And so, Submarine 707 ends. The Apollo Norm story finishes, and the rest of the volume is a miscellany of alternate versions and one-shots.

Focusing on submarines put a lot of restrictions on the types of characters that can appear, and with that in mind characters like Kane Amos are rather interesting. It's a shame that we didn't get a chance to see how his personality played out in the end.

It's probably not as obvious today, but Submarine 707 was really a phenomenal breakout hit. It was one of the first manga to be compiled and released as a book, and I believe it was the absolute first to be tied to a series of plastic models. Apparently, the raws I used for this were published at an unfortunate time, just before a huge trend of nostalgic re-publishing, and so Submarine 707 missed out on a revival of popularity that it might very well have had.

I'll wait a few weeks and check these over to catch typos, then put them up for wider distribution.

Anyway, new project sometime. I don't really know.

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No, not really. But the art style changes partway through this volume, which caused speculation of the sort. Apparently, Ozawa was working as an engineer at Nippon Steel and Hino Motors as his main jobs, and drawing a weekly manga as a side-job only. To meet deadlines, he relied on an assistant to move from the sketching to inking phase, and the assistant died or was injured (sources disagree). This led to the style change, and possibly to abruptly concluding things.

As to the stories themselves, the finale of the Mu story comes pretty early in this volume. What follows is a tale that seems abruptly cut off, but has a few ideas that Ozawa later used in “Blue Submarine No. 6”. For example, the concept of the “P.S.G” seems almost trite today, but in 1965 it was a daring vision of the future.

I should mention that a character here, Professor Ramapo, is possibly named in honor of Hirai Tarou, who used the pen name Edogawa Ranpo, and who died in 1965, the year this story was written (and in which it takes place). Ranpo was a well-respected author, best known for “boy detective” stories that may very well have been an influence for Ozawa.

Speaking of names, two of the next names that appear are エイモス (Amos) and ケーン (Kane). I'm not entirely sure I got the spellings right: there's some argument to be made that “Amos” should be spelled “Eimos”, or that “Kane” should be spelled “Cain” (or perhaps “Caine”). Ultimately, these choices match what I've seen of Japanese transliterations for names such as USS Kane and AA-9 Amos.

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In this volume, we don't quite get to the end of the Mu story, but a lot certainly happens. I think this volume has the highest count of destroyed or damaged submarines so far.

Captain Red, while being pretty stereotypical, gets a bit more limelight than his predecessor Wolf. An aspect that was particularly interesting to translate was his new title: 総統 (“soutou”). This word means something like “supreme ruler” and its primary use was to be a catch-all term for the titles of 20th century nationalist European leaders, who tended to adopt titles strongly tied to their particular history and culture. Instead of worrying over how to correctly convey the difference between Führer, Caudillo, Poglavnik, and so on, Japanese newspapers could call them all “soutou”.

The point is that, when Red uses this term, the intent to the Japanese audience was probably to convey that he was using a term evoking his own history: American. I read through a couple articles on early titles proposed for George Washington's office and tried to come up with something suitable, but it's just my guess. This is a curious case of effectively un-translating a “translation” for which an original probably never existed.

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The first story of Submarine 707 closes with lots of explosions. We now move into the second story, which is the one that was adapted in the 1997 OVA. The adaptation is very loose, so don't expect more than a handful of plot points to line up if you happen to have seen it.

The continent of Mu is treated a bit (just a bit) more seriously by the Japanese than it (or Atlantis) is by English-speaking world. To the West, Mu is mostly considered the invention of James Churchward in the 1930s, and has been relegated to fiction of the more fantastical variety. In Japan, however, the idea gained a bit more traction, possibly because Churchward described the Japanese as descended from Mu's rulers, possibly because several Japanese documents older than the 1930s describe some sort of lost civilization in the Pacific, and possibly because of things like Yonaguni. The idea has survived, in heavily modified form (actual lost continents are pretty much ruled out); for example, Japanese Wikipedia at present mentions a theory linking Mu with the Tongan Empire.

The informational sidebar sections in this volume start moving beyond the current state of submarine technology into what Ozawa predicts the future might be like. I may speak only for myself, but it's a lot of fun to see the “manga authorship as chance to talk about one's hobbies” phenomenon in earlier days.

As a side note: it may seem as if every officer in this manga has the title “captain”, but it's a bit more varied in the original. There's 艦長 (kanchou), “one in command of a military ship, regardless of rank”, then 船長 (senchou) and 機長 (kichou), for non-military ships and aircraft respectively. Hayami's actual rank is 一佐 (issa), meaning “Captain”, and Red's rank is 大佐 (taisa), the equivalent rank from earlier decades. To round it all off, Blood occasionally uses キャプテン (kyaputen), the transliterated word “captain” from English.

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Our story continues. There are midseason upgrades all around, a few more characters get names, and the Americans show up. Ozawa also starts regular sidebars describing (then-current) submarine technology. The submarines continue to be the star of the show, of course.

The plot will finish up sometime in the next volume, at which point a new story will begin, which has been adapted into one of the OVAs.

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After a few false starts with other projects, I've decided to start Submarine 707. This is a manga from 1963 by Ozawa Satoru, the forefather of “submarine manga”. The appeal to readers at the time was the numerous cameos by real-world ships and submarines (with model kits they could buy!), and to readers now it will probably be mostly of historical interest.

The first 50-ish chapters are one story, which is a sort of boys’ adventure in a military setting. Then there's another, more SF story for another 40-ish chapters, and then a succession of short stories as the manga gradually ends. Some of these were adapted into OVAs at various points, but at time of writing this I haven't actually watched the OVAs yet.

No promises on release speed.

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So, this is “Space Family Carlvinson Original”. It's the version that ran in Animage Comics for some time, before the series moved to Shounen Captain and restarted. By the time this version was collected in a tankoubon, however, the version we've already seen had also started compilation, so “Original” was added to the title.

Anyway, this version is a bit more whimsical and childish than the other, and the setting is naturally smaller. There are quite a few elements (typhoons, a wolf-man, references to Hokkaido) that carried over in different forms to the longer version.

This also contains a short gag series called “Go! Space Patrol”, which features alternate versions of characters from the Frontier Space Patrol. They can't be in the same continuity as main Carlvinson, but they don't interact much with the cast of Original Carlvinson either.

As I couldn't find a scan of this anywhere, I did the scans myself, so you get raws if you want them. I had to mess around with the levels a lot to get this one looking decent; the copy I got was yellowed enough that I found it difficult to apply black/whitepoints while still keeping the tone the same.

This version also has the sound effects drawn a bit more integrated into the artwork, to the level that I consistently felt I couldn't erase them without losing information, so I didn't. Hopefully the result isn't too annoying.

Anyway, I'm going to wait for about a month, then put up torrents for all of these. If you happen to spot typos or editing mistakes, please feel free to send me an email and I'll update things.

New project coming sometime, I don't really know.

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So here it is: the finale*. I'll try to keep the notes quick:

• 128: The title comes from the first song of this album, which was the title of the album in Japan.

• 131: The planet name “Ushtobe” isn't quite certain, but the Japanese characters match the Japanese transliteration of Үштөбе, a town in Kazakhstan. Given the other Russian language influences (especially the names of the characters referenced by this), I think it might be the original intent.

• 132: Corona is, of course, holding an Oxygen Destroyer, and the title is a reference to Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, which shows up as a secondary story-within-a-story. However, the primary story-within-a-story is more a reference to the lost film Nezura, although there's now a documentary made about it, so it's slightly less lost. The natives doing it, on the other hand, are known for the Heisei era Gamera trilogy (of which I believe only the first film had been released at the time of this chapter).

  It is also worth noting that the native “Shin” originally appeared in chapter 126, and so was quite possibly the first fictional character named for Higuchi Shinji. Sasuga Anno.

• 133: The title here is taken from the Japanese title of the novel Z.P.G.. I couldn't really go with “Z.P.G.” to translate the reference, though, because it has nothing to do with the plot.

• 135: If I've misunderstood any chapter and butchered the intended meaning, it's might very well be this one. Japanese has many more options for this sort of cagey, vague dialogue than English, and it took me a few reads to get a grip on who was supposed to be talking for some of the speech bubbles.

• 137: I believe the title page cover is a reference to this picture (archive), or perhaps another just like it.

  Also, in this chapter an oddity of the Japanese language finally rears its head: The word 星 (“hoshi”) means something like “heavenly body” and is used to refer to both planets and stars. It's been used for both throughout the manga, but the meaning is usually obvious. However, on page 159, Corona uses one meaning and (based on previous chapters) I'm pretty sure that another character hears it as the other meaning. I tried to keep the ambiguity of the situation by adding the words “or something” in an earlier line, but I'm afraid it still comes off as more confusing than it ought to be.

• 138: For some reason, I have difficulty remembering what this one is about.

• 139: I'm pleasantly surprised at a sort of follow-up to chapter 10, though it really drives home that everything is wrapping up.

• 140-142: Another three-parter. I suspect that this is an original story instead of a riff of a recent film, but there may be elements of Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. This bit also includes a pretty explicit map of how this setting reflects Hokkaido. Some of the landmarks can be looked up online pretty easily.

• 143: Asari's in the final stages of wrapping up this series, so it's a bit of a shame that the last John Carpenter film he had to work with was Escape from L.A. Oddly, the film titles in this chapter aren't exactly right, even though Asari had no problems naming films before. Perhaps it's because he's more critical than in the past?

• 144: A rather fitting end.

I'm rather relieved to be done with this, my first long-term project. I started it as an excuse to train myself at reading Japanese because I was pleasantly surprised at how simple the dialogue was in the first few chapters. But then came the puns and references to commercials from the 1960s and television shows I can't find subtitles for. I think this series really deserved a translator with much more knowledge of Japanese culture than I have.

Also, for the record, the protagonist's name wasn't actually a factor in my picking this up. I was just hunting for something within my skill level when I happened to be shown the OVA as part of someone else's attempt to clear their backlog.

*It's not quite the end, actually. There's one more thing I want to put out next week.

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This is the first chapter (I think) that has a purely English title (beyond acronyms). The title and contents are a reference to the first Gamera film in the trilogy from the 1990s. The name “Duke Gaa” is, however, another refernece to Okamoto Tarou who designed the Tower of the Sun; this was the name of his pet crow.

Next week the final volume starts. I'm going to try to speed things up a bit.

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Long-suffering Midori tries to teach a normal class, and we get a special guest cameo. We also get a new form for Father. The title is, quite probably, a reference to the Tower of the Sun, the image of which showed up back in chapter 55. There's another reference to the tower's original creator (Okamoto Tarou) in the next chapter, so I suspect this is more than just a cool title.

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Corona and her classmates learn a bit about lightning. Some people have a good time, others don't. The title doesn't appear to be a well-known saying, so there's a chance it's related to a film Man Who Causes a Storm. If so, there could be some pun on “chestnut” in the title that I can't see.

Another hypothesis is that it's a reference to the term “lightning crystal” from various RPG games (with “crystal” transliterated from English) to クリスタル, then abbreviated to クリ, which is exactly the way “chestnut” is written in the title).

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Asari takes a chapter to examine the SF question “What if you could go really fast?”. If you haven't read/watched Cyborg 009 yet, this is a good excuse to spend a few minutes.

There's what appears to be a commercial for breath mints mentioned that I sadly have been unable to track down. The song that the natives sing in the background this song, which presumably played during it: a popular children's song about trains. Several versions of it can be found around the internet, such as this one.

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The kids get together and play some games. Some people get upset, some don't, and Belka is officially referred to as a “tomboy” for the first time. For those interested in the phenomenon mentioned by Shou (especially its historical use), I recommend Chapter 3 of Bret Hall's “Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe”.

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Family tries to heat water, Tah hardest hit. This chapter's title comes from a French film, though I can't actually find so much as a plot summary, so I'm not sure how much is related. Perhaps it's as simple as Corona being in charge of starting a fire. The dialogue towards the end might sound a bit stilted, for which I apologize - it's a lot more fluid in a language that tends not to use pronouns and implies subjects and objects.

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Several very exciting pieces of setting development: Asari takes a stance on the idea of Universal Grammar and gives a cameo to an Anomalocaris. There might be some other stuff but it's probably not important.

A lot of the dialogue in the middle of the chapter is transliterated exactly from the raw. I spent a while trying to determine if it was some form of pig latin or other easy cipher, but it doesn't appear to be.

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The title for this one is very similar to that of chapter 37. Actually, chapter 37's title could have been rendered “Mr. Dreadful Dentist” and this would could be simply “Dreadful Dentist”, but unfortunately I didn't realize this would happen back when handling that chapter. The “Dreadful” in chapter 37's title was written in hiragana (a slightly childish/informal connotation), while in this chapter it's written with a kanji (slightly more formal). I'm not really sure what to make of that.

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Corona and her family have some more issues with food, but surprisingly Father isn't the cook. The “Functional Food” referenced here was/is a sub-industry that I'd never heard of, but I suppose it was a craze in the mid-1990s when this was written.

The inscription at the end appears to be a relatively common phrase construction, but there could have been an immediate reference being made. For example, there was a book published in 1995 about Nobunaga using that construction for the title.

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The title of this chapter references a series of short videos (Japanese) that were aired on TV starting in around 1974. The videos were of insects of various types, with voice-over work providing a plot. It seems like the videos are still for sale, and the series has been revived at least once.

On the first page, the costumed native calls himself Utsuno Ikusagami, a monster from a then-recent film, but due to the way the dialogue is written he might actually be calling himself Usono Ikusagami, which would be a joke meaning “Fake Ikusagami” or something.

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This chapter is a reference to a game show, for which unfortunately I can't find any footage at all. The title of the show is a pun on its own: it could also be read something like “Let's make firm evaluations/purchases!”, with the “let's” being pronounced like the English word “Show”.

There's a song mentioned in an author's comment: it's a well-known jingle from a commercial for a Sanyo Zubacon color television (with a remote!) that aired sometime around 1971-75. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a recording of the specific commercial, but there are quite a few Japanese netizens who remember it from their youth and have mentioned it in blogs and on message boards.

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As the length of a manga increases, the probability of a tournament approaches one, although this isn't exactly the classic formula. Amusingly, I don't want to say much more than the contents even though the thing which might be considered a spoiler is present in the very title of the first chapter because, as the first chapter of a volume, the table of contents is technically something that's part of the release. There are some nice cover illustrations, though.

There are some speech bubbles I've left untranslated because, honestly, I can't read them at all. If there's a deep cut reference buried in them, I'm afraid I missed it.

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Another, proper, two-parter. The setup for this chapter strongly matches that of Cordwainer Smith's “The Colonel Came Back From Nothing-At-All” (or the rewritten version “Drunkboat”) to the point that I think it must be intentional.

The first one, however, is more of a detective story (or commentary on them). Perhaps the natives’ suggestions and comments refer to their filmography, but I'm not well-versed enough to know. The second story follows up on the first, but with more continuity in characters than in plot (and to say too much would spoil that plot of the first).

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These two chapters aren't related, but the next two are, and I felt like it.

In the first, Corona and her family go for a drive and everyone has a good time. Corona and Jisso's dialogue in the first few pages has a few references to a certain political scandal (Japanese) that was major news around 1993, during an election that drastically upset Japan's political landscape. It's known simply as the “General Contractor Corruption Case” on wikipedia, among other scandals that season. Here is one archived news story in English that I was able to find.

In the second, we get another special episode, this time regarding the classic story of The Hare of Inaba. The casting is unfortunate given our other options, but at least it's not Chika. It also works in service of a really nice pun (in Japanese) that I don't think would be at all possible to do justice in English.

There's another story mentioned, Kachi-kachi mountain, which is also worth the few minutes it takes to read.

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Corona entertains company, and the rest of the village does some other stuff, I guess. This chapter feels as if it should have come directly after 106, but the numbers prevented it from being a double release.

Regrettably, I'm not entirely sure what the title page page is referencing. “Anaheim” is, of course, the name of the arms manufacturer in Gundam's Universal Century setting, and also a city in California. The natives’ dialogue at the bottom references a park and an aircraft model used by the JSDF. My guess would be that this was a reference to some sort of controversy of public funds, but I haven't been able to find anything to confirm it.

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There are a couple of chapter pairs in this volume that have more direct continuity than normal, and I'm going to try to release them together when possible. In any case, we see the power levels of the village reconfirmed, if not tested, and Asari gets to poke some fun at things like shouting the name of one's attack.

The three new characters’ names could have been rendered “La”, “Li”, and “Lu” if I wanted to follow the example of Metal Gear Solid - they're the same bits of the Japanese alphabet. There's a possibility that their name is a reference to the verb “rariru”, meaning “to lose focus/space out”, but I'd guess that what the audience is supposed to get is the meaningless sing-song nature.

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In this chapter, we see the depths of Midori's desparation to take the class on a field trip that doesn't end in disaster. We also see some more of those space cats, which I'm still convinced are references to The Game of Rat and Dragon. Two of them get names in this chapter, Chibi (which is written in a way to indicate that it's a proper name, but is almost certainly from the Japanese word) and Koshka (the Japanese transliteration of the Russian word for “cat”, although it also shares a spelling with the Japanese name of the island Corsica).

When the first, shorter run of Carlvinson (in a different magazine) was compiled into a Tankoubon, these characters were also present for a short but distinct gag manga at the end. I'm still trying to find a scan of that one.

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It's sort of a New Year's chapter. We've seen Karuta Tori before way back in chapter 14: it's the game in which players try to be the first to find cards printed with common sayings as another player says the first letter of that saying. This time, there's also Fukuwarai (literally “Lucky Laugh”), in which a blindfolded player attempts to arrange facial features on a picture of a face.

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Father gives a lesson on nutrition, Densuke misbehaves, and Tah is let off easy this time. Perhaps.

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Another folk tale chapter, this time Yamata no Orochi. As usual for Asari, however, some references to Japanese science fiction creep in. The cameo on page 49 (file 51) is from the Japan Sinks film, and there also seems to be a few allusions to Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, which I guess had been released recently.

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The elementary school gets some experience in “living education” and Midori gets preoccupied with whether she can, rather than whether she should (or however that goes).

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The gang goes drinking, Laika returns to her roots, and an unfamiliar face returns. Corona doesn't show up at all, because underage drinking would be a very serious matter. The title is that of a popular, sad song from 1931.

If Belka's line on the last page seems familiar to you from a certain anime that used it heavily, the Japanese isn't quite word-for-word identical to what you're thinking of. However, what Belka says actually matches the English a bit closer (in my opinion): 1) the pronoun she uses for herself is a lot more pompous, and 2) only Belka uses “いったい”, which is reasonable to translate as “…the hell…”.

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In this chapter, a surprising fad takes over the toy shop (the business model of which I question) as Corona looks for a new toy. The chapter number is probably a milestone, but given chapters 12 and 27 I'm not sure I can say so for certain.

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The gimmick in this is a pixelated Magic Eye-like effect. The “Bukimisha R&D” who apparently did the blending effects are a (sub-group of a) doujin circle with a wide range of interests, from a cappella arrangements of music from Godzilla movies to Utena-themed tarot decks, and also apparently computer-generated graphics. They appear to be still active as of the time of this translation, with an interesting website.

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On 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.

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Corona has a strange dream, and somehow this leads to an old adversary rearing its head once again. I'm pretty sure the first few pages of this were in color, but I can't find a version that still has the coloring.

I'm not sure if the title (which is originally transliterated English) is specifically a reference to anything. Japanese wikipedia's entry for “Basket Case” describes the song by that name by Green Day, which was released within a year or two of this chapter (I'm a little fuzzy on the exact dates of each of these chapters due to jumps of serialization). What I'd guess is more probable is the film series from the ‘80s.

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Corona goes on an adventure and we learn some science (hopefully I didn't mess any of it up in translation). There are a lot of technical terms in the raw text for this chapter, some of which are derived from English in interesting ways. The one that I kept is “Braun tube” for “cathode ray tube”, but apparently the Japanese for an electric wall socket is phonetically “concent”, short for “concentric plug”.

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The family does something completely normal, but things get complicated, as is usual.

On page 142 (file 144), Densuke is reading something called “Manga New Youth”. There's a Chinese magazine called 新靑年, “New Youth”, but the reference appears to be to the Japanese “New Youth” (especially with the cover being an abstract style-ish portrait) which used the same characters. I don't believe it was ever a manga magazine, so that's probably part of the joke. From what I can tell, that magazine went defunct in 1950, so the stash Densuke found was old indeed.

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Asari gives the whole “Corona goes camping” thing one more shot, Laika gets a job, and Tah makes up for lost time. The title of this one doesn't seem to be a reference to anything, although there was a film with a similar name released in 2005.

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It's been a while since we had a holiday chapter, also since Laika got a chance to cut loose. This holiday is Setsubun, but all you really need to know is that the main activity is someone dressing up as an oni (representing misfortune) and being chased away by tossing beans. The date isn't always Feb. 3 due to calendar calculations, but that's a usual date.

A lot of oni lore reportedly comes from encounters with foreigners, particularly Russians. This fits well with the Russian origin of some of the names, but I wasn't able to find out whether bean-throwing specifically had anything to do with foreigners.

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The song this chapter's title references is a song called “Earthquake, Lightning, Fire, Me”, and seems to be about the singer's domestic woes. Asari's adaptation is a bit more literal.

The song the class sings at the beginning is based on a childrens’ song about animals (Japanese), sung to the tune of “John Brown's Body” (“Battle Hymn of the Republic” and a bunch of other adaptations also use it). A quick translation (not to meter) is something like the following.

Tadpoles are the babies of a frog. They certainly don't come from catfish! And the best proof for that is: After a little while, they put out arms and legs!

Snails are molluscs like slugs. They certainly don't come from their shells! And the best proof for that is: As children or when cooked, they don't have them!

Blades of grass wave in the breeze. They certainly don't come from brooms! And the best proof for that is: Cats don't play with grass!

Octopi are bald, with eight legs. They certainly aren't just old squids! And the best proof for that is: You can't make squid dumplings!

I'm not clear on what Asari's intended fourth line was regarding the lineage of Battra/Batora, and I'm certainly not enough of an expert on historical Godzilla lore to venture my own guess.

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Some people come to Anika, the cast acts normally, you know the drill. The title doesn't seem to be a reference to a song, but perhaps to a story (Japanese) about young detectives.

The pun on page 69 took a lot more work than it should have to translate: the match is close enough in Japanese that I initially thought the joke went on for longer than it does, into enough lines that finding an English analogue was proving impossible.

The pun isn't my biggest regret in this chapter's translation, though. That's the term “human cannonball”, since I've been trying to avoid the word “human” in a story which has humanity being an unknown species as a foundational supposition. The Japanese word 人間 (ningen) carries a societal as well as a taxonomical meaning, so I usually translate it “person” or “people”. There's no clean way around “human cannonball”, though.

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This one is another song, this one a cooking sing-along. It's possible that this song was chosen because of it's appearance on the NHK show “Everyone's Song”. As can probably be gathered from the dialogue, each verse describes how to cook a different dish.

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The titles for a few of the next chapters are (I think) references to popular (though not necessarily contemporary) Japanese songs. This one can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uutynqXOYt8 (or backup).

Plot-wise, I can't quite agree with the village's choice of lifeguard, but perhaps Belka was busy that day or something.

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The title of this chapter is literally “School's ghost story,” the same as the anime Ghost Stories, but since the chapter actually predates the anime I don't feel justified in taking that translation.

The original pun in the chapter title is that it's written entirely without kanji so that “ghost story” (怪談) is written “kaidan” (かいだん), which is also the pronounciation of “stairway” (階段). I think the replacement pun I used comes across a bit more obvious in the English than intended in the original, but so it goes.

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The title for this chapter comes from a famous series of essays, an incredibly influential work of the Meiji period that proposed Westernization of the Japanese educational system. The wordplay in this isn't exactly Western, though, so my apologies for the translator notes.

On the last page, Asari thanks a teacher, whose name I can't decipher. Some of the radicals are a bit compressed in the kanji, so I decided to leave the name blank rather than make an attempt at guessing syllables.

If you haven't seen them before, here's a brief explanation of Japanese “number-puns”: Each digit can be read at least two ways in Japanese, and these readings are usually one syllable long. Since Japanese words have a more rigid syllable structure than English, it's surprisingly common for a Japanese word (or phrase, or sentence) to be recognizable as a string of digits. This is part of the reason why birthdays are so commonly listed for fictional characters: they're a way to slip a pun in.

For example, one sentence that comes up in this chapter is “At the foot of Mt. Fuji, cry ‘Om!’”.

富士山ろくオーム鳴く (Fuji at-foot-of-mountain “Om” chirp/cry/call/sing-nonpast-active)

Phonetically, this is

Fu Ji San Ro Ku Oh - Mu Na Ku

2, with kanji 二, can be pronounced “Fu” (from pre-kanji Japanese) but also “Ni” or “Ji” (derived from Chinese reading of the kanji). In similar fashion, 3 can be pronounced “San”, 6 can be “Roku” but also “Mu”, 7 can be “Na”, and 9 can be “Ku”. Coming from English pronounciation, 0 can be “Oh”. Putting it all together, the sentence can be heard as

2 2 3 6 0 6 7 9

which are the first few digits of √5.

The closest English equivalent I know comes from just using phrases where the letter count of each word is the appropriate digit, with some special cases to handle 0. Hopefully that's clear; I know I've heard the √2 one around at least.

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The class takes a field trip, and we get some more Manga Science-like discussion along with revisiting some themes from earlier in the story.

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This is a surprisingly down-to-earth chapter, and fitting for the last release of ‘21. Corona is clever, perhaps too clever for her own good. In a shocking twist, Tah suffers no ill effects.

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The title of this chapter is similar to chapter 41: it's literally something like “Mysterious Disk UFO”, the Japanese name of the Gerry Anderson show. Since the English title of that is just “UFO”, that's the easiest way to render it.

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This chapter appears to be based on a documentary television series (Japanese), showcasing metalworking, ceramics, art, and other traditional Japanese craftsmanship. Asari here appears to be answering the question “what if nobody cared?”.

The term “International Space Year” on the title page doesn't seem to be a calendar designation (like “Universal Century”), but rather a reference to the actual year of 1992. (Apparently the band “They Might be Giants” had some kind of promotional relation with NASA for this year.) I'm not sure if 2652 means anything in particular.

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The title of this chapter is a reference to the David Attenborough documentary of the same name, and Asari has gone all in on the exposition of the previous chapters.

I'm not sure if Chika's status as title-page character is satire or not, but it's certainly cause for concern.

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Between chapter 62 and now the class seems to have regressed mathematically. At least they seem to be understanding the lessons now, even if it does take a while.

There's a visual gag at the end of this chapter for which it helps to know some faces from ‘90s Japanese cinema. (The man on the left is partial inspiration for the salesman, Tora.)

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Laika is content for a whole, continuous page. Then the chapter happens. Oh well.

I'm trying to avoid leaving raw honorifics, but the terms are of course “senpai” and “kohai”. These carry a couple of different connotations, of course, but this chapter seems mostly to be addressing the Maria-sama ga Miteru-inspired(?) resurgance of interest in “S” relationships. It is, perhaps, worth observing the different reactions of John (cf. chapter 22) and Ken (cf. chapter 62) to all this.

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This chapter hits quite a few notes that have become staples of the series: wordplay, misunderstood customs, natives being silly, resident riff-raff making trouble, and Laika cheesecake on the title page.

There's a native pictured in this who I don't think is mentioned: Obayashi Nobuhiko, who wrote and directed the film adaptation of “The Drifting Classroom”.

(Also, with apologies to Asari, I have to point out “GALERRY” on the first page.)

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This chapter is pretty similar to Vol 1, Ch 6, but it shows how the world has developed since then, and how the characters have sort of settled into different roles.

The new character's lines are in a very thin font, probably to indicate telepathy. The font I ended up using is more cursive and loopy, so it's not a perfect fit, but I think it works well with the intent of a personal communication.

I think John's “Gillman” shirt is a reference to the planned, but unfulfilled idea for a Carpenter-directed reboot of “Creature from the Black Lagoon”. I'm not entirely clear on when these chapters are written, so the reference may have predated the project's cancellation (or at least public knowledge of it).

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The sheer size of the cast is starting to take a toll on some, and poor Tah bears the brunt of it as always. Oh well, he knew what he signed up for.

This is another chapter named after an Italian film, this time Conversation Piece. I guess Asari must have been into European films at the time.

There's another wall scroll that's probably a pun here: まんせる. It looks like one side is Munsell, but I'm not sure what conventional calligraphy it could be referencing.

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The title for this chapter is a reference to the film, a mainstream Spanish film with no explosions at all. It's about an orphan child being raised by a group of monks and making trouble, and a scary man who turns out to be good.

Rainbow Man mentions a certain do-it-yourself project, and from his description and from Asari's background in model rocketry I suspect he's referring to a variation of Rocket Candy.

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This is another holiday chapter, which is pretty cute. I'm a little surprised that it didn't tie in with the last chapter, but I'm sure we'll get some kind of follow-up on that eventually.

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This chapter is a parody of a film 天河伝説殺人事件 (japanese), which was released in Canada with the title “Noh Mask Murders”. Belka, presumably, acts as Asari's mouthpiece throughout. I also consider this chapter to have a subtle hint of Belka's model collection, of which I'm sure we're all hoping for a reveal.

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It seems like the cat is sticking around. Corona certainly has a lot of pets, doesn't she?

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This chapter expands a bit on the role of cats aboard starships. I'm not entirely sure whether the early lines about cats’ use are intended to be a reference. If they are, there's a low chance that it might be to Cordwainer Smith's “The Game of Rat and Dragon”. (And if I'm mistaken, Smith is still a good recommendation for anyone interested in the science-fiction inspirations of anime.)

Now's a good time to talk about the tranporters. This was written sometime in the very early 1990s, and the controls appear to be touchscreen, mirroring the TNG-style transporter that would have been in shows (and TOS films) at the time. We can see a bit of a hint of the LCARS interface in a panel or two, as well as a circular target pad. I'm guessing the effect of lightning instead of a shimmer works better in a static image.

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We get more about Pii and those ships in orbit. Also, a few references to lost material: the independent anime “Strawberry Panic” from Chiba University sometime in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, and the original 32 page version of this chapter. I tried looking for each, but with no luck.

The term I'm translating as “transport” is originally 転送, which is what whoever translated Star Trek into Japanese used, so I suppose it should work backwards. As we'll see next chapter, it's a very exact parallel.

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The cast has to deal with the absurd planet they live on, we get a bit of a dent in the fourth wall, and there's a wordplay joke with a western origin!

The festival of the dead makes another appearance. Part of the symbolism for this festival involves figures of cows made from eggplants with wooden sticks for legs. These cows are supposed to lead the sprits back to their resting place once the festival is over.

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The NHK drama that gives this chapter its name is this one (japanese). Apparently it's a show about a Japanese family that emigrated to Hawaii and became embroiled in WWII. According to the internet, it seems to have been well-regarded.

This chapter also features the second use of a term “Air Beast”, 空気獣 (the first is on the title page for chapter 54). It seems to be a relatively uncommon term, but not completely unheard-of: there was an episode of the 1970 anime Doubutsu Mura Monogatari about these creatures, for example. The earliest reference I can find comes from the late 19th century in the the Miyazawa Kenji story “祭の晩”, which was translated by John Bester as “Night of the Festival”. It describes an “Air Beast” as a name given to a carnival attraction, which fits with this chapter. From that translation, a description:

Clinging to the top of the stand was the air beast. It was big and flattish and wobbly and white, with no particular head or mouth. When the showman poked it with a stick, it gave way on this side and swelled out on the other side, and when he poked it on the other side it came out on this side, and when he poked it in the middle it swelled out all round.

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The title of this one is another NHK educational program (japanese), which was apparently dedicated to showing off various modern jobs. Of course, it's questionable what most characters on Anika even do, so this goes about how you'd expect. I'm not sure why Midori bothers. 99% of her class are going to become special effects directors anyway.

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The new character here is based on the long-running, heart-warming comedy film series 男はつらいよ, “It's tough being a man”. The protagonist of that series is a vagabond salesman named Tora (Tiger) who is always unlucky in love. This specific chapter title comes from the name of the third movie: the “mad” usually describes a madman wanderer more than a bloodthirsty beast. Asari's Tora is a lot less loveable than the film's, however, so I think the use of “mad” carries the appropriate multiple meanings.

Speaking of names, the guy with the eyebrows doesn't get named, and it doesn't look like he ever will be. He's occasionally referred to as サブ, a transliteration of “sub[ordinate]”. Also, the term “many-jewelled pagoda” is consistently censored towards the end of the chapter; I'm not sure why.

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Corona forgets to do her summer homework. Her family tries to be helpful, but she really should have done it herself.

Shou's bit in this chapter is referencing The Imperial Navy. Godzilla vs. Biollante is another reference, of course. The “indie movie” is probably referencing Ultraman: Towards the Future, released direct-to-video in Japan as “Ultraman G”. Takano Koichi (Japanese) directed special effects for that film.

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This is, of course, the Fantastic Voyage chapter. The Japanese translation (and the literal title for this chapter) reads something like “Micro Suicide Corps”, which does have a certain ring to it.

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Sorry, there are a lot of annotations in this one. Not even for puns or rakugo, either, just names of things. Ah, well.

This chapter also contained a severe test of my policy of translating as much Japanese text as is reasonable: the bedsheets. Father's is covered in 鰯, probably referencing his cooking, and Kurosawa's is covered in 乱, the title of one of his most famous films. It seemed to me that letting Ran go would be removing a bit of context. I guess the new line I draw is somewhere between natives’ head-kanji and bedsheets, huh.

The song Belka sings is Yamaotoko no Uta, and is roughly about a parent gradually accepting that their daughter is in love with a yeti. Knowing this manga's song references, it was probably featured on some NHK educational drama back in the ‘70s that barely has a stub on Japanese wikipedia today.

Also, the Star Wars references have a write-up here (archive).

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GUNHED is an excellent film, and if you haven't seen it it's well worth a watch. Kawakita Koichi (Ko) was the special effects director, explaining the team up.

This chapter's events seem to be an alternate version of chapter 53, or perhaps a prelude to chapter 55. Or maybe the gang just really likes playing paintball.

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The title for this one is probably referencing an NHK TV drama, which was at least partially based off a series of British children's novels. We also see a side of Ken that hasn't shown up since something like chapter 3.

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This is tied for the longest chapter so far, and it's really two small stories stuck together. The title is probably a reference to a long-running show called “Junior High School Diaries” (Japanese).

Now is also a good time to talk about the physical school building. Asari based it on the Numahigashi Elementary School, also known as the “Round Schoolhouse”. From what I can find, the building was constructed in the early 1900s, and was abandoned in the 1970s. Today, it's a destination for urban exploration and is known for paranormal activity. There are some daytime photos here. There might be some videos of night exploration as well, but the links I've found are dead and the big Y's searching is pretty poor.

The textbook jokes that happen early on are related to these events. The joke on page 21 (023.jpg) might be a continuation, but it might not: I've addded the “to our tune” to Corona's line to try and tie it together, but it's quite possible that she's referring to something else entirely that I don't get.

On page 32 (file 34), one of the video game references is a sign saying “I like strong people!”. The reference appears to be a franchise called Musashi, the Samurai Lord which spawned an anime and a couple of video games in the right time period to be mentioned here. The anime is mostly a retelling of various samurai legends, but the main characters are all robots.

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Laika tries to make some trouble. Her success is debatable.

Asari references a few short stories/novels in his explanation for the alteration of the front illustration. However, I don't think any of those works are translated. For one of them, I wasn't even able to find a translation of the name, so I could be completely off in the meaning. However, given past chapters, I don't think the lack of context will be critical to the entertainment.

Starting with volume 6, I'm going to switch over to slightly cleaner, higher resolution raws, which hopefully will make it easier for me to read some of the smaller text. However, as I write this I'm also preparing to move and start a new job, so I may have to take a few breaks.

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Ape man, the TurboGrafx-16, is back with another classic story, adapted to the residents of Anika. This time, it's Journey to the West. I've tried to use the Japanese names of the various characters, though Journey to the West is, of course, originally Chinese.

This special episode is surprisingly faithful to (part of) the original story, as far as I can tell. The items and characters, at least, are all faithful to the original.

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This chapter is titled Virus, but it really has very little to do with that film. It's more about the then-latest Godzilla film, the effects of which Asari appears to have been quite pleased by. At this time, the effects director role for the franchise had just been passed from Nakano Teruyoshi (Shou) to Kawakita Koichi (Ko), who would hold it for the rest of the Heisei era, until 1999.

Other natives who show up:

• “Dear old Dad”, whose name would probably be Ei, is Tsuburaya Eiji (English), the special effects director on the original Godzilla film (and some sequels), and the creator of the Ultraman franchise.

• Kazu is Omori Kazuki (English), the director of Godzilla vs. Biollante and apparently a licensed medical doctor.

• Yuu is Tanaka Tomoyuki (English), known as the principal creator of Godzilla. The kanji for “Tomoyuki” are often read as “Yuuko”, hence the alias.

• The very old native is probably Honda Ishiro (English), director of many Godzilla films, including the original, for which he was also the writer.

For a rather different reference, there's a nonsense chant that shows up in this chapter. That comes from Tsutsui Yasutaka's story 熊の木本線, translated as “Bear's Wood Main Line” by Andrew Driver. Tsutsui is the author of several works that have made it over to the western consciousness, such as Paprika and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

The punchline of that short story is sort of assumed in this chapter, so I'd consider it a spoiler. So fair warning: if you've acquired a copy of Tsutsui's short stories and have been waiting for an excuse to read “Bear's Wood Main Line”, now's a good opportunity.

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This is the second part of the “Corona wants a pet bird” story. There are also some callbacks to chapter 47. Speaking of which, I'm not entirely positive about Father's line on page 177, but I'm convinced it's some kind of pun.

Of note, I think the picture Jun holds up on page 170 (by page numbers) is a reference to the Ultra Q episode 12, called “I saw a bird” (the title of the last chapter).

On the final page, there's a wall scroll reading “Dysentery”. There have been others (smallpox showed up in chapter 39). I think this is based on the pun of “hyouki” (calligraphy/inscription) against “byouki” (illness/disease). The kana for the two words only differ by some voicing marks.

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This is the first in a two-parter. A new face shows up, and there was a bit of a challenge in translating: it's actually pretty difficult to determine the newcomer's sex, and this has bearing on another character we haven't seen much of, because… Anyway, long story short I'm basing everything off one pronoun in one line on the very last page, and I might have to come back to this chapter in a month to swap “he”s and “she”s.

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The statue/building pictured on page 136 is the Tower of the Sun, a famous symbol of the World's Fair that has featured in works such as 20th Century Boys. Asari is probably more directly referencing the Yokohama Exotic Showcase ‘89 (in Japanese, but with some nice pictures).

The film talk at the beginning references Gunhed and Godzilla vs. Biollante. Kawakita Koichi (Ko) was the special effects director for Gunhed, which so impressed Toho that he replaced Nakano Teruyoshi (Shou) for handling effects on the Godzilla films, starting with Godzilla vs. Biollante. More natives:

• Su is suspected to be Suzuki Akira, a special effects director who worked on some of the early Godzilla films.

• The unnamed native with a flower pot is probably Kobayashi Shinichirou, the dentist who wrote the story for Godzilla vs. Biollante.

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Even more new characters, and a bit of an expansion to the setting. Tah also gets beat up again.

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A new cast member. He's partially based on the artist Yamashita Kiyoshi, and on the actor who portrayed him in a film, but also on Gunhed.

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The title page on this contains characters from Phantasy Star (the text referring to Belka dressed as Nei), most of the plot is from Dragon Quest III, some of the mechanics are from Wizardry, and I'm sure there are some other RPGs included I don't recognize.

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This chapter title is taken from the show of the same name: 生きものばんざい, a Japanese nature show from the 1970s aimed at explaining creatures to Japanese children. Some clips can be found around the internet, but I wasn't able to find any full episodes.

This chapter also prefigures Corona wanting a pet (although, isn't Tah supposed to be a “pet squirrel”?), which will show up later. Gan also unceremoniously gets his first speaking part.

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This is the They Live homage. It's a pretty hard story to adapt to a setting that models rural Japan, and whose cast is already almost entirely aliens, but I think Asari does it justice. Once more, John Carpenter appears in a chapter that references an in-universe film that he apparently made. You'd think he'd start catching on by now.

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Rainbowman gives us a look into his inner turmoil and his experience of the human condition. (The plot point “humans are unknown” is losing relevance very quickly.) But in his struggle, he ultimately puts his finger on a good reason to stay on this planet.

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This chapter is the first of a few that are retellings of other stories using the established cast. The relevant stories are those of Princess Kaguya and of Momotaro. The slightly awkward translation of 新鬼ヶ島 is for the sake of the pun at the end: it's more commonly translated as something like “Isle of Demons”, or however you care to translate “oni”.

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Following up from chapter 38, we learn a bit more about Laika's past. For a backwater planet, Anika sure gets a lot of visitors.

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This chapter makes me wish that Manga Science wasn't in a “licensed, but untranslated” hell. It's also a really nice look at just how Corona has grown from a helpless child into having some ideas of her own.

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The contents of the chapter (and the name of the invented mushroom) are a reference to the film Matango. The title, surprisingly, is a more direct reference to the William Hope Hodgson story The Voice in the Night, by which Matango was heavily inspired. Teruyoshi Nakano was assistant director for the film, but I don't think any of the other staff were referenced by natives.

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This is an allusion, both in title and content, to “Tokyo Blackout”, the Japanese title of which could be rendered “The Capital Vanishes”. A translation such as “Corona Blackout” doesn't really read well, though. The special effects for that film were by Nakano Teruyoshi, which is probably why Shou is consulted on the matter.

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For some more references, the girl that Jisso is with is probably Jissoji Chisako (English), better known as Hara Chisako, who was (unsurprisingly) married to Jissoji Akio.

The native sitting on the swing is Kurosawa, playing out a scene from his classic Ikiru. I'm not able to find any information on the identity of the next native to speak: the kanji appears to be 哉, but that could be wrong (the dialogue is also nearly unreadable).

A page or so later, the native with 笠 on his forehead is suspected to be the screenwriter Kasahara Kazuo (English), known for the “Battles Without Honor and Humanity” series. I'm not sure exactly what scenes are being referenced, if any, by his actions.

The title is a reference to an educational children's drama that taught moral lessons. I don't know if this is an adaptation of a specific episode or not, though, since there don't seem to be readily available archives of the show online.

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This is an extended allusion to, of course, Assault on Precinct 13, starting with the most G-rated version of the “ice cream truck sequence” you'll ever see.

In Chapter 21 (and perhaps elsewhere), John is clearly wearing an “Assault on Precinct 13” shirt, implying that the film exists in-universe. Moreover, John also plays an active part in this chapter. This raises a lot of questions about continuity and why he doesn't recognize the plot of his own film. “It's just a show, I should really just relax.”

The gun involved is a “silver ball” gun. These were popular from around the ‘60s to the ‘80s among elementary school children. They used springs and fired slightly larger ammunition than BBs, made out of colored clay instead of steel. Overall, they seem to be much less dangerous.

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The title of this chapter is more precisely “Mysterious Saucer U.M.A.”, which is a play on the Japanese title of Gerry Anderson's UFO. There's not really a great way to translate that back since the English title is just the acronym.

There's a new native mentioned, though not named. Suzuki Akira, a special effects technician, specializing in creature miniatures.

I also want to point out that Corona's hair has a similar color and sheen to that of UFO's Moonbase operators.

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Remember how a few chapters ago we were promised some serious exposition, and after about 5 pages it got completely derailed? Well here we get the real thing.

The word 准将 could, I believe, be reasonably translated as either “Commodore” or “Brigadier General”. Trying to investigate exactly which is which leads down a rabbit hole of differences in military ranks of Imperial Japan, the SDF, NATO codes, the U.K. and the U.S.A., cultural expectations of whether space is treated as an ocean…

Ultimately, it doesn't matter because the word is being used purely to aggrandize, not to describe details of command structure. I went with “Brigadier General” almost entirely on the strength of the Japanese translation of Matt Decker being “デッカー司令官”, not “デッカー准将”.

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The title for this one contains censorship over the adjective. The saying that's being referenced is “Today is a happy Hinamatsuri”, but with the blocking out, the adjective could be pretty much anything.

The holiday in question is a sort of festival for girls under the age of 10. There's a standard display of dolls that each girl sets up, consisting of various dolls on levels of different heights, depending on how much money the family wants to spend. There are also parties and various other traditions.

On page 78 (the filename is 80), there's a framed scroll on the wall reading “Smallpox”. I must admit, I'm not sure what the joke is for this. It's probably a pun based on some well-known calligraphy.

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The songs Corona sings seem to be from old commercials or jingles that were popular in Hokkaido where Asari grew up. Sometimes it's hard to pin them down because the lyrics are only partial, but these two I can definitely identify.

Here's a (the?) complete “Our Little Watt” song (which I've just grabbed from Youtube for posterity). The “Our …” naming convention is standard for super-robots.

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We find out one more profession that Father isn't quite cut out for. You can't win them all, I suppose.

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If it were me, I wouldn't leave a malevolent mind-sucking robot with delusions of godhood just lying in a field somewhere, but who am I to criticize? In any case, Nomad makes a brief reappearance, and Belka suddenly becomes interested in the series’ resident Deus Ex Machina.

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The USS T'Kumbra, an all-vulcan Nebula-class starship, docks, and Captain Solok, an old rival of Sisko's, challenges him to a game of baseball. Unwilling to back down, Sisko recruits his entire senior staff (and a few others) into the newly-formed “Niners”. Unfortunately, none of them have ever played before.

…or something like that.

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The TV show that's referenced, Ohanahan, appears to have been a typical Japanese morning drama. (The title is sometimes translated as “Miss Flower”.) It apparently follows the struggles of a Meiji era woman raising a family by herself.

Castle in the Sand, on the other hand, is a police procedural film, less of a whodunnit than a how-they-do-it-by-the-books, with a rather experimental portion intermixing a detective's explanation with a musical performance. I've tried to match up the lines used to the most common subtitle track I could find, with a slight amount of editing to avoid giving away the whole film.

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This is the Mahjong chapter, and all I know about Mahjong is what I can read on Wikipedia. There's a chance I missed some really subtle jokes, but, well, I think you'll get the gist of it if all you know is “Mahjong is a game that uses tiles and has a reputation for being complicated”.

And if none of that sells you, Belka's wearing a swimsuit on the first page.

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I promised I'd eventually get around to this, and here it is.

First, I realize that I messed up the leveling for the raws. By using a linear scaling command, regions of the image that were supposed to be kept dark were made slightly brighter, and the effect was to wash out the entire image. It's fine to look at, but when editing with dark black text it becomes very obvious.

Imagemagick doesn't have a built-in arbitrary curve leveler, but it can take a LUT so I made a decent one in GIMP and re-made stage 3, then extracted the mask from stage 4 and reapplied it. It looks okay, I think.

Anyway, Takemoto Izumi is an author that I've wanted to see translated for a while. He's considered rather influential, but very few of his works have made it over to the English-speaking world. This was relatively easy to translate, since the audience is for younger children. The contents are short, charming stories with a slight hint of science fiction strangeness.

This is sometimes called “Lup Salad”, because さらだ is both a female name and the transliteration of “salad”. Within the story, Sarada's name doesn't appear to be unusual, so I think when translating I must avoid the meal interpretation.

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By this point, Asari had been working on Manga Science for a while, and it certainly bleeds through. This is also a nice climax to the various “Father's cooking” chapters, though I very much doubt we've seen the last of peanut butter eels.

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A new adversary appears, but the gang might prove too bizarre to handle. Also, Corona is her father's daughter. And speaking of father, some pretty hard foreshadowing.

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(Disclaimer: I know very little about any of the people mentioned. Everything I'm getting comes from this blogpost (archive, archive), this, this (archive) and some time on Japanese Wikipedia.)

A native's name is the first part of the given name of the person being referenced, and the kanji on their forehead is the first character of that person's surname. This can be complicated by the Japanese tendency to use professional names more than the west does, but things eventually line up.

• Jun is Oki Junkichi, alias Oohori Junta, who started off as an assistant director on Ultra Q, and worked on many, many more Ultraman shows. He directed the banned episode 12 of Ultraseven.

• Jisso is Jissoji Akio, alias Kira Heiji (English), a widely accomplished director who achieved recognition outside of Japan and also worked in opera. Jisso's tendancy to hide his face probably comes from Jissoji's well-known personality. (I originally rendered the name as “Jissou”, but I've fixed that now.)

• Shou is Nakano Teruyoshi, alias Nakayama Tankei (English), a special effects director (hence the obsession with explosions). The name “Teruyoshi” has the same kanji as the name “Shoukei”.

• Ko (who doesn't get named in this chapter) is Kawakita Koichi (English), who worked on a bunch of Godzilla films, and also Gunhed. (I originally thought the the kana might be read as “Kor”, but that was definitely a mistake of mine.)

• Toru (who I think hasn't shown up before) is Narita Toru, alias… Narita Toru, but spelled differently (English), who designed Ultraman along with a bunch of other things.

• Shuu (who showed up for one panel in chapter 23) is Kaneko Shusuke, who worked on Gamera.

• Yo (who has shown up before, but only got named in chapter 23) is Kobayashi Yoshiaki, a special effects director. He has been called “Japan's John Carpenter”.

There are a bunch more, including some who haven't shown up yet.

Oh yeah, and the Strongest Man also does some stuff this chapter as well.

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The title for this isn't quite literal, but it's just a tense away from the name of the Japanese translation of Ray Bradbury's “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, so it's probably an intentional reference.

Belka may be slipping pretty far down in the power level rankings, but she's also by far the most sensible in this chapter.

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If you had told me, a few chapters in, that we'd get this reveal, I would have assumed it was for Belka, or maybe Ken. But no matter, it had to be somebody.

The label “707” on the box is a reference to the manga “Submarine 707”, which is credited as the first submarine manga. It was a couple of years before “Blue Submarine No. 6”, and by the same author: Ozawa Satorou (小沢さとる).

And if you ask me, the spaceship that appears in one panel looks a lot like the one from “Life Force”.

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This is sort of a flashback, although it doesn't really affect the plot. It starts out as a surprisingly close parallel to the banned episode 12 of Ultraseven, but it's clearly Asari's take on it. This is unusually serious, with some good-looking action.

As I've mentioned before, I'm using two sources for this. One is the raws that I'm editing, which are cleaned scans of the Kodansha 11 volume compilation, and the other is uncleaned, (slightly) higher resolution scans of the 13 volume (but less complete) Tokuma Shoten compilation. The Kodansha version does not include chapter numbers, but in the Tokuma Shoten version, this is listed as chapter 12 (despite coming right after chapter 26).

This chapter closes out volume 3 of the Tokuma Shoten compilation, however, and starting with volume 4 the chapter numbers are dropped entirely. So it's not quite clear whether the next chapter is supposed to be 27 or 28. I'm going to number this chapter as 27 and the next as 28 so that file sorting works as expected.

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The title for this chapter is 大いなる旅路, which is the title of a 1960 film about the career of a railway engineer. It's mostly a setup chapter, bringing in some devices that will be used later (the doctor makes another one-panel appearance as well).

Surprisingly, Father's picture gag isn't a pun at all. John's “explanation” of trains, on the other hand, seems to be referencing something (a youkai story? a manga? a movie? a pun?), but I'm not quite sure what.

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The word in this chapter title that I've rendered “revenge” is 逆襲, which is fairly common: it also appears in “The Empire Strikes Back”, “Godzilla Raids Again”, “Char's Counterattack”, and of course “Wrath of Khan”. It carries a slightly different connotation from “revenge”, but in context the meaning is definitely “the word you use to denote a sequel”.

The doctor (from Super Robot Mach Baron) also makes an announced second appearance here on the title page. He'll show up again in a few chapters (or would that be a few chapters ago…?).

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This chapter is a pastiche of young detective stories. The Japanese author Edogawa Ranpo (pseudonym of Hirai Tarō, based on a transliteration of Edgar Allan Poe) features prominiently, but the themes translate well to western classics like the Hardy Boys, the Three Investigators, or Nancy Drew.

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Corona behaves in a perfectly reasonable manner, Tah continues his role as a punching bag, Laika does some cosplay, and this manga technically becomes a Chūshingura.

Unfortunately, I was hardly able to decipher enough characters to make out any of the book references on page 6. The two I'm definitely sure of are “Operation Evening” (which got a manga adaptation in 2009 that Mamoru Oshii worked on) and “Tokyo Blackout” (which had a film adaptation about the time of this manga), which are well-known SF novels of the era.

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In this chapter, it is confirmed that John Carpenter is in fact John Carpenter. As should be clear by now, Asari is a huge fan of western horror and sf films, so this chapter is a fun homage. It also raises many, many questions about the Carlvinson universe, but somehow I don't think that's a big concern.

There are dozens of other pictures I could pull out for a tease, but I really don't want to spoil a bit of this.

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Corona goes camping with her kindergarten class. Things actually go rather smoothly (for this manga). It should be pointed out that Belka still hasn't gotten a new motorcycle, though.

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This chapter sees the introduction of “Rainbow Man”, based on the 1949 film (subtitles) and the 1947 novel of the same name. The film was remarkable for being one of the first Japanese films to use color for some sequences, but those masters have been lost and the copies we have now are apparently reconstructed based on first-hand accounts.

The film is a classic whodunnit, and it appears that the character Asari brings in is a descendent, in a sort of Lupin III situation. His bloodthirsty nature is amplified, and the mask and cape are new, as is his irritating habit of using lots of difficult-to-translate wordplay.

I thought about trying to approximate the rakugo jokes with English alternatives, but I wasn't able to get close enough to feel comfortable completely replacing the content.

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To start with, recognizing the meaning of the framed text on page 131 took me far longer than I care to admit - it's easily the piece of text I've had the greatest difficulty translating so far. The first problem is that it's written in calligraphy and is almost small enough that JPEG artifacts start influencing the reading. Then, it looks just like a 5-7-5 haiku (with an attribution), but is written entirely in hiragana, which increases ambiguity. If you pick some archaic words, treat the づ as an accented つ, and assume the incredibly awkward flow of the result is just poetry, you can almost read it as a real poem, albeit one which makes no sense. The problem is that it's not funny, and detailed background text like this would have to be a joke.

Long story short, back in 2004 somebody on a now-defunct IRC channel explained the whole thing simply enough that I could understand it, and if you get enough of the characters right the logs show up in search engines. If you fill in the missing character that Tah's speech bubble obscures, the result (ならへぎづ なせみくのはへ まぶねびで うずべ) is a continuation code for Dragon Quest 1 that makes the hero's name “manko” (pussy).

Anyway, the title for this chapter references “The Fly” (or perhaps a Kamen Rider episode influenced by it) and a film called “The Secret of the Telegian”. The cast break out some rather heavy weaponry, and it becomes increasingly questionable whether they are a completely normal acting troupe.

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There are more references (or simply listings) of video games than I think could reasonably be covered, so I won't pretend to mention them all. The ones that are referenced by visual gags are mostly well-known like Dig Dug and Pacman, but there's also Phozon, which I don't think ever really made it to the west.

If you're here solely for mecha/powered armor design, there's a bit of that as well. This is probably fitting for a Father's Day chapter.

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Corona has her first homework assignment, and we see various characters reacting to the Kindergarten. Rather light-hearted overall.

I'm trying my best to handle the puns, or at least to replace them with relevant wordplay, but unless I can really find a decent substitution it feels rather inconsiderate of me to present my own, lesser joke as an accurate translation. So my apologies if the translation notes are annoying - I'm just not good enough to get by without them.

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I suppose the holiday this time could be “First Day of Spring”, but this chapter is really about introducing the Kindergarten part of the setting, which is final element that was missing from the OVA.

The childrens’ news program that Corona is watching on page 67 was a well-known production from NHK in that era: see this retrospective.

Personally, I think the characters made a terrible mistake in not hiring this guy (and his hair), who is based on the villain from Super Robot Mach Baron according to the Japanese internet.

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This time, the holiday is Valentine's, so the designated romantic couple of the story make another appearance.

Asari also starts seriously referencing Rakugo (traditional long-form humorous stories), and it certainly won't be the last time. Here are my haphazard paraphrases of two stories which are referenced in this chapter.

Saury of Meguro

One day, a lord was travelling to Meguro for falconry. When he grew hungry, he realized that he had forgotten his lunch. However, there was a delicious smell coming from nearby. He asked his servant to investigate. The servant returned saying “It's just saury, a fish which commoners eat.”

Nonetheless, the lord wanted some. He found that the roasted saury was delicious and decided to make a habit of it. Upon returning home, at the next dinner he held he decided to serve saury to impress his guests.

However, his cook was unfamiliar with saury, having been trained to serve nobles. The cook prepared the saury by baking it, which removed the oil that gave saury its flavor and ruined the texture. The lord's guests commented on the poor food, and the lord summoned his servants.

“Where did you buy this?” he asked. They responded that they had bought it fresh at the market. “That explains it,” he said. “You have to go to Meguro for good saury.”

Meguro is inland and far away from the sea, so the Lord's explanation is humorously nonsensical. Nobles not understanding common food is a common theme in Japanese comedy.

Chiritotenchin / Vinegar Tofu

One day, a group of poor commoners were hanging around on a hot summer day. They were hungry, but had no food. They tried finding leftovers and scraps, but the result was inedible. Even the tofu they used was rotten.

Then, they noticed a certain gentleman walking by. This gentleman was a pompous social climber, and was known for pretending to be an expert on anything. He was especially hated by the common people.

So they waved him in. “We have a rare foreign delicacy here called Chiritotenchin,” they said. “We suppose you haven't heard of it.”

“Oh, Chiritotenchin,” said the gentleman. “Of course I know it. I love the stuff.”

“Well, would you care to have some?” they asked. The gentleman ate one bite and barely managed to swallow it. The commoners were delighted.

“Do you want any more?” they asked.

“Oh, no,” said the gentleman. “When eating Chiritotenchin, one bite is enough.”

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Another chapter, another holiday (which will be a running theme for a while). This time, the gang try to play a matching game meant for children, which goes about as well as you'd expect.

Laika also makes another attempt on Belka's life. Guess how that goes.

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Chapter 12 doesn't exist. I actually discovered this purely by coincidence, right after releasing Chapter 13 (as Chapter 12), but it's a good thing I caught it. The raws I'm using come from the 11 volume Kodansha compilation, which omits chapter numbers (perhaps because of this very circumstance), but the Tokuma Shoten compilation (which is less complete) includes chapter numbers, and therefore includes this reference: the chapters skip from 11 to 13, with a note saying that chapter 12 has been lost.

In any case, this is probably a reference to Ultraseven. The monster in Ultraseven's episode 12 was considered very similar to a survivor of a nuclear attack, and after some outcry the episode was banned and completely erased.

Chapter 13 completes Volume 1 (or starts Volume 2, depending on which compilation you're using) with a certain girl learning a lesson about compassion, and an entry into a long and honorable tradition of illustrations of strange alien/robot Santa Clauses.

The chapters start getting longer now, and I'm going to have to drop down to 1/week. Perhaps I can build up a buffer and get back to a faster release after a while.

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A lot happens in these chapters. In chapter 10, the name Isewan is used. I've translated it as “Vera” to match historical context.

Chapter 10 is also a rare chapter in which I'm able to translate a joke (the “doggy dog world” one) to some degree of accuracy. There is a saying in Japanese,“jakuniku kyoushoku” (弱肉強食), meaning “(the) weak (are) meat (which the) strong eat”. It's comparable to “survival of the fittest” or “law of the jungle”. According to urban legend, a teacher once gave a test to his students in which he asked them to fill in “__ 肉 __ 食”. One student filled in “焼肉定食”, meaning “grilled meat prepared meal”, which reads like something you might buy in a grocery store. It's entered Japanese popular culture as a corrupted version of the original saying.

The athletic meet from Chapter 11 was also featured in the OVA, but some things had to be changed around to cut out Laika and add in the school. I think it's the last part of the manga that was featured.

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Here are some raws for Lup Sarada (ルプ★さらだ), a manga by Takemoto Izumi (竹本 泉) I'll probably end up translating this (and perhaps some other Takemoto works), but it might take a while.

• “Untouched” 600 dpi pngs (what I call “stage 2” below)

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• Levelled and cleaned, still 600 dpi (“stage 4”)

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• Resized (“stage 5”; probably what you want even if you're going to edit these)

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This is my first attempt at scanning. These notes are not so much me pretending to be an expert (I'm not), but rather for myself the next time I feel like doing this.

• For debinding, I used this guide. At first, I tried to be over-gentle by using cloth instead of paper to separate the iron from the spine. That didn't work at all: because it didn't heat the glue correctly, I ended separating the book into spine, glue, and pages instead of spine+glue and pages. (The glue also warped and then broke in half.)

  

• When I'd finished scanning, I rebound with this guide. It was difficult because of my errors before, but the result was satisfactory.

  

• I scanned at 600 dpi using an Epson v300 with a black cloth over the page (to prevent bleed) and a heavy book on top of both (to keep the page flat). I tried to keep the pages straight by lining them up with a side where the scanner had very little dead area. The resulting TIFF files were ~110MB each. Call that stage 0.

• Running convert 123.tiff 123.png gave stage 1.

• Manually cropping (luckily I didn't have to rotate much) gave stage 2, with images about ~30MB each.

• For stage 3, I ran convert -colorspace Gray stage_2/123.png -level 0%,87.5% stage_3/123.png on all the black and white images. The levels were determined experimentally. By this point, the files were ~5MB each.

  That messes up regions of lower intensity. So what I've done instead is to make a LUT by running convert -size 10x100 gradient: -flip lut.png, then applying GIMP's color leveling, keeping the whitepoint at 87.5% still.

  

  Then I applied that to all images by convert -colorspace Gray stage_2/123.png lut.png -clut stage_3/123.png.

• For stage 4, I needed a despeckling method. GIMP's built-in despeck didn't really do what I wanted, but I used something like the following:

     gegl-0.4 123.png -o 123-mask.png \
         id=base \
         gegl:gray \
         gegl:gaussian-blur std-dev-x=1.5 std-dev-y=1.5 \
         gegl:threshold value=0.9735 \
         gegl:multiply aux=[ \
             ref=base \
             gegl:gray \
             gegl:edge algorithm=sobel amount=2.0 border-behavior=clamp \
             gegl:threshold value=0.8 \
             gegl:invert \
         ] \
         gegl:color-to-alpha color=black opacity-threshold=0.001
  

  This takes the image and creates two masks: one a gaussian blur and the other an (inverted) edge degection. These masks are then converted into pure black/white at various thresholds and multiplied together (bitwise and-ing them) into one mask.

  Any pixel that remains white in the final result is 1) not dark enough to be a pen stroke, and 2) not near an edge of high contrast in the image. Those pixels are kept as white, and everything else is thrown to transparency, which makes a decent despeckling mask. It's good at removing small specks from large, white areas while allowing me to keep the whitepoint level relatively high, which is what I wanted.

  

  As you can see, some large specks were ignored, but those were relatively simple to detect and clean by hand. Certain types of shading were negatively affected, but it wasn't too bad to manually remove those areas from the mask. The filesizes didn't change much, which I was a bit surprised about.

• stage 5 was the result of the above, downscaled with convert -resize 2000x2000 stage_4/123.png stage_5/123.png. Final releases were either run through pngcrush -brute or cjpegxl -s 9.

We finally meet Laika. She doesn't get an introduction, a title, or even a name in her first chapter, but she'll get a lot of screen time for a while. Surprisingly, she's not named after the famous dog of the Soviet space program.

There's also some really nice mecha action from Father. I think some of the footnotes that I can't quite make out are describing his different components and their names.

It's worth noting about now that most of these titles are references to, or direct copies of, titles of Toku shows. These two chapters take their titles from episodes 15 and 41 of Space Sheriff Shaider (宇宙刑事シャイダー), and later Ultra Seven will lend a title.

Finally, have a Corona:

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Very light this time. Supposedly the movie theater is among the many buildings modeled on those of the abandoned 我路ノ沢 (Garonosawa) area, which used to be the center of a large coal-mining operation, and where Asari grew up. Some pictures.

There's no need to list all the film references, but please take a moment to appreciate the beach ball from Dark Star on the final page. Regarding the chapter-original films, my predictions are that Thing defeats Starman handily, and based on the frame of page 110 C.H.U.D. loses out to Deadly Spawn. Then again, we haven't seen Starman 2, so there's room for debate.

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The natives are apparently based on assistants, so their idiosyncracies might be based on drawing preferences (such as hiding faces behind objects). I don't think the kanji on their foreheads serve any purpose other than to distinguish them. See chapter 30 for who the natives actually reference.

Parker's name and appearance come from the covers of the translations of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.

The legend of a carp becoming a dragon by leaping up a waterfall is apparently a Chinese allegory for a public official passing examinations. This raises interesting questions about the backstory of the universe, but it also gives an excuse for Belka to wear an extremely ‘80s biker suit.

• v01c004

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• v01c005

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• mangadex

The first two chapters were adapted by the OVA (which then skipped ahead to chapter 11). They've been translated before, but I wasn't able to find any copies remaining.

The date 1972 in the opening is part of the Star Trek reference. The stardate (using the same term as in the Japanese dub) corresponds to somewhere in TOS season 2, which would have been airing in Japan around the given date of Showa 47, or 1972. (This despite the fact that the manga was written in the ‘80s.)

The plots in these chapters are pretty light, and problems are mostly solved by Father realizing that he actually needs to do something.

For technical aspects, I'm using the best raws I could find. Unfortunately, the resolution is barely too small for me to read some of the author's margin comments.

The JPEG releases are just layered on top of those, but as an experiment the JPEG-XL releases involve first running the base through a few iterations JPEG Quant Smooth, then layering the cleaning/translation losslessly, and finally converting the result to to JPEG-XL. The quality should be higher and the filesize lower, but who knows if the standard will actually be adopted.

• v01c001

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• v01c002

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• v01c003

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• mangadex