やっぱり in this sentence (regret?)


The following is from the anime Bleach. At the end of every episode they have
a little 予告 where the break the fourth wall. After a voiceover announces a
tragedy to come, an anonyed Ichigo (the main character) replies:

その予告は１週早え!つーかそんな渋い話じゃねえし!ああっやっぱり時間がっ… (end of episode). The last bit is
translated as "Oh no! We've run out of time!"

What is the function of やっぱり in the sentence above? The closest usage I can
think of is やっぱり associated with regret, e.g. やっぱり傘を持ってくればよかった – I should have
brought my umbrella. やっぱり行けばよかった. I should have gone.

Yet in these examples we still have the expected nuance "I knew it! I thought
so! Just like I expected", which seems absent in the sentence from Bleach...




I find that more often than not, やっぱり can be thought of more as "in the
end..." or "after all", meaning like "Aaa, we don't have time after all!!" but
without the formal connotation that comes from that phrase in English.

With the other examples such as 「やっぱり行けばよかった」The "should have" translation
comes from the 「〜けばよかった」, not the やっぱり. You can also think of the sentence as
"I should have gone after all." or "...as I thought."

But like I said, "after all" is kind of formal and serious in English, not
used as willy nilly. やっぱり is more of a word to add the connotation that it was
something considered before, and often is left out by translators because you
can get the same connotation from the context alone.

Hope this helped :)

