[Re:Aincrad] Chapter 3

We were supposed to finish off Scherzo V2 this week, but since Mtt didn't think he'd get it done in time, we decided to instead release a chapter of the Re:Aincrad manga that we had been working on in the mean time, instead of making another split release.

Now, as you may recall, The First Day adaptation last chapter ended with an Asuna panel and I was wondering where the manga would be going with this. I was initally assuming that the artist decided to work on Asuna's background by introducing some original content or expanding upon the brief remarks in Progressive and volume 2... but turns out the artist just decided to re-adapt Aria all over again... but without the parody that was present in the original Progressive manga. I guess Aria was technically "covered" in episode 2 of the anime, so, technically, it does fall within the scope of this manga... though I wonder if it's only going to adapt Aria, or is it going to doubledown and become Progressive V2.0...it's definitely not following the anime timeline, if anything.

This is a short chapter that skims through Asuna's monologues in chapter 2, adds an original Kirito and Argo conversation, then returns to chapter 1 to adapt Kirito's first meeting with Asuna... and then returns back to chapter 2 to where Kirito tells her about the boss meeting. Despite how messy it sounds, it's actually all in chronological order... though I am disappointed that Asuna's monologues were skimmed through, rather than delving into her character more. You can read more on this in my little adaptation notes segment at the bottom of the page.

The next chapter of the manga continues the Aria adaptation. It's remaining pretty faithful to the novel's version of events... and even tries to explain away differences between the novel and anime, so I'll give it props for that. At least we get more Argo.

Since both Mtt and I are pretty busy, I can't predict what we're going to release this week. Finishing Scherzo V2? A Comic Anthology chapter? A new announcement? Whichever gets done first, I guess, so 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.

Any feedback is appreciated.

-Gsimenas

Credits

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

Chapter 3

Links for the translation files:

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:
  • Page 04: The final panel of the page took half a sentence from one paragraph and a series of one/two word sentences from the next paragraph, so don't be surprised that it doesn't connect well with each other. The one/two word sentences are in imperative (i.e. Asuna is giving orders to her own body), then the final line is in volitional (i.e. "let's do X").
  • Page 05: In the first panel, Asuna technically says "disappear/vanish", but I went with "burn out" since it means about the same thing but ties into the whole shooting star analogy.
  • Page 06: The page begins with Kirito mid-conversation with Argo, so the topic of the conversation only comes up in the final panel. This works well enough in Japanese, but was tough to work with in the English translation. I tried to be more loose with the translation to make the whole thing connect well, but not sure how well it works in the end. If this was a novel passage, I would have just switched up the sentences to be more coherent, but with the manga, I have to take into account what's actually shown in the panel and how big the bubbles are.
  • Page 06: 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). Argo also speaks in boyish tone, so I made her language more casual, but she's not as slangy as Klein, so I only made minor changes to her lines (mostly just omitting silent consonants).
  • Page 07: Argo uses two types of first person pronouns: orecchi (オレっち) and oira (オイラ). Both are colloquial/dialectal variants of the casual masculine 俺 (ore) pronoun, usually used by people from the countryside. Orecchi seems to be prevalent in Shizuoka dialect and surrounding regions. Only the orecchi variant was used in this chapter and I tend to use "li'l ol' me" for it.
  • Page 13: "Just like a flash, huh" - the artist forced in a reference to Asuna's nickname (閃光 = The Flash) in the final panel. The original text was 閃光のようなプレイヤーだな (senkou no youna pureiya da na, lit. "a player that's like a flash"). It didn't sound all that great in English, so we simplified it to be less jarring.
Adaptation notes:
This chapter adapts chapters 1-2 of Aria of a Starless Night from Progressive volume 1.
  • Asuna's monologues early on in the chapter are kinda faithful, but mostly glossed over.
  • Argo's conversation with Kirito is entirely original... and not what happened in the novel. Kirito wasn't aware of Asuna being in the labyrinth, nor that she was a girl until he encountered her and got a closer look at her.
  • In the novel, Kirito had a conversation with Asuna in the Labyrinth about her overexerting herself, before she passed out. And she wasn't in the middle of a fight when she did.
  • Various dialogue trimming and rephrasings.

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