It had escaped me that Asphodel has completed her translation of volume 8 as of this past July: http://www.asphodelshaven.com/translations/mirage (scroll down).
Yay for her continued work all these years!
Mon, Aug. 14, 2017 - 8:34am
#1
Volume 8 Completed
My congratulations to Asphodel on finishing a 3 volume arc. Ah, this wonderful sence of accomplishment... Too bad it does not last for too long :)
P.S. I know a lot of people who would be really excited about vol. 9 :)
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That wonderful sense of accomplishment has already been replaced by translator's block for Volume 9's prologue, LOL. No matter what I do it still sounds awkward, gaaaah!
Yes, that (not so wonderful) sense, too :) My biggest nemesis are action scenes. I’m now in the last chapters of Showa vol. 01, Nobunaga vs the dragon, and it’s just… gaaaah! :)
You could post it, if that’s something you want to do. Other people with Japanese-English (or just English) skills can chip in. Might help.
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I finally finished reading Asphodel's wonderful translation of volume 8, and it was very enjoyable. It's weird to jump back into that part of the story after having my attention variously on Rina's translations from the end of the saga, Quaint-Twilight's vol. 17, and the Showa prequels. This feels weirdly--and perfectly--in the middle.
Here we have Takaya starting to awaken to being "Kagetora" for the first time. Though he still doesn't have most of Kagetora's memories, he is behaving with a very Kagetora-like authority, and it's interesting to read this through the lens of the stage plays. His general demeanor is very like Kase, right down to being alternately business like and punishing with Naoe. If I am remembering correctly, this is the first time he meets up with Naoe since Naoe assaulted him in the hotel, so it makes sense he's really angry that (and everything it says about their relationship), but it's also a regression to a much older pattern.
Yet it's also interesting to see how much Takaya is Not!Kase, and how much he is still attached to the idea of Takaya as a person wholly separate from Kagetora, which makes perfect sense at this stage: he has all the continuity of Takaya's life and only fragments of his life before, and Takaya has had a totally different kind of life experience.
Also interesting--both as a stage in the Naoetora ship and as an artifact of c. 1990 society--is the degree to which Takaya is hung up the "unnaturalness" of Naoe's being attracted to a man. It's very much in the same zone of "OMG, we're gay!" as Please Save My Earth (c. 1993). It's a good example of how Takaya's life differs from Kagetora's previous life. Kagetora has many reasons to be uncomfortable with Naoe's feelings for him, but shock that men can be attracted to men is not one of them.