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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Christmas Wish List
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Okay, so it's about a week late, but I wanted to say it anyway. Thanksgiving is a very important holiday, after all. In light of that, we were thinking of doing a little featurette on manga we're thankful for, but then we realized that that would end up being a list of comments on everything in our resume and then some, and that would get pretty long. So for now, suffice it to say, that we're very thankful to have been able to work on all the titles we've been able to work on, and for a bunch of other titles we haven't been able to work on (yet?).
So our next idea was to write up a wishlist of titles we'd like to work on in the future. Actually, Park had suggested we do something like this before, and we thought it was a really good idea, but when we started thinking of what we'd put on that list, it ended up being very short. We had been very busy, so we hadn't had any time to read any manga that wasn't work-related. And if it's work-related, that means it's already licensed, because we're working on it. Of course, there are some titles that have been licensed that we wish we were working on. Some of those will probably show up on this list too.
In no particular order, here are some titles that we would really like to translate:
Himegimi no Tsukurikata: How to Make a Princess, by Asuka Izumi, published by Hakusensha. This is the title that reminded us of the wishlist idea. From the title, you can probably figure out that it's about a girl who suddenly finds out she's a princess, and has to undergo training in order to be more princesslike. It's kind of cliche, yes, but it's a kind of cliche we like. There's also a strong focus on families, which is something we have a weakness for. And, from a translator's point of view, it would be an awesome challenge to work on, because there are two butlers who use honorific language like crazy when talking to the princess, but use regular plain language when they're talking to each other. So it would be neat to try to express that in English.
Speaking of family--The Akiyoshi Family Series, by Banri Hidaka, published by Hakusensha. We really love translating I Hate You More Than Anyone (vol.1-6, on sale now! from CMX!), and we've become huuuuuge Banri Hidaka fans. We're reading Tears of a Lamb and VB Rose, too, and those go on our list of “things that are licensed but we want to translate anyway.” (Incidentally, Manga Life's own Barb Lien Cooper is doing the English adaptation on VB Rose these days.) Anyway, the other installments of the Akiyoshi Family Series are about the siblings of the main character of I Hate You, and they're at least as good. We especially love Chizuru's story.
Hoshi wa Utau: Twinkle Stars Like Singing A Song, by Natsuki Takaya, published by Hakusensha. I'm noticing a lot of Hakusensha titles. We've been kind of obsessed with Hana to Yume Comics lately. Anyway, this is the current series by the creator of Fruits Basket. When I first started reading it, I had heard a few Fruits Basket fans say it was alright, but it just didn't grab them as much as Fruits Basket did, so I was determined to like it more than them and thus be a better Takaya-sensei fan. Because I'm a brat. It wasn't hard, though, because Chihiro is exactly the kind of mysterious character that tends to get me hooked. Plus this series just has an aura about it that makes me happy just to be reading it.
Hare + Guu, by Renjuro Kindaichi, published by Square-Enix. Actually this one is kind of scary. We saw the anime and we loved it to itty bitty bits, but we haven't read the manga, and we're a little afraid because manga can be even crazier than animated versions sometimes. It would get complicated trying to explain what it's about, so instead we'll just recommend watching the anime, because it is in fact made of awesome.
The Violinist of Hameln, by Michiaki Watanabe, published by Enix (now Square-Enix). A series about a hero who saves towns from destruction by monsters with his double-bass-sized magical violin, then charges them exorbitant prices for his service. Actually, there's some crude humor in this one, which we're not big fans of, so we're not sure we want to be the ones to translate it, but at the same time, we'd have a hard time giving it up (it's not all crude humor, after all). I don't remember the details, but I remember at one point deciding that listening to all the classical music he bases the manga on must have made Watanabe-sensei some kind of genius, because there's some kind of really intricate story in there that really takes you by surprise when it shows up through all the insanity.
Kero Kero Chime, by Maguro Fujita, published by Shueisha. This is another one we saw the anime of but haven't read the manga of. It's about a boy who runs into a random wizard who casts a spell on him so he turns into a frog whenever he gets wet, then the wizard throws him through a portal where he meets the princess of the land, who's supposed to help him find the cure to his magical ailment. If the manga is anything like the anime, I'd say it's got a humor that's kind of like a mix of Gakuen Alice and The Emperor's New Groove...? Anyway, it's cute and funny and we like it a lot. And even if the manga doesn't have all the gags of the anime, we have read some other manga by Fujita-sensei, and we liked it a lot.
Well, those are the ones we came up with off the top of our heads. Of course, we have a habit of wanting to translate everything. ...Okay, not everything. We don't like to work with titles that are too “adult,” for example. It's kind of funny, because whenever we go to a manga publisher's panel at a convention, unless they're talking about something we translate, our reaction is usually, “Why can't we translate that? Whine whine whine!”
But in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we really are thankful to be able to translate everything we do, and if we did actually translate every single series we wanted to, we wouldn't have time for anything else. So we just take everything in stride, and enjoy what we have, while looking forward to future possibilities. ...Was that too cheesy? Oh well. Now you can go get yourselves some crackers.
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