Part 2

r.i.p. “A Once-In-A-Lifetime Pandemonium,” you will be missed 😔

have a rui doodle i forgot i drew in class lol

//bsd ch 116 spoilers

when you get killed by a helicopter so you unleash one on the city out of spite:

bsd textposts!! i'm obsessed

u actually can make amvs for media properties with no visual component if ur insane enough by typing out the lyrics of a song in ur friends dms and painstakingly explaining what scene you would put line by line. not that i have done this

aSLFKDSHJF THE TEAM NAME “Willow and Cloud” IS DERIVED FROM AOYAGI AND SHINONOME LOLLLLLL those uncreative little bastards /pos (figured this out thanks to this reddit post about VBS name meanings. basically, the kanji for Aoyagi, 青柳, means “blue willow”. Shinonome’s kanji, 東雲, can be read as “eastern clouds” though together it means “dawn”.)

Happy birthday to fyodor! •●•●○•●°□

Our 10893627272818 years old boy!!

(Rat) yummy cake.

Wait An/Kohane have outright stated romantic interest?

poor wording on my end bc they never actually say "an and kohane like each other romantically" but the evidence it very much there and it is clearly depicted and phrased in other ways. for example: the shoujo sparkle effect that is used for An from Kohane's POV.

This effect is often used on Haruka in Minori's imagination, which, well, let's just say it doesn't disprove that Kohane is attracted to An. While the effect is also used to show a character being cute or having a strong "idol" aura without any attraction attached, it's prettly clear the intent was to show Kohane's attraction. Also she was blushing.

Bonus points to the fact the wedding event has a underlying message (they say it on screen) about how marriage should be equal regardless of the genders of the couple [because gay marriage currently isn't legal in Japan].

There's also literally everything in Buddy Funny Spend Time. While almost all of the interactions in that event can be read as platonic if you really want to, they're written so you can interpret it as romantic if you choose to. And considering the featured pairs in this event were Minori/Haruka, An/Kohane, and (briefly) Shizuku/Airi, it's not like that reading isn't supported by the writers lol. There's one part where Minori and Kohane get jealous of how close Haruka and An are as childhood friends and aren't sure if they can amount to that, but they want to try. Doesn't necessarily have to be romantic but can be if you choose to read it as such.

When Kohane is visibly attracted to Haruka, An gets slightly jealous and says that her singing should be the only thing that makes Kohane react that way.

Haruka also points out that although An has always been super friendly she's never been like this with anyone until Kohane came into her life, and still keeps this behaviour Kohane-exclusive. An says it's because they're partners, which, kinda friendzones them, but kinda doesn't.

The word for partner used in the story - "aibou" - means, to put it in incredibly basic terms, coworkers. It's like the cowboy or detective word for partner, though I believe it comes up in shounen every so often (the genre vbs story is based on). In itself, aibou has no romantic connotation. But 3 of the partnerships we see in VBS' story have lots of interactions that easily read as having romantic undertones, so basically in the context of VBS story the nature of said partnerships becomes a little more ambiguous. The word is still platonic and that doesn't change, but you get the idea. Oh and VBS has recurring romantic soulmate imagery more on that later.

continuing on BFST, yeah they went on a date. which is strongly suggested to be a romantic date unlike how it's sometimes used platonically. like the other characters say An is "seeing someone", at least in the English translation, which is very much associated with romantic interest. Also the original Japanese for the "do you know who she's going out with" line uses the phrase デートの相手 which is the Japanese equivalent for the word "date" (as in a person/your date), so it's not really any different. they go on another one in Kick it up a notch and An's card story for the event. their relationship is never labelled or anything (probably bc this genre avoids that sorta thing for fan-related reasons) but this very much was a thing that happened.

(also when ken says partner he says aibou. so not partner /r but anyway it does clarify that this date is to do with their relationship on a different level to partners /p. ie: an's going on a date with kohane because she's cute not because she's her partner. language is fun)

Lastly back on that thing I said I'd come back to. The Walk on and on costumes have romantic soulmate symbolism included on them. The wings on the backs of the outfits are based on the mythical hiyoku bird, a one-winged bird that could only fly after meeting its other half. Kohane's costume has pink accents, one of the variants has accents in An's image color and the wings on the backs of those variants match up to each other. The card illstrations themselves also feature crows, which mate for life. While the symbolism is mostly associated with Toya, the Whip the Wimp Girl! cards take place in the same location as the woao cards which is pretty neat, and makes sense given the themes of both events. I've put both their gacha logos above as well. Oh and An's card for wtwg was. Something.

And Kohane got the valentine event this year and it was about her entering a contest to win limited edition chocolates for An I forgot about that until just now.

Have fun with that.

How are we feeling about ensekai’s emu3 translation!!! (I’m mad)

(if you remember the 3 whole posts i made when asahi got de-gayed on EN you'll know i am mad too and that this is probably going to get long)

i don't like to be too cynical but it was so obvious that they were going to change that line, i had a feeling since the event first released on JP and after the incident with Asahi where I went through and tracked down multiple other examples of EN removing queer subtext it became clear to me that in no way shape or form was "emu-chan really loves nene-chan" making it to EN without getting changed. what i didn't expect was them changing Nene's line after Luka's comment, which actually makes this whole situation far worse than many of their other instances of toning down queer subtext.

for anyone who isn't aware of what happened, in chapter 5 of the current Emu event, there's a scene where Nene, Rui and the Virtual Singers are talking about what would cheer Emu up. The vsingers all talk about how much Emu loves spending time with Nene, leading to the following exchange

If you look for them, any fan TL of this scene will be something similar to this:

Luka: ...Fufu. Emu-chan really loves Nene-chan, doesn't she? Nene: Th-that's nothing special...

EN's official translation is this:

So what's the issue? I'll start with Luka's part. In the original text, she uses the word daisuki, which can mean to "like a lot" or "love". It's a word you will see frequently in the idol/idol-adjacent genre of games, due to its ambiguity in that it can be read as either platonic or romantic when used towards a person, and often will be used in ambiguous situations so that it's harder to confirm the writers' intentions either way. so here, fans of the emu/nene ship could view the fact that emu loves spending her time with nene as more on the romantic side, but people who don't like the ship could view it as platonic and move on.

while they didn't translate daisuki directly, Luka's line still works, and still contains the ambiguity that works as ship tease in the original text. it's a perfectly fine localisation that still conveys the original intent. despite that, there is something to be said about EN's consistent refusal to translate daisuki as love in most instances when it's not used on An/Kohane (but then again, EN has literally teased An/Kohane on their twitter account so is it all that surprising?).

Here's some examples:

Aibou no koto ga daisuki de / he loves his partner -> he cares about his partner very much (The Power of Unity chapter 7 when Kaito is comparing Arata to Akito and Toya)

HARUKA-CHAN, DAISUKI DAYOOOO!!! / HARUKA-CHAN, I LOOOOOVEEE YOU!!! -> You're the best!!! (Dear Me, As I Was Back Then chapter 4 when minori is at an ASRUN concert. this one isn't actually that great of a localisation)

Honachan no koto daisuki dakara. Kore de iinda yo. / I love Honachan, so this is fine. -> I want what's best for her. And this is it. (Leo/need main story chapter 14 after Saki tells Honami she won't bother her anymore)

Minna daisuki de - taisetsuna tomodachi na no / I love them all - they're my dearest friends -> They're all amazing, and very dear to me. (Leo/need main story chapter 17. this isn't good either)

What's particularly amusing about that last one is that there's a second official translation for it that I assume was done by JP staff (since EN never promoted doing the Journey to Bloom subs like they did back when they provided subs for Petit SEKAI) that actually keeps the word daisuki as love.

Yeah. I love all my friends - and they mean the world to me.

It's a better localisation than the official EN team one.

Questionable localisation choices aside, Luka's line is fine and is actually in line with the original. The issue with this localisation very much lies with Nene's part, because that is an entirely new line.

In the original text, Nene's "that's just normal" or "that's nothing special" or however you choose to TL it, is meant to be her questioning Luka's statement, since all the things that the other vsingers said that Emu liked were pretty normal things like going shopping and playing video games with nene. To Nene, these things are normal activities for them to do together, so she gets embarrassed by the fact that Luka concludes from that information that Emu loves Nene. When I dissect it like that I think you can really tell what the writers were going for here lol.

"That's just us being friends" does still convey the idea that Nene thinks these activities aren't anything out of the ordinary and she isn't sure why the vsingers are picking these out as some of Emu's favorite things to do, but it's very different from the original line. "But those are just normal things we do together" is something I just came up with on the spot, but it's a lot closer to the original text and still conveys the same meaning. The fact they changed the line to "that's just us being friends" is, honestly, not even subtle that they're covering up queer subtext. The original scene was very clearly written in as ship tease, and EN mentioning "friends" for no reason, especially since the word nor anything close to it was not used in the original, is instantly a red flag because it's like the go-to for queerbaiting and censorship. This was intentional. There was no need for them to specify that the relationship is platonic, Luka's part is ambiguous for a reason so that fans can view it how they like.

Just to top all this off, here's Rin's original line just before that Luka+Nene interaction:

Oh, and! And! She said that playing games with Nene-chan is also super fun!

And here's Rin's line from the official EN translation:

That's not the same thing, but even more weirdly, the incorrect part (super fun->really loves) is a correct translation for the part changed in Luka's line. So, they can do it, they are willing to say "really loves", just not in the right places. Maybe because Rin's part is less personal than Luka's part? It's strange actually, this isn't the first time they've done this either. Off the top of my head I can think of an example from Shiho's Varied Kindness 2* story where they translated the word "suki" as really loves, despite that being much stronger than the original word used (and the fact that daisuki is used a lot in the Leo/need stories and it's incredibly rare if not entirely unknown for them to translate it correctly).

It's not subtle that they're trying to remove implications of the characters possibly being queer, they did it in curtain call and they did it in walk on and on, and multiple times before then too. And considering some of the content in this year's events and the amount of times they say daisuki alone, it's gonna keep happening. honestly i hate the fact that i keep trying to justify the translations in these posts. these translations are intentional. what happened in the curtain call translation back in october says enough. when a character who uses explicitly romantic language towards another guy passes as a straight character in the translation you know they're doing it on purpose.

oh and once again, it's only the EN server that has this issue. The scene in question was translated almost word-for-word on the TW and KR servers.

read fan translations. they're better than what EN gives us and people put a lot of effort into them.