Once more the month of Halloween is upon us (hush, for me it is the entire month! I live and breath on my horror!) and this year, I will try to do some more suggestions for books, movies, series and also try to share some music and games! To start it off, an single based around Halloween from my favorite fantasy group, Sound Horizon!
I think the right translation of the album would be: The story about Halloween and the night.
The album has three different songs, and like most of their singles the songs comes together in one way or another. While the first one is really long, and have so many mood swings you will feel like you are listening to more than 20 songs in one, it has the best start and ending ever. (not the english in the start, that didn’t happen -.-, not the spoken part, but the sing part from Revo… never ever… happened -.-)
Most of the stories are linked together with the history of immigration to America from Ireland during a lot of wars and famines, and we first follow a young man that moved away to be able to make a new life for himself, and in turn his sister and her family still in Ireland. While lots of sadness and tragedy follow him, and he becomes a cripple after a war, he still finds a woman and falls in love, and even get enough money for his sister to be able to follow him to America with her family. The night after getting to know he is becoming a father, and having sent the last of his money to his sister, he is murdered in the street, and as he hears the singing and voices of children, the last he knows, is that he dies at Halloween night.
The second song is about a group of children celebrating Halloween night, and besides seeing the same man that told the first story, it don’t seem to have much to do with the first song. At the end, one of the children collapses.
The third song is where it is all tied together, as we hear the story of the child in the second one, and the story of his parents, that were able to move to America from Ireland by help of her brother, that they never heard from again. Having been born on the trip there, their son is weak, and never really leaves his room, until he gets a friend in the town they live in. They also find out they have the same last name, but never find an explanation of this. In the song, we find out that Lenny’s time is over, and he probably won’t survive long, so his parents lets him go out for his first and last Halloween with his friends. The last part of the song has his mother sorrowfully sing her last good night to her son.
“I believe that my child is still out there somewhere, having a Halloween that
never ends.
If you see a boy with a head like a pumpkin, then maybe that’s Lenny.
This is the end of my story. I don’t care if you think it’s not true.
I just want three seconds of your time, right before you fall asleep.
Just for that moment, would you forget all your worries, your hatred, your
sadness… and say this for me?
“Good night, Lenny.”
If you like sad yet story full music, I think you should check it out, if only to say you have seen lots of men in pumkin hats rage war, or a kid with a pumpkin head for hair. If you want to get the stories better, there are also translations easy to find on the net ^.^ Hope you enjoy! Let us all have a fun Halloween month (month!!! MONTH!!!!)
First off, I did not go to Japan, I got into Hokkaido, but I didn’t go because of different reasons. I have mixed feelings about it, I am happy that I didn’t have to go trough all the things I needed to do for the travel and move, but on the other side I am sad that I won’t be going, even thou I know that there would be little chance of me acctually being able to get trough a year with classes only in Japanese. Now I am taking the one year course in history to get my free study points and I am trying to find a job so I can get more money for when I am done here! But other than that:
Yay! I got my first package today! I have ordered a few things when I got money again! (But since I want a Cintiq 12, I were also smart and have put a lot of money into a savings account, and I hope that I will have enough to buy one for myself for christmas and also have money to spare for the time after school is over!)
I ordered two really cheap cross stitch kits from a chinese seller on ebay, and I think I might get them next week or something. (Which means I have one week to at least finish the one I am working on now XD) I will show you pictures of them when they come=)
I also have ordered a school book, that I really need XD I et my first hand in task tomorrow XD
Other than that I have become a member of Sylvanian families fanclub in Norway, and am waiting for the member gift ^-^. (I’m a kid at heart! That is my excuse!)
But today I got my first packet! It was the Sound Horizon Marchen DVD!!! I were too late to get the limited edition, but that is ok ^-^. And since it was cheaper than buying from Outland, I also ordered the newest magazine of “ゴス・ロリ”(Gothic lolita), since I had so much fun with the Noin jacket I were making, I decided to just start collecting them. It has a lot of inspiration, and also, for that many patterns for unique clothes, under 18 dollars are really cheap.
I have made a lot of manly costumes, but I wonder if I should try and make a dress one day? The good thing with Noin is that he is quite flexible XD
The Marchen DVD comes with two disks, one with one type of sound and the other with another type of sound (I am so smart!) Most of it is written in german so I don’t know a thing of what stands there XD.
It comes with japanese subtitles, but it only appears when they speak german.
If you have downloaded the consert, you can go to the international sound horizon fan page, white crow, and you can get the subtitles in english! It was really helpful!
Other than that I am hurt again, I have walked too much in bad shoes and my foot went owie… But I am using creme on it and walk as much as I can to get to school, then it goes owie on the way back home (*Random adorable crying eyes begging for attention and love*). I might have to get to the doctor next week if it don’t get better.
I am almost done with my Noin costume, and I will make a blog post with the details of my awsome sewing work soon, and I will also make a post with what I think about the Marchen consert, and also the new things I found out thanks to it! I think I understand the deal with Elizabeth and why she had to call her brother for father.
I will come back to that soon=) I’ll just leave you with a little tease:
Before I say anything more about this album, I just want to say this: This is my favorite album of all time! Märchen is slowly comming up to a standstill, but this is still the Sound Horizon album that I have listened to the most! It has a lot of stories, and you feel like there is real love and thought put behind this from the singers and also Revo who wrote it all.
Not all is ever made clear, and fans still try to figure out just how all of it can fit together. This Album is in my eyes, a masterpiece! It even had a manga made out of it! And that manga makes me cry for each chapter! Some of the stories are not big, but they are told with such a feeling that we feel with the characters in the songs. The young girl that is loosing her sight, the man that lost an arm in the war and is tossing his life away for revenge and we also see different possibilities in life, a woman that looses her child in birth, children that looses their mother in birth, and also how the father’s left will deal with it. Will he hate the child that took his loved one away? Or will he embrace it as the last gift his wife left him with?
Bravery, cowardice, hate and love, Roman dwells into all of this, and gives us stories that in some ways, are all linked together in this, the 5th horizon.
I couldn’t find all the songs translated, that is why I will link to the White Crow site, where you can find most lyrics of Sound Horizon in english! But I will post all the songs here anyway, and the ones that is not translated will just be the live, since Sound Horizon lives are awsome!
I will on some of them also add link to the manga online, since nothing will help better in understanding the songs than that ^.^
Asa to Yoru no Monogatari – The story of the morning and the night (Eng)
Hiver Laurant is a being that died before he was born. (That will be explained a little in the next song) and since he can’t leave the border between life and death, he sends out his two servants to see if there somewhere in the world is a story of him comming to life. Since he is dead I guess they can’t mean the story of him dying, so it seems that all the stories has some connection to Hiver. Either it is all bound together by the name Hiver or Laurant, or it is different realities and they search for the ones where he were able to be born.
In the manga he says that he is comming to the world, so they might have been sent out to look for the story where he can be born also.
I will add the manga link here. But the first chapter is about the two first songs.
Honoo – Flame (Eng)
A woman is chased out of her town as it is raged by was, and this might once more be a referance to the wars in the second chronicle. In the manga it is told that the men protected the town long enough to let the women escape, and the woman’s husband or boyfriend probably died then.
By the strain she ends up loosing her unborn child, and the rest of the song is his funeral. She tries her best to keep happy, as death and life is a never ending repeating circle. In the manga, I think it is her aunt that says that she can one day try again, but in the end she finally breaks down as she knows that even if she one day can try again, it would not be with her loved one.
She bury him with twin dolls to keep him company in death, swaying with joy is Violette and wet with sadness is Hortense. So for those who still have not understood it, the still born child is Hiver Laurant, who died before he was born. I acctually didn’t hear before that he sings in the background of the song, but it just makes this song more touching. But is he supposed to be Hiver? Or is he supposed to be his father singing with his mother?
The last few lines and the new melody that starts there makes me wonder if it is like in the manga, and that Hiver recognizes his mother’s voice, as he watches the stories sent from the two dolls.
A man served under the general Albers Alvarez in one of the wars from the second Chronicle. His name is Leon Laurant, and he comes into a fight with a man named Flambeau Laurant. Leon looses his arm, and starts drinking to chase away the memories and nightmares of what happened. In the end his lover leaves him, as she is afraid he will end up killing her and their unborn child if he goes into a new drunken rage. After this he uses all his money and power to find the man that took his hand, and soon he hear news of him.
He goes to kill the demon that has haunted his nightmares for years, and he is shocked to see just what has happened to him. The Laurant with flaming hair sits in the bar, drunk, fat and repulsive. With one eye and one hand, he had become a drunk man that disgraced himself before everyone. Leon sees that he even has a lover by his side that he keeps hitting, and he thinks back to how he had acted towards his own lover.
In a few seconds he is overpowered, as he sees before him just how he himself had almost become. He can’t even lift the sword to kill this man that was far from as glorious as he had remembered.
Then a new man comes in, Lauracin attacks and kills the red Laurant, and as the red Laurant’s son runs off to revenge his drunken father, Leon is left alone there to think over what he had tossed his life away on. He hated a man that attacked him in war, but that man had himself been attacked, and had lost both his hand and eye, that man had also wronged Lauracin, who hated him even more than Leon. And then the hate continues, as the red Laurant’s son runs after to kill his father’s killer.
Leon want’s to stop the hate, but how will he continue now that his life is left with no meaning?
Norowareshi Houseki – The Cursed Jewel (Eng)
Other than the names, one of the red threads trough this album, and also into a lot of the other songs, is the red jewel that brings death to it’s owners, even the reaper fell to it (If it is Alvarez or the red Laurant is not certain) and it might even have belonged to the woman from their Stardust song.
It seems that the man that found it first were a kind man, and when he found it he just wanted to use it for his dear sister. But the owner of the mine kills him, and his sister waits for him. It also says that she is not married, but I don’t know if it was just at the time, or if she never did marry. There is also a manga chapter of this, but it has not been translated yet. If she never married, did that mean that she loved her brother?
But it seems she is a doll maker, and it might have been her that made the dolls for Hiver? I also think that Hiver had the jewel, as he has a broach with a red jewel in it.
Hoshikuzu no Kawahimo (A Leash of Stardust) (Eng) (Manga)
Etoile is born with bad sight, and as she gets older her sight will fade. She live alone with her father, as her mother probably died in childbirth. It is not said right out, but her father is one armed, so in the manga at least, Leon Laurant is her father, and it shows that he returned to his lover and even though she died, he has shaped up and found a new reason for living.
One day he finds a big dog to take care of his daughter the day she goes blind, and the two of them soon becomes inseperable.
But she hates her name, since she can’t understand why she should be named Etoile (star) when she have never seen one. But her mother meant her name in another way, that Etoile would be a warm and gentle light for her father.
Then one day, Pleut, her dog dies, and in the end of the song the voice that sings as Pleut is also the same voice as her mother singing in the beginning of the song. Does this mean that Pleut were her mother reborn to come and take care of her and her father?
A puppy is born from Pleut, and Etoile takes care of it as she did it’s mother.
Hiiro no fuusha – Scarlet Windmill (Eng)
A town is attacked, and a boy grabs the hand of the girl he loves or care for. I am not sure of the relationship between them, she could have been his sister. They escape trough the forest as the attackers comes after them. Then she is grabbed and pulled up by a warrior on horse, and in fear, the boy escapes and leaves her. He regrets this, and if he were reborn and went trough this again, he would stay and die together with her.
This boy is also thought to be the boy in the single that came out before Roman, and also the killer that killed the red Laurant. If so, then the red Laurant was the man that took the girl away, and in the manga his son is also the son of that girl, and it is not known if it was rape or if she did fall in love with him.
Tenshi no Chouzou – Sculpture of an Angel (Eng) (Manga)
This song tells of the sculptor Auguste Laurant, who lost his wife in childbirth, and after that he keeps working each day for the rest of his life to make a sculpture of an angel in the image of his late wife. He has not once seen the face of his son, as he started to hate the life that his wife had given birth to at the cost of her own life. He dies in the end, as he is able to finish his angel, and he dies before the smiling statue.
Unlike the story with Leon Laurant, who also loses his wife, Auguste can’t see the child as a good thing. In his eyes it is the son that took his wife away, and he never wanted anything else than her. In the manga she was already sick, but she wanted to give birth to their child, since it was his and hers.
It is a short song, and not with much story, but it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Jimang does a wonderful work, and all the feelings goes trough to the ones listening to this song.
Utsukushiki mono – Beautiful things (Eng)
This one is one of my favorites, but that is just because I am a big sister, and my little brother is one of the most important persons for me. If anything were to happen to him, I would be desolated. So I feel the sorrow of this song, a girl that lost her little brother early to sickness, and she keeps playing the song he liked. How this is linked to the other songs is that the little brother’s name was Laurant.
Yorokobi to Kanashimi no Budoushu – The wine of Happiness and Sadness (Manga)
Sorry that I couldn’t find a translation on this, but there is a manga chapter for it! ^.^
Loraine de Saint-Laurent is from a rich family, and she gets her own wine field when she is old enough. With that wine field she also have a man and his son serving there, and she falls in love with him over the years. Her mother dies, and her father marries again with a spoiled woman that just wants him to buy her things. Loraine is in dispair as she finds out he has used up all his money on his new wife and wants to marry her away since he either can’t or don’t want to take care of her anymore.
She runs away with her lover, but her father hire a assassin to kill him, and she is soon brought back and she finds out her father ordered the murder of her lover. She then leaves again, and as she sees the assassin that took her love away one day, she kills him, before she travel back to the wine field that both she and her lover had loved. She never marries, and spend the rest of her life making wine there. The wine also makes a cameo in the phantom pain, as Leon uses the last of his money to order the best wine they have, and he calms down as he tastes the wine named Loraine.
This is a sad song too, and in the end, there really is not a happy end. The assassin also seems to be the man that goes trough some of the songs in Elysion, and maybe also the assassin that killed Alvarez, but we can’t be sure about that.
Tasogare no Kenja – The sage at dusk
I love this song!! It is my happy song! Savant is cheering up a woman that seems down, and it seems his way of cheering her up is just to say that: hey! Your life is bad, but you are a hundred times better off than the people in the other songs! XD
I don’t know if this links in to the other songs with other than them being mentioned, but no one knows who Savant is, and the girl might be one of the ones earlier. And in the end there seems that someone has just found Savant, and recognizes him as Christophe. I read somwhere that this could be a man from one of the earlier albums, but I don’t remember where I read it…
Man that guy can move XD In his special own weird way XD
11-moji no Dengon – the 11 lettered message
As the stories starts, so they end. And with Rikki once more singing as the mother of Hiver, but this time she died, and the child lives. She sings her last encouragment for her child, and wishes that he has a happy life. And in the text there are numerals written that when decoded will show the hidden message of the 5th story:
Well, I did the post on Märchen, and my awsomely cute and cool friend said that she wanted me to do more ^.^ (See what some sucking up can make me call you? If you want some too, please comment XD)
I don’t have time for Roman yet, but I have time for the single that got me interested in Sound Horizon, since Ike speaks english in the middle there, I got some of the story, and I liked what I heard.
So, first thing I did was find a translation, and I loved it more!!! Wah! It is such a beautiful and yet simple story. I love it! (But hey, I love everything where the demon is not the bad guy but humanity sucks XD)
The world of humans is always in conflict, and it seems to never end. Layla is born from parents with mixed religion, and when a war broke out between the two, her parents were either killed or killed each other. She were able to flee from the war, but fell down into a old cave when she was hit by a stray arrow.
In the cave she meets a demon that has been sealed there for centuries, but she shows no fear, and as she takes his hand, he asks her if she is ready for eternity together with him. (<3 I love good love stories XD)
Then she says something about suicide being a sin for humans, and I don’t know if that is meant with casting her human life away and becoming a demon, or if it refers to the end.
It seems Layla and Shaytan watches as time goes by, in hope for the war to end, but it just keeps going, and Shaytan watches as Layla starts to feel more and more powerless. Then he woves to protect her, as she had been the one to release him from his prison, and it was her light that made him remember his own name again.
He tells her that he will destroy that which she hates, if it is one of the two sides of the war, or the war itself.
As the wars continue Layla finally finds the answer for her question. Who should the powerless hate? She could not hate any sides, since her parents were from each their. So to unite the humans, a unhuman enemy must make its apperance.
Shaytan and Layla become the true evil of the world, and the humans unite to fight them. And as the demons either leaves or are defeated, there seems to be peace in the land.
T.T I hope they didn’t die!!
I put videos with pictures here, but the second song has a music video, and if you have time, you should check out the live for this, I’ll set the link to them on the song names ^.^. If Sound Horizon songs are great on the album, they are a hundred times more on the concerts!! And I just found the concert translated too! XD Check it out!
Well, I will try and do Roman next XD Believe me, that thing is a mind fuck XD
I found really good and well done translations of Märchen over at youtube today! And I thought I should share them ^.^
01 Yoiyami no Uta (The Song of Dusk)
Hm, I got more of the story now, and it seems that Ido is a creature that like Märchen also died in the well or something like that, and it melted together with Märchen to wake him up again to take revenge. It also woke up the doll that he had as Elize. But I still don’t know for sure if the doll is just like that on it’s own, or if she is the same as Elizabeth but just after revenge for her love being killed. Or maybe it is the revenge wish of Therese? Märchen’s mother?
02 Kakei no Majo (The Witch at the Stake)
I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for the old witch/mother, it seems she sent her daughter out when she couldn’t feed her herself, and she regretted it later and became religious. Then when her daughter never returned she might have decided to not listen to god anymore and when a nun then came to her house she killed her, not knowing it was her own daughter. After that she inherited her dead husbands fortune, and might have wanted to make up for not taking care of her daughter with taking care of the hungry children…
Like I said, not sure how to feel about that old woman…
But still, Grethel sounds so cute!!
03 Kuroki Okami no Yado (The Black Landlady’s Inn)
Yes! This translation gave me the name of the story! I found it now! The man from the gallows tells off a landlady that has no more liver to make for her costumers, and she then goes out to steal livers from newly hung offenders, but in the end one of them comes back from the dead for his liver. I love stories like that XD But it seems that here she is tired of having to wait for the people to die, so she instead hangs her servant girl to then cut out her liver. I don’t know if she just hangs her, or if she gets her publicly executed for something.
But this song also goes back to their 2nd chronicle story, as many of the others also does. That damned shinigami guy keeps poping up all the time XD I should really read a translation of that album soon, I am getting curious XD
04 Garasu no Hitsugi de Nemuru Himegimi (The Princess Sleeping in a Glass Coffin)
I would have been ashamed if I had gotten this wrong XD But most of what I thought was right ^.^ And I just love the scene where the prince asks for Snow White. “Dwarves, will you give me that corpse?” He does not think she is alive or anything, he just wants to marry a dead woman XD
Once again, love the revenge at the end, it is charming XD And I have been wondering what the hell that random conversation in the middle there is, but then after I saw the first song again, I wonder if it has anything to do with the man that Märchen became one with in the well? That creature was called Ido… and that man in the conversation was Idolfried. I do not know, but it is a thought.
05 Sei to Shi wo wakatsu Kyoukai no Furuido (The Old Well at the Border that separates Life and Death)
AH! Things makes more sense now! I found the story of this one too! Mother Holle is a little like the Norwegian Askeladden fairy tales, of a brother that works well and does all right, while his two older brothers never wants to do any work at all, and in the end Askeladden gets all fame and glory XD
This story tells of a young girl that lives with her stephmother and younger stephsister (Cinderella much XD?) Her father died by falling down a well, and his name was Idolfried! Dum dum DA!!!!
She ends up falling down the well too, but she ends up in another world where Idolfried/Märchen allows her time to think about her revenge, and she helps some bread and a apple tree in the other world, before she comes into the service of Mother Holle. She helps her for a time, and as a reward for her good work, she is sent home covered in gold. Her little sister is not so lucky and comes back covered in pitch (it is something used in asphalt I think…) and she can never get it off.
It seems that the girls can see Märchen, since the daughter said she talked to her father. And in the end of the song the sound of the rats can point towards the black death from the prologue single. Does this mean that this is the same well that Märchen fell into?
And I love that Revo is also the rooster, bread and appletree XD
06 Bara no Tou de Nemuru Himegimi (The Princess Sleeping in a Tower of Roses)
I guess everyone knows the story of sleeping beauty XD? This is the one without rape, so that is at least a good thing. The only thing I didn’t get before in this song was the ending about the last curse, that she would abandon her daughter in the forest, I thought it could be the girl in the second song, but when I read it I saw that she had not been abandoned as a baby, but when she was older.
But there might be a hint at the end, as the melody sounds like one of the older songs, and the princess could be a character from the Elysion album, from the song Majo to Lafrenze and I don’t think it went well with her… she is found by the same witch that cursed her mother and raised by her to use her purity to protect the gates of Hades from opening. But she falls in love with Orpheus, who takes her virginity. But after she finds out he just needed to open the gats of Hades to get to his true love that had died. She curses him and if he turns to look at his true love while they escape, he would loose her again. And he so does 😛
07 Aoki Hakushaku no Shiro (The Blue Earl’s Castle)
Tells of a terifying man with blue beard that killed his wives and kept them locked up in a room. It seems here that one of his dead wives wishes for revenge, and Märchen uses the earl’s newest wife, her sister and two brothers as his tool to set the revenge into action.
But Bluebard has a big mental problem… first he says that he might have loved his first wife, but still he killed her. It sounds like he really enjoys killing his wives, but then he says that he won’t forgive the people that claimed someone to be a witch? Does he mean that someone said one of his wives were a witch and he wants to protect the reputation of his loved wife even if he himself killed her? Or could there have been a woman he loved before that died as a witch? Could that have been Märchen’s mother? Could Bluebeard then be Märchen’s father? I should have read the single songs better *faint*
Oh, and Bluebard also quite frankly says: he rapes his wives, then kill them, and if God had a hole, he would rape him too!
08 Haritsuke no Seijo (The Crucified Saint)
This one is just sad! Elizabeth never loved anyone else than Märchen and when she finally is reunited with him it is after her death… life is unfair… but that damned doll got hers!
And I am curious about the family relationship here… he wants her to call her father, but he is her brother? I do not want to dwell deeper in this right now -.-
The last song has not been translated yet I just found out XD So I will take that later, it is mostly just Märchen saying goodbye to the world T.T
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