a couple of cool things I noticed in Shinzou wo Sasageyo (Shingeki no Kyojin’s 3rd opening)

attack on titan season 2 just finished which … sucks. at least I still have the opening to listen to, and the other day when reading the official lyrics there were a couple of lines I saw that made me like it so much more.

when listening to it I understood the meaning of the words easily enough, but the song does something really interesting in that the written lyrics will sometimes replace a common word with another one that is read the same way but has a slightly different meaning. it basically gives those lines two meanings whenever you listen to them!

one example of how the song does this is in the following line:

全ての犠牲は今この瞬間の為に

subete no gisei wa kono toki no tame ni

this line literally translates to “All sacrifices have been for the purpose of this time.” with a more liberal translation being something like “Every sacrifice comes down to right now.”

at least that’s one would assume by just listening to the opening. the kanji for “time” is read as toki and is written as 時. but instead the official lyrics use 瞬間 which is the word for “moment” or “instant” and is normally read as shunkan. it kind of adds a bit of urgency to the song when the line becomes “Every sacrifice comes down to this moment.”

the other instance is a bit more interesting I think. but before getting into that, I wanna bring up another lyric a few lines before it:

されど人類最悪の日はいつも唐突に

saredo jinrui saiaku no hi wa itsumo toutotsu ni

this one translates to “But humanity’s worst days are always so sudden”. take note of the phrase 最悪の日 (saiaku no hi). on its own it translates to “worst day”. now take a look at the line soon after:

招かれざる災厄の灯は悪夢のように

manekarezaru saiyaku no hi wa akumu no you ni

anything look familiar? there’s the word saiyaku in this one, which sounds exactly the same! which is why when you listen to the song, you would assume that it’s the same as saiaku. but in its place we have this neat little kanji compound: 災厄の灯 which translates to “light of disaster”. the full line translates to:

the uninvited light of disaster was like a nightmare.

when you replace saiyaku with saiaku the meaning is still pretty similar but a double meaning nonetheless, and a cool find!