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Our translation of the "BIO HAZARD The Elegant Beast of the North Sea" novel will be fully completed and released on June 27. In the meantime, I thought I would explain our translation of the book's subtitle, which has changed multiple times.
In Japanese, the subtitle uses "妖獣." The second is beast. A cursory translation yields phantom or strange for the first, but it has additional dualistic meanings (attractive, bewitching, calamity, monster, demon, evil, etc). In unison both characters can be translated as "wicked." An example of this usage is the anime movie Wicked City, however unlike that movie the use of wicked in the novel's title has no story or thematic relevance.
Phantom/Strange do not hold any relevance to the book or its themes. However, the use of attractive and bewitching does, as the antagonist is the beautiful young woman Mylene Beardsley, who has a B.O.W. clone. Our current translation reflects this aspect of duality in the story. She not only has a monster clone, but she herself is a monster through her actions (like scooping out a teenage girl's eyeballs, turning her into a Zombie and trying to feed them to her best friend in a soup).
This theme is particularly relevant as during the time the novel was written, the proposed scenario of BIOHAZARD 2 (released the same day as the novel) had a goal of showcasing human characters as just as dangerous and monstrous as the mutant enemies. Since there has never been an official translation of the novel, our chosen title may not reflect the author's intent, but we cannot help but take liberties under the circumstances.