Printable View
I was following this before, but somehow my liking drifted away. But I still find the main characters melancholy relationship in everything (i.e. the three sisters, to shogi, to the place where he lives, etc.) interesting. I might get back reading this.
When I saw it, it seems like a typical manga that will win an award! :XD But the manga is really great despite that, the art is very special, the story can be better, but it really overall has a nice appeal.
The shogi aspect is my least favorite part of this series. Rei's interactions and relationship with the Kawamoto sisters is brilliant though. The last few chapters with heavy shogi focus have been boring. This series should take a lesson from REAL for it's sport to character focus ratio. Or a lesson from Hikaru no Go or Chihayafuru in making a seemingly boring(to watch) game exciting for the reader.
Well I guess the average Japanese knows more about shogi than us. It didn't bother me to much as far as I remember. As for the art it is really cute, a bit like Saturn Mansion mangaka. When they are in the sisters house, it makes you feel the warmness of the house. And the cats are so adorable....
I like translating this series, but a lot of lines are really low-context. So it becomes really hard to finish things. It requires a lot of looking up and checking before you can get through a chapter.
I know a good amount about Shogi and that's one of my favorite parts of the series, how they're able to include complicated strategic ideas but use them so concisely so the player can understand them. I play chess and go and shogi a fair amount, when I have people to play with. So it's nice to be able to relate on that level. You can learn a lot about people by playing deep strategy games like that with them. And I know a decent amount about what high-level play is like and what the kind of subversive thinking you need to use to play them is. At the point where people won't be making stupid mistakes, it becomes this artful and personal battle of two different strategies that involve finding the way to combat your opponent while maintaining the right defense to not be beaten and also the right offense so you can reach your opponent. Pressure, traps, risks, dynamic VS static, etc. And obviously, I need to follow it and understand it in order to translate it so it makes sense in English. It's also very important in understanding the characters, which you need to do in order to do proper characterization.
I'd really prefer to use the Japanese-style notaition though. The international version is stupid because Shogi is not Chess. It's it's own game with its own pieces, rules, strategy, and associated culture. Stuff like "Kakugyou" does not "translate" to "Bishop". They're different games that just have a few similarities. Not to mention we've had to put in notes to say "The Japanese version of notation doesn't indicate this thing that's required in the international form of notation so we're just ignoring it". Like the international form of notaiton requires you indicate drops, captures, and moves specifically, where the Japanese does not. Stupid exceptions like that in a vague attempt to make it easier to understand. I'm going to try to persuade the BWYS to just let me write it like I do 81diver. Just "2-2 Hi" rather than "2b-R" and such.
Though mostly this project goes slowly because the scanlators don't have much free time and they're real perfectionists about this sorta thing. There's a lot of waiting long periods of time for someone to get to a job. Once I finish a couple other long-term projects I'm doing I'm gonna try to go through this at a decent rate.