OMINOUS

Romaji and English translation of the song OMINOUS from the album DOGMA by the GazettE.

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.

OMINOUS: Romaji

Sleep…Count me down…Again

Saa me wo tojite
Mukaou

Gareki ni tsubureta inori
Habataiteiku kimi no me ni utsusu

Atsuku kageru sora ni
Akumu to mau kimi wo miru

Wasurenaide
Kokoro wa shinanai
Wasurenaide
Sou yume wa sakayume

True…Dread

Sleep…Count me down…Again

Fushou wa ruten wo meguri
Danzoku no yami ga ore wo otosu

Katachi naki asu wo ubau fumidasu tabi
Kageru sora de nani mo mienai
Kanashimi ni jibun wo koroshi sakebu koe wa
Nanimo sukuenai

Sleep…Count me down…Again

OMINOUS: Translation

Sleep…Count me down…Again

So I’ll close my eyes
As I turn to face you

My prayer shattered into ruins
Is reflected in your eyes as you spread your wings to fly

I see you whirling with nightmares
Through a sky thick with darkness

Don’t forget
That the heart can’t die
Don’t forget
Really, dreams don’t always mean what they seem¹

True…Dread

Sleep…Count me down…Again

This cycle of constant change is ominous
I fall into the recurring darkness

It steals away my formless future and whenever I step forward
The sky darkens until I can no longer see
I’m killing myself with loneliness and even my screams
Won’t bring any rescue

Sleep…Count me down…Again

Here’s 逆夢 sakayume again. This word means “reverse dream, a dream that contradicts reality,” and would be called something like “bad dream” or “nightmare” in English.

But in Japanese, this particular kind of dream has an extra facet – while they’re often perceived as being negative on some level (because bad dream, but I guess they wouldn’t necessarily have to only be bad dreams, per se – just not grounded in reality), they have a positive aspect after the fact. The dream won’t come true, and in addition, something positive is said to happen in real life as a result of having it.

This sentence was super hard for me to translate because it’s so short, and so much more goes into the Japanese words than you can get from directly translating into English. Literally, it could be translated as, “So/it seems like, dreams are reverse dreams.” It could also be something like, “Dreams can seem like they’re not real.”