[Progressive manga] Canon of the Golden Rule - Chapter 1

Although far behind schedule due to RL circumstances, we're proud to debut our newest manga project: Progressive Canon of the Golden Rule. And our project debuts with a double length chapter that totals 50 pages of divine art (a rarity for Progressive manga adaptations these days)!

The first chapter covers the story up to Asuna and Kirito arriving to Pithagrus's second residence in Suribus. Though it does gloss over a lot of thing in the first chapters. I've made a detailed comparison with the novel below. Also, unlike the novel, the manga seems to be going for more of an Asuna perspective, as she's the one doing the narrations, but Kirito still gets some monologues of his own nonetheless.

Since Yen Press might license the project at any time, we'll refrain from hosting the manga pages themselves on the blog and instead only give links to the files.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the release. If you have any suggestions/requests for what to work on, feel free to leave a comment or contact us through Twitter/Discord/Email.

P.S. OMG, dem double pages...

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: Official SAOP Canon Twitter Account
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas
Redrawing: Nguyên Milk
Typesetting: Nguyên Milk
Quality Assurance: Mttblue2

Canon #001

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Scherzo of Deep Night

Index

Canon #002

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 03: "beloved sword" has "Wind Fleuret" written in furigana.
• Page 03: The original phrase for "Materialise All Items" was "Completely All Items Objectize" (コンプリートリィ・オール・アイテム・オブジェクタイズ), but that sounds horribly wrong in proper English, so I just went with Yen Press's version.
• Page 03, 37: There are a variety of ways to refer to people fighting on the front lines in Sword Art Online. The most common of them is 攻略組 (Kouryaku-gumi, lit. "capture/conquest group". I usually translate this term as "Clearers", based on the fact that the characters use the English verb "clear" when referring to beating the game (for reference, Yen Press seems to go with "advancement group" in Progressive volume 5). On the other hand, Argo invented the name "Front Runner" (フロントランナー) in English for them, but she's probably the only one who actually uses this name.
• Page 04: Elves refer to humans as 人族 (jinzoku, lit. human race/tribe), just like how all the fantasy creatures/people in games use the -zoku suffix when talking about the creature/people species/race. I decided to translate this term as "humankind" to account for this nuance, as I could easily apply -kind to any other race to maintain consistency.
• Page 06, 42: There are multiple words for ghosts in Japanese. The best equivalent for the English word "ghost" would be 幽霊 (yuurei). However, in most instances of this story, Asuna instead uses the phrase obake (オバケ, originates from お化け), which is a more general expression that literally implies anything that involves a transformation and can be used to refer to anything from ghosts to monsters and goblins (anything that can give you a fright, basically). Since it's basically used as a colloquial word for "ghost", I decided to translate it as "spook", a colloquial word for "ghost" in English. The word "spook" was used as Furigana for "Astral-types" (アストラル系) on page 07.
• Page 06: "beloved sword" has "Chivalric Rapier" written in furigana.
• Page 07, 09: Kirito started using some extra-polite phrasings in his questions. Probably out of fear of getting on the blacksmith's bad side.
• Page 10: "Pour salt on a wound" - the original idiom was "追い打ち" (oiuchi), which literally means "to attack a fleeing enemy".
• Page 11: "If you please" - Kirito used お願いします (onegaishimasu) for some politeness, so I added this in to account for it.
• Page 12: Asuna's "Good girl!" was in actual English in the original text.
• Page 16: "Girl, get outta town!" - the original phrase was さいですか (saidesuka), a corruption of the phrase そうですか (soudesuka = is that so/I see) that implies it's specifically hinting at something (exasperation or lack of interest). I decided that the English idiomatic phrase "get out of town" (expression of surprise or disbelief) was the closest thing to an equivalent that I could come up with. I added "girl" to emphasise colloquialness.
• Page 18: Kirito uses the term システム外スキル (shisutemu-gai sukiru = skill outside the system). It refers to actions that look like they would need a skill to pull off, but are actually pulled off through the player's own effort. Since it's a madeup term by SAO's characters, I decided to make up my own term as well by analogy based on the word off-line (if off-line means "not connected to the Internet, then "off-system" would refer to being not connected to the system). For reference, Yen Press rephrased the term to simply "unofficial skill".
• Page 22: "Cor" is the currency of Aincrad. It's an acronym of "Coin of the Radius", where "Radius" = Aincrad (An Incarnating Radius). Yen Press always mistranslates the currency name as "col".
• Page 24: Kirito's "OK" was in actual English in the original text.
• Page 27: Number Place is the original English name for sudoku (specifically, its French precursor) and is still used in Japanese as the generic name for the puzzle, since "Sudoku" is copyrighted in Japan.
• Page 28: The phrase "Number Place" is abbreviated as ナンプレ (nampure = NumPla) in Japanese, based on the first two kana of "Number Place" (ナンバー・プレース). The standard abbreviation method in English, on the other hand, is to just take the initials of each word, rather than full syllables, so I translated ナンプレ as "NP".
• Page 28: "Sevin hand-" - Asuna was so shocked that she forgot to use kanji for her words and instead her words were written solely in hiragana (and cut off in the middle of the word). To account for this, I decided to spell seven hundred phonetically.
• Page 28: "Puzzlers" - the original phrase in the novel was ナンプラー (nampurah = numplers, based on the abbreviation "NumPla") or "sudokers" in Yen Press's translation, but the manga changed this term to just puzzlers (パズラー) in general.
• Page 29, 30: "Dear Adventurers" was 冒険者どの (Boukensha-dono) in the original text. Also, Cylon is speaking in a rather polite tone, so I made his lines a tad more polite/humble.
• Page 30: Cylon refers to Pithagrus with the phrase 御方 (o-kata), a more polite way to say "person". I translated it as "gentleman" in the first instance, but it was impossible to use "gentleman" in the second instead, so I instead used "dear lord" there.
• Page 31, 32, 41: Japanese gamers frequently abbreviate the word "quest" (クエスト) to just "que" (クエ). I decided to translate the abbreviation as "q'st".
• Page 32: "interviews-only" - the word "only" was in katakanised English (オンリー) in the original text.
• Page 32: Kirito's "I feel you" was "同感" (doukan = same feeling = I agree) in the original text of the manga, but Kirito's phrase in the novel, however, was まったく同感 (mattaku doukan dan = completely same feeling = I completely agree). Since the manga lacked the "completely" in the phrase, I decided to go with "I feel you" for a more distinctive translation, since there are plenty of phrases that mean "I agree" in Japanese.
• Page 34+: Argo has a speech quirk wherein she changes the last kana (usually a sentence ending particle) in her sentence to katakana, when it would normally be written in hiragana. This is accounted for by emphasising the final letter in her sentence in the translation (making it capitalised or look bigger)
• Page 35: Argo occasionally refers to herself as Onee-san ("Big Sis"). I could have translated it to English, but since Argo is a quirky character anyway, I decided to leave it as is.
• Page 35: Argo nicknames Kirito as Kii-bou (キー坊) and Asuna as Aa-chan (アーちゃん). -bou and -chan are cutesy suffixes/honorifics for boys and girls respetively. Of course, since boys don't want to be associated with "cuteness", -bou usually only gets used with very young boys, unlike -chan being used for any relatively young and cute girl.
• Page 35: Argo shortened the word こんばんは (konbanwa = good evening) to just ばわ (bawa, with the wrong "wa").
• Page 39: "NO WAY" - the original phrase was 絶対イヤ (zettai iya), where "iya" was written in katakana, rather then kanji (嫌) for emphasis.
• Page 40: Kirito and Asuna are talking over each other in the first panel. Some words come from Kirito, some from Asuna.

Adaptation notes:

• The manga is from Asuna's point of view, rather than Kirito's.
• Prologue and chapter 1 was skipped entirely. Instead chapter 1 was replaced with a summary of events on the prior floors from Asuna's point of view. Part of the scene about the puzzle theme got adapted in greatly abbreviated form as taking place after the meeting with DKB, rather than events of the night prior to the meeting. The details about the sudokers, Asuna and Kirito turning into an inn on the 6th Floor, and the scene where Kirito informed Asuna about PoH on Floor 5 in Asuna's room after Kirito unintentionally misled Asuna into believing that he was going to confess to her all got skipped.
• The scene of Asuna and Kirito rushing down the stairs after sleeping-in to ensure they could call out the other for being late for breakfast was replaced with a scene of Asuna and Kirito rushing UP the stairs due to being late for their meeting with the DKB.
• The scenes at Asuna and Kirito's inn, including their conversation about the boss and the guild flag, and Asuna proposing that Kirito set up his own guild and swallow up both the ALS and DKB were skipped.
• The dark elven blacksmith first noted that the Sword of Eventide was a Dark Elven sword and then gruffly told Kirito not to choose Sharpness, rather than starting off with refusing his request without context entirely
• Kirito didn't go extra polite with the dark elven blacksmith in the novel.
• Since the manga is from Asuna's perspective, some of Kirito's narration got changed into dialogue lines, giving Asuna more speaking bubbles.
• The blacksmith's remark about Kirito overrelying on his sword to carry him is an original manga scene.
• Asuna and Kirito got their shopping at the Dark Elf camp done early and still had time for some duelling practice in the novel.
• Asuna referencing her girl-on-girl talk, I mean, duel with Argo on the 5th Floor was skipped
• In the novel, Asuna and Kirito met up with Lind 7 seconds before their appointed time (they did have to make a run for it), but Lind still smugly chided them for not arriving 5 minutes early.
• Asuna and Kirito met up with the DKB in the lobby, so the DKB had yet to notice the puzzle gimmicks behind all doors. They also had a horrible time with solving the horseshoe puzzle, so Kirito had to do it for them.
• The manga didn't mention the safety measures Kirito took when giving Lind the guild flag to ensure they didn't think to steal it.
• In the novel, Lind only made his monetary offer for the flag after Kirito had listed his own terms.
• When Lind offered Kirito a bag of Cor, the novel had an instance of "later, much later, Asuna would [...]" with her opinion on Lind's offer in Kirito's narration. Kirito also had a flashback of the events with the Anneal Blade on the 1st Floor, but since the manga is from Asuna's point of view, Kirito's reverie got skipped.
• In the novel, Kirito made his own hundredfold monetary offer right after Lind's, rather than bringing it up at the end of the conversation when he got awkward at Lind's gratitude.
• Instead of thanking Kirito for keeping their standoff with the ALS in check by not letting either guild have the guild flag, Lind only asked Kirito if other inns had puzzle doors too in the novel.
• Asuna and Kirito's conversation about how Asuna expected the DKB to be more open to the idea of a merger was considerably trimmed down. Also, since Lind didn't actually thank Kirito in the novel, Asuna instead complained about how the two guilds foisted the dangerous work onto Kirito rather than working out their differencfes with the ALS.
• A lot of details on Stachion's sudoku puzzles were omitted.
• Asuna and Kirito's conversation about the PK gang after the meeting with DKB, as well as Asuna demanding that Kirito always stayed with her sight (including sharing the same two-bedroom inn), were skipped. The novel also had a lunch break before Asuna and Kirito began the Curse of Stachion quest.
• Asuna and Kirito had to wait in line to get to Cylon in the novel, as there were plenty of other players starting his quest.
• Half of Cylong's dialogue was presented as a summary in the novel. Novel Cylon also made the golden cube sound like some random item Pithagrus had on hand, rather than a treasured possesion.
• In the novel, Asuna and Kirito also visited the grave of the traveller. A conversation they had afterwards also referenced Kirito forcing Asuna into materialising the entire contents of her inventory in her room.
• The scene with Asuna and Kirito speaking "elvish" and "orcish" took place after their questioned the first NPC after Cylon and only had 6 more NPCs to go. The manga also omitted Kirito's explanation that they couldn't just skip the intermediaries and head straight for the last NPC based on Kirito's beta knowledge.
• The manga skipped the scene where Asuna asked Kirito to spoil her how the Curse of Stachion quests ends.
• Kirito's joke about Sneak Attack Caution Week got skipped.
• In the novel, the conversation about Argo's guidebook took place before the trio headed out to eat. Argo was also the one who brought up dinner, so the scene with Asuna being overbearing with Argo is a manga-original scene.
• Argo didn't propose the idea of Kirito starting his own guild before bringing up the idea of Asuna being the leader of the guild in the manga.
• "Like a beauteous messiah leading the way for the adventurers, y'seE." is a manga-original line for Argo. Additionally, the scene where Argo implies that Kirito would be keeping Asuna all to himself, which prompted both Asuna and Kirito to vehemently deny her remark, as well as the remainder of their conversation at the restaurant were also not in the novel.
• Novel Asuna was actually delighted upon seeing Pithagrus's second residence, since it reminded her of Ponte Vecchio and didn't look like a haunted house from the outside. She didn't realise there were Astral-type monsters inside until she actually steped inside.
• Various changes to dialogue line order, trimmings etc.. Some lines were even entirely different from the novel, although they did mostly cover the same points.