harusono shou was for real so crazy for this. what the heeeeeeeeellllllllllllll man . jesus. nostalgic like a memory of summer when i went to visit my relatives in the countryside and played with a boy whose name i didnt even know, like a feeling that ill never see him again . ???????????????? christ
went only a little crazy and decided to clean and translate this to the best of my ability. fyi the two taped over prompts were originally ăçæłăźăżă€ăă"ideal type" and ăăăăăćŹăăăăšă"what makes them happy" . do with that as we will i suppose. also what i translated as "hot-blooded" is also used to mean like. enthusiastic/passionate. ha ha ha <-sick with Love & Passion brain. Anyways enjoyâŠ.
oh my GOD where do I begin. Uhhhmmm. Okay. So Love & Passion is a chapter is the Sasaki and Miyano: First Years novel. Every chapter in that book is from a different characters perspective, and Love & Passion is from Tashiroâs POV. It is mostly about tashiros first year of high school and his joining of the ping pong club. Here look at the cover illustration
Going under a cut now due to exceeding length.
So like. Thereâs like. A Lot. Certifiably. Especially if youâre a tashiro enthusiast like me. Phenomenal characterization and narration that is usually very fun and lighthearted and tashiro-esque!
Gonzaburo Tashiro, first-year. At the moment, Iâm facing an insurmountable barrier.
^ First lines of the chapter. Heâs continuously very silly and like. Dramatic narrator. Yknow.
And such a personality lends itself to awfully poignant lines of crippling sincerity and simplicity that make me bawl my eyes out.
I donât get it. What happened to the loneliness?
But of course tashiro doesnât exist in a void to we have our delightful cast of his dear friends and acquaintances! Middle school bestie shirahama, who gets him into This Whole Mess (Iâll get to that later). Dearest Hanzawa Masato, who he makes various umh. Comments about.
âGame, set!â announced the referee, a second-year.
Man, he sounds so cool saying that.
âŠ
As I stood there, drooping mentally and physically, I was approached by the guy who had refereed our matchâthe clubâs vice president, Hanzawa.
And last but CERTAINLY not least. Dearest dearest previous president of the ping pong club!!!!
There he is. The saulty little binch on the right.
And if youâre wondering why we call him that. Well. Heâs never given a name. Ha ha! But he has such a presence. The way he speaks and moves and looks feels so intentionally intense and like. designed. Heâs so on purpose. Makes me wonder if weâll ever get a spinoff of hanzawa masato[GETS SHOT] ha ha sorry who said that. Anyways
Dearest previous president (prev pres for short) and hanzawa torment poor tashiro. Endlessly. From the moment he joined the clubâwhich was kind of an accident (he and shirahama joined just to check it out but eventually wanted to quit, but to quit you had to win a ping pong match. Shirahama won his match against a newbie easy peasy. Tashiro got matched up against the president of the club himself. Obviously couldnât win and thus forced to join the club permanently)âfrom the moment he joined the club, prev pres and hanzawa are like. All over him. Obsessed with him. He tries to skip practice but both of them come drag him out of him classroom to come practice.
But despite his desire to not really be there, he takes club so seriously. Heâs so sincere about it. He knows everyone else there is really passionate about ping pong so he cant let himself be the odd man out and rain on everyoneâs parade. And this paradoxâbeing so avoidant of the club but coming to care about it and bond with other membersâreally catches the eye of dearest prev pres.
âI thought Tashiroâd be spoiling for a fight, but he isnât. Thatâs what makes him a genius worthy of my inner circle. Remember that, Hanzawa, âcause when I graduate, youâre gonna be the next club president.â
âYes, sir.â
âAnd I think that guy might be a good successor to you!â
Dearest tashiro overhears this and promptly realizes the two freaks heâs met will not let him out of this. Ever. But he tells himself heâll decline the offer. Surely theyâll find âsomeone more appropriate. Someone more serious about the club, maybe.â
And this is what like. Gets to the heart of this chapter. Love & Passion. AND REALLY QUICK touching on the fact that all the other chapters are named in ways that refer to specific characters. Theyâre all in pairs, and the chapter cover art reflects that too. She & Kuresawa. Miyano & Kuresawa. Sasaki & Miyano. Senior & Junior. SO IT MAKES YOU THINK. Who is love and who is passion. Anyways Tashiro meets and knows these various people around him and theyâre all so passionate about what they do and what they like. Shirahama ends up joining the basketball club and gets really into it. Miyano and kuresawa are passionate about their books and clubs. Hanzawa and previous president are passionate about ping pong. Tashiro is passionate about⊠? he doesnât really know.
We so rarely know what other peopleâs passions are.
âAre you into anything, Tashiro?â Ms. Toyoda asked, and I flinched.
âUh, me? I dunno. I guess I hadnât really thought about it.â I racked my brain for anything I might be passionate about, but nothing came to mind.â
Later in the chapter he participates in a ping pong tournament and its like. Heâs like the rush of it all and cheering for him teammates and stuff but. He doesnât cry like everyone else when he loses.
Still, when I saw players from other school practically weeping when they lost, I couldnât help wondering: What made them so different from me? I didnât have the passion within me to cry when I lost.
Maybe thatâs what real passion looks like. What did I have, then?
âŠ
But something held me back, a sense that âpassionâ was reserved for something you really, truly loved. Something you couldnât replace, couldnât even dream of giving up.
Ping-pong isnât exactly the hill I would die on. But then againâŠ
And he kinda goes through this arc where its like. Im not passionate about this like everyone else. But it has given me a goal to work towards.
And amidst all that We also get into what tashiro gets up to outside of school. Namely, he frequents a bath house where hes become the grandchild of all the old people that also frequent the place. And he also practices ping pong with his new grandpas, because he totally doesnt care about ping pong. He just. Wants to win. So he can beat the president and leave. Yeah thats it.
But he never does get around to beating the president before he has to graduate. Queue the moment that makes me the most insane
âSo youâre never coming back, President?â I said.
âI ainât President anymore.â
âNot the point! I havenât beat you yetâŠâ I clenched my fists, a yawning, lonely feeling of loss opening within me.
âAhh. You mean the thing about getting to quit if you win? The next presidentâll keep that promise. Dontâ you worry.â
âWhat?â
I donât get it. What happened to the loneliness?
The new presidentâin other words, Hanzawa.
This like. Special relationship hes had with the president. This game of cat and mouse remains unfulfilled. And he feels loss and he feels lonely about it. But at the same time he can renew that relationship with Hanzawa. And it suddenly doesnât feel so lonely anymore. And its the simplicity and bluntness of this whole exchange is what really sells itâtashiro is not particularly eloquent. Heâs brash and blunt but extremely observant. And thats reflected in his chapters. He recognizes the ways other people interact with the world and their expressions and language. And its so like. Factual to him. It is the way it is. And that observancy is applied to himself too. This feels lonely. Oh. This doesnât feel lonely anymore. But he doesnt necessarily have the self-reflection to understand why he feels certain things. Anyways.
And amidst all THAT theres these few moments where he gets this really weird adjacency to queerness. Like. If i had a nickel for every moment he asked about queer people, id have two nickels. Which isnât a lot but its strange it happened twice.
First one:
Miyanoâs hobby was man-on-man romance comics. I sometimes wondered about that (like, even though heâs a guy?),
Second one, where hes relaxing in the bathhouse common area and is listening to the old ladies talk about yuri.
Finally, I asked, âWhatâs yuri?â
âYou donât know? Itâs stories of love between girls!â
âHuh, Havenât heard of that one beforeâŠâ I guess Ms. Toyoda and her friends had been into reading that sort of thing many years ago, and now their interest was being rekindled thanks to their grandchildren. âI didnât realize women liked stories about girl-on-girl love, tooâŠâ
And its like. ITS NOT MUCH I KNOW. But it really is so weird it happened twice. Why did author Hachijo Kotoko do this. What does it mean. AND THEN IT ALL COMES BACK TO THE TITLE. Love & Passion.
I may not have that burning love that Miyano or Ms. Toyoda have, I thought.
Like. Specifically calling out the love miyano and Ms. Toyoda have. For queer stories. It sits so strange with me. Oddly meaningful but i dont know what it means.
Anyways. Thereâs also a really good shirahama and tashiro moment that i could get into but. I wont. Yet.
Anyways again. All that writing and i feel like i havenât even touched on everything. Did not talk nearly enough about hanzawaâs presence but like. Itâs very specific and hard to explain. But i also have an incessant desire to just quote like the entire chapter. So just go try to read it if you can. I unfortunately donât know of any sources online but who knows. The book also has a second tashiro pov chapter so like. Cannot recommend it enough. I love tashiro gonzaburou so so much. Heâs everything to me. Peace and love on planet tashiro.
if you look at the quotes of the tashiro birthday art theres a translation of the convo between the 3 of them and its much more sweeter than the auto translated one! highly recommend seeing it
