6th and final instalment of the Pokemon Conquest manga!

GUYS, GUYS, GO AND READ THIS. I take back what I’ve said about the previous ones, this one is my favourite. It is wonderful; EVERYONE appears in it, there’s so much going on in each panel, plenty of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details, the expressions are amazing (Ieyasu’s on 80, especially) and it’s just so much fun. My heart grew three sizes reading it and if I have a pet I would be hugging it now.

And you don’t even need to know Japanese to understand what’s going on because most of the panels are textless (other than sound effects). I’ve put my translation of whatever lines there are below the cut, and there are about ten lines in total.

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Anonymous asked: Hey, it's been a while, but how was The Samurai's Tale? Oh and thanks for the list of Japanese historic fiction again! :D

Hey there :D About The Samurai’s Tale, I like it lot! There are quite a lot of details about the setting and political situation that made it interesting to read. In fact, I guess my main quibble with it was that I wanted to read more about the conflict between Shingen and his son, and Akiyama’s take on it, rather than about Taro haha. Somehow, I feel that the need to be realistic and historically accurate prevented the story from going deeper into that conflict since the protagonist is an original character. But I guess that was not the author’s aim anyway.

Hope you found some good reads from that list!

5th instalment of the Pokenobu manga.

Full manga here.

My translation here.

PokeNobu / Pokemon Conquest manga translation

…I’ve been trying to write something in the description box for ages. What are words.

So, Pokemon Conquest manga! I wasn’t too impressed with the first installment, but the later ones are SO GOOD and gosh, I really wish SW has a whole series of manga like this one. There are some unexpected character interactions (Kenshin and Motonari, Kunoichi and Mitsuhide) and it looks like everyone is going to appear at least once, even if it’s just a cameo appearance.

Anywayyyy, not sure if there are translations of the manga up anywhere, so I’ll just drop a link here.

(The link above goes to my public folder on gdocs.)

(Each translation has a link to the manga hosted on nicovideo, but you will need to login to the site to read.)

(Translations done for #1-#4. #5 will be out on 11th May and will feature the three kiddies, I CAN’T WAIT :D)

Official manga! This first installment is totally not about these three but ahhhhhhhhh so cute View high resolution

Official manga!

This first installment is totally not about these three but ahhhhhhhhh so cute

Anonymous asked: Oops typed the title wrong. Yep, it's called "The Samurai's Tale," by Erik C. Haugaard. It's a pretty old book and use to be a middle school requirement to read (judging by the reviews). I just checked it out to read cuz there aren't that many fiction or nonfiction books I can get about the Sengoku Period. Not a bad read, takes place around Shingen's rise and fall of power. Pretty historical if that's your thing :) I recommend it cuz you can never get enough about Sengoku history.

(Sorry for being a flake and replying so late ahahaha…)

Thanks for the rec! I just finished a sengoku novel so I was in the mood for more and my copy just arrived today. By the way, I found this list when I was looking up something, perhaps you might find it useful if you haven’t seen it before.

Anonymous asked: Thanks for translating it! I remembered something about that when I read The Tale of a Samurai. So sad, but at least it makes sense now. Thanks again :D

Do you mean this book? It looks interesting :o

And no prob! I like Shingen’s story a lot, even though it’s so sad.

Nobutora: ‘Think of the people’?
Nobutora: This weakling of a son, spouting hypocritical nonsense again.
Nobutora: Eat this, son.
Shingen: Yes, father.
Nobutora: Weakling!
Nobutora: In these warring times, if the Takeda clan would end up ruined if we were to be left in the hands of a weakling!
Nobutora: The child betrays the parent, the parent kills the child; such is the way of the warring times.
Nobutora: We Takeda have no use for weaklings!
Kunoichi: Young master!
Shingen: Don’t worry. I knew I was going to get kicked, so I was ready for it.
Shingen: It’s alright.
Shingen: Father is the head of the Takeda clan. He has much to worry about.
Shingen: If Father can feel better this way…
Kunoichi: But-
Shingen: Is this… the way of the warring times…

—-

Second cutscene is the Kawanakajima cutscene from SW3, there’s an english version here.

—-

Shingen: With this, the Way of the King is realised.
Shingen: Father.
Nobutora: Son…
Shingen: I put on a show and you’re moved by it. Weakling!
Nobutora: Just look! That naive Way of the King of yours, this is the end of it…
Nobutora: That’s why I can’t leave the Takeda clan to you…
Nobutora: That’s why…. That’s why…
Shingen: Father, the Way of the King has been realised.
Nobutora: What?
Shingen: The child betrays the parent, the parent kills the child; that world has come to an end!
Shingen: The pain of killing your child for the sake of the clan
Shingen: More than anyone else, I understand it.
Shingen: It must have been painful, Father…
Nobutora: Son…
Shingen: However, you don’t have to feel that way anymore…
Nobutora: Sooooooon!!!

—-
I think the last cutscene would make more sense with some context, so some of my own impressions of this story path.
*王道 and 覇道 (lit. Way of the King and Way of the Hegemon) has its roots in Confucianism. I… know far too little about this to talk about it so have a link (if necessary, search for ‘true kings and hegemons’). ‘To realise the Way of the King’ seems to be a theme in Shingen’s story both in SW3 and SW3:E (and possibly in SW2 too) and is particularly poignant here given the storyline with his father.
Shingen’s own son, Yoshinobu, also rebelled against Shingen and Shingen ordered him to commit suicide. It is possible that he regretted this later on, and he does know that it is his desire to realise the Way of the King that pushed his son to his death. Thus, the ‘more than anyone else, I understand (the pain of killing your own child)’ line. ‘The child betrays the parent, the parent kills the child’ - it is possibly Shingen’s hope that Nobutora killing Shingen would bring this cycle to an end and the Way of the King he was striving for would truly be realised.

Anonymous asked: Hi, thanks for doing all these translations! Do you think you can do Takeda Shingen's cutscenes for SW 3 Empires? Thanks ahead of time!

Sure, no problem! I’ll have them up this week.

(From the Shimazu path in Samurai Warriors 3: Empires. If I’m not mistaken, this cutscene is from the first stage, Kizakibaru.)

Yoshihiro: The enemy force is ten times the size of ours… Satisfaction comes first.

Yoshihiro: Plan, strategy, when all preparations are in order-

Yoshihiro: -time the start of the battle with the cats’ eyes, and move out simultaneously.

Yoshihiro: Now!

Yoshihisa: The head of the clan, Yoshihisa, is here!

Toshihisa: The third son, Toshihisa, is moving out!

Iehisa: The youngest son, Iehisa. I may be inexperienced but I will take part too!

Yoshihiro: The second son, Yoshihiro. Shimazu Devils, let’s go!

*

So the story goes that Yoshihiro took seven cats with him to the battlefield during the 1598 Battle of Sacheon, also a battle where the Shimazu faced an enemy force much larger than their own, and determined the exact time of the day by looking at the cats’ pupils. Two of the seven cats survived and were brought home. Yoshihiro’s son, Hisayasu, liked the yellow-with-white-ripples one so much that he named it Yasu.

The cats were subsequently enshrined in the Cat God’s Shrine in Senganen. Two of the cats in this cutscene look a lot like the mascots…