Randomness Book

Review of an English cover: Shinitai-chan (Jubyphonic's cover)

In terms of "how much do the lyrics reflect the original song."

Yeah, I know, this is the third page of this book I've made today, but I want to do this.

(Also, you guys may request me to review more covers, if ya want... but please make sure they're originally Japanese songs because, outside of a few words in other languages, I only know Japanese and English [and when it comes to fluency, just English).

So, Shintai-chan ("Miss Wants-to-Die") is a song created by Switch using the voice synthesizer software known as Vocaloid, specifically using the Vocaloid IA. However, it does not have an official YouTube upload ("VocaVamp" unofficially uploaded it... with inaccurate English subs). Now, the sad thing: Juby's cover dwarfs the original in views (not just the unofficial upload, but the Niconico upload, which IS official).

Why is it sad?

Well, I'll get to it here:

Jubyphonic. Oh, Jubyphonic. I used to listen to her covers quite a bit, but then ended up listening to the original versions a few Japanese songs she covered, and... growing to respect and like them a lot, to the point where I preferred them to Juby's covers (especially Mind Brand. I do NOT like Juby's cover of it at all, really, and I have my reasons).

Now, why? Well... I'll be completely honest and say a huge factor is how Juby doesn't seem to care about which translations she bases her covers on. 

Because remember how I mentioned the inaccurate translation in VocaVamp's upload? Well, she kinda obviously based her cover off it.

So, I shall be going through her cover and dissecting every difference it has to the original song. Just remember: I'm not saying you can't like this cover, I'm just trying to point out how it is, objectively, not accurate to the original song (which is made obvious in the first line).

Now, which translation am I going to compare it to? My own, since it has been approved by Vocaloid Lyrics Wiki (with some corrections, which I have added). And the people there KNOW what they're talking about.

Oh yeah, and also: typing out romaji in Wattpad is painful because the autocorrect is stubborn and doesn't get that I'm typing Japanese words in English [look, I just say that for simplicity, I know English isn't the only language to use this alphabet] letters. There's probably gonna be a mistake because of it if I'm not careful enough, and if I see any I'll edit and correct them)

Now, without further ado, let's get started... is what I would say but this video is sponsored by Raid: Shadow Legends-

I had to.

Ok, ok, NOW let's start.

I'll be going line-from-line for this.

Vocaloid Lyrics Wiki page on Shinitai-chan (since for some reason Wattpad won't let me put the Niconico link): https://vocaloidlyrics.fandom.com/wiki/シニタイちゃん_(Shinitai-chan) 

I'm not linking the English cover since it's pretty easy to find on Youtube (under the title "Miss Wanna-die" [...basically means the same thing but I use "wants to" in the title because this song is pretty serious and the word "wanna" ...isn't).

And before anyone asks: 「」are Japanese quotation marks.

-

"Awake, I opened my eyes to see a hospital, so white and clean."

I won't fault her for trying to rhyme "see" by adding "clean," but the thing is that the original song said 「目が覚めた場所には　白い壁　保健室」("Me ga sameta basho ni wa shiroi kabe hokenshitsu")... and 保健室 (hokenshitsu) refers to the school infirmary, not a hospital. While if someone did jump off a building it'd make more sense to bring them to the hospital, it still wasn't in the original song so I had to point that out (especially since "infirmary" rhymes just as well with "see" there, to me)