Group Leader
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2018
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It is kind of hard to get across and also slightly speciesist? The text does say 'people' (but explicitly does not say 'human') , and then 'but not'. It IS alienating.I'm not saying the translation is wrong (especially since I have no idea what the original says) but the lines "People but not people" really comes across as wrong. Maybe it's because I've already read all the existing chapters so I have attachments to the characters or because I just inherently see non-human species as "people" but it just comes off as...racist (I don't have a better word to describe it.)?
It helps to realize just how hostile Japan is to anyone not Japanese. If you're a visitor it's fine, they love you, I've been there for months, everybody loved me as the gaijin who can party. But if you're Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese or African trying to live and work there it's entirely different. The genjin would technically be Japanese, but are also not Real Japanese as in people who have gone through our society's rituals for two thousand years.
So yes, the alienation is completely real. People living in Japan who are not Real Japanese OMG. It is racist. But after that I think this series is trying to say that we can still all get along. And I'm also kind of glad that actually came through in the translation!
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