Hello and nice to meet you all! I've studied Japanese in the past but eventually stopped the formal studies due to difficulties in my personal life to conciliate university with memorizing Kanjis. Eventually I forgot most of them but kept studying by me own and improving my vocabulary.
Recently, I've been watching one of my favorite Anime (The end of Evangelion) and was not very satisfied with the translation of the subtitles. I decided to do a better one by myself and this made me kinda of resume my studies. I managed to learn lots of new kanji and even grammar rules just by browsing the web and using a Japanese dictionary. However, one particular line of the movie stroke me as very difficult to comprehend without someone else help.
The line in question is:
三度の報いの時が 今
Now, the original translation was: "The time of third return has come".
The problem here is that this line refers to other things happenings in the movie. One person suggested me to translate "mukui" as "retribution" (more literal) or "reckoning" as something religious.
Indeed what the line in question is saying, is somewhat related to a religious ceremony, But It doesn't seem right to me, if they wanted the meaning of "judgement", why not use "sabaki"? I have the feeling that mukui actually relates to another line that is repeated several times during the movie:
"無へと還ろう"
"All returns to nothing".
The movie talks a lot about the meaning of life, and this phrase is a recurring motif.
The character that used "mukui" tended to always use difficult and ambiguous words and metaphors to express himself, So I got the feeling he was actually just using "third mukui" as a stilted way to say: "returning to nothing for the third time".
Could such interpretation be correct? What do you guys thinks translate better to english? Retribution, return (to nothing) or Reckoning/judgement?
I understand that without understanding the whole movie, is very difficult to give a correct interpretation of such a vague line, but I decided to give a shot here nevertheless.
Thank you very much!
Yes, the correct reading is Shitaya. Thanks for pointing it out.
