I posted this over in the Higurashi forum but I thought I'd share it here as well.
I'm currently reading the Higurashi VN decided to flip through the RAWs of the manga while I was at it. As I’m reading along, I noticed a certain familiar face…I thought it might be a coincidence at first until I realized it wasn’t just his appearance, but his name as well. The artist of the manga decided to make a certain bodyguard appear as Hibari 13, one of the Yamainu who fights the club members in Matsuribayashi-hen - Amakusa (because Hibari 13, and Juuza = 十三 = 13).
Considering Amakusa’s past military history included working for the Self-Defense Force and he’s loyal to Okonogi (who is almost definitely the same Okonogi from Higurashi), I thought this was absolutely brilliant of the manga artist and adds some nice - and very plausible - backstory to the character. I couldn’t resist my desire to translate these pages, since the Matsuribayashi-hen scanlation project will probably never be finished, AND the official English releases aren’t even this far yet. This is from Vol. 7 of the Higurashi Matsuribayashi-hen manga, during the battle between the club members and the Yamainu on the mountain.
Since I can’t read kanji, the way I’m doing this is to read the furigana and romanize how the sentence is read. Then, I punch those words into
Tangorin and find the ones that match the kanji in the panels. Then it’s a combination of Google Translate, my memory of the way the scene played out in the VN, and common sense of the English language to put it all together. So, forgive me if the translation isn’t perfect - I just thought this was an interesting scene that both Higurashi and Umineko fans would appreciate, and wanted to share.
My translation notes can be found
here. Let me know if I got anything wrong and I’ll be happy to fix it.
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