Kajiri Kamui Kagura Ezoushi: the Takashi Masada interview

Frohe belated Weihnachten!.. Okay, that really doesn’t work almost a month after Christmas, but trust me, I did want to write this post around that time. I can’t really say it has become a tradition to do something Divine Throne-related on December 25th, but I did say I might translate the entirety of the Masada interview from the Kajiri Kamui Kagura artbook one day, so why not do it now? Unfortunately, the timeline didn’t quite work out, so I decided to publish it some other day… which came much sooner than expected. Twenty years ago, on January 16th of 2004, Paradise Lost came out, setting the stage for the entire Divine Throne series. I don’t know about you, but I think that sounds like a worthy date to celebrate.

So yeah! Below, you will find the entirety of the Q&A session with Takashi Masada, published in “Kajiri Kamui Kagura Ezoushi”, the official artbook for Kajiri Kamui Kagura. I often found myself trying to cite it, but never really having a good way to do so, meaning I simply had to do all the work myself. Even if I may not need it right now, I’m sure it’s going to come in handy time and time again later on. You’re welcome, future me.

Now, for the disclaimers. First, this might sound obvious, but expect lots of spoilers for Kajiri Kamui Kagura, as that is what most of the interview is dedicated to. Second, keep in mind this interview was published around 2012, so some of it might have become outdated, while some might have already come true. Third, while I am very careful with my writing, this is a lot of text, so some typos did probably crawl their way in. I’m also the sort of person who tries fixing them as soon as they’re found, so do let me know if you see any! The same goes for any potential translation errors: the last thing I want to do is contribute to the general misinformation within the community, so if you have any constructive criticism, feel free to share it. Just be civil about it, okay?

Lastly, special thanks to my fellow translator and Masada enthusiast ZackZeal for lending a hand along the way. Having you around to work things through mattered more than you might think, Kamerad.

Ragna Crimson is even better than you think

If you’ve been following my Twitter account as of late, you know I’ve been kinda obsessed with Ragna Crimson, a manga that’s been getting a fair bit of attention thanks to its anime adaptation airing this season. Interestingly, I wanted to pick it up way before the anime was announced, even reading a few chapters and dropping it because it just didn’t click with me for some reason. Maybe I found the similarities to other series a bit too egregious? Either way, I picked it back up after seeing its writer and artist, Daiki Kobayashi-sensei, posting some pages from it, and on this second attempt everything just clicked immediately. Maybe I found the similarities to other series fascinating and charming this time? Or was it something else?

Well, either way, that’s the question we’re going to try answering today. Like I said, the anime has been attracting some eyes as of late, especially thanks to one pair of particularly solid episodes, but a lot of people are still not quite sold on it, and for a good reason. Unfortunately (or luckily?), the adaptation has been just average so far, and comparing it to the original makes all of its shortcomings immediately apparent. Which is why we’re mostly going to discuss the manga today — not because I want to sell the anime short, of course, but to show that, like this post’s title says, it’s actually even better than most of you might think. Now, this isn’t a review, per se, as I believe those should be written only after the work is completed, but more like a write-down of my random thoughts about the series. If that still sounds fun to you, read on ahead.

Most memorable lines of Kokubyaku no Avesta

Okay, we’re finally doing this.

It’s been a while since I got to talk about Avesta, huh? To be honest, it does make sense: while the visual novel version of it is in active development, there really isn’t much to discuss since the publication itself ended about two years ago. And while the desire to talk about it in greater detail has been gnawing at me forever, I couldn’t quite find an opportunity to do so. Or rather, finding a good direction was harder than I thought, simply because there’s so much I can talk about even while limiting myself to just Avesta. However, something did come up after all: the final volume went on sale around January, and to celebrate this occasion, a good Twitter ashavan @SmellHazakawa started a poll for the most memorable lines in Avesta. The poll ran for about two weeks, with its results announced on the 31st of January. This was a pretty fun event (which I took part in, as well), so I figured I might as well translate the winning lines and post them on Twitter… but then realized it just wouldn’t be enough. (At this point you might realize a lot of my posts are just what my Twitter threads end up being). Every line has something that makes it special, and I really don’t want to leave anything out. And so, here you will find all 17 winning lines (a lot of them tied for the same place), with my attempt to explain the impact each one made both in terms of the story and the fanbase (with the obvious SPOILER WARNING). Oh, and if you don’t mind, I’ll throw an extra line that I voted for but which unfortunately didn’t quite make it. If that sounds fun, let’s get right into it!

The Abyss: The greatest villain of the greatest series

So this post came a bit out of nowhere.

For most of this year, I’ve been brewing another Avesta-related post to finally try and talk my soul out about some of its aspects, but since being a freelancer makes it a bit difficult to make room in your schedule for things you earn no money for, I decided to wait until some memorable date that would make this especially fitting. One such date was July 16th, when Avesta has been completed in 2021. Unfortunately, last Friday (so, two days before July 16th), something interesting happened that has set the entire Divine Throne legion abuzz. Naturally, I could not just stand by and decided to tell my Twitter followers about it… only to quickly realize this topic is a bit too long-winded to put on Twitter. Or maybe I’m unable to express my thoughts succinctly, that works too. Either way, that is why Avesta will have to wait for another day (and don’t you worry, there’s another anniversary coming soon), while today’s spotlight is unceremoniously usurped by Naraka himself. To be specific, we’re going to talk about what we know about him, how we have arrived to where we are, and what exactly made him even more of a bastard than we ever thought. If that sounds like fun, read on ahead.

The cultural phenomenon of Ninja Slayer

DOOMO, mina=SAN. Translator=SAN desu. Today, on the official Ninja Day, I come to talk to you about one of my many obsessions I don’t get to talk about too often: Ninja Slayer. You might not know this, but it was one of the main reasons I got on Twitter, hence why I’m proudly bearing the NINJA HEADS userpic frame to this day. Interestingly, however, my social circle has grown pretty much independently of that, meaning many of my friends and followers sometimes ask me what the frame even means. Well, dear oomfies, this is the post for you. If you ever wanted to know why I can’t stop thinking about this silly ninja story for almost ten years (other than me being weird), or if you are one of those people who actually followed me for my humble contributions to the ninja head fandom and simply want to spread the word of YEEART, read ahead, and may the horrible truth contained within spare you from NRS (Ninja Reality Shock).

“That day will bring all the gods together”: Dies irae Pantheon, Episode 0 [EN TRANSLATION]

Frohe belated Weihnachten! My productivity wasn’t really at its best this year, which made me all the more eager to at least do something before it’s over. And while my backlog of projects is getting pretty long, there is one item on the list that keeps coming up over and over again. Back in the old days of 2018, I’ve written a summary of Pantheon‘s so-called episode 0, jumbled together from various sources giving their impressions on what they’ve heard. Obviously, it turned out to be pretty inaccurate, and yet no better source on this subject has come up since then — even after the voice drama in question has been released. I personally care a lot about accuracy, so it does get a bit hard to sleep at night when you know you are the one who can be traced to be the cause of a bunch of misinformation. And so, today I’m proud to present you the complete translation of the coveted audio track, done as accurately as I could by my lonesome. That being said, I can’t deny the possibility of some inaccuracy slipping through despite my best efforts, but surely this should still be better than that summary, right? Either way, make yourselves comfortable and let the imaginary voices of Suwabe, Toriumi, Yui-nyan and RenYama caress your heart’s ears.

EDIT: You can now listen to the whole thing (with some edits to my TL), subbed by SterrnerDeem, over here!

Kokubyaku no Avesta: The obligatory review

Face it: you knew it was coming. The journey which lasted for almost two years is finally over, and that means it’s time to write my review of Kokubyaku no Avesta. Just because I’ve talked so much about it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t organize my thoughts. And while I’m at it, I’ll try to keep it spoiler-free and introduce Avesta to all of you who never heard about it. After all, it’s a pretty good way to start the Divine Throne series, devoid of the sheer Japanese insanity of Kajiri, the early 2000’s smell of Paradise Lost, or the never-ending build-up of Dies irae (I know some of you people could never get to the good stuff). Let’s just hope I don’t ramble too much.

Kokubyaku no Avesta: References of Black and White

“Kokubyaku no Avesta”, the latest installment in the Divine Throne series, has been going pretty strong so far: there is already enough material for a single printed volume and even an entire drama CD in the works. And I gotta say, Masada really pulled all the stops with the mythology references this time (even if my speculation post missed most of them). A lot of it is pretty obscure, mostly concerning the Middle Eastern cultures, so unfortunately, there isn’t as much to read about it than, say, on Japanese or Scandinavian legends. This gets even more frustrating when you’re trying to translate it from Japanese, facing so many bizarre words that may or may not mean something in another language you can’t Google. And so, the purpose of this post is twofold: on one hand, I’m going to share whatever findings I have, making a reference list of sorts for whoever is interested in Avesta. On the other hand, if I miss something, you will hopefully tell me so, and I will add it to the list for others to see. I’m sure Quinn would be proud of us making this sort of miracle happen.

History of Pantheon: Hints of the Unknown

Things have been pretty quiet for the Divine Throne over the last year, which is to be expected when the developer of the series goes bankrupt. Luckily (seriously, I can’t stress enough how lucky we are for this to happen), Masada and G didn’t let that stop them, and soon we got an entire Avesta to read and discuss. But we will shelve that topic for another day, as we have some more urgent matters to talk about. You see, our patron deities have released their first doujin book together, and it includes nuggets of info about every single Throne we’ve heard about – some of them for the very first time. It’s not spreading around the English-speaking members of the legion that fast, though, so I figured I might as well help with that. Having received my own copy, I can actually translate the relevant pages, and for the most part, those are dedicated to Thrones zero, three and five. I’m not going to comment on anything for now, so dive in and enjoy the exhilarating thrill of the unkown.

Dies irae vol.4: Magazine vs Tankoubon

Before I set up this blog, I had to record my random ideas through other means, such as Pastebin and Imgur. That includes my analysis of the differences between the two versions of the Dies irae manga: its original publication in Dengeki Maoh and its tankoubon edition. Rest assured, I did not stop because I forgot or anything – it’s just that the new volume took, what, a year and a half to come out? I guess that’s what happens when a manga goes bi-monthly for no apparent reason… Either way, here we go again. If you’d like to catch up, here’s the link to the album with the previous three volumes. A small reminder: I’ve been using my Russian translation because the quality of the actual raws I have on my hands is way too low. That said, Dengeki Maoh finally went digital last year, so now I can use it instead of ripping the physical copy.