The young witch Wadanohara has returned from a journey across the sea, only to find that her peaceful ocean home has come under attack from the nefarious Tosatsu Empire. Alongside her faithful familiars – Memoca, Dolphi, and Fukami – Wadanohara promises to do all she can to prevent a terrible war. But when a mysterious figure from her past demands that she leave, can the pure-hearted Wadanohara muster the courage and magic she needs to save the Sea Kingdom once and for all?
Details
We are reading this book as part of the Absolute Beginners Book Club. This book club will be starting in early September with an official start date to be decided on soon. Everyone is welcome to join the book club! Previous grammar and vocabulary knowledge is helpful, but we will have a vocab sheet and lots of people to help with grammar questions, so please don’t be discouraged if you are just getting started on your learning journey! If you want to see if this book if for you please check out the nomination post and a reading sample on Bookwalker.
How Book Clubs Work on WaniKani
For each weeks reading we will have a new thread for discussing the chapter. In the thread you can ask questions on grammar/ vocab, talk about the book, and help others stay motivated! We also will have a shared vocab sheet. If you plan on reading along I would highly recommend setting this thread to watching and bookmark it, so you will be up to date and have easy access to the discussion threads!
** To buy the digital version from amazon you will need a Japanese amazon account that has a Japanese address or else the book will say unavailable.
** Notes on Physical Copies: This book is unfortunately difficult to get a physical copy of. Both CDJapan and Amazon are sold out. Manga Republic has it available (used but in excellent condition) with worldwide shipping. However, their shipping times are decently long and the supply is limited, so if you plan to order from them I would do so soon.
Thought I’d get ahead with the reading this week so I’m not behind on all the questions and stuff haha
I’m interested with what’s going on with the shark dude - seems like he’s got some beef against Wadanohara for some reason. Guess it’s a read and find out, so I’ll be patient there
I have a basic understanding of what happened, but I’m not entirely sure when it gets made clear tbh I think its in later books. @Shunrin might know which book it’s revealed in.
If I hadn’t already planned on reading that too, this definitely settles it!
That reunion had me laughing even though it was meant to be serious I went through and read it all without looking anything up, which means I understood about 15% of it so far (lul). But it’s pretty easy to tell what’s happening on page 50
In the circled panel I mainly understand the first sentence as being like Hey you! or Just a minute you! but the second part is slightly confusing me. A literal translation might be “for some time (or from earlier) what the heck?!?” As in you’ve been saying that for some time what the heck!! But when I look it up I get something more like “What the heck was that?!?” So I was just wondering what other people are reading it as and why. There is a similar construction on page 47 as well.
As an example, 「あいつ何なの！」means something like “What the hell is his problem?”. So that’s basically what she’s saying to him. さっきから is to emphasize that he’s been acting like that for a while, I think.
Okay so the さっきから indicates that he’s been acting poorly for a while, but doesn’t actually get put into the translation? So it would just roughly equate to “What the hell!/ What the hell was that!”?
I’m not sure what you mean by “doesn’t actually get put into the translation”, but basically, it adds an emphasis on the fact that he’s been acting that way for an unusually long time. For example, [何してるの] would just mean “What are you doing?” , but [さっきから何してるの] is more like “What on earth have you been doing for a while?”
Okay! Thank you. I think it’s kind of unnatural or awkward in English to have a word that emphasizes a duration with something similar to what the heck. So, I think trying to force it into a translation was just sort of tripping me up, but to be fair there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t really translate into English well, so I should probably not put such an emphasis on it.
Finished the chapter! It was certainly was entertaining and not too hard!
But I still have a few questions:
Page 47
Wadanohara calls her (ex-)familiar 鮫吉. I was wondering about the 吉. Is it an ending like 君 or ちゃん? If so, what implication does it have? (e.g. -chan is for familiar people or children, kun is for friends/buddies, etc.). Or does she really call him “good/nice shark”?
I read this as: パサ. But what does it mean? From the looks of the speech bubble I think that it is not a sound, but that someone is saying パサ. But I am not sure… Any suggestions?
Page 55
And lastly page 55. I am not really sure what the meaning of the second part is:
I can help with the 鮫吉 part. It’s not an ending like ちゃん. It’s just her name/ nickname for him. It basically means fortune shark or good luck shark as his nickname.
I wouldn’t read into the “good luck” kanji here to be honest. 吉 is a really common component for male names, to the point where it gets used almost as a cheat to name a character after a thing. In English it would be like calling him “Johnny McShark”. A famous example of this is たぬきち, the Japanese name for Animal Crossing’s Tom Nook (who is actually a tanuki, not a raccoon).
Other way around; “it is because in this ocean, my magic is still necessary”. More on explanatory のだ here.
This manga seems to like putting sound effects into speech balloons.
Best I can figure it it’s the sound of the ruffling of the sack the ocarina is in.
Since 魔法 has が, that means that 必要 is a description of 魔法. “My magic is necessary”.
If a sentence ends in だ (such as 必要だ), and you want to add the explanatory の after it, that だ changes to な. Thus, 必要だ＋のだ becomes 必要なのだ. And this なの often gets spoken as なん, resulting in なんだ.
This “explanatory” aspect changes the meaning from a statement (“My magic is necessary in this sea…”) to an explanation (“It is because my magic is necessary in this sea…”)
I’ve previously written a lot about the explanatory の here (highly recommended!):
If you plan on reading along I would highly recommend setting this thread to watching and bookmark it, so you will be up to date and have easy access to the discussion threads!
I went through and read it all without looking anything up, which means I understood about 15% of it so far (lul). But it’s pretty easy to tell what’s happening on page 50 
It was certainly was entertaining 
