An excellent Ditto
Now that it's out, I can finally share that I had the pleasure of working on the English localization of the wonderful PokΓ©mon Pokopia alongside a fantastic team!
I've been waiting a looong time to see what people think of this one, and we are unbelievably proud of how it turned out!! HAVE FUN!
Apropos of "nothing," the refrain of "English lacks our pronouns, therefore any loc is compromised" is such a cliched one monolingual Japanese creators trot out when they're disconnected from the process. And as a translator who Gets It, like, it's just not usually a huge creative hurdle day-to-day?
alt nightmare timeline where Deku is an ameriboo π
spelling it out for anime-onlys at the expense of continuity? not surprising!
somehow, I doubt that anyone involved in the official production of the MHA extended universe on the JPN side of things has put as much thought into the timeline as you π±
last year, for a while, I tried not scrolling before bed/upon waking up, but what's the correct balance between ignorance-for-mental-health and dutiful-informedness that will ultimately grant freedom from samsara?
it's all just more rug-sweeping anyhow
but I realize that's just a trolley problem.
sure, the gore is swept under the rug if you're on payroll, but the blood's on all our hands by virtue of laboring in this shithole. only solution is to leave...which is still a third trolley track of "abandoning" everyone and no longer voting. can't win
wish Viz et al would just withhold my taxes
salaried employees probably feel less like they're actively aiding/abetting the horrors,
whereas I have to type a number and hit a big red button that says SEND MONEY TO PEDONAZIS.
having agency in that "decision" is agonizing
love to donate 3+ out of every 10 bucks I earn to a cabal of nazis/technofascists/pedophiles so they can more effectively kidnap non-whites, murder people in the streets, bomb brown countries for oil, and not provide essential govt services
/s
Joe "Ashita no Joe" Yabuki, sitting on a stool, dead
taxes submitted
...and the O a zero, but that didn't make it in?
should've suggested Γ instead of 0 π
"don't localize names" is a golden rule, except when it's not. Monsters of the week are an ideal exception- today's punchline, gone tomorrow.
contrast w/mostly preserving 5anjuro's name, since he may be recurring
two more panels from the same chapter: 5anjuro: I am called... 5anjuro: ...5anjuro, the Roam-Bot!! 5anjuro: At your service! LABEL: Fear: 5anjuro
second one was
ζ΅ζ΅ͺδΊΊε€ 3106
with the ruby text over 3106 being γγγγ
γγγ
ζ΅ζ΅ͺδΊΊε€ = rurounin (wanderer)+ ningai (nonhuman)
And reading 3106 as sanjuro implies an old-timey ronin robot with a serial number
Couldn't preserve the number pun w/o a dreadful footnote, so I made the S a 5
3 panels from Tokyo Fear Rhapsody chapter 20.1 zom: Zom gyah hah! zom: I live for robbing stuff from humans! zom: If you can call this "living"! LABEL: Fear: Zom Robbie MC's group: Zoinks! MC's group: A Fear?!
Tokyo Fears Rhapsody loves brutal joke names for its monsters of the week, and chapter 20.1 had two
first was "γγ³γ»dead"
>>a play on undead + bandit, which only makes sense in kana
I started with the obvious- "Rob Zombie"- and did a Sham Hatwitch spoonerism to keep it legally kosher
claimed that the victim of noted coprophillic pedohile Yamamoto is lying. scum behavior
feeling more privileged than ever to have translated Eniale and Dewiela (Shirahama's very gay earlier work))
imagine if big-name male mangaka with a lot to lose would ever speak up and stand up to their monstrous overlords. imagine!
(on that note: fuck the Ippo author)
bsky.app/profile/oliv...
I didn't even see this prompt lol. just funny timing
my own white grandpa was a card-carrying Jewish commie who ran with the Rosenbergs before they got the chair and who volunteered to go to Spain and beat up Fascist Franco, just to make Marx's ghost proud
bsky.app/profile/sarc...
a restaurant table with a nagashi-somen mechanism, where noodles swirl around in a moat of water
A statue of Issie the lake monster, in a parking lot
her Japanese grandpa is an 80-something chain-smoking gravel-voiced liquor store owner in Kagoshima who took us to nagashi-somen and to Lake Ikeda, where Issie, cousin to Nessie, lives
The cover of a book titled Karate's History and Traditions By Bruce A. Haines With a photo of two white dudes in karate gi pretending to strike each other
The back cover, with a description of the contents and a brief author bio describing him as one of the first Caucasian Americans to study karate in the US in the 50s.
my gf's white grandpa, Bruce, was an OG proto-weeb who would've made Lafcadio Hearn proud
yeahhh I'm personally not ready to give any pro-slop entity the benefit of the doubt, especially when their noted slop affinity is baked into their mission statement and every slide deck prior to today!
also curious to know how any of this affects 7S's union π
I still don't trust em π€·ββοΈ
clearly they wouldn't even say this much if not for the immediate backlash
(note: this is Media Do's statement, not 7S's. Seen a number of people not getting that, prolly b/c of that wonky "we at The Company" phrasing- presumably "εΌη€Ύ")
bsky.app/profile/seve...
Media-Do recently published the Investor documents about the Seven Seas Acquisition which includes a lot of information that I've seen that hasn't been reported on yet
So here's a thread breaking down what I found & what it could mean for the future of Seven Seas Entertainment
(Long Read Warning)
a pokemon leaf green screenshot of me encountering Tauros in the safari zone
me catching that tauros successfully
avenging 10-year old me, who was stuck on 149/150 in gen1 for so long because of this fucker
(4% appearance, 45% chance to flee on turn 1; got this one in 1 bait + 2 balls)
No clue lol but I had to roll my eyes when (in this commentary) they start glazing econ/law/govt/politics majors as being noble, principled individuals who want to make society better. the kool-aid has been DRUNK
With all the recent stuff going on, I do want to affirm here that all of the localization for @mangamavericks.bsky.social titles are done 100% by humans.
We have no interest in using AI for any part of the localization/production process.
a post from 7S official bluesky account at 10:59 am on 3/2/2026, reading: "Many have asked about AI and translation following the acquisition announcement. Seven Seas remains committed to human translators and the high editorial standards our readers & creators expect. Nothing about the acquisition changes how we translate our books. More info shortly."
encouraging statement (and satisfying distrust in the replies), but don't give them another dime until the dust has settled, and keep sending feedback.
bumbling shitheel Media Do won't sheepishly give up on its grand slop fantasy just b/c 7S employees offer pushback in the first 24 hours
a interstitial page in World Trigger v29, introducing the series' lineup of editors over the past decade+. All are men.
meanwhile, I winced a little as I TL'd this end material in WT v29, featuring commentary from the series' all-male panel of six editors, past and present.
you think that doesn't affect the work? the culture? the coddling of monsters?
Jump's first-ever female editor (Fujita) got the gig in ~2022~
Shueisha, actually π
but that's okay- best not to trust any of them
new campaign: bring actual cancel culture to Japan...perhaps 20~odd years after the term was coined in the US (and then accomplished nothing at all wrt bringing down sex criminals in positions of power)
not sure, but Shogakukan and their puppy mills =/= Jump
(I mention the SJ boys' club because of Watsuki and his neverending support, Toriko guy, etc.)
"if you squint, this afterword bit seems to suggest...early-onset osteoporosis ??
thank fuck! now I'm 99% sure this author is a woman!"
