zetsu

Romaji and English translation of the song 舐～zetsu～ (zetsu) from the singles Dainippon itangeishateki noumiso nakadzuri zecchou zekkei ongenshuu and zetsu by the GazettE.

I gave this the explicit tag because of violent sexual undertones, but there’s nothing overtly explicit in it.

Lyrics originally sung in English are in italics , and words or phrases I felt were implied are in [brackets] in the translation.

I also (usually) put repeats of chorus/verses/stanzas in [brackets] if they’re not written that way in the original lyrics for ease of singing along.

If he writes a word in the lyrics but doesn’t sing it, I put it in light grey to make it easier to skip when singing along.

I usually romajize katakana characters in CAPITALS, and keep punctuation and line spacing as close to the original booklet as possible. If you see me putting spaces before punctuation at the end of a sentence or writing things in mixed-case capitals, that’s because it’s how it was in the booklet.

Any comments I had during the romajization/translation process will be included as footnotes so as not to disturb the flow of the song. They’re not required reading, but Ruki does some pretty nifty things with his lyrics/kanji choices, or sometimes there’s further explanations about words or phrases in there.

zetsu: Romaji

Amefuri no kayoubi, shikke ga hidoku kokochiyoi
Are hateta shinshitsu kara kikoeru kanjouteki
Kanojo no fuman, gouyoku, shitto ya sokobaku heki
Konou wa yagate kirete boku no koto wo kowasu no deshou?

Amefuri no kayoubi, shinshitsu he wa ikitakunai
HISU taishitsu no kimi ga, mata tekubi ni mitoreteru
Boku no kunou wa yagate jihatsuteki ni kuda wo kiru
Yoteidoori ni boku wo kowashite kureta ne

Ashimoto de imasara kobiru nante shouki kai?
Waraeru yo doko made kimi wa minikui ndai…

Bara bara bara daeki ni bara
Chiru wa koyoi namida, nado nai.
Bara bara bara aishite ita
Kimi yo kako yo kaerazu no amai hibi yo

[3, 2, 1 Action]¹

Amefuri no kayoubi, hakike to zutsuu no naka
Keiren gimi no hitomi wa nigeru kimi wo toraeteru
Mada asonde itai akiru kurai kanjitai
Gouyoku no hate wo tannou shiyou

Nakigoe wa sakebi ni, kao wa hyoujou nakushi
Henshitsuteki, MOA kaihouteki ni majiriaou…

Fukaku fukaku tokeru youni
Fukaku tsuraku itaku aisu
Oborete yuku ayausa ni
Tsuyakasa ni hikarete iku

Bara bara bara nerezu no hana
Fukan SHOW TIME
Koritsujiiteki yura yura yura tarenagaseba
Munashiku natte koukai no hibi

[Bara bara bara daeki ni bara
Chiru wa koyoi namida, nado nai.
Bara bara bara aishite ita
Kimi yo kako yo kaerazu no amai]

Amefuri no kayoubi, shikke ga hidoku kokochiyoi
Atarashii kanojou wa A-gata kurumaisu izonshou
Kimi wa mukuchi, keppeki, junketsu no kegarenaki bara
Juuni-nin me no gisei ga denai koto wo hibi negaou.

Death Advisory²: Translation

It’s a rainy Tuesday, and the dampness is brutally pleasant³
From the shabby, run-down bedroom I can hear
My girlfriend’s moody complaining, her neediness, jealousy, and clinginess
This irritation [from her constant nagging] will eventually make me snap and break, won’t it?

It’s a rainy Tuesday, and I don’t want to go into the bedroom
Your hysterical impulses have me eyeing your wrists⁴ again
Eventually, my irritation gets the best of me and it⁵ slices open your veins on its own
Yeah, you finally broke me and it⁵ let you have it

Far too late, you’re at my feet groveling⁶ – is that your true character?
It makes me laugh to see just how undignified you are…

Roses, roses, roses⁷, roses in saliva
Tonight it won’t be tears that flow
Roses, roses, roses, I loved you
You, the past, those naïve days that I can’t go back to

[3, 2, 1 Action]¹

It’s a rainy Tuesday, full of nausea and headaches
I feel my pupils dilate⁸ as I eye your fleeing form
I still want to keep toying with you I want to enjoy you until I finally tire of you
I’ll take my fill until my craving is satisfied

Your cries turn into screams, and your face loses all expression
We’ll join together more freely, more perversely…

Profound agony⁹, profound agony, I hope you melt away
Profound agony, suffering, anguish, tragic love¹⁰
I’m so drawn to the luster of it
I’m at risk of drowning in it

Roses, roses, roses, these flowers are no longer wet
Frigid¹¹ SHOW TIME
In private masturbation　I’m trembling, trembling, trembling, and when I find release¹²
My days of regret won’t matter anymore

[Roses, roses, roses, roses in saliva
Tonight it won’t be tears that flow
Roses, roses, roses, I loved you
You, the past, those naïve days that I can’t go back to]

It’s a rainy Tuesday, and the dampness is brutally pleasant
My new girlfriend is blood-type A, and confined to a wheelchair
You’re a reserved, wholesome, pure and unsullied rose
I hope you won’t become the 12^th victim¹³ someday.

There is stuff before and after this that’s not included in the lyrics (and even the “3, 2, 1 Action” isn’t actually included either, but it’s obvious what he says, complete with a countdown on his fingers in the video, so I at least put that part in).
So, in reality, no one knows what the title is supposed to mean. If you wanted to get extra punny with my title, you could call it Death Note. Basically, I chose a reading of the first radical as zetsu in 舌代 zetsudai “a notice (as in a posted sign, warning, etc.)”, and a silent version of one of the readings for the second radical as 氏ぬ shinu “to die.” (He’s done stuff like that before, who knows.) Because the song kind of seems like a warning to anyone that wants to date this guy that it’s probably not gonna end well for them.

This is not an official thing, it’s just kind of my interpretation of what the title could be – and without finding out from Ruki directly (and good luck with that), no one freaking knows what he meant by the title, we just know for sure it’s pronounced zetsu thanks to him helpfully writing it out next to the kanji he picked.

If you want to puzzle it out yourself:
- 舌 by itself is read either shita or zetsu and means “tongue.”
- 氏 by itself read as tsu means “family/clan” – but pronounced other ways it can be part of compounds meaning death, a counter for people, or the equivalent of “go to hell/fuck off and die.”
- 舐る (a verb using the actual kanji, but NOT pronounced zetsu) can be pronounced either neburu or nameru and means “lick, taste, burn up, despise.”
It sounds like this adjective should not go with a word like “pleasant” but…that’s how it’s written. 酷く hidoku “unmercifully, brutally, cruelly”; 心地良い kokochiyoi “comfortable, pleasant.” Since he did it this way on purpose, not making the second word negative (as in UNpleasant), it kind of speaks to the kind of warped personality of the guy telling his story, I think. Either that or the guy is heavily sarcastic.
It sounds like he’s considered killing her before, like every time she annoys him, he thinks about slitting her wrists for her. Note: The other way this line could be translated is she is eyeing her wrists again, like in addition to being a slovenly, nagging harpy (according to him), she’s also hysterical and may have previously tried to emotionally manipulate him by threatening to commit suicide (i.e., slit her wrists). It’s hard to tell since there are no pronouns in the line.
The way he phrases it is more like it’s his *irritation* that cut her, not *him* – like he got so mad that he lost control of his actions, so obviously it’s not his fault he slit her wrists for her; it’s because she drove him past his breaking point and his irritation became a force of its own and took matters into its own hands as it were.
The regular translation of 媚びる kobiru is “flirt/flatter,” but I translated it with more desperation. To me, this sounds like she’s pleading for her life, and he ends up laughing at her because of how pathetic she is. If translated as “flirt/flatter,” it would be more like she was trying to get back in his good graces, but at this point he’s already slit her wrists, so…I mean, I guess that would still be too late, too. Reader’s choice?
The word he’s singing is 薔薇 (ばら) bara which means “rose(s)”. However, he’s used different ending kanji for each of the first three baras (all of which are pronounced ra as well):
- 螺 ends compounds meaning “big talk, tall tale, boasting, bragging” as well as “screw/spiral (as in a snail shell)”
- 裸 ends compounds meaning “nakedness, nudity”
- 羅 ends compounds meaning “fool, airhead, self-indulgent” or by itself “silk, lightweight fabric” or “spread out”
  
  The only time he writes the regular version of 薔薇 bara are the “roses in saliva” part – and again at the end talking about his new girlfriend, so those are the only spots where I’d consider “roses” to actually mean “ROSES.”
  
  Additionally, ばらばら (or バラバラ) barabara is an onomatopoeic word meaning “scattered, loose, in pieces, in drops, disconnected” – and in fact is also part of the phrase バラバラ事件 barabara jiken which means “mutilation murder/murder in which the victim was chopped into pieces.”
  
  Since the song is about a guy who snapped and has been killing his girlfriends, roses could be symbolic for blood (especially given the next line “tonight it won’t be tears that flow” – though that could also be translated a couple different ways thanks to the verb 散る chiru meaning…so many freaking things), chopped up body parts scattered about, a downward spiral of sex and blood and lies and spit and girlfriend-pieces all over the place repeating over and over again, etc.
  
  Basically it seems like anytime one of his girlfriends starts harping on him/nagging at him/acting annoying or hysterical/whatever his criteria is for going off the deep end, he kills her in a fashion mostly left up to the imagination (except for the first one, who it sounds like he slit her wrists for her), but the point is, he’s not dealing with his anger in a healthy way at all, and he blames it on his irritation as if that is what actually killed them and not him. And it’s a repeating cycle – at the end you find out just how many times he’s done this.
痙攣 keiren means “convulsions/cramps;” I translated this as “dilate” – as in when pupils enlarge. If you’ve ever seen a cat go into predator mode, their pupils enlarge and become big and black and round right before they pounce on something: this allows more light into the eye temporarily so they can take in more detail during their attack. Think of this like that: he’s going into predator mode based on her trying to get away from him.
Normally fukaku, meaning “deep/profound” is written 深く, but Ruki has used 苦 (also read as ku) as the second character. 苦 ku means “agony/anguish.”
So 哀す aisu is… not a verb the way he’s written it. The kanji 哀 ai means “pathetic, grief, sorrow,” but again, not a verb. So I’m thinking maybe he switched out the previous 愛 ai (“love”) with this kanji to show it’s not like a happy mushy love, but a miserable, unbearable version of love. IDK.
不感 fukan begins the phrase 不感症 fukanshou which means “sexual frigidity.” Um, combined with a couple other things (the flowers no longer being wet – and 花 hana “flower” can be a euphemism for sexual stuff – especially concerning females, her face has lost its expression – i.e. she’s not moving, joining together “more perversely,” and the next line about private masturbation) I’m kiiiiiinda getting a semi-necrophilia vibe from this… Or at the very least, ‘jerking off over his dead girlfriend’s body’, if not ‘doing the deed with his dead/dying girlfriend.’
The word used is 垂れ流せば tarenagaseba and means “discharge.” This is…exactly what it sounds like in this context. The end result of masturbation. Climax, ejaculate, pick your favorite synonym.
So while it only directly describes him actually doing in his first (harpy) girlfriend – and he was probably relatively normal prior to losing his shit – apparently the rest of the song (everything after “3, 2, 1 Action”) is like a flash-forward of his next 10 girlfriends, who all end up the same way, because he’s now hoping this quiet girl will be what breaks the cycle, assuming she stays quiet and reserved and doesn’t accidentally flip his psycho-switch and become victim number 12.