In place of my lord I scatter A ready-made race Knockdown By myself At a tragic end DIVE JAPANESE and non-JAPANESE citizens Boundary lines Anguish THE pubescent BOY
Dulled By instigation, instigated Madness Upbringing Distorted and twisted By the megaphone Only the hidden needle Is my armament I don't feel like we'll lose Keep shouting that
When the cherry blossoms Flutter I Bloomed Let that girl be well
A strike with the flat of my blade is enough For the likes of a plane That might as well be you bastard Aware that We're outnumbered Banzai I close my eyes And come to an end
Within the picture frame Saluting PAPA On standby for rations and Notifications MAMA Unable to stand upright on two legs SISTER Greetings, the daily life of my sixteen years
When the cherry blossoms Flutter I Sleep I want to meet that girl
That ridiculous era When we checked Lead With bamboo spears The siren, a full-stop Is unexpected The Heisei world From the sky I grieve
A strike with the flat of my blade is enough For the likes of a plane That might as well be you bastard Aware that We're outnumbered Banzai I closed my eyes And cried
That ridiculous era When we checked Lead With bamboo spears The siren, a full-stop Is unexpected The Heisei world From the sky I pray
=== ♪In place of my lord I scatter A ready-made race My lord = Japan's emperor Ready-made race = Term used to describe a rigged competition, or one in which a contestant is so much stronger that it's already obvious what the results will be like, but they're going to compete anyway.
♪Knockdown On my own At a tragic end DIVE At a tragic end = Japan only dispatched kamikaze pilots towards the end of WWII, which is when they were obviously starting to lose. Those missions were more like a last-ditch attempt to buy time than a strategic move to win.
♪JAPANESE and non-JAPANESE citizens Boundary lines Anguish THE pubescent BOY Basically, anyone who wasn't all YAAAAAAAY JAPAN FTW brb going to move Zig → Allied ship for Great Justice at that time was thought to be unpatriotic, dishonourable blahblah; i.e. "non-Japanese". Caught between two choices, neither of which is usually faced by a typical teenage boy, the narrator makes the politically correct decision.
♪A strike with the flat of my blade is enough Double meaning here. On the surface, it sounds like the narrator is belittling the enemy, but note that when someone pulls a mineuchi, he swings the sword like he's going to cleave his opponent, then turns the blade at the last second to strike with the flat instead, because the objective is not to strike down your opponent, but to try and frighten him into submission.
♪Aware that We're outnumbered Banzai I close my eyes And come to an end Banzai = A cheer, it roughly means "Long live (the emperor, Japan, something)!" and is what a suicide pilot might've shouted before crashing his plane.
♪Within the picture frame Saluting PAPA Narrator's father went to war as well.
♪On standby for rations and Notifications MAMA And is more than likely still thar / never made it back.
♪Unable to stand upright on two legs SISTER The heavy emphasis on "two" here is unfortunately lost in translation, it implies that his sister may not have both legs anymore. :|
Also, the katakana for boy is "boui", which also means "tyranny" in Japanese, so the title can be mockingly read as "Salute Tyranny".