Amaryllis

[MangaDex]

 

[Fuko]

that cover though

 

[Pokari]

Still waiting for someone to translate this. I couldn't puzzle my way through the raws, whatever was going on was far too strange for me to fill in any gaps, or rather I couldn't grasp what was going on in the first place XD

_{Though I don't know if, afterwards, I'll find out that I really didn't want to know afterall. At the time it came out I'd rather liked everything else the author had written, but his stuff has clearly gotten a little stranger and more provocative, at least some of it. Not that it'd never not been strange. I'm just not ruling out the possibility of being unpleasantly surprised, is all. I'd still like to know, though XD}

 

[tangentbell]

Still waiting for someone to translate this. I couldn't puzzle my way through the raws, whatever was going on was far too strange for me to fill in any gaps, or rather I couldn't grasp what was going on in the first place XD

_{Though I don't know if, afterwards, I'll find out that I really didn't want to know afterall. At the time it came out I'd rather liked everything else the author had written, but his stuff has clearly gotten a little stranger and more provocative, at least some of it. Not that it'd never not been strange. I'm just not ruling out the possibility of being unpleasantly surprised, is all. I'd still like to know, though XD}

I'm curious what you thought now that it's translated lol

 

[Pokari]

I'm curious what you thought now that it's translated lol

Aww, I got a Christmas pesent! You're wonderful. I have wanted to know what was going on in this for... heck, a decade.

...

...Well. In some ways I'm not as shook as I was back in 2014-ish when I first saw the raws (remember also that homophobia was going even stronger back then, so the thought of a shounen-jump author writing something gay was still pretty darn spicy), and everything Teppei had written that I knew of was perfectly straight and fell reasonably neatly under the penumbra of standard shounen comics (granted that for instance, yes, in retrospect, the protagonist of Samurai Usagi bucking some of the softer gender norms for the protagonist was already like 40% of its charm).

But Bokura wa Mahou Shounen (or at least, what I remember of the first several chapters before it got too much for me) was already a pretty full-throated venture into queer-curiousness, in the process doubling down on the interesting dissonance in some of the previous works between "we're not sure we're being fully healthy about this situation" (e.g. again using Samurai Usage as an example, the foundational premise of an arranged child marriage, committed to horrifyingly casually and without preparing anyone for it) yet at the same time "all of the characters are going to do their best with what they have, sometimes adorably". Even though I've ceased to be fully clear which side the mangaka was approaching that tension from. So, like, okay, that somewhat prepared me for this?

But if Mahou Shounen was doubling down on that tension—this is, like, taking the unhealthy side to the fifth power, we've blown out the proverbial speakers. And honestly, we've gotten to the point where I'm very uncomfortable. So, I'll tell you what I think once I manage to get past the crippling anxiety I'm feeling by the time I hit page 21.

Edit: Okay, finished!

Spoiler

Yeah, I dunno what to say, it's powerful as hell, but I sure preferred the lighter Teppei stuff where the trauma isn't quite this bad and gets better and everyone proverbially hugs it out at the end. (By the way, posting just the oneshot without the rest of the anthology and therefore the epilogue is criminal XD not that it seemingly provides any real closure even with it, or makes anything any much healthier, but you made me dig up the raws for this on my old computer to confirm it didn't really end just on that note. Thankfully my Japanese was enough to maybe puzzle through the last few pages @.@)

Honestly. This one feels a bit like a call for help in some ways, and it worries me a little. Like this was a decade ago, but. I can't help but wonder if anything in this a reflection of Teppei beating himself up over being a nasty nasty man for whatever sexual preferences he has or had (be it through the protagonist's viewpoint symbolically as someone who sees themselves as "tainted and dirty", or through the satanically vile mangaka who "does all this while writing children's books").

All that said, sincerely, thank you for translating this.

 

[tangentbell]

Aww, I got a Christmas pesent! You're wonderful. I have wanted to know what was going on in this for... heck, a decade.

...

...Well. In some ways I'm not as shook as I was back in 2014-ish when I first saw the raws (remember also that homophobia was going even stronger back then, so the thought of a shounen-jump author writing something gay was still pretty darn spicy), and everything Teppei had written that I knew of was perfectly straight and fell reasonably neatly under the penumbra of standard shounen comics (granted that for instance, yes, in retrospect, the protagonist of Samurai Usagi bucking some of the softer gender norms for the protagonist was already like 40% of its charm).

But Bokura wa Mahou Shounen (or at least, what I remember of the first several chapters before it got too much for me) was already a pretty full-throated venture into queer-curiousness, in the process doubling down on the interesting dissonance in some of the previous works between "we're not sure we're being fully healthy about this situation" (e.g. again using Samurai Usage as an example, the foundational premise of an arranged child marriage, committed to horrifyingly casually and without preparing anyone for it) yet at the same time "all of the characters are going to do their best with what they have, sometimes adorably". Even though I've ceased to be fully clear which side the mangaka was approaching that tension from. So, like, okay, that somewhat prepared me for this?

But if Mahou Shounen was doubling down on that tension—this is, like, taking the unhealthy side to the fifth power, we've blown out the proverbial speakers. And honestly, we've gotten to the point where I'm very uncomfortable. So, I'll tell you what I think once I manage to get past the crippling anxiety I'm feeling by the time I hit page 21.

Edit: Okay, finished!

Spoiler

Yeah, I dunno what to say, it's powerful as hell, but I sure preferred the lighter Teppei stuff where the trauma isn't quite this bad and gets better and everyone proverbially hugs it out at the end. (By the way, posting just the oneshot without the rest of the anthology and therefore the epilogue is criminal XD not that it seemingly provides any real closure even with it, or makes anything any much healthier, but you made me dig up the raws for this on my old computer to confirm it didn't really end just on that note. Thankfully my Japanese was enough to maybe puzzle through the last few pages @.@)

Honestly. This one feels a bit like a call for help in some ways, and it worries me a little. Like this was a decade ago, but. I can't help but wonder if anything in this a reflection of Teppei beating himself up over being a nasty nasty man for whatever sexual preferences he has or had (be it through the protagonist's viewpoint symbolically as someone who sees themselves as "tainted and dirty", or through the satanically vile mangaka who "does all this while writing children's books").

All that said, sincerely, thank you for translating this.

Honestly I more so got the impression that Teppei or someone close to him had an experience like this... Like, the way Jean's perspective is portrayed feels very personal, how he's too young to identify his feelings and considers himself the "dirty" one rather than the people abusing him—not to mention that at the end of the book Teppei says he'd had this story "in his head for a long time but could never get it published in a shounen magazine." I don't think someone with such a desire to tell this story would really be doing it for shock value, but who knows. In any case, I love him as an artist and regardless of the subject matter I want to share more of his stuff with the world.

And don't worry, I promise I'll translate the rest of the stories! Bokura wa Mahou Shounen takes priority because it's the more popular series, but Amaryllis will fill the gaps when I need a break from the bubbly escapades of Thrilling Pink and friends. (Plus this is a heck of a lot easier to scanlate than bokumaho, that series can be a nightmare lol)

 

[fujoshi-sama]

Kudos and thanks for the scanlation of this gem. I'm a big of Fukushima's work and this is such a tonal departure from Bokura wa Mahou Shounen, the series I like many others found his work from, but I honestly love it.

On top of his art style creates a fascinating dissonance with the heavy subject matter and this chapter really came out swinging with laying out Jean's struggles

Can't wait to see more.

Honestly I more so got the impression that Teppei or someone close to him had an experience like this... Like, the way Jean's perspective is portrayed feels very personal, how he's too young to identify his feelings and considers himself the "dirty" one rather than the people abusing him—not to mention that at the end of the book Teppei says he'd had this story "in his head for a long time but could never get it published in a shounen magazine." I don't think someone with such a desire to tell this story would really be doing it for shock value, but who knows. In any case, I love him as an artist and regardless of the subject matter I want to share more of his stuff with the world.

And don't worry, I promise I'll translate the rest of the stories! Bokura wa Mahou Shounen takes priority because it's the more popular series, but Amaryllis will fill the gaps when I need a break from the bubbly escapades of Thrilling Pink and friends. (Plus this is a heck of a lot easier to scanlate than bokumaho, that series can be a nightmare lol)