Friday, February 15, 2013

Post 03

Release #02, Oira Houkago Wakadaishou v01 c04.

It's time to close some loose ends on old mangas from Maestro Adachi.
Chapters 01-03 were translated by DRAT some years ago.
You can find the new chapter on mangatraders.


And now, some curious stuff.

While reading another of Adachi/Yamasaki early days works
(Yuuhi yo nobore! by MangaDownloads,
http://www.mangadownloads.org/) and
translating something else that will see the light after
Wakadaishou, I noticed something really cool that
lit some light bulb in my head about something I had
forgotten. Yep, something.

Sometimes, Adachi uses real baseball players names
for inspiration for some of his characters or does puns
with their names putting inside kanjis that resemble or
anticipate the character true personality or one aspect of it
(like Ushirosugata and Arase in this chapter).
Mizue could have been inspired by idol and singer Takada Mizue.
Sakaki it's her surname, probably from Hanshin Tigers
Sakakibara Yoshiyuki at that time. The "sakaki" kanji is even the same.
Wakamatsu (Tsutomu) was another baseball player.

Kakefu (Masayuki) from "Isourou" too was a baseball player.
Even more, in that story we have four sisters and the golden combi
Yamauchi Momomi - Urami Tomokaku
(btw, "urami" means grudge, malice, resentment, regret...).

For those who found strange what Adachi wrote in a
panel saying that the story does not have any connections
with real talents and actors, well, keep reading.
The cool thing is that Yamaguchi Momoe (see the resemblance?)
was an actress, singer and idol who married Miura Tomokazu (see?)
her often costar. It doesn't end here though. In her early career
she was in a singer trio with Sakurada Junko and Mori Masako (!).
With her popularity rising up she could chose her songwriters.
One of her singles was written by Aki Youko (!) a songwriter,
actress, novelist and essayst. I bet that even the names for Hiroko
and Setsu were inspired by actresses or idols of the '70s...

Write down a comment if you know something about it, 'cause
like Chitanda would say, "ki ni narimasu!", and I haven't got an Oreki
around to help me.

See you next friday!

5 comments:

DTP said...

hiya thanks for continuing this...

it's been a while since DRAT shut down

do you have any plan or members to continuing other halted adachi's scan like slow step or idol a?

anyway nice job for wakadaishou thanks a bunch

Guren said...

Hello, thanks for your comment.
I thought this unimpressive blog was read only by myself...

My plans are these:

1) complete Wakadaishou.
2) do the short story at the end of Yuuhi yo nobore! v02.
3) do Gamushara

Idol A. I had forgotten about this series. Really. I've read the one-shot and the three chapters in Short Program 3, but i completely forgot he did more. Is there someone doing it? Or else I could ask a couple of guys if they are interested into doing this.

Slow Step: I didn't know this wasn't finished! There're like three and half volumes to do. I could get to it but after everything else.

Unknown said...

There's no one currently working on Idol A or Slow Step as far as I know so it would be nice if you'd pick them up, even if that's after you'd finished your initial plans. I dream of a future where every (notable) Adachi manga is fully translated.
Keep up the good works :)

DTP said...

as far as i know chapter 1 of idol a has been done by prozess but nothing more.

slow step has restarted by adachi project a while back but then then suddenly closed down. so yeah, nobody doing those now.

i appreciate you put some thought on this and i hope you can finished your project plans.

btw i like your translation for GUNMN:LO. didn't know you're the translator till i read your project page.

thanks and keep up the good work ~

Guren said...

Thank you.

As for Last Order, it helps a lot that it's become basically a shounen manga. No more philosophical stuff, martial arts technical terms, french names and so on (...I miss all of that). I have great respect for the previous translators. They did an amazing job. If the series will be back on that standards and tone...i just hope to survive ;)