And rounding out the trio of 1-2* Vox princes is Lied, the poor cousin. I’m not really sure how the hierarchy works in this country but it seems that since Stimma is first in line for the throne and Lied is only his cousin, the only way Lied could ascend to the throne would be if Stimma, Flu, AND Rufen died. Don’t go getting any ideas though Lied. Maybe that’s why he’s so depressing…That leads me into the problem I had with Lied. I’ll note that Lied does instruct the main character to drop formal language, which wasn’t an issue, but I did have a little trouble with a couple lines. The most notable would be the titular line in Ch. 3:
リード「馬鹿みたいに明るい曲ができそう。」
The trouble is with the first part, 馬鹿みたいに明るい曲. 曲 is song, so that’s not a problem, and 明るい is bright, or cheerful. But the issue is with 馬鹿みたい, which means idiotic or ridiculous. So basically Lied is saying he’s inspired to write a song that’s ridiculously bright and cheerful. But the main character takes offense at what he says, so I wanted to translate it a little stronger than ‘ridiculous’. I went with ‘idiotic’ but…even now I second-guess myself and think that’s too strong. I guess I can always go back and fix it later!
But the worst part of Lied is his ATTITUDE. I awakened him to the MOON route so I could get the dialogue I was missing, but dang, I wish I’d gone SUN route. MOON route is just…depressing. Seriously Lied, you need to lighten up. SUN handles his mood a lot better so…my recommendation is definitely SUN. I know Lied has had at least one event version, so I really hope he’s not as depressing there.