I’m inordinately pleased that I don’t have to start this chapter by hiding pictures due to gore or violence. DOES THIS MARK MY FREEDOM? ARE WE FREE FROM THAT FOR A LITTLE WHILE? A BLESSING.
Please join me as I applaud the new Celes outfits that have been bestowed on us this day. They’re so good and simple and practical, and yet still different for each of them. Lava Lamp gets to show off his legs just in case he gets to kick something, while Kurogane gets to be the Prepared Adult with a handy extra bag around his waist. Which is... you know... essentially a fanny pack.
The true discourse is: would Kurogane wear a fanny pack. And how would Tomoyo ever live down the shame.
ALSO WE CAN’T MISS THIS:
MOKONA GETS ONE TOO.
HOW RARE IS THAT. FINALLY MOKONA GETS A FANCY COAT TO MATCH HER FAMILY.
Am I tempted to forgive Eagle Vision because of this one detail alone? Probably, yes.
Can I please also have a transcript of the conversation where Eagle Vision had to describe to a tailor the different sizings he wanted for these coats. How did he justify this to them.
I’m also side-eyeing this piece of dialogue
Because this is essentially what every other character needs to say right now.
LAVA LAMP IS A GENTLE PURE SOUL AND I AM SO GLAD SOMEONE IS GIVING MOKONA THE LOVE AND APPRECIATION SHE DESERVES
She might be excluded from all the fighting and all the major events but HER LOVE AND SUPPORT IS INVALUABLE
I’m also just really entertained by the image of Mokona swivelling her head like that and the projection of Yuuko suddenly flying to the other corner of the room, half of it being projected onto Lava Lamp’s face
It would have been the greatest joke if Fai asked for Kurogane’s hand and then just held it instead, but oh man here we go magic weapon access upgrade I’m on board
I like so much about this because it still hides so much about what we really need to know. Ie, what this costs.
There was a Very Good Reason why Fai never used this magic, or any of his magic, before now.
The reason was great enough that he had magic tattoos sealing his power that he had to give away because they were his most valuable possession.
The reason was also great enough that they went through numerous encounters where they might have died but Fai still didn’t use it.
But at this point he’s used so much of it that he’s just YOLOing it and throwing it all into the wind. Which, knowing Fai, can only mean that it’s bad for him.
I’d love to know HOW, but either way, the fact that they’re on the edge of going to Celes seems to be spurring Fai into doing as much good as he can now before it’s too late, no matter the cost to himself.
Not that it’s a good thing, but. Now Kurogane can pull his sword out of his hand, which is pretty neat.
Kurogane calls Eagle Vision out on having spied on them this whole time (for months) and he’s just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And then in true CLAMP fashion they drop an important hint and give it the space of 0.5 seconds before moving on entirely and not explaining a thing.
WHO ELSE WAS WATCHING THEM?
Aside from, you know. Evil Wolverine. And Yuuko, probably. And us, if we count. Aside from all of those people. It’s presented a bit too dramatically to just chalk it up to someone we already know about, but I probably won’t find out the answer for 50 chapters anyway, so oh well! At least Lava Lamp is practicing some variations in his shocked face while Mokona looks dramatically off into the distance.
ALSO FAI. FAI IS A THING.
LOOKS LIKE WE’RE GONNA HAVE A FUN TIME.
Fai is being politely reassuring here, but it’s not really an effective lie.
Not only because Mokona is an empath and already knows exactly how Fai feels, but because of the hell chorus of internal screaming that we saw two seconds previous.
Does anyone have Fai’s number. I need to tell him that instead of saying “I’m alright” he’s allowed to say things like “no”, “kinda depressed actually”, and “this is literally my nightmare scenario in every single way lol”.
We’re slowly going through the back catalogue of all of the lies Fai has told us over the years and debunking them one by one.
This one is interesting, if only in hindsight at this point. We’ve already discovered that Fai is much more powerful than he ever claimed to be, but it’s good to know roughly where “inter-dimension travel” falls on the Fai scale. The fact that he could cast it at all already put him really high on the scale. The fact that he finds it relatively easy pushes him ridiculously beyond any expectation we might have. (Except for people like Yuuko, and Sakura, who are beyond him again)
Though with all that said, I find entertaining that it’s Lava Lamp that recalls Fai’s exact lie and is the most directly affected by it, because he wasn’t even technically there. He was watching, sure, but Fai didn’t lie to him, so his dramatic twirl of offense is Delightful.
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.
For once I agree with you and your empathy towards Yuuko is the best thing I have ever seen you do.
GOOD WORK.
C+. Room for for improvement.
Aaaand they made it!
This page feels like it fits better at the start of the next chapter than at the end of this one, so maybe it’s a weird publishing detail, but still! End of chapter!
