#translation reflection

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I moved to Japan because of Kagepro. Like yeah, everyone knows I moved here because of utaite, but like, 12, 13 years ago? The utaite community was saturated in Kagepro. At that point, saying you liked utaite should have been synonymous with saying you liked Kagepro.

As I was waiting on the station platform, I felt a little strange listening to a funeral song about the summers I spent with Kagero Project. After all, I was simultaneously experiencing the sounds, smells, and blistering heat I originally only heard about through those songs. It was fun when I was translating “Summering,” because now I had a real-life reference for the “damp smell” of Japanese summers and the “rusted railway bridge,” as there’s one in my town. “The flimsy can badges,” “stickers ripped from the sheet”-- I also knew these references very well. 

Surely, this must be Kagepro merch.

Even though they’re just cheap pieces of paper and plastic, I made sure to carefully put the merch I had into a box and storage shed in America, instead of throwing everything away when I moved out. In that sense, maybe I did “get it together” to a certain extent, but I still think there’s a part of me not quite all there for dropping everything and moving to a foreign country.

真面 (まとも/matomo) was one of the first words I struggled with translating (I translated 真面になった as “I got it together”). In the dictionary and many of the translations I saw, it’s commonly translated as “serious,” but that doesn’t even begin to cover all the nuance contained in that word, especially in the context of “Summering.” In “Summering,” it mainly brings to mind someone becoming an adult, literally getting their crap together and stopping messing around, but in some contexts, it can also mean “sane.” If you don’t get your crap together, work, give up childish things, and become a member of society, you’re insane. And the fact that the narrator of the song themself says they “got it together” makes it sound like, yeah, they believe they were into silly things and they weren’t normal. It’s horrifying that they betrayed their past self and grew ok with it.

That’s why the summers in “Summering” have passed. They’re not just gone with the seasons– they’ve passed away. They’re dead. And the thing that was breathing life into them was maybe not just summer vacations and youth, but Kagepro. Maybe losing that wonder is what is consuming our narrator with regret.

Maybe there’s a certain point in our adult lives where we attempt to rewrite or justify the past to protect ourselves. Maybe everything wasn’t as beautiful as we remember, or maybe we shut away parts of ourselves because we think it would be in our best interest.

Maybe that’s why in the second verse of “Summering,”  the narrator writes a letter to their past self to explain why they chose to “get it together” (If you take out the line breaks, it reads as 拝啓　僕 or “Dear myself,” basically). They didn’t need to protect only themselves, but also their hobbies, because they loved them so much. I know that anime is very mainstream now, but when I was in high school, it was lame and nerdy. Luckily, no one in my school was bullied for liking anime, but I got voted as class nerd because everyone knew I was going home and studying Japanese for two hours every night LOL (I was very popular don’t worry this was not bullying HAHA). Even in Japan, though, I don’t think it was easy to be an otaku.

At the end of the letter in “Summering”, I like how the “always” could be connected to both “I believe” or “Yours sincerely.” Maybe the narrator has always thought it was tragic that they had to abandon everything they loved to keep living. But in the end, after rewriting and throwing away those summers countless times, the narrator is finally letting them go and becoming a “real” adult (of course, it’s not lost on me that this line may also mean Jin’s giving up on the Kagepro IP battle that’s been going on forever). This line doesn’t come off as painful to me, though, just more accepting and maybe bittersweet. That’s probably the most adult attitude you could have when you’re attending the funeral for your childhood.

I’ve been very fortunate to not have to wear the recruit suit the narrator is wearing in the PV, but if I want to move on to bigger and better work opportunities here in Japan, I’m probably going to have to wear one very soon. It really does feel like a funeral suit ngl lol. But I think I still have a few more years until I become numb to the cumulonimbus clouds and azure skies in Japan.

My panorama is made out of utaite and Vocaloid. I feel like listeners and utaite themselves have had similar experiences as we’ve grown up in this subculture. Sou in particular is the same age as me, so I imagine we both grew up sitting in the dark on our computers, finding our next favorite song on the Nico Video rankings, and growing attached to this digital community. I could see not only parts of him, but also myself reflected in the lyrics of “Terminal.” I like how the song can be interpreted as both from the singer and the listener. In fact, listening to it from this dual perspective just makes the lyrics even more sincere. 

“Terminal” also highlights how music creates connection across distance. Connection with music isn’t formed by meeting the artist in person, but rather by meeting them every time you listen to their songs. The connection isn’t how many times you’ve seen someone in concert or how much money you’ve spent on them, but how their songs have dyed your daily life and impacted you as a person. No matter where you are in the world, every time you listen to your favorite songs, you’re building a unique and real relationship with the artist.

I think this sense of connection is why I like the album Panorama so much, though. While much of the media in our current world is made for fast-paced consumption, the technology and digital motifs in Panorama feel more like an homage to a nostalgic era, where music, photography, and video are used to capture and preserve precious moments that would otherwise disappear. It invites us to step back and take in the world shaped from the memories we attached to our favorite music.