Written by: Pomelote
And These Freezing Hands, judging from Nogiku's reaction.
And now for something marginally different.
Told you it was a terrible, terrible idea, Nogiku!
Thoughts:
This chapter manages to be both satisfying and frustrating, like that scab you keep picking at so it won't heal. Seriously, give the poor thing a break.
On the satisfying side, there's a lot being brought out into the open, and it's about time someone took Nogiku to task for trying to hurt Kasane for things she had nothing to do with. On the frustrating side, they're mostly just venting, not making any real attempts to engage each other. For example, Nogiku makes no attempt to mention that Nina was conscious and suffering when she killed her, or correct Kasane's impression that Nogiku was duping her from the very start, and Kasane seems more interested in being as spiteful as possible than talking about how hurt she is. Then again, Kasane's basically just found all of this information out in the last twenty-four hours, and Nogiku probably hasn't even been awake fifteen minutes, so it's understandable that tempers are running high for now. What. A plot-tease.
The next chapter looks set to be an Izana flashback, but I'm not sure if it'll bring anything new to light or if it'll just be a barebones recap of Izana. (Oh, and in a related note, when I finish Izana, I was thinking of putting up a translation at some point, if anyone's interested in it.)
Translation/continuity note:
Just a minor one! Nogiku calls Kasane a monster （化け物・ばけもの・bakemono), which has previously just been used to describe Kasane's face, but Nogiku uses it here in reference to her callousness and indifference. ... well, I thought it was interesting.
Pomelote
Pomelote is the physical embodiment of first-world millenial entitlement. You can contact her on Skype with the name suukebind or Twitter at @poorlicoricekid, if you know any good spam bots. Editor's note: This article is not intended to be an endorsement of suicide, but it is an endorsement of imprisoning people in basements.
I'd be interested in a translation of Izana.
ReplyDeleteMaybe now Habuta will reveal the fate of Izana. I wonder though, why couldn't Izana have used a new face after Nogiku's mother died? She just faded out of the spotlight once the real Fuchi Sukeyo died.
Judging from Kasane's comment and the last few panels, could Habuta have a torch for Kasane, even if it's because her acting ability and stolen face resembles Izana's?
If Iku makes a reappearance, maybe she could be in a play alongside Saki, but playing as a minor character (since she's not as talented as Kasane). It'd be great if she could become Saki's new support or friend since it seemed that Iku was genuinely a good person.
Now that Nogiku is out of the way, I can only guess that a new antagonist will be introduced in the story. I doubt that Kasane will be given a worry free life from now on. For example, how many more uses does Kasane's lipstick have and can she or Habuta create more lipstick for Kasane to use?
Thanks for translating this chapter!
Hi again! Sorry for the late reply!
DeleteIt does seem pretty strange that Izana gave up when Sukeyo died, given how ruthless she'd need to be to imprison her in the first place. Maybe she couldn't go through with doing it again to another person, especially after she had the guilt-based breakdown during MacBeth. I really hope that Habuta gives up some juicy details!
Oh, Habuta definitely has a thing for Kasane/Izana/Nogiku/Sukeyo. He's always having flashbacks to Izana (with someone else's face) burning down a building when he looks at Kasane, and once when he looked at Nogiku. But I think he'll keep it unrequited. His behaviour and the sound effect at the end of this chapter look really suggestive, but he's had no sense of personal boundaries towards Kasane from the very beginning, so I think this is just his usual creepy asshattery. Him adding "-chan" to Nogiku's name in the last chapter came across as very worrying, though (but I could be reading too much into it).
I really think it'd be neat to see Iku again; like you said, she genuinely was a good person, and I'd like to see if she was changed by her brush with the lipstick, knowing that something happened, but not quite knowing what, wondering what happened to Kasane...
I'm not entirely sure that there will be a new antagonist, personally. Nogiku's story is far from over, and at this point almost half of the series has been told from her perspective (and the parallels between her and Kasane are so strong), so I doubt that she'll just be reduced a living prop in the space of two chapters.
At the moment I'm wondering if Kasane's relationship with Nobuhiko will take centre-stage, because there's a lot that could be done there if he finds out her secret. Another idea I've been having is that maybe Mineyo, Kasane's "aunt" and the real Sukeyo's sister, could find something out and get in Kasane's way. Neither of them have really been developed much as characters (Nobuhiko is a Serious-with-a-capital-s actor and Mineyo is pure evil incarnate; that's about all we know about them), but they could set up some interesting conflict while Nogiku's plot is on the backburner.
I really do wonder about the limits of that lipstick sometimes. It's one of those things that have never been brought up but seem like an obvious issue (like why Kasane's nose can never be clearly seen, even though it should Be. Right. There.). At this point I'm starting to think that maybe we'll just have to assume that it's magic, damn it, it doesn't have limits, stop asking perfectly reasonable questions!
Thanks for reading!
It's possible that Mineyo will find out about Saki through media and notice how alike she is to 'Sukeyo'(acting and appearance wise). She might even do her own investigation as Saki would seem more likely to be the daughter of Sukeyo than Kasane. (It doesn't seem like Mineyo knows about Kasane's acting ability).
ReplyDeleteI don't think Mineyo would enjoy finding out that Saki is Sukeyo's daughter. She could come to the conclusion that Sukeyo had another child (love child) and the possibility of having to share Sukeyo's estate with Saki in addition to Kasane.
If Nobuhiko started a relationship with Saki, it's possible that along the way, he finds out about Kasane's secret because of Saki's similarities with Nina or a slip of the tongue by Saki. He could purposely mention something that only Nina and himself should know about and try to catch Saki off guard and get her to accidentally reveal her identity as 'Nina'.
I think it would be ironic if Nobuhiko were to find out about Kasane's secret and become the new Atae to Kasane's role as the new Sukeyo. Nobuhiko would then know about Nogiku but not do anything to help her and would keep mum about it. This scenario might be out of character with his seriousness though. Also, like you mentioned, it doesn't seem like Nogiku will become a just a living stage prop.
Nice scenarios! I particularly like your suggestion for Mineyo; that's a good way to get her involved without letting her in on the secret (since she'd probably immediately go public with it, which would be too big of an obstacle, or be satisfied with just blackmailing Kasane, which would too little an obstacle). I hadn't thought of that.
ReplyDeleteIf Nobuhiko discovers the truth, it'll definitely be interesting to see if he becomes a contrast to Atae or follows in his footsteps. It'd certainly be a different kind of moral dilemma than the ones Kasane's struggled with before.
After thinking about for a bit, I wonder if Saki 'exists' now? Did Habuta help Kasane create or falsify the legal documents proving that there is indeed a person called Saki?
DeleteCould Izana have known that Sukeyo was going to die soon? The first chapter seemed to foreshadow her knowledge of Sukeyo's upcoming death. The way Izana had asked Kasane what she would do if she were suddenly all alone and telling her to take her lipstick may have been an indication of this. That, and it would probably be hard for the both of them to share a single tube of lipstick (since there only seems to be one in existence).
"Saki" almost definitely legally "exists", from what I can tell (no family name has been mentioned so far, though). Habuta's pretty resourceful/shady, so it's easy to imagine him knowing somebody who could create new identities. I don't know much about the minutia of identity-wrangling, though, so Saki could be either completely fabricated or based on a "real" Saki, like an infant that died after being born, but was never legally registered as dead for some reason. I learned that from movies! (๑′ᴗ‵๑)
DeleteYup, Izana and Sukeyo's comments in flashbacks seemed to indicate that they both knew Sukeyo's death was coming. On top of that, Sukeyo was originally kept chained up in a dingy cellar, but a few years before she died, she was moved to a normal bedroom in the mansion, with no chain. It isn't stated, but the implication was that she was sick/dying (of what, I don't know) and moving her to better conditions was an attempt to prolong her life. That does raise questions about why the best Izana could do was leave Kasane the lipstick and then just disappear, if there was so much time to prepare. My guess is that ghost-Izana has something to do with it, whatever that might be.
Hi! I love your translations and the added humour you put in. You mentioned of anyone's interested in the book "izana" been translated and...yeah, I'm interested.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading! You'll be seeing the first half of Izana preeeeeeetty soon. (⊙ᗜ⊙)
DeleteBeen stalking you since you started on posting about Kasane. Do please keep up the good work! This series is just immensely entertaining to me. So many mysteries still unrevealed, so I'll be really looking forward to Izana! (And of course your commentaries on it, that adds more fun to me) :"D
ReplyDelete