Not Red Reviews

Time to check out WhyNot’s Medaka Box.

r/a/ge level: 20/100. It’s WhyNot with an original translation. No honorifics, Japanese name order, “tsundere” used in one line near the end. Other Japanese terms are translated, including the names of kendo moves and such. English-only kara.

I’m not really sure what WhyNot’s fetish for proper punctuation in song lyrics here is all about. It looks a bit dumb to have every line end with a full stop during the kara.

There’s got to be a less awkward way to phrase this. At the very least I’d split it into two sentences – it’s a lot more readable if you have it like “Oh, Hyuga. Hitoyoshi just got abducted…” – possibly with a line split after “Hyuga” as well, timing-wise.

Continually, not continuously. Continuously means to do something over a solid period of time with no breaks/interruptions at all.

I think you accidentally a word out.

Needs better phrasing and an exclamation mark. How about “Don’t just undress behind me as if it were the most natural thing in the world!”
Hopefully this screenshot will also improve blog traffic.

A few other lines from this part I won’t bother screencapping:

Is there a reason we should be embarrassed?
At least, there shouldn’t be for a man who bathed with me until 6th grade.

These don’t flow on well from each other. I’d rewrite to something like “I can’t imagine what it would be, given that we bathed together until sixth grade.” or similar. Also, the second line ends way too early.

Besides, Zenkichi, the reason I bring you along is not for you to help me with my job.

This makes it sound like it’s something she does regularly, which would be weird seeing as how she only just got elected. Having it as “The reason I brought you along was not for you to help me with my job” seems like it would make more sense, but I could be missing something as I haven’t read the source material.

98% of the votes. Also, while I understand what these lines are supposed to mean, the second one doesn’t really make sense the way it’s written unless these guys were the people running against her for Student Council President, which I doubt. “You might’ve gotten 98% of the votes or whatever, but so what? We are the 2%.{Occupy Sandbox High}”

Replication isn’t really the word I’d use here, that sounds more like something you’d use to duplicate objects instead of the intended “ninja shadow clone” meaning. “But at her level, she moves so quickly that it must have looked almost like she split into many.”

To have dirtied one of this school’s great facilities to this extent…
I’m rather impressed.

Unnecessarily Japanese structure. “I’m rather impressed you were able to dirty one of the school’s great facilities to this extent.”

All of you guys were undoubtedly once passionate, dedicated Kendo Club members.

This line starts like four words late. This isn’t a timing review, but I have a hard time ignoring stuff like this because someone should really catch these errors at some point in the process, ideally your timer.

Assuming the “Little Princess” for “ojousama” is somewhat sarcastic in tone, why not just use “Her Highness”?

I assume the point of this line is either to stress that they are alive, or to stress that they are human beings. Having both just confuses the issue.
I believe “Don’t refer to living people as percentages or stats!” would be the literal translation, though to be honest “Don’t refer to human beings as percentages or stats!” would make more sense to me as the “living” part doesn’t seem like it would be relevant.

In face of her overwhelming abilities and remarkably unquestioning way of life,
which went beyond right and wrong,
while envying and respecting her, nobody could resist coming to like her.

These three lines could use a rewrite as they’re pretty awkwardly structured. Also, “in face of” should probably be “faced by” or similar.

I’m not sure if this is just a literal translation or not, but it’s a nice line.

Needs a comma after “offense”.

“Times”. Though it doesn’t apply to this one, I also noticed a bunch of shouted/declared lines in this scene that just had full stops instead of exclamation points for some reason. Not really sure what was up with that.

“Monster girl” was previously used to refer to Medaka so I assume this is meant to be singular.

Pretty sure this should be “armbands”. Especially since “armband” without the space is used about four lines down.

“The student council will even agree to search for a dog.” C’mon, guys.

Anyway.

What I liked: This was clearly worked on by an actual editor who put in actual effort, which is certainly a plus. Most lines flowed quite nicely and things such as the references to kendo and ninja techniques were handled pretty well. Quite watchable.

What I didn’t like: The occasional poorly phrased line and a bunch of silly errors that really should have been caught at some stage in the process.

Overall Grade: 4/5

This entry was posted by Xythar.