[Lycoris manga] Chapter 16 - ～Ｅｐｉｌｏｇｕｅ～ That Which is Passed Down

Luckily, our plans for this week went off without a hitch. So, this week we're finishing off our Lycoris project with a final/bonus open-ended chapter.

Since the manga was axed and only had one chapter left, the artist didn't have the leeway to start adapting a whole new arc, so instead he decided to replace the northern empire storyline with a one-shot original story that seems to be loosely based on one of Eugeo's character events, where Kirito and Eugeo come back to Rulid Village only to find out-of-season snow. However, instead of the weird ice from the original event, we get a revived ice dragon behind the whole thing (borrowing elements from the western empire storyline?). And while Eugeo's character event only featured him and Kirito, the artist decided to squeeze in as many characters into this chapter as he could for an ensamble send-off for the series. But even this original plot is left open-ended, as the chapter ends with some random glimpses of a possible future... that's totally not just an excuse for the artist to draw Eugeo in a spacesuit. Totally.

Honestly, it's a shame that this series got the axe so early into the story. I'm not sure why the manga was cancelled specifically, but the Project Alicization manga artist did imply that he was only given one volume worth of space to finish out his manga after the Dengeki Bunko Magazine was discontinued, so it's possible that the same thing happened with the Lycoris manga, as the Dengeki PS Magazine was also discontinued. So, it's quite possible that bureaucracy killed off this manga, rather than poor sales or anything (though it could have been a factor, if the sales were actually bad), or perhaps someone in upper management decided to finish up all SAO manga other than Progressive for some reason. Whatever the reason may be for the axe, it doesn't change the outcome that we have to live with. Personally, I'm not a fan of Lycoris's story, but I did like working on a manga that has Eugeo in it. While the manga did take a whole lot of artistic liberties, I honestly did enjoy the manga's rendition of the story somewhat better than the original version. It did give the secondary characters a chance at some deban and it did explain some of the plot points better than the game itself had, in my opinion. So, all in all, I enjoyed working on this project and I hope you all enjoyed the manga and our work on this project. In the name of the entire Dreadful Decoding team working on this project, I thank you all for following our translation of this manga to the very end.

For next week, it doesn't seem like any of our manga projects will have any chapter ready for release, so I guess I'll pull out something of my own. I did pull out a certain little project that I had lying around on the backburner deep in some drawer, so I guess that's what we'll be releasing next week. I'll take the liberty of keeping the details of what project I'm working on a secret for some suspense.

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

Any feedback is appreciated.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: Celest and MttBlue2
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Kaantantr
Proofreading: JengKay
Redrawing: Hassassin
Typesetting: Celest
Quality Assurance: MttBlue2

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 04: "Nee-sama" is a respectful way to refer to an elder sister. I decided to leave it as is, since it's used in vocative.
• Page 09+: The dragon speaks in an Archaic Lite tone. The dragon uses the personal pronoun 我 (ware), uses -ki suffices for -i adjectives, and frequently uses the word 者 (mono = person/"one who is X"). It's the kind of speech usually used for "greater being" archetype characters.
• Page 12, 13, 15, 16: The phrases "Generate Thermal Element" and "Discharge!" are meant to be uttered in (katakana) English as system commands.
• Page 12: Sempai/senpai is a Japanese word for "senior" in a line of work or in education. I decided to leave it as is in instances where it's used to adress some individual, since most anime/LN fans are aware of it. Also, due to Japanese phonetics, an "n" before a "p" is actually pronouced as an "m", which is why I went with sempai, rather than senpai.
• Page 14: Aside from instances where actual system commands are recited, Sacred Arts elements are almost always referred to with Japanese expressions (kanji), rather than English words. Since the Japanese kanji terms aren't as sophisticated as the English variants, I translated the element names literally when they are mentioned in actual Japanese. For example, the "thermal" element is called the "heat element" (熱素) outside of commands.
• Page 15, 17: "Teach" - Linel uses the word 師匠 (shishou = master/teacher), in reference to people who teach martial arts and other practical stuff like that.

Chapter 15

Index

N/A

Alternative versions:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Chapter 16 - "～Ｅｐｉｌｏｇｕｅ～ That Which is Passed Down"

Chapter 15

Index

N/A