Chapter 1
(Today’s live has been strange from the very start.)
(This is the first time Valkyrie is participating in this showdown format… the Dream Fes.)
(We’re not used to it at all, so everything feels so out of place.
(I thought that was the source of this unnatural feeling in the air, but…)
(……)
(This is even worse than I expected! But I get it now; not everyone in the audience is here just to see Valkyrie!)
(Some of them don’t even care about us at all!)
(This kind of thing never would have happened back when units… idols performed on their own.)
(All these cold gazes staring directly at us…)
(There really are people who don’t care about us at all.)
(In the past, everyone would have paid the entrance fee in order to see the idols at Yumenosaki Academy.)
(We’re also Yumenosaki idols; that ’s why they took interest in us. But that’s not the case for this audience.)
(Some of these people are only interested in the unit we’re fighting against in this Dream Fes.)
(So not only do they not care about us, but they think of us as an enemy… an obstacle.)
(Valkyrie doesn’t work with that kind of audience.)
(And because we didn’t have any experience with these Dream Fests, we couldn’t have anticipated an audience like this.)
(So, just like always… In true Valkyrie style, we performed.)
(Like a movie directed by an eccentric, pouring out our own worldview onto them…)
(But for those who aren’t interested in us, it’s just painful to watch. You can feel it in the air—They’re fed up with us; they want it to be over already.)
(They came here for some thrilling entertainment, but it’s more like we’re talking philosophy to them.)
(And we never noticed because this kind of thing has never happened before.)
(It doesn’t matter how refined and advanced something is if you can’t get people interested in it.)
(They’ll just end up thinking it was a waste of their time. Like how taking a kindergartner to a museum will just bore them to tears.)
(Even so, Oshi-san’s a genius. He’s showing off such incredible works of art.)
(It’s a performance created with even more bloodlust and obsession than ever before. The craftsmanship is top quality.)
(But that’s not what the audience wants. It’ll be a hard sell for them.)
(We were so conceited, self-righteous, in displaying our work that we made a strategic error.)
(At this rate… We’re screwed, probably.)
♪ ~ ♪ ~ ♪
(I’m sure Oshi-san’s already figured that out, too. But everything in Valkyrie’s performances is strictly planned down to the second.)
(We can’t just rearrange things to fit the mood on the spot like that.)
(We don’t have that kind of flexibility. Everything is so perfect, so complete—that it’s holding us back.)
(We have no other choice but to follow through with everything as planned.)
(What do we do? No, there’s nothing we can do, is there?)
(We can only see things through to the end! That way, at least, we won’t be total failures.)
(Our opponent for this is fine, right…?)
(They’re not a very prominent unit, I don’t think. I heard that their leader is insanely rich.)
(But Oshi-san called them third-rate idols. A plaything for a spoiled child. I hope that’s the truth.)
(But what if fine has been hiding their claws up to now? Pretending to be weak, never revealing their true nature…)
(What if they were lying in wait for the opportunity to kill us?)
(What if that’s their strategy…? No, this is bad, this is bad! In the worst case scenario, today could be the very end of Valkyrie!)
(If we lose here, then…!)
(I learned about that in history class. About a great nation which was once celebrated and feared as a sleeping giant…)1
(A single defeat showed the world the truth: that this great nation was actually weak.)
(It was devoured mercilessly—stripped of its limbs, cut up into pieces of meat, tortured to the point of death… It was robbed of everything it had, until there was nothing left.)2
(Is that what we are…? Are we just foolish sleeping giants being fattened up for the day we’d be sent off to the slaughterhouse?)
~… ♪
(Oshi-san.)
(We have to change the arrangement from here to fit the mood. I know you’re bad with that kind of thing, but—)
(But if we don’t make a decision right now, then it might be all over for us…)
♪ ~ ♪ ~ ♪
(Oshi-san isn’t even looking over here. He’s part of us, but he’s out of sync.)
(Maybe he just doesn’t have that luxury. But it’s a little lonely, like you have no expectations of us at all.)
(I can’t even give him a signal with my eyes. And because I’ve been forbidden to speak on stage…)
(Oshi-san would probably get shaken up if I suddenly spoke up.)
(And I don’t have any solid ideas for the arrangement, either. We’re just desperately trying to follow what Oshi-san trained us to do…)
(We’ve just been practicing it over and over so we can execute it single-mindedly.)
(We can’t deal with such a spur-of-the-moment situation. A doll can’t even move its fingertips by its own will, after all.)
(We can’t do anything we’re not programmed to do. But even so…)
(This is the best possible timing for them to defeat us… But we haven’t worked so hard for so long just to be devoured by others, have we?)
All right, so this 眠れる獅子 (nemureru shishi) is “sleeping lion.” This is a phrase attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte (though the man proper never actually said it; it was first attributed to him in 1963). Because the term was never actually spoken, I’ve found three different variants of this term: sleeping lion, sleeping giant, and sleeping dragon. The full quote attributed to Napoleon is: “Laissez donc la chine dormir, car lorsqu’elle s’éveillera, le monde entier tremblera” (let China sleep, for when she wakes, the entire world shall tremble). You may be thinking, “That doesn’t say sleeping giant,” to which I respond yes, you’re right. This was a whole ordeal to track down. Thanks Nazuna.
The “sleeping giant” variant specifically seems to come from the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! in which Japanese admiral Yamamoto Isoroku says about the US: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” This was likely written as a direct reference to the Napoleonic misquote, which is why I’ve chosen this variant for my translation here.
And finally—the reason Napoleon supposedly called China this sleeping giant/dragon/lion is because, before the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the expansion of Western imperialism, China struck awe in the west because of its might and potential power. After China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, though, this power was left unrealized, and the awe was dispelled as Western imperialism spread its reaches further east. This disillusionment that came as the result of the war is what Nazuna is referring to here with his metaphor.
I guess i should mention here that this metaphor is all probably commentary on what happened to China during the Sino-Japanese War (in order to give you better context for this, and to uh, set the tone). Honestly I’m really not comfortable writing out a summary of the atrocities committed by Japan, so I’m just gonna... link the Wiki page for the Nanjing Massacre, one of the most notorious instances of the war.