As Sensei says, this is the start of Part 2. Hamada Shouko replaces Toujou Kazumi as illustrator, and that means: new chapter inserts! (For at least the next two volumes...) Please log in if you want to view them.
Wed, Nov. 2, 2022 - 11:35am
#1
Volume 13 discussion + afterword
What the Wikipedia entry on Enoshima (E Island) calls "Iwaya Caves" appears in my translation simply as "grotto". "Iwaya" (岩屋) means "cave" or "grotto", so "Iwaya Caves" = "Cave Caves", which annoys my pedantic brain.
This conundrum appears a lot--for example, Yuigahama, which I translated as Yui Beach (hama = beach), appears as Yuigahama Beach in many places, e.g. Google Maps. I feel like I'm going against popular convention, but I've decided that readability is more important than convention. Plonking "Yuigahama" down on a page is going to confuse most people; going with "Yuigahama Beach" makes me wince, as I mentioned before; while "Yui Beach" as least gives people a point of reference.
If you're compiling a list of touristy location names for your Mirage tour, you'd be willing to do a little extra research, right? :)
Thank you again for the translations and also for the extra info about your translation process! And happy new year!!
I appreciate your hard work in translations of Mirage, I am very happy to read it. Your translations are very good and I really want to interact more with the topic that will be addressed in the following volumes.
Chihiro
I'm glad you're enjoying the translations, and thank you for your comments!
This is the start of Part 2, and it was released four months after the end of Part 1. Kuwabara-sensei mentioned that readers were quite shocked by the last volume, and there was a lot of scary reaction. She was afraid that many of these people weren't going to read volume 13.
Around a year and ten months have passed in-story, and Takaya is now 19. Kuwabara-sensei says she feels like a mother thinking, "My son has grown into an adult." She's also recently noticed that Takaya has shed a lot of vexed tears, but only when it comes to Naoe.
She's planned the introduction of new recurring characters Sakaki and Nikaidou for a long time and is very curious how these genuinely modern people will be affected when they poke their noses into the Yami-Sengoku.
Kuwabara-sensei apologizes to everyone who anticipated Irobe's entry as a three-year-old baby. Apparently there was already a fan club devoted to him based on that assumption, and they sent age-appropriate book and toys on Valentines Day...
Satomi descendant Kaizaki is difficult to comment on, but he's a character to keep your eyes on.
She often visited the area around E Island in middle school. Speaking of middle school, she remembers a television series she loved called The Hangman (ザ•ハン グマン), which she recently realized has influenced Mirage a great deal. It's about vigilantes hunting down and killing evil people who evade justice. Chiaki's personality has incorporated some aspects of a character with the codename of Kurei (Clay?).
It seems like there's a thing where fans send her(?) the publisher(?) gifts for various characters on Valentines Day. She published a tally of the results. As usual, Naoe got the most with 120 (though he's dead). She had thought that might change things. They were mostly dog-themed chocolates, though this year she also got black pants.
Second place: Takaya with 57 votes. She questions the disparity, especially since he's the protagonist. Still, there's been an increase. Fight, Takaya!
Third: Chiaki with 17.
Kousaka experienced a tragic fall from last year: 20 to 4. She feels like all the side characters got a decrease, though a random middle school friend of Takaya's got a vote.
She thanks illustrator Hamada Souko for taking over, expresses her love and gratitude for her work, etc.