Translator’s Notes

Chapter One: They’ve Got the Whole World In A… Pinch?

Resid*** Evil… Devil *** Cry… Dark S**ls

That is, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and Dark Souls, all video games with hellish settings.

I’ll Give You Half the World

A famous line uttered by the final boss in the first Dragon Quest game, in an attempt to get the hero to join him instead of fighting him.

Dancing Half-Naked, etc.

(Spoilers: Dragon Quest Builders)

This refers to the game Dragon Quest Builders, which turns out to take place in an alternate-history version of the DQ world in which that first hero took the evil villain up on his offer of “half the world.” The villain bestows on the hero a dilapidated castle with a sign that says “Half the World,” and the hero lives there for ages, until by the time of Builders, he’s bouncing around, barely clothed, an enemy to the player character.

The Hetero Sword

In Japanese, nonke soodo. Nonke is Japanese gay slang for someone who isn't gay. (The closest English equivalent in meaning is probably “breeder,” but we figured that term might not be familiar enough to some readers.)

Mara**h and Banco**n Got Pregnant in Patalli**

The reference is to Patalliro!, a manga (and later anime) that started running in 1978 and continues today. Maraich Juschenfe is an assassin enlisted to kill Jack Bancoran, but instead they become lovers, with Maraich becoming pregnant (not once, but twice) despite the fact that both of them are male.

Yaoi Holes

Yaoi ana: a fictional organ (or perhaps, simply a fictional hole) sometimes said to exist in the bodies of male lovers. Although opinions vary on exactly what a “yaoi hole” is, the expression doesn’t necessarily refer to any standard feature of male biology.

Harmagedon

It’s possible this is simply an alternate spelling of the event also known as Armageddon, but it could also be a reference to the feature-film version of a series called Genma Taisen (Genma Wars), a franchise that began as a manga in 1967. The film, which came out in 1983, was titled Harmagedon.

The Demonlord Attacks! Shinichi Takes 99 Damage!

Shinichi describes Minori with the classic term maou. This is often translated as “demon king,” but Minori probably wouldn’t be a king. She arguably isn’t a lord, either, but in addition to being a standard trope in light-novel fantasies, maou is also a play on ryuuou, the name of the final villain in Dragon Quest. That name was rendered Dragonlord in English, so we played on that for our translation. The line “Shinichi takes 99 damage!” is likewise an allusion to the battle text in Dragon Quest.

Emergency Spray

A health item from Resident Evil.

Warrior of Light

This may or may not be an intentional reference to the heroes of the original Final Fantasy game, who were known by this title.

Indoorite

Shinichi refers to himself as indoa-ha, “[part of] the indoor faction.”

James Camer**

That is, James Cameron, director of films like Aliens and Avatar.

Chapter Two: When an Armor Meets an Armor Coming Through the Rye

Seiza

This is a formal sitting position in Japan. As Hikaru says, it involves tucking your feet under your behind so you’re sitting on your shins. It can get pretty uncomfortable if you’re not used to it.

Word Games

In the Japanese, Shinichi actually mentions a specific game, known as shiritori. Translating literally (if somewhat unfortunately) as “bottom-grabbing,” shiritori is a game where one player says a word, then the next player has to come up with a word that begins with the syllable with which the previous word ended. So for example, the first player might say kani (crab), and the second might respond with niwatori (chicken). A third player might then say risu (squirrel). (In general, only nouns are allowed in this game.) The game ends when a player can’t think of a word, or when they say a word ending in the syllable n. (Although many words in Japanese start with an “n” sound, such as ni or na, no word begins with the actual individual syllable n.)

Dragons Screwing Cars

An online subculture exists of people who create and consume images of dragons having sex with cars. The trend seems to have emerged out of the Furry community, and appears to have begun in earnest, though it has sometimes been picked up as a meme by people who find the idea amusing.

A Butterfly Flapping Its Wings

Fun fact: there exists (and Shinichi uses) a native Japanese equivalent of this proverb: “When the wind blows, the coopers profit.” According to the Japanese website kotobank, which explains various proverbs (kotowaza), the logic goes like this: “When the wind blows, there's more dust. The dust gets in people's eyes and causes them to go blind. Blind people commonly make their living by playing the samisen [a three-stringed, lute-like instrument]. This causes a rise in the demand for cats, as samisen are often strung with catgut. But fewer cats mean more rats, which chew through barrels, hence barrel makers see an increase in business.”

The World on a Turtle

Several world cultures have stories suggesting the world is supported on the back of a turtle or tortoise, or sometimes on the back of something else (such as several elephants) that are themselves standing on a turtle.

Visions of the End

Hikaru lists off quite a few different versions of the end-times idea, which seems to have appeared in some form or another in virtually all human cultures. The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, contains a variety of elaborate prophecies that at least nominally depict the end of the world. (It’s sometimes argued that the author was making coded references to Rome, to advance ideas he couldn’t spell out explicitly without danger to his life, but such debates are well beyond the scope of this note.) This includes a “last judgment” at which humanity is divided into those who inherit paradise and those who are thrown into a lake of fire. Mappou, literally “the decline of the Dharma,” is the way Buddhism conceptualizes the end times: as a span of time in which people will be less and less drawn to and influenced by the Dharma (that is, the teachings of the Buddha). This has been a concern in Japanese Buddhism for at least a thousand years. Finally, “the twilight of the gods” is the event perhaps more widely known as Ragnarök, the Norse story holding that at the end of the world a great battle will take place that will involve the death of several gods. The actual expression “twilight of the gods” is probably better associated with the last installment of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, Götterdämmerung.

It’s interesting to note that although we often think of such tales in terms of “the end of the world,” as Hikaru does here, almost all of these stories come with a hopeful coda. In the Book of Revelation, the saved live in the new Jerusalem, a shining city of gemstones and gold. And mappou isn’t a strictly apocalyptic vision. It’s believed that after 10,000 years of this degeneration, the Maitreya Buddha will appear and instigate a new era of fidelity to Buddhist teaching. Finally, even the Norse seem to have believed that after the great battle of Ragnarök, the world would be submerged in water but would emerge renewed and fertile.

Reaction Weapon

A weapon from the Macross franchise.

Wave Motion Gun

Hadou-hou in Japanese. Although this has become something of a generic term in anime for massive, planet-destroying weapons, the original wave motion gun belonged to the Space Battleship Yamato.

Super Laser

In Japanese, wakusei hakai biimu, or “planet-destroying beam.” This is a more general term than hadou-hou, and is most prominently associated with the Death Star's super weapon (from Star Wars). That weapon is usually called its “superlaser” in English, so that's what we went with for the translation.

**cke The Superman

Locke the Superman (Choujin Rokku) began life as a manga in the late ’60s, and the series is still ongoing today, having gone through various incarnations and publishers. Several OVAs and a movie were also released.

Co**ny Drop

The “colony drop” is a tactic from Mobile Suit Gundam, specifically a moment in the original series when the Principality of Zeon attempts to ram one of their space colonies into a Federation military base on Earth. The expression has come to have a wider range, and can facetiously refer to anything large that gets dropped from space onto a planet or moon.

The Red Faldra

When Loek insists that the lead Faldra be “red and have a horn,” presumably he’s thinking of Char’s mobile suit from Gundam. Char’s suit is said to be “three times as fast” as a normal Zaku unit, hence Loek’s next comment.

The Vampire Squad

The “Red Shoulders” are a military unit from the ’80s mech drama Armored Trooper VOTOMS, a unit which was also given the nickname “the Vampire Squad.”

Just Like Joj*!

Shinichi is making a reference to a specific pose struck by the characters of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Ha***kyu

The hadoukyuu (lit. “ball of destruction”) is a fictional move from Prince of Tennis.

Anime Moves

Shinichi and Minori unleash a blizzard of techniques inspired by anime and manga. The list includes (deep breath) the Hokuto Hyakuretsuken (Hundred Rending Fists), the iconic attack of the main character of Fist of the North Star; the Futae no Kiwami, a devastating strike learned by Sanosuke in Rurouni Kenshin; the Kimen Flash from the Kimengumi franchise; Tiro Finale, a finishing move from the Madoka Magica series; the Dismembering Halo (Yattsu-zaki Kourin) from Ultraman; the Galactica Magnum, which is either a super-punch from the series Ringu ni Kakero! (Leave It All in the Ring!), or, less plausibly, a move used by Sailor Galaxia in the Sailor Moon musicals; the Bodhisattva Fist (Bosatsu Ken) from Baki the Grappler; the Hardening Punch (Koushitsu-ka Panchi), probably referring to an ability of some characters in Attack on Titan; the Bakurei Jigoku, probably from Bastard!!; the Eternal Force Blizzard, a Japanese internet meme; and finally the Diamond Eternal, a combo attack from Pretty Cure. (Phew!)

Vertical Maneuvering Equipment

A device from Attack on Titan that allows characters to fly briefly through the air.

Zangief’s Super Uryah Jou

The Street Fighter character Zangief has a move called the Super Lariat (Suupaa Rariatto, called the “Double Lariat” in English). However, when reporting on Super SF II Turbo, a writer for a Japanese game magazine allegedly wrote the name of the move so messily that his scribbles were misinterpreted, and the finished article gave the name of the move as the nonsensical “Super Uriajjou.” This has become a long-standing joke/meme among Japanese video game fans, but obviously doesn't translate very well into English.

“Bro, Get Outta the Way, I Can’t Kill Her!”

An urban legend from the Japanese internet, the so-called “S-Ken Tsukimiya Incident,” tells of a messy online love triangle in which one woman stalked and attempted to kill another because of her relationship with a man they both knew in an MMO. The quote is what the first woman allegedly said when the man threw himself in front of the stalking victim to protect her.

Catharsis **ve

Catharsis Wave is a move from the 1984 tokusatsu series Seiun Kamen Mashinman (Nebula Mask Machineman).

Fina* Tiiime!

The Japanese “fainaru da yooon” is a callout to the name/verbal tic of a character from Akatsuka Fujio’s ’60s comedy manga Osomatsu-kun.

“Your Barrage Is Weak! What Are You Doing?!”

A complaint widely associated with Bright Noa from Mobile Suit Gundam.

Dy***** Warriors… Isekai War*****

Shinichi first refers to a “musou game,” then suggests that the title should be Isekai Musou. The word musou literally means “unparalleled” or “peerless,” but the word is prominently featured in the titles of Koei’s series of mash-and-smash historical brawler video games. For example, the branch of the series set in ancient China is called Sangoku Musou (“Peerless [Ones of] the Three Kingdoms”), and the entire franchise is referred to as the “Musou series” in Japan. The games have been localized using the word “Warriors,” as in Dynasty Warriors, hence our choice of Isekai Warriors to translate Shinichi’s proposed title.

Chapter Three: Fire? Fire!!

An Astronaut

The quote as Hikaru gives it (“Uchuu wo shitta ningen wa kesshite mae to onaji dewa irarenai”) is widely attributed on the Japanese internet to Russell “Rusty” Schweickart, a NASA astronaut who was involved in a number of missions including the Apollo 9 mission in 1969. However, no quotation of his that we could find in English quite matched the meaning of the Japanese.

Fahrenheit 451

As Shinichi mentions in the text, Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel depicted a dystopian future society in which books are incinerated for containing dangerous ideas. The protagonist is one of the “firemen” who deals with such contraband material (“It was a pleasure to burn,” opines the opening narration), but he begins to question his vocation when he sees a sample of what he’s destroying. The 1966 film version was directed by no less a personage than François Truffaut. The 2002 movie Equilibrium (which Shinichi refers to by its Japanese title, Rebellion) borrowed parts of its premise and some of its themes from Bradbury’s novel. As for the light novel Shinichi mentions, it’s likely he’s thinking of Fahrenheit 9999, a two-volume LN series about a future Japan in which otaku culture is heavily restricted. It's worth noting, though, that the series Library Wars also has some (admittedly broader) similarities to the Bradbury story.

“When Youuu Reaaach For Your Dreaaaam…”

This is a reference to the opening theme of the anime version of Kyojin no Hoshi (Star of the Giants), a sports manga/anime from the 1960s. The connection might only be the presence of the word “giant” in the title.

A*-*Ts in Star W**s

That is, the AT-AT (All-Terrain Armored Transport) “Walkers” that appeared in the 1980 movie Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

The Termi**tor

The Terminator, the unstoppable robotic killer from the film franchise of the same name.

E*doskeletons

“Endoskeleton” is the term for the artificial skeletal structure that makes up the body of a Terminator android.

Live-In Disciple

In the afterword, Sakaki-sensei jokingly refers to his assistant as “also (an) uchi-deshi.” An uchi-deshi (lit. “inside student”) is a student or disciple who lives in their teacher’s home, helping with menial tasks while also having the opportunity to observe the master up close and to learn constantly. This was a common arrangement in many disciplines, especially the martial arts, until as late as the end of World War II.