stuck in yakuza hell

liz | 25+ | i draw and sometimes overanalyze my blorbos

[kohi-karasu]

Five years after the fall of Maruki's reality, Akira has a chance encounter with a certain detective.

The first chapter of my new shuake longfic, The Adventure of the Dying Detective, is finally up!! I'm suuuper excited to share this one, a lot of it is pre-written and each chapter will be accompanied by art! I hope you will check it out, it would mean a lot <3

[kohi-karasu]

claiming the title of the (probably) first makoto/yu fan artist

[kohi-karasu]

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE IS SOSOSO GOOD I LOVE IT SO MUCH!! UR THE GOAT

Awwww thank you so much!! ;; so sorry for the long wait for the next chapter, I hope I can publish it soon!

[kohi-karasu]

back off

[kohi-karasu]

Analyzing the localization of K3/DT (pt. 2)

Here's a line that made me do a double take when I first saw it in English, so I would like to take a closer look at it.

それに　お前は危なかしいからな…… 俺の目の届くところにおいた方がいい

Sore ni omae wa abunakashii kara na... Ore no me no todoku tokoro ni oita hou ga ii Lit.: Furthermore, you're reckless... so I better put you where my eyes can reach.

Official translation: Also... You have a tendency to walk right into danger. Better to keep you at my side - where you'll be safe.

At first glance, the literal translation looks quite different from the official translation, and it feels like the English translation added a whole notion that isn't there in the original version. Looking closer at it, though, I don't think this line was badly localized. First of all, 危なかしい abunakashii is a little difficult to translate literally. If you look up the definition, you'll come across terms like dangerous, uncertain, unreliable, but the context here is important: abunakashii usually carries to nuance of "something or someone that brings danger to itself/themselves and others." For example, a wobbly ladder that would break if you step on it and injure you would be called abunakashii. But you would also call a reckless driver abunakashii, or a risky plan, or a toddler walking on wobbly feet. The closest I could think to define the term is "a person/thing/action that elicits worry for someone's safety," and I can't really think of a word in English that captures that exact nuance, but in the specific context of this scene I think reckless is the closest translation.

And that's where the "where you'll be safe" part of the English translation comes in - it's not literally there in Japanese, but abunakashii implies it. Daigo thinks Mine's behavior is dangerous/reckless in a way that makes Daigo worried about Mine's safety - so by putting him close to himself, he wants to keep him safe.

At first glance, people would easily assume that the English wording makes the line sound gayer than it was originally intended to be. But incidentally, I don't think that's the case! Unfortunately I can't provide receipts for this, but I've seen not one, but several people on Japanese twitter state that this line sounds like something straight out of an Otome game. Which I can't confirm nor deny since I don't play Otome games lol, but I'll trust their word.

In summary, I think the literal translation of this line doesn't quite catch the nuance it has in Japanese, and the English re-interpretation basically spelled that nuance out for us. So while it may look inaccurate at first glance, I don't think it was a bad translation.

That's all on this line!

[kohi-karasu]

Between the Megu substory for Mine and the RGGO character story for Daigo, RGG straightbaited us once for each part of the ship and I fell for it both times. I think that's hilarious

[kohi-karasu]

even funnier that it worked on me but didn't work on Mine, bro heard that Daigo left with a woman and went "that can't be right"

[kohi-karasu]

Between the Megu substory for Mine and the RGGO character story for Daigo, RGG straightbaited us once for each part of the ship and I fell for it both times. I think that's hilarious

[kohi-karasu]

Analyzing the localization of K3/DT (pt. 1)

I've been having some gripes with the localization ever since this game came out, so I want to take a look at some noteworthy examples and clear up some misconceptions the official translation may have caused.

Worth noting: Unlike some previous RGG games, K3/DT uses the same English script for its Dub and the English subtitles in the Japanese version (probably due to time/budget constraints.) The Dub script is written accordingly with the lip flaps, which causes a lot of these inconsistencies with the Japanese script. I don't mind non-literal translations as long as the original meaning gets across, but there's a few cases where the translated lines have a completely different nuance, which is what I want to dive into here. This is an example that was particularly jarring to me:

俺の知る峯は…… 生真面目で賢く　それでいて芯の部分で熱い男だった Ore no shiru Mine wa... kimajime de kashikoku, sore de ite shin no bubun de atsui otoko datta Lit.: The Mine I knew... he was earnest [to a fault] and clever, and yet, at his core a passionate man. Official translation: The Mine I knew may have been cold and calculating... but there was no mistaking the fire in his heart. This is a translation choice that really bothers me. The latter part of the sentence is fine, 熱い atsui in this context meaning passionate, enthusiastic or fired up, so translating it as Mine having a fire in his heart works well.

The first part of the sentence however changes the nuance the completely. Daigo isn't negatively talking about Mine. He's not calling him cold and calculating, no matter how you translate the original Japanese phrase. 賢い kashikoi means smart or clever and is regarded as a positive attribute someone can have. 生真面目 kimajime means earnest, sincere or serious, with the nuance of going a bit overboard with it (thus "earnest to a fault.") It could be read either as a positive attribute or as light criticism, but it's definitely not an insult of the likes of "cold and calculating" either. I'm honestly not sure why they chose this translation, but I really don't like the way it changes the nuance. What sounds like a "he was a cruel man but deep down he was passionate" in English, is actually much closer to a "he kind of had a stick up his ass but he was smart, earnest and passionate deep down" in Japanese. The former is waging Mine's negative attributes against his positives ones, while the latter feels more like Daigo listing Mine's positive attributes to his subordinate. It implies a higher opinion Daigo holds of Mine, which works better with the rest of this scene as well.

At least that's my read on it. Let me know if you have other interpretations on this line in English vs Japanese!

[kohi-karasu]

i quickly put that analysis post together before i left for work so sorry for all the typos lol, i went back to fix them now. as always, if you have any more scenes/lines between mine and daigo you want me to take a deep dive into, just let me know! i really love overanalyzing everything that happens between those two and then yapping about it >:3

[kohi-karasu]

About *that* line, and why I think it was most definitely intended to be romantic.

I've talked about this line before in my essay on why I think Mine's feelings for Daigo are reciprocated, but I would like to take a bit more of a deep dive into this particular scene and why, to me, it's soft-confirming Minedai/Daimine, completely aside from the whole bottle thing and the entirety of Dark Ties - that's a whole different can of worms, but I feel like this line is the most definite proof we have that Daigo's feelings for Mine aren't just those of a strong friendship, but romantic in nature. So, here's why I think so!

First of all, to get that out of the way - yes, the translation is accurate. I double and triple checked to make sure the Japanese version says the same, and it's fully unambiguous too, so it's not like someone translated this line wearing fujoglasses or something. (The translation I'm using here is the one by @/Hisana on Youtube, all of their RGGO translations are very well done.)

Anyway, as we know, this RGGO story is about their (in RGGO) first bar outing. They drink together, we get a timeskip, Mine tells Daigo a random story that makes him laugh, and then Daigo hits Mine with this:

It's a 180° change in topic - nothing leads up to Daigo suddenly inquiring about Mine's personal life. While that part can be explained by a boss just wanting to get to know their subordinate better, if you really want to see it like that, the way Daigo goes about it definitely can't be. It's even more evident if we look at the Japanese line:

The とか at the end of the phrase signalizes that Daigo is inquiring about a relationship partner (gender neutral btw!) as one of many things Mine could potentially have going on in his private life. But why is this the first thing Daigo's mind goes to, if he just wanted to know Mine better? What about asking about his hobbies, favorite foods, friends and family? The fact that he asks about neither of those, jumping straight to a potential relationship partner, makes the とか…… suddenly feel like Daigo is trying to sound casual and nonchalant about what is a very obvious advance on Mine to everyone with eyes.

(What's more, 交際している相手 carries the light nuance of someone Mine is currently dating. It may not make a huge difference, but it is worth noting Daigo is inquiring about Mine's current dating life, where instead he could be asking about stable relationships like marriage if the idea was just to get to know his subordinate better.) And it does seemingly strike Mine as odd, reacting to the inquiry dumbfounded if not flustered.

And then, of course, the biggest giveaway to me that this scene was intentionally written with romantic subtext is the fact it then gets interrupted by Daigo's phone.

Which is, like, the oldest trick in the book of romance media - interrupting a tense moment that could lead to certain romantic developments, especially with phone calls lol. If Daigo's inquiry was supposed to be a casual conversation between friends, there would be no reason to interrupt this moment. And actually, we have proof for that in Dark Ties!

Funnily enough, I've seen people trying to discredit the Daigo scene using this moment in Dark Ties, because "Kanda asked about Mine's relationship status too though!!" I think it's obvious that the context of these moments is very different though (Kanda has a reason to breach this topic because they're in a soapland, and he's clearly doing it for horny reasons because he wants to talk about girls with Mine lmao), and I'd go even further: I think this scene further proves the romantic nature of Daigo's inquiry. The reason is simple: Mine doesn't react uncertain or flustered to Kanda's question. He gives a straight answer to the question, and the scene doesn't get interrupted by anything either. There's no buildup nor tension, no phone calls interrupting Mine's reply. The "new scenario" of Dark Ties, which I'm pretty sure includes the Kanda Bro Time scenes as they don't really count as side content (imo), is written by Takeuchi according to the DT credits. Takeuchi also wrote the Daigo/Mine character story from RGGO, as far as I'm aware. It's the same writer portraying similar scenarios very differently depending on who's the one asking Mine the question, and I can't help but feel this was intentional on his side. (It's also worth noting that this same Kanda Bro Time event pretty much confirms Mine being gay. So I wouldn't be surprised if these two scenes were written to go along with each other.) There's more to be said about the context of this line within the full RGGO story - like how I think the full story reads like a classic romance drama plot that hinges on Mine recognizing Daigo's flirting (and thus growing rightfully suspicious of him allegedly meeting with a woman, or how Daigo leaving with a woman could be read as a subtle call for help to Mine to signalize he's in trouble, since he couldn't talk about it). But I think that part is a bit more open to interpretation, and since this post is already getting long, I wanted to focus on what's actually textually there.

One could argue that this line, as well as this RGGO story in general, is merely fanservice/fujobait. Which may or may not be true, but I think with the direction they've taken in Dark Ties (pretty much confirming Mine being gay completely aside from his crush on Daigo, which is pretty rare and goes beyond the classic fujobait) I'm inclined to believe it's a genuine attempt to write their relationship as reciprocated love, as far as they were allowed by Sega. I just hope the trend continues and they'll grow bolder/be granted more freedom in regards to daimine. So this concludes my analysis, let me know what you think of this line!

[alexbrunn]

Hype for Dark Ties is over, but my fanart isn't. I’m still deeply moved by the story.

[kohi-karasu]

reunion

[kohi-karasu]

minedai kiss canon actually

[kohi-karasu]

my friend who took all this free cam footage has uploaded a compilation on youtube :D check it out if you wanna see minedai fondling each other in 10 different angles (peak)

[kohi-karasu]

minedai kiss canon actually

[kohi-karasu]

#'i should make a compilation of queer mine moments' #'i should make an analysis post on why dark ties is a romance story' <- These do sound fun! Love your insights, in both text and art form!

Thank you so much! :D Hehe I still don't know where to start with those but I absolutely hope I can make those posts soon!!

[kohi-karasu]

I love reading your more analytical minedai posts

They’re so interesting (^▽^)

Awww thank you so much!! 🥹 I always feel like that "i just made some bullshitttt" meme when I post them but I'm glad if someone finds them interesting <3

[kohi-karasu]

By the way, if anyone has suggestions for posts like these, anything you want me to look into or compile, just let me know, I have endless minedai yaps stored inside me 🙂‍↕️

[kohi-karasu]

I love reading your more analytical minedai posts

They’re so interesting (^▽^)

Awww thank you so much!! 🥹 I always feel like that "i just made some bullshitttt" meme when I post them but I'm glad if someone finds them interesting <3