i’m not here right now

I wish this necklace was the real deal.

wh

…

In his Aliases, one is Red Oni.

If I remember the tale about the Red Oni and Blue Oni goes. The Red Oni wants to be loved and admired by the villagers who are afraid of both onis. So one day, the Blue Oni makes a plan to play the villain and the Red Oni plays the hero in saving the villagers. The Blue Oni leaves as a villain and the Red Oni remains as a hero.

What is Yu Shinjo's main color in their older version... Blue

We already know they're going to be rivals but he cares for his friend, Makoto. So is he going to fulfill the Blue Oni's role while Makoto fulfills the Red Oni's role?

It's a theory! I don't know! It could be wrong with someone putting that into his wiki page!

Here's a line that made me do a double take when I first saw it in English, so I would like to take a closer look at it.

それに　お前は危なかしいからな…… 俺の目の届くところにおいた方がいい

Sore ni omae wa abunakashii kara na... Ore no me no todoku tokoro ni oita hou ga ii Lit.: Furthermore, you're reckless... so I better put you where my eyes can reach.

Official translation: Also... You have a tendency to walk right into danger. Better to keep you at my side - where you'll be safe.

At first glance, the literal translation looks quite different from the official translation, and it feels like the English translation added a whole notion that isn't there in the original version. Looking closer at it, though, I don't think this line was badly localized. First of all, 危なかしい abunakashii is a little difficult to translate literally. If you look up the definition, you'll come across terms like dangerous, uncertain, unreliable, but the context here is important: abunakashii usually carries to nuance of "something or someone that brings danger to itself/themselves and others." For example, a wobbly ladder that would break if you step on it and injure you would be called abunakashii. But you would also call a reckless driver abunakashii, or a risky plan, or a toddler walking on wobbly feet. The closest I could think to define the term is "a person/thing/action that elicits worry for someone's safety," and I can't really think of a word in English that captures that exact nuance, but in the specific context of this scene I think reckless is the closest translation.

And that's where the "where you'll be safe" part of the English translation comes in - it's not literally there in Japanese, but abunakashii implies it. Daigo thinks Mine's behavior is dangerous/reckless in a way that makes Daigo worried about Mine's safety - so by putting him close to himself, he wants to keep him safe.

At first glance, people would easily assume that the English wording makes the line sound gayer than it was originally intended to be. But incidentally, I don't think that's the case! Unfortunately I can't provide receipts for this, but I've seen not one, but several people on Japanese twitter state that this line sounds like something straight out of an Otome game. Which I can't confirm nor deny since I don't play Otome games lol, but I'll trust their word.

In summary, I think the literal translation of this line doesn't quite catch the nuance it has in Japanese, and the English re-interpretation basically spelled that nuance out for us. So while it may look inaccurate at first glance, I don't think it was a bad translation.

i'm sure rgg doesn't really Mean it like this but when i watched the new trailer for stranger than heaven, it was oddly cathartic to hear the guys scream "HEY JAPAN, I'M HOME!" and "SO LONG, AMERICA! THIS IS MY HOME, AND NOTHING'S GONNA CHANGE THAT!" as an asian-american.

coming off of infinite wealth which also included tomi coming to his ancestral home has really put into mind this recurrent motif of "returning to the homeland," which can probably be read as a bit conservative but it's just oddly cathartic to me. a fantasy of the marginalized to retreat from the place that has rejected them and returning to the place where they can be one with everyone else.

i wonder if the increased involvement of america as a setting/presence in the series is purely due to increased worldwide sales creating a desire to simply increase international appeal, especially with all the international celebrities like snoop and danny trejo, but on a creative level i think it can work really well if the writers seriously have something on the mind regarding this.

for instance, it hit me that makoto stranger than heaven is american-born (apparently?) and comes to japan looking for, you could say, a land of new opportunity. literally emigrating to a new land in search of a new life. forming the tojo is like his version of achieving some cobbled together, second-hand version of the american dream, where people can live "on their own terms." he wants to carve a place for outcasts, for those who have nowhere else. looking for your tired and your poor, you could say.

i doubt it'll ultimately go this way but it'd definitely be a pleasantly surprising and astute direction if, as such, the formation of the tojo is depicted as an imposition of the american dream upon japan. makoto apparently feels so rejected by america, unable to obtain the dream, that he comes to a wholly new land to achieve it, but once again he is eventually forced to realize the american dream is just a delusion, and as an american, it seems like the only thing he meaningfully brought to japan was violence and bloodshed. this'll definitely be an interesting throughline as it runs in parallel with the ww2 and post-war periods especially.