Gundam Aggressor - page 78 - well fought!

I read a bit about copyright law, as well as asked a friend who studied Law in college, and we came to the conclusion that intent matters, and it being educational and you not making money off of it means you’re pretty much in the clear. Also distribution that might affect sales or image and stuff like that, which you’re not going to do.

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That’s how I feel as well. But I really want to make sure. In other clubs it isn’t a problem as there are lots of people and so each line gets discussed. Here I doubt there will be many other people, if any, joining in and so the only justification for posting text that I’ve not worked on is to provide context. Well, all I can do is start in January and see how it all works out! Thank you so much @Kazzeon!

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A friend of mine will try to find volume one on her trip to japan. So I might lurke around here XD

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I hope she finds it! That would be great! Nice one! :smile: :+1:

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2020 - Happy New Year everyone! It’s gone midnight here in Japan so the new decade has started, and it’s time to make a start on Gundam Aggressor! Happy New Year to anyone reading along!

Mobile Suit Gundam Aggressor
Volume 1

Contents:
第1話 -アグレッサー
第2話 - はじめての戦場
第3話 - 親子愛
第4話 - 戦場のトラウマ

Contents:

  1. Aggressor
  2. The First Battlefield
  3. The Love of a Parent and Child
  4. Battlefield Trauma

はじめての
This being the first post in a long series, I doubled checked everything, and while doing so came across a very useful Q&A on Stack Exchange on the difference between はじめの and はじめての. Seems that はじめの refers to first in a list or sequence, while はじめての shows that the noun which follows is being experienced in some way for the first time.

親子愛
This is, I think, the only page without furigana, but no problem, a look at page 107 tells me that 親子愛 is おやこあい. Looking at the individual kanji - parent & child, love - the meaning seems fairly obvious, and I’d assumed it would be a popular word, but I was surprised to find no entry for this in Jisho, and only two examples of it in Reverso. I asked the resident expert about this and she said it is a word, but not one she hears often. She looked in her Japanese dictionary and found 夫婦愛, a much more common word, but not 親子愛. I like this word.

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オレはよく戦う理由を人から尋ねられる…
ジオンからも連邦からも同じ質問を…
なぜジオンから寝返って連邦で戦っているのかと…
忠誠心はどこにあるのかと…

オレはよく戦う理由を人から尋ねられる…
オレ - I, me
は - subject particle
よく - often
戦う - fight, wage war
理由を - reason + object particle
人から - from people
尋ねられる… - to ask, to inquire, in passive form
“I am often asked by people why I fight”

ジオンからも連邦からも同じ質問を…
“From Zeon, from the Federation, it’s the same question”
Question: The meaning is clear enough here, I just wonder abut the grammar of も. Why も…も and not と for example. I guess it has something to do with coming from both sides.

なぜジオンから寝返って連邦で戦っているのかと…
なぜ - why
ジオンから - from Zeon
寝返って - betray, and…
連邦で - Federation + で
戦っている - fighting
のかと… - ???
“Why [have you] betrayed Zeon and are [now] fighting for the Federation?”
Question: Not sure about the のかと at the end. Is it the explanation particle, an embedded question particle, and a simple “and”, or perhaps the quotation particle?

忠誠心はどこにあるのかと…
“Where is [your] loyalty?”
Question…. The same! What is that のかと??

I’ve asked on HiNative, and if any good answers come along I’ll edit this post to include them!

Anyway, I think this is a great opening and, looking at the pictures too, the book takes no time at all in setting the scene. This is no “immature teenager finds himself in mobile suit almost by accident” beginning, as we might expect, but someone who has already long been fighting. Here we go…!

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In this sense, think of と as “with” or “and” and も as “also”.

I can’t really explain why one would be used over the other, but here’s a bit about using も that maybe will help a little:

Compressed into details for length.

も on the other hand is basically は, but with an inclusive meaning.

Consider the following sentences (I’ll use English to make it clear):

  • “Fredは, he is learning French.”
  • “Garyは, he is learning German.”

If you remove は topic change in the second sentence, you get “Fredは, he is learning French. He is learning German”, and you think Fred is learning both languages. By changing the topic with は, it becomes clear that the “he” learning German is Gary.

But, what if both are learning the same language?

  • “Fredは, he is learning French.”
  • “Garyも, he is learning French.”

Again, if you leave out the も, the topic change, you have “Fredは, he is learning French. He is learning French.” We need to change the topic over to Gary for the second sentence to make sense.

We could use は, but that’s a little off:

  • “Fredは, he is learning French.”
  • “Garyは, he is learning French.”

Since Gary is also learning French, we use も in place of は. And because everything after the は/も is the same, we can even leave that part off entirely:

  • “Fredは, he is learning French.”
  • “Garyも.”

We can also put the two topics together in a single sentence, but when doing this, we need to use も on both of them:

  • “FredもGaryも, they are learning French.”

For me, personally, just the feel I get from it, I would read と as Zeon and the Federation being grouped together in some way, like there’s some relation between them. On the other hand, も I feel as them being two unrelated entities that happened to both be doing the same thing (which looks here to be both asking the same question).

I’m not certain about the と, but I feel you are right about the のか. For the explanatory の, you can often insert こと (“thing”, conceptual) after it to make it a little more clear:

(なぜジオンから寝返って連邦で戦っている)のことかと

Here, everything I’ve placed in parenthesis is a modifier of こと, meaning “the thing which is (why having betrayed Zeon and fighting in the Federation)”.

The か means the speaker is saying this to theirself, as self reflection, a question. They are asking theirself, “why is it that (etc)?” Crossing this out as I think it’s a poor wording of mine. If you have any questions of か, that’ll be something to read up on =)

I’m not certain about the と, but it can be a quote like, “(I ask myself) why is it that (etc)?” Keep in mind, I don’t have the material, so I’m not able to discern based on visual aid for context.

This can be the same thing. If と is indeed a quote marker, then:

「忠誠心はどこにあるのか」と…

Something like, “I’ve asked myself, on the topic of loyalty, where does it exist?”

Question: Is this person asking why someone else betrayed and where that someone else’s loyalty lies? Or did the speaker do the betrayal, and they are asking theirself why they betrayed and where their own loyalty lies?

Followed by a flashback for the next 20 chapters, showing how the lead character started out as an immature teenager who (almost by accident) finds himself in a mobile suit :wink:

Edit: Re-reading the quotes above, it sounds like the questions may have previously coming from people in Zeon and people in the Federation. The と makes sense if the speaker is quoting questions they’ve received.

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Wow! Thank you so much ChristopherFritz! What an amazing reply! Thank you!

What I want to do now is get busy making notes of everything you’ve said, but we are off out to the in-laws today and I’m in a mad hurry. But tonight I’ll spend some real time going over your post. Thank you so, so much and have a wonderful day! Thank you!

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I have no idea! … I thought and tried to find some answers on google. :smile:

Like @ChristopherFritz already said (and much more detailed and grammatically accurate than I could!), the と is used as a quotation marker and marks the question that are always being asked. The のか on the other hand… I’ve seen it before, but always simply accepted that it was some variant of か or even the の from のです and left it at that.

Having looked it up, it seems to be a variation on the か that is used to mark questions containing question words. In these sentences, that would be なぜ and どこ. I found this post on stackexchange explains it well. :slight_smile:

That’s an interesting perspective! I’ve always thought of も…も as expressing a sense of surprise or maybe wonder that they’re both doing this thing. I’ll be looking out in the future and see if I can’t catch that nuance you’re seeing too. These don’t seem like mutually exclusive concepts. It would be more surprising if two totally unrelated parties act the same after all. :smile:

That is so brilliant! Thank you so much @Belerith! I’ve just got back home, and now I can finally get to studying, and you’ve given me so much to learn here! Really appreciated! Thank you so much!

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Thank you so much again ChristopherFritz and Belerith! Your help has been really amazing! Thank you!

No point in having time off for dialogue-free pages so early on in the project (though I’ll be welcoming them later), so after a good look on page 6 of the Mobile Suit of the cover, …it’s on with page 8!

グフか!! 地中から!!
連邦の新型か? 面白い!!

グフか!! 地中から!!
“A Gouf!! From under the earth!!”

連邦の新型か? 面白い!!
“A new Federation model?” Interesting!!”

The language today is simple enough, but what a stack of questions it all poses! What is this Mobile Suit? Who is the pilot? Where are they? And wow, a Gouf, piloted by a Zeon officer, coming up from under the ground?! On page 9 he seems to lose any advantage he had by attacking from under the ground and behind, but does seem to use his heat rod to put the Federation machine off-balance. This is quite a start!

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My own attempt att beating the XもYも horse is that you can think of it as “both X and Y”, but perhaps with a bit more emphasis (which も often adds).

I can’t really find any way to translate my gut feeling exactly, but “both X and Y” or “not only X but also Y” are in the ballpark I feel.

So something like “I get asked this from both Zeon and the federation” or “I get asked this from Zeon and federation alike” maybe?

Probably suffices to just know that it’s another way to “and” stuff together though, you’ll get your own feel for it eventually! :slight_smile:

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That is brilliant! Thank you so much!
(You wouldn’t believe the notes I’ve made on this grammar point tonight! Thank you again so much!)

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I think this is just quoting the question he gets asked from these people. Think of the か as a question mark and と as quotes:

I get the same question from both Zeon and the federation: “Why have you betrayed Zeon and are fighting with the federation?”.

Just like you wrote yourself :slight_smile:

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Thank you again @crihak! It is really kind of you (and of ChristopherFritz and Belerith too!) to help out like this! Thank you so much!

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So the Federation Suit jumps to avoid the heat rod and we see the reactions of the pilots in battle…

Zeon Officer: このMS… は… 速いぞ!!
Federation Pilot: ベテランか!? MSの性能に助けられた!!

このMS… - this Mobile Suit
は… - is this は as in the topic marker, or is it は as in the first syllable of 速い?
速い - fast
ぞ!! - sentence ender adding force
“This Mobile Suit… is… fast!”

ベテランか!? - a veteran + question marker
MSの性能に - Mobile Suit’s performance + に
助けられた!! - to save / to help / to support / to contribute to in past, passive form.
“A veteran? I was saved by the performance of this Mobile Suit!!”

The Federation machine lands back on the ground… and battle continues….

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That’s a good question. I feel if it were the topic marking は, there would be no pause between MS and は. I’m going with the first syllable of 速い.

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Thank you for that! Actually, looking ahead a bit, I see this kind of speech, with the first syllable coming on its own like that, is pretty common in this manga. So knowing that the は as topic marker wouldn’t be separated like that is very useful to know. Thank you again ChristopherFritz!

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I would say the opposite. :sweat_smile: But if you say that it happens again later, then that settles it.

Sure, it wouldn’t be separated like that if it was the topic marker は, but you usually don’t separate it like that if it’s the first syllable of the same word, either. (Mostly also because は changes reading depending on if it’s a particle or not, so it would be weird to read. Something like that.)

Maybe I’m just thinking too much into it. (Or am wrong.) :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, I had planned on reading way ahead before this project started, but we all know what happens to plans like that! I’m barely a page in front! But, flicking through, I see that a lot of sentences have these dangling syllables in them, I’ll have to look out for exactly how they work! Thanks so much Kazzeon, and Happy New Year to you! :smiley: :+1:

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