New Translation of "The Plundering Fleet" from Macross: Perfec

SCOOPUDA! · September 15, 2015

MW member and Macross SpeakerPODcast partner-in-crime GubabaÂ has provided us with another new translation!Â I'll leave it to him to introduce it...Â Download link at the bottom!

The Plundering Fleet is one of two short stories included in the Macross Perfect Memory book from 1983, in the section "Macross Outside Story" (by which, they mean "side stories"). It was written by Kenichi Matsuzaki, who was the script editor for the series and also wrote plenty of episodes, including the first three and "Love Drifts Away."

You may remember that in Episode 15 of the series, Global tells Misa a story about her father pulling off some wild scheme involving pretending to be Anti-Unification Forces and raiding a UN storehouse. That's what this story is about, but really, only partially.

I've always been kind of curious about the story. MW member Roycommi posted a version over a decade ago, but since that was only two pages long, and the story in Japanese covers four pages of extremely small, dense text, there was clearly a lot missing. I started the translation in late 2011, while still working on the Misa novel. I did most of the first section, and then put it away for a few years, picking it up a little less than a year ago. I worked on it sporadically this year, and finally finished it yesterday (mostly... There will be a slightly revised version coming later). Honestly, I found it a real slog. Fun to read, I hope, but really difficult to translate. Neil Nadelman and Frank Reynolds helped with the submarine terminology, and my old housemate in Tokyo, Irina, helped confirm that the "Russian" names in the story aren't actually Russian, and okayed my spelling of them. Any errors that remain, however, are my own.

Download HERE: The Plundering Fleet