わたしがExceed Gunblaze Vengeanceわけないじゃん、ムリムリ！（※ムリじゃなかった!?）

Satsuki does not see Mai as Mai Oduka, she just sees her as someone she could match with the same effort put in.

Satsuki, the one person Mai is comfortable with seeing her cry, who neither Mai nor Satsuki are comfortable saying the other is a friend, per se

But she's the only one who grounds her.

excuse me every version calls attention to how Satsuki is smiling here, and a smile from a bitch in the b cluster is worth the weight of the world, so here I am--

Satsuki-san had had a phase like that too? “But you still kept going?” I asked. “I lost my temper is why.” Satsuki-san giggled. “I was so frustrated. No one could beat Mai in anything. Not academics. Not athletics. Everyone kept showering her in praise and saying it was because she was so special, but she wasn’t. She just worked very hard. I knew that she was just as human as anyone else, which meant that, eventually, I could win. And so, I kept on challenging her.”

What she says here is 'ムキになってね' , which when translated without emphasizing that she got upset/lost her temper/pissed off *at* something, we lose the correlation to the next statements.

Okay, this was absolutely mangled in the translation, but less than I expected upon reviewing it. Initially, I thought they cut an entire line, but I misheard the slang upon reviewing it.

I waved my hands back and forth to hide how red my own face was getting. “L-look, I just mean, like, if it was Mai teaching me or something, she’d just give me a look like, ‘I can’t comprehend how you don’t get this.’” “Comparing me with her is tantamount to committing an act of violence on my mental well-being. From now on, can you exercise a bit more caution before speaking?” “Got it.” I zipped my lips. Satsuki-san and I went back to studying. “Here,” she said. “Look at this part.” The way her pale fingertip traced the problem on the page felt oddly sensual, and a weird sound welled up in my throat. I called out to the mini-Mai in my head, begging her to stifle these feelings. But she just looked back at me with a complacent grin and said, “Oh, don’t worry about me.” Great, she was no help at all!

The scene change does pull away from Renako being a pervert about Satsuki's finger For Fuck's Sake, and we lose a little incident of the Mai tulpa reappearing and being useless. Please look forward to the tulpas in the next arc.

A+. I was actually worried they'd whiff the translation, communication, or reception of this exchange, and this is just incredible. Comparing Me to Mai right now Is A Violence. One Unit Whole Violence.

Stellar expressions as always, and the minute detail on Renakoi's upper lip does soooooooo much heavy lifting here.

“You know, Satsuki-san,” I said, “I honestly think you’re the kind of person who’d be like, ‘Well, I have no other choice’ and light yourself on fire for the person you’re dating. You’re kind of a caretaker in relationships, aren’t you?” “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never dated anyone before.” She frowned, her eyebrows furrowing and cheeks turning red. “It’s kind of embarrassing when you look at me that way.” “Huh? Oh, uh, no, sorry. I wasn’t thinking of you, like, romantically or anything. I was talking about a hypothetical scenario, you know? I just think that you’ll make whoever you end up dating really happy.” “…Well, right now I’m dating you, aren’t I?” “W-well, yeah,” I admitted. Seeing Satsuki-san this flustered rattled me too. What was going on? Why did I feel so weird?

Interestingly, this and the next little exchange between Satsuki and Renako is moved from the library to their walk home, which is perfectly natural. Neato though.

You know, as surprising as it was, Satsuki-san turned out to be a pretty darn good teacher. Whenever I didn’t get something, she first checked to see what I wasn’t understanding and then led me step-by-step through the problem. She never got mad or impatient with me. She just kept pace with me and offered logical, patient explanations until the end. “Satsuki-san, you’d make a good wife who’d force her good-for-nothing husband to get ahead in life,” I told her. “You’re usually so distant, but you’re really nice when you’re teaching me. Are you, like, playing good cop/bad cop by yourself?”

“I’m not trying to,” she said. “But what’s the point in being strict when you’re learning? I mean, unless you subscribe to the theory that people learn by being told off, but that’s another story.” Nope, I was totally fine with this current teaching method.

Absolutely a nice, clean and justified cut, but we do miss a little look into Satsuki expressing her thoughts on learning and motivation.

That’s how I felt about multiplayer games. I liked beating my opponent, sure, but what I loved more than anything was the feeling of improvement. The joy of victory was fleeting and would only be struck down by the frustration of defeat, but compared to that, the feeling of getting better stuck with me forever, and kept getting bigger and bigger. Come to think of it, that’s how I’d felt about all my smiling and make-up practice back at the beginning of high school. It’d made me start to feel like I really was cut out for living on the straight and narrow. Well, I guess I’d better study, then. “I suppose it’ll make my mom happy if I bring my grades up,” I admitted.

We do lose Renako translating Satsuki's comment into her own language, though. Anime Renako? Fake gamer girl. Never been on the internet. Has not learned a single slur playing COD online.

I was actually stunned they kept this in, I figured Satsuki's teaching style would be fully cut. The expressions are wonderful and do a lot of conveying what was simply narration in the novel.

oh excuse me it completely whiffs it by having Renako react specifically to the grades part with less exaggeration. But her face is cute so I will accept this with no critical thinking

“It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me either way,” she continued, “but Amaori, you think everyone else is better than you, don’t you? If you have an opportunity to work hard and close the gap, I think you’d be better off putting in the effort.” “Urgh…” Once again, there she went making a good argument. “Maybe the top ten is pushing it a bit,” she conceded. “I certainly don’t need extra competition for the top spot if I can help it. Still, don’t you think it’s fun to watch your hard work pay off when you get better grades?”

Satsuki's statement is roughly the same in all 3 versions, but the anime honestly downplays the framing juuuust enough to distract from how absurdly laser focused this is to hurt Renako specifically, with the scope of her statement not specifying "grades-wise".

messatsu

“I don’t want to waste my time with low-achievers,” she informed me. “And that hurts even more… Urgh, I mean, I think I’m just a bit below average is all…” And besides, Ashigaya High was kind of out of the way and required kids to work super hard to get in, so the bar was already high. “If you’re going to date me, at the very least you’ll need to score in the top ten of our class. Or else we’re going to have a problem.” “The top ten?” I cried. “There’s, like, three people in the world who can pull that off!” “There’s ten.” She looked at me like I was an idiot. “It goes without saying that Oduka Mai places number one in our

Before we get to the joke, Satsuki stimming with her pencil is improv. Love it. Pour it into my mouth. I love you expanding on them like this.

Additionally, we did have a small cut joke about being a top 10 placer at Ashigaya.

so this is a setup for an upcoming joke, and I know that, firmly, top to bottom

But I never realized until just now that she's actually brutally dismissing Renako without realizing, OOPS

Satsuki's pen spin is smoothly demonstrated, without any form of smear or etc to obscure the action.

...No, I'm not saying smearing is bad animation. I uh, more, never figured out how to move my fingers in 3D space to spin my pen. Shush.

Body language and expressiveness game is still through the roof

No notes. Absolutely incredible voicebite.

As soon as we stepped out into the hallway, I unabashedly drooped. “Hey, Satsuki-san, you’re being kind of pushy…” “Don’t you remember what I said yesterday? You’re about to get lucky.” Uh, hello?! Satsuki-san side-eyed me and grinned at the shock on my face. “So, come on,” she said. “Uh, to wh-where, exactly…?” “Where do you think? Somewhere with a desk that we are about to put to very good use.

「昨日言ったでしょ。いい目を見せてあげるって」 　え!? 　紗月さんは驚くわたしを横目に、薄く微笑んだ。 「それじゃあ、行きましょうか」 「ど、どこに……？」 「決まってるわ。いいところよ」 　わたしは紗月さんに手を引かれ、とっておきの場所に連れていかれることになった……ひええ……。まだわたしたち、未成年ですよー……！

Honestgly, I didn't think I'd need to comment on this part at all, and was going to skip it... but, even though it wasn't an accurate translation, the english embellishment of Satsuki talking about the desk is so A++ primo I wanted to call attention to it.

doing thread pre-prep. The "haruna is a good sister and perfectly normal" crowd aren't gonna like her accusing Renako of rent-a-girlfriending Ajisai and Mai dkgjdgkldsdf

ILU SIB

developing new forms of insane posting

@takamomchi.bsky.social

Oh my god Satsuki's every expression her every moment of my god they made it so much slower and more intentional from Renako rather than a quick slip up abdisndb

SHE HAS MY BRSIN DISEASE WHERE BATHING SOESNT SEEM SECUAL I LOBE HWR SO MUCH I MEAN I KNEW BUT I LOVE HER

this show is so peak I'm so happy

Who runs this account

With the early release of the manga in SQEX's LA pop-up store, I've been cleared to talk about it publicly.

I'm the translator for the manga series Dragon Quest: The Mark of Erdrick, AKA Emblem of Roto.

This has been a dream project of mine for literal decades.

Damn skippy