[This quarter, I’m taking a class that’s focused on reading authentic Japanese text. Everyone finds something short to read, makes copies for the entire group, and prepares a vocabulary list. Well, we’re supposed to be making vocabulary lists, although so far I’m the only one to do so. Two of the pieces I’ve brought in have been from illustrated books, and it seemed wasteful to photocopy the whole things, so I typed them in and added some furigana.

The first one wasn’t really authentic Japanese, being from the ASK reader series, but the teacher really liked that author and wanted us to read it. The second is more contemporary, and I thought it might be of general interest. It’s the latest short story from the Kino’s Journey series. I’m just posting the first scene, since it’s both illegal and darn rude to reprint the whole thing. If you like the story, buy the book, which also includes a DVD of the second Kino movie.

I’ve added a lot more pop-up furigana (with English translations) than I need myself, to give more people a chance to work through it.]

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I just finished chapter one of the first 魔法戦士リウイ novels, in Japanese.

[Pardon my shouting: I just read thirty pages of Japanese prose written for a native audience!! Ahem.]

The anime adaptation opened with the experienced adventuring team of Genie (amazon warrior), Melissa (priestess of the war god Mylee), and Merrill (thief) finding a magically-sealed door in a ruin. They headed to town to recruit a mage, preferably female, but the only one that seemed interested was Louie, a brawny goofball who had already “rescued” Genie from a fight and pantsed Merrill while being chased by a mob of angry women. Later, he accidentally blew up a bar trying to prove himself to them, and then while being chased by a mob of angry priestesses, destroyed the roof of Mylee’s temple with his magic, inadvertently revealing himself to the (naked) Melissa as the hero her god had chosen for her to serve. By the end of the first episode, Louie was firmly established as a drunk, a womanizer, a careless street brawler, and a terrible student, with no real interest in or aptitude for magic.

The novel starts out a bit differently. Louie is being congratulated by his classmates for finally mastering enough magic to earn his mage staff, making him the fifth to succeed out of the hundred apprentices that their class had started with ten years earlier. The next day, the others are all nursing a hangover from the party, but Louie cheerfully heads off to the entertainment district in pursuit of wine, women, and trouble. The sound of a tavern brawl draws him in from a distance, and he pushes through a crowd of onlookers to find two apprentice knights fighting three women (guess who?), and the women are wiping the floor with them.

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1. Pizza Hut's new meat pasta is pretty good. I'll be eating it for another two days, since they only deliver a family-size portion with breadsticks, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
2. I always thought the name "Rune Soldier" was an invention of the team who translated the anime for the US market, since "Magic Soldier Louie" sounded too similar to "Magic Knight Rayearth" and similar series. Nope, page six of the first novel glosses 魔法戦士 as ルーンソルジャー. Pity, really, since the change ruined a decent joke in episode 18.
3. Constructs of the form AたるB, where both A and B are nouns, are a bit of grammar that's hard to find a good explanation for in English. Historically, there were three different conjugations for adjectives, but for the most part only the -i and -na types still exist; there are only a handful of true -taru adjectives in modern Japanese. This does not stop people from occasionally attaching -taru to a noun to make an "A-looking B" or "A-like B" expression.
4. Speaking of -taru adjectives, I find this one charming: 死屍累々. Shishiruirui, it's like the "que sera sera" of carnage. I don't think I'll ever be able to sing the correct lyrics to that song again.
5. Speaking of songs we'll never be able to sing correctly again...
6. Nobody ever told me that Pixel Maritan had a webcomic.
7. On a vaguely related note, the trading figures for Moe yo! Tank School are, um, interesting.
8. And while we're following dirty links at Amazon Japan, I can see where the artist was going with this covergirl from MC Akushizu ("the hyper bishoujo military magazine"), but, anatomically speaking, he made a wrong turn.

[Update: holy crap, they’re doing a second season. WTF?

… Okay, having followed the scavenger-hunt instructions on ANN, the only verifiable fact in their story is this line on the next-to-last page of the just-released chapter of the manga: 「ＴＶアニメ第２Ｓ制作決定!!」, which does in fact say “tv anime #2S production decision!!”. Their “announcement” link just goes to the publisher’s flash-based home page, which doesn’t seem to mention this. I’m wondering if it’s just obsolete news based on the publishing cycle of a monthly magazine.]

[Update: nothing on the anime’s staff blog, but there’s a similar one-liner on their news page. Also, a lot more merchandise, including an original novel, a school uniform, and a special edition of the DS game that comes with an original comic. Again, WTF?]

Out of morbid curiosity, I downloaded episode 13. Pretty thorough spoilers follow:

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The phrase “voted best punk band by Shoujo Beat” pretty much sums up this song by Ketchup Mania. I think it’s a bad sign when you can listen to punk rock and visualize the anime series that it would make a good opening-credits song for.

[Update: animated music video for another Ketchup Mania song.]

[Update: I just skimmed through the raw of episode 10 on youtube. They found an unanticipated way to trim Rubi’s story, and solved the continuity problem by quickly moving on to the next scene. The fight apparently used up the last of their budget, however. Wow, I’ve never seen character art and animation go downhill that fast. I notice that they worked Rubi’s song into it successfully, though.]

Continuing from where I left off, the last three episode titles have been revealed. It looks like:

• 11: New school term: chapter 8
• 12: Public Safety Commission: chapter 9
• 13: Tsukune: chapter 10

So, 3.5 chapters of Rubi’s story will get crammed into episode 10, and whatever doesn’t fit will spill over into 11 along with however they resolve the continuity break at the end of episode 9. They’ll swipe the ending from chapter 19 to bring Rubi back in at the end of episode 13, which will put them on track to start a second series at episode 20 or 29.

ANN has reported that Sekirei will be animated this summer.

By coincidence, volume 1 of the manga arrived at my house a few days ago. I was putting in a large order with Amazon Japan, it popped up as a recommendation, and looked like an amusing ecchi fan-service comic, so I threw it in. Sadly, it’s aimed at a slightly older audience than usual, so there’s no furigana, which will significantly slow down my reading.

So, bearing in mind that I can’t just skim through it and get the gist of the plot, I would describe it as “the bastard child of DearS and Ikkitousen”. I’m not sure which parent it got the brains from, though.

Note: the heroine is Rushuna-scaled, enjoys bathing, and repels fog and other obscuring effects.

There are five Kiki novels? Thanks to Amazon’s sudden shift to Miyazaki-related recommendations, I just found out about the translated edition of the first one. The cover has that accurate-but-hideous look common to children’s books (completely different from the pen-and-ink interior illustrations), but the translation is apparently decent.

Not something I’d buy, but still interesting.