Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2014-01-02 10:19 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2014-01-02 10:19 pm
Shiki Novel Translations 2.3.2
2
And so it came to be that by the sin of slaughtering his little brother he was exiled to wander the wasteland. Never to return to that splendor, roaming the desolate earth, yet that sin followed him over the wastelands. His sin was the form of his little brother who had become a Shiki; it followed him, to make him suffer for an eternity.
No, where his brothers aims lied, he did not know. All the more did it pile onto his sufferings. As to why, it was because he did in his own way love his little brother, and he loathed his momentary impulse. His little brother was systematically favored. Deep with love, knowing compassion, like a vessel of splendor to others was his little brother. The people loved his little brother and longed for him. He, too, could not but. The people detested he who had fatally wounded the soul of such deep love but, he again in that same pattern detested himself.
His little brother's eyes of compassion turned on him endlessly cascaded his guilt and regret. His sadness at losing his brother, the lamentations over that death, his hatred of the deceased, his hatred of his own sin compounded his own unyielding selfloathing. Sadness and deterioration, sharper than the frozen winds, tore at him for infinity.
No, where his brothers aims lied, he did not know. All the more did it pile onto his sufferings. As to why, it was because he did in his own way love his little brother, and he loathed his momentary impulse. His little brother was systematically favored. Deep with love, knowing compassion, like a vessel of splendor to others was his little brother. The people loved his little brother and longed for him. He, too, could not but. The people detested he who had fatally wounded the soul of such deep love but, he again in that same pattern detested himself.
His little brother's eyes of compassion turned on him endlessly cascaded his guilt and regret. His sadness at losing his brother, the lamentations over that death, his hatred of the deceased, his hatred of his own sin compounded his own unyielding selfloathing. Sadness and deterioration, sharper than the frozen winds, tore at him for infinity.
Seishin sighed and threw out the manuscript he had read. The mood wasn't coming to him at all. His pen strokes were superficial and repetitive, his consciousness idling back around to the memos.
Giving in and putting up the Japanese writing paper, he put it away into the drawer. Arranging it face down and placing a paperweight on them, in exchange he took out the notebook from another drawer. Gotouda Shuuji, Ohkawa Gigorou, Murasako Hidemasa, .... ten people. And newly added, Yasumori Nao and Ohta Kenji. Even now as he did this, it was spreading out somewhere through Sotoba. They were being slowly driven to a cliff's edge but Seishin and the others couldn't sense its movements.
(Is it all right to be doing this now?)
Seishin had no qualifications to investigate the situation. Unable to even allude to the situation, there was a limit to how much he could ask people in conversation. As expected, it was best to pass it on even a step sooner if possible to the appropriate source, wouldn't it? So he felt. Even Toshio might have been a doctor but he was not an epidemiologist Rather than an amateur doctor and a complete layman floundering about, he thought the obvious thing to do was quickly entrust it to a specialist in order to discern the situation and cope with it.
But, thought the other party.
If a specialist investigated the circumstances it would be fast work but, the probability that the circumstances would worsen was indeed high. If they knew it was a plague, the villagers would be uneasy. Am I, is my family all right? The uneasy villagers would, without a doubt, go to the Ozaki clinic. To get comfort from Toshio. The more people acted like that in tandem, the more the situation would spread. Not only would they have needless anxiety, they wouldn't be able to help drawing in unnecessary anxiety.
(No...)
To begin with, it wasn't yet even determined for certain that it was an epidemic. They didn't by any means have a solid handle on what was happening. There was the feeling it was a plague, the thought that it couldn't be, the unease that came from thinking 'if', and the irritation at being unable to confirm any one of those things.
As he stared at the notes in thought, the phone rang. Seishin looked behind him over the back of the office chair, pulling the phone on the office desk towards himself. On the other end was the bookstore's Tashiro.
"Ah, Masa-san."
It has been a while, Seishin tried to say as Tashiro interrupted.
"Seishin, have you heard? The resident officer Takami-san died, they said."
Eh, Seishin's eyes widened.
"--Takami-san? It can't be."
"That's, but it's true! This evening an ambulance came. Wondering what was up I went out to the front of the shop, and Takami-san was being carried out from the police sub-station."
Takami's wife, Hideko, had boarded the ambulance too. There were two children at Takami's place but when he asked them, Takami had suddenly collapsed they said. Since yesterday he had had a cold and was laid up in bed but he went to go to the bathroom when it seems he fainted. At any rate, unable to leave the kids alone, Tashiro Rumi stayed at the residential station to watch over them but not long after Takami Hideko returned. When asked what happened, she answered that Takami had died.
"Anyways, his wife seemed spaced out, ---like she was distracted, could you say? She wasn't in a state to ask her for details. I mean, I don't know the particulars but you guys have a deep connection with Takami-sam too, so I thought it'd be better to let you know."
Seishin swallowed down something bitter. "He had a cold and was bedridden?"
"Mm. Seems like it." Said Tashiro, his voice not inviting any particular unease. But, Seishi could feel the sweat rising up. ---A bad premonition.
"Those guys though, you know, even if they lived in the substation, they're not from Sotoba. They're not in a funeral group, I was wondering what we'd do."
"That... is true, isn't it."
"Either way I'd say we'd help if it came to it but, anyway for the time being, we contacted the family and the family said they'd take care of it. Probably they'll ask a funeral home in Mizobe and have him cremated, I guess, huh? Anyway, his wife herself was saying to leave her alone, so Rumi and me came back, but."
"Thank you very much. At any rate, I will contact his wife."
Yeah, if you could, said Tashiro, hanging up the phone.
Seishin immediately phoned the substation. But, listening to it ring fifteen times, there was no answer. Did they leave to go to the hospital? Hanging up the receiver, he made another call, to Toshio. He tried to the hospital---which after hours and on days off switched to the house line--but Toshio did not pick up. Hesitating a moment then calling the house line, Takae picked up and answered, voice nasal and stiff, that he was out.
"Would you happen to know to where he had set out?"
"I don't. There was a call at the hospital, and then he left. Wouldn't it be a house call?"
It was possible that it was a call conveying news of Takami's death. So he might have gone out to the substation. While hesitating on whether he should try going there, there was a call from Toshio.
In the background there were the sound of people making a fuss and he could faintly hear Dixie. It seemed he was calling from creole.
As expected, Toshio hurried to the substation. And when he did, there was nobody at the substation, he said.
"People from around said they say the wide take the kids in the car. They may have gone to get the body or to drop the kids off at her parents place, something like that."
Right, Seishin answered but, somehow he wasn't fully convinced.
"Anyway, I don't know any specifics. I won't until his wife comes back."
That's true, Seishin answered before lowering his voice. "---Do you think it's that?"
Toshio's voice lowered all the more.
"Probably, yeah."
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(I don't know how to do direct links you should teach me)
tinypic . com /r/161ywyo/5
...and then the lit cigarette that fell onto the floor will ignite the carpet and start the Sotoba fire a few months earlier than planned.
I'm also working on this piece that has Toshio in Seishin's normal monk outfit and Seishin in Toshio's normal doctor's outfit. I was inspired when I commented like "What if Toshio had met Sunako?" or something. So what if their roles in the story were reversed? I got the line art, but I want to color it so it looks like official art (haha, good luck with that amirite). Althouuugh, some official art is really bad. For instance, Fujiryuu's attempts at coloring his art look like 3D first person shooter stills.
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Poor Masao's innocent stupefied face in panel 5 with the stray hairs (or 5 if you call the split panel 4 a single panel) is particularly great. I also see you have a knack for Ozaki's Crazy Hair. It's so tempting to just make it a jagged mess, but there is some real form to it, isn't there? Also, is it as tempting for you as it is for me to round his chin out to look less ridiculous when drawing him?
Yeah, Fujiryuu likes to do stylized, very 'flat' looking coloring I've noticed; it's obvious he knows depth and color and perspective and light sources, so it's definitely a stylistic choice rather than lack of ability. In fact, most of the time, he does 'normal' coloring on clothing or background, perhaps still colored ridiculously since his fashion sense is a little... but. That just makes the hair (or occasionally the skin, but it's usually just the hair that looks really flat) look all the more strange, doesn't it?
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I've never used html in my life, but it is a popular pastime; more people do it than I would have thought. In my speech class a girl even tried doing a tutorial for it...but it wasn't that good. Speaking of speech, I gave my last speech today! Now I'm done forever. But it does seem like a cool thing to do, using it to design websites and stuff too.
I wish DW had one of those special word editing buttons where you paste the link and it auto-htmls it for you ;A;
Yes and yes! I was looking up detailed pictures of his hair for that other art I mentioned, and I kind of got a feel for how he has those chunks that frame his face, and it's particularly spiky on his right. It's even longer in some places than in the other. Really, it's so artistically messy that I could see him spending hours at a barbershop to get it cut so that he can mess it up juuust right.
My art style is usually smooth with rounded edges, so it was kind of a nails on a chalkboard feeling for me to make the sharp Shiki angles. In the bottom right square the tip of his chin is dark not because of an accumulation of stubble, but because I accidentally drew it round and just when I was walking over to the scanner I realized that I needed to sharpen the chin-stake.
If Fujiryuu's coloring is meant to look surreal, he certainly succeeded with that! I'm just not a fan of the 3D effect; going by the nature of the work, I would have probably colored it dark, with lots of shadows and muted colors. There's a picture out there from one of the manga covers with Ozaki holding a scalpel with both of his arms out that I particularly don't like; it just doesn't look like him.
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I've determined the answer. Fujiryu's self insert in the cover slips and gag pages was formerly the barber of Sotoba. It explains so much of their surreal, messed up, flattish hair.
I dunno, I kinda like that pic. Maybe it's not the best on technical merits, but I think it conveyed a mood to me at least. A more determined or worn expression seems to suit him more, but that blank look seems to match his open armed "I'm a doctor, this is my work. Judge me." look.
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Haha, I just thought you were HTML-savvy.
I've never seen Fujiryu's self inserts!
Well, if they all went to the barber, even if he is the only one, that says a lot about the intelligence of the Sotoba populace. I would have thought that at least Ritsuko "The Mountain Pass" Kunihiro would be smart enough to do it herself at home rather than risking Fujiryu. There are YouTube tutorials for that, after all!
I suppose I didn't look at his expression too closely...but that's part of the point, I can't really make out his features if he's colored like that! So it's just the coloring I have a problem with~ I don't know, I just can't get used to it. However, I always like the Ozaki line art, I thought he was one of the better drawn characters. Very detailed and creepy.
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I'm sure you've seen his self insert; it's the tiny, big-lipped, small eyed midget Shiki in the white corpse kimono at the end of certain volumes of the manga. He's been arrested by Sakaki, amongst other things.
That there are Youtube Tutorials for Mountain Pass Hair does not surprise me, yet it does scare me. Is it at least for cosplay purposes or are people doing that to their hair willingly, as a normal in-public thing...?
His work is usually better black and white, but blonde Seishin from his earlier art still amuses me. Sometimes in Shiki, there's too much black and figuring out what's going on in the panel takes a minute, it isn't always intuitive, but I have that problem with a lot of horror and action manga, so that may just be a me thing rather than an artist thing.
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I like that Seishin's excerpts are indented, it makes reading a lot easier; does it show up like that in the novel too? Without them, I don't think that I could always be able to differentiate between those and the actual story..like once it starts talking about the Shiki brother I know it's begun, but if it's just scenery porn descriptions, that could easily be the actual Shiki too.
Maybe I should go reread the manga, I don't remember the self insert at all D: Perhaps I was too caught up in the suspense and didn't pay attention to those parts.
Ohh, I meant that there are YouTube tutorials for cutting hair! I wasn't too clear I guess, but I was trying to say that Ritsuko would be better off cutting her own hair than running the risk of getting The Mountain Pass from the Sotoba barber. I just checked, and there are no Mountain Pass tutorials that I can find, so we can sleep soundly without worrying about that!
But it's a slippery slope. Some people crimp their hair to look like mini mountain passes. If those mountain passes were to gradually increase in size......
Does Seishin become brunette in later chapters?
The biggest problem I had reading the manga was just making sense of what Fujiryu's art was even supposed to be. I think black did probably pose a problem though, because the scans sometimes left white patches in black parts, or made it uneven--you know, like scans do a lot of the time. So if there's a lot of black, there would be a lot of those faded areas. That wouldn't be a problem if you had the direct magazine, though.
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While we're laughing at Fujiryuu's art, I will probably never convince my brain that Ozaki is going up the stairs here rather than doing some bizarre hopping dance. Seishin's look is one of realizing that his dear friend has gone mad. Again. It's an appropriate look for when he just starts skip-dancing around like a damned nut.
And here's a quick omae shot with his self insert. The barber of Sotoba?!
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I refuse to believe he's going up the stairs. He also kind of looks like he's in the beginning stages of smashing Seishin with a fabulous roundhouse kick. See that airborne, sneaker-clad foot? In a few seconds it will be colliding with the glorious, disapproval-filled visage of the Junior Monk.
Being dead doesn't stop Barber Fujiryu! He uses his small size and hypnotic vampire abilities to sneak into the houses of his victims at night. In the morning, they wake up with anemia, a fever, and worst of all, Barber-san's idea of a good haircut.
How about Shiki brother's rape face?
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That makes me long for a Shiki fighting game, complete with those strange fighting game story reasons for each character to be battling people they're otherwise allies with.
Egad. And the little brother is supposed to represent Seishin's nice, public facade... look out, Ozaki. With things like that, people might start writing Seishin as capable of semeing.
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Ozaki vs Everyone, I like it. And also if all the characters were scrambled up and you could put them on two random teams. If Ozaki was on team Shiki, they'd win right away because he's such a BAMF.
Also the fact that the little brother looks like it's crawling on top of the viewer. But Seme, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed so it must be taken from an existing source. Then, are the tides of Seme ebbing in Ozaki? Could he be mellowing into a uke?
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Seme vampire, sucking away your ability to domineer a relationship. Suddenly Sesihin's character arc all comes together.
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If Ozaki didn't already have a dad, I would headcanon him as the illegitimate son of Ohkawa. They both sport facial hair, and both have staked a family member. Then that would make...Atsushi, Ozaki's half brother? And by extension, Officer Takami becomes Ozaki's sister in law. I think with this revelation, the character chart might need an update.
The ritual is complete when Seishin leaps up on Ohkawa's back in the ultimate move of Seme dominance. The Seme levels are over 9000.
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Man, how am I even going to document that with a character chart....
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Since the beginning, I've noticed that Takae and Kyoko both have similar hair styles. Could it be true that, at least in Ozaki's case, men go after women that are like their (adoptive) mother?
Shh, just take it step by step.