Yep, that’s right. Though I did initially think he was invisible.
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It’s a 旧字体 form:
Not that I knew the 新字体 form either… Although I think I encountered it somewhere before. According to my JPDB frequency database 封蝋 is top 40k and 封蠟 top 80k, so neither of them are super common but the 新字体 seems to be significantly more popular.
The old form looks significantly cooler though…
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Thanks for this information, that was interesting. I agree the old form looks cooler. Every now and again I come across a kanji that is not only unfamiliar, but looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before! This was one of them!
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Yeah usually that’s what clues me into checking if it’s not an old form, some radicals get systematically simplified in modern forms and as such stand out when you encounter them in the classical form. Frankly it’s a mess because all these forms end up coexisting so eventually you have to be familiar with both new and old forms of radicals.
For instance 国’s old form is 國, and while I don’t often see it used on its own I do encounter 摑まる fairly regularly (although 掴まる is also possible). Lately I learned 瓦礫 and if you look at the 礫 kanji it contains 楽 but in its old form: 樂. 䃯 also exists (so-called “extended shinjitai”, 拡張新字体) but I have yet to encounter it in the wild.
I really feel like this effort to simplify the kanji only made sense for a few decades back when writing by hand was the norm, nowadays 99% of all Japanese is written through IME and it just makes everything more complicated than it should be.
And of course to make matters worse Chinese has also its own simplification scheme that’s different from Japanese and as a result you effectively have three separate sets of kanji in use. So a Japanese word like 機会 is spelled 機會 in traditional Chinese and 机会 in simplified Chinese for instance.
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Wow that was super interesting, thanks! Please share more if you have more!
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I should have kept it for the top secret thread, damn it.
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I was thinking about that haha
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By the way I forgot to mention that while 楽 is the simplified form of 樂 in Japanese, simplified Chinese uses 乐 instead…
As a result 礫 is written 砾 in simplified Chinese, but also there’s a “2nd round simplified form” written 劯. As far as I know this “2nd round” was a failed effort to simplify Chinese even more, so it may not be used at all (it may be similar to extended shinjitai in that regard, although note that the forms still differ from that).
And that’s why Taiwan #1. Just use traditional characters and avoid all that nonsense.
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Finally caught up this weekend.
Ch 48
Boy, that was hard. The only reason why I understood anything at all was because halfway through I remembered that I still had a translated version I once got on Humblebundle lying around and read that.
So many new character, not sure which ones are important enough to remember. Only the über king made something of an impression. Since his son seems to have gone missing while slumming and is sure to run into the atelier kids at some point, we’ll probably see him again in the not too distant future.
Ch 49
I’ve sort of had a latent interest in Eat-this and Lulucie since they were introduced. The former is so uptight and pretty, he just seems like the type to have a tragic backstory. And the latter always seemed kinder than her trigger-happy colleagues, which made me wonder how she ended up in this job in the first place. I suppose the second question was answered in this chapter, and in a way I found quite satisfying. Had some really well-drawn kick-ass action scenes as well. Now back to waiting for Mr. Uptight-and-pretty’s tragic backstory.
Ch 50 & 51
After this chapter, I’m tending more towards thinking they’re at least allies. This time, Ribbon Lady’s ribbons definitely looked more like a brimmed hat than last time. Also, the kind of healing/augmentation she did on Kustas seems more like their style. So far, we still haven’t seen anyone do just plain actual healing, it’s always flashy root-legs and cat heads with the Tsubaari. Which makes me wonder if healing just hard to get right or something? Former chapters brought up the idea that you could just use the turn-back-time spell to repair people’s bodies like you repair objects, and I’m still really curious to see what happens, when you actually do that.
Also, missing prince found. That was quick.
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治す・直す
Very possible, or it’s a way to force the patients to join the dark side. With simple healing they could return to a normal, non-tsubaari lifestyle, but with a 魔法入れ墨 or root-legs you can’t safely return to civil life without the threat of being found out and memory-wiped.
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