Translators Just Can’t Handle “Dai”

 Hololive legend Korone, famous for her whimsical and carefree gaming platform, is also quite well known for her limited and hilarious use of the English Language, created yet another classic meme when, during a live game stream of “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” (where the team must use clues to disarm a ticking bomb), simply gives up and says “I’m Die, Thank You Forever!” before the bomb blows, causing the whole group to crack up laughing!

It became a viral meme, and the internet would blow up with snippets of this glorious scene!

Even the animated series "Cultural Exchange with Game Center Girl" had one of the characters SAYING the line in an episode! But looking over the clip, however, fans were quick to notice that Crunchyroll had heard Korone’s “DIE” as “Dai”, and thus, instead of "I'm Die", they translated it as “I’m BIG” LOLOL!

“Dai”(大) in Japanese means Huge or Big and I guess the translators didn’t count of Korone’s bad english trying to say she’s dead, hahaha! Die, Dai, it all sounds the same!

This reminded me of another classic “Dai” blunder from back in my childhood, as a youngster watching the classic “Kikaider” Tokusatsu series on TV. As a rule, Kikaider’s monsters were usually a color/animal (example Grey Rhino, Green Mantis, Orange Ant, Blue Buffalo, etc.).

But when they got to episode 25, there was a snail monster and, instead of a color, the subtitles told us he was called “Great Snail". GREAT? Why wasn’t it a color, we wondered, but left it at that, just assuming those KIKU translators knew what they were talking about!

It was only as an adult, talking to a fellow Kikaider fan, that I found out the truth! I mentioned to him “Hey, isn’t it weird that Great Snail isn’t a color?”, to which he pointed out that in FACT, his name WAS a color: ORANGE. WHAAAAT!

His name, as he explained, was ORANGE Snail, but the word they used for “orange” was “Daidai” (橙 or ダイダイ), named from the citrus orange fruit, and I guess the KIKU translators didn’t know such a slangy term for the color and assumed he was named 大大 DAI DAI. i,e, BIG BIG, or “Great” hence the change of name! 

I was mindblow, having thought it was GREAT Snail all my life, and, even though I was relieved to know the monster DID in fact conform to the color/animal blueprint of the show, it was too late, my mind was imprinted and I will ALWAYS think of that monster as Great Snail now! Sigh.

Childhood Mysteries: That DENON Label on my Kikaider Records

ANY kid growing up in Hawaii during the great Tokusatsu boom of the 70’s is familiar with the bright orange DENON labels adorning all the Japanese Superhero albums and singles as they were the company that put out all the theme songs and LPs of the Toei line of heroes.
Kikaider, Kikaider 0-1, Kamen Rider V3, Five Rangers, even Inazuman and ROBOCON, ALL of them came on this particular line, and over time we even began to think of DENON as exclusively attached to Kikaider and his cohorts, and even the fancy design with the name DENON made of these “power dots” made us think of Kikaider 0-1!

But therre was one thing that always puzzled the more curious of us, and it’s the fact that the DENON logo was STICKERED onto the 45 record’s label. As nosey as we were, of course we couldn’t help trying to peel the DENON stickers off (as you can see by my failed childhood handiwork on my Goranger, Robocon and Kamen Rider V3 singles below), 

...but besides ruining our records, we were more confused when there was only a COLUMBIA label underneath. Why Did My Kikaider Records have a DENON sticker coving the Columbia Label? Why were they trying to “hide” it?  

Well, we just had no idea, and for years as I grew up around tokusatsu fans, I’d ask around but NO ONE seemed to have any real idea- that is until a conversation on reddit about (of all things) a vintage Denon/Columbia LP set of WWII songs, where the subject of the DENON label came up and redditor mawnk informed:

The Denon logo on the labels is a ring-shaped sticker. The albums are actually on Columbia, but they weren't allowed to sell them as Columbia in the US, because Columbia is Columbia in the US - hence the sticker.
You'll see the same thing on imported Japanese Victor records - a sticker that changes the company name to either Nivico (Nippon Victor Company) or JVC (Japanese Victor Company).
Record company names got licensed to separate companies all over the world in the early years of the industry, creating chaos and confusion that continues to this day. We have our own example here in the US in the form of Decca, which was originally a partially-owned subsidiary of Decca Record Company in England, but got spun off as a separate company because of WWII. When Decca England decided to reenter the American market, they had to do it under the name London, even though Decca was their name originally.
Going the other way, in the UK CBS is Columbia, and Columbia is (er, was) EMI. And HMV has RCA's logo (or vice-versa), but it isn't RCA.

VERY interesting and informative and SUCH a weight off the eight year old boy inside of me who had continued to wonder about it even into adulthood!
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PS: Ya gotta love those YUSHA RAIDEEN stickers I stuck all over my Goranger singles! What a crafty kid I was!

You would have thought I'd have stuck it on my Raideen single, however, the Yusha Raideen 45 was one of those thin plastic flexidisc singles that came with a book...not suitable for stickers!

NOW, it’s time to listen to some of these songs again!

What The HECK Did I Just Inherit? Figures Galore

 At my friend's workplace he shared with three other artists, someone's brother had donated a bunch of those anime/manga/hentai figures you see lining the shelves at shops like MiniQ, Razor Concepts and even BookOff, and since no one was "into" the genre, no one knew what to DO with them!

Glancing briefly at the full bag and seeing some decidedly risque and scantily-clad figures in the bunch, my friend remembered my obsession with artist Shunya Yamashita, (and in particular the lingerie-clad statue of his character "Shouko-san", which I gushed about here), and thought, "HEY, ya know what? Z would DIG these!"

Shouko-san

Dropping by the other day to go grab lunch, he reminded me about that bag of dolls and told me to see if there was anything I liked. His co-worker waved his hand and said, "Dude, you can take them ALL! It's just taking up space!" My friend nodded and said, "This has been sitting here for MONTHS and you're the only one who's even remotely into this kind of stuff!" And so it was that I hauled home that whole bag of ziplocked goodies!

Spent a whole AFTERNOON sorting through the contents, and after trying to figure out what went with what ( and only partially succeeding), I took the time to arrange them all to see just exactly what I had, and was ASTOUNDED at just how MUCH figures were stuffed IN there!

Will you LOOK at this MASSIVE haul!!!

I recognized some FINAL FANTASY and DRAGONBALL Z characters, but I gotta tell you...MOST of these characters, I had NO IDEA who they were! And STYLES- Man, this load of collectibles really ran the GAMUT of genres: Figures went from the Sleek and Cool, to Sexy and Alluring, toVery Shoujo Manga-esque…and even to the zany, KOOKY, and totally WTF!

 

I must say, there were quite a few figures that I really loved that will probably make its way to my CD.DVD shelves, but I have no clue what to do about the REST of it! This is the first time I'm going through Action figure OVERLOAD, LOLOL!

A Kaiju Indentified

 My Childhood friend Jas is, like me, a huge aficionado of Tokusatsu heroes, and we are constantly on the hunt for collectibles of the past that we once had or saw as kids, haunting Collector Shows and Comic Cons for those elusive grails. Funny thing about being kids- at the time, you never think to take care of those toys/records/posters/etc, and over time all of them get destroyed and lost to time! So much of our grown up lives are spend trying to recapture and reclaim those things we took for granted back then...

Mandarake

Out of the two of us, Jas was really into the Collectible Toys/Figures/Die Cast aspect of it (I was more into the Posters, books, 45's and Albums) and spend a good deal of his time perusing collectible platforms online (Mandarake and the like), and generally had a good handle of the stuff that was out there, where to look for them, and what it might cost! Sometimes I'd remember some random toy or book and he'd almost always know what it was and locate photos of it for me to see and purchase.

One time we were talking about those cardboard tokusatsu books that were so popular in the 70's, and I mentioned I had one of Kikaider 0-1 "with a huge pic of Kikaider 0-1 and the four Hakaidas lined up in front". That night, Jas shot back an email with a picture , saying "This it?" and I had to laugh 'cause of course it was!

After he solved my Kikaider 0-1 mystery, I also mentioned that I had another tokusatsu cardboard book, but had no idea who it was. Thinking back, I believe it was missing its cover, (not that could have read the Japanese back then anyway) and maybe that's why I only had a vague idea of the series it was based on. I wracked my brain:

"This hero was like Ultraman- he fought monsters like the size of buildings. In my memory, I think it was a hero like that Ryuusei Ningen Zone Fighter guy with the three bug family in that Poster set we had,"  to which Jas said, "Are you sure it wasn't Ultraman?"

I told him that I would have recognized Ultraman and didn't know the hero in the book. What I DID remember, however, was one of the monsters, so i tried to draw him from my fading memory banks. "From What I recall, he looked like this," I said, sketching out this doodle:

Are you SURE it wasn't Ultraman?" Jas asked again, scratching his head. "Cause this looks like an Ultraman monster." 
"Nah," I said, "The hero looked like Thunder Mask or something."

Jas jumped on the computer and scrolled through Ultraman monsters anyway, but didn't come up with anything right away. "I'll look again later." he said, and we went for lunch.

That evening, he once again emailed me, saying, "Is THIS the monster you were remembering?"

WHOA! That looked a LOT like the monster in the book I had, and confirmed excitedly, "Holy Crap, that totally looks like him! Who is He? What super hero is it from?"

"If it's him, his name is Takkong.  And the series is...ULTRAMAN!"

"Whaaaa???? It WAS Ultraman???"

"Yeah, the "Return of Ultraman" series, actually. Ultraman Jack."

Me; "D'OH!"

Jas added, "And funny, speaking of Kikaider 0-1, Shunsuke Ikeda is in this series as an Ultraman Agent, LOL!"

AHAHAHA, It's  all connected!

I will say that there is still a 1 percent chance there's some OTHER monster out there that matches my drawing and maybe it ISN'T Ultraman, but so far Takkong is the closest I've ever got to finally identifying the Monster and series, anyway!!!

Adventures In Cuteness: Fumika Shimizu

You may remember how much I loved Fumika Shimizu back in her stint in Kaseifu no Mitazono, as well as her fun role in the Suteki Na Sen Taxi Special. At the time I noted that Fumika was a former Kamen Rider Girl (because, of course she was…ALL young actresses I like are former Kamen Rider girls, it seems!) but I had to yet to actually see her in it...

Kaseifu no Mitazono

Suteki na Sen TAXI SP

Well, with Toei’s Official channel Tokusatsu World fully stocked with a wide assortment of their classic shows, I was finally able to watch some episodes of the show Fumika starred in, Kamen Rider Fourze. Not only was I surprised to see Kamen Rider Fourze alter ego Gentaro played by none other than Sota Fukushi(!), but…HOLY HANNAH, Fumika’s character of Yuki Jojima was the hands-down CUTEST and most SPUNKY and ADORABLE character EVERRRRR!!!

I’m not kidding, every scene she was in was completely STOLEN by her adorable antics, spazzy behavior and 100% ALL-IN enthusiasm, as evident in this terrific scene with Yuki and Gen:

A  monster has invaded the school and a hero is needed! Say, this monster reminds  me not just a little of Kome Kome Club's James Onoda!

Gentaro has the spirit to fight the baddie but not the smarts when he realizes he has no idea how to work the transform belt.

But never fear, Yuki Jojima is here to help!

Grabbing the device from him, she slaps it around his waist and tells him the switches and levers he must turn on to invoke the mechanism!

Then some genki words of encouragement  before running to hide behind a corner to watch the pyrotechnics!

"B-But how do I change after flipping the switches??"

"You make the moves like this...and say...HENSHIN!!!!"

HENSHIN FOURZE!!!

And thus Kamen Rider Fourze is born, much to Yuki's delight!!!

"YOSSSSHHHH!"

Fourze uses his newfound powers to vanquish the vile foe....

...and then it's time to celebrate their VICTORY!!!

Watching Fumika (now going by the name Yoshiko Sengen) in Kamen Rider Fourze, and how unbelievably charismatic she is, I’m astounded that she isn’t a more well-known actress. Is it because of her religion thing? Someone with this much radiance should be having dramas lined up down the road! And yet we haven’t seen much of her in recent years, such a shame!

BTW, I still can’t get over that it’s Sota Fukushi as Kamen Rider Fourze. And if that wasn’t enough of a shock, there was Erina Mano as Kamen Rider Nadeshiko to come in the Fourze Movie!