While waiting for someone better than me to chime in I translated this as
Panda looking cat
My reasoning for this is that, みたい is a na-adjective suffix, so パンダみたい means panda-looking or panda-like. Then like any na-adjective, when modifying a noun you add な before the noun it modifies.
I read that as a confirmatory noise, I get it now, I understand it already
Things always apply to what comes before - it’s one of the things that makes Japanese grammar seem backwards compared to English.
AみたいなB = a B that’s like A, or an A-like B.
な here doesn’t “mark the noun”, but rather the みたい auxiliary is a な-adjective, so you need the な in order to connect it to a noun.
I’m thinking of みたいに and みたいな where my understanding of whether it’s な or に depends on if it’s a verb or noun that it’s marking…
Actually it makes much more sense that it depends on what it’s connecting to
に turns it into an adverb, basically.
どんなのだったか描いてみそ
Can’t quite put this one together, I feel like its it should mean what are you trying to draw but the words I’ve pulled out don’t quite fit together
what kind of (were/was) or try to draw right
ugh
I think the main thing I’ll be taking from this reading is humility 
Everything is so different from the example sentences that I’ve seen so far that I can barely decipher it even with the vocab and answers here. It’s a struggle to even identify what are words, particles or exclamations, so I think I’ll mainly be focusing on getting better at that for now.
Oddly enough, while cleaning up last night I came across my box of keepsakes from my time living in Japan. Up near the top:
From looking at the photos salvaged from my livejournal, I think this visit was towards the end of January, 2006. Now that’s old!
I’d say it’s two sentences.
どんなのだったか = What was it like? (like, what sort of thing was it?)
描いてみそ = Try drawing it.
Let’s see, this is…page 5. Good to have, so someone answering can check the correct page. There aren’t many page numbers in this manga (unfortunately), but the first post in this thread includes a (hopefully handy) page number guide!
As @Belthazar wrote, we have a question and a command here. Learning where a sentence ends in Japanese can be a tricky affair, but it gets more or less easier over time. I hope. (I still have trouble with this in some manga panels…)
The first part is a question: 「どんなのだったか」
どんな = “what kind of” (and needs to be attached to a noun)
の = filling in for a noun, similar to “one” or “thing” does in English (example: “Which one do you want?”)
だ = appears at the end of a noun sentence
った = marks the sentence as “completed” or “past tense”.
か = essentially a “verbal question mark”
=> “What kind was it?”
The second part is a command:
描く = to draw
描いて = the verb 描く with て to be able to join it with another verb
みる = has a meaning of “try doing”
みろ = the verb みる with る changed to ろ to make it imperative (essentially, Sacchan, telling Yui to do it)
みそ = mentioned earlier, みそ is a pun on みろ, so we can consider it has the same meaning
=> “Try drawing it.”
In the translation, I wrote “it” to fill in what Yui would be trying to draw, but if she put the first and second parts together, we get:
“Try drawing what kind it was.” (“what kind” in context means “what kind of monster”)
It gets easier over time.
1) Learning particles and what their function is.
Some particles appear after a word to identify its function in a sentence.
Other particles appear at the end of a sentence.
Recognizing particles helps get a feel for where individual words are.
2) Learning very common vocabulary words.
Consider the following gibberish sentence:
“Keo jwps panda nwoe ifkeh cat setnf iakwje.”
If you look it over, there’s a good chance you will recognize two words in it.
That’s how Japanese (or any new language you’re learning) comes across in the beginning. The more words you learn, the more clear sentences will be.
3) Learning grammar.
I tend to think of this one as the most important one. But it’s also the hardest one, because it involves concepts more complex than individual words.
Grammar (including particles) helps you get an idea of the basic meaning of a sentence, even if you don’t know the meaning of most of the words.
For another gibberish sentence example:
“The oljwyfj gave the nawygr to the hfyatrs after pwyyfse.”
You may be able to get a sense for the structure of the sentence, even before knowing the words.
4) Repeated exposure to all of the above.
By following along with picking apart the dialogue in the manga, and by reading along with the discussion threads, you’ll get plenty of exposure. You don’t have to understand everything in the discussion. It’s fine if you think, “I didn’t understand that at all” for some things.
Chances are, the same kind of material will be asked about again when it comes up later, and next time you might think, “I don’t get this, but I remember it came up before.” And if the same grammar is asked about later, you may read the description and think, “I’m kind of getting to understand this, at least a little…I think.”
It can be a bit difficult to see where you’re actually starting to understand things because the more you understand something, the less you notice it. The less you understand something, the more you notice it. It creates a blind spot to how well you’re doing, and puts a spotlight on everything you still don’t understand yet. Be sure to take a moment to appreciate what you have learned so far!
Gotta keep this one around for the zoo chapter.
By the way, I’m trying an experiment in the third post on this thread:
It’s a list by page and panel to the questions asked for each line of dialogue.
(Hopefully it doesn’t repeatedly ping everyone linked to whenever I add to it… If so, sorry about that!)
I’m still working on the last two pages for this week, but I feel just from the discussions here that I’ve already learned a lot. Gotta say this is definitely a lot harder than チーズスイートホーム though. 
I started reading that recently as well.
Something else that might help regarding page numbers, for those who are using Amazon Kindle (I don’t know how other epubs mark their location, but if it’s similar to Kindle, this should hold true), subtracting 3 from the “location” tracker gives you the correct page number. I.e.: “Location 8 of 154” is Page 5. It worked for Ayumu, and looks to work here too!
This is an excellent idea! As a newbie, I worry about asking a question that has already been answered, so I will trawl the forum looking to see if it’s been covered already. There can be a lot of posts to cover, so that can take a few minutes, getting you further away from thinking about the sentence or question that was foremost in your mind.
Apologies for leaving off the page number & thanks for the answer to my sentence question! I won’t lie, after five pages I’m struggling to make the story coherent in my mind. It feels like the characters are each having their own conversations!
The good(?) news is, that’s kind of what’s happening in the beginning. So if that’s what you’re getting from it, you may be doing better than you think 
もっと大きな事件は無いのかよリーダー。Page 3, I believe.
I’ve seen this happen before when an い-adj gets the い replaced with a な at the end, and been a little confused about it. What’s a な doing on an い-adj?
Thanks in advance.
大きな is a な-adjective, 大きい is an い-adjective. Some adjectives can have it both ways. There may be a subtle difference in meaning, but I couldn’t tell you what it is or whether it’s important.
Edit: Found an article about it if you’re interested in a more in-depth analysis: https://www.imabi.net/adnominaladjectives.htm
Here’s an extract:
Thanks, this is great. Plus, I’ve never used this imabi website either so thanks for introducing it to me. Another reference gained! 
I’m a little bit tempted to try doing a full translation in this thread, classic ABBC style. I feel like a lot of the dialogue in this manga would, if spoken, be delivered in a pretty fast-paced, almost manzai-style, which can possibly make it a little tricky to follow along…
I was pondering whether to do such a (rough) translation right before week two, so anyone struggling with the first half of the chapter can get into the second half with a clearer picture of what’s going on. If you’d like to do so, by all means go for it =D
(Otherwise, I may still go ahead with it.)
