Not Red Reviews

The second episode was even tougher than the first and featured an even bigger number of puns that necessitate these notes.

I forgot to point this out the last episode when they were talking about rakugo vocab, but among the five girls only Marii and Gankyou are second seats, the other three are still on the beginner level. Only the two of them wear haori.

This is gonna stick with us to the end of the series.

Her change in style is amazing.

Japanese language allows you to express a whole sentence in one word. She only says ワンメーター (wanmeetaa), which is the basic fare price.

They must be really poor, because McDonald’s has lots of 100 yen items on their menu, so you can get food there really cheap.

Brave Hearts: Umizaru.

There’s an idiom in Japanese that literally translates into this.

I always mess this one up, props to the editor for spotting it. (スタイル (sutairu) is not “style” (nor {be1}Sutai), but figure.)

They use the pretty much only way how you can be sarcastic in Japanese: they speak overly politely.

She uses a quite ancient phrase mostly known from the Pillow Book, it means what the subs say.

Some people just aren’t made to talk snobbish. (I chuckled on my coffee when she said the ごじゃりまする (gojarimasuru).)

Yeah that was a really amazing one from her.

She mixes the catchphrases from a bunch of famous detectives. You get Columbo, Kindaichi Hajime (from Kindaichi Case Files) and Yamada Naoko (from Trick) at least.

This anime isn’t afraid to make fun of sensitive stuff.

The Sky Tree opened this May to the public.

This pun can’t be helped. Japanese can write many things just using the different readings of numbers. This way 634 (mu-sa-shi) becomes Musashi, She’s referring to the famous 16th century battle between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirou.

The censored logos are of the companies mentioned.

A minor tower no one really knows (or cares) about.

This line makes it clear if it wasn’t clear yet: she’s talking about Korea.

And now she’s talking about political wings.

How did you?

Apparently there are some in Japan who believe that you’re supposed to eat rice by putting it on the back of the fork. Don’t ask me why, table etiquette is beyond me.

This whole thing is a mess. The girls keep associating and these associations are really hard to follow in English.

凸凹 (dekoboko) means uneven or jagged, and it rhymes with the Fujiya mascots’ names (Peko and Poko). Peko’s always sticking her tongue out.

Talk about wild associations.

She is flat.

This was the first pun I had to change totally to make sense. In the original it’s more about “being straightforward”, and Marii admits she’s bad at lying.

This one couldn’t be helped. She puns on the Japanese idiom 背に腹を変えられない (se ni hara wo kaerarenai, lit. “you can’t switch your front and back”) that means sacrifices must be made for a difficult problem. She negates the tense, implying that Marii could solve difficult problems without serious sacrifices, but also that she’s just as flat in the front as in the back. Thus Marii’s confusion whether they’re praising her or not.

“I haven’t eaten anything.” “That’s because it’s before breakfast.” Here “before breakfast” (朝飯前 asameshimae) is a phrase that means “easy as a pie” – a problem you can solve before breakfast.

…

I sense some self-irony here.

There’s no pun. She’s being random.

Read up.

This probably fits all idol groups.

Some Japanese cell phones have paychips in them, so that you only need to touch your phone to the sensor to pay.

I’m not gonna screenshot all of these.

• Dr Naka**tsu: Nakamatsu Yoshirou (中松義郎). Inventor, celebrity.
• T**su: Takasu Katsuya (高須克弥), famous plastic surgeon.
• Ka**ma R**a: Kayama Rika (香山リカ), psychiatrist, critic and fortuneteller.
• Dr Zhivago: Boris Pasternak’s novel’s title character.
• Dr No: a James Bond novel’s title character.
• Dr Moreau: Wells’ novel’s title character.

• Dr B**ck J*ck: Black Jack, a medic mercenary in the manga named after him. (The girls are then cosplaying characters from that manga.)
• No**pi: Noripi, celebrity Sakai Noriko‘s (酒井法子) nickname. She has a really characteristic way of talking and had a quite big drug scandal a few years ago.
• Mistress E**ka: celebrity Sawajiri Erika (沢尻エリカ). Drug abuse rumors about her are quite widespread.
• O***o Ma**bu: Oshio Manabu (押尾学), former celebrity, also associated with drug abuse (ecstasy, thus Gankyou’s pun).

In Japanese it’s called “imaginary pregnancy” (想像妊娠 souzou ninshin).

Originally she asks for something sour (酸っぱい suppai), but I had to change it to make the spy pun work.

Sometimes I like to add my own little references and jokes in memory of all those lost. (See the “big” pun in the first episode and the “ecstatic” one earlier.) You are probably familiar with the “why can’t I hold all these” meme.

Note to all weeaboos. The song is from the Nash Music Library, it’s titled Moe×2 Kyun×2 (萌×2キュン×2).

• 符里宮亜 (purikyuua), the anime Pretty Cure.
• 魅留奇異 (mirukii), Milky Holmes.
• 光厨 (pikachuu), Pikachu.
• 帆裸伊図 (horaizun), the anime Kyoukaisen-jou no Horizon.
• 亜盗 (anusu), anus.

Imaginary miscarriage?

Yellow emergency vans are for the mentally ill.

I wasn’t sure this was a pun, but it fits the context (in Japanese the adverb “well” and “bath” are both pronounced yoku).

真田小僧 (sanada kozou), the Sanada Boy is a rakugo comedy.

This entry was posted by Vale.