i finally realized that all the answers i had hoped for were in day to day life that’s too mundane to be “fate,” and yet too beautiful to be “chance.” happiness must be hidden somewhere in each of our days.
love for love’s sake (2024), dir. kim gyun-ah / fatima aamer bilal, from so this is all i will ever be? / mahmoud darwish, if i were another / rainer maria rilke, “the prodigal son.” the selected poetry of rainer maria rilke / sarah waters, from the little stranger / virginia woolf, from a letter to edward sackaville-west / anon on gentleearth / kate rokowski, “a good day” / mary oliver / ocean vuong, “the last dinosaur” from time is a mother / richard siken on twitter / james baldwin, from “they can’t turn back” / heather havrilesky, ask polly / llya kaminsky, from “dancing in odessa”/ fariha roisin, how to cure a ghost / mary oliver, from “work, sometimes”, new and selected poems, volume 2 / maggie millner, couplets: a love story
“You feel the bulge in his pants” - implies that you are feeling some guy’s penis, may be sexy depending on context
“You feel the bugle in his pants” - implies that this guy has a military horn in his pants, invites confusing questions like why does he have that and how big are his pockets
Naomitsu and Souta get closer (quite literally sometimes) in episodes 4 and 5. Their banter is really great and I wish we had more of it!! But I'm really excited about episode 7. Episode 6 is more emotional and focuses on Anna's character.
Sorry about the delay btw. I was waiting for episode 5 since they were connected. I thought they'd go more into detail with that ep, but turns out they didn't. After that, I thought I'd wait for episode 6 since it'd be nice to have three episodes to watch, and the episodes were connected.
There's a lot to explain about the episodes, so I'll try my best to make it make sense below the cut.
Lastly, some good news! My subs for episodes 1-3 are now up on YouTube if you want to re-watch! It's my first time doing an official translation, so it's kinda exciting. Feel free to give me any feedback on the subs. They are slightly different in some aspects, and some on-screen text is untranslated because there's no good way to do it. I might change up some lines in the future, but for now, these will do in case some people prefer to watch on YouTube or don't know much about fansubs. Hopefully, more people will discover this fun drama and enjoy it.
Episode 4
Nekocap link
YouTube link (if you have the nekocap extension installed)
Mega link
Episode 5
Nekocap link
YouTube link (if you have the nekocap extension installed)
Mega link
Episode 6
The title of the episode is actually a reference to Anna's character and I explain it better below.
Nekocap link
YouTube link (if you have the nekocap extension installed)
Mega link
Episode 4:
Throughout the episode, you often hear them mention トリック(torikku - trick), but it's actually more of a technique and plot device used in romance. I didn't know if there was a good translation for this since it is technically a psychological trick. From my understanding, it's similar to psychological techniques such as suspension bridge effect (misattribution of arousal), mirroring, foot-in-the-door. Suspension bridge effect is about misattributing physical heartbeat to romantic feelings. If you put two people in situations that makes their heart race, they are bound to start having feelings for each other because the excitement makes their heart race. Mirroring as its name suggests is about mirroring the other person's actions and behavior in general, in an effort to get closer and bridge the distance. Foot-in-the-door means that you start from smaller things and work your way that way. If you start by asking someone for a pen, they are less likely to reject your next question, until you can ask them out on a date for example.
There are loads more of these techniques! I can't find a good English article summarizing them all, but here's a very nice Japanese one.
1:15 timestamp
Anna uses entertainment industry jargon here バーター (baataa - barter). It's often used to describe someone who's less popular being bundled together with someone more popular, especially in talent agencies (juniors being a package deal with seniors).
3:55 timestamp
The café's name is "Café Entr'acte" - If you're curious about what entr'acte is, it's a pause between sections of a play. Usually you'd see this translated as an interlude, but entr'acte implies a short performance between parts of a play (as far as I know, it's usually associated with special musical pieces in operas).
6:53 timestamp
Souta's "Is that because you prefer older guys? Or straight guys?"
These actually use very popular slang in gay circles - オジ専 (oji-sen, from oyaji-sen which is also used, oyaji=old man) and ノンケ専 (nonke-sen, nonke=straight). As you can tell, there's loads more of these you can form with "sen" which states your exclusive preference for something. For example, oke-sen is used for preference of silver daddies - men who are close to death.
Episode 5:
1:18 timestamp
"For someone who does creative work, your level of understanding is low." - this is actually a play on the word 解像度 (kaizoudo). This word means resolution, but also figuratively the degree of understanding something or someone, hence why Naomitsu comes back with the 4K line.
5:07 timestamp
"Yagi-san, you're doing on-site research today, right?" - she uses the word シナハン (shinahan), which is a shortened form of scenario hunting. You might think it's actually scouting the locations, but it's different from location scouting ロケハン (rokehan, from location hunting) which is used for that. Scenario hunting is actual on-site interviews with people, and trying to construct the story as realistically as possible by making use of the people present. In a way, it's a form of research, so I translated it like that.
Episode 6:
This episode was fairly straight-forward, so I don't have much to comment on apart the title.
The title is an oxymoron of a sort. It pits two words 不純 (fujun) and 純情 (junjou). Fujun is used to describe impure things, and it's often associated with physical impurity in terms of carnal relationships (preference of sex). Junjou stands for pure heart, naivety, and innocence. So it's basically a contrast of Anna's feelings - her innocent feelings for Yagi-san getting polluted by the sexual relations
forever grateful i was simply too lazy to let the makeup industrial complex get its hooks in me. I was just like im not doing all of that. in fact. im doing none of that
yeah I have political reasons for it now but my original and still most powerful reason is "I am not getting out of this bed one single second before I have to"
