble, or side speech text was a poor choice. I’m sorry, but I have excellent vision and some of it takes a double take before I can decipher what’s written.

These pictures are zoomed in in comparison to a normal reading position, and those y’s in particular are awful. Whew, personally I think most of that is minor grievances. It’s long, but I do feel the need to express why I feel that these are complaints. Onto praises! Praises Firstly, I noted this earlier. They spelled youkai correctly and used youma books for the official TL, yay! I’m not sure is any of you have played any of the Play Doujin! releases that have been translated into English officially, but they spell youkai as yokai, and it really gets on my nerves considering how often the word is used. They didn’t go all the way and spell Gensokyo properly as Gensoukyou, but getting that changed across the fandom is basically asking for a miracle at this point. Second, there is a pun in chapter 2 that was translated beautifully.

I know it’s a “word-eating worm”, but gramma-tick, just flows with the joke. The Enenra is the main youkai antagonist of chapters 2 and 3, so playing around with the name of this youkai for a joke is fine in my opinion. While I’ve never seen the type of basic math problem (maybe I just don’t remember seeing them) they are talking about, I think making a small pun off of basic school subjects makes much more sense than the fan translated version. With this translation I can at least see a little of the original joke shining through. Final Thoughts As a long time Touhou fan, I was overall very pleased by this translation, and I would recommend it to any Touhou fan. Seriously, go pick up a copy when you can, not enough Touhou fans know there even are manga series. I can’t say that this would be a good place to start in Touhou though, I feel as if Silent Sinner in Blue would be the best Touhou manga to begin with, as it shows more of Reimu and Marisa’s character rather than how they are perceived in the eyes of a third party, that party being Kosuzu. If someone does begin Touhou by reading the English TL of Forbidden Scrollery, I hope you were bewildered to the point where you are asking yourself, “Who were all those charterers, and why do I only have a decent grasp on one weird bookseller?”, you’ve started down a slippery slope friend. In the end I’d like to thank @yenpress for bringing over Forbidden Scrollery officially, overall you guys did a great job. If anyone out there read through my thoughts all the way to the end, thanks for reading!