Space Family Carlvinson v08 c098
OctonionicOn one hand, this is obviously the Robocop chapter. On the other hand, there are some parts of this I'm not quite sure I understood correctly.
The title for this chapter is “機動特捜タンゼント”. The “機動特捜” is a bunch of kanji that sound a lot cooler in Japanese than they do in English, in the same style as titles like “Special Tactical Police”, “Super Rescue Solbrain”, and “Mobile Armored Riot Police”, the last of which sounded so un-cool that the west knows it better as “Ghost in the Shell”. This particular bunch of kanji appears to be the prefix “mobile” attached to the the ones in “特捜ロボ ジャンパーソン”, which in the west is mostly known as simply Janperson. I'm not too familiar with Janperson, but I understand it to take a bit of inspiration from Robocop itself.
The second part of the title is “タンゼント”, a transliteration of “tanzent” used as an alternate form of “tangent” (the function). There's a definite pun on “tanzen” (both an article of clothing and an adjective meaning “correct”), but I think Asari might also be using the English “gent(leman)” for closer allusion to Janperson so I've kept the “g” option in the translation.
That's a lot of words to convey that the title probably means more in Japanese than I was able to make it mean in English.
There's also an extended Rakugo sequence, but readers might be able to get the humor without knowing anything about it, because the story structure is very widespread. Here are five versions that I've found and I know there are more - the version I originally heard involved cheese vs. a hard-boiled egg for the punchline.
Anyway, the Rakugo version goes by the name “蒟蒻問答”, “Konnyaku Mondo”, meaning something like “Cross-talk” or “Jelly Talk”. For an English translation, see this blog, about half-way down the page.
v08c098