Noragami Chapter 70

Noragami chapter 70 is now in English. Let the fandom meltdown re-commence.

Google Mirror

Mediafire Mirror

Translation notes below

Sample images

Translation notes below the cut

Page 3

The chapter title is just the character “上“, which can mean “up”, “above”, “top”, “increase”, “summit”, or “superior”. I went with “On High” to kind of cover all of those and the tone of the chapter.

Page 6

Dangling objects: the bane of all Japanese-to-English translations. Yukine’s original line is a much more active “I (killed) Bishamon”, but with the “killed” left off. There is no way to keep this line in active voice in English and delete that word, so it has to be flipped passive, but in doing so it makes Yukine sound less culpable.

Page 7

Yato is best dad.

Page 8

I’m not sure why they continue to conceal Arahabaki’s face, since from the clothing showing it seems obvious by now that he’s the Emishi we met earlier. However, his lines on these pages are in a completely different speech style than when he’s spoken previously. The Emishi god speaks with a provincial northern accent, and the god here speaks with the same “old timey formal” style as the other gods. However, perhaps he only slips back into “hick talk” when not dealing with the other gods. Similarly, Yato speaks much more formally than normal through much of this chapter.



Page 10

HIYORI, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

Page 28

The “three sacred treasures” (三種の神器 / sanshu no jingi) also called the “imperial regalia” are the mirror, the sword, and the jewel. “Jingi” is spelled with the same kanji as “shinki”, however I translated the term out this time due to the “three sacred treasures” being an actual thing.

Page 30

The jingi’s names are written out in hiragana rather than kanji like shinki names. “Mikagami” would be the mirror, “Mitsurugi” would be the sword, and I’m assuming going by this naming scheme, the third one would be “Mitama”.



Page 36

This is Nora talking at the bottom of the page here. It’s more obvious in Japanese due to the pronoun usage, but since she isn’t shown at all, it could be confusing.



Page 39

The term “kakure-miya” rears its head again. It literally means “hidden shrine”, and first appeared when Ebisu’s sentence was being carried out. The official subtitles in Aragoto called it the “shrine of holding” or something, which is equally unhelpful. In mythology “kakure-miya” was the place built by Izanagi after he finished with creation, to live out the rest of his days in hiding. It can also refer to a hidden burial chamber. The connotation seems to be that it’s where the gods are when people complain “where were the gods when I needed them?” They’re, like, living it up on their private island somewhere where you can’t bug them. But since in Ebisu’s case it’s a forced getaway, I went with “exile”.

