Wow! The birthday fanart for VTuber Houshou Marine has been Frontpaged! Thank you, Newgrounds! Thank you, everyone!
Marine is not only a Vtuber, but also a singer. In her 2025 birthday live show, she sang many different kinds of songs, and one of the most impressive songs was “Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan (The Imperial Opera Company),” performed by Chisa Yokoyama as Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Wars. It was so amazing that I decided to draw the new outfit she wore during that performance as fanart!
https://www.youtube.com/live/1WbyakjUmsI?si=Ks0F1UFCm0z1SOvs&t=1615
If you have time, I really recommend checking out the concert!
By the way, she also released a new birthday song called "Suki-Suki Diesuki Cho Ayeshiteru", and it’s a really fun and interesting song.
https://youtu.be/aI769CgHfLc?si=lwd8xOMvt5tqhbZH
As you can probably tell, it seems to be heavily inspired by Michael Jackson-sama’s Thriller. Many parts of the song feel like direct references, and I actually laughed a bit when I first heard it.
I’ve been trying to reinterpret Western (especially American) music in my own way for a long time, so songs like this are a great learning reference for me. I hope I can study more of this kind of music in the future.
By the way, the lyric “born cute bomb” at the start is a wordplay based on the Japanese onomatopoeia “bon-kyu-bon” (ボンキュボン), which describes a curvy body: big chest (bon), slim waist (kyu), and big hips (bon again). It was turned into silly English on purpose to sound fun!
Yomuchan
Regarding this: https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/precipitation24/himesaki-rinami-and-arimura-mao
Translation, as accurately as I can manage, from right to left:
Title: Arimura Mao, afflicted/suffering by puberty/growing up(?uncertain translation)
First Panel
"S-sorry."
"I just... thought 'you're great'..."
Second panel:
"N-no..."
"It's wasn't good..."
"T-that's how you flatter a simple person..."(? unsure of translation.)
-
I hope that was good enough. I'd be happy to hear any feedback you have.
Precipitation24
Wow! Thank you so much for the translation!
As a native Japanese speaker, I can say that the Japanese in this comic is very colloquial, but your translation is incredibly accurate. With your ability to read Japanese at that level, I’m sure you could play 学マス without any trouble (perhaps you’re already playing it?).
On the other hand, I still don’t really understand what conversations between teenagers in English are like, so I’d love to learn more from you about that. However, even for the short exchanges in this comic, it would take dozens of back-and-forth comments - me asking a question, you answering, me making suggestions, and you replying again - so there wouldn’t be enough space in the comment section, so I’ll refrain this time.
Anyway, based on your translation, I’m going to make an English version of the comic right away! Thank you again!!