ichirin no hana - by high and mighty colors

[Noremaku]

According to the current lyrics, the first line goes:

"Kimi wa kimi dake shika inai yo"

But after looking at the subtitled intro (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOEuQITUgRY), the correct line should be:

"Kimi wa kimi da tashikamenai yo"

Dake and shika are both limiting particles, but their usages are completely different. Shika takes a negative, where as dake does not. Tashikameru means "to ascertain, to make sure." So, the new line should be translated:

"I can't be sure that you are you."

or, more loosely:

"I can't tell you're the same person."

[Lady Elwen]

Hm... been a couple days and no deluge of messages... so maybe I can try again... >_> <_< (The story: I kept trying to post this message, and every time it'd say it was posted but not be there when I reloaded.)

I don't have the lyrics scans anymore, so you'll have to take my word for it that "kimi wa kimi dake shika inai yo" is correct.

If you can read Japanese, Google "high and mighty color 一輪の花" and see for yourself. Even Yahoo! Music lists it that way: http://music.yahoo.co.jp/shop/p/52/355281 (it only has the first line).

The YouTube link didn't work for me, but I'm guessing you were watching Lunar's version. They probably did the lyrics by ear rather than following the booklet, which is why they're wrong. It always annoyed me that they didn't bother to fix it after the single was released. And there are more mistakes than just the first line, IIRC.

From a purely logical perspective, the current version makes more sense anyway. "kimi wa kimi da tashikamenai yo" is bad grammar unless you split it up into:

kimi wa kimi da.
tashikamenai yo.

Which translates into something like: "You are you. I won't double-check." (Note that it's not conjugated to mean "can't be sure", which would be "tashikamerarenai".) Not only does that sound silly, it doesn't fit with the next line, which means "you have no replacement".

AND, it doesn't fit with how it's sung, because there's a long pause between "shika" and "inai", and it would be weird to stop in the middle of a verb like that.

But yeah. I won't say song lyrics are always logical. I'll say, "Look at the lyrics booklet, or the many transcriptions thereof online. Do not trust the fansubs." :P