Alright, despite the hangover that comes after a long vacation, I was still able to get Kotohogi's story done in a week. Honestly I went into this expecting to not like the character. Granted my opinion of him only came from the dialogue he says within the game, but I really expected him to be...too nice. Turns out, I really ended up liking him! There's a lot more to the character than I had expected.
I didn't really have any trouble with his translation, though there was quite a bit of exposition in the later chapters that was...a little boring. Necessary to understand what's going on, but kind of tedious to translate.
So instead of comments on the translation process, here's a little side bit of information.
Kotohogi is one of the few characters in this game whose name is written out with kanji: 言祝. Most characters use katakana for their names. So why is Kotohogi different? Honestly I don't know. But his name is made up of two characters, 言 meaning 'words' or 'to speak', and 祝 meaning 'celebration' or 'to congratulate'. So his name roughly translates to 'congratulatory words'.
Then, I want to look at the name of his kingdom, Amatsu. Written in katakana as アマツ, it is read the same way as the kanji 天津, a Japanese word that translates as 'being of heaven' or 'imperial'. As an example, in Shinto, amatsu-kami are the heavenly gods (as opposed to the kunitsu-kami, gods of the land). So, a kingdom within the Land of Light, a prince that wears all white, and a strong similarity to the Japanese word for 'heavenly'? Basically, Kotohogi lives in a heaven-esque country. I assume that reference is more obvious for native Japanese speakers, but for us non-native speakers, making that connection takes a little more work!
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