3 December 2013

Sneewittchen (last updated Dec. 30)

So I've talked about Morohoshi Daijirou in my Some Thoughts #6 post and I mentioned being quite impressed with his take on the Little Mermaid fairy tale. That's why when I saw he had a 1-volume collection of his take on Grimm's Fairy Tales, I knew I had to translate it. The un-neutered original version of Grimm's Fairy Tales, as you probably know, include very bizarre and grotesque stories, which makes it a perfect fit with Morohoshi's style. The highlight of the volume is definitely his spin on Snow White and Rapunzel, but there're other interesting chapters. Some are relatively straight adaptations while others have a sci-fi, horror, mystery, or even a comedy-twist.

One more thing to mention, since I'm releasing this chapter by chapter, I thought it would be nice to include the author's commentary section immediately after each chapter instead of saving them for the end of the volume. This section includes a short summary of the original fairy tale as well as the author's thoughts, so I encourage you to not gloss them over like most people do with these kinds of stuff.
Die wunderlische Gasterei. Translated either as "The Strange Feast" or  "The Strange Inn" in English, while titled as "The Strange Invitation" in Japanese. A very strange story only found in the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Morohoshi does a wonderful job in making the story even more bizarre.
Although Morohoshi "says" he didn't tamper too much with the original story, it seems to me his subtle changes to "The Fisherman and his Wife" had quite a drastic effect on the whole. You can hardly call this a story about greed anymore.
"If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame." That sounds like one hell of a creepy-looking kid. Glad to see Morohoshi picked up on it and subverted the story in a way that fits so well.
Oh dem Germans and their weird stories about sausages.
From the commentary at the end, it seems Morohoshi isn't too proud of this one. Still, I personally really enjoyed it, and I have to say it's tied as my favourite of this collection along with Snow White. I should go look for his other mentioned manga and the alternate version of Rapunzel eventually.
Oh man, do I ever love Morohoshi's take on this bizarre fairy tale. Hilarious stuff.
This chapter was the most entertaining to translate so far. Quite humorous.
It's rather odd that I never actually knew the original story of Puss in Boots before reading this manga.

Download:
Sneewittchen c01:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c02:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c03:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c04:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c05:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c06:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c07:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c08:   Sendspace
Sneewittchen c09:   Sendspace

23 comments:

  1. >Sneewittchen
    Is that intentional? Because correctly it should be "Schneewittchen".

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    1. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html

      >Both elements of the heroine's name Sneewittchen are in Low German, although the tale itself was recorded in High German. The High German form of the heroine's name would be Schneeweisschen or Schneeweißchen.

      tl;dr
      It's intentional and it's accurate.

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    2. Fucking prussians.

      Thanks for the info.

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    3. Schneeweisschen (and Rosenrot) is another of Grimms tales. For folk tales as collected from the Brothers Grimm there is no "correct" form since there are several German dialects. Lower German you mast think about Dutch. Prussians are People with a different (Baltic) language which does not exist anymore since the fall of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, belonging to Russia) in 1945.
      The Strange Inn is well translated. But "wunderlich" and "Gasterei" are so oldfashioned words that it would not be used anywhere.
      White Skin, red lips and black hair are supposed to be beautiful and noble, unlike today. Not scary at all.
      Ah, and thank you very much for your good work. I appreciate it much. (Missing Vinland a bit.)

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  2. Gantz Waiting Room also released a oneshot collection which is a humorous take on Grimm's Fairy Tales by Otomo. Plus this thing, both wraps up my year purrfecly!! Thank you very much!

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  3. Hey friends! I was wondering if you could provide me with the "raw" of this manga and give permissions to use your translation by to then translate this manga to the Spanish. If this were possible all credits will be given to Hox Translations as God commands ^^'

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    1. http://raw-hunters.com/raw-scan/grimm-no-you-na-monogatari-snow-white-raw-zip/

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  4. Thanks for always bringing interesting manga to us Hox. Stay great!

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  5. Thanks Hox for this awesome manga. Do you know how many chapters have this volume?

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    1. There's a table of contents page in chapter 1, page 4. 12 in total.

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  6. Recently, I thought about reading the orignals. I ended up not doing it, but this will do for the time being.

    Thanks a lot, Hox.

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  7. Thank so much.

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  8. Just want to say thanks for including the author's commentary with chapter really enjoy reading them following the story!

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  9. Hox, my friend, I have a recommendation a manga recommendation for you to translate: http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=59192

    Is by the same author of Sneewitchen.

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  10. hi hox
    i wonder if you're going to re-work on historie vol 8 or not

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    1. I am but if you're asking because you want to take a shot at doing it, that would be nice as you'd save me the time. If not, maybe next Feb?

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  11. Hoxman, will it have a single volume download after you end the translation?

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  12. hello could re-upload the chapters again and the links are down. Thank you

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    1. https://mega.co.nz/#F!119QSBhS!bCe22AtmY6puabi3XL5b1A

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    2. https://mega.nz/#F!119QSBhS!bCe22AtmY6puabi3XL5b1A!UwM3zQrQ

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