World Famous Comics: Twelve Kingdoms, The - Hardcover Edition Volume 4: Skies of Dawn
Twelve Kingdoms, The - Hardcover Edition Volume 4: Skies of Dawn
By: Fuyumi Ono Publisher: TokyoPop Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 656 Publication Date: March 10, 2010 Reading Level: Young Adult Release Date: March 02, 2010 Studio: TokyoPop
Awsome ^ Great work, lovely story. I wish it wouldn't take so long for them to publish the books in English.
Editors in Training? ^ I agree with the other reviewers. I loved the story,( the arc has always been my favorite one ever since I watched the anime for the first time) but I am very disappointed with the sloppy editing job. What happened to the missing scene where Yoko speaks to Koushou? It's an important development in the story in my opinion so I don't understand it could be just left out.
Not bad, but too many editing errors. ^ Well, the translation is not bad, although there are several inaccurate phrases. But the editing is pretty bad, too many errors. And every time I read the words "prophet-king" and "glory-king", had to control the urge to throw the book against the wall...
Translation has too many errors & Parts of the original storyline was cut out! ^ The Twelve Kingdoms is a wonderful series to read and I own all of the earlier releases of this series, but there just are so many errors in the translation that I've completely lost interest in reading this book. The story is great, but the quality of this translation is very low.
(Note: They also used extremely low quality paper to print this book.)
Advice:
Do not buy this volume of The Twelve Kingdoms until they fix the errors in the translation and just read the free online translation of this arc because compared to that free translation, this translation from Tokyopop is absolutely horrible! Buying this poor translation of the novel will just be a waste of your money.
Why is it horrible?
Like some of the other reviewers stated, there are many grammatical errors and mistakes in this translation. One of the most noticeable errors which I found in the translation was that it would often use the wrong character names all over the place, and that is a seriously grave mistake in its own way. Honestly, if someone new to the story of the Twelve Kingdoms read this volume, it would probably boggle their minds and they'd say, "Huh! Where did this character come from? Aren't they still in that other country?"
In addition, they actually cut out some parts of the storyline! The story literally jumped from Yoko threatening to stab a guy if he did not tell her where Koshou was to her suddenly helping Koshou with the rebellion in Wa, so they left out the section which actually tells you how and why Yoko found herself participating in the Wa rebellion by teaming up with Koshou. (You can find that missing section of the novel over the internet. You just need to search for it.)
Give us a reprint edition, please. ^ I completely agree with all the errors mentioned by the earlier reviewers. There's also some inconsistent name translations that I found were aggravating to read through.
For example, Shoukei's mother's name was translated as "Graceful Flower." It would've been more appropriate to not translate it into literal terms (her name, , should be written as "Kaka"). Thankfully, the readers don't have to deal with Shoukei's name being translated as "Sparkling Jewel" throughout the book.
Another example is with the naming of some places such as the four gates surrounding Takuhou. In the beginning, they mentioned the southern gate as the "Suzaku Gate," which is named after one of the Four Symbols of the Chinese constellations, represented by the Vermillion Bird/Peafowl. Yet, when mentioning the eastern and western gates, they were inconsistently translated as "Blue Dragon Gate" (Seiryuu) and "White Tiger Gate" (Byakko), respectively. Personally, either translations would be fine as long as they kept it consistent, which the translators failed to do so.
I imagine that because this is the largest bound volume released thus far in this series, the translations had to be rushed within a year after the release of the third book. However, I would not have minded if the release date was pushed back a month or two just to give the editor more time for a thorough editing.
Throwing that aside, this is definitely the best book of the series released so far. More character development, more info about the Twelve Kingdom's culture, and definitely more plots and schemes running rampant. You'll be amazed at how the author, Fuyumi Ono, interweaves the story of three girls of the same age into a greater plot. Highly recommended.
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