Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2014-01-01 10:34 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2014-01-01 10:34 pm
Entry tags:
Shiki Novel Translations 2.2.0
Links to Chapter 2
Chapter 2 - 1
Chapter 2 - 2
Chapter 2 - 3
Chapter 2 - 4
Chapter 2 - 5
Chapter 2 - 6
No cultural notes this chapter, unless I've overlooked something!
So instead I'll give a visual progress report:
These are the two volumes of Shiki, with a roll of toilet paper beside them for size reference.
The bookmark shows where we are in Volume 1 right now, at the end of Part 2, Chapter 2.6, page 351.
This is an internal shot; pages are double-layer printed. Keep this in mind when comparing the time it takes to translate light novels that don't look so much thinner.
These are a Knights of Ramune & 40 Fire novel and a Sotsugyou II (Graduation: Neo Generation) novel, respectively. Print size and spacing is typical. In terms of sheer physical thickness, the average light novel looks to be about 3/4ths the length of a single Shiki novel and they usually come in at 250-300 pages, but the print size and spacing makes the difference in volume more pronounced than that. In the 5 volume larger print version, each part comes out to about 500 pages. In typical light novel printing standards, we'd be around 700 pages.
Coincidentally this is why I predict another two years or so to completion; you might look at the current rate of progress and think "We're more than halfway through book 1. By June, couldn't we be done with book 1 and maybe even have a start into book 2, which could then be conquered in about another year for a year and a half?" Those extra 200 pages that make book 2 longer than 1 are nothing to scoff at, since they come out to about 4x as much volume per page as a typical light novel.
Chapter 2 - 1
Chapter 2 - 2
Chapter 2 - 3
Chapter 2 - 4
Chapter 2 - 5
Chapter 2 - 6
No cultural notes this chapter, unless I've overlooked something!
So instead I'll give a visual progress report:
These are the two volumes of Shiki, with a roll of toilet paper beside them for size reference.
The bookmark shows where we are in Volume 1 right now, at the end of Part 2, Chapter 2.6, page 351.
This is an internal shot; pages are double-layer printed. Keep this in mind when comparing the time it takes to translate light novels that don't look so much thinner.
These are a Knights of Ramune & 40 Fire novel and a Sotsugyou II (Graduation: Neo Generation) novel, respectively. Print size and spacing is typical. In terms of sheer physical thickness, the average light novel looks to be about 3/4ths the length of a single Shiki novel and they usually come in at 250-300 pages, but the print size and spacing makes the difference in volume more pronounced than that. In the 5 volume larger print version, each part comes out to about 500 pages. In typical light novel printing standards, we'd be around 700 pages.
Coincidentally this is why I predict another two years or so to completion; you might look at the current rate of progress and think "We're more than halfway through book 1. By June, couldn't we be done with book 1 and maybe even have a start into book 2, which could then be conquered in about another year for a year and a half?" Those extra 200 pages that make book 2 longer than 1 are nothing to scoff at, since they come out to about 4x as much volume per page as a typical light novel.
no subject
I didn't really like Kirei until around the middle when he started stirring things up and stabbing Tokiomi and little things like that. Kiritsugu reminds me of Ozaki so much that even though he's clean-shaven, in my mind I always imagine him as having perma stubble. And he had some of the best fights ever!
Iris was such a good character. Her real age was, like, 14 or something? And yet she still had a kid. Which was kind of weird, but I liked her Kaori-like inner strength where she's stern and brave at the right moments like at the beginning where she convinces Kiritsugu that he can hold his child. And after being trapped in a castle all her life, her excitement at being outside was adorable; and if she was fazed, she didn't show it at all. She was one of my absolute favorite characters, now that I think about it.
I didn't like Waver. I sympathized with him at the beginning because I like characters that show their skill despite not having "the right" ancestry but his attitude was just...annoying somehow. I don't know if it was the tsun, I just didn't like him.
Natsuno deserves getting tsun'd at sometimes! As much as I kinda dislike his attitude, Megumi's advances were just creepy and if Kaori had known that Megumi actually stalked his house, maybe she wouldn't have insisted on giving him the card. Or maybe she knew anyway? People always seem nicer when they're far away (or dead, I guess). It's easy to forget Megumi's flaws when she's, uh, gone.
A good reason not to like Ritsuko is cause she's kind of boring. The perfect nurse who tragically gets attacked and then hangs out in a shed for the rest of the show. However, it depends on what one's personal morals are, but the viewer's supposed to gain a lot of respect for her for being the only Shiki who refuses to kill. It's especially significant because she's a nurse and knows that once someone's dead, they stay dead and even if they're moving around, they are still dead and should be treated as such. Therefore, she sees herself as dead and dead people don't eat or change out of their burial robes, so she does neither. Go Ritsuko! But that kind of self control could be hard to relate to for some people.
no subject
Kirei doesn't do much until mid-way through when he gets interested in Tokiomi, but his thoughts when he curb-stomped Maya and Iris were when I first really god interested in him. But I did the novel before the anime, and as expected, the introspection is my favorite part. In the anime, without as much of that, he's boring early on. I'd probably not care for Kiritsugu either if I went with the anime first. I'm just not big on action most of the time. But then, who could be bored with him, for Kiritsugu does have Ozaki stubble!
I dunno if you can dislike Ritsuko for being boring though, can you? Maybe you won't be interested in her, you might not think she's well written, but I can't think of why anyone would dislike her, which sets off my alarms for a too perfect character. Obviously, as I've said, I really love Ritsuko, she's one of my favorites, she IS interesting to me, I think she's involved in a lot of interesting conflicts and even better is not just a victim of those. She tries to find out what's going on, she just fails. She doesn't just wait for things to happen to her, but her failure isn't due to any flaws of her own; it's because people who have access to the information she needs aren't sharing (Ozaki-senseeeeei....). It's because she trusts those people if there is something grave to tell her (Ozaki-senseeeeeeei....). I don't even think she's naive in trusting them; she does push and prod a reasonable amount, for how much evidence she has. I think she acts admirably, reasonably, realistically. But while I admire that, I don't see how anyone couldn't. She's perfect, besides the fact that the story doesn't curb to her whims. It'd be Mary Sue-ish if the setting itself catered more to showing off her perfection, rather than using her perfection to underscore how hopeless the situation is. There was no reasonably expect-able action she could have taken for a better result. This shows us how thoroughly the noose is around Sotoba's neck and how thorough the Shiki team's been.
Let's compare this to characters who stories go out of their way to establish as super awesome good at something, beyond a simple standard reasonable ability, only for it not to be particularly plot relevant at any point. If Ritsuko were randomly established as some kind of prodigy nurse or detective or whatnot and still failed, it wouldn't had made the Shiki seem any more capable.
Compare to, say, Al, of FMA BH: is there any reason at all to dislike him? At worst, he's boringly polite, but he's not generally passive or inactive or unable to think for himself. He's a bit naive but not dense by any means and quite sharp. And short of one single plot arc with Barry the Chopper, nothing bad ever happens to him or anyone else as a consequence of any of his mistakes. Add to the fact that we're shown he's a super badass fighter and God Tier Alchemist, and yet those skills are rarely plot relevant. His in-series win record against enemies is atrocious, he's taken hostage/prisoner more than the child hood friend/love interest heroine. His alchemy is apparently amazing, but that's never relevant or important; every single alchemist relevant to the story is equal to or better than him. When he does win, he never has to dirty his hands; he squarely 'defeats' enemies who someone else suddenly kills for him so he's the winner but never has to deal with the ethics of winning against people trying to kill you--which is a major theme of the series. He's a character it's hard for me to empathize with in the manga because he's "awesome" because they tell me he is, but then almost never so in practice. It makes him boring instead of sympathetic like Ritsuko, at least to me. I don't dislike him the way I dislike Sunako; I'm just bored with him, or find him badly written at times. Sunako is well written, I like her as a character, a written literary device I just don't like her on a personal-character level. I like Ritsuko on both levels.
But the only difference is that Ritsuko isn't set up to be amazing like Al. She's not flawed besides by normalcy. So I have a hard time reconciling her being in my top 3 Shiki characters while Al probably doesn't even make my top 10 for the FMA Manga. I know I'm allowed to be subjective in which characters I like, but it still feels off, like maybe Ritsuko's cute and that's tipping the scales or something...
no subject
I fully intend to take a scientific and objective approach to watching Brotherhood. Just my own impression, without...outside influences.../pointed glance/
Urk, I knew that Fate/Zero had a novel, but I never bothered to read it. What kind of a fan am I!? It's been a while since I watched it for the first time--well, not that long I guess since I started at the end of August or something like that--but I didn't expect it to be that good so I kind of half-watched it at first, but in the first 40 minute episode, there was a long chunk where Tokiomi and Kirei Sr. talk to Kirei about his role in the Holy Grail War. I thought that was a lot of monologue, but I also thought that Kirei was going to become the main character. As much as I liked Kirei and Gilgamesh, I thought they could have had a better relationship. After a lifetime of being oppressed into the expectations of being a priest, are a few talks with Gilgamesh really enough to get Kirei to reveal his game face? And before I learned Kiritsugu's name, I actually dubbed him 'Black Ozaki' (now I'm imagining Ozaki as, like, African American). Hang on...Black Ozaki, and a depressed priest who has expectations forced on him...is this like the Ozaki and Seishin relationship, but on drugs? Kiritsugu may have the stubble down, but his chin is still too round for getting down to business!
There's the possibility that Ritsuko's there to be relatable for the reader, which doesn't necessarily mean that she has to be well written. Characters that are meant to be like everyday characters are usually pulled off better if they don't have really unique traits. Ritsuko's actions really are logical and everything; if I was a nurse in Sotoba, the best course of action I could probably take would be the same as Ritsuko does. It can even be said that she does what everyone in Sotoba should have done...but they were too late. She could've made a difference if she moved earlier--actually, if the whole village thought to look past their own noses and moved earlier, they could've made a difference, but a big theme of the story is how dysfunctional the village really is so that wouldn't happen. I think I saw a review of Shiki that called her too 'timid' or something for not telling Ozaki about seeing Nao in the woods. Like okay, but she doesn't know what the viewer knows...telling your boss that you saw a dead person walking around is a good way to get yourself fired, especially in a realistic type of setting like Sotoba.
Yeah, I hate informed abilities too. I haven't gotten too far into Brotherhood yet to really judge how Al will turn out, but so far I think he's totally bland and I can see him continuing to be bland throughout the series. Another good thing about Ritsuko is that you really get to know her through her actions, so instead of Infodump-sensei or someone having to explain that she's a good, normal nurse, you kind of just get her whole personality through her interactions with the other nurses and other patients, although that's not shown as much.
Maybe having to think to find a flaw in Ritsuko is a mark of a good character. Sometimes to make characters more believable and realistic, authors exaggerate their flaws so much that a specific flaw stands out right in the viewer's face, although there might be more flaws besides that one. That's a lot like real life; if you don't really know a person, their flaws don't just jump out. And that's what Ritsuko is like to the reader; she's not a heavy monologuer like Ozaki or, God forbid, Seishin, so we never really get to know her besides a superficial impression based on her interactions. Sadly, looks do make a big impression. Buuut they aren't the final decision. For instance, I personally think that Natsuno is the hottest guy in Shiki (after Atsushi, unnnf) but I still dislike him. I bet he wouldn't have as many fangirls if he wasn't so bishonen and fashion forward!
If nothing else, let's at least establish the fact that Ritsuko's Mountain Pass is a definite flaw.
no subject
As someone who has a print-out of the laws of physics and internal contradictions present in the mere ideal of ghosts prepared for whenever I have to deal with people at work trying to believe in such claptrap, I can understand Ritsuko not saying anything. I kind of suspect that if Ozaki hadn't come to the conclusion himself, he'd be just as angry and insufferable of an anti-mystic as I am. USA is a common law nation, each time we let something supernatural be the answer in an investigation or a court of law we're doing a grave disservice to the future. Each time a client tells me their room is haunted or their kid cries and refuses to go to bed because of it, it's even worse than obstructing justice, it's taking up my free time to deal with their bullshit.
Ah ha. Her hair. Her hair is her flaw.
I don't think she's badly written, and I love her! But can't those justifications for a flawless character give anyone a pass? Ritsuko's not a main who monologues at length but she's hardly a bit character.
no subject
So when I watched the infodump scene, I sort of zoned out too, but unlike you I still didn't know what the Grail War really was and just kinda figured it out along the way. And I managed just fine, which proves that the Kirei Circle scene could be cut out entirely. Maybe it's there to prove to the viewers that Tokiomi exists, because tbh he is practically nonexistent after that.
I'm curious as to what kind of a job you have as to get clients that complain about ghosts!? Yeah, I feel your pain, though...one of my past friends used to say that she could see ghosts. One time during a slumber party at my house, we were watching TV when she suddenly went pale and pointed to a corner and whispered, "Your home is plagued by spirits!" Just as I was getting ready to kick her out, she pulled out a goddamn Ouija board out of her bag and started communicating with the ghost. After we suffered through that, she got 'possessed' by the ghost and started talking about what her past life was like 100 years ago. And this came totally out of nowhere, she seemed totally normal until these quirks started showing themselves...I don't talk to her anymore! But I can't imagine dealing with that on a daily basis.
Ozaki is just so down-to-earth that it would be impossible for Ritsuko to imagine him taking her Nao ghost story seriously. It must've seemed really freaky for Seishin to see him becoming so sure that vampires would attack the clinic.
Maybe she should get a weave?
There are some characters that you just can't help liking! If that was Ono's intention, maybe Ritsuko was there to be sympathetic, just like Masao's there for the reader to hate. Nobody can help not liking Masao.
no subject
That friend sounds more than insufferable... I work more than one job, but the one the ghost print out is for is the DV shelter. I get disgusted at how many clients come in there believing in ghosts, believing the shelter is haunted, trying to make up a haunted history for the place when the building is only 15 years old. I thought they were just using it as an excuse to stay up late often. Eeeek, ghosts, too scared to sleep, eek. The last straw was when some kid came into my office crying about being afraid to use his bathroom because of ghosts; I'm terrible with children, so I drug his mom in to take care of it, and she refused to just man up and say there are no such things as ghosts because SHE believed in them. I started writing on the dry erase board, explaining physics, photons, matter, energy, e=mc^2, everything to explain how the laws of nature don't work that way, and anything interacting with the physical universe to produce visions, sounds, tactile sensations, etc. have specific, definable properties, in an angry fit wanting mom to do her damned job and calm her kid down.
....In the mean time, the kid, 8 years old, way too old, pissed on my floor while sobbing because he held it in too long.
The next day I prepared a simple one page print out explaining in simple terms how ghosts can't exist, or at the very least can't manifest in the ways people are claiming. If you want to claim they exist on some spiritual level fine, but anything visible still has to reflect protons, anything making noise has to cause vibrations. They may break the laws of physics themselves somehow, exist on another plane, whatever you need to tell yourself for spiritual reasons, but the rest of the world they would have to influence still operates by them, including you, so there's nothing to fear.
I do that about 30~ hours a week, sometimes a full 40. I also do dojo stuff where they believe in unscientific things like chi, but I don't own the place, and that kind of mystic claptrap sells. My usual full time always 40 hour a week job involves investigating abuse of the old or retarded, including in hospitals, nursing homes, etc. Thankfully most investigative and court matters aren't prone to humoring supernatural answers, but I have had to sit and grind my teeth very, very, very hard to keep from continuing to argue with superstitious medicinal/diet claptrap. Telling women in your office they're wasting their time on a diet they feel like martyrs for suffering on tends not to go over well. Gaaah, we're a branch of the Health Department, can't you read a damned scientific study on some health craze...?! We can have any journal or book brought to us from anywhere in the US, we practically have State Alchemist Library style access, we can assign a secretary to go scrounge up studies for us, you have no excuse for not reading up on this if it's important enough to take action on!
The point is, I'm not even a professional scientist like medical professionals are, and I get this pissed at bad science and supernatural answers. I can definitely imagine how one might expect Ozaki to respond to such things and hold off on bringing them up in his presence, especially as they notice he's already on edge looking for a "real" answer. All the more if one is also a medical professional trained in the scientific method and evidence based medicine.
I dunno. I kinda like Masao sometimes... I think sometimes because they make him so detestable. Likewise, I often hate characters a work tries too hard to make me like--often the pure, but boring, vapid love interests, but also often the too good to be true perfectly moral, somehow always ultimately heroes/heroines who just happen to be dense enough to never have to make a decision on the many love interests they accidentally acquire, because that would hurt someone and make them less perfect. I think a lot of people have such a negative reaction to a work trying too hard to tell you to like someone. So I still wonder why flawless, utterly sympathetic and admirable Ricchan doesn't trigger the same response from me.
no subject
Thanks for the link! I'm a hands-on person so I'll try looking at some places to download it from to play it. I had heard parts of it were kind of inappropriate...but I'll watch them for the plot.
My friend also went so far as to get into a relationship with a ghost, too. She started about two years ago and when we stopped talking 9 months ago the relationship was still going strong. I guess you can call it pretty serious; they used to stay up late into the night chatting over the Ouija together...yeah, I wish I was making this up. That experience with the child makes me vicariously horrified. I can't really deal with kids either; whenever I see any, I either try to avoid them or go the opposite way and try to be super-friendly, in which case I think I come off kinda creepy too. But that sounds like it would suck telling off, or being strict to, the inhabitants of the shelter. Cause they've been through a lot so you'd wanna be nice to them, but if they're ranting about ghosts it would take almost inhuman patience not to snap at one point. I can't stand parents who won't reign their children in; even if that lady believes in ghosts, that doesn't mean she can't keep her child from harassing someone who's just doing their job! Has your printout proven useful?
Aw, I kinda feel bad now...I have to admit I kind of like ghost stories, and am a little scared of empty dark places (although that doesn't necessarily have to be ghosts). I'm not sure if I believe in them though, or at least the popular way they're portrayed, Ghost Hunt-style. Souls of dead people lingering unseen somewhere? Maybe. Not stuff like hauntings, though.
Your jobs sound pretty cool, actually; you said before that you lucked out finding them, and it certainly sounds like it. Although it also sounds like you have to deal with a lot of frustration at work. I had been thinking you worked in the SPR to have to deal with ghost complaints! With the medicinal/diet stuff, I feel like you and Ozaki could bond over the pain of dealing with patients' beliefs in home remedies.
I'm even less educated than you two, but even I kind of roll my eyes at home remedies. One time when I was sick a relative bought me a necklace of stones that are supposed to 'suck away negative energy' from the body. I mean, I'm already sick, why do I need to put up with having a bunch of rocks around my neck too!? Of course I didn't get better, and then later it turns out I had pneumonia, so...that could've ended badly.
Especially with that new chapter, it seems like Masao exists just to be hated. In the anime I thought he was annoying and tried to copy Natsuno, but now I know he's annoying and abusive of his own volition. He's a good character I guess though, because he's actually realistic and those are the types of personages that I end up liking; sad as it sounds, there really are a lot of people like him around everywhere. As for Ritsuko, there you go--she doesn't do things that are too good for a normal person (maybe some people, but there are definitely people who'd behave the same way as she does), and love interests don't dominate her storyline. That's why I personally like Ritsuko; she's a pretty strong female character whose inner strength is shown without having her romantic feelings or lack thereof be the main focus. I really dislike heroines that are supposed to be 'strong' by dealing with their love interests in a way that shows they are smart and/or independent, but they're otherwise basic in all other aspects. It's refreshing to see her being awesome just by being herself!
no subject
I'm just no damned fun at all on supernatural things. Horoscopes, birth signs, Ouija boards, talking to the dead, dousing, mystic medicine, chi, any of them will get me eye rolling and breathing fire. As you might expect, I don't get invited to a lot of parties. In me and a buddy's LP of a video game where you raise a magical girl, I refuse to let her touch faith and magic skills, even in a game where magic is explicitly real, on principal.
The neat thing about Ritsuko was they added a little love story with Tohru without taking anything away from her. Granted, I'm not sure she had any romantic interest in him or was just being kind, but she wasn't defined by romance, and also wasn't an "I DON'T NEED NO MAN" type. She was just Ritsuko, and that's enough. A lot of romances in anime/manga seem to take away from the character as a stand-alone character, which I guess is a given in some degree as when you're in a relationship like that it's normal to have your lives merge, but it doesn't mean I don't find it dull. It's not unrealistic that Tamahome has pretty much no other drive or anything else going on or inspiring his in life besides Miaka, but it sure does make him bland as hell.
no subject
Aw well, I guess if you work with them long enough they can start getting annoying. I'm not in your situation so I don't know exaaactly your reasons for being against them, but I can kinda relate because a lot of patients with pretty serious illnesses come into where I work, and some are so snobby and snappish and curmudgeon-y that I start hoping that they'd trip on their way out. Being afflicted with a hardship in your life just doesn't pardon you from being a royal douche.
Then do vampires and shikis and the like also rub you the wrong way like other supernatural stuff? A party where invitation is based on how much you enjoy Ouija-boarding isn't one most people would want to go anyway.
I think the problem with the "I DON'T NEED NO MAN" types is that they try so hard to make them seem independent (because of course, normal-acting girls are hated by fandoms for being doormats) which makes them come off really annoying. Both guys and girls can be in a relationship without being fiery and independent; believe it or not, it's okay not to push away your love interest when they're admitting their feelings! Who knew? I think that might be a factor in why people who watch that kind of stuff all the time have a reputation as being loners who nobody would date, because they assume that all relationships should be like what they see in anime with the tsunderes, while that would actually be pretty weird in real life. Back to Ritsuko, yeah, it's so refreshing that she interacts with a number of guys, but they don't throw her off or keep her from being a generally good person. It actually indicates a greater strength of character because even if she might feel flustered around Tohru, she hides it pretty well, and keeping control of yourself is a good trait to have. She's actually a stronger character for not tsun'ing out, she doesn't let no man change her awesome self.
no subject
Shiki would probably be a lot more effective as horror if I didn't know it was vampires. Drugs, serial killers, conspiracy; right now, I could probably still write up a possible (if improbable) explanation for everything.
It's still very successful as a suspense series or a character drama, and I can recognize scenes as very atmospherically creepy which makes it horror, I just do not personally experience the horror.
no subject
I think it's really reiterated that a horror story becomes scarier if you feel like it can actually happen. I wonder how I'd feel if I was reading Shiki without having seen the anime? Probably still kind of enjoying the slow horror. But it can be argued that the true horror of Shiki comes from the fear and reactions of the characters? Or rather, that the shiki are only catalysts for displaying the real horror. For instance, we're already how far into the book and everyone knows about this scary illness that's killing people and it's impossible to pin down. That could happen in real life, and although it's caused by the shiki, it could very well be the situation with a new illness being discovered in some isolated village. Also the paranoia of the people, and even the dysfunction of the village as a whole is very 'horror' if you think about it, because it brings suspense that with all that tension, something will happen. And of course, all those creepy empty characters (I'm looking at you, Monk) that rely on lolis to keep them going too. So the shiki are all but absent so far on, and the author probably wrote it that way on purpose to add a dose of horror that doesn't rely on just the supernatural but is created by a group of people with high levels of paranoia.
Hmm, at this point my explanation could be that Ozaki was involved with the mafia at one point during college. Then he got the leader mad, and escaped with his life back to Sotoba. Now the gang knows how important the village really is to Ozaki, so they're trying to kill it off, one by one, to inflict as much suffering on Ozaki as possible. Their weapon of choice is a new poison that induces the illness that causes all of the deaths. They can't possibly kill everyone, so some people they bribe to cut all ties, quit jobs, and move out etc. And Ozaki recognizes that it's the work of the gang somehow (he either a) recognizes the poison which has been a trademark of this gang since he was a part of it, or b) sees a gang member and guesses the truth). That's why he doesn't want these cases to be made public, because his past with the gang is kind of shady too, and doing so would put the blame on him too. The person who attacks Masao is a gang member.
How'd I do?