Chapter 005: The hero suddenly proposed to me, but . . .

Also known as: Yuusha-sama ni Ikinari Kyuukonsareta no Desu ga ( 勇者様にいきなり求婚されたのですが )

Author: Togashi Seiya (富樫聖夜)

Artist: Watanabe Una (渡辺うな)

Read chapter one

Read chapter two

Read chapter three

Read chapter four

The hero suddenly proposed to me, but . . .

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Reika’s Notes:

This time I commissioned Rin (rinruritrans@gmail.com) to translate the chapter for me. I did the proofreading, editing, and typesetting. This release took longer because there was a large amount of text. You can view the status of each chapter on this page.

Sound effects

On page 26 there is actually a pretty HUGE sound effect. I removed it since I tried to translate and edit it but my skills suck. It’s basically “ba-dump” (the sound of Greed’s heartbeat) as he falls madly in love at first sight. Greed’s thoughts are translated and he thinks “My heart pounded. My soul trembled.” etc. so I think readers get the idea that his heart pounded even without the sound effect.

It would be better if I could make a handwritten sound effect. Too bad I don’t have the skill for it.

Do you prefer no sound, just the text? That is the one that is up there with the rest of the pages since I felt it would be less intrusive. Sometimes including a special translator’s note for SFX seems intrusive to me and with this being the special romantic moment, I thought it would ruin the mood. Or do you prefer the one with the big sound effect included? Let me know what you think.

Aria’s skill

When Greed used his analyse skill, he found that Aria has a skill of her own: Tsukkomi EX.

Now, in many ways, this presented a problem. The translation options were:

Tsukkomi EX – just keep it literal

Verbal Riposte EX – translate the skill in English

Tsukkomi EX (T/N: The “straight man” of the Japanese comedy duo.) – keep it literal but put in a translator’s note

I would normally use the second option but in this case, the next page has Greed wondering “what is that skill?” which means that this skill is meant to be pretty obscure. Therefore, I decided to keep it as “Tsukkomi EX” but explain it here in the notes.

Tsukkomi EX – Aria’s skill is all about being the “straight man” or the person who shoots down jokes.

There is one particular style of traditional Japanese comedy called manzai (漫才), which is a type of two-man act. One man is called the boke, who is the buffoon; the jokester; the funny guy. The boke will make jokes, many of which (to American audiences at least) are groan comedy. The other member of the pair is called the tsukkomi, and his job is to react to the boke’s jokes (often critically), taking on a role very much like “the straight man” in Western comedic practice. (source)

Allow me to illustrate this in one picture:

In this picture of a comedic scene, Sousuke is the Boke as he has a detonator in hand and is about to make something explode, while Kaname is the Tsukkomi, she is stopping him from destroying private property. The paper fan is a classic prop of the Tsukkomi.

Perhaps Aria’s Tsukkomi EX skill was developed because she is surrounded by idiots everyday and she has developed her “stop these morons from doing something stupid” skill? We’ll see if she uses this skill in the next chapters.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think. I absolutely adore comments so keep ’em coming.