Ep26: Tracks of the Soul

Well, there ends a fabulous first series for me to translate. It was interesting, and not at times, and like all other Jigoku Shoujo series, started kind of dull… but it ended quite interestingly, I guess.

The final episode was kind of ?!?! but hey, Jigoku Shoujo never really made sense in the first place. I guess we can say that the whole “You are me” thing is deeper than it sounds — perhaps Yuzuki is Ai reincarnated or something, as this series is full of Buddhist imagery and concepts. And Shinto ones, I guess. I love how the Japanese treat them as though they were one unit. Which I guess, is how it is in Japan, since you go to both shrines and temples depending on your business.

I mean, Ai did die, so it might make sense for Yuzuki to be a new Ai, quite literally, which means that all the “other” Jigoku Shoujo are probably the same person or something.

Anyway, since this was the finale, there’s not much to say/note except commenting on the ending, so here is one translation note:
23:15 — 北特院礼父命揚信士 — this is the thing you place in a shrine to your ancestor, in this case the father. This phrase is quite confusing, and therefore, “Rest in Peace: The Father Who Gave His Life” is the best I could do. The whole thing acts as a sort of “religious name” for the dead person. “北特院” (hottokuin)’s homophonic nature to “掘っとく” (hottoku, leave alone) may signify letting the person rest in peace. “礼父命揚” would mean something like “thank the father who gave his life.” And “信士” is an honorific, signifying that the man who died was an adult.

Hope you enjoyed my translation/everyone else at Yuurisan’s hard work! It felt like quite a long season, but it’s over. It kind of makes me sad to see Jigoku Shoujo end. Oh well, I guess I can go watch season 2 again, since I don’t seem to remember it very well…

Ep25: Yuzuki

Well, translated episode 25 today! I guess you could say that I’m on a roll, but that was only possible because I failed to translate them earlier. And I’m beginning to feel sick to boot. Maybe it’s all that angsty anime I’ve been watching lately.

Anyway, that episode was interesting… that her whole life was basically a lie. I liked when her eyes suddenly turned red. But really, I don’t see how her life could prove that sending people to hell can be good, since sending anybody to hell in that situation wouldn’t have helped anybody.

Anyway, three notes again:
04:33 Pachinko — It’s the Japanese equivalent of pinball combined with a slot machine, I guess, where you buy a bunch of balls to put in the machine, which can sometimes activate the slot machine inside. A jackpot gives you more balls to play with, or exchange for prizes. It’s quite popular amongst Japanese men. Frequently cited in anime for its potential to waste a lot of money, usually angering the wife of the household.
16:09 Ojichan — Ojisan is a word used in Japanese to refer to any older man (as in, older than 20-30 and younger than 60 or so), and Ojichan refers specifically to a man like that that you are close to.
16:36 Hanko — In Japan, instead of signing important documents, you frequently use a stamp. These are pretty normal — they just have your name in Kanji on them. While it may seem easily forgeable, the most important documents require you to register the specific stamp, and thus, most of these stamps are very unique, not to mention handmade.

Ep24: Mayfly

Hello! Long time no see… and it’s entirely my fault. Sorry. I’ve got time this week, so hopefully I can finish this series up and then catch up on my other series (namely, Regios).

Anyway, this was a fairly interesting episode I guess. There aren’t many quirks in this episode you can’t understand, so here goes the 3 notes I thought were interesting, and not really that important.

01:17 Heisei – The dating system in Japan uses regular Gregorian years (as in, 2009), but can also use the, I guess, imperial system where you count years based on the reign of the current emperor. The current emperor was crowned in 1989 (Heisei 1), so this year is Heisei 21.
05:43 Flammable – As explained earlier in the season, Japanese garbage is split up into many different categories. The flammable category is burned and usually used to generate electricity, thus serving as a good way to recycle.
17:26 Torii – This is the gateway to a Shinto shrine. They’ve been a significant symbol throughout this series, and really, that’s all you need to know, that it has religious significance.

I’ll try to get the other episodes done this week, but Jigoku Shoujo is REALLY hard to watch continuously for me (as it’s very angsty and depressing), so I might be taking frequent breaks watching something like Sola or Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid.

Ep23: Sunset Hill

So I had time this morning, and translated the next episode of Mitsuganae. Which means I’m almost caught up, except for the episode that aired today (I have it downloaded already XD). Anyway, this is another easily understood episode hopefully; it’s something that could happen in any country that requires tuition for school, for example in the US, entering college might end up like this.

So, onto the small number of notes. These are again beginning to be things that interest me and are notable about Japanese culture, rather than things important for the plot. After all, anime watchers probably should know more about the culture they’re so in love with, right? ^_-

04:10 Recommendation – to get into high school in Japan, there are multiple ways. Normally, you would take the entrance exam (for which there is a unique one for each school), or more rarely, your middle school would recommend you to a high school, and if that’s accepted, you don’t even need to take the test. This is also notable in the last episode (22) since Sumika got into college through this same recommendation process, while Yuika had to take the test.

05:39 Some movie titles of note that I found hilarious, with references in ()’s:

1. Rote of the Rink (Lord of the Rings)
2. Jurassic Pearl (Jurassic Park)
3. Heaven Girl/Tengoku Shoujo (Hell Girl/Jigoku Shoujo)
4. Parry Potter and the Immortal Cat Knights (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?)
5. Parry Potter and the Goblet of Wood (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

He really has WAY too many expensive things, though. What is that, like 10 different DVD/Video/BluRay/HDDVD/LaserDisc/BetaMax/CD/LP/8-track etc. players?

10:50 Koushien (甲子園) is the national high school baseball tournament in Japan, which goes on during the summer. It’s a really big deal, since it’s when you would get recruited to the Japanese major leagues and stuff. Lots of matches, lots of coordinated marching and fanfare.

13:27 Smoking seats – most restaurants in Japan still have smoking seats. They’re usually separated from the non-smoking area, but usually just by distance, not by any physical barrier. And regardless of what you think about second-hand smoke, remember that Japan’s life expectancy is one of the highest in the world, so it’s not THAT bad.

24:47 The next episode’s title has two translations: “Mayfly” or “Ephemera.” I guess they’re the same, in that both signify something lasting a very short amount of time.

Well, that’s it for this episode. Hopefully I can get 24 done soon, since it aired today, and people want their Jigoku Shoujo, especially as it reaches its finale. I’m excited; this was a long series with not a lot a plot until recently. Like that scene at the end of this episode when she saw all the people she had come into contact with involving the Hell Correspondence. That was spooky.

Ep22: Flower and Moon

It’s been a while! Since encoding was so long, I took some time off from Mitsuganae to translate other projects… so I finally finished episode 22 today, two weeks late! This episode is rather straightforward, so the number of notes is very small:

00:59 Kiritsu! – In Japanese schools, it is customary to start classes formally with a greeting. Whoever is on day duty gives the orders, “Kiritsu! Kiotsuke! Rei!” which means “Stand! Attention! Bow!” which sounds a lot more vulgar than the Japanese ^^. After this, depending on the class/time of day, you can say “Good morning,” “Let’s begin,” “Let’s end,” or “Good bye.” My English professor makes us bow as well (he’s an interesting fellow ^_- who lived in Japan), so it’s not THAT weird.

02:10 Guidance Counseling – Japanese schools hold conferences for rising high school freshmen to discuss career paths, since high schools in Japan can be very specialized (remember, it is not required).

07:27 Eye Exam – Just thought I’d point out that instead of using letters for an eye exam, you tell the examiner where the hole in the “C” is in Japan, by saying “Right,” “Left,” etc.

Anyway, that was an interesting episode, I guess. Who ended up sending whom to hell? The candle was obscured, and you can always cover-up a birthmark with make-up (since you can with tattoos…). But ultimately, it doesn’t matter much, since they ended up the same person, basically. Right? Right.

As always, feel free to comment!

Ep21: The Back’s Front

Sorry for the delay… but at least we’re faster than any other group, right? Also, we’ve reached OVER NINE THOUSAND hits on our site, which I found pretty amazing ^_-

Onto the episode. This was the most accessible episode for non-Japanese yet, probably… I mean, this kind of step-mother and step-son relationship is more common in countries where divorce is more common, like the US. Anyway, I found it particularly applicable since the mother was reading Cinderella to Mao. And it still makes me wonder why their child is named that.

Onto the notes. There aren’t many notes. As you can see.

14:50 DV – Domestic Violence. Just saying, since DV seems like it would be Digital Video… but wasn’t.

16:42 Maternity Record Book. Mothers in Japan keep careful records including pictures of when their child did x for the first time, etc., and all their medical records as well. These books fill up pretty quickly… but they’re useful when you need basically any information on your child.

17:21 “Don’t run out into the street!” Haiku Sign. Just pointing out that this sign is a haiku, so I tried to make it haiku in my TL:

Don’t run out into
The street, as cars cannot stop
Immediately

Isn’t that delightful? No? My bad.

Hope you’re enjoying the slightly more interesting plot in these episodes. Frankly, I thought episode 20 would start a long arc that would last until the last episode (OH NO! THE PROFESSOR GOT A HOLD OF AI! SIEGE!), but this is what happens… an innocent baby forced to be aborted. But the ending was weird – am I supposed to be happy, or sad? What do you think?

Ep20: Hell Professor versus Hell Girl

Whoa! Feels like yesterday since I wrote one of these!
Wait, it actually was.
Anyway, here’s episode number 20. It was an awesome episode – that what, 6 minute monologue by the professor was the longest thing to translate ever ^_-. And episode 18 is still not released (;_;).

And every time someone said “Kikyou,” I couldn’t help but think of SHUFFLE!’s Kikyou (Lisianthus’s alter-ego).

Anyway, here are the notes. They get pretty in-depth, because I’m a computer nerd, and there were quite a few things that excited me.

06:53 NeXTstep system! At 11:05, it’s identified as a NeXTcube. These little boxes were amazing – made out of Magnesium and were pretty expensive, if I remember correctly. They were built in the 90’s under Steve Job’s new company at the time, NeXT, and the operating system was UNIX-based, with lots of cool features. It was the first OS to have a web browser (WoldWideWeb), and had scrollbars on the left side (which I would still prefer), plus the equivalent of the Mac OS X Dock and its Docklings, and so many “state-of-the-art” features that it was probably too ahead of its time. You should look at Wikipedia if you really care ^^.

10:15 Elekiter – I wonder if my editor changed this. They’re static electricity generators imported from Holland to Japan in the Edo period (introduced in 1776, see Wikipedia), which really shows how old Wanyudo is.

12:02 Shibata Hajime-shi – Shibata Hajime is the freelance journalist from season one. You probably know that… anyway, the “-shi” at the end is an honorific, used for people you do not know in formal writing and speech (Wikipedia rocks – of course I knew how to use it, but explaining the peculiarities in Japanese is quite difficult).

14:39 Heisenberg – he’s the one who made the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics. The professor is referring to how after Heisenberg, everything from Physics to Philosophy to Popular Culture began using the Uncertainty principle as a means to prove that things like moral relativism and the nonexistence of fate had a basis in science. You must understand that calling this professor an “Applied Mathematician” as Ichimoku-ren does seems really strange – the only use of mathematics was to find his constant; everything after that was philosophy and psychology. Of course you can disagree with me, though…

15:04 BBS in BASIC – Yes, there was a time when bulletin board systems were this low-tech. When he says BASIC he’s referring to the programming language – it’s really easy (hence the name), which is why many programs were written in it in the 80s and 90s.

18:04 Ressentiment – This is a French word. Not a misspelling of an English one (resentment), although the meanings aren’t too far off. The editor might have changed this, but it means this, according to Wikipedia (yet again):

Ressentiment is a sense of resentment and hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one’s frustration, an assignation of blame for one’s frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the “cause” generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. The ego creates an enemy, to insulate itself from culpability.

A term imported by many languages for its philosophical and psychological connotations, ressentiment is not to be considered interchangeable with the normal English word “resentment”, or even the French “ressentiment”. While the normal words both speak to a feeling of frustration directed at a perceived source, neither speaks to the special relationship between a sense of inferiority and the creation of morality. Thus, the term ‘Ressentiment’ as used here always maintains a distinction.

The term was used by Nietzche in his books on Morality – I just find that interesting since I do debate and Nietzsche is an author we see often.

Well, that was a time consuming episode, with the translation finished on the day of transmission – now only if the encoder were faster, we would get 18 soon ^_-. Anyway, enjoy when you finally get the episode!

Ep19: Snow, Moon, Flowers

This was a tight episode. Maybe not for the episode itself, but that part at the end. Yes, yes, it was expected. But it was nice, finally seeing some plot. Now we know why the hell (heh) this series is centered around one girl, who is not Ai.

Oh and by the way, one of my subbing mates was wondering why there weren’t more people in our IRC channel (#maiwaifu@irc.rizon.net). We have me, an idler, and that person there sometimes. So if you want to talk about Jigoku Shoujo, maybe it’d be a good place to do so… of course, the more people, the better discussion we can have. And better criticism of our work, perhaps.

Anyway, onto the notes. This one was quite confusing. First of all, to understand the reason she’s so grave about her whole inheritance situation, you must know that the iemoto system (家元制度) in Japan is where the Japanese government sponsors and licenses certain families in Japan to keep cultural practices alive. In this case, the Nakiri (and Hyakki) families are doing exactly that, with flower arrangement.

Now for specific ones:
03:13 – Yaoya-san. See Episode 7 (08:03).

03:16 – Hyakki school. The Hyakki/Nakiri family is divided into two schools – Hyakki and Nakiri (if you’ve seen the episode). It’s important to note that 百鬼 means One Hundred Spirits, which is why Yuzuki is surprised. I have no idea how you would read that as Nakiri, by the way.

03:49 – Yaki-imo. See Episode 15 (13:28).

04:22 – Licensing. See above.

06:21 – 袖振り合うも多生の縁. This is a Buddhist saying in Japan, about how if you touch sleeves with someone in this world, it signifies a sort of fate you share with them from other lives. Reincarnation is really important… also note that the word Kadokura uses for “passing away” means “to go to another world.”

07:00 – Yama-waro’s misconception thing. Just wanted to note that this explains why there were so many episodes with Yuzuki’s classmates being sent to hell – yet they never realized that those sending them were their teachers. There were way too many pronouns in that last sentence.

16:59 Name explanation – Snow, Moon, Flowers (Yukina, Tsukio, Kaori). Kadokura explains it well, but without Japanese knowledge, you might be clueless. First, Yukina is 雪奈, the first character means Snow (雪). Second, Tsukio is 月男 or 月夫 or similar, and the first character means Moon (月). Lastly, Kaori is 花緒里, the first character means Flower (花).

20:48 Spider Lily. In Japan (and China) it’s called Manjushage (曼珠沙華). Since on these flowers, when the flower blooms, the leaves fall, it gave birth to many folktales. One is in which two elves, Manju and saka (Japanese reading is a bit different, yielding shage), are respectively charged to guard the flower and the leaves. When they fell in love with each other, the God (don’t ask me which) cursed them to never meet again. When they meet in hell, they promise to meet after reincarnation, but never do.
On a similar note, they grow in cemeteries around the autumnal equinox, so they are frequently depicted as ominous flowers that grow in hell.
Also, there are legends where these flowers bloom when you are meeting someone for the last time, hence their use in Japanese funerals.
Ai’s usage of another name (Hell Flowers) is one of many alternate names – according to a study by a high school computer club in Kumamoto, it has the most alternate names out of any other flower.
These flowers are probably the flowers we see a lot in Jigoku Shoujo scenery and imagery – e.g. the ED sequence.
(References: English and Japanese Wikipedia).

Well, I’m done with this episode rather late (a week). In fact, the next episode comes out tomorrow. Let’s hope I can get it done quicker. Yeah.

Ep18: Special Radio

Wow, I totally saw that coming… anyway, I found this episode dull seeing as that girl was just an idiot not to think of that.

Anyway, I guess the title IS significant, like I explained in the last episode’s notes. The fact that it uses “レディ” instead of “ラジ” points to the hidden lady that is at the core of the radio show – i.e. Yume.

09:32 Broadcasting club – in Japan, there are a ton of clubs you can join in school, and usually membership starts at the beginning of the year, i.e. April. Here, however, the girls are asking Hamano to join the club even in the middle of the year due to her popularity.

16:39 Nice leaves.

21:49 Purple Moon. Tell me if that’s significant – I bet it has some significance in Chinese/Japanese mythology/religion.

24:46 “Snow, Moon, Flowers” is a literal translation of this title – according to my Japanese dictionary, this refers to the differing beauty in the four seasons (the dictionary does not explain what represents summer), and comes from a line in a Chinese poem (“雪月花時最憶君”). It’s since been loved and used often in Japanese poetry, notably in the Manyoushuu (万葉集).

Oh and I acknowledge there has been significant delay recently. I apologize. Weekends have been busy, so my usual slot for JSM translation (Saturday evenings) were always full, forcing me to find random, shorter blocks of time during the week.

Ep17: In the Straw

w00t! Finished this episode quickly; hope that makes up for last week in which it took me until Wednesday to get it finished.

Anyway, this was a VERY interesting episode. No plot development, but who cares when Yama-waro is… well, see for yourself. I’m not going to spoil the surprise! ^_-

Anyway, random notes I decided to write; most information is from Wikipedia:
03:22 The date is 1944-08-21. Though you’d might like to know. This is during World War II, when the Dumbarton Oaks Conference began as the precursor to the United Nations.

03:48 Osaka World Expo – also called EXPO’70 and Japan World Exposition, it was during 1970. According to Wikipedia, “This fair was one of the largest and best attended expositions in history.”

09:56 Ambrosia is the food which the Greek gods eat to attain eternal life. Ashiya Risaburo is trying to develop that using biological practices of selectively breeding Caterpillar fungus.

10:43 Caterpillar fungus is a fungus used in traditional Tibetan medicine, which went to China and then to Japan later. It’s Japanese name, 冬虫夏草 (To Chuu Ka Sou, same characters as the Chinese name), means “that which is an insect in the winter, and becomes grass in the summer,” showings its parasitic relationship to insects, in which the parasite invades a moth (usually), kills it, and grows into a fungus in the summer. It’s used as everything from an aphrodisiac to medicine for fatigue to cancer. It’s apparently also good for radiation poisoning. Oh how I love Wikipedia, with information about everything!

14:27 Yes, this means Yama-waro is not human. He’s a mountain-child of nature! Too bad he doesn’t have Tarzan surfing-on-trees skills Confirmed at 21:07.

19:09 If you remember from season 1, this was one of the older methods of accessing the Hell Correspondence, via a blank ad in the newspaper at 12:00.

22:49 Notice how the candle goes out – I checked older episodes, and this is the first time I’ve noticed this. It might mean the person on the candle died already.

24:45 This title is romanized really weirdly… Radio is usually ラジオ but here it’s レディオ. レディー means “lady” so it might be a play on words.

Well, that’s it! Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode – because when people read this, it’s after they watched the episode. Hopefully. Or else I spoilt how Yama-waro was actually not human for you guys. Anyway, now we know his background – it’s kind of cool and disgusting at the same time. I mean, a host for Caterpillar fungi? Eww…