[TRANSLATION] Saga＊Clashing Rebirth Live - Masterlist
The success of Rain-bows has attracted attention within the industry, and the number of participants in Project Saga begins to increase. Among them are certain individuals…
Season: Winter, Spring ✦ Writer: Akira ✦ Release Date: 31st December 2018
Sorry if it looks a bit rushed, I did this quickly because I wanted to translate it and show it to everyone as soon as possible -- Fyodor is finally appearing in a Wan chapter as one of the main characters!!! I'm so happy!!!
The thing about Little Romance is like, yeah yeah Knights fanservice song. And it's like, really cheesy with fairytale theme. But this is Ritsu center, it's his song.
And like... The bit about "The gallant knights embark on their quest to save the captive princess" is that... Like... This is Ritsu. Ritsu is/was the captive princess. He has an ongoing fairytale theme. And back during the war he was very much a princess who sat in his tower as he watched everyone fought around him and died and just didn't/couldn't do anything about it. And then he was sad about that because he got away unscathed and had survivor guilt.
Past Ritsu was very much like... reliant on others. Clingy. He didn't wanna be left behind but he couldn't bring himself to be the protector.
And like... now he's a true knight. He's both the knight and the princess and he's coming in to save both his fellow knights and himself, taking on accountability and an active role as knight's strategist. But he's still the romantic who dreams of fairytale and wanna be spoiled and coddled. And he wants their battles to be happy and soft and light hearted.
It's just... the song is very him and very suitable for the event.
What do you think makes this series so good/fun to read?
AHA YOU’VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD
(using a readmore bc its 1k words)
I think a manga has to do 2 things well, mainly. To grab your attention so you start reading it, and to keep your attention so you don’t drop it, and come back every month/week/whatever for it.
I actually started reading Yohaji because I saw it in a bookstore and the art, characters and premise caught my eye. While the “student transfers to a wacky school” scenario has been done to death (though I do enjoy it), I’ve never actually seen the teacher version of it done. I think I’ve started appreciating it more as I’ve grown up and grown out of “14 year old swordboy saves the world” plots, it’s just as fun to see an adult MC and adult characters having fun.
And speaking of characters, I think Haruaki is the perfect character, in general. His design is clean. Simple. To the point. I think a good indicator of a good character design is how easy you can shorthand it, how many details you can take away and still have it be recognizable. You put a ahoge on a distressed circle and that’s him.
My favorite phenomenon is the fact that on any book website, the first volume is always rated the worst. The biggest criticism I see of the manga, and of Haruaki specifically, is his sailor uniform fetish and “I can’t stand to watch him get bullied”. The second one is a common attitude problem I see of people going into comedy media, of taking things too seriously. Of course different genres of media have to be enjoyed with different metrics, you don’t go into Looney Tunes expecting high literature, and “sucks that Wile E Coyote got an anvil dropped on him”, said no one ever. “You’re supposed to laugh” is the most cringe thing to say about a joke, but I think some people ought to have a wider collection of lenses to look at media through.
I have thought about the sailor uniform fetish thing long and hard. The knee jerk reaction is “fetish is a strong word” and “he doesn’t need that character trait” but those are COWARD THOUGHTS! The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a genius move. First of all, it grounds him. In another more serious series, his combination of character traits (smart, athletic, has exorcism powers, reincarnation of Abe no Seimei) would be pretty scary, but his patheticness and his sailor uniform fetish grounds him firmly in the comedy genre. It’s also a good setup for jokes, and punchline to other jokes. Also, it gives him a reason to use his powers and do all the other weird shit without the story getting too serious.
Second of all, it acts as the great filter. Too many manga have your turn-off way too late into the story, whereas Yohaji has it in the synopsis, and if you don’t read that, on page two of chapter 1. It sets the tone, and you’re immediately confronted with the decision of “am I okay with this”. And if it’s not a turn-off, it’s almost certain you’re the target audience and are going to enjoy it. It’s almost like a thesis statement, “if you like this thing you’ll like the rest of it”.
The progression of the story is good too, while it starts with the tried and true “ahh the students are youkai so scary”, it’s actually a good thing, since it grounds the reader and gives a point of reference to jump off from. And as someone who reads other manga, and has seen fiction before, you probably get used to it pretty quickly, and the story does as well, and by the end of volume 1 it’s no longer doing the “youkai so scary” thing. (Chin up, Seimei-kun! There’s more things to be scared of in the world!)
The 25 students of class 2-3 are also handled super well. It’s a daunting number going into it, but most of them get a focus chapter early on, as well as earlier chapters being focused on the core group of Sano, Mame, Hijita and Beniko to ease you into the world. Even the ones that don’t get focus chapters show up in the background and interact enough that even if you’re bad with names, you can at least remember a trait or schtick of theirs. (See: the amount of times I’ve heard “oh yeah the merman” or “oh yeah the toilet paper”)
As a comedy manga, Yohaji gets to pull my all-time favorite trick: “Ohhhh there’s plot”. This is something I realised watching chainsawman analyses, which is “openly showing emotion is cringe”. This is true of basically everything, casual conversation with your friends, a song that hits too close to home, a story that sees you like a specimen under a microscope to pick apart; instinctively, many people show aversion to this, after all, isn’t it terrible to be seen so thoroughly by something other than yourself?
The great trick of comedy, is its ability to let your guard down to things like that. Unlike sadness or outrage, also exploitable and addictive emotions, joy is positive, and there’s no reason to pull yourself away. Comedy also typically doesn’t take itself as seriously, so when there IS an emotional moment, you’re vulnerable and it hits you full force. Basically it’s like this:
And now, the most important thing that Yohaji does well IMO, is each chapter’s structure. With monthly manga, a huge problem is by the next month you’ve forgotten what the previous chapter was about. (This is a problem I personally have with a lot of the Jump SQ monthly mangas, that shit just keeps escalating and I don’t know what’s going on anymore and I’m just along for the ride) This isn’t even usually a problem with Yohaji, since most chapters are standalones anyway (or 2 parters) but we’ve gotten to see how it handles this with Renren arc and Kyoto arc, and I have to say, really well!
Each chapter sets up its own minor conflict and resolves it by the end, while also setting up a vague direction for the next chapter. And the first 1 or 2 pages of each chapter has enough information to remind you what happened previously. This self-contained conflict-resolution makes each chapter a lot more memorable and satisfying, as well as being more effective for establishing new information for the rest of the arc to act on. (See: the common complaint on monthly manga chapters of “what? that’s all that happened this month??”, which is what happens, I find, when you keep escalating and escalating without ever resolving anything)
Well. All that said, the simplest answer to “what makes this fun to read” could probably be boiled down to clear panelling and clean character designs. Without those nobody will stick around to see what else the manga has to offer. Ultimately, it’s a matter of personal taste, and I think it’s better to have a specific target audience than casting the net wide, and it just happens you find out if you’re that target audience by page 2 of chapter 1.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
GUESS WHO FINALLY TRIED TO WRITE A FANFICTION: it's ya boi
Sekai fandom, I present to you: Ena and Akito, from their baby years to their present relationship. A 1k study on these two funny gay beans. It's wholesome and light hearted, but rest assured I'll make more angsty stuff in the future, and in other fandoms too.
Terribly done doodles of rhythm characters in glitter pen ink. By yours truly.
Honestly joining TWST's fandom around its launch after finding it through hypmic was a bad idea. Now I'm in like 5 rhythm game fandoms. Yikes. Time to add more.
Thinking about it, Nikki and Dice often get conned or dragged into problems due to their addictions or naivete lol. Nikki will say yes if there's food involved, Dice will do things for money to gamble soon.
Also Dice/Rinne using gambling to chase the high they never had growing in strict households... *Head in hands*
Still waiting for ENGstars to have more cards. More swords. More guns. More violence. More long haired cards in different angles. Can't wait for cursed card bios soon.
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