"I love you" ochako says, togachakoly

Well, I was re-reading Noragami a while back because I was bored and found a bit I always thought was a little weird in regards to the translations. This was when Yukine stung Yato because Nora had kissed him, and Takemikazuchi sends Kiun to go give him a ‘talk’. I went ahead and found the raws, and found out that the context was heavily changed in regards to Kiun as a character, specifically his love affairs (lol) so I thought I’d make a post to elaborate (also because it’s interesting). 

So, here is where I think the translations started diverging from the original context. Takemikazuchi uses questions and open ended suggestions: “You’re the romantic expert, right?”, “I’m sure you’ve made plenty of women cry” 

This makes the readers believe that this is merely based on Take’s assumptions and not actually how Kiun behaves. With the way the panels and the expressions were flowing, I thought it was a little weird that Kiun would be this surprised over open ended suggestions like this, so I checked the raws: 

What this bit says is actually “You’re the expert on ‘色恋’ (erokoi), aren’t you?”. While 色恋 can be used to refer to love affairs, it’s typically used on sexual affairs without romantic connotations. Takemikazuchi then says, “And I want you to tell Yukine just to what extent you made all those women cry.” (Mandarin translations also says the same thing). Essentially, there is a really huge difference between “I’m sure you made women cry” and “You definitely made all those women cry.” because the next bit is the part where it sets a completely different tone on Kiun’s character: 

Now taking the previous English translations, you would be inclined to think that Kiun probably made all the women cry because he rejected them. However, Yato’s dialogue about shinkis fooling around and Hiyori’s flustered reaction would make no sense, because Take should be suggesting otherwise. If Kiun was so uptight and aloof and does not play around, why would Yato say something like this in response? Below are raws and translation:

It actually goes something like: “The list of women Kiun has abandoned just goes on and on and on. I’ve gotten quite sick of having to sit and listen to them complain and complain until they were satisfied so that their emotions wouldn’t affect me.” Again, the mandarin translations also leans towards this sense of certainty too. 

This would imply the complete opposite of what the english version was suggesting, as it is possibly and most likely canon that Kiun does in fact sleep around, and Takemikazuchi is just confirming the fact and elaborating it, leading to Yato’s and Hiyori’s reactions that makes more sense now. 

BUT, the next part where Kiun talks to Yukine also kind of confused me, but I think it does give clarity to my previous suggestion that he probably isn’t as uptight as we thought he was: 

The translations are correct here. I think the reason he was saying “I don’t exist for my own enjoyment anymore” was probably because he viewed romance and courting to be something self indulgent, while sleeping around without romantic/emotional attachment is probably just … stress relieving? a biological need? Or whatever else he considers it as… it’s definitely not something he believes to be ‘enjoyment’. (Truly an ancient mindset). 

Also, note that Kiun uses the word 恋人 (koibito), which translates specifically to lovers, a word you use with romantic connotations. He’s telling the truth here, he doesn’t have lovers. And the next bit, he says:

When Yukine says “Aren’t you super old? I’m only 1 year old as a Shinki”, He switches to 色恋 (erokoi, aka sexual affairs) once again when explaining that ‘love affairs are all the same’ to Yukine about his encounter with Nora back in chapter 74. As we know, Yukine is flustered and confused by what Nora did to him, not exactly because he has a ‘crush’ like Yato has said. This is why Take told Kiun to give him the talk, and pretty much confirms that Kiun differentiates between romantic affairs and sexual affairs and does probably, ‘fool’ around’ when he’s not busy dozing off or running errands.

Again, his next line “People are ruined by love more than I imagined” or simply “People truly can’t control themselves when they fall in love” would make more sense in this case. He probably thinks that being in a romantic relationship would hinder his ability to work, and probably in turn affect Takemikazuchi too (and little does he know the consequences of his actions that is women crying and affecting Take anyway lol). 

Anyway, that’s about all I wanted to say, I can’t believe I really made such a long post to prove that Kiun sleeps around LMAO. I thought it was pretty interesting and saw that no one made a post about it, so here. 

Ps. I definitely do think that this isn’t out of character for him considering the things he has said in the omakes, despite them being played off as jokes: 

However, while capturing the personhood of queer people; Danmei also captures the queerness of people because none of these stories would work if the characters weren’t gay/queer

Wei Wuxian’s absolute buffoonery of misunderstanding Lan Zhan’s feelings in a decade long telephone game in which neither of them open their damn mouth would never work in a non-queer story because between a man and a woman romance would be the natural assumption of everyone around them and therefore wouldn’t leave space for confusion. The misunderstanding of their romance is so closely tied to the plot succession that the plot would be… non existent without it

In TGCF Xie Lian and Hua Cheng’s absolute aspirational love is literally in the backseat and front seat of the story. Not too different from a classic hero’s journey but instead of the hero being one person, it’s two people. They are so intertwined with eo that they become one character and witness a lot of the story together. Witness being a very interesting word choice. Their queerness doesn’t drive the story but replacing one of them with a woman would dampen the effect— it’d remove the uncertainty, the confusion from everyone around them, the genuine slow burn of the romance. There’s also this idea of Hua Cheng falling in love with Xie Lian so far separated from concepts such as gender or whatever which wouldn’t have been hammered home in a straight romance where those conversations aren’t always had between the audience and the story

And Erha.. well obviously. Half of Chu Wanning’s “this is so inappropriate” spiral wouldn’t exist if he was a woman. And, the idea of Mo Ran being a “cut sleeve” builds up the under current of his character being so far dismissed by society because he’s seen as immoral. Which just wouldn’t serve to the same effect if he was into exclusively women because so was every other character.