Let me tell you a little bit about how we do things here at ORZ.
For the purposes of bringing Japanese material intended for entertainment to a general audience, BDR and I aren’t fans of literal translations. While they are more accurate in a technical sense, and thus obviously still important (I myself ask BDR to give me more literal translation scripts to work with, as opposed to the slightly more “localized” stuff he does elsewhere), sometimes the intonation, cadence, nuance, and all that other good stuff don’t come across the same in English, potentially to the point of not clearing anything up for anyone. Which kinda defeats the point of a translation, right? The idea is for something from one language (in this case, Japanese) to impart as much of the same information as possible in another language (English), and the alchemy required to make that happens comprises more than just mixing together conjugations and dictionary definitions. The problem lies in the hazy space between, where a line that is perfectly cogent and snappy in Japanese ends up a long-winded mess in English because that’s the way to convey the proper “feeling” of the sentence; where a word that is highly important in Japanese for whatever reason has no real English equivalent (see: the myriad of Japanese pronouns and their significance, not to mention particles) so you have to expand or even outright change the sentence in English to come close to matching the intent of the original; and don’t even get us started on wordplay and kanji-related puns. Since it’s not always a matter of “insert word A, get word B,” translators need to have wordsmithing skills in order to forge something new that still properly resembles the original Japanese but which holds together better in English. In some ways a translator’s job is like that of a seer’s: you’re handed a jumble of symbols and need to interpret them in a way that makes sense to others who don’t have your skill, and sometimes the meaning is crystal clear and sometimes all you have is a hope, a wish, and a handful of vaguely hazarded guesses.
This song? Is one hundred handfuls of vaguely hazarded guesses.
In other words, it doesn’t seem to make much more sense in Japanese either and so I ragequit my usual attempts to make magic out of moonspeak. Have fun, because we didn’t.
The singer and writer of this song is Maiko Kikkawa, who also performed and wrote Bakugaiden IV’s 1st ED, “Sora no Kakera.” The Japanese Wikipedia page matching the kanji given for her name is about someone else with the same name; this profile is probably more accurate, as the timeline matches up better and it actually mentions that “Sora no Kakera” was part of a dual-single CD debut by her. While she has a solid musical resume spanning a variety of roles, she appears to be less of a solo artist and more of a director and accompanist.
English translation and other information below the cut. The kanji and romaji are here on Google Sheets.
PERFORMED BY: Maiko Kikkawa
LYRICS: Maiko Kikkawa
MUSIC: Maiko Kikkawa
ARRANGEMENT: Unknown
FOUND: Track #1 on Bダマン爆外伝 & ボンバーマン 絵かきうた (”B-Daman Bakugaiden & Bomberman Drawing Songs”)
Ta-da. (B-Daman Bakugaiden Drawing Song)
I’m totally a half-faceless specter
Even if a ball falls on my head I just stick my tongue out at it
Then a pair of flower petals oozes and dribbles down
Make some urchin spikes and a crab!
A sweatdrop, a teardrop, and a yaaaawn, serves you right, sigh
Sneeze out some mountain ranges
Sickness, darkness, anxiety
Corner, ink, and paint, goodnight
When they wake up they’ll aim
That B-Da energy
At someone looking this way
Ta-da! Badump-badump
Hey! It’s Shirobon and his friends!
As B-Damans they’ll shoo-shoo-shoooot!
Boing! Gluttonous chaos!
Laughter in our hearts, ding dong dang
We might not be able to see it, but it’s definitely there
The one thing that anyone can do
Even you, in that little pocket
Have something someone gave you
Sweet lemon, my dude
Half-candy halfmoon
Take me back to that time we saw
The night sky, darlin’
A revealed sparkle
A fluffiness we can feel
Even when you’ve got it, it’s such a mystery, right?
How lovely you are without answers
So let us both always
Ta-da together
Gradually we’ll let it be, be…
