What Do You Call This Trash - Vol. 2 Ch. 19

[SunnyD88]

Unfortunate. She seems like she'd be a really nice girl if she didn't have a fucked up family life. But such is life. God's always gotta have some way to nerf people so they don't become too powerful. Like imagine if Akira was as cute as she is AND was a normal loving girl.

 

[rellea]

I thought her doing part time stuff would give her feel of independence (from crazy mom) and confidence but maybe still a bit introverted, not sure why the guy saving the day there made her stalker-ish really. More on that next chapter I'm guessing.

Pretty sure it's because the big bro is how she imagined her dead dad was like (everyone loves him and he's like a hero). I'm guessing it's not that she actually likes him but that her obsession is tied up with her mommy issues.

 

[silverpetricof]

Yeah that Akira backstory was very sad. I still like Akira despite all she's done (but I don't excuse what she's done) and even feel for her now that I understand how she came to be the way she is.

Ugh who am I kidding? I know I have a soft spot for yanderes; but at least I can say Akira is a bit more layered than some of her contemporaries.

Thanks for the translation. You've been doing an excellent job.

 

[shiyu]

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((

 

[Amaya19]

Why you gotta make me feel all conflicted?

 

[impendio]

Yo’ I didn’t even know we had comments again, it’s been so long!
Also, no amount of backstory will make me like Akira, like, fuck that shit lmao.
Still, thanks for the great work as always to the scanlators!

 

[yuriie]

so, thats how they met.. also im so sad for akira's past

 

[Coldlight]

I like the usage of color here, and those are good TL notes. While I don't necessarily agree that watashi is definitely feminine (I was taught in 日本語 language classes that this is gender-neutral and perfectly acceptable to use by both sexes), I suppose it got a slight feminine connotation to it in practice, because in media, men typically won't use it in a casual setting with other men of similar social status (e.g. at a drinking party) or in situations where verbal assertion of masculinity is somehow necessary. Atashi, however is unambiguously feminine. I don't know if they used it here, but I can easily imagine Akira's female bullies using atashi to assert their femininity, rubbing the salt into her wound.

In my view, Akira's mother is even harsher by not allowing Akira to use even a generic, gender-neutral pronoun. She forces her daughter to unambiguously speak like a male and be a replacement for her father.

 

[superstorm]

I like the usage of color here, and those are good TL notes. While I don't necessarily agree that watashi is definitely feminine (I was taught in 日本語 language classes that this is gender-neutral and perfectly acceptable to use by both sexes), I suppose it got a slight feminine connotation to it in practice, because in media, men typically won't use it in a casual setting with other men of similar social status (e.g. at a drinking party) or in situations where verbal assertion of masculinity is somehow necessary. Atashi, however is unambiguously feminine. I don't know if they used it here, but I can easily imagine Akira's female bullies using atashi to assert their femininity, rubbing the salt into her wound.

Good points! I kinda worded that note about the femininity of 私 weirdly, I'll rewrite it when I find the time.

あたし wasn't used by the bullies here (and in fact, only Akira ever uses a first-person pronoun in this entire chapter), but it would have definitely had some dramatic effect. Missed opportunity, I guess.

 

[jak]

Since it's more interesting to see that the character is not just one-dimensionally evil for the sake of evil? I mean yeah, sometimes a shitty character without any reason might work sometimes but it also can be boring/confusing if we don't actually get the villain's motivation at all. It will look like the villain is just being placed there by the author whenever the MC needs some hardship without any rhyme lol. It's not a justification to absolve their shitty-ness though, it's just made it easier to understand the conflict afterward, at least for me.

A character doesn't need a backstory like this to be a developed character though.

 

[Ren4president]

I already saw her as a good yandere, now she was a reverse trap? Straight fire

 

[Akikako]

So, all fault on the mother that tried to make her a transformer

 

[ItsThatBriGuy]

Sigh, why is it that these types of characters always need some sort of "tragic" backstory to try and justify their shitty actions?

An explanation isn't necessarily a justification.

 

[zoo-wee-mama]

i thought this before, but i felt like her and yuuto kinda bonded over their mutual lionization of kai. we got to see why yuuto was a kai fan, and now we know the exact trigger for akira's obsession

 

[HoangDinh]

landmind girl? what are they called? jirai kei?

 

[Amylase]

[Snip]

It also now makes slightly more sense why she's attached to the older brother. What I don't get though is why she didn't use female pronouns in school and changed to the male at home? This feels like a semi forced drama writing but not the worst, A for effort.

[Snip]

Responding to the bolded part.

This is harder than you'd think! I'm not certain about Japanese but in Russian you gender yourself almost constantly through grammar. Trying to maintain two separate identities with different people is hard. You slip into a habit and it gets very easy to trip over it in a suspicious way or blurt it out. I have done this a couple times.

That Akira is a child, seems scared of her mom, and has no friends makes this sort of thing more difficult.

My understanding is you don't use a pronoun for yourself quite as much in Japanese as feminine/masculine conjugation in Russian but English has them both beat because you basically never need to gender yourself at all if you don't want to.

Forgive me if this is incoherent. I just got off a 12 hour shift.