Ring 16

Okay, I did it! I finished V2. Way before Jump came back. Ok so now I’ll take on the challenge of trying to get through to the end of V3 by the time Jump comes back, I guess. Why not, right? I do really like this series even if it is short. When it’s not super-wordy I really like it.

[Ring 16 Translation by Kewl0210]
Page 181:
Sum: The last one...... What do you say that if I score that "Rodem"... [First sentence big/bold.]
I win the whole thing?
Aka: This guy......
Okay, I get it...
Narration: This guy's like me-----
Title: Ring16: A Brief Defeat...

Page 182:
Title: Ring16: A Brief Defeat...
Aka: He's got an "allergy to losing", huh...?!!

Page 183:
Ken: Allergy to losing?
Toki: Yeah...
He hates losing so bad it's like an allergy to Summer.
Ken: What the hell?
Toki: Even when we lose in that scrimmage match a month ago,
he got hives all over his body and couldn't get a proper sleep for a week, apparently.
Guys: Hu~~~h? For real?
Yumi: ......Why's Summer still hate losing so bad...?
Ken: Well, "not liking to lose" is a kind of talent.
Izumi: I think he had quite some talent the moment he decided to challenge Aka.
Toki: .........
Ishi: Isn't he just a moron then?
Guys: Basiclly.
SFX: HAHAHAHAHA

Page 184:
Aka: All right, Summer, sure.
If you get the last throw, you win...
Sum: For real?!
Aka: Yeah...
If you can get it, that is...
Also it's not rodem it's rodeo. ["rodem" and "rode" in italics.]
Sum: Huhhhuhhu. Aka-chin... I can hear the footsteps of "regret"...
heading straight for you...
Aka: You moroooon! I should be the one saying that!
You'd have been better off just accepting your defeat and moving on.
Now you're just gonna lose in a way that'll be even harder to watch, Summer!
Aka: Me or you, Aka-chin?
Whose shoulders is regret
sliding its arms around?
Aka: Hurry it up.
This is stupid.

Page 185:
Sum: ............
Aka: !
SFX: SU...
Aka: What sorta stance is that...?
SFX: PU
Hm?
Sum: .........
I'm pretty sure......
it was like this......
He threw it with a sorta outward pushing motion...

Page 186:
Aka: Uwa~~~~
This kid's really getting serious...
SFX: BUN

Page 187:
Aka: Oh!
Guys: Oo?!
It's kinda sloppy but...
doesn't that look good?!
-----!!
Sum: Go in!!

Page 188:
SFX: KAH
Aka: OOA?!
Sum: Come ooon!!

Page 189:
[Dang.]

Page 190:
Guys: UWAaAAA So clo~~~se!
For real?!
Man, I got goose bumps from that!!
SFX: WAAAAAA
Aka: HOH
!
SFX: BATANN
Toki: Summer!
He might start crying again...

Page 191:
Aka: It's a complete defeat for you...
Summer.
............
As a reaction to his defeat-allergy...
he'll probably feel like he wants to run out of here right now.........
!
Toki: Hm?
Asuka: Huh?
What's SUmmer-kun doin'?
Bubble: Why's he laying down somewhere like that?

Page 192:
Sum: AUUAAAAAAAH!!!
Aka: oAUAAH!!
Sum: Ashuka-senpai! [Heart]
Toki: Huh?
Sum: Where'dja gooowww this whole time?!
Asuka: Ah... Well......
I just ended up a little late on the club preparations thing...
Sum: C'mon! Let's get on with your lessons, okay?!
For Ring!
How about we do a one-on-one lesson today?!
Asuka: Huh?
Ah...
Sum: C'mon!
Aka: H... Heeeeey!!
Dangit Summeeeer! Don't just approach Asuka-chan like it's nothing, moron!!
Didja forget what you promised if you lost that match?!
Ah?
You loser!
Sum: Hm?
Pwomise
if I wost the mwatch?

Page 193:
SFX: SHUBOOOH
Sum: I have no recollection... of such a thing...
Aka: Heeeeey! What are you, a little kid?!!
You know you did, don't play dumb!!
SFX: FUUUUH
Aka: ...Geez..........
Hey, Summer... I get that you hate losing,
but seriously...
Sum: Don't get the wrong idea, Aka-chin.
I accept my defeat.
Toki: Summer...
Sum: As I am now, I can't beat you no matter what I do...
It's my utter defeat...
This time... that is. ["This time" big.]
Aka: Ah?
This time?

Page 194:
Sum: Nobody said that this was a one-round match...
In other words, we're still only part-way through it...
Aka: Part-way?!
Sum: Someday, I'm definitely gonna beat you and it'll end with my victory...!!
So prepare yourself, Aka-chin!
Okaaaaay, Ashuka-senpai, lesson time!
Let's have a lesson with some new horizons!
Handwritten: New horizons? Is that English?
Aka: He really is a little kid...
Just a selfish 5-year-old...
Ken: Okaaay, practice!
I want a 30-meter dash and 5 sets going there and back!
2 at a time!
Guys: Issu!
Toki: .........
Ken: Akaaaa! You, too! Hurry it uuuup!
Aka: Ayyyyye!
...Geez, what a waste of time that was.
You: Senpai!

Page 195:
Aka: Hm?
You: Would you mind havin' a match with me, too.....?
Doesn' have ta be now 'er anythin'...
Aka: ......Hey, hey... If it ain't little-brother-kun...
Where're there so many guys full of energy in this year's 1st years.........?
Fuji: Heeeey!
Are you guys doing what you should be?!
Aka: !

Page 196:
Guys: Ah!
Sensei!
Fuji: oiiiissu!
Guys: Fuji-sensei!!
SFX: NOSSHI NOSSHI
Guys: Iiiiissu!!
Supervisor!!
Iiiiissu!!
Aka: Issu! Aka Taichirou has just returned, Sensei!!
Fuji: Mm.
Must've been quite a hard time at training camp, eh, Aka-kun?
SFX: BIH
Fuji: Allll right, would everyone gather 'round for a minute?!
I have some news!
Sum: Nu?!
Gather together everybodyyyy!!
Hurry it up, slowpokes!!
Okay, Sensei! I'm #1!
In Bubble: In gathering here.
Handwritten: Shut up, Summer!
Fuji: Hn...... Okay...
SFX: ORAA SASA

Page 197:
Guys: Uhhhh.....
With Aka-kun back with us now,
we're finally now coming up on the inter-high prefectural preliminaries...
So for our final preparation, I've setup a practice match.
Guys: !!
Practice match?!
For real?!!
Ken: Who're we against, Sensei?
Fuji: Anri High School!
Guys: Anriiii?!
Those guys are good!!
Anri got 2nd in the prefecture last year, didn't they?!
Handwritten: Oh no!
Sum: Wha's that?
Is that good?
You: Yeah, they're good.
Anri High School... They've gone to nationals representing Shizuoka Prefecture a bunch of times in the past.
They're a famous "Ring" school...!
Handwritten: Even I got an invitation from them at one point...

Page 198:
Aka: A... Anri~~~
Those basta~~~rds.
SFX: PIKU PIKU (Tension)
Guy: Anri... aren't they the ones with Date?
Yumi: Yeah, their forward, Date, is famous.
Handwritten: Super famous
Aka: Heey!!
Don't say that name out loud!!
SFX: BIH
Guy: Hm?
Yumi: ...Ah! Oh yeah, Red,
Date was in the youth training camp with you, right?
Fuji: I heard that when you got that hand injury... the person you were fighting with was Date-kun, yes...?
I heard all about that, Aka-kun...
I can't tell you how much I had to apologize to the staff afterwards...
Yumi: No waay! You got in a fight with Date?!
Man you're brave!
Guy: You're really something, Red!!
Aka: That's one guy I'll never forgive!
OO~~kay, I'm really fired up now! I'm gonna beat that Date asshole black and blue!!
Izumi: Don't fight, Aka.
Fuji: The match is in 10 days...
We'll be playing at Anri High...
SFX: DOKI DOKI
Sum: A...... A ma~~tch...?
SFX: DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI

Page 199:
Sum: A... Aw ma~~n, Ashuka-senpai!
I've gotten really doki-doki all of a sudden~~!
Handwritten: I'm so nervou~~s!
SFX: DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI
Aka: Uh, you're not gonna be in the game no matter what.
So no point in getting nervous.
SFX: DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI
Aka: Shut the hell up, Aka-chiN!!
If I get a butt-load of experience points in 10 days and level up, I could still be in it!!
Aka: You could what...?
This ain't friggin' Dragon Quest, idiot!!
I'm tellin' ya, nothing's gonna change in 10 days!!
Sum: What'd you say?!!
There's gonna be some dramatic changes!!
Aka: No there won't!!
Izumi: Oh, here they go again...
Fuji: The match...
will have a match against the A-teams of regulars
as well as a match against two B-teams made up of supplementary players. So there'll be 2 matches taking place...
Sum: Hoh?
Aka: 2 matches?
Fuji: To be honest, it'll be quite a problem for the A-Team, but...
For the B-Team, there's quite a possibility you could be in the B-team match, Summer-kun.
Sum: Right?! I can be in the A-Team, can't I?! [First sentence big/curly font.]
Aka: Not the A-team, moron!! In fact you're not even gonna be in the B-Team!!

Page 200:
Sum: Yes I wiiiill!!
Aka: No you wooon't!!
Sum: Yes I will!!
Aka: You friggin' won't!!
Sum: I will!!!
Aka: No ya won't!!!
Guys: ......
Sum: Goddammi~~~~t! That bastard Aka-chi~~~~n! I'm definitely gonna get better and join the A-Team, dammi~~t!!
Toki: Na~~~w.
There's really no way you can be on the A-Team right off the bat.
Sum: You're supposed to be on my side, Toki!
Toki: ..............
Anyhow, this is the first time I've heard that, Summer...
Sum: Ah? Heard what?

Page 201:
Toki: Heard you ever say the words "It's my utter defeat".
Was getting beaten so badly actually kinda refreshing?
Sum: Wha...... No frickin' way!!
That was an instant, 15-seconds of frustration max...!! ["15 seconds" big/weird font.]
Toki: Is that a lot?
But...... Good on you not losing your nerve and crying, Summer.
Sum: Hm?
Yeaaaaah...
I guess so.........
Hey, Toki! When you throw a ring,
how do you feel when it goes in the goal?
Toki: Huh?
Sum: I mean the moment you get a ringer... ["moment" in italics.]
Ain'cha crazy happy?
Just, simply speaking!
How do ya feel?
Toki: Uh... Well, I guess I'm happy...
Or something......
Sum: With me... I shiver for a second and it goes down my spine... I also get some sorta deja vu-like feeling...
So I get this cra~~~~zy good feeling...
Toki: Deja vu?
Sum: Er... I'm not sure what it is I'm remembering exactly, but...
Toki: What're you talking about, man?

Page 202:
Sum: Anyhooow... It feels good...
And since I feel this good throwing it normally...
if I can get good at scoring with all those other kinds of shots...
I'll bet that'd feel pretty incredible...
Toki: ..........
So that's why...?
Why you've had that delighted look on your face...
Summer, you really may have...
Sum: Anyhow! My goal now is to get on the A-Team!
Haha...
Gonna have to do a whole lotta practicing!
Toki: gotten totally addicted to Ring already...

Page 203:
SFX: KAH
Guys: Did you hear, Sensei?
Hm?
About the Ring duel that Summer kid had with Aka today.
Fuji: No... I didn't hear about that.
Izumi: Huhu... Geez... That beginner with 1 month of Ring experience...
challenged a genius who's been playing Ring since he was around 5 years old... It was sort of praiseworthy...
Fuji: ......
"The Golden Age",
do you know the phrase, Izumi...?
Izumi: Huh?
Yes...
In the sports world, that's what they call the elementary-school age where there's remarkable growth of the nervous system...
They say it's an important time where what you did in that age highly effects your play once you become an adult.....

Page 204:
Fuji: You see, Hanagata-kun...
apparently did a lot of "ring-toss" when he was right around that age...
Izumi: R......
Ring toss...... sir......?
Fuji: While he may not be a match for Aka-kun who's been playing since he was 5...
I think there's a high possibility that he has a good "knack" for Ring...
Where they are 2 years from now... ["they" italics.]
No...
I'm really looking forward to seeing them next year...
Bottom: [2] RING (End)

Page 205:
Top: Shimabu's Story
Parentheses: (Until I made Ring (6))
Article: I'm just gonna keep going with these digressions, I guess. Back when I started little-league baseball, I wouldn't use the spiked shoes, I would practice in just regular ones. My uncle told me he would buy me spiked ones when I got 1st place in a foot-race at an athletics festival, so I worked hard and got 1st place at one. And the spiked shoes I got made me so gosh darn happy... I remember really treasuring them. Whether it was a CD or whatever, once I got a part-time job and went out into the world, I always really treasured things I bought with money I earned. But at that time I had a sorta feeling of accomplishment a lot like that. Anyhow, I really treasured them. I really liked Ichirou, so getting to use the tools that Ichirou used during a match (bats and gloves) made me really treasure them, I think. I'd clean them every day and be really thankful to my tools. There are a lot of players that, on a human-level, are really respectful people. Yeah.
I seriously can't believe how off-topic I've gotten (hehe). Okay let's go back to talking about manga a little. I thought about a 'ball' as a tool you could get attached to, but that was pretty hard... To be honest here, there really are just too many sports out there that use a ball and everything I came up with was really similar to something that exists. I kept running into stuff where it'd feel like 'It'd be faster just drawing a soccer manga than this~'. So at that point, I threw the idea of a ball out of my head. So I set aside details like the rules and decided to go with illustrations. I though about what the "scene" and the "movements" in that sport would be like. At this point, I set aside the tools too, and tried to imagine a sport based on "moves" that would be cool for a human to do...
Bottom: Continued on the next page~

Page 206:
Top: Shimabu's Story
Parentheses: (Until I made Ring (7))
Article: I think simply the coolness and other stuff you get from the visuals are really important to a manga. Like, even if I came up with a perfectly interesting sport, unless I could make it look interesting in a manga, it would be pretty pointless. So it had to be something cool from a visual perspective... So at that point I started just drawing like crazy in my notebook. Of human movements. Of course using other sports as a reference...
And then one day, I can still remember it really well now, I was drawing like I always do at a family restaurant in Okinawa (At that point I was doing names in Okinawa where my family lived) and I had an idea. In many sports, you have a ball that you throw overhand, right? In handball they have passing from your shoulder, too, but basically you usually throw them like a baseball. There are very few sports that go the other way where you start inside and release it going outward... I thought. There are the throws you have in basketball and handball, but what I was imagining was more like how you throw a frisbee. When I tried throwing a frisbee myself, the feeling of it flying from you felt really good. It had that fun-to-throw sorta feel... (Something like that, I don't totally understand it.) So I tried drawing a "pass" with a frisbee, and I could make it look really cool as an illustration. But as for making a game, I couldn't think of anything beyond that... Like how you scored points, how you would dribble, that sorta thing. I thought maybe there's nothing I can do besides a touchdown like in American football? But then you've got the frisbee itself... I hit a lot of walls, but then I had an idea.

Page 207:
Top: Shimabu's Story
Parentheses: (Until I made Ring (8))
Article: What if I put a "hoop" through the middle of the frisbee...? Hey, a frisbee is basically a flat plate, right? So I'll gouge out the center. But if I do that, then it won't fly that way (like a frisbee normally does), will i~t? I thought. Then how about I just forget the frisbee and make it just a hoop? Something like a hula hoop... Yeah, the original idea for the rings was a hula hoop. Right, the ones you spin around your waist. I spent forever on the idea of if you make a hula hoop spin towards you when you throw it, it comes back to you (You know what I mean, right?). There are a lot of hoop-related sports in gymnastics, right? Those are simple and interesting and I did them a lot in elementary school. And I really had a lot more fun throwing them and getting them to come back to me than I did making them spin around my waist (hehe).
Okay, so what if I try having only one hoop? I had that helpful idea and so I tried drawing lots of "moves" of using that hoop in my notebook. The result was 'Man, I sure can draw a lot of moves with this~'. There was a larger degree of freedom than there was with a frisbee, plus you could roll it on the ground... Using a hula-hoop it got in the way in the drawings a lot of the time, so I tried making it a bit smaller. And you could do the nutmeg move where it goes under someone's legs, too. I came up with all these scenes where you dribbled it or passed it past an opponent, so I got to thinking this could be pretty good... And I chuckled to myself alone at a family restaurant (What a weirdo... hehe). I guess the idea I had somewhere in me from the beginning, within the idea of a team sport playing on a field doing that sorta dribbling and passing was pretty strong. But you can't do that sorta thing with a hoop, I thought.
Bottom: Continued on the next page~

Page 208:
Top: Shimabu's Story
Parentheses: (Until I made Ring (9))
Article: Okay, next was the question of the "goal". How do you score points in this game...? Yeah, thinking back on it now, since you were using a hoop it seems inevitable that the goal would be a "poll", right? I think the reason it seems that way is because we now have the fictional story of 'RING' in its entire complete form, but back then nothing really came to mind. I really stressed over it. Anyhow, I kept thinking. And I then what I came up with finally was barely anything, just that "rod" (hehe). I remember it now, the moment the poll came into my mind it felt like I'd conquered the world. I was a real idiot. I mean, after that I thought 'Ah, oh yeah, the "ring-toss" exists, doesn't it?! Yeah, let's try doing a ring-toss on a field in a competitive way!' I thought. Yes, 'RING' was not something I started on as a ring-toss and then arranged it into a sport, it was something that I thought of from a ton of other things and then I realized that what I had was like a big version of a ring-toss. I know I'm going back and forth with this, but the first idea I had for the goal was a game called 'pole bring-down' that we would play in athletics festivals when I was younger (I don't do it much anymore...). I though of using that sorta huge poll and it was after that that I remembered the idea of the ring-toss. I thought about the idea of shrinking down the hoop and the poll to make them the size of the tools used in an actual ring-toss... and I decided that was no good really so I made 'em bigger... Anyhow in my mind that "hoop" and "poll" were the result of my sweat and teams at this point... Yeah. ...I had gotten so fervent over this that I'd gotten sorta heated (hehe). But anyhow, yeah that's how it went. Yup, I don't think I have enough pages to finish this time, so I'll leave it off here (But it's not the end! Hell no!). Next time we'll have a theme of 'a sport you can actually do in real life' and I'll talk about me actually trying Ring myself. There are still many barriers to overcome. Look forward to it!
Bottom: Continued in Volume 3~