Itsue come baaaaaaaaack 🙁

–  –

夜中抜け出したら 56番線へ
(yonaka nuke dashitara gojyuuroku bansen e)
[ When at midnight you’ve come out to Line 56 ]

 

僕は待つよ 夏の蜃気楼の中
(boku wa matsu yo natsu no shinkirou no naka)
[ I’ll be waiting in the midst of a summer mirage ]

 

君は確かに僕の目を見て くちづけをしたんだ
(kimi wa tashikani boku no me o mite kuchidzuke o shitanda)
[ It was certainly you that I kissed and saw with my eyes ]

 

君は確かに、存在した あの夏に
(kimi wa tashikani, sonzai shita ano natsu ni)
[ It was certainly you, who was there that summer ]

 

見えない明日より今日が大事だった
(mienai ashita yori kyou ga daiji datta)
[ Today is more important than the tomorrow I can’t see ]

 

それは誰にだって止められやしない
(sore wa dare ni datte tomerareyashinai)
[ That is something that not anyone can stop ]

 

また会えたら笑ってほしい
(mata aetara waratte hoshii)
[ If we ever meet again, I want us to laugh ]

 

ただ、不確かな約束を交わしただけ
(tada, futashika na yakusoku o kowashitadake)
[ But, vague promises are only meant to be broken ]

 

君は確かにわたしを見て くちづけをしたんだ
(kimi wa tashikani watashi o mite kuchidzukeru shitanda)
[ It was certainly you that I kissed and saw with my eyes ]

 

わたしは確かに、存在した あの夏に
(watashi wa tashikani, sonzai shita ano natsu ni)
[ It was certainly me, who was there that summer ]

 

君と僕の街が窓の外を流れる
(kimi to boku no machi ga mado no soto o nagareru)
[ Our city is flowing out the window ]

 

僕らを乗せたバス 優しく揺れる
(bokura o noseta basu yasashiku yureru)
[ The bus we boarded gently swayed along ]

 

見えない明日より今日が正しかった
(mienai ashita yori kyou ga tadashidatta)
[ Today is truer than the tomorrow I can’t see ]

 

他に誰も悲しまない 二人だけの時間
(hoka ni dare mo kanashimanai futari dake no jikan)
[ No one else will be sad; This time is just for the two of us ]

–  –

56番線 (56bansen lit. ’56 number line’) is the fourth track off of イツエ (Itsue)’s second mini-album “「今夜絶対」” (konya zettai lit. ‘tonight absolutely’). Fans of the anime Aldnoah.Zero may come to recognize band vocalist Mizuki as one of Sawano Hiroyuki’s picks for his [nZk] project, lending her powerful vocals to the songs aLIEz and &z. The band however, in lieu of creative differences, had since stopped making music together; making Konya Zettai their last official release to-date.

They describe their music as a mixture of “dramatic and dark, beautiful, soft, solitary, strong, [and] agitato”. Line 56, in my opinion encapsulates this greatly. It starts off with a gentle sway, that slowly builds up to an intense chorus, which then softly comes back down, and up again.

The somber drama of the lyrics presents a scene of lovers going off into the night, or hopes of it at least. A chance meeting in summer; Line 56.

This interpretation is kinda supported when you notice the switch in the use of personal pronouns between verses. In the first half of the song we see 僕 (boku) which, in most cases, is used by a male/masculine party. The second half uses わたし (watashi), which is a more general pronoun. I took this to imply the presence of two different personae conversing so to speak within the song. The mirroring lines kimi [you] wa tashikani, sonzai shita ano natsu ni and watashi [I] wa tashikani, sonzai shita ano natsu ni sort-of reference this further.

A line that sticks out for me is 見えない明日より今日が正しかった, which I’ve chosen to translate as ‘today is truer than the tomorrow I can’t see’. It doesn’t come off as generic as the more popular ‘you only live once’, but it does offer more or less the same sentiments – the unforeseeable future doesn’t matter as much as what we are able to see in the present; so go, go out, and go off into the night!

*I wasn’t able to have anyone do a once-over on my translation, so by all means call out any line I may have mistranslated or a line that could be better phrased 😀