Month: September 2022

My Children! The Monster’s Love

A giant moth monster, Dokunga, attacked the Cosmos. After laying eggs in the main booster, Dokunga runs out of strength and collapses, but the hatched larvae continue to grow in secret. Dragged by an invisible force, the Cosmos crash-landed on a small planet and was attacked by a male Dokunga. Kugo and his friends are saved by Dodge’s little brother, Hepburn, who had gone missing for ten years while he was on a space expedition. Hepburn, who hates Dokunga, is trying to kill all the larvae by luring them out with ultrasonic waves.

You can download the torrent file in Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

You’re all going to cry with this one!

The moth monster in this episode is called ドクンガ Dokunga, which is an interesting name because it sounds like 毒蛾 dokuga which means “poisonous moth”.

I know calling Hepburn ヘボン Hebon a moron was a stretch, but I didn’t want to include notes in the episode and distract the viewers from reading more things than they are supposed to.

The joke here is that Kugo always calls Assistant Professor Dodge ドジ doji, which means “clumsy”. In this episode Kugo meets Dodge’s little brother, Hepburn, who in Japanese sounds like へぼ hebo which is another word for “clumsy” as well. He couldn’t believe the coincidence. It’s very funny.

Hepburn is an entomologist, which is a scientist that focuses on the study of insects. The word for entomologist in Japanese is 昆虫学者 konchu gakusha (literally “insect scholar”). You can tell at 19:17 that Kugo calls Hepburn 昆虫学者の先生 konchu gakusha no sensei, which means “entomologist doctor”.

So since the first time I had to translate the word ドジ doji I’ve been using “dork” since it kind of sounds like “Dodge”, and the joke was sort of kept instead of lost in the translation. But since I watched the whole show way before starting to translate it, I knew that this day was going to come when I had to somehow keep the joke with Hepburn. I’ve spent days thinking of a word that sounded similar to Hepburn in English and meant something like stupid or idiot, and I couldn’t find any that really worked.

Anyway whenever your read “dork” in this episode is when Kugo says ドジ doji , and whenever you read “moron” is when Kugo says へぼ hebo. I’m sure you’ll get all the jokes and intended puns from Kugo with those two names.

Rebellion at the Planet Lenfa Base!

Kugo finally gets to the planet Lenfa, Kinkinman’s home planet, but is intercepted by the Horus Attack Force, which renders all the cyborgs’ energy useless. Kinkinman takes advantage of this opportunity to attack the Cosmos and capture Princess Aurora. Kinkinman forces the princess to swear obedience. The princess adamantly refuses, saying that she must not use her galaxy energy for his own desires. Angered, Kinkinman orders Jogo, who has lost his memories and been enslaved, to hit Princess Aurora with a plasma whip!

You can download the torrent file in Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

This is the final episode of the Kinkinman – Ginginman arc. It consisted of a total of 7 episodes, from Episode 25 to this one.

Jokes are always very hard to translate between different languages, and even between different cultures using the same language. Translating jokes is always very hard for everybody. I’ve noticed by watching the Spanish dub of this show that when things get tough to translate, they just remove the whole scene! There are a lot of scenes missing in the Spanish dub! Don’t worry, I won’t do that.

What follows is an example from this episode. Hakka saves Kugo by digging under the ground to escape the attack from Horus. Starting from 12:30, this is what I believe they’re saying:

Hakka:
クゴたん,もう俺のこと泥なんとかなんて言えねぇな
Kugo-tan, mou ore no koto doro nantoka nante ie nee na
Kugo-tan, you can’t call me a mud-something anymore.

Kugo:
えなんて言えないって
e.. nante ienai tte?
Huh? What is it I can’t say?

Kugo always calls Hakka a mud pig (泥豚 dorobuta) and Hakka doesn’t want to say “pig” at first. Kugo is playing the fool here, obviously. That’s why in the next line, Hakka calls him “slow”:

Hakka:
鈍いんだよ全く.俺のこともう泥豚なんて言えないって言ったんだよ
Nibuinda yo mattaku. Ore no koto mou doro buta nante ienai tte itta nda yo
You’re so slow! I said you can’t call me a mud pig anymore.

Kugo:
あーそうかそうかおまえのこと泥豚って
泥豚って言っちゃそりゃ行けないんだよな.
泥豚なんてとんでもないやこりゃ
Aa sou ka sou ka omae no koto doro buta tte
doro buta tte itcha sorya ikenai nda yo na
Doro buta nante tondemonaiya korya
Ah I see, I see. I’ve called you mud pig (before) [Direct translation: oh I see, you’re a mud pig].
I can’t really say it was even mud pig (what I’ve said to you before).
Mud pigs are terrible things.

That’s not really a direct translation because direct translation doesn’t work even remotely here. The joke is that he calls Hakka “mud pig” three times in the same sentence, but in English you would just say he’s talking about mud pigs and not actually calling Hakka one. So I changed it up a little bit to try to make it funnier than the direct translation would’ve been. I probably failed at it. What can you do? I always struggle to translate Kugo and Hakka when they are like this.

Dodge Jokes

I feel like I need a whole section to explain all the kinds of jokes that happen with Assistant Professor Dodge. You might already know that ドッジ Docchi (Dodge) sounds similar to どじ doji (clumsy), and it’s a recurrent joke throughout the whole series. Even Professor Kitty called himどじ doji in this episode.

But ドッジ Dojji (Dodge) also sounds almost identically to どっち docchi (which one). So when Assistant Professor Dodge gets confused about his own name he says, at 15:24:

どっちがどっちかな
docchi ga docchi ka na
I wonder which is which.

It can also mean “I wonder if it’s Dodge”, or “I wonder which one is Dodge”, or things like that depending if you replace the first どっち docchi, or the second one, or both. In Japanese, it is very funny, but unfortunately it is untranslatable to English.

And this is going to get worse in the next episode, where we will meet Dodge’s brother: ヘボン Hebon, that obviously sounds like へぼ hebo that also means clumsy! I don’t even know how I am going to translate all the jokes that those two names cause in Episode 32.

Is it Professor Kitty or Doctor Kitty?

I guess I also need to explain this. Kitty is a 博士 hakase, which is a word in Japanese that can only be used to address people with a Ph.D. For a Doctor of Medicine there’s a different word: 医者 isha.

The decision to use Professor Kitty instead of Doctor Kitty was made by the original ILA translator, gxseries. I would assume he made the distinction so people wouldn’t think that Kitty is a medical doctor. Since TSHS also used Professor Kitty, I used the same translation as well. Dodge is a 助教授 Jokyouju, an Assistant or Associate Professor. I have to admit that when I first watched this show as a kid I actually thought Kitty was a physician, and Dodge was the actual scientist.

Escape the Hell Planet!

Princess Aurora finally decides to fight. The cunning Ginginman takes the life of the father of the Three Poise Brothers and sends them into the battlefield in his place. The three brothers are convinced that their father’s death was the work of Kugo and his friends. The three brothers come at the Cosmos with a vengeance, and Kugo and the others are forced to fight an uphill battle. The three brothers, however, happen to learn everything from a microcassette left behind by their father and realize that they have been deceived. Kinkinman, realizing the failure of his plan, sends out Kinginder again!

You can download the torrent file in Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

The title of this episode is: 地獄星を脱出せよ！– Jigoku hoshi o dasshutsuse yo!

地獄 jigoku means hell. But the planet our friends end up is Planet Magnet. They clearly say at 6:34:

敵を油断させてあのマグネト惑星の地獄谷へ突き落としてやるんだ
Teki o yudan sasete ano MAGUNETO wakusei no jigokudani e tsukiotoshite yaru nda
We’re going to catch our enemies off guard and push them down into the Hell Valley of Planet Magnet

マグネト惑星 MAGUNETO wakusei means “Planet Magnet”, or maybe “magnet planet”.

I wonder why they didn’t name this episode “Escape from Planet Magnet!”?

We got a new song for the opening! This will be the opening up to the last episode of Starzinger I, which is episode 64.

The song is called 宇宙の戦士スタージンガー Uchuu no senshi SUTAAJINGAA – Space Warrior Starzinger, and these are the lyrics:

君の汗が星になる
Kimi no ase ga hoshi ni naru
Your sweat becomes stars

君の涙が風になる
Kimi no namida ga kaze ni naru
Your tears become wind

闇と嵐をこえるとき
Yami to arashi o koeru toki
Through the darkness and the storm

遠い光が見えてくる
Toui hikari ga miete kuru
You see light in the distance

急げ 戦う男たち
Isoge tatakau otoko-tachi
Hurry up, fighting men!

夜明けが 君を待っている
Yoake ga kimi o matte iru
The dawn is waiting for you

スタージンガー スタージンガー
SUTAAJINGAA SUTAJINGAA
Starzinger Starzinger

力の限りを敵にぶっつけて
Chikara no kagiri o teki ni buttsukete
Strike the enemy with all your strength

胸に描くは はるか大王星
Mune ni egaku wa haruka daiou sei
The distant Great Planet is drawn on my chest