hello! happy April Fool's Day! don't forget to drink water. april fools! I forgot to drink water because I spent the last 6 hours being normal and translating an insert/idol song from 2017 from a dead mobage that was part of my identity for a lot of my internet years
this is Cat-Cat Romance.
f*f (pronounced ”fortissimo”) is an idol duo from the mobile game Battle Girl High School, which is nominally about high school girls on Space Earth doing a bunch of dodge rolls in combat against fantasy monsters in the year 2045. fortissimo, consisting of the yellow-hair twintail tsundere Kanon and the big sister (who is... well, big) Shiho, arrives on the scene in the second part of the game's story, where the developers made a big push for idol game money (remember, this is like peak Cinderella Girls time).
the signature fortissimo song is the dramatic Deep-Connect, but Cat-Cat Romance is a secondary banger of an EDM song which worked its way back into my ears, and so here we are.
so who wants some lyrics? (points to read more) I also added like a thousand words of commentary and life experiences relating to this translation after the English lyrics. cheers
lyrics
each japanese verse/chorus is followed by the corresponding english translation for this. I decided to interweave like this totally arbitrarily and so that you could kind of try to line up what I was doing with the original. also it's in a code block so that I can do single line breaks
すれ違うたび ただの顔見知りだとか
高い場所で 突き放しちゃう
でも気づいたら いつも影を探してる
足跡から 暴き出しちゃう
偶然さえ Making ぴくりと動く耳で
キミの周波数 Biri-Biri 問い合わせて
ねえ
どこにいるの？
Whenever you pass me, I pretend that you are just another face
I push you far away and flee to a high place
But before I know it, again I'm searching for shadows of your trace
Chasing your footsteps and pouncing upon you
Even a chance is Making my ears move and flutter
Seeking out your frequency, Biri-Biri, my heart says to itself
I want to find you now
恋は Cat Cat わがまま言って 会いたい
だってワタシは気まぐれなの
Cute Cute 可愛くそっと 甘える
なんて似合わないでしょ
今は Cat Cat 素直なハート なれない
ちょっと心はおあずけなの
Choose Choose それでも絶対 いつかは
そうよ 必ず手に入れたい 振り向かせて 抱き寄せて
My love is Cat-Cat, want to say selfishly, "can I see you?"
but I can't be straight 'cause I'm a fickle kitty
Cute-Cute, fawning gently, softly, acting sweetly
Doesn't really feel like me, does it?
But I'm a Cat-Cat, my heart can't be honest, so I'll have to
try and show a little of my feelings to you
Choose-Choose, but still one day surely I will be yours
That's right, I will really get a hold of you so
Turn and look at me now, come and hold me tight
見つめあう魔法 あれは勘違いだったの
弱いところ 強がる合図
懐かしい鼓動 浸るノスタルジーの中
裏路地から 踏み出してみる
泣きマネを Present チラリと見せた舌で
キミの心拍数 Doki-Doki 追い詰めたら
ねえ
気づかないの？
That spark when our eyes met, was it only me that felt it, I wonder?
The parts where I act strong, are to cover up weakness
A pulse that I recall, drowning me in a sea of nostalgia
I peek out from the alley, and take a step towards you
Hey, if I were to Present, my tongue peeking through a veil of tears
would it make your heart beat fast Doki-Doki and push you in a corner?
Come on and notice me!
愛を Cat Cat 届けて全部 欲しいよ
ずっとワタシは此処にいたの
Cut Cut 視線をさっと 逸らして
そんな態度はダメよ
今は
Cat Cat 信じて待って お願い
もっと隣に近づいたら
Call Call 何度も呼んで 名前を
そうよ 聞かせて駆け引きなら お手の物よ そばにいて
My heart is Cat-Cat, I want to give it all, over to you
Always, I've been right here, calling out for you
Cut-Cut, whenever our gaze meets, I turn away
I can't handle it when you're like that
Right now I'm
Cat-Cat, waiting for you always, won't you please
close the distance to me, come up to me and then
Call-Call, won't you call out my name, endlessly
That's right, if you say it, you will win me over
I'm weak to that from you, stay here by my side
恋は Cat Cat わがまま言って 会いたい
だってワタシは気まぐれなの
Cute Cute 可愛くそっと 甘える
なんて似合わないでしょ
でもね Cat Cat 素直なハート いいかも
もう心は君だけなの
Choose Choose これから一生 いつでも
そうよ ワタシをときめかせて 胸の奥に 抱き寄せて
My love is Cat-Cat, want to say selfishly, "can I see you?"
but I can't be straight 'cause I'm a fickle kitty
Cute-cute, fawning gently, softly, acting sweetly
Doesn't really feel like me, does it?
But hey a Cat-Cat honest heart might be good, thinking of it
My heart already is for you and only you
Choose-Choose, for the rest of my life, now and always
That's right, my heart is pounding now thinking of you
Press yourself against me, come and hold me tight
Hello thanks for listening and reading and possibly singing
Battle Girl High School is a mobile game that I have decided to make inextricably linked to my life experience, for whatever reason.
after having branded myself as Person Who Will Tell You About Fujimiya Sakura At Anime Convention Panels (and Anko Tsubuzaki, but the patron saint of lazy garbage gamers is also championed by a good friend of mine) for years, the mobile game shut down on the day I moved to Japan in 2019, only to have its musical spirit channeled from its grave under the careful necromancy of Sega's arcade game division, which perpetually wields Ongeki (one of my main music games) as a staff which casts a spells upon nerds who are hipster for random niche idol-ish franchises.
nowadays, a few years after its eternal rest, BGHS is held in regard by parent company COLOPL the same way you and I think about the OCs that we invented and put in like half of a fic or RPG Maker project. "haha remember BGHS? ikr. here's a random piece of new art" toots the bullhorn the BGHS official twitter in the anniversary month of April every year, causing half of my twitter to kind of mill around the town square and mutter things like "so are you going to do BGHS 2 or what"
this year is no exception, as for the second year in a row, the Token Evil Villain Mascot took over the BGHS twitter for April Fools', cryptically announced a collab with COLOPL's tennis game, did some exercise, and left.
anyway what I'm saying is that I reacted to this extremely normally and listened to Cat-Cat Romance for about 10 hours today, and decided to make an attempt at translating it given that there are approximately 0.5 English translations for this song online and I don't fully agree with that one (or half of one, as it is).
as someone who is an N2 Japanese student and not a professional localizer, I found it to be a bit of a challenge, especially as I found my brain insisting that the flow of the lyrics match the original despite massive differences in word density (I would say some of the extended sentences involve a nontrivial amount of either interpretation or hallucination, depending on your opinion)
I'm also not convinced that I understood the song fully properly - there are some sentences where I'm uncertain if I am reading them backwards, but I ended up going with my gut of how the song portrayed its progression.
I personally visualized Cat-Cat Romance, after my first few reads, as being the story of someone with a very cat-like love - someone who has a strong desire, but not the strength to express it openly, so they're always hovering around the object of their affection, poorly attempting to glare love beams into their target. over the song the choruses, in my opinion, evolve from "I wish I could express myself" to "I want you to say my words for me" to "I will take a step forward", and I ended up building my translation around that.
I think ultimately, it's a bit of me writing the kind of story that I'd enjoy and want to read into this, but as I'm fairly uninformed by the BGHS canon nowadays beyond surface reads of characters (Kanon is a tsundere and Shiho is a big sister and together they're the cool idol duo) and surface understandings (this song is kind of written like a straightforward love song of yearning, and BGHS fans on average would probably want to construe that as shipping Kanon/Shiho, though the split vocal parts in this song do not really indicate different viewpoints but instead just convey one continuous story)... I think I was going to end this paragraph "well I can do whatever I want unless COLOPL wants to come back and stop me" but I don't remember why
oh yeah, also in the process of making this translation, I realized that although I like to match general syllable flow, I totally throw any sense of rhyme or "is it weird to use that word to end a sentence" out the window, and also I rely on very short, simple vocabulary words to fill syllables. I'd probably catify the song more to be cheeky (though I don't think this reflects the original too much)
anyway, see all BGHS fans in two weeks when the game's 8th anniversary rolls around and we get served one more thin slice of art cake