Utena Fansub Ep 31 Translation Notes

Revolutionary Girl Utena Episode 31 Her Tragedy.mkv

Apologies for phoning it in a bit on these translation notes. I’ve had a lot of stuff on recently and I am t i r e d.

A close-up of the lower half of a face: a blonde girl in a yellow uniform with pink fringed epaulettes holds a phone to her ear. The subtitle reads “Hey Touga, where are you at?”

The same close-up of a blonde girl in a yellow uniform holding a phone to her ear, with a different line. The subtitle reads “Oh Touga, why didn’t you come last night?”

It was interesting to translate these two different girls calling Touga, because the way they speak is completely different. The first girl is confident, aware of Touga’s womanising, and speaks like a modern day high school girl, while the second girl is needy, guilt tripping, and speaks in a more old fashioned way. The contrast is stark, and I think it’s a way of setting up the ”when it comes to girls, he doesn’t care who it is” vibe that’s shared across the episode with Akio.

A high-angle shot of a large, empty, sunlit hall with small figures casting long shadows, among them Utena, Touga and Akio. The subtitle reads “We’re in this together, as siblings.”

Touga: 俺たちは二人きりの兄弟じゃないか？

Touga: We’re in this together, as siblings.

A more literal translation would be something like “We’re siblings, just the two of us, aren’t we?” But in this case 二人きり (just the two of us) has more of a “just the two of us as a team (against the world)” kind of vibe, rather than a factual “we are two siblings”, so I figured it wasn’t too important to make a point about the literal number 2.

Nanami, with long blonde hair and wearing a frilly nightgown, gives a small relieved smile against a dark blue background. The subtitle reads “Oh, it’s just him.”

Nanami:（なんだびっくりしたー）あの…

Nanami: (Oh, it’s just him.) Excuse me…

It seems like most translations translate this as “Oh, you startled me.” I don’t like this because it seems obvious to me that なんだびっくりしたー is Nanami whispering to herself. She follows it with あの, an attention-getting/conversation-starting interjection! Not to mention the volume of her voice between the two sentences is different. It’s as though the other translations didn’t pick up on the fact that she was talking to herself.

A big thank you as always to my editor @dontbe-lasanya!

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Rose divider taken from this post.