TheFoxsCloak
Professional Otaku
Manic glossed over it, but this chapter is also where we learn that every named Kure also gets their own epithet, and most of them share a theme of having "Demon" somewhere in it. While the exact kanji can vary from 鬼 (Oni) to 魔 (Ma) they all are usually translated as "Demon". The two seeming exceptions are Fusui and Karla, but both still contain the 魔 character so they still fit the theme. Additionally, both are actually references to famous mythological figures.
I've previously praised Hokuto no Gun's translation as one of the best fan translations I've ever read, and I stand by that. But I also noted it is a "a fan-translation that tries to emulate an official localization". What I meant by that is that it is much more liberal in some of its choices than most fan translations, which tend toward the literal.
Not that this is a bad thing! Over in My Hero Academia, the term "Quirk" is the result of the very first scanlators taking a very liberal translation of 個性 (Kosei), which more literally would translate to "Individuality". I very specifically remember this because when Mangastream picked the series up, they did translate it as "Individuality" or something similar for like two chapters before switching over to "Quirk" as well. So while "Quirk" may have originated from a fan's liberal choice of translation, it was very much for the series' better.
In Fusui's case, her epithet is 魔弾の射手 (Mahi no Ite), translated somewhat liberally as "The Wicked Shooter", which would be more literally translated as "Shooter of Demon/Magic Bullets". But 魔弾の射手 is actually the exact title in Japanese for the famous Der Freischütz, usually called The Marksman or The Freeshooter in English. A neat reference that I'm guessing Hokuto no Gun missed, but they still preserved the overall intent.
Now, Karla's epithet, given on the page Manic hates, got translated as "Succubus".
There's no two ways about this, HnG fucked up here; "Succubus" is an even more liberal translation than "Quirk" or "The Wicked Shooter", and it is very much for the worse. Karla's epithet in Japanese is 天魔 (Tenma), literally translated as "Heavenly Demon". Which sounds awesome, right? Badass and evocative on its own, and it fits the theme of the rest of the clan. So how do you get "Succubus" from that?
Well, Tenma as a term has a very long history. If you just google it on its own, one of the most likely results would be the demon race page from SMT, and if you look at that you'll see some big names on there. But the biggest name associated with Tenma by far is Mara. Also known as the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, itself a long and storied title in media, Mara is most famous for tempting the Buddha from enlightenment via visions of beautiful women to seduce him. The Sixth Heaven itself, to simplify it to an insulting degree, is also the one most associated with passion and sensual pleasures. Unsurprisingly, this means Mara is primarily associated with lust.
HnG had to have known that, because why else would they pick "Succubus" of all things? So the joke should be obvious, right? But as you may infer from the SMT page, it is more complicated than that. While Tenma is not a title exclusive to Mara, if a Japanese work uses it, 90% of the time he is what they are referencing.
But that remaining 10% leaves enough ambiguity that the joke is a bit more layered. You'd read "Heavenly Demon" and think "oh, that's badass", then see the panel, make the obvious connection and say "I Understood That Reference". HnG clearly prioritised the joke, because if you see "Heavenly Demon" without knowing about Mara, the punchline seems to just be another "Karla is acting inappropriately" thing rather than being tied into the reveal of her epithet.
By contrast, "Succubus" is blunt, the complete opposite of subtle, and actively damages Karla's character (or at least, her perception as a character) because of the loss of nuance, however little there was. The joke makes sense in the moment, but there are times where her title is used in what is supposed to be a badass, or at least non-jokey way and "Succubus" just doesn't work there. To give them some minor credit, there is to my knowledge zero English, or even Western equivalent that could have been used. They tried to maintain the intended tone of the scene and used the closest thing they could come up with, but it was still a fuck up.
However, there is an additional, much more specific layer to this that I can't completely blame them for missing. Because while "Heavenly Demon" is a reference to Mara in 90% of Japanese media, it has a very different connection in 90% of martial arts media. More accurately, in classic wuxia and most anything that draws on it, giving a character the title of "Heavenly Demon" is a clear indication they are not to be fucked with. Most commonly used by the head of the local Demonic Cult, itself usually one of the big local power players or a looming external threat they need to unite against, anyone given the title is all but guaranteed to be one of the biggest badasses in the story.
Obviously, this is a very different intent to using the title than you would see in almost any Japanese work, which in a similar context would usually use the "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven" title if they're being specific, or the more generic "Maou'' if not. Classic Wuxia and the tropes associated with it are almost never recognized in manga, being by far more popular in its native China and, at least in modern times to my knowledge, the neighbouring Korea. Pick any given martial arts manhua or manhwa set in the appropriate time period and you can see the clear differences even compared to manga set in the same period. They absolutely share common tropes, but how they are used and presented vary greatly. I won't get into everything about it since it is very much not my expertise, but it is something that needs to be known and considered.
Because while it may not be obvious from what Manic has covered so far, Sandro has a well known…interest in China, to the point where it is one of the most persistent discussions (to be polite) in the wider fandom. I won't touch that wider part with a 10 foot pole, but he has put some really damn obscure Chinese references in Kengan that you would have to dig deep to find on your own. Combined with his even more obvious passion for martial arts, I would be more shocked if he didn't know how "Heavenly Demon" is used in wuxia.
Given some later revelations about the Kure and their history, plus a suspicious number of similarities to most (modern) Demonic Cults (such as their shared propensity for giving fucking everyone some form of "Demon" name, which is way too specific to be coincidence), there is zero doubt in my mind that Sandro wasn't also referencing this alongside the Mara stuff.
Again, I can't fairly blame HnG for missing this; despite shared roots in martials arts and tropes (storytelling, common beats, etc), wuxia and manga don't have much overlap in fandoms. Because of how differently they use/present the shared traits, the end result is often different enough that the fandoms are often looking for things not found in the other, thus there is little overlap in knowledge. So it is not surprising that a group of fans translating a series out of pure passion wouldn't catch a reference to something almost completely outside their interest.
This is a risk of any series with a large number of references to its inspiration; any veteran Type-Moon fan can rant about how translators, fan or official, got messed up because they didn't know when something was a mythological reference or just Nasu being Nasu. They can't reach into the author's head or see the future; even if HnG was familiar with the use of "Heavenly Demon" in wuxia, at this point in the series Sandro's interest in China couldn't have been well known if it was at all.
But while missing the wuxia reference can be forgiven, translating "Heavenly Demon" as "Succubus" can't be. I've never had strong opinions on literal transating vs liberal localizing, outside of truly egregious cases, but that is a fuck up with lasting impacts to this day. They got ahead of themselves in trying to localize something that really can't be, ruined a deceptively clever joke on multiple levels, and damaged a character almost beyond words by sticking her with one of the most inappropriate titles possible.
I've previously praised Hokuto no Gun's translation as one of the best fan translations I've ever read, and I stand by that. But I also noted it is a "a fan-translation that tries to emulate an official localization". What I meant by that is that it is much more liberal in some of its choices than most fan translations, which tend toward the literal.
Not that this is a bad thing! Over in My Hero Academia, the term "Quirk" is the result of the very first scanlators taking a very liberal translation of 個性 (Kosei), which more literally would translate to "Individuality". I very specifically remember this because when Mangastream picked the series up, they did translate it as "Individuality" or something similar for like two chapters before switching over to "Quirk" as well. So while "Quirk" may have originated from a fan's liberal choice of translation, it was very much for the series' better.
In Fusui's case, her epithet is 魔弾の射手 (Mahi no Ite), translated somewhat liberally as "The Wicked Shooter", which would be more literally translated as "Shooter of Demon/Magic Bullets". But 魔弾の射手 is actually the exact title in Japanese for the famous Der Freischütz, usually called The Marksman or The Freeshooter in English. A neat reference that I'm guessing Hokuto no Gun missed, but they still preserved the overall intent.
Now, Karla's epithet, given on the page Manic hates, got translated as "Succubus".
There's no two ways about this, HnG fucked up here; "Succubus" is an even more liberal translation than "Quirk" or "The Wicked Shooter", and it is very much for the worse. Karla's epithet in Japanese is 天魔 (Tenma), literally translated as "Heavenly Demon". Which sounds awesome, right? Badass and evocative on its own, and it fits the theme of the rest of the clan. So how do you get "Succubus" from that?
Well, Tenma as a term has a very long history. If you just google it on its own, one of the most likely results would be the demon race page from SMT, and if you look at that you'll see some big names on there. But the biggest name associated with Tenma by far is Mara. Also known as the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, itself a long and storied title in media, Mara is most famous for tempting the Buddha from enlightenment via visions of beautiful women to seduce him. The Sixth Heaven itself, to simplify it to an insulting degree, is also the one most associated with passion and sensual pleasures. Unsurprisingly, this means Mara is primarily associated with lust.
HnG had to have known that, because why else would they pick "Succubus" of all things? So the joke should be obvious, right? But as you may infer from the SMT page, it is more complicated than that. While Tenma is not a title exclusive to Mara, if a Japanese work uses it, 90% of the time he is what they are referencing.
But that remaining 10% leaves enough ambiguity that the joke is a bit more layered. You'd read "Heavenly Demon" and think "oh, that's badass", then see the panel, make the obvious connection and say "I Understood That Reference". HnG clearly prioritised the joke, because if you see "Heavenly Demon" without knowing about Mara, the punchline seems to just be another "Karla is acting inappropriately" thing rather than being tied into the reveal of her epithet.
By contrast, "Succubus" is blunt, the complete opposite of subtle, and actively damages Karla's character (or at least, her perception as a character) because of the loss of nuance, however little there was. The joke makes sense in the moment, but there are times where her title is used in what is supposed to be a badass, or at least non-jokey way and "Succubus" just doesn't work there. To give them some minor credit, there is to my knowledge zero English, or even Western equivalent that could have been used. They tried to maintain the intended tone of the scene and used the closest thing they could come up with, but it was still a fuck up.
However, there is an additional, much more specific layer to this that I can't completely blame them for missing. Because while "Heavenly Demon" is a reference to Mara in 90% of Japanese media, it has a very different connection in 90% of martial arts media. More accurately, in classic wuxia and most anything that draws on it, giving a character the title of "Heavenly Demon" is a clear indication they are not to be fucked with. Most commonly used by the head of the local Demonic Cult, itself usually one of the big local power players or a looming external threat they need to unite against, anyone given the title is all but guaranteed to be one of the biggest badasses in the story.
Obviously, this is a very different intent to using the title than you would see in almost any Japanese work, which in a similar context would usually use the "Demon King of the Sixth Heaven" title if they're being specific, or the more generic "Maou'' if not. Classic Wuxia and the tropes associated with it are almost never recognized in manga, being by far more popular in its native China and, at least in modern times to my knowledge, the neighbouring Korea. Pick any given martial arts manhua or manhwa set in the appropriate time period and you can see the clear differences even compared to manga set in the same period. They absolutely share common tropes, but how they are used and presented vary greatly. I won't get into everything about it since it is very much not my expertise, but it is something that needs to be known and considered.
Because while it may not be obvious from what Manic has covered so far, Sandro has a well known…interest in China, to the point where it is one of the most persistent discussions (to be polite) in the wider fandom. I won't touch that wider part with a 10 foot pole, but he has put some really damn obscure Chinese references in Kengan that you would have to dig deep to find on your own. Combined with his even more obvious passion for martial arts, I would be more shocked if he didn't know how "Heavenly Demon" is used in wuxia.
Given some later revelations about the Kure and their history, plus a suspicious number of similarities to most (modern) Demonic Cults (such as their shared propensity for giving fucking everyone some form of "Demon" name, which is way too specific to be coincidence), there is zero doubt in my mind that Sandro wasn't also referencing this alongside the Mara stuff.
Again, I can't fairly blame HnG for missing this; despite shared roots in martials arts and tropes (storytelling, common beats, etc), wuxia and manga don't have much overlap in fandoms. Because of how differently they use/present the shared traits, the end result is often different enough that the fandoms are often looking for things not found in the other, thus there is little overlap in knowledge. So it is not surprising that a group of fans translating a series out of pure passion wouldn't catch a reference to something almost completely outside their interest.
This is a risk of any series with a large number of references to its inspiration; any veteran Type-Moon fan can rant about how translators, fan or official, got messed up because they didn't know when something was a mythological reference or just Nasu being Nasu. They can't reach into the author's head or see the future; even if HnG was familiar with the use of "Heavenly Demon" in wuxia, at this point in the series Sandro's interest in China couldn't have been well known if it was at all.
But while missing the wuxia reference can be forgiven, translating "Heavenly Demon" as "Succubus" can't be. I've never had strong opinions on literal transating vs liberal localizing, outside of truly egregious cases, but that is a fuck up with lasting impacts to this day. They got ahead of themselves in trying to localize something that really can't be, ruined a deceptively clever joke on multiple levels, and damaged a character almost beyond words by sticking her with one of the most inappropriate titles possible.
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