SF Saiyuki Starzinger – Episode 32

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.