Rakudai Kishi no Chivalry

[kiiryto]

Hi everyone, can i have the vol 3 and 4 in pdf format, please.

[endarion88]

thank you a lot for the translation KLSymph i really love the serie and appreciate your efforts

[chan0001]

Thank alot for the translation. It was fast =). only 4 volume to go before catching up . Good Job. Cant wait for next volume

[mildran]

Thanks for you hard work

Muchas gracias....

[endarion88]

anyone can upload the pdf of translated volumes?

[Treyon]

Anyone can upload the PDFS?? im fkng scared already by the fkng DMCA (Hope their HQ burns)

[lifeman120]

no books without their HQ, also different publisher. so DW for now

[2hayka]

Here's the link to mine.
Here

[Janime6]

just kidding I can't send messages
so I'll just share with dropbox

volume 1
volume 2
volume 3
volume 4
volume 5
volume 6
volume 7
volume 0
volume 8

they're just the illustrations, no text

volume 9

Perhaps volume 10 will be the last volume?

[KLSymph]

KLSymph's review of the Rakudai Kishi anime (episode 12 - finale)

And as we come to final episode of the anime, we've come full circle all the way back to the first problem of the first episode: speeding up the pacing so much that the dramatic portions suffered. The scene of Ikki stumbling toward the match while lost in his suffering is compressed to around one minute's length. One minute! At least the novel wove the conversation with Akaza through the narrative to provide the illusion that Ikki was suffering longer. What the anime shows is just not enough to get that feeling of despair--to the point that Ikki couldn't even think straight anymore--to set in properly, which makes weaker the climactic moment in which he realizes he shouldn't be in despair.

The imagery of Ikki grasping the flame of his relationship with Stella is also poorly used. Ikki's stumbling along all grayed out in despair, and then deep inside of him he finds hope in his promise with Stella, which appears as a burning light before him that he reaches for. When he grabs onto it, the heat radiates through his hand and into him, restoring his color, and then he falls down and Shizuku catches him. That certainly matches the superficial sequence of events. The problem is this representation doesn't properly, explicitly show the core meaning of this scene. It's easy to see Ikki regaining color as a sign that even if he falls, he has already regained enough of himself to get back up and push onwards. That's something we know Ikki can do. But the reason in the novel that Ikki was falling despite having clutched that remembrance is his feelings for Stella aren't enough to carry him on in this case. That's why Shizuku and all the people she brought to cheer him were necessary. If Ikki could just think of Stella and keep going, then this arc's climax would be a complete retread of the first arc against Shizuya. In the novel, Ikki hits the climactic realization that he's not as alone as he thought from seeing all of his friends and supporters, and is ready to go on to the fight against Touka. Then Stella comes with her medal and gives him an extra little boost. The anime stills shows Ikki still stunned and confused even after seeing all of his supporters, and only gets the energy to keep moving after Stella arrives, phrasing it as remembering he had made a promise with her. For the third time, the anime manages to so perfectly slice out the fundamental meaning of a volume's dramatic climax that I suspect the anime staff are wizards in making things pointless and lame.


Can you put the crowd any farther away!?

On the fight with Touka, I've seen here and there on the internet that people were afraid such a one-slash fight would be anticlimactic for the anime. This was never a real worry for me because the climax of the arc was the emotional reversal described above, and the fight afterward with Touka is part of wrapping up the story. As far as plot goes, it isn't supposed to be any more climactic than the fight with Shizuya after Stella gets Ikki back up in volume one. So I watched that part of the anime hoping to see some novel visual representation of the match, and--you'll want to sit down for this--I was really disappointed. What an impressive wind-up, with all the color work and the blood flying, and then... nothing. The moment of impact isn't animated. Everyone stares in silence, and then Touka's Narukami slowly shatters.

Let's try to picture what this sequence of images implies happened: Ikki and Touka swing their swords at each other... and then their edges meet... and then the edges bounce off each other because neither edge actually cut into the other... and then Ikki and Touka stare at each other for a long moment because they're standing face to face and there's nothing else to do... and then Narukami breaks and Touka falls down.

Thanks, Rakudai anime, for that ridiculous image. I didn't put that much importance in the Raikiri match, but you still managed to make it a little more awful, as is your way.

Looking back on the anime, there were some high points, and overall the anime is of an average competence (which is a compliment!), but speaking as one who's invested a great deal into the Rakudai Kishi story, I'm not very happy with how the anime turned out. Don't take it too seriously, though. It's just my opinion, and the purpose of the anime is to entertain, so if you enjoyed the anime then it's a success regardless of what anyone else thinks, myself included. The only thing I can comment on with some authority is the merit of the anime as an adaptation to the light novel I've had a part in translating, and I'm only giving these comments because my perspective as a translator might be worth some thought or discussion. Writing up these thoughts was fun, and that counts.

[KLSymph]

So back when I was writing the review for the last episode of the anime, I was thinking of also appending a critique of of volume four, to balance out my negative impression of the anime with my way, way more negative impression of the volume just to show I'm not unfairly biased toward the novel. Volume four is awful on many, many storytelling levels. The important fight scenes against Edelweiss and against Wallenstein suffered from nonsensical technobabble, and the emotion drama involving Arisuin and Shizuku failed so hard my undergrad foreign language credit hours for Japanese got revoked. But then I thought, hey, it's the holidays and would anyone really be happy seeing me beat Rakudai Kishi to death? Nah.

It would be a shame to throw away all the thought I already put in, though, so as a microcosm of the problems in this volume, here are two epilogue statements intended to explain the consequences Akatsuki attack, and how I imagine the characters of Rakudai Kishi would've responded in an official hearing on the matter if only they followed characterization, established setting premises, and basic common sense.




KLSymph's review of volume four epilogue part 1

After that speech, the situation started to develop in a direction that no one had imagined. The police, the justice system, they took absolutely no action against Akatsuki Academy's brutality. On the contrary, they asserted 「It is a false report that Hagun Academy was attacked. In reality, it was only an accident during a mutually agreed-upon practice match.」 and began to pass this off as the truth. Generally, this was an unacceptable assertion, but if the government insisted it was so, it was easy for the public to become confused.

Kurono Shinguuji, Board Director of Hagun Academy: This is obviously ridiculous. A mutually agreed-upon formal practice match between students of different schools requires a negotiated agreement between the administration of those schools, like any sporting event. We are public institutions dedicated to the education of soldiers, not a bunch of private dojos who make oral agreements. For example, just recently I had to run around and beg a favor of Kyomon Academy to let us share a training camp facility for the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival's preparatory training period, which was a huge pain in the neck.

Administrator of Kyomon Academy: Indeed, as Mrs. Shinguuji says, and here is a pile of timestamped documents establishing our communications over the course of weeks, as well as the signed contracts declaring how the costs of the training camp would be split between the schools, and various other details. It was quite a lot of bureaucratic work. I invite a representative of Akatsuki Academy to produce similar documentation to prove that their "practice match" was really mutually agreed upon. Unless this matter has been clarified, I believe that Hagun Academy has legal standing to sue Akatsuki Academy for the extensive damages that can be attributed to Akatsuki's students. Since our esteemed Prime Minister is Akatsuki's chairman, it would only be expected that he take financial responsibility here, including justifying the expense to taxpayers if he intends to use public funds to remunerate Hagun.

A political opponent of Prime Minister Tsukikage: Of course, if the Prime Minister or Akatsuki Academy under his leadership has some, shall we say, under-the-table funds he could put to this task, it would only be in the civic interest that the public verifies all of his funding do come from reputable sources. It might impact the Diet's casting of the ballets for appointment. Who knows, it might even lead to a motion of no-confidence by House of Representatives! We certainly can't have such a public official doing things like this without accountability.

In the end, their claim had ended with a whimper, and Akatsuki Academy took the reputation and degree of attention as a collection of powerful up-and-comers who drove Hagun Academy to half-destruction with only seven people, and formally entered the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival as the eighth school.

Representative of the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival steering committee: How would this possibly justify the inclusion of Akatsuki "Academy" in the Festival? A mage-knight academy's main purpose is not just to produce powerful young Blazers, but to instill within them a sense of responsibility over their superhuman powers so that they bend such powers toward the betterment of their fellow citizens. This is literally the reason the mage-knight system exists. But Akatsuki's students "accidentally" destroyed a large swath of a public institution during a mere "practice match"! What would've happened if they were in the middle of a civilian area doing mage-knight peacekeeping against a real enemy instead? Such utter lack of control over their power shows that these Akatsuki students are completely unqualified to receive mage-knight certification, and allowing them entry into the Sword-Art Festival only legitimizes the abysmal incompetence of their school's teachers and educational system.

Yuuri Oreki, eyewitness: Yes, and the testimony of myself and other students and teachers at the event, Board Chairman Shinguuji's Blazer abilities, and the most cursory forensics of the scene all show that combat occurred out in the public areas of Hagun Academy, like the main entrance. According to Hagun's student rules, all Blazer combat and even the manifestation of Devices are restricted to special training zones like practice arenas, because Blazer powers are so potentially destructive. Violation of that rule is serious enough to justify suspension or expulsion, so it's only natural that Akatsuki's students be harshly disciplined for violating Hagun student rules on Hagun property even if their actions were accidental. *cough* Also, their admissions into other academies while attending their own in secret are clearly fraudulent, and should be punished accordingly by law for taking educational resources which could've gone to deserving prospective students.

Kanata Toutokubara, eyewitness and Hagun student council official: In addition, we have the testimony of an existing Akatsuki student, Nagi Arisuin, that Akatsuki Academy doesn't teach much of anything to its students. According to his affidavit, his abilities were honed by personal experience predating his admission as an Akatsuki student or by the education he received at Hagun Academy which he infiltrated. The power displayed by Ouma Kurogane was also present long before his association with Akatsuki, as everyone who knows him well understands. Without evidence to the contrary, we've no reason to believe Arisuin's or Kurogane's experiences are different from Akatsuki's other students, so we are as much justified in claiming that the power of Akatsuki's students comes from their education in the Seven Stars academies as it comes from whatever they learned at Akatsuki. That is, of course, unless Akatsuki is willing to open its Blazer curriculum to League review...?

Nene Saikyou, first responder: By the way, you know that Akatsuki beating Hagun isn't all that impressive, right? Hagun is one of the weakest schools. It hasn't won a championship in years. That's why the last chairman was kicked out and replaced with Kuu-chan, and then she laid off a huge chunk of the teaching staff. All Akatsuki did was come in during semester break and smash up the place, while most of the teachers and students weren't there. Whoop-dee-do, what does that actually prove?

Shizuku Kurogane, eyewitness: And if damaging buildings and attacking teachers with only a few combatants exhibit power, then it's just fair to point out that while Akatsuki came to Hagun with seven people and accomplished so much, Hagun then went to Akatsuki, fought Akatsuki's teachers, and thoroughly destroyed an entire Akatsuki training arena with only two people. Hagun is certainly no less powerful than Akatsuki by that stupid metric.

Itsuki Kurogane, League branch chief: In fact, the vast majority of the damage caused to both schools was dealt by two members of the Kurogane clan. This goes to show the continued excellence of the Kurogane bloodline far more than it demonstrates anything about the power of either school.

Shizuku Kurogane: Your son was there too.

Itsuki Kurogane: Yes, of course he was.

Shizuku Kurogane: The other one!



...And so forth. The first half of the volume was kind of okay, but the entire second half of the volume was just this sort of thing over and over. At least I finally got some of it off my chest.

Anyway, Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

"The only evidence that Akatsuki Academy's students are members of Rebellion is Arisuin's testimony, after all. If they just feign ignorance and honesty, there's nothing we can do."

Kagami Kusakabe: Have you heard of... investigating? You know, like I did, and I figured out there was something wrong with these people with just some part-time work over the course of half a week? You're going to give up because some criminals (gasp!) claimed innocence? Do something! Anything!

Kurono Shinguuji: ...Look, brat. We're trying to deal with it, but with the Sword-Art Festival so close, a real investigation--which takes months to carry out if it's supposed to stand up in court by the way--won't be complete in time to matter before the Festival's over and Akatsuki's settled either way, not even mentioning all the work I'm plowing through to bring the school back to normal so that you can continue to have an education. I'm just trying to keep you kids from having to deal with all the details that adults have to worry about. Now get out of my office.

Handwaving is not that hard.

[DisavateraMX]

First post ever, and already I'm doing something similar to what I always do on forums. Argue with people. What a terrible human being I am.

Nevermind, it's fun, let's do this.

DISCLAIMER: This is not to be taken seriously either. I'm just bored, it's early in the morning and I'm too lazy to open Google Docs and get back to work. Also if you haven't followed the translation fully and are reading this, there are some spoilers, be warned. Random shout-out to whoever edited me in as a Translator. I was waiting to actually finish Chapter 1 before putting my name up there, because stretch goals are good and I'm not, but thank you anyway for your support/faith/greater responsibility than I have.

This is a bit long so I'm just gonna spoilertag all of it.

Introduction

Spoiler! :

I definitely, 100% agree that the anime adaptation wasn't perfect. But I came into it expecting that it wouldn't be. As translators I'm pretty sure one of our greatest gripes is that Japanese does not always translate well into English without some modification/inference or changes in idiomic/prosaic/grammatical structure - in fact the diversity of light novel writing styles makes it almost certain that some writers will be more easily translated than others in content, but not necessarily in form or style, and vice versa with any of these factors.

In the course of my meagre education I have shot a couple of films, acted in a couple productions, written stories and essays alike, read scripts and theories, and I think -or I hope- that amid stumbling around half-blind at times I've nonetheless managed to get the sense for a few things. One of these is that different forms of media can be subjective in different ways, and subject to different ideas or methods of 'seeing' and 'reading', and also different forms of 'censorship' and 'limitations'. So there's always going to be some things that get 'Lost In Translation' so to speak. There is no perfect or even near-perfect solution to this, only people working hard at mitigation and maybe at adding something new precisely because they're using another form.

In my eyes the Rakudai anime is under quite a few such limitations, that do in part -though not fully, hence why I think it's imperfect- explain some of its flaws:

Corporate Interests

Spoiler! :

- Underlying Corporate Interests and Its Results: Oh no, here's the stereotypical "they had 12 episodes what could they have done guys pls have mercy" argument! Hide your waifus! Hide your husbandos! Just kidding, because these actually matter. In fact, I think Rakudai doesn't just suffer from 12 Episode Syndrome (which I really think should be called Fixed Anime Episode Count Syndrome, because I'm pretty sure a lot of your gripes stand a chance of being resolved if 1. they just had one or two more episodes and 2. they were willing to put in the same amount of effort they put in to tell the story as they did for the rest of it), it also suffers from Ever-distant Second Season Uncertainty Syndrome. Reisen Hiraga? Alice taking a Mysterious Phone Call? Taken out of the picture, because we don't need extra loose ends. That need to tie up as many things as possible in case you don't get Round 2 can be a very distorting force - not that it isn't objectively a flaw, but it's not one I would be particularly disappointed at that Silver Link for.

You can draw your own Conclusions about Fanservice Syndrome and stuff like that - I'd argue in some of the minor cases both the LN and the anime have the same problems in spades.

Different Media

Spoiler! :

- Different Media Different Storytelling Method: This is perhaps one of the reasons why light novel adaptations have had such a wide spectrum of quality. Some styles are just easier to adapt than others. Wall-of-text style worldbuilding is gonna get cut - you know it.

Mahouka? Snip Snip Snip, to the point where it felt like this was no longer one alienated man and his sister's struggle against the world but The Adventures of Magical High School Jesus (I suppose the covered material was also an issue but I'm not going to kick and scream, since that's just a function of the narrative and way the author chose to reveal that part of Mahouka's world). Log Horizon? Snip Snip Snip Snip - and even then Season 2 was a lot slower in pace than Season 1 simply because Season 2 simply had so much more worldbuilding on a much larger scale (this is not even considering that there was this other alternate story in another part of the world that had its own wall-of-worldbuilding to be converted into visual form. And don't think this is unrelated to the previous point - I'm talking about an anime with 24 episodes and 48 episodes, respectively. If you thought a lot was cut there, I would say that we can only have expected something similar to happen to Rakudai in its more wordy sections. Of course the most wonderful way of incorporating all those juicy details we wanted was to imply them via the images that are the vaunted elements of visual media like anime, but images too take time, images take dramatic space and therefore need time. There's only so many you can have, and even among the many you have you will have another problem in the form of...

Visual subjectivity

Spoiler! :

- Visual subjectivity: Let's face it, we do sometimes look again at the things we've translated or even written in our native languages, look at the words we used and gone "Good lord, what the hell was I thinking when I used this word?" That's because words imply things more than they describe things at times, and if our implication was wrong/inaccurate/inappropriate, it can twist the meaning or ruin the experience of the whole sentence, even an entire paragraph, or even the whole story if we make enough of these mistakes and the reader is sensitive enough to the nuances of English (or Japanese for that matter). Images don't quite have the same problem, but rather suffer from the singular issue of subjectivity, that a single image can have many interpretations, and thus a chain of them together would have many more as a collective. The manipulation of this chain, as Eisenstein would have it, is key to meaning making - but as always the devil is in the details.

And in the viewing; more importantly the time of it. Potemkin was a work of genius in its time, but now we'd probably find it clunky propaganda. Which it is, but that's not awfully important here. TL;DR viewer interpretation matters and we should be open to more than one.

To illustrate, let me put forward an interpretation of events that make the Ikki Despair scenes and the Narukami/Itto Rasetsu scene look like neat, concise tie-ups as opposed to a desecration of authorial intent. Warning, my prose is about to degenerate since this has gone longer than I feel it has had to and I'm hungry and Google Docs is making eyes at me from across This New Divi- the tabs.

1. Ooh the world's gone all monochrome with splashes of color! Guess time isn't passing like normal anymore huh because there's this thing called Dramatic Time that's been around since the Greeks. The Drama, the drama! A second is a minute! Three minutes and hour! A Day goes by in a moment! Oh hang on wasn't it always there when like 3 days could pass in about 25 minutes or we could have something as immersion breaking as a black screen that says "Two Months Later" and then continue with the story? Nevermind guys, up with convention!

2. Go Ikki my inner fanboy is cheering for you - and no that's not tears in my eyes for your manliness it's just sweat! Sweat I tell you-oh, there's snow in my eye! The fire warms him up, alright go Stella fire girl best girl! Oh shit Ikki falls anyway, guess that wasn't enough huh?

3. Oh don't you look surprised to see your sister and your friends - oh wait I guess you were never sure they were your friends, no? After all, a lifetime of abandonment and then a climactic rejection by the man you wanted acknowledgement from the most -thank you Freud but y'know you're sexist as hell- isn't gonna be overturned so quickly by some interactions in school, some borderline sexual harrassment, and a few dates. And you've just been through a highschool life crisis that should never really have been allowed to happen to a highschool student -come on Kurogane family what the hell?!- plus scandal and everything still unresolved, of course you're wondering if these 'friends' (some categorized as 'acquaintances' in your mind most likely) had enough faith in you to support you. Oh right I suppose you didn't know this but even your red-headed girlfriend had a crisis of faith earlier, eh?

4. Speaking of which, there she is! BEST GIRL ARRIVES! She, who must have apart from you had it the worst all this time as the other person implicated in the scandal (even though she was politically protected, unlike you, though I'm sure that makes her feel even worse), is here for you! She becomes the lynchpin and symbol of the fact that people actually give a shit about you, more than a few shits in fact, and your faith in humanity and the power of love and friendship is restored. It's Time To Take The Top!

5. Enter United Colors of SHAFT world during fight - well I suppose we're back to dramatic time again aren't we because who take like 1 minute to finish running at each other from like 20 metres out (insert twitch-chat worthy ramble of how I can run 100m in 10 seconds Shiruba Rinku pls fix in next patch)?

Oh we didn't see the slash. Too fast for my eyes? Too fast for my eyes, like half the samurai chambara comics/films out there (with the other half being them showing the slash and having the lag time anyway - does it make it slower in plot? Apparently not, but I suppose artistic choice matters. Maybe they didn't think that showing the slash would be climactic after all that buildup, and that nothing would beat the epic single exchange that we imagined in our own heads - which it probably wouldn't.

Heck, isn't that some concept they call Closure and isn't the reader/viewer sometimes allowed to do it themselves for emotional effect? Speaking of emotions, what's more important is that Ikki's emotional growth is what really allowed him to win this so let's not take it away from him by risking an anticlimax or by overshadowing his discovery that he isn't just some kind of invisible man who learned to materialize an arm or a leg. You Are The Captain This School Needs And Deserves, Kurogane Ikki!

As for Volume 4's epilogue, I can only say that the truth is quite a bit dirtier and less prone to easy solutions than it seems. Apparently Rakudai's world isn't all sugar and rainbows, which I hope the author will expand. Anything else is literally ongoing spoilers, and while the result may not satisfy you (or me), I sincerely hope that the translation I, KLSymph and whoever else will join in our crusade, who will be strong and stand with us...*ahem* will do it the justice it deserves at the very least.

[KLSymph]

*stares at Watchlist and all the instances of "changed from International Mage-Knight Union to League of Mage-Knight Nations"*

In my defense, I got pretty close. I suspected it was a reference to something in real life back when I was translating volume three, and I guessed the United Nations because that's what "international government" plus "after World War Two" brought to mind, hence "Union". I also considered the League of Nations, but I thought that would be odd since the League of Nations dissolved before WW2, and also the term "League" would cause confusion with the King of Knights league, so I thought I didn't have to check the kanji. But when I translated Ultimate Antihero and saw the "Knights Without Borders" thing, I guess I subconsciously realized the author didn't care all that much how accurately the fictional organization matched the real one, so... after hitting the first mention in the Rakudai manga, I finally got around to confirming it, and yep, League of Nations it is.

Makes more sense than "Knights Without Borders", anyway. Now that was a head-to-desk moment.

[lifeman120]

Wait you are the translator of the Ultimate antihero manga? ;D

[KLSymph]

Only one way to find out.