Akai kodou

Romaji and English translation of the song 赫い鼓動 (Akai kodou) from the single reila 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.

Akai kodou: Romaji

Hikarabita machi　yase kogareta norainu
Oita hifu musaboru kodomo no mure
Muryoku na ai no te wo sashinobeteru　haritsuke no jakusha wa itta [itta]

God of death is calling me …
God of death sings the last song
[God of death is calling me …
God of death sings the last song]

Haitsukubatte doro kurau mono
“an eyes like the dead fish” no gotoku
Buzama na minikui aigan shite mo 　kono jigoku ni wa OASHISU nado youisarete inai

“mizu no nai umi no sakana” “su no naka de tomogui no ari”
“hebigawa de dekita hina no ■²” aburanashi ja moenu taiyou no shita

God of death is calling us …
God of death sings the last song

[God of death is calling us …
God of death sings the last song]

Ima　toki ga shuuen wo sasu　mukau basho ni koe wa naku
Tada　tsumetai kaze to dosuguroi ame ga furishikiru oto dake munashii

Subete no ikiru monotachi yo　kodou wa ima mo kikoeru kai?
Asu he no hikari ga chi ni rakkashite mo
Sono unmei kara me wo sorasanaide

[God of death is calling us …
God of death sings the last song]

[“mizu no nai umi no sakana” “su no naka de tomogui no ari”
“hebigawa de dekita hina no ■” aburanashi ja moenu taiyou no shita]

[Subete no ikiru monotachi yo　kodou wa ima mo kikoeru kai?
Asu he no hikari ga chi ni rakkashite mo
Sono unmei kara me wo sorasanaide]

Toki ga owari no hane narashi　nigeba sae taihaishiteru
Tada　soko ni wa kokyuu sura wasureteru　akaguroi nukegara no juutan
Mi wa hate tsuchi ni kaeru　nemuri ni tsuita kodoutachi
So no “mi” wa “chi” wa “nou” wa　hitotsu no tane ni nari
Saisei no asa　kirei na hana ni naru darou

Blazing Red³ Vibration¹⁰: Translation

A sun-scorched city　favored by scrawny stray dogs
Groups of children greedily devour their leathery skin⁴
Hands helplessly outstretched in longing⁵　the weak [being] crucified cry out:

God of death is calling me …
God of death sings the last song

The stricken⁶ grovel in the mud
Their eyes [dull and lifeless] just “like [those of] a dead fish”⁷
Even their grotesque appeals
Won’t make some kind of oasis appear in this hell

“Fish [living in] a waterless sea” “Ants in the anthill exterminating one another”
“The doll’s⁸ ■² is made of snakeskin” [and] without oil, nothing under the sun will burn

God of death is calling us …
God of death sings the last song

Now　time points towards our extinction　and there are no voices in the place to which we’re headed
There is only　the unceasing sound of cold wind and threatening black rain⁹ in that void

Everyone living now,　can you still hear that vibration¹⁰?
The light leading to the future is falling on the earth
So don’t avert your eyes from your fate

Your time is up when the bell tolls　and even your place of refuge will crumble
You’ve simply 　forgotten how to breathe in that place　blanketed by scarlet stripped-off skins
Your bodies will return to the earth　[after] your heartbeats have been laid to rest
Those “bodies”, that “blood” and those “minds”　will turn into a single seed
And on the morning of rebirth　will hopefully become beautiful flowers

There’s talking in the background that’s not included in the lyrics.
This is a censored word in the lyrics that isn’t sung in the song.

Also, it sounds like he says, 余録の yoroku no “[it’s] a rumor” where this word would be said, but since it’s not written and I can’t be positive, I didn’t include it in the lyrics.
3 He pronounces this 赤い akai “red” but uses a different first kanji. 赫 (basically two 赤 radicals) is not a word on its own, but forms compounds for words meaning “brilliant, bright, glorious, glitter, sparkle, shine” or “furious, violent, angry,” and is typically pronounced either kaga or kaku.

Usually when he swaps characters in words he’s either combining the meanings of the two characters he’s merging (so “Blazing Red” or “Red Hot” combining both the “red” reading and one of the “bright/brilliant” readings), OR sometimes with the case of a double-radical character like this one (again 赤＋赤＝赫) he will sometimes mean “[a great amount of] ___,” so for example, this could also potentially be read as something like “Deep Red.”

Combined with the imagery in the song referring to intense heat and arid dryness, I get the sense of glaring, brutally blinding light, like being in a desert with no shade.
IDK, this sentence was really freaking difficult and weird. 老いる oiru means “to age, to grow old,” 皮膚 hifu is “skin,” and 貪る musaboru is “to desire, to covet; to devour greedily, to indulge in.” I even went so far as to look up other translations people have done, but everyone else seems to translate it as something like, “group of children desiring/lusting after aged skin.”

Since this is like, a near-apocalyptic, desert-like world (and food would presumably not be easy to come by in such a dried up and desolate world as it wouldn’t grow easily with limited water), I ended up saying children are trying to eat the emaciated stray dogs for lack of anything else to eat. No promises this is right, but I did my best. Sorry!
愛 ai is usually translated as “love, affection, care” – but another possible definition is a Buddhist term meaning “attachment, craving, desire.” I went with this because it seemed to fit better than the regular “love” definition.
He writes 喰らう者 kurau mono, where kurau is a verb meaning “to eat/drink, receive (as in a blow); to be on the receiving end (of something undesirable), to undergo (trouble)” and mono means “person (with a qualifier)” (so like ‘____ person’). So basically, I went with the “undergo trouble” definition, leading it to being a person in dire circumstances. I hope that makes sense!
I had to change his original English lyrics around a little to make them fit a regular translated sentence. (I typically try not to do this but…I kind of had to for it to not sound strange. If the line had been on its own without any Japanese in it, I probably would have left it alone.) The original lyrics had the line 「an eyes like the dead fish」の如く. Basically, either way, he’s saying their eyes are clouded over/blank and lifeless like a dead fish.
The word used is 雛. When pronounced hina as it is in the song, it can either mean “young bird, chick” or “Hina doll (doll displayed during the Hinamatsuri or Girls’ Day/Doll Festival held on March 3).” The doll made more sense to me with the bleeped word mentioned in the second footnote; think ‘private parts.’
黒い雨 kuroi ame can literally be translated as “black rain,” but also means “heavily polluted; radioactive rain following an atmospheric nuclear explosion.” (This is also referred to as “nuclear rainout” as opposed to “nuclear fallout” when radiation is distributed in the form of dust.)
This is 鼓動 kodou. It can be translated as “beat, palpitation, throbbing, pulsation” or even “heartbeat.” I basically ended up translating it a few different ways as it appears a few times in the song.