The Stories of Ibis, by Hiroshi Yamamoto (Haikasoru), first impressions

[elfs]

The Stories of Ibis, by Hiroshi Yamamoto. Haikasoru Press.

I have to wonder: are the cliches translator Takami Nieda uses ("as frightful as a visit from the Grim Reaper", "city walls like a canyon", "plain to see") as grey-worn and thin-heeled as the ones in the original Japanese?

That said, the writer has a wonderful grip on what I've come to expect from Japanese modern literature. The description of Ibis is utterly mangaesque:

While it's proportions were human, it was plain to see that it was a machine. No human could be this beautiful.

Steadying its perch atop the bus, it thrust out its chest and rested its right hand on its hip as if to preen over its own beauty. In human years, it apeared to be in its late teens. It had bright red hair and wore hemispherical goggles resembling the compound eyes of a dragonfly. Emblazoned on its face was a tattoo in the shape of a flame. Its left hand gripped a long metal rod. It wore something like a two-toned racing suit made of shiny artificial leather, but the areas from the neck to its breasts as well as the sides of the hips were naked.

Yeeee....ah. Anyone who's ever read watched any superhero or magical girl anime, or see a race queen, or read manga, knows precisely what Ibis looks like. She's basically Motoko Kusanagi with red hair dye.

Still, Yamamoto's description of Ibis' arrival in Shinjuku, and the fight scene that erupts, is slightly more credible as anything that happens in anime, although Ibis later claims she could probably take Duenan Knute in a hand-to-hand fight.

We'll see...

Comments

A lot of its

[(Anonymous)]

Gee, there are a lot of "it"s in that quote... In addition to using cliches, looks like the translator simply isn't very good at writing smooth, readable English. The translation itself might be stone-perfect, for all I know, but unless he can put it into good English, I sorta wonder what the point is...