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Would you be cool with translating the new DH single at some point? I was so normal about it on release it's like my favorite one out of the batch 🤣🧡

*and @ a handful of other anons who asked for multiple songs, including this one

It's procrastination o'clock, so you got it! After reading the full lyrics, I choose to title this one "Fortune Smiles upon Our Smiles."

The Japanese title is the short form of a proverb (笑う門には福来たる and the shortened 笑門来福), and while several common translations of this proverb exist, I don't think any single one adequately encompasses all the ways in which the proverb is used here. Meaning-wise, this proverb is a call for optimism--good things will seem to happen more often to those approach life with a good attitude. However, per the 門, the proverb also calls to mind an image of family--a household with lots of smiles and laughter will be blessed with good fortune. Sasara calls to question the wisdom of this phrase in relation to his usage of laughter as a means to hold together his turbulent family situation in his childhood home. Throughout the song, all three characters stress the notion that there's more to life than joy; ultimately, though, this newfound family of "smilers" finds joy and catharsis in their shared, imperfect experiences with one another. In homage to the role comedy plays in DH's life, I wanted to use wordplay in the English title ("fortune smiles upon"/"smiles") and acknowledge the optimistic tone found by the end of this emotional song. Fortune, therefore, smiles upon Dotsu Hon's newfound smiles. It would be remiss to ignore the appeal to traditional Japanese images in the MV and some word choices, including the title itself. (Using the short form of the proverb, which contains only kanji, makes it evocative of Chinese and thus seem even more historical.) This poses a challenging question: How can the audience catch the characters' allusions to something if the audience lacks the requisite background knowledge? In the interest of time, I've generally sidestepped this, especially as these images are less prominent than in other DH songs and less crucial to the core messages. However, during the comedy routine interlude, DH devotes a couple of lines to talking about the proverb mentioned in the title and how the Japanese language has evolved since the proverb's conception. I felt that it would be appropriate to pick an actual English phrase here, and I chose a line from the Bible with a similar meaning because it allows me to follow both the form and the spirit of the passage to an impressively close degree. I do feel like this is an incongruous intrusion that I'm not totally happy with. I may seek a different solution in future. Amusingly, this line (Luke 15:32) is from the story of the prodigal son, whose themes tie heavily into this song; this is a lucky bit of coincidence.

That's enough about the title. Let's talk style! Wordplay and rhyme is at the crux of the song, so I felt that to do a purely prose translation would be doing a disservice. I also thought it'd be difficult to illustrate how certain concepts flow together without a rhyme structure--for instance, why does Sasara jump from money to vehicles of transportation in his first verse? Because he's rhyming the clinking of coins (charin) with bicycle (chari). I therefore opted to write the song in roughly the same rhyme scheme--I use simple couplets more often than they do for the sake of time/simplicity--and with wordplay in the same spots/using the same themes.

I would've liked to have done more and ironed out a lot of the clunkiness/cheesiness occurring as a result of juvenile rhymes and mediocre wordplay, but I realized really quickly that if I let perfectionism take the wheel, I was never going to finish this. So I locked myself into a strict two-hour time slot and banged out a first draft. I would really, really like to revisit this and create something I'm happier with, but to be perfectly honest, if I'm going to sink a lot of time into this, I'm probably going to publish it elsewhere under my real name. 1. Sorry. 2. If you notice a version of this song up elsewhere with some familiar phrasing, haha no you didn't.

Because I'm doing a lot of reworking and moving things, I'm going to annotate this very, very heavily. I also want to draw attention to a few lines that stand out for being incredible in JPN.

Apologies for the roughness and the walls of text...! Let's get into it.

Sasara: Fortune smiles upon a happy home, the proverbs avow. [0] Sasara: But what good do those old rules do here and now? Roshou: Running free with the joy of an unbroken horse, [1] Roshou: the comeback from my downward-spiraling course. Rei: What? Isn't this fun? Am I not entertained? Rei: Could it be that all hearts can be freed from this pain? [2] All: Everyone, everyone, there's no need to suffer. All: Why not use our joy to absolve one another? Sasara: Say you hit a dead end when fortune's not your friend, when kith and kin try to spit and skin each other [3] and the only way to get away costs a pretty penny-- but of that currency, I've got plenty. Watch me make it rain; you wanna go by car, bike, or train? Pick whichever transportation--your problem's your hesitation. [4] You'll only fall behind if you stay trapped in your mind. And me? What drives me along? That'd be my motor mouth; it's never steered me wrong. [5] Chorus: It all happened so fast; it was over in a flash. We looked up and knew that it was true. It was just like that; we all started to laugh. And that was when we knew we were a crew. Put your smile on and come dance 'til dawn. Bring yourself--be yourself--all night long. Sing and squawk; lose track of the clock. We can be who we are and still reach the stars. [6] Belly laughing together when times are bright Bellyaching, sobbing, anger-driven fights Bellicose tumult all day and night And still we're moving, moving on Futile endeavors are okay Few would fault you for walking away Furious tumult all night and day On and on and on Roshou: But not everything's worth smiling about! I mean-- Sometimes I need to cry or shout! I mean-- It's just, at this stage, I'm always filled with rage! I'm completely, totally burnt out! I mean-- [7] This harshest of rubrics on which I've been graded and this hollow inside me that's never once abated aren't actually so bad. I'm really quite all right. They're just the long, long set-up for the joke that's my life. [8] Rei: Yes, pay attention to relief and tension, when hearts start to race, both of which pale before the thrill of the chase. It's rich of me to say, but in all our souls we're born with the drive to chase down all our goals. "That can't be true," you say. "Shut your mouth, pop!" But if no one catches me, who's gonna make me stop? [9] It's rich of me to say, but you should fall for my scheme if it means you don't ever, ever stop following your dream. [10] Chorus: It all happened so fast; it was over in a flash. We looked up and knew that it was true. It was just like that; we all started to laugh. And that was when we knew we were a crew. Put your smile on and come dance 'til dawn. Bring yourself--be yourself--all night long. Sing and squawk; lose track of the clock. We can be who we are and still reach the stars. Belly laughing together when times are bright Bellyaching, sobbing, anger-driven fights Bellicose tumult all day and night And still we're moving, moving on Futile endeavors are okay Few would fault you for walking away Furious tumult all night and day On and on and on

Roshou: There are lots of old phrases tying joy and fortune. Take "it was meet that we should make merry," for example. Do you know what the word "meet" means there? [11] Sasara: Meets me. [12] Roshou: "Befitting" or, in this case, "necessary." It's vital to give our lives joy. [13] Sasara: Oh, buddy, you missed the perfect opportunity! You could've said "It's meet we meet our need for laughter." Heck, you could've gone for "Well, I'd be merry if we made meat!" [14] Rei: Lay off him. You're setting the bar too high. No one's merry facing expectations they can't meet. [15] Sasara: True! Merry wise of you to say so, if I do say so myself. And it's kind of you to look out for him like that. You're a regular meetheart. [16] Rei: At my age? Nah, regular meat's bad for the heart. [17] Roshou: You two can cool it with the bad puns any day now, you know. Sasara: Well, I'm pretty merry that we all got the chance to meet! [18] Rei: And I'm ready to meet a merrier future... All: ...where fortune smiles upon our smiles! Our flow and vibes are a spotlight shine lighting our places on the world's front line. [19] Chorus: Put your smile on and come dance 'til dawn. Bring yourself--be yourself--all night long. Sing and squawk; lose track of the clock. We can be who we are and still reach the stars. Belly laughing together when times are bright Bellyaching, sobbing, anger-driven fights Bellicose tumult all day and night And still we're moving, moving on Futile endeavors are okay Few would fault you for walking away Furious tumult all night and day On and on and on

Notes: 0. (I forgot about this bit until I was halfway through annotating lol). The lyrics contain a syllable set off in parentheses at the end of each line. The latter three are simply English words that sound very similar to the final syllable; they contain no meaning and are there for the lyricist to flex their chops. The first lines' parenthetical double syllable finishes a word in Sasara's line. (rule, ruuru) I didn't see a point into tying myself in knots to replicate this effect--probably with a third language outside of Japanese or English--and skipped it accordingly.

A fascinating and rare piece of imagery. It's not uncommon to see punks, societal misfits, etc. compared to wild horses for their unruliness. Here, that's used favorably for Roshou and his wild, runaway emotions--his emotions and rebellion are being portrayed as a strength. I chose to write it as "running free" for that reason.

Rei spends most of the song--at face value--talking about Sasara and Roshou. However, there are undercurrents of reflections on himself that rise to the surface at times. Here, while he uses language that suggests a degree of distance from the hurting heart, I'm operating under the assumption he's talking about his own heart.

Highlighting this line because it's so clever in Japanese -- "when hakama (jackets) with familial crests [montsuki hakama] mean people who hit each other [dotsukiau nakama]." The crest and hakama give this line a strong historical feel a la the proverb Sasara references in his very first line. We're suddenly forced to examine if that proverb is really true--does good fortune come to happy families? Or is Sasara's "happiness" in his childhood home a coping mechanism for something else?

The images of movement and running to catch up with someone appear many, many times in this song. Here, we see Sasara use running both as an escapist tool and as a metaphor for chasing his dreams. (This latter metaphor is very, very, very common in Japanese and, as such, all the talk of "chasing" in this song is automatically understood as such to the Japanese audience.) While the focus on anxiety and hesitation in these lines suggest Sasara could be talking to Roshou, I actually think this serves a double purpose of being self-talk. Sasara's lost plenty of things in his life as a result of not speaking up and/or trying to laugh away/deflect the pain. See his first falling out with Roshou for a clear example. He could've had the object of his desire--a loving relationship (and I don't mean necessarily in a romantic sense)--had he chosen to talk things out with Roshou instead of doing the easier thing and let Roshou leave.

Highlighting this because it's both fun and revealing about Sasara. "My 口車 is a maglev train." The "maglev train" is likely mainly for rhyme (kuchiguruma and rinia mootaakaa), whereas 口車-- mouth + vehicle--suggests Sasara's saying his own form of verbal transportation (again, escapism) operates very quickly. However, 口車 has nothing to do with vehicles in normal speech. 口車 is the skill of buttering people up or saying things one doesn't mean. Sasara, then, is not only saying he's very quick to run away but that he's very good at doing so via his constant jokes.

Drawing attention to this line because its English may give the wrong impression. At a very literal level, it's "with you as you are, I'll have all eyes on me." The stress is on as you are. The listener (the other members of DH) don't have to change who they are; they can be themselves! And DH will still have an audience! And be loved! I tied in the "reaching the stars" phrase I commonly use in the manga for DH because I'm extra and it fit the rhyme.

"burnt out" is a very deliberate word choice on my part. The phrase Roshou uses, atama ga panku shichau (my head feels like it's about to explode), is commonly associated with stressed students. The emotional Roshou in the first half of this verse is Roshou as a child and adolescent arguing against his parents and the same proverb that weighs heavily on Sasara's mind. He can't always be a part of this perfect laughing, smiling family. He needs to be able to cry, scream, and blow off steam just like anyone else!

There's a recurring bit of food wordplay in here I didn't have the time to work in. "Harshest" has a double meaning of "spicy." "Never once abated"/"with no brakes" looks like "stopping one's teeth" in kanji. "aren't actually so bad"/"easy" is literally "before breakfast." Roshou then reuses the "before" concept to say his whole struggle growing up is the lead-up (or the "before") to a joke. I'd have to have found a concept I could make three puns about that would segue into the notion of "prefacing a joke." What immediately leaps out to me, looking at it now, is trying something with faces--maybe tie that back into his emotions in lines 1-4? Hmm.

A lot of Japanese listeners zeroed in on this line; it's deceptively simple. Who will ever stop Rei? Some people have interpreted this as Rei implicitly saying that he wants someone to come along and stop him forcefully. And there's a corollary to that question--stop him from what? We see evidence for that in the unique word choice here. "Stop me" is literally "to give me my last rites." In practice, we see this phrase used allegorically when warning someone they're on death's doorstep, and they need to stop whatever they're doing (usually fighting). So we have a rather violent image of someone coming along and stopping Rei headlong because to go any further would be to get himself killed. Rei seems to want to stop whatever he's doing--pushing people away, tricking people, fooling people--but doesn't think he has the capability to do it himself. He needs Roshou and Sasara to "catch up to him"--become just as clever and capable he is--in order to do it for him.

I wrote this as "my scheme" in terms of the scheme he's proposing in this particular verse. Rei doesn't seem to believe that everyone is capable of achieving their end goal (happiness? connection? family?) but says it's crucial we pretend that it is true anyway.

"So, Sasara. You know that phrase 'fortune comes to a happy kado'? [warau kado ni ha fuku ga kitaru; the long form of the titular proverb. This is an archaic phrase and 'kado' is no longer a standard reading for the kanji 門] I always picture that 'kado' as something like a street corner [magari kado]; don't you?"

"Huh, you do?" This isn't strictly a joke in Jpn, but the kado/chau no is a similar enough sound I thought it was acceptable to put a pun here in Eng.

"Yeah, so the thing about that word, we write it as 門 [gate, usually read as "mon"] and read it as 'kado.' But it's not a gate. It's like family, your clan, your kin [ichimon]."

"Aww, prof. [Sasara's making fun of Roshou for suddenly having a teaching moment.] You could've thrown a nitpicking [ichamon] or a 'excuse me, I have a question... [ichimon]' joke in there."

"Don't set unrealistic [kado] expectations. It'll hurt his feelings [kado ga tatsu]."

"Whoa, that was kind [kandou] of you! I'm impressed [kandou]."

"Don't underestimate a middle-aged man's flexibility [kadouiki]." A joke on Rei being mentally "flexible" enough to drop these puns. I must admit, at first I wrote this as "S: You're a big meatheart!" "R: They do say I have a big meat...heart." before my sense of responsibility forced me to delete it.

"We're the Dotsuhon clan [ichimon]!"

This is a nasty rhyme to execute bc "flow and vibes" doesn't rhyme with "spotlight" in Eng. :/ The "front line" here is meant in the sense of being very good--standing on the front line or cutting edge of society, the comedy world, the rap world... etc.

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