the 1999-2006 book series for children obviously wasn't an allegory for what's happening now but revisiting as an adult, the VFD come off as basic liberals (lofty ideals, zero follow through) who refuse to throw a punch as the bad guys literally murder them and start fires and exploit mob psychology
-unrepentantly evil charlatan whips up credulous bloodthirsty populist mobs everywhere -as villains burn it all down, primary opposition is a passive/ineffectual org -young people realize the authorities/courts will not save them
good thing A Series of Unfortunate Events is fiction (just rewatched)
when the author thinks my stance re: "English does not tolerate repetition" is a bluff and not a boulder of a principle that I've chained myself to and that will drag me off a cliff
go ahead make all 95 characters say 了解 in a row, see if I blink
of course, the amateur mistake would be to equate alien syntax (to us) with the author intending characters to sound like aliens. but no! it says nothing about characterization. purposely shackling the sentence's chunks to those same speech bubbles in target lang. would be a misleading TL artifact
there's also this fun spot where Sakamoto abandons his photorealistic art style for a single panel to do cartoony caricatures of Jack the Ripper suspects. the Scotland Yard sketch artist seems to be Naoki Urasawa!
the contents of volume 5 of DRCL are up for ~free(ish) if you're subbed to the SJ app
this book covers the arc where Joe Suwa is convinced Dracula is Jack the Ripper, and he unleashes his steampunk clockwork Renfield sex doll made in the image of Luke/Lucy Westenra
"I wish I had been a J>E translator in the 80s/90s"
✔️Would probably own a house ❌No internet, basic research grueling to impossible, must resort to school of Woolsey, let's say the sign says "The High Point of Your Day"
new bucket list item: intercept Wataru Watanabe during his annual summer cycling journey to Kyushu, tell him I translate his work, get drawn as a stick figure in volume 137 or whatever, translate the anecdote about him encountering me
