Hot off the presses, it's another scanlated chapter of Ryuu.
Thanks to Penchan for the cleans, typesetting, and some rigorous proofreading this time.
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There are chapter spoilers in my rambling this time, so don't read past the jump until you've read the chapter.
Sakra is the name of a class in El Sword that the character Ara can be promoted to. Huh? What do you mean El Sword came out decades after Naki no Ryuu?
Nah, I'm just kidding. It just so happens that El Sword is basically the only thing you get when google searching for "Sakra" in English.
Anyways, Sakra is the name of the ruler of Trāyastriṃśa, the highest realm of the heavens that still is connected to the physical world. In Buddhist lore, they are also referred to by the epithet "Indra." This is particularly confusing because in Hindu lore, their name is Indra and their epithet is Sakra. Yeah... Indra is the name of an upcoming chapter, so I'll be going more in-depth into what their deal is later.
Now I probably should talk about the contents of the chapter at least a little bit, because I can't ignore Kai and Ryuu finally clashing for real. It's honestly really strange seeing Kai suddenly gaining Ryuu's calling powers. It's almost like Ryuu's calls give you immense power, but they really do eat away at your life, just like Ryuu said. In this chapter we get one of Ryuu's famous quotes, "I'm not stealing tiles with my calls. I'm imbuing them with life." I wasn't sure how to translate this without sounding awkward, but I think I did a good enough job. It really hammers home this idea that Ryuu is putting his own life force into the tiles in order to get godly luck.
Speaking of which, I really like how this chapter gives a clear idea of what Ryuu's mindset appears to be (Penchan wasn't a fan because of all the redrawing of filtered photos, bless his soul). The line "He's going to keep fighting until he destroys himself" is just really fascinating to me. I think one can see how Akagi is pretty similar to Ryuu in that regard. In fact, I might even go far enough to say that Akagi's character was influenced by Ryuu. I can't confirm this 100%, but I'm pretty sure that mahjong manga characters before Ryuu were basically just slick dudes that happened to be really good/lucky at mahjong, and mahjong manga was all pulpy gekiga. That's probably why Naki no Ryuu was so wildly popular at the time: it managed to somewhat go beyond sex and violence and mahjong pulp and become something just a little more ambitious.
Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI believe I read somewhere (maybe just wikipedia, lel) that Naki no Ryuu had considerable influence on pretty much every "serious" mahjong manga that followed, so Ryuu himself probably influenced Akagi.
ReplyDeleteIt occurred to me that, tone-wise, Naki no Ryuu itself might have been inspired quite heavily by Battles Without Honor and Humanity, the classic "real yakuza" movies. I've only seen the first of the original pentalogy, but there's some common ground. The sudden and brutal flaring up of violence, the way the gang members act and talk, the narrative sequences that sum up events in a realistic way and anchor them in time and space (there are even very similar "X days later, A., of Y. Gang, was shot to death" sequences, as in chapter 4), everything that concerns formerly tightly-knit yakuza groups starting to fight among themselves, and of course characters -bad or good- being shown as they are without specific judgement are the main similarities that come to mind. It'll be interesting to see if any more similarities will pop up.
It's possible that Naki no Ryuu will have a karmic outlook at the whole yakuza deal, going by some early and late chapter names.
Also, I think "I'm imbuing them with life." is a pretty damn good translation. Looking forward to seeing Ryuu's most famous quote.
On page 187, why did Sakurada say that Ryuu was unlucky to draw 5-sou with that hand? Ryuu’s hand was an open tanyao hand, and the dora is indicator is unknown to the reader. Did Sakurada say that because Kai was going for an open chinitsu of sou tiles, and it was dangerous for Ryuu to keep drawing sou tiles (he have discarded 8-sou and 4-sou)?
ReplyDeleteThank you ffor this
ReplyDelete