drawn Jan 25, '04
posted for Jan 19, 2007
(50)
50th picture! Cool!Anyhoo, this is a picture of three great characters from the pentology (like a trilogy of five) called The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. The bearded man is Merriman Lyon, a mysterious figure who everyone seems to know casually. The elderly man on the right is Captain Toms, a kindly old seafarer who lives in a big stone house with his lovely red dog, Rufus. The boy in the middle is one of the most main characters: Will Staunton, an eleven year old boy who wakes up on his birthday and finds the world upside down and discovers a startling heritage. He's my favourite character.
Although Will is eleven, in 'reality' he is an ageless, powerful Old One, one of an ancient group called the Light (who are fighting against the Dark, no surprise there) who seem to centre on Welsh myths like King Arthur. All these three in this picture are Old Ones. Will is the youngest and last, and Merriman is the eldest. I liked The Dark is Rising very much.
Well, I have some translation troubles with The Last Exile: the last few episodes have been translating the first line - which is English anyway - as "Just keep on trying, keep on flying, I will be the light" which makes about as much sense as "need to run" which isn't much sense in the first place. Also, the "calling, calling the stars" has been re-configured in the Japanese subtitles as "(Umi no) mukou ni hikari ga sasu hou e" which means now "Towards the rays of light that slant downward beyond the sea of clouds". I like the first version better. Here it is compared phonetically with Japanese pronunciation:
| U-mi no
ka - ri-n, ka-ri-n da su-ta-su |
| U-mi no mu-kou
ni hi-ka-ri ga sa - su hou e |
'ou' is normally pronounced as 'oh' in Japanese and 'i' as 'ee'. The 'ru' in stars is left out, as they sometimes do (Fiya Emuburemu, anyone? - Fire Emblem) Anyway, this seems a little far-fetched when I clearly do not hear the second version. The 'hou e' is, in the first version, just a melodic cry or moan a couple of bars after the line ended.
Now, I don't understand or speak any Japanese at all (well, besides such useful phrases I picked up from the Tsubasa anime like 'shinjimasen' and 'mahou' - more useful would be daijobu and Chikoi-wan or the words like 'wakarimasen' from some of the Japanese courses I took) so I can't tell which is the actually correct version. The second version makes no coherent sense, anyway. However, lots of people hear English song lyrics differently. Here's proof.
I'm also a bit confused about Ravey: all the subtitles on Leslie's DVDs say Ravey, yet the title of one episode is Etude Lavie (in English text, not subtitles) and other sites call her Lavi. I also like Aru and Arvis instead of Al and Alvis.
Greek is used liberally in The Last Exile. Cool. Here is a site that includes some translations.
I just learned from DiscDrive that the phrase "no strings attached" comes from the silk industry - if there was even a slight flaw, they would put a string on the end of the cloth.