a second

A skillful display of an unusual instrument: The Theremin. An electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer | source

BLEACH X Divine Gate Collab

去る梅雨

by 丸新新作抱き枕販売中@marushin_0214

Regina by Magion LoVun@magion02

Kim Hyung Tae, 김형태, キム・ヒョンテさんはTwitterを使っています: 「https://t.co/0gYp1rTXBr」 / Twitter

"Fire breathing" peacock - thanks to perfect sunlight

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This beating heart coin carved by Roman Booteen is absolutely wild | source                          

I need this.

One Haunting Video Shows “Beauty Through The Decades” In New Light

Karolina Żebrowska’s “Beauty Through The Ages” video shows not only on the glamorized versions of women but also the real, middle and lower class women as they lived in the past century.

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GIFS VIA.

Custom Pokemon Gameboys made by 8BitAesthetics

Okay, so, adding Uryuu & early series Quincy stuff to this pile of posts… I wasn’t initially sure how I’d want to handle this, but i think it’ll make sense just to go thru things in reading order.

Originally there just wasn’t a lot of jargon surrounding Uryuu at all. We got the term Quincy[クインシー] written as [滅却師]: “Destruction/Extinction + Master/Specialist” which we also got pretty much immediate and explicit explanation for in the narrative anyway. Not very obtuse, so much so that even without a strict divide of kanji and romaji, the meaning is part of the definition of who the Quincy are and what they do. It actually wouldn’t need to be translated.

Following that, the next round of terminology comes out of basically just the one fight with Mayuri:

All pretty literal, names, nothing esoteric, and moreover nothing that wasn’t pronounced in Japanese. And this default “pattern” of everything just being Japanese carries over into parts of the Arrancar arc as well…

The Ginto however were also introduced along side a bunch of the first bits of German, in the names of the actual specific Ginto techniques themselves complete with fully written chants in doubled speech…

Where [聖] most readily reads as “Saint” but perhaps also “Sanctified” or “Consecrated” but [噬] seems specifically taken from [噬臍] a word translated loosely as “bitter regret” but written with what appears to be the literal components “bite + stomach” as to describe the knotted stomach feeling of said regret. And while, etymologically, it means “Bite,” as far as I can see it doesn’t seem like it’s actually used that way grammatically.

I think anyway… I didn’t realize that this line apparently just wasn’t touched in the Viz translations? And I don’t have my old fanscans on hand to see what they did. I think I reverse engineered those katakana sounds in a way that makes sense? It seems to mirror the meaning of the incantation at least. Not sure what the logic was pairing “Saint Bitter” and “Heat” though…

I like that this feels like it’s pulling on old alchemical logic and symbolism though. In the old western four element system each of the elements exist in a simple two axis table of Cold/Hot and Wet/Dry. (Fire = Hot & Dry, Water = Cold & Wet, Air = Hot & Wet, and Earth = Cold & Dry.) While this doesn’t appear to use that system accurately, the specific assortment of words and symbols evoked –Heating, Dry, Wind/The Air/Atmosphere, and a Grail/SakeCup– all feel like they’re aiming for this sort of aesthetic.

okay so this is where I’m just way out of my depth… I have no idea what Kubo’s doing. And I don’t know German well enough to recognize these mangled sounds as any one thing over another as far as guessing goes… So here’s the the Japanese phonetics and romaji

And the same goes for this third spell as well… Japanese is fine, but I’m lost on the German…

Definitely has torture dungeon imagery in it. Restrained on a torture rack in a stone floor room, with a whip coming down on someone, their hands crashing to the floor? orz “Five Hands” and “Five Racks” is curious though. A rack for each hand to be restrained to, but why 5? Referring to the “hands”/“arms” of the Quincy’s 5 point cross maybe? Also appropriately this appears to restrain his father in something not unlike an iron maiden, which, while historically a fake curiosity cooked up by grifters, still an enduring and instantly recognizable symbol of “medieval torture.”

Now, to be fair, I do have guesses at a few of these, but without enough to complete the line it’s impossible to verifying if those guesses have anything to them… And frankly what I do have feels completely unrelated to the Japanese… But the fon[フォン] is very probably a “von” or “vom,” and the fieruto[フィエルト] I think might be “vierte”? haruto[ハルト] at least is very easily “Hart” as in “hard” which lines up with the stone imagery.

And in another weird move, like with Chad, the databook chooses to take an unnamed tool/technique(?) and retroactively give it a name, in German, but without any underlying Japanese kanji: Silber Draht meaning “Silver Wire.”

And as we get more bits of German sprinkled in a lot of them seem to center around Ryuuken in one way or another… first he’s the one who retroactively names the quincy final form Uryuu assumed when fighting Mayuri. Then when the Seele Schneider is brought out it’s mentioned as something Uryuu pilfered from his dad’s stash of goods.

Oddly though, when Ryuuken brings out the Quincy Cross he names it in English, not German, and it’s later referred to as Quincy Zeichen: “Quincy Sign” [滅却印]: “Destruction* Sign” later, while fighting Szayel. It’s technically a different term –the “cross” referring to the pendant itself, where as the Zeichen seems to refer to the pattern more abstractly– but clearly the effort was made to make the latter fit the linguistic motif, where as the first wasn’t so concerned.

*The Phrase “Awn” here, also translatable as “Arista” or “(grain)Beard” all referring to the sharp bristled ends of raw grains like wheat and barley. I feel like this combination of words must be referring to the process of removing the awn from raw grains, but I don’t know exactly that that’s called. Is that threshing? I know that removes grain from chaff, but is the awn removed before that? I have no idea. But the point being is that I think this can be read as something like “Thresher Formation” if threshing is in fact the process for that.

This really feels like it was something Kubo sorta phoned in here. Considering how rarely he seems to match duel language terms 1 for 1. And past that, I don’t think there was anything new introduced for the rest of the Arrancar arc or in the Fullbringer arc, so that’s everything before the TYBW. And at that point the actual persisting German theme as tied to the Quincy as the spotlight enemy faction is in play and that’s its own thing with a more distinct and more or less uniform system and patterns.

Hirenkyaku飛廉脚 has a double meaning in Chinese of Feilian’s Feet (feilianjiao?) Feilian being the Chinese god of wind who was kept in check by the heavenly archer Huoyi. Possibly some early Quincy lore that Kubo abandoned.

I’m pretty sure haizen is supposed to be heißen (to call/name) not Heizen (heating) because in German the letter z is pronounced with a ‘ts’ sound rather than the hard English ‘z’ which in Japanese would be written phonetically with the ツ character.

I think lenz could be from du lenze  (to scud; move fast in a straight line because or as if driven by the wind.)

I know I just made a point of the difference between German z and English z, but I think it’s possible Kubo made a mistake with the pronunciation, since I think moving quickly makes a bit more sense than dry.

Again with formel I think Kubo made a mistake and meant formung (shape; formation) not formel?

Given that he’s probably just grabbing stuff that sounds cool out of the dictionary and doing 5 minute German grammar lessons I’m willing to cut him a lot of slack and make a few reaching guesses as to what he intended.

So in all I think we’re meant to have the idea of a swift (battle) formation of the Holy Grail that moves like the wind? I’m getting a lot of Holy Grail Crusaders vibes from this. Especially since the Quincy have a lot of Catholic vibes in their design.

イシェンクツァイ        

I shenku tsuaihi

i, Schenkung zwei!

(the?) two gifts!

ヴォルコール

Wolke!

Cloud!

Going off the dictionary it seems like Wolke can be read in the sense of hard to see not just as cloud as in the weather formation. So maybe “be clouded!” would make a bit more sense since the technique seems intended to blind opponents temporarily.

I think hypothetically , as I don’t speak German…

ツィエルトクルーク フォン  キ- ツ  ハルトフィエルト

Tsuieruto kuru-ku huon ki-tsu horutohuieruto

Zielt (ab) Krug von (das) Kitz fortfielt

Target the pitcher of the fawn that fell away

“fiel” is the preterite form of fallen as in ihr fielt fort.

I know it seems like I’m jumping through a ton of hoops and making some stretches but it’s the only way I can make sense of the katakana.

破 ha- destructive

芒 kou/mang tip (of blade) (Chinese)

陣 jin- battle formation

I think it could mean “destruction point battle formation”

The reason I think it’s meant in the Chinese sense is you do have words in Jisho likeこうぼう 光芒 beam of light andごぼう 五芒 pentagram so I think 芒 refers to the sharp straight lines in the technique which comes from the word awn in these sense that awns on grain are very sharp and pointed.

Just giving a little update to my post after talking with my German friend

イシェンクツァイ

Ich schenke zwei (I give/gift two)

I stumbled onto these, all the original 151 drawn by Kazunori Aihara, the artist of the "Let's Find Pokemon" series of books. They do quite a nice job of emulating the coloring style of the original games, though it's quite clearly distinct with much brighter colors. The scan is pretty dirty, I wonder if a cleaner version exists? I'm sure someone would have to be willing to destroy their precious book to get one though.

A shocking experience, synchronized scream! Source

Missile in slow motion appears to split the air | source

A historical moment

Graylag geese flying in formation with a boat | source

This is how we taught our rescued goose how to fly!! :D