As explained in our announcement post for the project, Re:Aincrad is a reboot of the very first arc of the series in manga format, since the original adaptation of the arc... wasn't all that great. The first chapter adapts the opening day events, Kayaba's tutorial and so on. Truth be told, this chapter basically turns the first episode of the anime into a manga, so it doesn't offer anything new per se, aside from adapting the inner monologues, unlike the anime. However, the manga will also adapt novel content that the anime skipped over, such as the First Day story in the next chapter, so stay tuned!
Since the chapter is basically a manga version of episode 1, I decided to write my adaptation notes based on the anime episode, rather than the original novel story.
On a side note, Celest has been doing such a great job with our manga releases lately that Mtt has decided to leave this project entirely in his hands. So, congrats Celest on graduating from being a kouhai!
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.
Finally, a standard thank you to all of those who contributed to the SAO Scans project for helping us get the raws.
Any feedback is appreciated.
-Gsimenas
Credits
Raws: CelestTranslation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas, Kaantantr
Redrawing: Celest
Typesetting: Celest
Quality Assurance: Mttblue2
N/A |
Chapter 1
Links for the translation files:Translation (choice/nuance) comments:
- Page 7: "we'll be doing a feature" - the original text was the Engrishy phrase "ピックアップ" (pick-up). Since the literal translation doesn't work in English, I rephrased it to make more sense.
- Page 16+: Klein speaks in a coarse masculine tone in Japanese. To account for this, I made his lines more slangy and casual (you -> ya, to -> ta, aren't -> ain't, did you -> didja and so on + trimming and abbreviating words).
- Page 16: "rundown of the ropes" - in the original text, Klein used the English word "lecture", but it didn't quite fit all that well in the translation, so I changed it to "rundown".
- Pages 19-21: "Sword Skills" (ソードスキル) refer to system-assisted combat moves with specific weapons. The word "technique" (技) is used to refer to (specific) Sword Skill moves.
- Pages 19, 21: The word "motion" (モーション) is said in katakanized English in the original text.
- Page 23: "Go get him, tiger" - the original phrase was "向こうに行ってこい" (mukou ni ittekoi = head to the other guy). The literal translation sounded awkward, so I went a little creative with it to sound more natural.
- Page 26: RPG was written in the Western alphabet in the original text. It also had the words ロールプレイングゲーム (role-playing game) as furigana to explain what the abbreviation meant. Klein only used the abbreviation in his speech.
- Page 29: Since Kirito uses regular casual Japanese without excessive masculine patterns in his speech, I try to avoid using words like "dude" in his lines, since that's what I use to emphasise Klein's more laid-back speech. But I do use it as a translation for the word 奴 (yatsu) when Kirito decides to use this word particularly.
- Page 30: Kirito's statement about getting to the 8th Floor in the beta is based on the original anime, which came before Progressive changed it to 10 floors, 1 month. For reference, the original first volume of the LN used 6 floors, 2 months.
- Page 32: "With a single sword in-hand" - the original line was "剣（こいつ）一本 (ken (koitsu) ippon)", where the word "剣" (sword) had furigana that said "this thing/this guy". Kirito actually said koitsu, rather than ken. The "sword" part was just added below the furigana for clarity on what he was referring to.
- Page 37: "Kleinmeister" - in the original text, Klein used the first person pronoun ore (俺) and appended the honorfic -sama (様) to it. When appended to the names of other people, -sama expresses respect... but when it's used on your own pronoun, it makes the person sound arrogant, kinda like adding "Lord" to it. Since there was no easy way to account for this in English using the honorific itself, I got creative.
- Page 37: "Just call in a Game Master (GM)" - the word "call" was in katakana English (コール = kooru) in the original text. The phrase "Game Master" (ゲームマスター = geimu masutah) had the abbreviation "GM" in English as furigana. Kirito said "Game Master" specifically... not sure why the "GM" was even needed... maybe some people are more familiar with the abbreviation?
- Page 39: "the sole human being" - this is a rather literal translation, but Cardinal controls the world too, so I decided to play it safe.
- Page 50: The original text had "SAO" written out in letters, with the words "Sword Art Online" (ソードアート・オンライン) as furigana. Kayaba actually says the full game title, not the abbreviation.
- Page 52: Kayaba Akihiko refers to players using the phrase プレイヤーの諸君 (pureiyah no shokun). The word 諸君 (shokun) is used to refer to other people when addressing them for something official (such as how "ladies and gentlemen" is used in English). I translated the first instance of this word as "ladies and gentlement" to set the tone, and translated later instances as "Dear Players".
- Page 59: "G.I.R.L." - the original phrase was ネカマ, which is a Japanese slang word for guys who play as girls online... and "G.I.R.L." was even one of the translation options on a dictionary, so I just went with that.
- Page 61: "I developed SAO for one purpose, and one purpose alone: to create this world and intervene in it." - after we released this chapter, I caught a mistake in the original text. Akihiko intended to say "take pleasure from observing", not "intervene". See this post for a more in-depth explanation.
- Page 67: "I spent… several nights" - technically, Klein only says "overnight". He doesn't mention how many night he spent in-line specifically, but since he was among the group of people who've been said to be camping at the storefronts for three whole days, I decided to use "several" specifically.
- Page 67: "buds" - Klein used the word ダチ (dachi), a colloquial abbreviation of the word "友達" (tomodachi = friends).
This chapter adapts episode 1 of the anime (which is based on chapters 2-3 of volume 1 of the novel).
- Suguha and Kazuto got an extra line before the latter logged into the game.
- Kirito's first line after logging into SAO is a bit longer in the manga.
- Pages 26-27 - different dialogue order.
- Page 33 - Klein stole one of Kirito's lines in the first panel, for some reason. It was supposed to be said by Kirito, but the bubble is pointing to Klein instead...
- Page 33-35 - dialogue order changed.
- Page 40 - greatly trimmed dialogue. The manga skipped Kirito's comments about Suguha not liking games... and then kicking Klein in the balls to get him off him. Granted, the latter is an anime-original scene.
- The manga skipped Kirito daydreaming about being hit by boars and about how his fingers were bleeding. Guess the anime's artistic liberties were a bit confusing even for the manga.
- Various dialogue trimming and rephrasings.
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