Weird, I cannot fathom what these panels mean, it’s an enigma, I’m clueless.
The first problem I encounter in such instances is trying to figure out who’s talking, and the second is, what’s the relation between the different speech bubbles. Is there a full stop? Is it a unique sentence broken in 2? A comma? I don’t know.
I suppose this is all spoken by Tanjiro (he just won agains the monster), but still totally unsure of the relation between speech bubbles. Also, the biggest doubt is about the past tense being used after the たら conditional in the last panel, this makes me think that 死んでいたら is not “if I died” but “when I died” and therefore it’s not Tanjiro speaking. But what about the 安心していい? Isn’t this Tanjiro telling (in his thoughts) the died kids that they can relax now? Could ていい used to refer to oneself? One last thing is, Nezuko’s name (Tanjiro’s sister) is cited in the last speech bubble and there’s no reason for any other than Tanjiro to know her name.
Here’s an attempt at a transcription including punctuation and a translation that is partly biased by deepL’s response as well:
“I won. You can rest now. The other slaughtered kids as well for sure returned as promised. Let’s become a spirit only, and (go) to your loved Urokodaki’s place, to your home Mt. Sagiri. If I died, I’d have got back as well. To the place where Nezuko and Urokodaki are”.
You’re right, I think as well, I just remembered that they’re the only one that define Urokodaki as 大好き. Plus everything makes much more sense! How would you translate everything?
Edit: hold on, now that I think about 死んでいたら it seems like meaning “if I was dead” since it’s not 死んだら… so isn’t that Tanjiro saying “if I was dead my sould would return, too, to the place where Nezuko and Urokodaki are”?
That’s my same guess😄 could it be in your opinion that there are different speakers? Like, children at the beginning (I don’t see Tanjiro use all those よ and よな particles often) and Tanjiro at the bottom
No, I think all one speaker – generally if there’s a shift in voice I’d expect that to be marked. Though “thinker” here is more accurate – this is internal monologue, not spoken.
By the way, I think 魂だけになろうと is very likely “even if only [returning as] spirits/souls” – though I haven’t read the manga, so you’d know better than me whether these children are going to be returning as living people or not…
No, I believe he means that he would do the same the children did after dying (that is, coming back to Urokodaki’s place).
I had to go check the corresponding anime episode to be sure yes, it’s Tanjiro speaking all along
“Thought bubbles”!
As I wrote above, I believe that the children came back as ghosts after dying, and they came back exactly in the nearby where his master Urokodaki (still alive and unaware of them, for what I know) currently lives. Probably Tanjiro in the end was observing that if he had died he would probably come back to that place as well (since Nezuko is currently being kept by Urokodaki) and stay as a ghost near his dears.
One thing I’m still unsure of is, what’s that と after the volitional なろう?
Note how, in both interpretations (炭治郎 speaking or the dead children speaking) the meaning of the sentence is the same, it is 炭治郎 that won, and the dead children that can rest
volitional verb + と or が means “even if verb”. It’s often in a two-part thing like this example:
雨が降ろうと 風が吹こうと 、毎日見回りに出る。 Even if it’s raining, even if it’s windy, I go out on patrol every day.
where it often translates as “whether it’s X or Y” (or “whether it’s X or not” if it’s a verb and its negative) but it works also like the example from the manga where the form only appears once. The Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar entry “yō to/ga” covers this.
Very useful to know, I used to totally ignore this grammar point, but I think (also with your example sentence which was perfectly clear) I got a good grasp on it. Actually this is the second explanation of yours (the other being the one on ように〜 from a month ago which I frequently checked recently) that I save with the bookmark function, very useful!!
Also just googled it and am surprised to see that there aren’t grammar points of volitional+と listed anywhere
…at least it does here! But there’s separately volitional + とする which is “try to verb; be about to verb” (you’ve likely run across this one already, I suspect – it’s more common than the ‘even if’ stuff and a lower JLPT level for whatever that’s worth)
先生が話している間に帰ろうとすると、先生に怒られる。
If you try to go home while the teacher is talking, he will yell at you.
any suggestions?
yes, it’s Tanjiro speaking all along
