[Progressive manga] Canon of the Golden Rule - Chapter 5

Surprise! Since it's Halloween, Mtt decided to give everyone a treat by making a DOUBLE release today! So, since the Aria movie just premiered in Japan, here's a Progressive-themed manga release as a bonus li'l treat!

Chapter 5 of the manga covers the end of Asuna and Kirito's encounter with Morte and Joe. The manga does still take some creative liberties (I've made a detailed adaptation note list below, for those interested in a comparison), but nothing major.

I'll be having shitty schedule next week, so our next release will have to be a filler, unfortunately.

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.

-Gsimenas

Credits

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

Canon #005

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Canon #004

Index

Canon #006

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 02+: Joe speaks in a very coarse manner, so I tried making his speech more informal and slangy.
• Page 04+: Morte speaks in an informally polite tone with a speech quirk, wherein he elongates the final vowel (usually the sentence ending particle) in his sentences. The elongation consists of an extra small kana for the vowel + a vowel elongation mark (chouonpu, ー). So, sentences that end in desu ka (ですか) become desu kaah (ですかぁー), sentences that end in desu ne (ですね) become desu neeh (ですねぇー) and so on. To account for this quirk, I tried to include some kind of filler phrase at the end of his sentences that I then elongated with an em dash + extra vowels. I also made him sound a tad more formal, but sprinkled his speech with some slang and informal expressions, since he's basically feigning being polite. Strangely enough, Yen Press made Morte sound like the informal guy and made Joe sound like he was speaking regular old Japanese, rather than coarsely informal Japanese.
• Page 08: "Guess it's time for a little carrot." - the original phrase was (仕掛けるか), where 仕掛ける (shikakeru) implicitly refers to setting up a trap. I tried using carrots in the sense of "A reward that is promised to someone as an incentive to complete some task" to imply "bait" for a trap indirectly to imply Kirito's intentions without explicitly stating that he's going for a bluff.
• Page 12: Amputation damage (部位欠損ダメージ, lit. "(body) part loss damage)) is a term for when an avatar loses a part of their body (e.g., when Kuradeel chopped off Kirito's hand in volume 1/season 1 episode 10). Yen Press has translated this term as either "limb damage" (V1) or "part-loss damage" (PV5). Fan translations for V1 also went with "part-loss damage". However, "limb damage" is inaccurate, since it can also imply fractures, rather than literally chopping a limb off; meanwhile, "part-loss" doesn't specify that it refers to body parts. After consulting my editor back when translating Sugary Days, we decided to go with "amputation" instead of either of Yen Press's versions, as it's both accurate and succinct.
• Page 17: "Astral-type" in the original text was written as 幽霊 (yuurei, "ghost") with アストラル系 (Asutoraru-kei, "astral-type") in furigana. This notation was used to explain what the English word "astral" means in Japanese.
• Page 17: "It has even more oomph than that" - the original word for "oomph" was the English word "impact" (インパクト). In actual English, the word sounded a bit awkward in that sentence, so I decided to use a different phrase to capture the intended meaning and colloquialism.
• Page 18: A True Critical (真クリティカル, Shin-kuritikaru) refers to a phenomenon when a player randomly deals much more damage than usual. Unlike Weak Point Criticals (弱点クリティカル, Jakuten Kuritikaru), True Criticals aren't a product of hitting a vital area of the target; rather, it's the old school critical that just randomly buffs a specific attack for no apparent reason.

Adaptation notes:

• Kirito's first line to Morte and Morte's first line in response have been rephrased entirely.
• Kirito's narrations have been rephrased to shorter monologues to better fit a manga format.
• Asuna's monologues in this chapter weren't in the novel; instead, they're based on Kirito's narration.
• Kirito's explanation for how fatique works in SAO was omitted.
• The manga omitted Kirito's monologue about how he would usually not have risked pursuing Morte after severing his arm as it carried a lot of risk, but Asuna being put at danger made him too mad to care about that.
• Morte's monologue wasn't in the novel; it's an adaptation of Kirito's narration.
• In the novel, Kirito only realised that Morte's HP kept on dwindling because of continuous piercing damage after Joe butted in. Additionally, Joe noticed Morte's condition on his own without Asuna's reaction
• Asuna wasn't the one who made Kirito hesitate to kill Morte. It was Joe rushing in to his partner's aid that forced Kirito to retrieve his sword to defend himself.
• Various dialogue trimming and rephrasings.