可愛いだけじゃない式守さん・ Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie ❤️‍🩹 Week 1 Discussion Thread (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

Thank you everyone for the help!
I had a lot of similar questions and most of them have been answered :blush:

Another one on page 5 - bottom-mid panel:

式守さん:“ごめんじゃないの“

I am a bit confused with this statement. I believe it’s literally translated as ‘It’s not an apology,’ but does it actually mean ‘I don’t need your apology’?

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p5

Since the last is being used as an emotive emphasis (5th option in the link), the later would be more accurate. She’s expressing her annoyance with Izumi’s frequent apologies so equivalent phrases in English would be like “stop with the apologies,” “enough apologizing,” or “no more apologies” something along those lines :slightly_smiling_face:

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Using the information @Gorbit99 provided to lookup onomatopoeic words as well as some additional resources and searches, I’ve compiled a tabular reference (with links) of all onomatopoeic words in the background for this week along with a description and English approximation. I’ve separated them by individual panes to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ and also provided reference links for further details.

Feel free to let me know if I’ve made any mistakes and I’ll edit this accordingly. If others find this valuable (and accurate), it might be worthwhile to add a link to this post directly into the vocabulary section of the initial post of the thread for easy reference.

page 3, bottom:
Japanese + Link Description Potential English Approximation
ボソオッ in a whisper whispering
ハア・・・ sigh sigh
ガン, ガ⁠ー⁠ン Although this is written as ガン, I suspect that it is actually alluding to ガーン which expresses being extremely shocked or upset while ガン is defined as “vigorously, swiftly”. I think the notion of being shocked makes much more sense in context here. what?!?
page 4, top:
Japanese + Link Description Potential English Approximation
ムスッ sullenly, discontentedly, with hurt feelings grrr
page 4, 2nd pane from the top:
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ムーッ to be offended, to get angry, to be annoyed, to be miffed, to be huffy, to be sullen, to be upset hmpf
page 4, bottom right:
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ブオオォ used when a car is going faster/increasing speed rooaaarrr
page 4, 3rd pane from the top on the left:
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ガッ used when hitting something with a dull sound thud
page 5, top right
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ブロロ sound a car makes when going at normal speed zoom
バサ used when a stack of clothes/paper is falling down rustle
page 5, top left
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ぜー gasping for breath, puffing and panting, wheezing gasp
page 5, bottom right
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ポン used when patting on the shoulder pat pat
page 5, bottom middle
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ぐい suddenly and forcefully (e.g. jerk, poke, shove, squeeze) squeeze
page 5, bottom left
Japanese Description Potential English Approximation
ドッ used for a sudden, dramatically heavy atmosphere or change in tone (usually for dramatic or comedic effect) guhh
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Some questions:

page 4

ほら後ろから
車来てますよ

Is it used to put emphasis?

page 5

ぶな・・・!!

What does it meen?

page 5

ごめん
じゃない

What is the function of this no particle

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Really appreciate this, for me as a total beginner this so invaluable.

Would love to see this expanded, gives so much detail.

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@ChatterBox ohh… that makes sense. Ty!
@MikeyDC65 This is really helpful Ty!

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Pg. 4

The よ is adding emphasis to the sentence, yes. Strengthening it a bit.

Like, “A car is coming, you know.”

Pg. 5

The ぶな is the latter half of the truncated あっ earlier in the speech bubble. @Gorbit99 explained it here already, but, it is just あぶない in a breathless sort of way.

The の is an emotive one, essentially. @ChatterBox already answered this question here in the same way I would (and included a link to the の for further detail!)

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Tnx, I forgot to search my bad, it’s getting late. Tomorrow the last part.

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No problem! Best of luck as you continue reading! I hope you are enjoying yourself. :blush:

Yes I totally am, the helpfulness and the reading experience is so great.

Makes me want to read more, can not wait until I am at a level for Naruto. Besides that this is a really fun way to read manga and still feel you progress. There is much more that just translation.

Tnx again everyone.

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greetings! baby’s first full jpn manga chapter (lol). I don’t have any questions that weren’t already answered, so I just wanted to say I think it’s funny that I zoomed past the sound effects at first without acknowledging them, probably just because I’m used to ignoring them in eng fan tls since they don’t usually get a translation. looking forward to next week (it’s hard not to read ahead www)

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Lol, that’s exactly me. But when I saw @MikeyDC65’s post on all of the onomatopoeia, I just had to go back and look at them again, and it actually makes the whole reading experience more fun. :smile:

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Hello! I have a few questions while reading through that I don’t think have been asked yet.

Page 4

In the 2nd panel, when Izumi says 余計悪いです!!, I’m not sure what this sentence means?
Is he saying something like: that was excessively rude of me!!

Also does the 違くて… right after mean something like: that’s not what I meant…

Page 5

…いつもゴメン ケガない?
I’m a bit unsure on the sentence meaning, does this mean something like: Sorry for all the trouble, you’re not hurt, are you?

Also is there a particular reason why ゴメン is written in katakana but then later Shikimori says ごめんじゃないよ and ごめん is written in hiragana?

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Page 4

I’m a beginner too, so I could totally be wrong here and one of the more experience people can correct me, but:

  1. It’s present tense
  2. 余計 = more
  3. 悪い = bad

So, being literal: “It’s more bad”. Aka “It’s even worse”. Then, considering the further context of the previous statement, I’d say it’s “That’s even worse!!”.

Also, I think it’s Shikimori saying it, not Izumi. Then the 違くて is a non-standard te form of 違う and one of its meanings is “to be incorrect”. So, it seems like Izumi is responding with something akin to “no, actually…”.

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p5

いつもごめん here is something along the lines of “I’m so sorry for everything”, I believe it has an undertone that he does this sort of thing all the time. As for the katakana, it works somewhat like bolding or italics on English, it’s used for emphasizing.

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To quickly add to p4

You’re correct on the 余計 悪い part, good job :+1:

Also good job :slightly_smiling_face:

The て form of verbs is often used to link thoughts/actions of a sentence together, so the て form plus the ellipses are showing that it’s an incomplete thought Izumi is expressing here.

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I very much appreciate all the excellent discussion in this thread.

Page 6

Him: 好き。。。
Her: なんでこのタイミング

I’m reading that as

Him: I love you.
Her: Why are you saying that now?!

If that’s correct (big if), I don’t understand her response. Right after being saved from injury seems like a reasonable time to say it. Is the implication that she doesn’t want the strength she just showed and her scolding him to evoke that feeling rather than her cuteness? Am I losing something in (mis)translation?

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This might be a cultural thing, because to me, the situation feels all wrong for a confession.

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p6

I usually parse that as “I’m in love with you”, less so “I love you [for this]”, which would feel much weirder in this scenario

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I didn’t take it as a confession given that he refers to her as「ぼかの彼女」twice on the preceding pages. That and he’s not having a meltdown over her touching him which in manga usually takes several years of dating! If it was a confession her exclamation would make more sense to me because, yeah, that would feel wrong.

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