#primal beasts

[valentinecult]

Okay, so in the story mode of Granblue, I'm a little confused about Beezelbub. Isn't he the main villain of the lore? Belial seems to have taken the spotlight over the course of the story. I thought Beezlebub was the more powerful villain than Belial.

In the first story arc, he was the first main antagonist, yes. 

But he wasn’t the real threat here, Belial is the more dangerous one and someone I’d keep an eye on. 

Beezlebub is an Astral, a god-like entity of immense power that can distort the fabric of reality and warp causality in the world. Astrals are the creators of Primal Beasts and we know that Belial is one himself. So, you can safely assume from the onset that Beezlebub is the more powerful one in the duo. However, Belial isn’t the typical Primal Beast. 

Belial is the manifestation of lust, temptation, and deceit. He is arguably the most cunning Primal there is, so his resourcefulness is what makes him a threat to nearly anyone, including Beezlebub himself. 

Belial isn’t the type to take people head-on, not without some sort of advantage. If Belial were to fight Beezlebub earlier on the story, Beelzebub would have the upperhand because of his knowledge on the Primal Beasts and their physiology, given how he has aesthetics of Primal Beasts on his person, making him a formidable opponent for an Astral. 

Unfortunately, Beezlebub was blinded by his jealously and hatred for Lucilius. Belial took advantage of that and discreetly manipulated Beezlebub to do most of the work for him to wear down certain characters who may even be powerful enough to kill him. 

[gabuex]

Episode 1470: Danua and Baths Again

Translator Notes:

Ugh, I did my best to salvage this joke in English, but Unheil posed such a pivotal role in the original Japanese comic, both in the script and in the visuals, that my options were extremely limited.

The original Japanese joke centered around the Japanese name for Unheil, Unhairu - the phrase Un, hairu roughly means, “Yeah, I’ll get in”, so the joke is that she waves around the harp in front of Danua, asks her whether she’ll get in the bath, and then asks her what the name of the harp is, resulting in Danua saying Unhairu, which the Morrigna sisters interpreted as Un, hairu - i.e., that Danua is agreeing to get into the bath.

...The original Japanese was a pretty lame joke anyway, I suppose.

[paintingtulipsarchive]

Caro (Together in Song)

I made this photo set for my best boy Caro but forgot to post it so here it is! Looking back at it now, I'm actually more happy with it than I was back then, lol

[3xmantou]

Drawing GBF primals for inktober this year!! idk how often ill update here though i update more regularly on twitter than anything quq

[gabuex]

Episode 1314: Making Place Mats

Translator Notes:

This joke worked a bit better in Japanese.  The Japanese word for “place mat” is ranchon matto (literally “luncheon mat”), and Vane’s “Lancey” nickname for Lancelot in Japanese is Ran-chan (abbreviating his Japanese name Ransurotto), so the Japanese pun title for the creation in the final panel was Ran-chan matto.

[gabuex]

Episode 1305: The Test of Baal

Translator Notes:

As I’ve covered elsewhere, the Japanese word I translate into “straight man” is tsukkomi, which refers to the straight man in a comedy duo who serves as a foil for the boke (pronounced “bo-keh”), or funny man.  An example of a real-world tsukkomi would be Bud Abbott in the comedy duo Abbott and Costello.

The role of main tsukkomi in Grand Blues! has historically been filled by Io, but her role has recently been diverging away from that, so is Baal being enlisted to fill her shoes?  Time will tell!

[gabuex]

Episode 1300: Commemorating Episode 1300

Translator Notes:

The word that I’ve translated usually as “beauty” is bikei, which can mean beauty as the concept, or can mean a beautiful thing.  Vyrn’s title in the second panel in the Japanese comic was Biikei, a pun on this word and Bii, Vyrn’s Japanese name.  There was really no way I could think of to make an equivalent English pun, unfortunately, so I just transcribed it instead.

“See you next episode!!” is a very rough translation of the Japanese, which was Korekara mo yoroshiku onegai itashimasu!! - extremely literally translated, this could be rendered as, “From now on, like before, we sincerely hope that you treat us well!!”, but this would ignore the fact yoroshiku onegai itashimasu (or its less formal, more well-known cousin, yoroshiku onegai shimasu) is a Japanese idiom that doesn’t really have a concrete meaning so much as just being a thing you say to express positive feelings towards someone, especially seen commonly when first meeting someone.

Korekara (”from now on”) and korekara mo (”from now on, also”, or “in the future, as before”) are similarly difficult phrases to translate literally due to the different connotations in English of the literal translation.  In English, “from now on” has a distinct implication that you’re expressing some dramatic departure from how things have been, whereas in Japanese, korekara just expresses that you’re talking about the future, with no implied commentary about the past or your disdain thereto.

At any rate, I figured that since this was basically just a bundle of Japanese idomatic appreciation and well-wishing, it would be OK for me to replace that with a more natural sounding bit of English appreciation and well-wishing.

[gabuex]

Episode 1299: De La Fille’s Discovery