[Re:Aincrad] Chapter 2

As you may have inferred from the previous post, the Dreadful Decoding team has been having issues keeping up with our weekly release pace. I'm personally struggling with a 60 hour work week (on average; usually not distributed evenly on a week-per-week basis) over two hospitals (+ seminars, evaluations etc.), which means that I can't devote that much time to translations nowadays. On quite a few weeks, the best I can do is a short manga translation or nothing at all. Even when I do manage to find time for non-manga projects, they tend to be pretty long and need an extra week or more for editing, in addition to the time needed for translation, so they can't be released on the same week as I finish my draft translation. Meanwhile, our chief manga editor has been finding it hard to work on his manga projects, so we're often struggling to have something available for release. Last week, we suffered a combination of the two issues: my week was spent preparing for a seminar on workdays and running all over the Emergency Department over the weekend, since I got two shifts there in a row on this specific week; meanwhile, Mtt was unable to finish working on a Scherzo chapter we were planning to release that week.

Since neither of us had anything ready for release, Celest and Kaan pitched in to get chapter 2 of the Re:Aincrad manga prepped for release earlier than planned... although we didn't actually make it in time to make a weekend release, but better late than never, I suppose. This is a pretty long chapter though, so I'm sure it's been worth the wait.

Anyway, with that sombre preamble out of the way, let's get down to the fun part. With the second chapter of the manga, Re:Aincrad parts away from the animeverse by adapting a fan-loved story (so much so that a certain someone made a joke anime announcement for the story on April Fool's last year) that both the anime and the original Aincrad manga skipped: The First Day/Day of Beginnings (はじまりの日). It's a pretty decent adaptation of the story, albeit there are some changes. Most changes come about due to the different nature of the medium, but there is one major change that leads to a plot hole due to a certain reveal in another side story (The Next Day)... as well as changing some implications behind the characters' actions even disregarding that plot hole. You can read more on this in my little adaptation notes segment at the bottom of the page.

The next chapter of this manga series is apparently... going to redo Aria of a Starless Night... which is rather unexpected. Technically, Aria was adapted to season 1, episode 2, so I guess this is the logic behind doing an Aria V2.0 manga. I'm interested in seeing where this will go, if anything...

Due to the aforementioned situation with our team, I'm not sure what we're going to release at the end of this week at this point. Stay tuned.

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: Celest
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas, Kaantantr
Redrawing: Celest
Typesetting: Celest

Chapter 1

Index

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 01: "VRMMORPG" is written in the Western alphabet.
• Page 02: Kayaba Akihiko's infamous quote is これはゲームであっても、遊びではない (Kore wa gehmu deattemo, asobi dewa nai = This might be a game, but it's not meant to be played). Akihiko uses the English word "game" in the first instance, while the second instance uses the noun form of the verb 遊ぶ (asobu = "to play"). In this instance, however, Kirito says これはゲームであって、ゲームではない (Kore wa gehmu deatte, gehmu dewa nai = it's a game, but it's not a game). This phrasing doesn't make much sense in English without some extra words to hammer home the intended nuance.
• Page 07: The NPC refers to Kirito as 旅の剣士さん (tabi no kenshi-san). To account for the honorific "-san", I added "dear" in the translation.
• Page 07: The quest featured in this story is called 森の秘薬 (Mori no Hiyaku) in the original text. Unfortunately, it's one of those pieces of terminology that don't have a consistent translation. The fan translation of the original story by Tap used "Secret Medicine of the Forest". When Yen Press came into the fray, their translator's first encounter with the quest wasn't in Volume 8, but rather in Progressive Volume 1, where it was mentioned in passing as a reference to volume 8. Since the translator didn't know the context for the quest at the time, he translated the quest name as "Herbs of the Forest", even though the quest involved plant monsters rather than simple herbs. When the official translator finally got to volume 8, the quest name was retranslated to "Forest Elixir", which is a more suitable name for the quest. However, I personally found all the translations somewhat lacking. The quest isn't actually "secret", nor does it have "herbs", and "elixir" makes it sound like some witch quest. The 森 (Mori) in the quest name means "Forest", while the word 秘薬 (Hiyaku) consists of the kanji for "conceal" and "drug/medicine"; however, its meaning is twofold: it can either literally mean "secret medicine", or less literally refer to a "wonder drug" or "miracle cure/remedy". Since the translation for the quest name is inconsistent anyway, I decided to make my own translation of the quest name in a way that I believe it best reflects what the quest is about. So, after a discussion with my editors, we'll be going with the name "Miracle Remedy of the Forest" in DD's translations.
• Page 08: Kirito's bubble used the word 妹 (little sister) with スグ (Sugu) as furigana.
• Page 09: "they're kindly refraining from taking the NerveGear off my head" - I would have gone for "ripping [...] off" rather than "taking [...] off" in this case, but apparently the novel and manga used different words. The novel used 剝ぎ取ろうとはしなかった (hagitorou towa shinakatta) while the manga shortened it to just 取らないでいて (toranaideite). 剥ぎ取る (hagitoru) literally means ripping something off, while 取る (toru) is a more general "take off"
• Page 11+: Kirito and Coper refer to Little Nepenthes with flowers as 花つき (hanatsuki = "with-flowers") and the Nepenthes with fruit as 実つき (mitsuki = "with-fruit"). Since a literal translation of these terms sounds awkward, I decided to get creative and came up with "flowerhead" and "fruithead" respectively... since both the flowers and fruit grow on their heads, get it?
• Page 13: 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 15+: The original character of the story is named コペル (koperu) in Japanese. We decided to stick to the old fantranslation rendition of "Coper" for it in English, because we think it looks better. For reference, Yen Press translated the name as "Kopel".
• Page 16: The phrase "trial ＆ error" was in katakanised English (トライ＆エラー = torai ＆ erah) in the original text.
• Page 19: Coper's "nice" was in katakanised English (ナイス！ = naisu!)
• Page 21: "Something that boosts DEF" - the original text was ＤＦ強化系 (DF kyouka-kei = DF boosting type). For some reason, "defence" was abbreviated as "DF" rather than the usual "DEF".
• Page 41: "Esteemed Travelling Swordsman" - the NPC used the honorific "-sama" in this case, which I accounted for by adding "Esteemed".

Adaptation notes:
This chapter adapts "The First Day" ("Day of Beginnings") side story from volume 8 of the main light novel series.

• Kirito's monologue on page 2 was entirely original. In the original text, Kirito finished his though with "Everything Kayaba had said was the truth".
• Kirito's monologues about death games and his reasonings for why he left town as soon as he could were omitted.
• In the novel, Kirito only attacked a boar on impulse due to a pang of self-loathing, rather than meticulously hunting them down for experience points.
• The scene where Kirito saw his own reflection in a mirror and the explanation for why he didn't purchase a new weapon from a store were omitted.
• The manga didn't bother with the initial dialogue that prompted Kirito's quest.
• In the novel, Kirito only got to see Agatha and the end of the quest, since she was in another room that had been locked back in the beta test.
• Kirito's monologue about skill slots and Searching/Hiding skills was replaced with a covnersation with Coper.
• In the novel, Kirito fought against a Little Nepenthes before meeting Coper. Accordingly, the narration about the monster's attack patterns and notable points came earlier as well.
• Kirito spent fifteen minutes fighting Little Nepenthes and defeated eleven of them before he came across Coper in the novel. Additionally, it was Coper who sneaked up on Kirito upon noticing him levelling up, rather than Kirito coming across Coper fighting the Nepenthes. Coper catching Kirito unawares was also foreshadowing for the fact that Coper had been using the Hiding skill, which was why Kirito didn't notice the guy until he revealed himself. There's also an issue that the manga overlooks with this change: as revealed in The Next Day, the quest could only be accepted by 1 player in a 24 hour window, so Coper and Kirito can't have both accepted the quest on the same day. Since Coper was late to the party in the novel, this implies that Coper couldn't have accepted the quest himself... which gives him a reason to want to take Kirito out of the picture.
• On page 14, Coper's argument for letting Kirito have the first drop was that Kirito had reached the forest spot first. Since the manga skipped this nuance, his argument was accordingly changed to "I was the one who brought the idea up".
• Kirito's monologues while fighting alongside Coper were skipped.
• Coper saving Kirito from a Nepenthes' attack is an original manga scene. In the novel, the two of them were fighting different monsters when Kirito's monologues resulted in Kirito being so distracted that he almost got hit by the Nepenthes.
• Kirito and Coper's talk about skills were an original manga scene that replaced an earlier Kirito monologue infodump.
• The manga doesn't make clear that Kirito and Coper had spent over an hour fighting Nepenthes, killing about a hundred and fifty of them and reaching level 3 before they got their first flowerhead.
• Kirito alerted Coper to the fruithead's persence using gestures, rather than words in the novel.
• The manga omitted Kirito's monologue about a rumour that flowerheads turned into fruitheads over time if they weren't killed off soon, which added to Kirito and Coper's pressure of attacking it here and now.
• Kirito's monologues when Coper triggered the Nepenthes trap were greatly trimmed.
• The scene of Kirito getting whacked by a Nepenthes and only regaining his will to fight after remebering the NPC girl whom he associated with Suguha was a manga original addition. In the novel, Kirito realised that Coper's plan would backfire on him and made use of this knowledge to only focus on the Nepenthes going after him so he'd have the chance to escape. Kirito's dialogue about the pitfalls of Hiding had also come before the final battle.
• Kirito's monologue at the end of the final Nepenthes battle was omitted.
• Various dialogue trimming and rephrasings.