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I was reading a light novel and found this bit that really bothers me.

ここから彼女の通っている小学校までは少し距離があるのだが、しかし《創世》にかかれば、移動距離などまるで意味をなさない。

(although it seems pretty intuitive, if needed the context is that the girl is able to warp space)

How common is this? Does this fall in the same category of using たとえ before a ば/... phrase to anticipate the hypotetical nature of the sentence

Gianni Trattore
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It is quite common as a dramatic and/or literary expression. You should not overuse it, but you can use it when you want an emphatic version of "however". だがしかし is used almost as a set phrase at the beginning of a sentence; an English equivalent would be "But yet".

See also:

naruto
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  • Thank you. Reading だがしかし with less pause between the two words makes it sound much more understandable to me. I still can't wrap my head around how much punctuation in Japanese is different from my native language. – Gianni Trattore Jul 27 '23 at 10:58