In search of KURAI / GURAI

Wow. Day number five of manga related posts. I really am on a roll.

Today, we are going to talk about one of the longest running manga group, and one of their most famous stories, so I think it’s okay indulge myself for one more post, eh?

CLAMP is famous. When I say famous, I really mean it. They have done everything from Cardcaptor Sakura to Tokyo Babylon, to Angelic Layer to… the list really goes on. They do very serious works filled with blood and gore, and fun uplifting ones where people don’t die tragically but fall in love. They are sort of the Shakespeare of Japanese comics, really.

The only manga I own in Japanese by CLAMP is X/1999, one of their most epic, and most controversial pieces. Truthfully, I’m not overly fond of it. Why do I own it? Because this, even if it takes thirteen volumes of mind numbing repetitiveness to get through his story line, is one of the greatest characters ever created.

I did purposely scan the whole thing just to give you an idea of how cheap it is to buy used manga in Japan.

Subaru Sumeragi. He is originally a character in Tokyo Babylon, which is a bit more light hearted than X/1999. It’s not necessarily a prequel, but it does have a lot of the same central themes as its successor. In any case, Subaru is one of the most believably developed characters I have ever read. It’s too many spoilers to go into, but his transformation into a teenager who wants to protect everyone to a person with a love/passion for a man he wants to kill is just… amazingly well done!

Sadly, while Volume 12 (where we find our grammar point) is very Subaru heavy, our scene today will not deal with him.

But first, a quick run down of X/1999. The idea is that the end of the world is in the hands fourteen people, seven on the side of Earth, and seven on the side of Heaven. The Dragons of Earth (as they are called) are trying to protect the people of the planet, whereas the Dragons of Heaven are intent on destroying it so the Earth can take back what is its. There are many bloody battles, gratuitous decapitations, and torture scenes with the trials of relationships filling the gaps.

Which is.. a lot different than something like says this:

Oh, how I love Cardcaptor Sakura.

In any case, this series has been made into an anime and a movie, but no one actually knows how it ends. Yes, the movie has an ending. Yes, the anime has an ending. The problem is neither of those were written by CLAMP, and they will only reveal it if they can publish it exactly the way they would like. Essentially, the manga was deemed to violent and ASUKA (the publisher) told CLAMP that either they censor themselves, or they stop printing the manga. Seeing as nothing new has been published, and the last chapter is a cliff hanger filled with the likely death of at least one of the main characters, you can guess how that standoff went down. It is pretty unlikely we will ever see how this story ends...

But on to grammar!

KURAI/GURAI means “about” but not in the same way as NI TSUITE.  More like “It’s about (around) nine o’clock"(９時ぐらい). In fact, you usually hear it when it is in relations to numbers. “There are about seven hundred people”　(７００人ぐらいいる).

What it is, in this case, is an estimation or a guess. But, actually, in Japanese it’s not actually that at all. It’s time for another episode of Lots of Different English phrases for One Simple Japanese Word!

The context of this page is that someone's kekkai (protection seal) failed and the smiley guy's mom happened to be there when it did. Sadly, she is no longer with the living, and Kamui (the main character) is listening to what his friend has to say.

• 葬式の時目が溶けるくらい泣いたから今度は二人の分までいっぱい笑えるように頑張らなきゃ。
• Soushiki no toki me ga tokeru kurai naitakara kondo ha futari no bunn made iappi waraeru you ni ganbaranakya.

The thing with KURAI is that you need to think of it at as "as" "or as much as". It's used to say "about" and "around" because it's not a very exact phrase. It's supposed to give you indication of "how much" without it actually being that. We will see that in this sentence translation, but we are going to stop at the KARA, and just focus on the beginning of the sentence.

• 葬式の時目が溶けるくらい泣いた
• At the funeral, my eyes melted I cry so much.

That is the most literal way to translate it. Seriously, I would probably add a bit of English in in order to get the idea across properly:

• At the funeral, I cried so much I thought my eyes would melt away.

Now for the whole sentence, just in case you're having trouble.

• Because I cried so much I thought my eyes would melt away at the funeral, I'm going to try my best to small enough for both of them (my mom and dad).

Done.

It's not that easy... I hope that gave you some indication of how to use it. I also found this as a nice example sentence:

• 死ぬくらい笑えた。
• He made me laugh so hard I thought I would die.

If you need more, please visit JGram. They have a lot of great example sentences.

Before I leave though, I figure I should quickly go over the difference between KURAI and GURAI is. There isn't any, except for you use one after one type a sound, and the other after another. It is sort of like how sometimes you have to change a SHI to a JI depending on what sound is before it. If you would like, I could do a post on what sounds follow what sounds, but it would be a bit too long to get into at the moment.