One of the other students in my reading class brought in the first chapter of the One Piece manga, which we finished a few weeks ago. Towards the end, there’s a scene in the bar where the villain Higuma is laughing with his gang about how pathetic Shanks and his pirates seem to be. One line in particular is noteworthy.

To set the scene properly, the teacher is a rather attractive woman “somewhere past age 30” (coughcough), there are two male students in their early twenties who are big Japanese pop-culture fans, and a basically-bilingual female student who’s about 19. And me, the big hairy over-40 otaku. We were translating as we went, and I had just finished reading the following speech bubble:

酒ぶっかけられても文句一つ言えねェで!!

This loosely translates as, “they didn’t even complain when I threw a drink in his face!”, but before I had a chance to say that, the teacher launched into an explanation of the verb, which she was sure we wouldn’t know: bukkakeru.

All three of us guys were trying hard not to say anything, or look at each other. We just let that one go quietly by…

Fail.

With the latest antics among the Democrats, I was reminded of the video from their last convention [NSFW!].

Following up on earlier discussions of the trainwreck that was the anime version of Rosario&Vampire, I recently picked up the latest issue of the magazine that’s running the manga, Jump SQ, and learned that:

• They're hyping the light novel.
• They're hyping the game, including its two new girls in a crowd scene, holding a DS Lite.
• They're hyping the second season of the anime, which, if the pictures are to be believed, consists entirely of swimsuit scenes, and adds Our Hero's human cousin Kyouko and the second loli, Moka's little sister Cocoa.
• In this episode, Nekonome-sensei kicks off a membership drive for the newspaper club. How to get attention? Cheerleader costumes!
• Cocoa finds this incompatible with her dignity, and flees the fan-service, with Yukari chasing after her. Flying lolis in skimpy cheerleader costumes.
• Chuu is in the manga cast now, and hangs out with Cocoa. I don't know if he was added because of the anime, or in spite of it; I'm not really following this series.
• Our lolis go looking for another club for Cocoa, and get booted out of several for being too young. Cocoa doesn't handle frustration well, so Yukari offers her latest magical item: instant puberty candy.
• Cocoa's a big hit with her new look, easily winning a brick-breaking contest at the karate club, and breaking dozens of hearts in the process. It doesn't hurt that her cheerleading costume didn't quite scale to match her new figure.
• Cocoa is thrilled with the power in her new adult body, and the effect it had on all the boys. Yukari's thrilled too; not only did they win a lot of money, but she likes Cocoa's new body, too. Especially the boobs.
• ...so much so that she goes in for a squeeze, leading Cocoa to moan, "oh, what's this strange feeling?", and the lecherous Yukari shows no signs of stopping.
• Fortunately, Cocoa's honor is saved by the dishonored karate club, who wants a private rematch to salvage their reputation.
• Naturally the pill wears off just as she's about to kick their asses, dropping her skirt around her ankles. Full-frontal loli-pantsu!

I know there have been a few “serious” chapters in this second series, but they don’t seem to have advanced the overall plot significantly. No matter what happens, Tsukune won’t change in a way that will prevent his harem from glomping him at every opportunity. He can’t leave the school, he can’t stop being at least partially human, and he can’t commit to any one girl. Similarly, Alt-Moka must remain constrained by the rosario, or outer Moka will effectively die.

The mangaka might want to break out of this genre, even if he doesn’t have a real long-term plan for a serious story, but he’s trapped. There’s too much merchandise that focuses on the harem side of the series. Maybe he can work out some of those issues in the light novel, but I think the manga’s future is clear.

In the Kino’s Journey short story we’ve been reading in class, the following line appears as Hermes the talking motorcycle is introduced as a “Motorado”:

（注・二輪車。空を飛ばないものだけを指す）

Translated: “Note: two-wheeled vehicle. Refers only to non-flying ones”.

The origin of the word appears to be German: “motorrad”, as in BMW Motorrad, makers of fine motorcycles. All the Japanese search engines I’ve checked turn up lots of links to Kino, followed by a few to generic motorcycle discussions.

So why does the author feel compelled to point out that Hermes can’t fly? I just spotted the exact same phrase while skimming through the first Kino novel, in every story. Where’s the ambiguity? If motorado isn’t in common use in Japanese outside of Kino and motorcycle fans, why stress the fact that Hermes is a non-flying two-wheeler, every time?

After eleven novels, two spinoff novels, an anime series, and two OVAs, isn’t someone who picks up a special-edition Kino book going to be pretty clear about at least the non-flying part? The novels are really short story collections, originally published individually in a magazine, so I can see the first half-dozen or so introducing unfamiliar katakana words like モトラド and パースエイダー, but doing it every time is either an editorial standard or a stylistic choice, and just calling it a “two-wheeled vehicle” is somehow insufficient.

1. The use of marketing phrases to describe the release of a product shall be forbidden. In particular, the word "drop" shall be reserved for articles announcing that a product has been removed from the market.
2. Press releases for objects which are not only unreleased, but nonexistent, shall be clearly labeled "concept art," "design project," "spec work," "wishful thinking," "investor pitch," "violates second law of thermodynamics," or some other appropriate, factual description.
3. Press releases that contain neither release dates nor specifications shall be considered to fall into one of the above categories.
4. Factual information contained in press releases shall be clearly presented above the fold.
5. Embedded links to manufacturers and products shall go directly to the most appropriate page on the most official source available at the time. The practice of burying the source to generate additional ad impressions shall not be tolerated.
6. Contributors shall demonstrate at least a grade-school grasp of English composition.
7. Except when discussing products and services specifically designed for adult-only audiences, contributors shall write for a general audience, not a locker room.
8. Contributors and editors shall not suffer a shill to live.

[Update: Replaced the store link; I hadn’t realized that asianmunchies.com was now wholesale-only.]

One of my regrets from the trip to Japan was that I didn’t bring home more ginger-flavored crack(ers). I hoped I’d be able to find them in the US, but the only name I knew to call them by was a Kyoto cliché.

Today, I avoided the con crowd by heading up to SF Japantown, and while browsing through a grocery store, I found two different brands of Shouga Tsumami (“ginger pinch”). They’re a little thicker than the ones we bought in a Gion candy store, and not quite as fresh, but they’re still darn tasty, and they’re available online.

There are several different ways to romanize Japanese. This is the wrong one.

more...