Destroy and Revolution

Who cares? There will be no end to the debates. I'm also waiting to see what Yuuki has planned. For me, it's about how he does what he does, rather than why he does it.

Well author depicts how corrupt or self-centered is National Diet. But I really wanna know what Yuuki is trying to achieve, I don't believe that he is ''freedom to people'' kinda guy ,he probably has some master plan which we might see later and this whole Enquiers thing is to manipulate people and carry out his will.

The proper translation by DT is out! Rejoice!

 

Without trying to get overtly political (politics is flame-war stuff and this is just a manga), I wonder what ideology the author chose to for the series… the manifesto sounds vaguely social-democratic, but the student who contradicts Kojima leans towards classical US-type libertarianism.

Here's the reading aid for chapter 35, published in this week's edition of WYJ (no. 18):
 

A relatively easy chapter this time, with much more shown than said. This time, I only wrote semantic breakdown lines for the lines which contained structures and words new to me, so this reading aid will probably read more smoothly than its predecessor. However, I wouldn't go so far as to call it a translation. Not yet.

 

Highlight to see a vague comment on the chapter, barely spoilerish, if at all:

 

The next chapter is going to be released in WYJ #23 on the ninth of May.

Here's the reading aid for chapter 34, which came out this week in WYJ #14.

Things are still escalating. Nice chapter.

Now I've caught up, I'll have a month's rest before the next chapter, which is due out on the fourth of April, in WYJ #18.

And finally I managed to gloss chapter 33. It came out on WYJ no. 10 in early February. Awfully wordy chapter though, it put 32 to shame. And things have escalated, too. Here's the link for the reading aid:

 

The next chapter should be out on WYJ no. 14 next week. This essentially means that the Anglosphere has caught up at least with the text of the Japanese original. Now we only have to wait patiently for the folks at DeathToll to produce the genuine scanlations. But I'll keep glossing the next chapters as well.

Whew! Finally finished chapter 32. Here's the reading aid:

This chapter came out in YSJ 5-6, this year.

Awfully wordy chapter for the beginner's standards. But things are starting to get weird.

I'm still trying to find raws for chapter 33, but I have an idea of where to look for it, so I should be done in a few more days. Then we may have caught up with the series progression in the original Japanese (at least the text, of course).

So, I've searched around the net and did find raws for the next chapters (so far, for 31 and 32). Unfortunately, I am too computer illiterate to release them, but I'm sure diehard fans (I'm probably the only one, anyway) will be able to find them for themselves (a hint: chapter 31 was published in volume 1 of this year's YJ).

But, in any case, here is the reading aid for chapter 31:

I'm not sure I like some aspects of the plot unveiled in this chapter, but let's see where the author takes us.

And here is the reading aid for chapter 30. An interesting chapter with some development. This one was also fairly straightforward in terms of the language level, like the last one, and I am confident that mistakes were kept to a minimum:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/agvy97n9771s259/Eighth%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf?m

Then again, that was the last chapter in the source I found. Which means this is pretty much the end of the road for me. Which is sad, because chapter 30 came out in the beginning of November, so there are probably five or six more chapters in Japanese (presuming the series hasn't been cancelled, but last time I checked Young Jump, it hadn't).

If anyone knows where I can find raw files for chapter 31 and beyond, and wants to share, please let me know. I can't have enough of this series.

Yay!

Here's the reading aid for chapter 29:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybqisr6eo1r5ufn/Seventh%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf

Nice chapter, much easier to gloss because it comparatively fewer lines of dialogue than the average D&R chapter. This one took me less than three hours. A thrilling chapter, too.

The raws can be found the same way as the previous chapters. I have raws for the next chapter as well, but that was the last one available last time I checked there. If no new chapters were released there after 30, this will be the end of my term as makeshift translator (sorry for using the word).

And this is the reading aid for chapter 28. A cliffhanger too, so I'm afraid I won't be able to take too much of a rest before I embark on the glossing of chapter 29:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dkar209lky30q24/Sixth%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf

Now, it's never too often to do a disclaimer: this is not a proper translation, but a reading aid. I am a beginner. I am confident that I captured the gist of the meaning of the Japanese original, but it is with absolute certainty peppered with mistakes. Some of them can be quite crass. It is not impossible that I got the opposite of what was said at times. Of course, if I knew precisely where I made a mistake, I wouldn't have made them on the first place, so no use asking me about them.

This should be useful only for people like me who are diehard fans who cannot wait (not sure there are many of those). At least this is more honourable than badgering the scanlation group for faster releases.

In any case, this time it took me only two days. Even if I'll keep making mistakes until I attain a competent level of Japanese, practice will make the job easier.

The raws can be found the same way for chapter 27, as described below in my last post.

Here is the reading aid for chapter 27:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsr88j88z435kfd/Fifth%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf?m

This time, I got the raws from a source that forbids us from releasing the files in the public domain. However, it just takes registering into the community to have access. Google "Destroy and Revolution raws" and it should be among the first results.

I'll take a break now and turn to real life issues for a while before I take on chapter 28. Hopefully the pros will produce their scanlations before that happens.

So, here's what I've done: being just a beginner in Japanese, but very addicted to the series, I found the raws for the next two chapters in Rawscans and translated them. Well, I tried at least, and think I managed to make sense of each one.

While we wait for the next releases, you can use these as reading aids for the raws. The files for download are dubbed "attempts at a gloss". The third is chapter 25 and the fourth, chapter 26. "Glosses" are rudimentary translations, a term I find preferrable to "translation" for what I have done.

Each page is marked by the "==" symbol. The text has three lines: one of the Japanese, a second one with a semantic and syntactic breakdown to aid me in translation and the third one, dubbed "suggestion" which contains the English version for the preceding line or lines of Japanese. Each line represents a speech bubble from the original, in the Japanese reading direction. There are a couple of comments in brackets where I discuss lines I found particularly difficult or which I changed significantly.

In the beginning of chapter 25, there is a long manifesto by Yuuki and I decided to write the whole thing in one big "Suggestion" paragraph, so just scroll down until you find it.

I'll keep translating other chapters and releasing them here as links if I find raws.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0gvmvlmmqjypku4/Third%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/s/44q5x7fqhbnvxxc/Fourth%20attempt%20at%20a%20gloss.pdf

You know that a mangaka of a work like this is doing a good job when it generates thoughtful discussion about the themes, ideas and implications the work presents

kendama, what they say in chaper five, pg 12, is that the "basic construction material" doesnt change(wood stays wood, concret stays concret, flesh stays flesh), what changes is the shape, into the shape of his hand

Oubliette Its not realistic in a sense that 98% of the offcials, and leading corporations featured in Akumetsu are evil down the bone.

@kendama Read Akumetsu - it's actually not so different from D&R. A very small group of individuals are gifted with an unusual power and use it in order to try and bring positive change to their government in a way that is described as terrorism by that government. If anything the government in Akumetsu is far more accurate and realistic than the one in D&R, several RL officials are featured in it.

@Schizophoenix:

I see your point. I haven't read Akumetsu, but the synopsis in Wikipedia seems to describe something less consequential. It is described as a violent vigilante story. Issues like the inner workings and the superstructure of the society don't seem to be in discussion (correct me if I am mistaken). The setting is a hyper-corrupt Japan, which detaches the narrative from real life, while D&R describes normal Japan and world as crooked, which certainly drives the point home - our home. Also, D&R goes beyond corruption: things like apathy, imbalance of wealth distribution, justice and other central questions are at issue. Corruption is just the first target because it touches the political class directly, but if D&R lives up to my expectations, it will branch out. The latest chapter on the impact of the server is quite promising in this regard. Remember that Yuuki said that normal people are his enemy.

This is not to disparage Akumetsu, just to state that it is different.

I'm more and more interested in this. Let's see how bold the author gets. For now, Ootsuki's madness is not only expected (I said so on my comment in the 6th of August) but makes total sense.

Although I'm afraid it will be short-lived. Despite its audacity, D&R has a slow narration. Maybe politics and social philosophy -well maybe this is too grand a term to describe this piece of pop culture - are beyond the scope of the target audience for Young Jump. I expect it to be cancelled soon. It will be sorely missed on my part.

yeah, this is kinda dull...

I hate drama in stories like this. Not as exciting as I hoped this would be.

kandama kendama

Whoops. I can't delete comments here?

@kandama Akumetsu.

A minor inconsistency of the plot: although Makoto and Yuuki verify on chapter five that everything Makoto teleports changes into the same indistinct, ionised matter, the concrete from the Tower of Challenge they sent to the government is still concrete. It had already happened with the flesh from that thug's shoulder, but now it became more central to the plot and thus more problematic. Oh, well, maybe perfection is just unattainable.

So, regarding this "realism" discussion… (under the risk of stoking the fire)

I think imercenary has failed to grasp a fundamental difference between D&R and other pieces of pop culture that deal with radical ways of addressing societal malaise and governmental paralysis.

D&R terrorists are trying to do something quite unprecedented: instead of proposing nostrums or seizing power, their goal is to force authorities and people to think of solutions. If you pay attention to Yuuki's words in chapter 15, he actually admitted that he doesn't know how to solve world's problems.

True, his methods are coercitive, but such a display of epistemic humility (that is, the acknowledgement of one's intellectual limitations) is absolutely different from any recent manga or anime revolving around politically engaged terrorism.

Take Lelouch Lamperouge or Light Yagami, for example. Both of them are much closer to real world terrorists - supernatural powers excluded - than the Inquirers, in that they are messianic in their beliefs and think that taking charge - directly or indirectly - of matters is better than letting people decide.

So of course D&R is not realistic. Its terrorists are conflicted, cognizant of their limitations, uninterested in direct power and not messianic. This is light-years from real world terrorism, be it salafi, Aum Shinrikyo, Stern, McVeigh or Baader-Meinhof. He is also making a point that should be a no-brainer, but which seems to escape mass media nowadays: terrorists have reasons for their actions, even though the reasons are objectionable and the methods can be monstrous.

So all imercenary's ranting that the Inquirers' methods are childish is only tenable if they were actually interested in solving the problems of this society. But Yuuki has said it: he wants to engender a state of creative chaos under the belief that the odds of something better emerging justify the effort. More than that, he is essentially forcing people to deal with destruction in a creative way. He wants to bring the whole house down. A less corrupt society is merely a consequence, not a goal.

If you think that this is morally, philosophically or even operationally wrong, the fact remains that it is original and certainly provides some food for thought. The mangaka clearly is not trying to tell the world what to do or to present solutions. What he is doing is to ask: "What would happen if the world were coerced into solving its problems in a radical way?" And he goes on to write a story based on this idea.

Even the recent development of creating a server to communicate is not a way to dictate orders, but a way to get people to connect and vent their own opinions about the system. One can construe that as a salvo against recent trends in representative democracy and its disconnect with the populace. Even if you disagree, one must concede it is creative.

If anything, I would suggest that V for Vendetta is closer to D&R, with the difference (in the latter's favour) that the former is revenge-driven. But both are quite entertaining pieces.

Imercenary says that destruction, assassinations and blackmailing don't solve anything. World politics shows otherwise: NATO blackmailed Milosevic on retreating (or "being bombed into stone age"); Stern would have a word or two on the subject of political assassinations; and wars are all about "destruction solving things". Whether this is good or not, it is the world we live in. In that sense, destruction manga can be quite realistic: people do become creative when their necks are on the line.

All in all, I'm not reading this manga expecting a treatise on the politics of revolutionary change. I'm reading it because it is cleverly plotted, subdued in its compass and centered around people who are surprisingly ordinary (save for Yuuki). It is definitely fresh air.

lol, you do know that Taliban is the former government before usa decide to destroy them by force right?
(I don't like them but its the truth.)