Forum - View topicHouse of 1000 Manga - Chihayafuru
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Banken
Posts: 1280 |
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IIRC she's a 6th grader, which makes her an elementary schooler (in Japan) not a middle-schooler.
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unready
 Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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Yes, it was elementary school (East Ōsato Elementary School, in fact). It's a plot point that Taichi gets accepted to a different middle school (Kaimeisei) upon graduation from elementary school; and Arata moves back to Fukui upon graduation from elementary school.
More than that, Taichi is the leader of the abuse on Arata. He's on his way to becoming the snobby rich bully stereotype.
I found it interesting that the art for Nishida (Nikuman) evolves a bit. He kind of starts out as an amorphous blob and eventually becomes the character design folks see in the anime. One big difference (for the narrative) between the manga and the anime is that the manga starts farther forward in time than the anime, then flashes back to elementary school, then flashes forward to high school. The anime starts in high school, then flashes back to elementary school, then returns. So basically, if you see the anime, then read the very first page of the very first chapter of the manga, you know where the story is headed. In other words, knowing the later story helps you understand that very first page. For the benefit of those who have only seen the anime, spoiler[the manga starts with Chihaya in a televised karuta match, which can pretty much only be the queen match.] |
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mierin
Posts: 270 |
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It's too bad Kodansha only offers the first two volumes in bilingual release. I think there are quite a lot of Chihayafuru fans who bought this release since it's the only legal English option available. Even I resorted to importing the bilingual volumes.
Before I started watching the anime, the only image I had of karuta was Japanese people playing it during New Year. Never thought the competitive side of it could get so physically and mentally demanding. |
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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It was mentioned already, but Chihaya, Taichi, and Arata met in elementary school.
I absolutely love this series. I've read about 18 or so volumes... Fell behind because my office stopped getting the new volumes. ^^;; I think the new volume just came out this week or last week too. Want to read more!!! I would totally buy the manga myself if I had enough storage space in my room. The characters in this series are so well-developed. Each one has their own personality that defines them and sets them apart from others. What's great is that each of them gets some time in the spotlight and it's not all about the main three characters. Just an excellent series overall. |
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Banken
Posts: 1280 |
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To be even more pedantic, Japan doesn't have middle schools (although the word literally means middle school), they're actually junior highs (which are schools with the grade range being one year higher than typical middle schools), which is why high school (actually senior high school) is only three years in Japan. FWIW, the real world "Queen" has dominated the 'sport' for like the last 10 years, so there's no way she's going to be Queen unless Chihaya bumps off that lady...hehehehe. |
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taster of pork
 Posts: 594 Location: My House |
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I've been putting this series off for a while. But after reading this, I might finally get to it. Should I go with the anime or the manga?
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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For ease of access' sake, both seasons of the anime are on Crunchyroll. If you want to read the manga in English, you will have to use more illicit means. As mentioned in the article, the first 2 volumes are available in a bilingual edition, but nothing beyond that. |
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hpulley
 Posts: 408 |
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I love this series and have imported both the Blurays, all the manga which I really love and the middle school novels which are also great but sadly under-selling; I wish the novels were more widely accepted but I guess the art is much of the attraction.
I'm not sure how well the manga translates into English officially or unofficially as I've only read the Japanese. With all the karuta content I wonder what they do, translate the poems? Or leave them? That is probably part of the problem. Same for video, a dub would be pretty much impossible unless they leave the karuta readings Japanese. Translating them would be weird with all the first syllable game references. The article once correctly says it is josei manga, then says shojo, shojo, shojo... but it runs in BE LOVE which is josei. It looks shojo and has furigana on everything after the first few volumes so it really does feel shojo in many ways but it also focuses on the adults which is I guess why it runs in BE LOVE. It could probably run in DESSERT instead but it is the flagship of BE LOVE I think. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2455 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Genuine karuta question. Early on, Arata talks about using a "tape" to read out the poems when he practices solo. Wouldn't this call the same poems in the same order every time? Wouldn't that be predictable and not useful as a training technique? I sort of imagined that for solo play, there would be a CD of the poems and you could just put it on shuffle, but there's nothing I've seen in the series so far (through episode 9) to back this up.
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Maidenoftheredhand
 Posts: 2633 |
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Unofficially I can tell you they don't translate the poems, just write the sounds out in Romanji. Officially I have the two bilingual editions and I don't recall what they did, I will have to look at my volumes when I get home. They did translate all the poems in the back. I guess if this was ever translated officially in the US I would say keep the poems in Romanji for the sounds but maybe translate the poem used at the end of the chapter.
If this is ever licensed I wouldn't expect a dub in a million years so that isn't an issue. I'd be thrilled with sub only. Crunchyroll's subs are great. |
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hpulley
Posts: 408 |
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Of course these days we use CDs with the random play setting...
Do let me know what the official bilingual editions say... Sadly I think it is getting pretty late for this to get licensed but never give up hope I guess! At least the season two Bluray boxes were quite reasonably priced compared to many imports, with the amazon discount they were not much over $120/cour which is a real steal compared to the usual $350-400/cour. Still no subs but I prefer it without them. |
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Meygaera
 Posts: 324 Location: Maryland |
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The official bilingual releases translate it very similarly to the anime sub. They always use romaji when a person is reading the poems. They may use some english when a character is describing or explaining a poem. Any depiction of a card uses the original Japanese characters.
I'm importing Season 2 Blu-Ray for Christmas. I haven't got all of Season 1 yet but I went for Season 2 first because I figured that sales figure would be more persuasive for a Season 3, and also you could buy Season 2 in two full bundles at a cheaper total price, instead of a lot of individual volumes.
I think the Australian release is DVD only, so you would have to have an Australian (or Central/South American) dvd player since they are Region 4 for DVD. But I'm sure you could find some sketchy software to take care of that for you, and also, that you aren't a liability to the license holders since you would buy any NA release for the show if it were to happen, right? Anyways, my vote is for NISA to get this show, mostly because I would LOVE to see those beautiful art boxes they have with our beloved characters in their hakamas and cards flying all over the place! I tried putting a post in their suggestion forums a while back: http://nisamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12540 I was basically told "No matter how I look at it, It's you guy's fault Chihayafuru is not popular " Since there isn't enough hype from the fans ( us people, I guess). |
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hpulley
Posts: 408 |
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Any computer DVD player on Windows can be set to another region. Sometimes you can only set it a few times before you reinstall the OS so you won't want to flip back and forth but if you have a laptop you never use for watching movies it can be set to 4 for Oz or 2 for Japan to watch them. That's what I do, I have a Japanese Windows OS laptop where I play all my region 2 DVDs.
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Maidenoftheredhand
Posts: 2633 |
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It is but I changed my DVD Player settings to be region free. I have a lot of DVDs from other regions (mainly from the UK) and have no issues playing them.
NISA would be my top choice but I also think Noizomi would be a good choice as well. |
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unready
Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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Sometimes the scans use the horrible translations from virginia.edu or the even more horrible translations from sacred-texts. sacred-texts just uses a translation by William N. Porter, 1909. virginia.edu uses Clay MacCauley, 1917, translations, but cleans them up a bit. Of MacCauley's translation, they say:
When Porter and MacCauley did their translations, they didn't just translate. They completely re-wrote the poems to conform to the western poetic conventions of the time, which were still heavily influenced by Baroque and Romantic tradition long after, e.g., music had shaken it off. The original Japanese ideal was for the poem to be one or two simple and syntactically correct sentences. Compare, for example, poem 9.
The Crunchyroll translators didn't try to re-write the poems. They seem to have followed two simple rules, which make their translation superior (imo). 1. The English translation is one or two simple and syntactically correct sentences, just like the original Japanese. 2. The translation of the Japanese first verse is the English first verse; the translation of the Japanese second verse is the English second verse. ("/" inserted by me to denote the division between verses.) Crunchyroll was constrained by the fact that only the second verse is printed on the playing cards, although both verses are on the reading cards. I once spent some time looking to see if the Crunchyroll translators were using a more modern text, but I think they came up with their own for the anime. Seriously, they ought to translate them all and publish a book of them, but unfortunately its market would be even more niche than the anime's. EDIT: corrected embedded url Last edited by unready on Fri Dec 20, 2013 10:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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