Manga Review and Translator Interview | Apple Children of Aeon Volume 1

Abandoned as a baby, Yukinojo can't help but feel adrift in life, so when an heiress to an Aomori apple farm proposes to him, he takes up her offer.

However, after he feeds his newlywed wife an apple from a mysterious tree, she becomes irrevocably changed, and the two of them are left trying to deal with the aftermath. 

Apple Children of Aeon, Vol. 1 by Ai Tanaka is a surreal and contemplative slice-of-life manga that’s steeped in Shintoism and magical realism. 

I’ve got to say, this manga has such a wonderful sense of place, transporting readers to the idyllic Aomori countryside. I think it’s precisely because the setting and characters feel so grounded that the subtle fantastical elements woven into the story feel all the more believable. 

On top of that, the art style feels like you’re opening up an old illustrated folktale. It’s simple yet charming and atmospheric. Honestly, the artwork and covers are so gorgeous that I wish that Kodansha will eventually come out with a print release.

Lastly, I love how introspective this manga is. Yukinojo is a poetic narrator who meditates on themes of life and death and identity through dream sequences. He lays bare his doubts and fears to the reader, making for an earnest and heartfelt read. 

Overall, Apple Children of Aeon is a wistful and poignant beautiful gem of a manga that’ll endear fans of Go with the Clouds, North by Northwest and Spice and Wolf.

Along with my usual review, this time I also have with a bonus interview from the translator, Samuel Messner, who was kind enough to answer my questions regarding the series! You can read the interview below. 

 
1) What was your greatest challenge while translating this manga?

Apple Children may well be the most difficult work I have ever translated. Part of that falls on the hours upon hours of research required to convey cultural nuances and historical accuracy, but more than anything, it has to do with the double trouble of the dialect. Half the text in Apple Children is written in Tsugaru-ben, a rural dialect so infamously indecipherable that when I told a Japanese friend that I was translating it, she told me, “What!? Not even Japanese people understand that dialect!” The rationale for choosing Scottish as an English equivalent is detailed in the endnotes of volume 1, but it wasn't an easy decision… because it doubled the work needed. Not only did I need to research an inscrutable Japanese dialect, but I needed to research and immerse myself in Scottish as well!

2) What was your process for translating the Aomori dialect into English?

For each character, I would gauge how thick their dialect is by looking at how often their pronunciation differs from standard Japanese, and how often they use dialectal words. This would vary from scene to scene, too, as characters sometimes suppress their dialects, or speak more dialectally when excited. I would then aim to replicate this level of usage in Scottish – you'll note, for example, that Mrs. Okuse (an occasional side character) speaks with a thick accent and words that no American has ever heard, while Asahi's speech mostly differs in pronunciation and enunciation.

3) What do you want readers to take away from the story?

Ms. Tanaka wove a good number of messages into the story, which I worked hard to convey in English. However, as the translator (and the one who writes the endnotes), what I personally want to give the reader is knowledge! There's a lot of information packed in there that is otherwise completely unavailable in English, so I hope everyone who reads Apple Children comes out of it head full of those good learnings about the culture of Aomori, about old religion and traditions, and of course about apple farming.

4) Is the Obosuna based on any real folk legends?

Obosuna is based in real-life religion! In Shinto, there's a category of god known as Ubusuna-Gami: literally, “birth god”. These are gods who preside over local areas here and there – they're the “gods of the land”, if you will. Beyond the land itself, they also serve as a sort of guardian angel for everyone born there. Each Ubusuna-Gami has different specifics in the local culture. In some dialects, the name even differs: for example, “Ubusuna” sometimes undergoes phonetic drift into “Obosuna”. These deities have become less and less popular in the modern age, but they remain a fixture of some communities and traditions!


OK, that's a wrap! Thank you to NetGalley and Kodansha for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also, special thanks to Samuel for taking the time to provide such thoughtful answers. If you’d like to follow him, you can check out his Twitter at https://twitter.com/obskyr.