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REVIEW: Inu × Boku SS GN 1

The biggest offender at this point is the aggressive lesbian stereotype Nobara Yukinokouji, although part of her annoying factor may come from Yen Press' translation of her catchphrase as “smexy,” which is frankly just irritating to read.

As Cocoa Fujiwara's biggest fan, let me just say this... Dear was far better than Inu x Boku SS, and it totally deserved an anime adaptation.

It's unfortunate that only Inu Boku SS has received such popularity in the west.

I haven't read this (yet—I plan to) but just wanted to mention that the word "karuta" in Japanese is derived from "carta," the word for card in several Latin-based languages. I believe Portuguese was the one that introduced the word to Japan.

I don't know how that word or meaning might relate to the specific character named Karuta/Carta, but I did notice on the Japanese wikipedia page that nearly every character's name is written entirely in kanji—I saw a couple with hiragana—while Carta's name alone is written in katakana (generally used for foreign and loan words). So to me, it makes sense for a translation to go to the root word, and it also causes the character's name stand out as "not-Japanese" the same way it might to a Japanese reader seeing the use of katakana.

カルタ 【carta ポルトガル

As for maniac/smexy, they both sound annoying to me, and maybe smexy is worse, but I'm inclined to believe that the use of "maniac" in the original rarely made grammatical or actual sense in context, and so could reasonably be changed to something that wouldn't sound quite so random/weird/Engrish-y to an English-language reader. I may be wrong, not having read the original (I watched the series on CR for a while but my memory of specifics is foggy).

edit: I went ahead and rewatched the first two episodes on CR to refresh my memory. The translation entirely ignored the use of the word "maniac." I could see where "smexy" would make contextual sense in the places Nobara spoke maniac, but actually keeping the word "maniac" would've been a stretch, or sounded awkward at least.

I've been thinking about this a lot since I voiced the complaint in the review, and I tend to agree with Lys that "maniac" might not have worked very well either - was it an issue for those of you who have read it in another language? (I'm kind of kicking myself for not picking up the French edition when I had the chance, just for comparison's sake.) My general feeling is that that kind of catchphrase just doesn't work as well in English, although I hesitate to advocate leaving one out entirely...it is part of Fujiwara's original intention for the character, so it's a tricky situation.

mewpudding101 wrote:

As Cocoa Fujiwara's biggest fan, let me just say this... Dear was far better than Inu x Boku SS, and it totally deserved an anime adaptation. It's unfortunate that only Inu Boku SS has received such popularity in the west.

A fellow Cocoa Fujiwara fan!
Yeah, I wish Dear received the same popularity and attention that Inu Boku SS did. I don't know if it has enough potential to become an anime series, but if they bring Dear manga over, they'll have to include Watashi no Ookami-san too because the backstory is in this series.

I had plans to buy the release when I heard Yen Press was going to pick it up. But changing Karuta's name to Carta (I had no idea who this was until I read the talkback posts), and changing Nobara's "maniac" to "smexy"?!

Regardless, I'll probably still pick up the first volume whenever I head over to the bookstore.

What really worries me is that YP may lose sales over this, even if it's official word from the Japanese side. Perhaps adding translator note sections would work? Or keep Carta if it's official and jam "maniac" in somehow.