This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, and I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is Digimon Seekers, and I'm continuing with my audiobook recording of Digimon Seekers.
This is Digimon Chronicles. This is Digimon Chronicles, where I'm reading Digimon Seekers, making basically an audiobook for it.
This is a fan project for free. Of course, I'm not charging anybody for it.
Today I'm going to be using the translation by K-kun or on K-kun. I'm not quite sure how to say that day, but K.
I think it's just what matters there, because that's what I've heard.
So, anyway, I'll be reading that translation. It was interesting when I pasted in the notes originally, or the script, rather, from the website.
Originally I had about a 1700 word count, and when I pasted in K-kun's there was about a 1900.
Now I don't know what will be added, and I'm not going to do a head-to-head comparison, but I'm thinking that this should be a lot more readable,
because in the past when I've read his translations they've been more readable. So let's go ahead and get to this.
I anticipate it'll be about a 10-minute read. We shall see as we go through this together.
And I want to let you know my previous Seekers episodes are, you know, my previous episodes where I'm covering Seekers,
they have been mostly the stock translations that come straight off the website, off of Digimon Web,
but I'm going to do an ongoing podcast audio-only file that you can go back and look up and update.
That'll have the most current of the whole collection with the translations by K-kun,
because I think it's just going to be a much better reading experience overall, so you can check that out.
And I think I'll leave a link to that in the show notes so people can go back to that anytime they need to.
All right, so this is continuing Chapter 1 of Digimon Seekers Wolf of the Ninth Avenue,
Eiji Wolf of the Ninth Avenue, and this is Chapter 1, Part 13.
The cloaked SOC Digimon gazed at Lugomon and Eiji Nagasumi from atop the building roof in Wall Slum as the duo headed to their mapping job.
I wasn't told that they'd be mind-linked.
The cloaked Digimon spoke up suddenly to somebody who wasn't there.
I had been told of it. Also, didn't expect him to suddenly show up with his limits unlocked.
The reply came through voice chat.
Never mind the new kid, the cloaked Digimon said.
I wonder if that dog, Lugomon, noticed that I was mind-linked too.
Well, I can't be sure. The voice of the person on the other end belonged to the SOC interviewer.
You asked the Demon Wolf of the Castle of Nine Wolves to map Ninth Avenue, the cloaked Digimon said with some concern for a test.
Isn't that way too easy?
You're right, the interviewer said.
This sort of test wouldn't be semi-A level for the likes of them.
I'll be making a few adjustments. The interviewer was up to something.
Once Lugomon reached ground level, he headed further underground.
It's a shortcut, he assured Eiji.
They reached an underground station platform.
Chug, chug, chug, chug.
In front of a bewildered Eiji, a wall-slum train came to a standstill.
Eiji stared out in a daze at the rapidly changing scenery outside the train as he held onto a hanging strap.
The slum loop line subway.
The interior of the train was very familiar.
In fact, it looked similar to the Tokyo Metro system that he normally used.
The only difference was that the passengers on the train were not humans, but Digimon.
The subway map had characters on it that Eiji had never seen before.
He wasn't able to read any of the advertisements within the train or at the station.
What is this? Digimon language?
It's forbidden to cause trouble in the subway, Lugomon said matter-of-factly.
Forbidden? So no fighting?
In a public place, so mind your manners.
Sorry, it's a public place, so mind your manners.
Seeing this Lugomon laid down, taking up three whole seats to himself, the Digimon around them looked annoyed.
But apparently it wasn't an upreach of manners.
What the heck were considered good manners to Digimon? Eiji had no idea.
The subway train passed through a stop every two to three minutes.
Eiji was fidgety and restless, partly because he couldn't read the characters on the map, which he found out was called DigiCode.
I've been thinking about the mind link, he said to Lugomon as a way to distract himself.
Is me being in your DigiCore similar to like a human writing a Digimon?
Am I the Chuchumon earlier who was writing the Domimon?
Don't compare me to that piece of poop.
It's not like that then? Hmm, not even close.
Where do you think your real body is right now?
Um, what?
Eiji's consciousness was currently within Lugomon's DigiCore.
Since his physical body wasn't there, it must be back at home, leaning against the wall of his loft.
That's right, your body fell asleep like that. Your consciousness doesn't return back to your body unless you break the mind link.
Huh. Well, that's fine. Whatever. That's fine.
By the way, Lugomon, what is it?
Since I'm able to touch you now, can I touch your toe beans? Since Lugomon was lying on the seat on his side, his paw pads were visible.
They looked plump and squishy.
No. Why do I have to allow what you want? Lugomon said grumpily, showing his teeth.
No, huh? The dog I used to have wouldn't let me touch his toe beans either.
I'll kick you out of my DigiCore if you keep talking rubbish like that.
Also, from what I'm hearing in your stories about that dog of yours, hmm?
He probably didn't think of you as his master. He looked down on you for sure.
What?
A surge of passengers got off and got on at the next station.
Digimon who boarded the train reacted in surprise when they saw Eiji.
Hey, Lugomon, I feel like all the Digimon are staring at me.
Well, it's rare to see a human here.
Oh, so this is like if a Digimon was hollowized in writing on a train in the real world.
No wonder he was attracting all this attention.
Since it didn't appear likely that he would be harmed, Eiji took the opportunity to take a closer look at his surroundings.
The Digimon in the passenger compartment seemed to mostly consist of one single type.
Almost all of the Digimon here have corrupted data, Eiji observed. They look injured.
Most of all, some of the inhabitants of Digimon that were originally used by humans, Lugomon said matter-of-factly.
What?
Now that he mentioned it, Eiji could see the majority of the crowd were cyborg types or machine types, which were favored by codecrackers.
They're all Digimon that were used by humans and discarded for some reason or another, Lugomon said.
They screwed up on the job or were entrusted with security of some company servers and got destroyed from an attack or something.
Discarded Digimon? Eiji was astonished.
It was true that codecrackers used and abandoned Digimon regularly.
Although it was not generally known to the public, governments, military, megatech companies, and other important servers and data centers were already using Digimon in their security.
Digimon got used up there on the daily.
No matter how carefully tools are treated, they eventually break.
They fail. They fail. That's how Eiji had felt about it before now.
Normally those Digimon die a dog's death and revert back into Digi eggs, Lugomon said.
But as they survived by slurping up the scrap data that drifted along the outer security wall, they built up houses, villages, and towns.
As long as they can hide...
Sorry.
As long as they can find their way to this place, Digimon who were abandoned by humans can survive.
The stray Digimon that gathered together here are what become this sit...
The stray Digimon that gathered together here are what became this city, this slum.
A slum known as Wall Slum.
I thought humans were pretty tough, but Digimon are strong too, Eiji said, impressed by the very life force of the Digimon.
This trash heap of a slum is the last paradise for stray Digimon.
Some of them may have gotten fed up with humans and drifted away on their own.
Others may have wandered here due to some kind of trouble in the digital world beyond the wall.
Nowadays it's not unusual to find Digimon who were born and raised in this slum.
Roar!
The subway shout out above...
The subway shout out above ground.
The sound of wheels treading along rails thundered.
The red polluted surface of the river beneath the truss bridge was spread out into the distance.
Eiji learned from Lugomon that the slum was full of Digimon like Chumon who were proliferative everywhere.
The mutant Damimon and other Digimon who had adapted and evolved to live happily in an environment polluted with garbage data.
Do the Digimon here not get along with each other?
Chumon and Chuchumon had been fighting over food.
The rule of not fighting allowed on the subway...
The rule of no fighting allowed on the subway meant when you flipped it that there was plenty of fighting allowed everywhere else.
Basically, basically everyone is poor here and that's the reason for it all, Lugomon said.
Those in the slum can't consistently feed themselves so fighting is a daily occurrence.
There are Turf Wars and Digimon in each neighborhood who act as its boss.
Only in this subway and in the center of the slum, Avenue Zero, is there an unspoken non-combatant agreement.
The center of the slum?
That must be the blank area on the map that the cloaked Digimon had shown them earlier.
Eiji looked out the window.
Upstream of the river was a mountain peak at the center of Wall Slum made hazy by static.
I can't see it very well. What kind of place is it?
It has the gate that leads to the inside of the security wall, the wall gate, Lugomon responded.
Inside the security wall? You mean the deep digital world?
This wall slum was, without any doubt, a part of the digital world, but the deep part of it was protected by the wall contained...
...but the deep part of it that was protected by the wall contained the original shape of the digital world.
It would be an unknown digital world for you humans.
The wall gate controls the flow of data into the digital world and prevents unauthorized entry.
The train crossed the river and slid back underground.
The subway cars went dark for a moment, then flickered, and the lights came back on.
Eiji thought a little bit.
This wall gate prevents codecrackers, us humans, from getting in. That's right.
It's not only humans.
It's not only humans, Lugomon said.
It also includes Digimon who have been used by codecrackers and hackers.
That's all of the Digimon in the wall slum.
Huh? All of the Digimon here?
None of the Digimon on this subway were able to return to the digital world.
This wall slum has perpetually been affected by real-world data via the network, Lugomon said.
Once a Digimon is contaminated by real-world data, it can never return to the digital world.
They lose the ability to pass through the gate.
On whose authority?
The digital world system, which is all I can really say about that, to put it in human terms, are God, so to speak.
For the Digimon of wall slum, the inside of the wall is their long-lost home.
Lugomon, do you know what's on the other side of the wall?
We're getting off here. Lugomon got up from his seat.
Eiji had no idea of what route they'd taken, but he heard the announcement say,
Next stop, 9th Avenue, 9th Avenue.
Eiji's mind switched over into work mode.
First, he had to fulfill Ryusenji's request and pass the SOC entrance exam.
So we're mapping the 9th Avenue, Eiji said.
I wonder what kind of place it is.
Find out when we get there.
You sure seem to know a lot about wall slum, Lugomon.
Have you lived here before?
Lugomon had been stored from the beginning as his child-level stage in the Digimon Linker.
Eiji hadn't bothered to ask where Lugomon had been and what he'd done before that.
It had never occurred to him that Digimon could have a past.
I don't remember.
The sudden confession confused Eiji.
What?
My memory is hazy from one point to another.
I know that I grew up here in wall slum, but I only remember when I was just a brat at child level.
Everything else after that is vague.
Lugomon said that he knew about the digital world and wall slum,
but he couldn't remember much about himself.
He had no idea who he was here.
Is it amnesia? Eiji asks.
Seems kind of half-assed, though.
Whenever I try to remember, it's like there's a haze around my Digicore,
like fog settling down on my memories.
Come to think of it that Chuman and the others had something of interest, Eiji said.
They seemed to know about you, spoke reverently to you, calling you the demon wolf and boss and whatnot.
After coming to wall slum with you and listening to them, I feel as if my memories are returning little by little, Lugomon said.
That's why I said we might find more out when we get there.
I get the feeling that there's something at 9th Avenue, something that's very important to me.
And that is the end of that chapter.
I had a lot of stumbles and slips there, and I do apologize for that.
I, uh, I don't know. I slept well. I'm feeling pretty good.
I don't know why I'm fumbling on the read, but I won't use this.
I won't edit those out in this episode, but I also won't use this raw recording.
As my, um, as my, you know, solid K-Kun translated audio book track.
So I'm going to do, I guess I'll have to do separate recordings for those and make them sound real good.
Because, yeah, it's, that's not cool.
There were a lot of stumbles in there, and like I said, it's just, I don't know.
I want to get this out sooner than later, so I'm going to let it slip with the imperfections and just let it go.
But I will blame part of the imperfections on the way that this thing is written.
Just, and I'm not blaming Keg, because this is, uh, he's got source material to work with,
and in the source material they did not put the dialogue tags.
Um, and I, I guess you're supposed to read it quietly yourself, which doesn't really make sense.
Like as a, as a writer, one of the things that they say is that, specifically with scripts for movies and such,
movies, teleplay, whatever, you should say the dialogue out south, out south?
You should say the dialogue out loud to yourself so that you can hear how it sounds when people are actually saying this.
Famously, uh, I've heard, I think Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill both say in interviews,
maybe Van Erissenford, uh, separately, uh, that they would say of George Lucas's script for Star Wars,
you can read this stuff, but you can't say it.
I think partly because it sounds a little goofy when you say it, and also because it's just outlandish to say,
uh, you know, whatever it was, like, uh, not Alderaan, there was another one.
Hamill had this line memorized from the sides of the, uh, the audition where it was this crazy thing about,
oh, the security here won't be like this because of that or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He's like arguing with Han in the cockpit of the Falcon, right?
And he was saying, uh, like, you know, he had it memorized, and he's like, you can say it, but it's not natural dialogue.
It just doesn't work, and, you know, that's not the dialogue that ended up in the movie, so, um,
all that dialogue was saved for the Anakin Padme romance in Entirely the Clowns.
Uh, I kid. Anyway, uh, but yeah, so I get that depending on what medium you're in,
you can do things differently, and you can skip on dialogue tags in some places,
and this is something I've talked about before, so I'll just keep it brief and just say,
you can't do that all the time, and I'm really frustrated with how this is, uh, written,
and I wonder what the Japanese readers are thinking of this and what their perception of it is,
and is it something that they're finding frustrating or something difficult to read aloud, or is the, I mean,
it's not like real, I feel so bad these things, it's not like real, um, like cyberpunk, uh, or cypherpunk even,
uh, people are gonna be reading this because it's, you know, dipping its toe in that genre or whatever,
uh, this is gonna be Digimon fans who are reading this, and either they're so, uh, I don't know,
bought and sold, bought and paid for, either they're so into Digimon that they're just gonna ignore
all of the, uh, demerits or deficiencies in this, or they're gonna be truthful like I'm trying to be
and talk about when they don't like certain things in it, and hopefully that's what's happening,
but I haven't seen any insights into the Japanese discourse on Seekers. Um, I mean, you know,
it's funny too, it struck me a little bit like, oh, Lugaman's got semi-amnesia, but it's starting to clear up
as he goes on this adventure, like, oh, this is, uh, this is very video game, this is very anime,
this is very, you know, standard for the, uh, the genre type of trope, and I'm not mad at that,
but it did just kind of strike me as funny, and like nothing before, uh, indicated that his memories were hazy,
to me at least, and I agree with, you know, what was stated in the book, that there is this sense that you get
that he's experienced and that he's reverenced and, uh, all this stuff, and I thought, oh, that's cool
that we've got this guy, a jugado, who like, um, you know, has respect from people and has experience
and partly because of that, he doesn't have respect for Eiji, his, you know, tamer or cracker,
or whatever you want to call him, and like, that's a cool dynamic, uh, and then we find out that, you know,
he's missing his memories, but he still has enough confidence and, I don't know, self-assuredness, uh,
to still feel that way about Eiji is kind of odd. I did, I almost laughed out loud in the middle of doing the
reading of the recording when, uh, Lugaman said like, that pet dog you had, I know he didn't respect you.
That was a hilarious moment, so, uh, I do like that, and I'm gonna assume this is K-kun's translation,
but calling the, uh, the toe pads or whatever beans, you know, bean pads or whatever you called them,
like, I've definitely heard, you know, people in America refer to them as that on their cats or dogs or whatever,
and it's, you know, it's funny, um, and, uh, it was just kind of a, I don't know, it's funny, but it's also kind of lame,
I think, if you do that, um, which, you know, I've done it myself, so, I'm not immune to being lame,
but it's just, uh, uh, it kind of, it goes to state of mind for Eiji and shows kind of what a goofball he is,
and, well, he wants to be this codecracker and wants to be serious. He's still, you know, he's still a person,
and that's kind of, kind of good.
Okay, so moving on to some other stuff. First of all, there's an ethical question that I want to bring up from before,
and I hope the, I hope John Tate, I guess it'd be Bandai, not Toei, but whatever.
Hopefully nobody comes after me for this.
The other day, or, like, two or three readings ago, two or three chapters ago,
when Eiji got hololized and there was all this personal data from him, he's like,
hey, how do you have all this information from me?
Uh, Lugamon, I believe, says, are you an idiot? Don't you recognize that the vital bracelet is pulling all that information from you 24-7?
Eiji, I'll just put it this way, Eiji, who wears his vital bracelet, or his, you know, his dock, his Digimon dock, or whatever it's called,
is willingly submitting himself to be scanned, tracked, and traced to some extent by whatever company is behind the Digimon dock,
which, I mean, Ryusenji made it, you know, it's kind of an open source platform thing.
I don't know if their data is encrypted or what, but, like, his data wasn't encrypted unless it's encrypted and it's, like, peer-to-peer,
and Lugamon receives that data.
But anyway, regardless, like, the device itself, the dock, has the ability to pull all this biometric data from you
and scan all this information data from you, and that's kind of creepy, and it made me think,
oh, I wonder if, uh, I wonder if Bandai, I guess it's Bandai who makes it, right?
I wonder if Bandai recognizes that and knows it, and, like, if they thought about that,
and if people who wear the vital bracelet think about that, and, like, I've considered getting, I don't know,
one of those things, like, Armin or, uh, what's the other one? I can't remember what it's called.
It's the most popular one. Anyway, I've considered, and I thought, like, no, isn't that, like, gonna give somebody information on me,
and that seems weird and uncomfortable, and, uh, there's a lot of, you know, you should protect your data, basically, is what I'm saying.
And, uh, I haven't looked into it, and I'm not making any accusations, but when that was, uh, like, a, an element in the story,
I thought, oh, wow, that's, that's super interesting, and I wonder if people are gonna talk about that or, um, think about that at all,
and then I forgot to talk about it, so it didn't happen with me, so, uh, there you go.
If you hadn't thought about that, that's something to consider for the future.
All right, uh, other thing, this Digimon are alive, which, I didn't say that this episode, or this chapter, which is good,
but, um, these Digimon are, like, somehow, like, okay, there's this, either this god of the digital world or this protocol
that once a Digimon has left the digital world and gone out beyond that gate, uh, beyond the wall gate, or whatever I think it was called,
um, they are not allowed to go in back into the deep, or to the actual digital world, or I guess the deep digital world.
That is super fascinating, super interesting. I like that A.G. is thinking, I think it man because he says,
hey, why is that the case? Who determined that? You know, who, by whose authority, he said in Kay's translation here,
and I think that's a great question because what makes that legitimate?
You're saying they don't do it or they are unable to do it, and it's clear they are unable to do it,
or at least it sounds as if they are unable to do it. They are definitely not supposed to do it,
and the trigger for making the distinction between Digimon is that if they've gone out,
I guess once you go out you can't come back in, is what it sounds like. It's a much simpler way to put it.
And there's either some protocol or some force in play that makes that so, and I find, again, I find that to be super interesting,
and I don't know why that would be the case, but it is, and I wonder what's up with that.
So that's kind of a fun thing to think about. That raises all sorts of questions.
Is there really a god of the digital world? Is there some sort of set of protocols that was put in place that are like,
I don't know, I know enough about computers to be dangerous, basically, to myself, not so much to others,
unless they trust me. But does that mean at the base level, at the kernel, in the source code or whatever,
there's something that says that once Digimon have left and their data has become corrupted by stuff outside of the
pure, pristine digital world, that it makes it so that they can no longer come back in?
And is that as simple as their data has changed and it no longer retains the proper hash function, so to speak,
to enable them to get in? Like, they're rehashed, and because they have outside data mixed in with them,
or like, salted in with them to use like, security language, like, it doesn't work. The hash that they have isn't the same.
You can have a, if you stay in the digital world, I mean, but you would never have to re-authenticate.
So that's kind of a weird thing. Like, you can go out, but you can't come back in.
So does that mean that there's only somebody on the inside of the gate stopping anybody from coming in,
or does that mean that there's, because why would there be permission to flow out, but not to flow back in?
That kind of doesn't make sense to me. But again, I don't know necessarily enough about computer stuff,
and I don't know enough about the lore, but it does open up questions, and I find it to be very interesting,
very interesting idea to consider. So yeah, that was pretty neat. And those are my big lore points.
You know, I am going to continue to stick with the story just because, you know, you need something to do with life.
And I want to see this story go somewhere. I want to be interesting, but like, I cannot believe that we're 13 parts into one chapter.
That doesn't make any sense, and I won't belabor the point because I've already talked about that
and how I hope to see change in the future. So that's it. I'm going to go ahead and get out of here.
And I thank you for your time and attention. This is MJ signing out.