Coming straight from their battle with Episode 3 of Mahou Shoujo Ore, our heroes have already spent a lot of energy dealing with the monstrous technique known as “the flashback”. Unfortunately, a new enemy already stands in their way, with even more in store…
Astral: We had yet another great week in Boueibu this week, with the crew learning a little more about the Furanui Knights Edelstein, the history of Furanui and Karl, as well as a face-off between the Karl’s Knights and a sushi bento monster. Exciting stuff!
Aria: I can’t believe I’m saying this, considering English is the only Germanic language I know – for once in my life, the Edelstein makes me wish I learnt German…then I’d actually be able to understand the phrase they used to transform the monster of the week.
Astral: All I really would like to know about that is, does it actually mean something, or is it just nonsense like we sometimes see when foreign languages are inserted into an Anime?
Aria: Apparently the Caerula Adamas’s one translated to something like “Gold, silver, pearl, present!” in Latin, so there is some significance to the random language if the Edelstein are the same way.
By the way, the Crunchyroll subs say the monster is a “cute lunch monster”, but if you listen to the audio you hear them use the term chara ben instead.
Astral: Interesting. That’s really something quite small, i’m surprised you managed to catch that. Or maybe I just don’t pay enough attention to the actual wordage that’s being used most of the time.
Aria: Nah, I just keep an eye out for stuff on the twitter, and they tweet whenever the character page gets updated with this stuff. Which reminds me, Crunchyroll sometimes stuffs the monster of the week’s name jokes up so hard you can’t tell what they are. They definitely did that last week.
Astral: You know, i’ve noticed that as well. Crunchyroll is a great service, but sometimes the translations are a bit off…
Aside from the slight errors in translation though, I thought the episode was a pretty good one (though a big chunk was dedicated to a relatively dull flashback). What did you think of it?
Aria: They did do this flashback stunt before, although I can’t remember for the life of me when they did it (might’ve been somewhere in season 2). I do think the punchline they used at the end had a bigger payoff though. That “self-destruct booster” Taiju/Rosenquartz uses on the monster is definitely new though.
Astral: So like, i get why Karl wants to make his subjects happy… but even with that whole flashback scene, I don’t think we really learned why Furanui wants people to be unhappy, unless I missed something. Is it just because he’s a natural-born jerk? I mean, he says he wants to be a strong and powerful ruler, but making his subjects unhappy and transforming them into monsters doesn’t really seem to be the right way to go about it… Basically, his actions and motivations make no sense.
Aria: I don’t really know what to make of it either at this point, considering the general structure of this show is that villain motivations are elaborated on at the end of the season. All I can really say so far is that King Kamopapa (the platypus) doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it. That lemur on the other hand…I feel like that lemur’s foreshadowing for something.
Astral: He did seem pretty shifty, I wonder where he went, and what he’s got to do with all this. After all, he kind of disappeared, didn’t he? As a side note, going back to interesting wordplay, kamo is the Japanese word for Duck, and papa is, well, papa. So his name is literally Duckdad.
Aria: If it’s word games you want, then I can go one better. Apparently the word for platypus is kamonohashi. Also, he uses the sentence ending -kamo, which is short for “maybe” (kamoshirenai). So not only does his name explain what he is in a way, it kind of explains where Karurusu’s airheadedness comes from, too. I didn’t think of the “Duckdad” bit despite knowing what you’ve mentioned, but that is hilarious!
Ah, we missed this last time, but the word for “otter” is apparently kawauso, so prepare for Karurusu being associated with rivers and lies…although I think they already got some mileage out of the latter one (with kawaisou, or “unfortunate”).
Astral: On that note, then, something else I discovered is that Furanui is a word that originates from the language of the ancient Ainu people, meaning “fragrant flame”. The word was adapted to the town of Furano in Hokkaido, whose meaning is literally “navel town.” It’s known for fragrant flowers of various shades of lavender, red, and yellow (which matches pretty well with his minion’s colors), and festivals where people draw strange monsters on their bellies and dance through the streets. Maybe that’s all just me reading too much into things, though…
Aria: Uh…I didn’t expect that. The pattern from previous seasons is that everyone critical to the plot in some way’s got (sur)names associated with onsens aside from Wombat and Zundar (pun on zunda mochi, which he’s shaped like), but personally, I think the colour association’s a bit of a stretch. It’s really a matter of searching for stuff most of the time…so to paraphrase Kyoutarou, “just Google it”.
Astral: Unfortunately, I don’t speak nearly as much Japanese as I wish I did, so a lot of the more subtle wordplay is pretty lost on me without some research to go on on my part. With all this wordplay going on, I feel like our opponent is trying very hard to finish us off here and now by derailing us endlessly. Do you have any strategy to put the creature down?
Aria: The wordplay is just part of the fun of Boueibu, though. Lessee here…
Maybe something like this? Storm Warning!
Storm Warning is a violent and reckless wind attack. However, it is surprisingly good at clearing the attacker’s mind and allowing them to focus on the task at hand, which makes it a suitable fit for a pun-based opponent.
Both: Magical Explosion!
Astral: We hit them! But I think they got away…
Aria: Dang, these opponents are definitely harder than the Mahou Shoujo Ore ones.
With heavy hearts, the two detransformed and waited for their opponent to come back. Hopefully, they’ll defeat their opponent properly next time…right?
< To be continued in the next post… >
If you guys haven’t done so yet, make sure to check out our other post on Aria’s blog, The Animanga Spellbook, where we take on Episode 3 of Mahou Shoujo Ore, the other show we’ve been reviewing in this collab. We couldn’t get any Magical Girl shows to watch this season, so we settled for Magical Boys instead. Let us know what you guys think of this collab, and the shows, and thank you all so much for reading!
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This was a great discussion about the language in the episode and some of the jokes those of us who struggle with our Japanese most likely missed. Thanks for sharing.
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