Here we are again with some excellent translation notes about the first part of Volume 20, all from the wonderful @giniroangou.
Highlights Include: Tube mysteries solved!, Fai’s dramatics actually making sense, wonderful explanations of Fai’s lies, Yuuko Queen of sass, Watanuki will change the future!, a touching Lava Lamp moment, and oh god the Fai flashback gets worse?
Chapter 150
p.9 - Yuuko is still talking about a one-in-two chance here, not two-in-one. A couple of the speech bubbles are also swapped around - first she explains the body/soul separation, then the two worlds Sakura has gone to.
p.12 - Kurogane’s words to Fai are even more straight-forward in the original text. Just: “Don’t hurt anyone else with that sword. Including yourself.”
p.18 - Mokona and Yuuko aren’t talking about the store being different here, they’re saying that the inside of the tube is not in the same place as the store.
p.19 - An alternate translation for the dream world Sakura went to could be “The World of ‘Dreams’.” Once again for clarification, this is NOT in reference to Yuuko’s shop - the inside and outside of that tube are in different places.
p.20 - “My man Lantis” is BEAUTIFUL and I wouldn’t change a thing about it, but unfortunately it’s much less funny in Japanese. Eagle says “uchi no Lantis” which is basically like “our Lantis” - it’s an expression that indicates someone as part of the speaker’s in-group, so it can be used for a family member, a member of an organization, etc.
Lantis doesn’t actually say “I saw the future,” just “I had a dream,” though they would amount to the same thing.
p.24 - I would translate Fai’s line as, “Sakura-chan knew what I was lying about.” It’s not that she knew he was lying but that she knew the truth behind it.
Chapter 151
p.26 - This is a continuation of Fai’s final line from the previous chapter, so the lie Sakura knew about was that Fai knew one of her feathers was in Celes. Also, they dropped the honorific in the translation but Fai is still saying “Sakura-chan.”
p.28 - Fai is saying here that he found out at Yuuko’s shop that Sakura and Syaoran were searching for the feathers but he never told them about the one used to make Chii.
p.29 - It’s obvious from the flashback, but Syaoran is talking about what happened when they all arrived in the first world they were sent to (by Yuuko not Yukito.)
p.30 - Mokona isn’t talking in general terms, but saying specifically that from the moment she awoke at Yuuko’s shop she could sense a feather there but couldn’t tell who in the group had it.
Fai then says to Lava Lamp, “That’s why you kept your distance from me.”
Again, this is not really about Fai lying in general but about the specific lies people around him were already aware of. He’s basically saying to Yuuko, “You knew what some of my other lies were too, didn’t you?”
p.33 - Fai refers to his wish to go with the group as something that was devised/planned - it’s the same word they’ve used previously to talk about Fei Wang arranging for all of them to go on this journey, so I’d assume that’s what he’s referencing here.
p.34 - Kurogane asks why Sakura wanted to go into the tube, not why she’s living there.
p.39 - Slight adjustment: Fai’s saying he wouldn’t mind gouging out his eye if he could, but he can’t because losing all his magic along with both eyes would probably kill him and he can’t die yet.
Chapter 152
p.45 - In case it wasn’t clear, Kurogane is connecting his punch here with his line from the previous chapter about punching Sakura.
p.46 - Yuuko’s criticism of Kurogane after he says, “Hey, Witch,” is much more entertaining in the Japanese version. She says, “On top of being beyond rude, there isn’t a shred of taste in the way you address me.” Kurogane’s comeback is the ever-eloquent, “Shut up.”
p.47 - It’s not actually the meeting between Sakura and Watanuki that Yuuko says will trigger another change to the future, but Watanuki himself.
p.48 - I would change Yuuko’s line about Watanuki vanishing to, “Watanuki hasn’t vanished either” (presumably in addition to Sakura’s soul not having vanished.) Then she says that “for now” Watanuki’s identity has nothing to do with them. It’s an ongoing state that has the potential to change in the future.
p.50 - Lava Lamp says nothing about Fei Wang slicing out Sakura’s memories - he’s saying that Fei Wang wants her body with the dimensional memories etched into it. (This isn’t new information btw - Yuuko already explained it to the group back in Acid Tokyo.)
p.51 - We have another “Syaoran” with quotation marks from Mokona here.
p.52 - Let’s re-translate Lava Lamp’s lines here because they came out super awkward: “The reason I didn’t say anything despite what I knew was that Sakura… the Princess trusted you. Even if you’d lied, the Princess trusted you, lies and all.”
p.53 - Lava Lamp only speaks for himself here; he specifically says “I’m going to trust you too.”
p.57 - Again, we have “Syaoran” in quote marks, this time from Fei Wang. I’m sure everyone’s tired of me pointing these out, so just assume the quotation marks should be there from now on unless I say otherwise. And the translators are very inconsistent with this, but Lava Lamp’s relationship to Clow Reed has so far only ever been denoted with the word “chisuji”/血筋. He’s part of Clow’s lineage, but we don’t know anything beyond that.
Chapter 153
p.62 - Eagle specifically says that he’s offering the clothing as an apology for keeping silent.
p.63 - Kurogane could just be talking about Fei Wang watching them - he doesn’t specify whether it’s a single other person or multiple other people.
p.76 - More precisely, Eagle says here that Lantis lying would have come to nothing.
Yuuko says that the one Sakura saw being “stabbed” in her vision was Lava Lamp. The implication matches what Fei Wang was talking about in the previous chapter - that Sakura put herself in Lava Lamp’s place.
Chapter 154
p.84 - Lava Lamp refers to Sakura’s feathers as both her memories and her heart (“kokoro”), furthering the parallel with Syaoran.
Chapter 155
p.101 - This is actually a complete sentence in Japanese. It contains the same information as the translated version, but since pronouns aren’t necessary it stands on its own and can be assumed to mean, “You killed me.” It’s also written entirely in katakana, which can indicate stilted speech and here I think is meant to just drive home how horrific this is.
p.102-103 - I can see why the translator struggled a bit with these pages because a lot of the Valerian titles are unconventional. The twins’ father is the “teiou” written with the characters for “younger brother” and “king” (弟王), and the other ruler is the “kyouou” written with the characters for “older brother” and “king” (兄王). A little later it’s clarified that the “kyouou” is the country’s king/emperor - the reading of the word is “ou” meaning “king” but the kanji is 皇 meaning “emperor.” The twins’ mother is referred to as “okisaki,” (御妃) which can refer to an empress, a queen, or a princess consort. The twins themselves are called “koushi” (皇子), meaning “imperial prince(s).” It’s kind of hard to tell from all of this what the best representation of these terms would be in English, but I would guess that this is intended to be an imperial family, with either the younger brother next in line to inherit the throne if the older brother has no children or with dual rulers who were reduced to a single ruler once one of them died.
Whatever the case, as has already been explained, the twins’ parents both died and their fate was left in the hands of their uncle (their father’s older brother and the current ruler of the country.) Specific to the official translation, the “elder prince” refers to their uncle the kyouou, and “his majesty” who passed away is their father the teiou. The “royal consort” who killed herself is their mother.
I also want to point out that in this chapter we see the return of the term “fukou,” which we’ve seen Fai use in Acid Tokyo and Himawari use to discuss her effect on the people around her. The official translation often equates this word to unhappiness but as I’ve said before, I think it would be better represented as “misfortune.” Where this translation says that the twins’ mother committed suicide because “life held no joy anymore” I would interpret it as “because she’d brought such misfortune into the world.” Just keep in mind that generally when words like “unhappiness” and “sorrow” pop up in this part of the story, that’s what they’re translated from. Another word that gets used a few times in reference to the twins is “kyouchou” (凶兆), meaning “evil omen.”
p.104 - Though the implied concern here could be the twins taking the throne, the original text just refers to them one day surpassing their uncle’s power.
p.108 - “And the people shall be happy” isn’t necessarily saying that the people are going to be happy about this situation, just that the king believes enclosing the twins in a bubble of their own misery is going to allow the people to live happy/blessed lives. You could probably interpret the line either way though.
p.110 - The king doesn’t just say that one of the twins must die to get out of this situation, but that one must kill the other.
Chapter 156
p.136 - I had left a comment saying the king was telling the twins to pay for their sins rather than atone, but I’m taking that back! There are two words that sound the same when spoken (“aganau”), but depending on the kanji they’re written with one means “to pay for” (購う) and the other means “to atone for” (贖う). In this case, the one used is “atone.” Still horrific though!
That wraps it up for now. I am really regretting doing this by page numbers with all the black pages coming up, but otherwise thrilled to be back in the game! I hope all my babbling has been somewhat informative and as always, please remember that I can make mistakes too so I am always open to questions, suggestions, corrections, etc.
I appreciate that this is CLAMP sitting back and explaining a lot of technicalities to us, in a conversation that these characters really do need to be having. It’s always nice when they put effort into explaining the reasons behind certain things, because in a clamp manga it can be super hard to figure things out even after they’ve happened at times.
The rain thing is really funny to me though. I went back and checked the art and there isn’t anything different that we (as readers) could have observed, so this is definitely just a Yuuko Thing (tm).
THE COOLEST THING THOUGH?
FULL CONFIRMATION: YUUKO IS MUCH STRONGER THAN FAI.
YUUKO IS THE STRONGEST BEING WE HAVE ENCOUNTERED SO FAR.
Which isn’t really a surprise, because it’s correct and true and what she deserves, but it feels like justice that we get the proper confirmation of it, just so people wouldn’t misread Fai as being stronger than her.
Yuuko’s wishes are always impartial - she doesn’t get to pick and choose wishes she thinks will work out well. If someone pays the price, the wish is given to them no matter how it turns out. Fai hasn’t been reading xxxHolic so he doesn’t quite get that yet, but it’s ok, because now he gets to learn it in a soul crushing event instead. How fun!
Meanwhile we’ve seen that kind of ominous silhouette behind Fai before too. Let me see if I can fish it out of Piffle.
I’m not super sure who it’s implying. My money would have been his twin if we hadn’t already seen what happened to them in the end. Perhaps I’m forgetting something.
Either way Kurogane’s moving on with the plot and asking the question we were dying to know.
I mean, of all the shocking revelations we’ve had recently, I feel like this one doesn’t really hold up to the rest.
Maybe it’s just because I’d been suspicious of it since chapter 3, when Fai pulled a feather “out of Syaoran’s clothes” back in the Hanshin republic, but secret feathers in the world that Fai definitely didn’t want to go to? Not as surprising as Sakura violently dying by a long shot.
I didn’t foresee it being inside Chii though, that’s for sure.
(Kurogane are you ok.)
I do love that Lava Lamp isn’t even mad, he’s just disappointed.
There’s another page under the cut, more to try and trick Tumblr into not flagging people standing next to each other as adult content:
This is a nice confirmation of when Sakura’s future sight returned, at least. Though like, “the world immediately before this one” isn’t the most exciting of answers. She got her powers back just in time to see everyone she loves die, and then dies herself to prevent it.
Narratively hitsuzen? Sure! But I’m beginning a petition to give Sakura nice dreams that don’t involve horrible violent murder at least one time.
Also HEY IT’S FAI’S MAGIC SIGILS. THEY’RE BACK.
IT’S BEEN A WHILE, YOU FUNKY LITTLE LETTERS. GOOD TO SEE YOU.
