Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current act’s reading.
If you are reading ahead, please withhold discussing future acts.
When asking for help, please mention your book version (tankoubon, shinsouban, or kanzenban), act, and page number. Feel free to use shorthand as well. Examples:
Shinsouban Act.15 Page 8
S.15.8
If there’s anything you don’t understand while reading, don’t hesitate to ask questions.
Way back when I read this arc in Kodansha’s English release (which still bugs me to no end how many incorrect homophones there are, as well as misspellings in the whole release), I read it quickly enough that I’ve forgotten 99% of the material. It’s nice going through it slowly enough that it can sink in
My observations of Act.15 (expect spoilers behind some details):
On that note, why was Shingo not in the umbrella scene? After that, Usagi rushes Chibiusa into her bedroom, and then Shingo barges in already under the spell that he missed out on.
I couldn't figure out Makoto's へーわって at first.
I had to stop reading and come back a couple days later to realize she’s saying へいわ + って. Made much more sense (as in, any at all) once I realized that, as well as Usagi’s response.
…even though I learned both kanji way back in high school. I think the さい reading would have thrown my kanji recognition if I hadn’t learned it from WaniKani.
And yes, I feel slightly proud for inferring a word a little kid doesn’t know. If only my Japanese vocabulary actually reached that of a six-year-old…
Is this my first time ever seeing 死に神 written this way?
Why yes, I think it is. Is the に actually a particle that gets swallowed by the kanji when written 死神? If so, I never knew!
In the 90's anime, Chibiusa doesn't see this until much much later on.
Feels weird for it so happen to early.
It’s nice seeing a bit more casual scenes with the characters, especially Rei in this Act. Oh, hey, she just got kidnapped and doesn’t seem she’ll be back any time soon.
This Act had a lot going on that the ending portion of it felt a bit rushed to me. I think it would be nice if it could have stretched out into two separate Acts, but this is a fast-paced series, after all.
I thought the しに part was the masu stem of 死ぬ, with the に getting swallowed as it often does. Never bothered to research it, so I’ll do it later today. Kind of looking forward to it.
Wasn’t sure what to vote, since I finished chapter 16 but haven’t started 17 yet, but I think I chose right.
Towards the end of Act 15, the enemy keeps saying コーアン (referring to Sailor Mars, I think) and I can’t figure out what it means and neither could either of the two sources I usually check. One place is K. p44, middle panel (this is not the first appearance, but the one I found first).
Otherwise, my thoughts on Act 15 and why I finished it a little late: the first few pages were pretty dialog/info heavy (meaning I actually had to look up several words to get better comprehension) so I didn’t read that many before pausing. Then the next few pages after that was also dialog/info heavy. And then the rest of it (which I finally read today) I could read easily with only a couple of look ups.
And yes, the end of the chapter felt rushed and it would have been nice to see more of the 学祭.
I haven’t started reading this week’s Act yet (that’s next on my to-do list), but hopefully dialogue-heavy pages will subside a bit now that we’ve been introduced to a majority of the badguys.
It is a bit sad to see at the end of Act 15 where コーアン is killed off since I’m familiar with the anime version where コーアン is healed and turned good by Sailormoon.
Man, now I have to reread the last few pages of the act to figure out what that bad guy was actually saying. Obviously, reading the first part of the chapter and the later half with a week’s span in between makes it easy to forget a name.
In some series, I don’t even bother learning names because there are too many characters with complex (to me) names, especially if I’m only reading once or twice a week. It’s the opposite for me with anime, though: if I watch it too quickly, I don’t learn any names; if I limit myself to one episode per day, the names sink in better.
I lucked out with コーアン because back in the 1990’s, when the US English dub ended partway through the Black Moon arc, I rented some VHS tapes with Japanese Sailormoon episodes from a little Japanese shop near where a friend of mine lived. They included random episodes from the Black Moon arc (Sailormoon R), and either one or both of the following arcs, giving me exposure to their Japanese names.
I’ll have to especially make an effort to read each chapter within a couple of days. I can easily, it is just about choosing to read instead of my many other interests. (I picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons the other day and I’m playing it in Japanese. ^^ And I started playing the Witcher 3 for the first time only a week or so before that. Two very different but both very fun games.) In fact, I’m not even doing any (English) reading currently. I sometimes have off-periods when it comes to reading, a month or so and then I’ll read regularly for months and months. So I’m more on than off reading, but right now is an off time.
S.15.153 (also S.14.148)
Is it common to use なさい with non-verbs? Is なさい even what one would use in this highly unrealistic and convoluted situation? Isn’t it too polite? Or is social hierarchy so engrained in the Japanese psyche that this is what happens in such a circumstance?
158
I love Mamochan’s little face-doodle.
160
Argh! Another missing い from a て+いく construction! (I asked my desk-buddy once my eyes popped back into my skull after that double って).
167
I was confused as to why 安心 was furigana’d as あんじん, but now I think it’s just the blanket dots lining up over the し.
172
bottom right panel - ACK! That’s a lot of KANJI! Hey, wait, I know some of these…it’s a nice feeling! Also, lol at Google Translate for suggesting that I want it to translate from Chinese because long string of kanji…that I input with hiragana…
174
Can someone help break down the grammar in 着陸跡じゃないかって言われてます? I get confused when じゃない doesn’t necessarily mean a negative. I’m good with the last part (was said, or maybe more like has been said), but I’m stuck on the negative in there.
Here, Chibiusa is saying 渡しなさい, which is the verb 渡す (to hand over) in its stem form 渡し, and then なさい added to make it a soft-yet-firm request. As for the politeness, I can’t explain it, but based on my hearing なさい used in anime over my many years of watching, it didn’t feel out of place for me to see its use here.
I oft struggle to remember that 行く becomes 行って, and thus that ってって may be [る verb]って + 行って.
Even though I know some of the kanji, I still had to take it two kanji at a time. (By the time I got to her name, I didn’t even pay any attention to it…)
「着陸跡じゃないか?」 is like saying in English, “Isn’t this a landing site?” or “This is a landing site, isn’t it?”
Remember, じゃ is from では, so it’s:
「着陸跡ではないか?」
Here, で is a connective form of だ, so you have an embedded “A is B” sentence, 「着陸跡だ」 or “it’s a landing site”. (In this sentence, the subject is unspoken. It’s essentially 「∅が着陸跡だ」, where the unspoken が-marked subject is equivalent to “it” in English.)
Then, the は marks “it’s a landing site” as the topic, marking it as the context of what’s being talked about in the rest of the sentence. This gets you to the outer sentence, which is essentially 「(this thing being talked about), ないか?」
ない is the negative of ある. Where ある means something “is”, ない means something “is not”. However, ない isn’t always used in a negative sense. This is like in English, if someone says, “Won’t you try a cookie I baked?” they’re not actually asking if you won’t, but rather if you will. It’s a less direct way of asking someone to do something or (in the case of this manga panel) to agree with something.
“Is it not (this thing being talked about)?”
“Is it not (this is a landing site)?”
“Is this not a landing site?” “This is a landing site, isn’t it?” “This is a landing site, no?”
There’s an in depth tofugu article on なさい and its politeness level here!
In short, なさい is fairly polite, but actually carries an authoritative nuance. It is used by parents toward their kids and teachers their students, for example. Chibiusa does act quite entitled.
S. 16. 211
Is it common to shorten a word ending in の to ん, particularly when preceding a negative? I looked up タダモン and found 只者, but the pronunciations don’t quite match.
