#tousei

Happy birthday @cotybelux

the sub we were watching translated the tousei scoring song using "king of glory, king of peace," a nice tune, but clearly not what they are singing. as it happens, there are a couple japanese worship songs called or containing some variant of 栄光の王 eikou no ou ["king of glory"], but this isn't one of them.

it was hard to hear the words clearly over the instruments and dialogue, so i pulled out the manga and found one instance of it early in volume 7, corresponding to midway through episode 20 in the anime:

from the page, we get:

おおい　なるーっ　めーぐみ　をーっ　うーけたる　しゅーっに　こたーえる　よろこび　をーっ

and there’s a little bit that continues onto the other side:

たちあがりて　うたえーっ

this is searchable once you chop out the vowel lengthening and glottal catches from singing, and google turns up the third verse of the aforementioned hymn, whose full lyrics you can see here. below is the specific verse they are singing, first romanized with the parts not shown in the manga bracketed off, followed by the written japanese lyrics:

ooi naru megumi wo uketaru [warera] shu ni kotaeru yorokobi wo tachiagarite utae [koe wo awasete]

大いなる恵みを受けたるわれら 主にこたえる喜びを 立ち上がりて歌え声を合わせて

a loose translation might be, "let us who have received great blessings rise and join our voices to sing our joy in answer to the lord." a neater translation is left as an exercise for someone with greater japanese proficiency and a higher religion modifier - i just went to catholic school and know what my flavor of religious music sounds like, and notably, this song is baptist.

see the video below for what it sounds like without a baseball game happening at the same time. they sing it as verse 2, starting at 0:37:

「ALL DIR EN GREY FANS」

i incorporated some of the lyrics of tousei to what has been going on in the world concerning ignorance/silence on racism,, i posted the whole rant on my instagram story and would appreciate it if u read through it. i feel like as an a knot i had to make musical connections especially during these stressful times since dir en grey have been my only comfort nowadays...pause the video to read thoroughly!

and it’s especially telling how meaningful it is, considering kaoru himself acknowledged what’s been happening...and i hope the rest of the boys take the time to do so as well bc they have huge impact!! a lot of their music is political and revolutionary whether you like it or not!! they are the voice of waves, WE ARE THE VOICE OF WAVES. thank you 🖤