MaruMA:Doujinshi1:Story1
Only God Knows[edit]
All the notes between parentheses are Takabayashi-sensei's. My translation notes are at the bottom.
How are you guys? It's Takabayashi. Uhm, who will I be now? For the people who read doujinshi my pen name is Takabayashi Chica, but the people who read my commercial works[1] I've become Takabayashi Tomo. In this case, which one should I use? For now, let's just go with Takabayashi[2]. This thin, flat book is a legal (?) plagiarized parody book of Takabayashi Tomo's " Kyou Kara MA no tsuku Jiyuugyou". Ah, how could something like this happen!? God apparently knows everything that happens in this world but, could it be that even the almighty God, that that guy, didn't know this would happen? That I myself would end up publishing a doujinshi of my own work?!
No, well, it's just that, a magnificent God like that would probably not be thinking about such a trivial thing but, somewhere in the corner of a deserted shrine, the whispering God of Yaoi is smiling and gloating.
If I recall correctly about two years ago, I was doing this same thing for a GB (Get Backers, the manga published in Weekly Shounen) parody book, which was when I became, for the first time, circle REFREE's Takabayashi Chica [3]. (Note: I should research myself)[4] In other words, I've been a doujinshi bastard since the very beginning. After gaining seniority, and as a reward for being in this business for such a long time, now I have my works published as paperback books. Well, now that I'm publishing "a parody book of my work" , I can taste the best part (or is it "huge piece of trash"?) of being a writer[5]. The truth is that it would be best if I made a website for these things, but I don't have a PC. And I don't know how to make a website. And... since I haven't published anything new, I thought I could at least make the wait shorter , similarly to pouring you some tea, by publishing this doujinshi that contains a few unknown facts. Well, this is neither a "Today MA", not even a "Now MA" [6], since it will have such an ultra-small circulation, and I don't even know if the people waiting for my next work will read this...... It's a really minor thing, like a school newspaper?! kind of thing. I'm sure they'll be shocked if they hear about this. Speaking of shocks, the short amount of time I got for this is also shocking. I'll have to work so fast it'll make me say "Will I be able to finish in such a short time?!" Like a short distance run. And on top of that without telling anyone. And if I fall into a slump, I'll have to increase the amount of alcohol. Why do so much to publish a book like this? Because there is a deadline.
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References[edit]
- ↑ Doujinshi means self-publishing work. So what's the difference between a doujinshi and a commercial work? In the case of doujinshi, the author has to pay for the printing and distribution of the work. This is why doujinshi tend to be more expensive. On the other hand if an author gets a publisher to buy their manuscript, it becomes a commercial work, the publisher handles all the costs of marketing printing and distribution.
- ↑ This sentence rhymes: "Toriaezu, Takabayashi desu."
- ↑ A "circle" is a group of doujinshi artists.
- ↑ The fact that Takabayashi-sensei clarifies this probably means that she doesn't remember if that was the first time she started working with REFREE. But she had been publishing works under the name Takabayashi Chica since 1995. Takabayashi Chica is her real name, I don't know why she says it's a pen name. Maybe she's trying to confuse us all, now that she's famous?
- ↑ So the pronunciation of "best part of" and "huge piece of trash" is "daigomi" . Even though grammatically it doesn't make a lot of sense in Japanese either, what she's trying to say is that now she gets to do something awesome like publishing a doujinshi of her own work, but also that maybe it's just going to be a pile of hooey.
- ↑ The kanji for today contains the characters "now" and "day", so by just saying "now" she's making the word shorter.
