Talk:Shinsengumi/@comment-34681066-20180803030234/@comment-36590736-20180919232221

I'm not the translator of this story (kotofucius) and I'm not sure which twitter TL you're referring to, but the line in Revolutionary Ogre 6 is:

「ちいさな子供のころに、ちょっと遊んだだけで、ずうっと縁のなかった子を幼なじみって呼んだりして―」

The short answer is: the translation of the line provided by kotofucius is accurate.「ちょっと遊んだだけで」means "Only played just a little bit [and did nothing else]." He then follows it up by saying they had no relationship whatsoever since the time they met when they were very very young. (So basically, the kotofucius TL.)

The slightly longer answer is:

Note the use of だけ here and the specific lack of だり (and he uses だり for another verb in the same sentence above - so it wasn't accidentally left out.) In brief, だけ means "only [and nothing else]" whereas だり means "this [as well as other things]."

So the idea behind this line is that Madara and Anzu did play a little bit, maybe a handful of times as a child, but the way Madara paints it (and who knows if he's purposefully painting it in a bad light or if he's being 100% honest), it's basically like they played in the sandbox or on the playground once or twice, but never really spoke or hung out or saw each other outside of those few times they played. So they played a few times as kids, but they didn't really know each other or speak to each other besides that (according to Madara).

You're right in that they did more than have one brief conversation! And how you want to interpret "only played a little bit" (literal translation) is probably up to you as a fan. Madara is coming clean in this chapter, but he's also playing up his anti-hero persona. How literally fans choose to take his words likely depends on how they choose to interpret his attitude in the chapter overall.

I hope this helped a little bit!