Mise à jour de la base de données, veuillez patienter...

The title sums most of it up. I’m not dead. The blog got pretty close to being dead, but isn’t quite yet. This translation endeavor, also, is still alive. And thanks in part to the little kick delivered by this fine fellow’s comment, we have a release!

Summer Specials 3 and 4 are the last strips in the long string of specials that go in between “Episode 12 (see it here)” and “Episode 13 (see it here)” of the original 4-koma-style strips. I’d recommend taking a look at “Episode 13” again after reading these two chapters since there is a little bit of continuity between the story at the end of Summer Special 4 and Episode 13.

As again, a reminder here that these strips weren’t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by buying a volume (paper book and e-book). These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release – unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.)

Look for previously released translations in the category archives.

Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.

At this point we’re pretty much done with, if I’m not mistaken, the content published on weekly ascii before the advent of the manga vol 1. So we’ll be diving into vol 1 exclusive material next. Here’s hoping it’ll be sooner rather than later :)

These translations are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Snowfall
spiralling, swirling dance
The warm, smearing cloud
of my breath against
the burning frost in the air
The yellow lamplight
dotting the snow-clad wind
whisper of distance, beyondness, flickering
like shadows in my crusted soul
but with quiet, graceful tempo
Amidst the smell of fragant cold
the sweet, stinging taste
of yuzu

Strung with thorns, this path we plow
Far as the eye can gaze upon
Lo what comfort, what joy to know
The road goes ever on and on

Onward

-Photos by JX

Not an update worth writing home about, but an update nonetheless, with what little significance it brings. I guess this is a giving of voice, however small, to a defiance of sorts – a flail and a flinch that says I’m not quite ready nor willing to throw the towel and let the blog die just yet, notwithstanding the curveballs life has been throwing me of late. The great difficulty with the issue of blogging, at least for me, is that blogging – or more specifically writing – is for me immensely beneficial and stimulating, but also demanding of a synchrony of time, place and mood – mental room and solitude – that is getting harder and harder to achieve nowadays. One is tempted more and more to say “this isn’t working out, I’m busy, there is much to do. Better to put it down with finality than to have it forever hanging on my conscience – always desired but rarely reached”. At least for the near future, the plan is still to hold out somehow until the next time I am able to find the right spirit, topic, time and place to write a good blog.

… There’s still more android manga to translate too.

Anyway, back on topic. I had the pleasure of looking up the lyrics of this song recently – the second ED of that great series Fate/Zero. It was wonderful. Suffocatingly beautiful. Almost poetic. And as usual, not being satisfied with available translations that I’ve found, here is my own. Reflect on Kiritsugu and Irisviel as you listen – their romance and ideals. And then in the backdrop, the ideals, the passions, the efforts of the many other participants of the Fate/Zero stage – how they burned bright and intense, to eventually fizzle and fade, but not without first adding heretofore absent illumination to the Fate/Zero whole.

Merry Christmas from Between Linux and Anime. May the dream never cease to light our horizons, and may our weary steps thereto never falter for long.

Hit F8 to listen to it while it’s up (or play it from the player at the sidebar). Hit the jump for some pictures, Romaji lyrics, and translations.



Lyrics

Doushite sora wa konna ni aokute
Nani mo kanashimi o shiranu you ni
Itsumo tamerawazu ashita e to kuzureochiru

Inochi wa tarinai mama umarete kuru no ne
Itami ga mitasu mono mo aru no ne
Kakeochita kokoro ni anata ga furete

Futari de yuku mirai wa
Kegare no nai tsuyosa de

Sora wa takaku kaze wa utau
Yume o miteta
Yorokobi e to
Hito wa itsuka tadoritsukeru
Kodomo no hitomi de anata wa shinjita
Soba ni iru yo
Kooritsuita mori o nukete
Sono hitomi ga sekai no nageki ni
Mayowanu you ni

Doushite todokanai hikari dake ga
Itsumo nani yori mo mabushii tadashisa de
Kanawanai ashita e to hito o sabaku

Tsumetai senaka ni sotto furete mita
Sekai no yasashisa o shinjinai hito da kara
Dare yori mo yasashikatta

Ikite ita yo mirai e
Sora ni kaze o nokoshite

Yume wa doko ni nemuru no darou
Itsuka dare mo inakunatta
Kono kishibe ni yosete kaesu
Hikari no kakera ni nareru to shinjita
Yami ni kaeru omoi-tachi ga
Moetsukiteku
Sono akari o shirube ni
Sekai wa mata yume o miru

Sora wa takaku kaze wa utau
Anata ga mita yume no kioku
Sono sakebi ga
Yasashii kodama o
Kaeshite iru yo

Translation

How could the sky be so blue
As if it never knew of suffering
Always unhesitating, collapsing into tomorrow

Life is born incomplete isn’t it
There are things that suffering completes aren’t there
My fugitive heart, you touch it

The future that we both move towards
With untarnished strength

The sky runs high, the winds sing
To the joy of seeing a dream
People will someday find their way
With the eyes of a child, you so believed
I am here with you
Escape the ice-bound forest
That those eyes do not lose their way in the grief of the world

Why is it, that the unreachable light
always, with a righteousness brighter than anything
judge people, towards an unfulfillable tomorrow

I touched your cold back
Because you did not believe in the kindness of the world
You were kinder than anyone else

I have lived, towards the future
I leave the wind in the sky

Where do dreams go to sleep?
One day we would come back
to this shore, where everyone is gone
Believing that they can become a fragment of the light
They return to the darkness, these feelings,
Burn away into nothing
Guided by that light
The world dreams again

The sky runs high, the winds sing
The memory of the dream that you saw
That scream
that now gives back
but a tender echo

Romaji Lyrics taken from Gendou’s Anime Music.
Translation by me.

Originally announced (aeons ago) here. Not much to say but enjoy!

(Reminder here that this strip wasn’t released freely online, so if you like Hana no Android Gakuen I encourage you to support the authors by buying a volume (paper book and e-book). These are of course in Japanese, and no official English translations exist to the best of my knowledge. As long as this persists I will for my part commit to eventually translating everything in the first volume release – unless a much faster-working translation group picks it up or I get shut down by the creators for releasing non-free strips.)

Look for previously released translations in the category archives.

Hit the jump for the released strips. Like all Japanese manga, this should be read right to left, top to bottom.

These translations are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

I seem to be doing this a lot lately, but I’ll make it quick this time :) Juuuust in case you haven’t actually seen them, a bunch of veteran dudes are trying to fund a high quality anime episode – in its entirety – via Kickstarter. That’s basically it: fully crowd funded anime, where creator retains artistic rights and freedom and is answerable only to the audience.

There’s only three days left to the campaign at this writing, so here are some quick pointers to what I consider the important bits:

Step 1: Watch the trailer

Step 2: Read the last paragraphs of the Kickstarter page. Just look for “In closing, we will say again and again” and read from there.

Step 3: Read Hideo Kojima’s endorsement of the endeavor.

Step 4: Read some of the responses in their AMA.

Step 5: If any of that spoke to you, throw some money at them. (ASAP! Campaign ends in three days as of this writing)

Pace of funding has been accelerating, with about 70k being pledged in the last 24 hours, so it’s actually looking like they may yet make it to the goal. Which is kind of crazy. It’s a tired rhetoric in this blog by now perhaps, but a success here will be quite unprecedented, and perhaps be part of the catalyst for an inevitable change in workings of the anime industry. We want anime to become more transparent, more accessible, more sensitive to the fans (globally!) and less to investor whims, so that’s where our money should go. Into the projects and ideas that are nudging the industry in a direction we like.

So how about it? Do consider giving them some love (ASAP!).