[aDoIJG] O-R 💮 A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar

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1

Entries O-R

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A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar :white_flower: Home Thread

Previous part: N
Next part: S

Week
Start Date
 Reading Entry Count Page Numbers Page Count
#19 May 11th お〜だ to を通して 6 318 - 332 15
#20 May 18th っぱなし to ろくに〜ない 7 333 - 357 25

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2

In the entry for 思われる, the “formation” example for an i-adjective is 面白いように思える, not に思われる. You can use the potential form of 思う for a similar meaning like that, but none of the rest of the entry even mentions it, so I wonder if that is a mistake…

3

思われる
日本語を習う時はローマ字を使わない方がよいと思われる
Finally, after having made us suffer for an entire volume they have realized :smiling_face_with_tear:

4

お～だ

お～だ does not express the aspect (i.e. progressive, perfect, etc.) of a verb explicitly. Aspect can be determined from context. It can’t be used with two-syllable group 2 verbs (like 見る) or irregular verbs.

For する-verbs which require the polite prefix ご, ご VN だ is used rather than お Vます だ. The する-verbs which require the polite prefix お are not commonly used in this pattern (I wonder why?)

お～だ is not as polite as お～になる, but is politer than passive honorific forms.

I didn’t think I’d likely find any examples in Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, but I thought maybe there was a chance I’d find one in Sakisama’s speech somewhere, so I went looking in her promos, but I wasn’t able to find this exact structure. Not going to try doing a ctrl+f search!

をはじめ(として)

N をはじめとして literally means “by making N the beginning of something”, an idea very similar to the English phrase “starting with”. N をはじめ is an abbreviative version.

In conversational Japanese, N をはじめ(として) is not used. Instead, だけで(は)なく～(も) is used. All the examples in this entry can be rephrased by that.

I didn't expect to find an example of this in TJPW, but not only did I find one—my translation of this grammar point was off! So I'm glad I went looking, haha! This was from 2023.06.18 after Suzume and Rika Tatsumi faced Himawari and Yuki Aino in a preview match leading up to Rika vs Aino (as well as Daisy Monkey vs Juria Nagano and Moka Miyamoto) at Summer Sun Princess:

No video for this one because it happened in-ring! (Usual disclaimer that the transcripts are from shupro, and the translations are mine and may contain errors. This one especially, since I just tweaked it, haha!)

辰巳「（鈴芽に）ありがとう！ 今日からね、大田区に向けての前哨戦が私は始まって。この調子で前哨戦も全勝して、当日も決めようと思ってるので、まぁ見ててください。今日はお越しくださった皆さん、配信をご覧のみなさんもありがとうございました。7・8大田区の全カードも決まったし…どうですか？ 意気込み、せっかくなので」

Tatsumi: (to Suzume) “Thank you! From today, the preview matches as we look to Ota City have started. At this rate, I’m going to win all of the preview matches and get the victory on the appointed day as well, so please watch me. I’d like to thank everyone who came today, and everyone who watched the stream. The full card for July 8 Ota City has been set… Are you pumped for it? Since it’s taken a bit for it to come together.”

鈴芽「欠場から帰ってくる選手もいますし、リカさんのカードをはじめ、私はでじもんで一緒に闘える、そんな熱い夏がやってくるので。みなさんぜひ大田区で会いましょう！」

Suzume: “Some wrestlers will be coming back after an absence, and not only is there Rika-san’s match, but I’ll also be fighting as Daisy Monkey, so it’s gonna be a hot summer. Let’s be sure to see each other in Ota City!”

辰巳「会いましょう！ じゃあね、今日も東京女子プロレスのすばらしさをみなさんに伝えて、大田区もまだまだこんなもんじゃないぞと最高を更新していきますので、最後はよっしゃいくぞー！で締めたいと思います」

Tatsumi: “Let’s do it! Well, I’m going to keep conveying TJPW’s magnificence to everyone, and at Ota City, too, I’ll show you that you ain’t seen nothin’ yet and raise the bar even further, so I want to close with ‘YOSSHA IKUZO!’”

5

Week 20 Begins!

Pages: 333 - 357
6

Let’s do this :muscle:!

7

I’ve been seeing a lot of 例の and ろくに in what I read lately, awesome timing!
From ISLAND:
「昨夜はろくに寝てないからな……ふわぁ……俺も眠くなってきた」

8

お～下さい

Just like the above entry, お～下さい can’t be used with two-syllable group 2 verbs (like 見る) or irregular verbs, and the する-verbs which require the polite prefix お are not commonly used in this pattern.

Interestingly, the book has an example with お電話下さい that is acceptable because there’s an implied を.

お～下さい can’t be used in negative requests.

お～下さい is politer than 下さい (shocker). Any verb can be used in the 下さい pattern, unlike お～下さい. 下さい can also be used to make negative requests, and it can be used with auxiliary verbs which require verb て-forms, while お～下さい can’t.

I’m not going to look for a Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling example because I don’t think it’s likely I’ll find one transcribed, though I’m pretty sure I see/hear them during basically every wrestling show when the venue is instructing the audience to do something.

思われる

思われる is the passive form of 思う “to feel; to think”, but this 思われる does not have the meaning of passivity, but rather autogenesis (what the speaker/writer feels or thinks spontaneously). It can be differentiated from the passive use because it doesn’t have a true agent. The true passive by definition involves an agent, which is marked by に in passive sentences. So genuine passive sentences should have a に-marked agent to be grammatical (and introducing a に-marked agent to these example sentences renders them ungrammatical). You can use に when it indicates not an agent “by” but an experiencer “to”.

Note 2 made me laugh: “The difference between (5a) which is identical with KS(A) and (5b) cannot be captured by the translation, because both sentences come out the same in the translation.” Boy is that a problem I’m familiar with…

Since ようだ is a conjecture based on the speaker’s reasoning process, if it is used with 思われる, a marker of autogenesis, the combination sounds more indirect and even humble.

The experiencer of the spontaneous feeling of 思われる is usually the speaker/writer, but can be a third person if the tense is past. If the sentences are in a novel in which the reader can empathize with the character, then the nonpast tense is acceptable.

I went looking for TJPW examples, and I don’t think the に rule indicating or not indicating passive is exactly set in stone, because I found a lot of examples that seemed to be passive, but which had an assumed に (often the audience). I also found examples that seemed a bit unclear to me whether they were the passive meaning (“it is thought”) or this one (“it seems”).

Here's an example from after Grand Princess on 2024.03.31, where Ryo Mizunami & Yuki Aino lost the tag belts to Daisy Monkey. I'm waffling on whether this example is this use or the passive, haha!

Hard mode: here’s the video.

愛野「（崩れ落ちて）ああああああ…。ホントに、ホントに…情けなくて。何度挑戦しても、何度頑張ってもこうやってすぐにベルトを落としてしまって。もうなんか、ベルトに好かれない人生なのかなとか思っちゃう。思っちゃうんですけど、ですけど！ でも、でもね、でも私はアニキと出会ってから、自分が前を向けたと思ってて。こんなところで落ち込んで止まる人生じゃないって思ってます。だから、ベルトに好かれたいとかそんなの知らん。いま私が言ったことだけど知らん。もう関係ない、そんなの。だからどんどん私はこれからも、もっと強くなりたいし、もっとベルトを取りに行きたい。もっともっと挑戦して、タッグもプリプリもインターナショナルも全部私は取りに行きたいです。でもそう思わせてくれたのは、アニキです。ありがとうございました」

Aino: (her head in her hands) “Ahhh… I’m really, really… pathetic. No matter how many times I try, no matter how hard I work, I always lose the belt right away like this. I wonder if belts don’t like me, at this rate. That thought does cross my mind, but! But… you know, ever since I met Aniki, I’ve felt that things are looking up for me. I’m not going to let my life go to a standstill by getting depressed at a time like this. I don’t know whether that stuff I just said about the belt not liking me is true or not. So it doesn’t matter! Better not to dwell on that. I want to keep getting stronger and stronger, and I want to win more belts. I want to challenge more and more, and I want to win the tag belts and the Princess of Princess and the International—I want to win them all. But the one who made me feel this way is you, Aniki. Thank you so much.”

水波「ユキニキ、1月にベルト取って。今日まで2～3カ月…防衛できなくて、いま目の前にタッグのベルトはありません。だけど私は、ユキとこうやって組んで、1人の人間がこの2カ月でこんなに変わっていく姿が見れて嬉しかった。そしてベルトはないけど、0に戻ったわけじゃない。次のステージに行ったと私は思ってる。いま今日もまたこうやって泣いてる…この涙は次の第一歩の涙だ。私はプロレスは青春だと思ってます。青春！ 悔しい思い、よかった思い、嬉しい思い、楽しい思い、そんなことがプロレスで体験できてる。そしていま、ユキの言葉が出た…他のタイトルも狙っていきたい。これがベルトでこの2～3カ月、たったそれだけって思われるかもしれないけど、それで1人の人間を変えた。いまこの姿だ。こんな夢のあるプロレスっていう職業、私はホントにすごいと思うし。そんなユキを見て、いま言った言葉を聞いて、私も次の新たな第一歩が進めると思いました。まだまだだ、これからだぞ、ユキ！」

Mizunami: “Yukiniki, we won the belts in January. That was two or three months ago… We couldn’t defend them, and now we don’t have the tag belts in front of us. But I’m glad I got to team up with Yuki like this, and got to see one human being change so much in just two months. And even though we don’t have the belts, that doesn’t mean we’re back at zero. I think you’ve made it to the next stage. Crying like this again today… these tears are the first step to what’s next. I think pro wrestling is the springtime of life. This is youth! You can experience regret, relief, happiness, and fun through wrestling. And Yuki’s words just now… I want to aim for other titles as well. You may think that this is just a belt, and just two to three months, but this changed a person. This is her now. I think pro wrestling, an occupation so filled with dreams like this, is truly amazing. Seeing Yuki like this and hearing what she said just now, it makes me think that I, too, can take the first step forward to something new. It’s not over yet; it’s just the beginning, Yuki!”

9

I was getting so close to catching up, and then I got busy again :weary:.

おり

Vて おり is the written version of Vて いて. Although おり is the ます-form of the humble auxiliary verb おる, when Vて おり is used in written documents, articles, papers, etc., it does not express the writer’s politeness.

Vて おり is more formal than Vて いて or Vて い. It can be replaced by Vて いて without changing meaning.

Vて おる, the informal sentence-final form of Vて おり, is not used in writing in place of Vて いる.

Shockingly, I did find one of these in Toyko Joshi Pro Wrestling! This wasn't in anyone's speech, but was in one of the news articles on the DDT website which summed up what happened during the 2023.07.29 random drawing for the Tokyo Princess Cup semifinals:

Here’s the article, and here’s the video of the drawing itself.

8月12日後楽園ホール大会にておこなわれる東京プリンセスカップ準決勝の組み合わせ抽選会が本日の大会終了後におこなわれた。難波小百合リングアナが用意した4つの封筒には赤い紙が2枚、青い紙が2枚入っており、それぞれが封筒を引いて同じ色の紙を手にした者同士が闘うことに。

The drawing for the match configurations for the Tokyo Princess Cup semifinals at Korakuen Hall on August 12 was held after the July 29 show. Ring announcer Sayuri Namba prepared four envelopes, two with red paper inside of them, and two with blue, and each of the wrestlers was to pick an envelope and whoever drew the same color would be their opponent.

を通して

This was another one I learned initially by mining it from pro wrestling stuff, haha.

を通して means “through the medium of ~” or “through specific duration of time”.

It can be replaced by 通じて (some fun things happening with the kanji readings here. Luckily it makes intuitive sense to me, haha) in all cases except when the medium is a concrete, physical medium.

Here's a recent-ish TJPW example from the 2024.02.17 show, where Rika Tatsumi faced the visiting Zara Zakher:

Hard mode: here’s the video.

辰巳「いやぁ…ザラちゃん、最初はひどい目にあわされたんですけど、でもなんとか無事に勝利できたし。試合後はちゃんと仲良くなれたのかなって思ってます。国際交流ができたなって嬉しい気持ちです。それに試合もザラちゃんは動きも素早いですし、パワーもフィジカルもなんてすばらしい選手って思って、またぜひ日本に来て一緒に闘いたいなって思ってます。また来てほしいです。ありがとう、ザラちゃん！（友達になれた？）なれました。やっぱり試合を通して通じ合うものがあったので。握手もちゃんとできたし、友達がまた増えて私がハッピーです！」

Tatsumi: “Well… Zara-chan, you gave me a very hard time at first, but I managed to get the win. After the match, I think we became good friends. I’m happy that we could have this international exchange. And in the match, too, Zara-chan’s movements were agile, and her power and physicality were also wonderful, and I hope she comes back to Japan and we get to fight together again. I hope she comes back! Thank you, Zara-chan!”

(You became friends?)

“Yes. We were able to communicate with each other through the match. We had a proper handshake, too. I’m happy that I made a new friend!”

っぱなし

This is another one I mined very, very early on! It was early enough, the grammar nuance gave me a bit of a headache, haha, but by the time I got to it in Tobira (pretty sure it was covered in there), it made sense to me.

っぱなし is derived from 放し, the ます stem of the verb 放す “leave”. I already knew this because when I first encountered it in the wild, it was in the form of っ放し.

The meaning of っぱなし differs depending on the kind of verb which precedes it. When the verb is intransitive, it means that someone or something keeps doing something. When the verb is transitive, it means that someone does something to X and leaves X as it is without putting it back to its original state, which is not the proper way.

っぱなし behaves like a noun, so it’s followed by the copula だ or particles such as で, に, and の.

まま expresses a similar idea to っぱなし, and っぱなし can be rephrased as まま in most cases when the preceding verb is transitive. However, because っぱなし with a transitive verb implies and improper state, it can’t be used in some contexts, and it sometimes carries different connotations than まま would.

When the preceding verb is intransitive, まま can’t always replace っぱなし. まま focuses on the state after a single action (i.e. an action described by a punctual verb) while っぱなし focuses on a continuous action.

If the preceding verb is intransitive, っぱなし can’t be used in an adverbial phrase.

Vます 続けだ also expresses the idea “to keep doing something” and can be used in place of Vます っぱなし with intransitive verbs, but not transitive verbs.

Vます 続ける also expresses the idea of “to keep doing something” and can be used in place of Vます っぱなし. But Vます っぱなし (with intransitive verbs) doesn’t express the actor’s volition while Vます 続ける does, so Vます っぱな is not acceptable in some circumstances. Though conversely, sometimes it’s more natural because some actions are beyond the speaker’s control.

Here's a TJPW example from the 2024.02.24 show after Miyu Yamashita, Yuki Aino, and Ryo Mizunami teamed up with each other:

Hard mode: here’s the video.

愛野「メチャクチャ悔しい！」

Aino: “I’m so frustrated!”

水波「まず一言いいたいのはこの３人が初めて組んで、私は大興奮しっぱなしでした。なぜならヤマシー、ユキ、アニキのトリオ。これなかなかレアですよ」

Mizunami: “First of all, I’d like to say that the three of us teamed up for the first time, and I was ridiculously excited. Because of this trio, Yamashii, Yuki, and Aniki. That’s quite rare!”

山下「私は発表された時から興奮してました」

Yamashita: “I’ve been excited since the moment it was announced.”

水波「興奮の度合いがね」

Mizunami: “The level of excitement was through the roof.”

10

New thread for S entries just dropped:

11

I found the “relative clause” entry in this intermediate volume a bit odd – I had no trouble understanding the example sentences and didn’t even register why the authors thought they needed extra explanation at first. But the explanation in terms of an implicit conditional verb doesn’t really match how I think about this kind of sentence, so I didn’t find it super convincing.

12

っぽい

Pretty sure I learned this one initially from the wrestler Natsupoi, haha. At least I think I recall her making at least one wordplay joke based around this grammar point?

っぽい is usually used in highly informal speech and writing, meaning something like the English “-ish”. It is an Adj(い), so it conjugates exactly like other Adj(い)s.

The nouns, adjectives, and verbs that can take the suffix っぽい are not unlimited, but quite productive (took me a bit to figure out what the book meant by that), especially when it is connected with a noun.

The book includes one irregular form: 湿っぽい (the expected form is 湿りっぽい). I’m noting that down because I feel like irregular formations are super uncommon in Japanese? I wonder what happened to that one to make it turn out like that.

N + っぽい can be replaced by N + のような or by N + らしい, and N + 風の. The expressions のような and らしい are quite different from っぽい and 風の in that the former are conjectural expressions, whereas the latter are not. I think that distinction is still a bit hard for me to get a feel for…

The examples [2] and [3] do make sense to me, though, so maybe I have a better intuitive sense for it than I realize.

There are also some N + っぽい expressions that can’t be replaced because the meaning is very specific and fixed.

Adj(い/な)stem + っぽい can be replaced by none of the other expressions.

Vます + っぽい can be replaced by Vinf・nonpast + やすい, but depending on the verb with which っぽい is connected, the やすい version becomes marginal.

All the っぽいs that immediately came up in Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling were from Kamiyu, which makes sense because it's a very Kamiyuっぽい thing to say. Here's one from 2023.07.29 during the Tokyo Princess Cup last year, after she got an upset win over Miu Watanabe:

Hard mode: here’s the video.

上福「まぁ前回普通の女・角田奈穂に勝って、嬉しかった半面…やば、これトーナメント進んじゃうやつじゃんって思って。次、未詩ちゃんが相手で。あの人はマジで、前も言った通りずっと練習してるし、ずっと充実してるし。これ、ワンチャン痛くなる前に負けちゃってもいいかなって思ったことあったんだけど。でも周りのみんなが『渡辺未詩勝つじゃん。で、誰が決勝かな？』みたいなこと言ってるプチアンチみたいなのがいて。これちょっと違うなって思って。ゆきのこと応援してくれてる人もいるし、親戚も応援してるわけだし？ 未詩ちゃんにどうこうというか、負けるだろうって言った人がうざかったんでね。ちょっと強めのテキーラをいっぱい飲んできましたよ…嘘ですけど。なんかトーナメントすごいイヤなんだけど、ゆきたちはどう生きるかってかんじで。今後、どう生きるか考えます。

Kamifuku: “Well, last time, I was happy to get a win over ordinary woman Nao Kakuta, but on the other hand… I thought, ‘oh no, this is going to advance me in the tournament.’ My next opponent was Miu-chan. She’s really, like I said before, she’s always training, and always improving. I thought, you know, it could be the thing to do here is to give up before it gets really painful. But everyone around me was saying, ‘Right, so Miu Watanabe advances. So then I wonder who’ll be in the final?’ There were slightly hater-ish types saying things like that. I thought they were just a little off the mark. There are also people rooting for me, and I also have relatives supporting me? The people saying ‘How about Miu-chan? You’re going to lose’ annoyed me. I’ve been drinking a lot of strong tequila… that’s a lie. I really hate tournaments, but it made me think, ‘How Does Yuki Live?’. I’m going to think about how to live from now on.”

（優勝も見えてきたが？）そうだな、あんまり優勝とかにこだわってなかったけど、今日なんか練習生みたいなの発表してて。でも私が欲しいのは港区っぽい子、なんなら銀座。そういう子がいいので、私を見て『こういう人がいるんだったら東京女子に入りたいな』って思ってほしい。一緒にお酒を飲める仲間、みたいな？ 飲める子募集中。そのためだったら、頑張って優勝しようと思います」

(Is winning the entire tournament also in sight?)

“Yeah, I wasn’t too concerned with winning the tournament, but today they were like announcing new trainees or something. But what I want is Minato-ward-esque girl, or Ginza, if you prefer. I like girls like that, so I want them to look at me and think, ‘If there’s someone like that there, I want to join TJPW.’ Like, a friend you can drink with? I’m recruiting girls who can drink. And with that in mind, I’m going to try my best to win the tournament.”

来

When 来 is used to mean something has continued up until the moment of speech, the final predicate takes Vている or Vてくる.

X は N (of duration)来 の Y だ means that as for X, the speaker has never experienced Y in the specified duration. When Y is a person, 来 means X has continued to have the status of Y for a certain amount of time.

来 is used with an expression of time duration. For nouns which express a point of time, 以来 has to be used to make them grammatical. However, there are exceptional cases where 来 can be used with a non-duration expression. (I wonder why some of these get an * and some get two question marks? Why is there a difference in unacceptability between 先週来 and 先月来, for instance?)

When 来 indicates continuation of an action/state, it can be replaced by 前から or 間. 来 can be freely replaced by 前から and 間, but not vice versa, because the latter can be used with an expression of both relatively short and long duration; whereas the former can be used only with a relatively long duration.

When 来 is used in X は N (of duration)来 の Y だ construction, 来 can be replaced by ぶりだ which means “after the lapse of ~”. Note that Y cannot be a person.

This entry was surprisingly enlightening! I’m not going to try searching for 来 examples in TJPW, though, because I feel like it’d be too much trouble to find specifically this construction.

13

例の

例の is used in situations where some information is shared by the speaker and the hearer. Because 例の is a device to remind the hearer of something experienced or mentioned earlier (although not in the same discourse), 例の X can be used without having mentioned X previously in the discourse. Thus, 例の has the “force” to make the hearer recall the referent of the following noun phrase. (I found this a mildly odd way to phrase this, haha)

If there is strong situational and/or contextual support to indicate the referent of the following noun phrase, 例の can be omitted. The book says in note 3 that if 例の in KS(B) is omitted, 中華料理店 does not refer to a definite Chinese restaurant, but my gut instinct is that sometimes it can? Though I dunno, maybe it would be more likely to say その中華料理店 or something if it does…

The related expression section tells us that the topic marker は marks known information. So は and 例の have some commonality, and both X は and 例の X are used when X is definite and known to the hearer. However, は alone does not have the force that 例の has, a force to make the hearer recall the referent of X. So leaving out 例の in KS(A) might be too abrupt in some situations.

Also, the referent of X は can be generic while that of 例の X is always definite. Additionally, X は is a topic phrase, while 例の X is a simple noun phrase.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this grammar point before. Could find no examples of it in Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling.

Relative Clause

I was a bit surprised to see this in the intermediate volume, and only noticed once I got to the notes that this is apparently a specific type of relative clause that is different from “ordinary” relative clauses.

Yeah, I agree. This is one where I wonder if there is any basis in monolingual reference books drawing this sort of distinction between these types of relative clauses.

I’m well aware of は carrying a contrastive meaning, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it carrying a conditional meaning.

Not gonna look for examples for it in any case… :sweat_smile:

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Rhetorical Question

Ah, this has definitely been my enemy as a translator before, haha. I feel like I’ve struggled a lot to pin down the tone of these kinds of sentences.

The notes tell us that rhetorical questions take various forms, and typical endings include: potential verbs, ものですか and its variations, だろうか and its variations, (ない)ではか and its variations, のか and its variations, and ないか. No matter what form it takes, though, a rhetorical question always uses falling intonation. In Japanese, genuine questions always use rising intonation. (This would be super helpful if I was good at catching intonation…)

Rhetorical questions in some forms are equivalent to their corresponding negative sentences in meaning. Rhetorical questions are more powerful than their corresponding sentences.

A simple negative question can function as a strong command, and is often used for intimidation.

Not going to search for a Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling example for this because it would be difficult to do a ctrl+f search for.

ろくに～ない

This one doesn’t ring any bells at first glance.

Along with ろくに～ない there is another structure similar to it, ろくな N ～ない, which is used to indicate that something animate does not or cannot do something decent/sufficient/satisfactory.

Nothing came up for either ろくに～ない or ろくな N ～ない when I went looking in my TJPW translations.

And with that, I’ve finished the R’s! Onto the S’s…

15

Funnily enough, I specifically remember being confused about this kind of relative clause a number of years ago when I was trying to help answer somebody’s (that was @eefara?!) questions about a card game’s complicated rule descriptions:

自分の場にあるキャラカードが「使用部隊」となっているスキルカードを使い、いずれかのプレイヤーの場にあるスペシャルダブルスカード以外のキャラカードを１枚撰び、捨札置場に置く（使用したスキルカードは捨札置場に置きます）

Amusingly, in the thread, I pretty much paraphrase the dictionary’s “it looks as though medicine becomes smart” explanation for how one can end up misinterpreting these clauses, in describing how the phrase sounded to me at first.

What confuses me is となっているスキルカード sounds like the skill card itself is becoming the 「使用部隊」(…) but a skill card becoming 「使用部隊」doesn’t make sense to me from what I can tell of the game

It ended up going into the Short Grammar Questions thread at the time (but didn’t get answered probably since both the grammar and card terminology were a bit too obscure). But now, the dictionary’s explanation turns out to be the direct confirmation I was wanting at the time about how it works.
自分の場にあるキャラカードが「使用部隊」となっているスキルカード
is talking about
a スキルカード which fulfills the condition 自分の場にあるキャラカードが「使用部隊」となっている.

Granted, better grasping となっている and being able to actually see and understand the rules of the game directly might well have helped me not get tripped up at the time, but for when it does happen to occasionally come up in a way that isn’t immediately obvious, it is good to remember that the noun modified by a relative clause isn’t necessarily the direct subject of that relative clause, and I’m glad to have that loose end tied up from a few years ago at least.

16

Wow. :open_mouth: I can’t believe such a good example came to mind and how it’s been three years since that question. Kinda glad to see it’s relevant again, haha.