I’m still reading but I have a small kanji question: page 8 has the word 謀報員, which I can’t find in any dictionary. Might that be a typo and should it be 諜報員? Or… might it be an intentional alternative spelling because 謀 has some meanings that are also interesting in this context? (The readings of the two kanji are completely different, though…)
This is a thing the manga does very very often, the kanji are there for those that know what they mean. It explains the katakana word. Break it down into its components and you get: conspire, report, member, aka, an agent
Another example from a different manga, full metal alchemist has the automail as 機械鎧, 機械: machine, 鎧: armor
I can’t prove, but almost definitely true. After all, searching 謀報員 gives some interesting results too.
I don’t know how to pronounce the Kanji compound (in Japanese way) for sure, though…
Actually, I think this one is the different case from 機械鎧; but mangas (e.g. JoJo) usually create new words too (+ Furigana, with usually unrelated readings). Nonetheless, 諜報員 do 謀 too, according to Wikipedia.
In the manga they appear the same way as this one does, like: 機械鎧, it’s the exact same scenario as here, it’s called ateji (当て字) or assigned characters. This manga does this a lot, for both westania and ostania, for strix, and for spy quite often
I know, but usually I would try to find original Japanese reading, even if it never exists in anime or ever spoken. Of course, there were failure cases (e.g. 屍生人, 流法), but never frankly visually similar like this.
Occasionally, the Japanese reading (before Furigana) can be found in HiNative. (So Japanese reading does exist after all, just never spoken.)
I am on Bookwalker monochrome e-book of full paid version. Counting from page 26 = SPY WARS TV – Bookwalker page 28. IIRC, full limited-time version is page +4.
Page 30: Shopping is done
Page 32: Book reading is done, and next morning is coming.
I ran into this too while putting together the vocab list lol. I tried to list out the component kanji and then explain what was happening in the notes column.
The discussion here missed the point. Does 謀報員 mean intelligence officer; secret agent ?
Another point here is, is fellow readers’ SPY WARS TV counted as page 26 in print? If so, Vocabulary Sheet paging is wrong – vocabularies from this page counted as 28, there.
It seems pretty clear from the discussion above that this is a made-up compound… It only has meaning insofar as the author gives it meaning, because it isn’t a word that is going to be in a dictionary, and searching online hasn’t given any other indication that it is a word in use in any way. Just as 機械鎧 is a word that doesn’t have any other use besides what the author who made up the compound gave it. The context in this case clearly indicates that this compound is intended to mean “intelligence officer; secret agent; spy”.
I could be misunderstanding what you are getting at, though, to be fair.
(Should probably throw that page behind a spoiler tag!)
I don’t have a print version, but my version also has 26 on the page (marked as location 31 of 222 on the Kindle app). Going by past book clubs, the convention for vocabulary sheets is to follow whatever page number is actually marked, so vocabulary for this page should be marked as page 26.
Sure, it could be guessed wrong… But you are reading a manga called SPY X FAMILY. I’m fairly comfortable assuming they aren’t referring to a real estate agent.
I mean, not originally Japanese, but エージェント is a loan word in use in Japan.
Thanks for pointing this out. This is only my second book club, so I wasn’t sure what the general convention was vis-a-vis page numbers.
And when I started the vocab list, there were several editions of volume 1 that were free during a promotion period. Those free versions had extra pages in the beginning which also threw off my count.
Since I lost access to the free version when the promotion ended, I bought a digital copy that didn’t have the extra pages, so I went with how the digital reader was counting pages. I can go back and renumber them to be accurate to the physical page numbers. (My attempt to rectify was to include clarification in the notes column for things like cover page and table of contents).
No worries! We are always just grateful when people fill out the vocabulary sheets! Things like fixing the page numbers and whatnot are no big deal. They don’t take all that much time! Thanks for all your hard work on filling in the vocabulary!
Hope this doesn’t stop anyone from also contributing! I had a month to chip away at those first few pages. Will need help to get through the rest of the chapter in a week lol.
Edit: okay, in my defense, on the home thread it says we’re ending this week on the page with Anya sleeping and that the page count is 33. that’s only true if you count from cover page.
But it’s not a big deal
Also I realize my digital copy doesn’t show the printed page numbers. It’s too zoomed in…
Ah, I hadn’t noticed that. Maybe @shadowlauch would like us to count pages that way, then? I would follow the convention of the person running the club, in that case. My comment was just going off of previous clubs.
Eh? Really?
Not every page has numbers on my version, just to be clear, but 26 was numbered in mine. Gotta love the joys of working with different versions.
(The readings of the two kanji are completely different, though…)
Thanks for all your hard work on filling in the vocabulary!