Volume 1 Chapter 1 Part1 (1/2)

Welcome to my Tsurune translation! I’m basically translating the book whenever I have time, so, uh, don’t expect updates anytime soon (at least not until I finish DIVE!!)

Tsurune is written by Kotoko Ayano, with ill.u.s.trations by Chinatsu Morimoto. It won the Grand Judge award at the 7th Kyoto Animation Awards in 2016. It also has a PV and you probably heard that it’s getting an anime in 2018.

Tsurune follows Minato, a boy who used to be really into kyudo (j.a.panese archery) until something happened at his last compet.i.tion in middle school, after which he lost his confidence and quit. When he goes to high school, he has no intention for joining the kyudo club, despite the urging of his friends, but when he stumbles upon an archer practicing in the woods, he decides to do kyudo once more.

Some things to clarify:

- Tsurune refers the “sound of a vibrating bowstring”

- There’s going to be a lot of untranslated terms since kyudo is pretty different from the archery most of us know (still debating whether or not just to translate kyudo as archery)

Will this become Kyoto Animation’s next female-oriented cash cow? Read on and find out!

Translation Notes

1. A coma is a nebulous envelope around the nucleus of a comet (according to Wikipedia)

2. Izume is a way to determine the final rankings for a kyudo compet.i.tion. Basically, everyone shoots their arrows, and when someone misses, they’re out. The one who wins first place is the one continuously hits the target.

3. Enkin kyousha is another way to determine rankings of archers who have missed the center of the target and are tied for the same place. Each archer shoots an arrow, and whoever’s arrow is closest to the bull’s-eye gets the highest rank.

4. Tsuruoto is written with the same kanji as tsurune (弦音).

Full list of translations will be .

What sound is this?

Wind, gather, someone was singing.

In the midst of the dancing reddened leaves, a boy was searching for the source of the mysterious tone that he heard from somewhere. He didn’t look old enough to go to elementary school. His clear eyes concealed the power to stop the tracks of those who saw them, as though they were roaming through a gloomy forest and got captivated by a glittering river surface. The thing that caused the boy’s eyes to brighten like that was there.

It was an archer. An archer who was shooting an arrow at a target.

There were two targets. Clad in white hakama, the clothing for kyudo, a middle-aged man and an elderly man took turns shooting arrows.

The moment an arrow left, a high tw.a.n.g sound rang out.

As if chasing that beautiful sound, the arrows made a sound as they pierced their target, followed by cheers of “Alright!” that covered it. The cheers came from a group of high school students sitting in the spectator stands, as though they were singing a round.

It was a scene at a shrine that his mother had just happened to bring him to for a short visit. There was a crowd around the kyudojo at the back of the shrine grove, like the final round of a tournament was going on.

His mother, who was left behind, placed her hand on the shoulder of the boy who had squeezed himself into the gaps of the crowd.

“Minato, there you are. You ran ahead so suddenly. Mom was so surprised, you know.”

“Sorry. Hey, Mom, what’s that?”

“It’s a kyudo compet.i.tion. The person who gets the most hits wins. If there’s a tie for first place, each person would keep firing arrows one by one, and the person who doesn’t miss until the end wins.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun.”