Ai to Noroi - Vol. 1 Ch. 4 - Broken Heart

[MangaDex]

 

[Nosebleed]

Hey everyone, I'm now helping aliceshiro translate this series like I offered to last chapter. I've been a scanlator/translator for almost 10 years so I hope I can provide this series with the quality translation it so deserves.

Fumi Fumiko is one of my all time favorite authors, and her manga "Bokura no Hentai" is still in my top 5 best manga of all time (please read it if you haven't yet!), so suffice it to say I will be pouring my heart into translating her story as best as I can as a long time fan.

Now for some context which I believe is important for understanding the culture surrounding this story, as this is referenced a few times throughout. The incident that happened in this chapter is the Kobe child murders where a man named Shinichiro Azuma, AKA Sakakibara Seito (in his letters), AKA Boy A (in the newspapers), murdered 2 children aged 10 and 11 and inspired other similar copycat crimes with his letters (an excerpt of which was featured in this chapter).

This crime and others like it had a very big cultural impact in 90s and 2000s Japan, because it was part of a series of horrific crimes all perpetrated by people born either in 82 or around that (notably the Akihabara Massacre and the Nishi-tetsu busjack, among others), some of which referenced Sakakibara Seito as their inspiration. An entire generation of people was deeply marked by these crimes and teenagers who committed these crimes were dubbed "kireru 17 sai" or "17 year olds who snapped"

It was also around this time that the infamous tokyo subway sarin attack happened which forever marked the nation. It was carried out by the aum shinrikyo cult. I think there's clearly some parallelisms between the fictional cult depicted in this manga and cults like aum/aleph, which spread like viruses across Japan and ruined so many families with their doctrines.

This is all important info/context because these were the formative years of the author, Fumi Fumiko, who was born in 1982 (which makes her part of the "kireru 17 sai" generation as well, and that's why that subject is so prominently featured throughout this manga). So not only did she have a horrible life at home, with her molesting father and an insane cult, but the outside world was also going through this sort of hopeless vibe where teenagers were feeling trapped by either their families or the systems they were placed in and lashed out against the world, sometimes violently as seen above. Fumiko herself says in an interview that will be translated at the end of volume 1 that she could legitimately identify with some of the feelings expressed by people like Seito, though she of course disavows the actions they took.

I hope this provides just a tad bit extra context for the time period surrounding this story and the dents it left on the author, and of course I hope you enjoy this now being properly translated with no machine translation.

 

[silverpetricof]

I really like how the author switches between art styles to represent what I assume is a flashback/the past and the present. She does it to great effect.

Thank you for the translation.

 

[Nosebleed]

I really like how the author switches between art styles to represent what I assume is a flashback/the past and the present. She does it to great effect.

You're right, the present Aiko is the Aiko you see at the beginning talking to her grandmother. Everything else is flashbacks.

And I absolutely agree about the art. It gets more intricate in future chapters too as she narrates different phases of her life and the artstyle completely changes depending on the emotions she's going through as a way to depict how the world around is viewed in her eyes.

Fumiko-sensei is such a talented artist as far as the range her artstyle has. It's not that it's the most detailed, but rather that it is so effective and conveying the emotions that the protagonist is feeling at that moment.

 

[Darkchung]

Yeah I'm all onboard for where this train is going. Thanks to Nosebleed for stepping up and getting this one out there with a good translation. The reprieve from the ocean of web novel adaptations and wank bait for 14-year olds is very much appreciated.

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Boy creeped out but thats kinda a bad reply from him though hes probably shaken by the letter.

 

[EchoGirl]

Thanks and oof i hope the suffering isn't too long

Boy creeped out but thats kinda a bad reply from him though hes probably shaken by the letter.

It's probably better than him being opportunistic and being like "i'll date you if you let me have sex with you"