Bronze: Commentary & Translations

Here I trace my way through Minami Ozaki's Bronze, picking out certain scenes and moments which especially catch my attention. I'm only browsing, so this is a somewhat piecemeal and incomplete treatment, not a synopsis or even a review. These are my own comments on Bronze, personal and biased as they are, along with fragments of translation, which may be sporadic and not necessarily accurate. It's also the English translation of a Chinese translation of the Japanese original. You have been warned. Corrections and suggestions welcome.

Expect these documents to evolve along with my understanding of the events. Since I'm skimming certain scenes and giving detailed examination to others, I may add more information if I happen to go back and read over a scene more carefully. This is especially true since my command of the language is somewhat limited, and later readings may throw a better light on the true meaning. I can't think of a convenient way to flag these updates, except to indicate at the start of each document when it was last modified.

Book 1

Act 1 (23 Sep 1998)
Act 2 (23 Sep 1998)

Book 2

Act 3 (6 Feb 2000)

Book 3

Act 3 (10 March 2000)

Translation guide:
Angular brackets <> are used to denote thoughts, as opposed to speech.
Square brackets [] within a translation denote my own comments.

A note about Japanese honorifics:
I haven't reproduced these because I can't always deduce from the Chinese text what the Japanese original was meant to be. Translating them poses a dilemma for me. For the most part I've just used the plain name of the person referred to. Where the situation seems more formal, I've used 'Mr' or 'Ms' or whatever. Also, for references to siblings, I've decided to alternate between using the given name and the relationship label. So for example, sometimes Serika will call Izumi by his given name ('Takuto'), and sometimes she'll call him 'Brother'. The same goes for Akihito and Hirose.