So...we begin the next 5-volume arc with child abuse and violent bullying. Awesome. And both towards girls, of course. There is arguably more normalized misogyny in this arc than all the past volumes put together, and the central plot-line makes me rage. You have been warned.
By the way, the part where a girl is confined inside Hitaki Hall to tend a fire for 59 days is apparently real, except that she gets to go to school now, at least.
I assume that the "boy" and "girl" in the prologue are Tetsuya and his twin sister Hokage. If we're going by that assumption, two points written here will be contradicted later:
1. Tetsuya/Hokage's age on the night of the festival is given as 12, which means (going by another chronological marker given in Volume 18) Tetsuya is now 21+.
2. There is a mention of Tetsuya/Hokage's parents. The kanji is very specifically "parents", not "parent" or "guardian(s)." This seems unlikely, given a detail mentioned later about the twins' mother basically mirroring actions taken by Takaya/Miya's mother.
At one point I wanted to say that Old Castle High School is an interesting meditation on fascism, but unfortunately that all goes out the window with the revelation that everyone's just brainwashed into compliance. (In which case, why is there a need for the patrolling and informing on each other at all? Shouldn't Mikurya want to entice as many people to the school as possible to add to the student population for her nefarious plot? Party school FTW, onshou-style!)
I guess I'll just enjoy the Chiaki/Takaya and Naoe/Takaya interactions (and not think about Kaizaki too much). "So not only do you skip class to go snog your lover but you force another student to skip class to spy on you snogging your lover--that's taking delinquency to a whole other level!" (paraphrasing) is gold. XD Why can't we have more of this?
I wonder if Naoe's ever like, "How come Kagetora lets himself be seduced by the first man who shows interest in him who's NOT me?!"
Oh, definitely, I love the incredible historical detail Kuwabara-sense put in, I've actually learned a lot about history from the series . . . but she defintely lets logic slide in the plots! She said in an interview once that she loves writing battle scenes, so I always assumed she went with Rule of Cool to get to them. ^_^
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Can't I even dream? Would you shut my heart in my chest? -Kagetora, Yonakidori Blues
Hah, I suspected that was why there were so many battle scenes, thanks for confirming! <3
I gotta admit I don't love translating them, though. It's all X attacked Y, Z was blown away, explosion explosion explosion. I swear I've exhausted my thesaurus.
The historical bits are way cooler for me. There are some really interesting bits in this arc--part of the fun for me is figuring out what's real and not.
I agree, actually, the history is most interesting to me too (romance notwithstanding, of course!) I've learned a lot from this series.
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Can't I even dream? Would you shut my heart in my chest? -Kagetora, Yonakidori Blues
Sensei mentioned last volume that we're "crossing the sea" in this volume, and some readers wondered if this story was going to take place outside of Japan. But no, different sea. This is the Mirage's first landing in Kyuushuu (except for Naoe's trip to Nagasaki in Exaudi Nos).
Sensei mentions various champion horses in horse racing--apparently she's a fan--including Tokai Teio (1991 Japanese Horse of the Year), who "debuted around the same time" as her and recently retired. She went to Teio's retirement ceremony at Tokyo Racecourse.
Sensei traveled to Kumamoto for this arc. She's not good at flying so she travels by train--she calls herself a train fanatic/enthusiast and says the private green room on the limited express "Tsubame" is very nice.
She feels like school uniforms make a good basis for psychic stories, but Takaya is already nineteen, and she wasn't sure if it was a good idea to send him back to school.
This arc is a mix of Buddhism, Shintoism, and Christianity--a religious war? Kyuushuu is historically inseparable from Christianity. Kiyomasa, who is pretty familiar to the locals of Kumamoto, was an ardent follower of Nichiren, while Ootomo Sourin, a Christian daimyo, wasn't so well known in Ooita. She feels like Ootomo's vassals had a lot of individuality and are worth writing about, but when she thinks of vassals with rich personalities, she thinks of Date. She wonders what the Date are doing now [hint hint]. She mentions the horse sashimi (basashi) of Kumamoto was very delicious.
She took a course called "Music" about the origins of Western music in university which didn't require written work or attendance. They had to listen to Gregorian chants for 90 minutes. She bought a CD of Gregorian music as reference for this arc.
She mentions seeing an adorable baby wild boar in a cage at the entrance to Kyuusen Cave, a short trip from Kumamoto, because it's the Year of the Boar.
I was reading my way through and found that Volumne 15 is missing.
AkeruJoyden
If you need your volume 15 fix now, you can access Quaint_Twilight's translation here: https://quaint-twilight.livejournal.com/50336.html
The comprehensive list of translation links on Mirage_Trans is here:
https://mirage-trans.dreamwidth.org/profile
I know some of those are also dead; I haven't been great about curating them, but most still work.
Thanks for letting me know. The link is fixed now.
Found it. I tried putting in the URL by hand:
https://www.asphodelshaven.com/translation/novel/mirage-blaze-volume-15-kingdom-fire-wheel-1
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Can't I even dream? Would you shut my heart in my chest? -Kagetora, Yonakidori Blues
I tried guessing the correct name and typing it in... obviously failed at that... Thanks for finding it. gotta go read now...
AkeruJoyden