Finished the translation for TJPW’s April 24 show in decent time for once! It helped that there was less going on, haha. The recap for this one is here.
The most notable thing from this show happened during the main event, which was a preview tag match leading up to Free WiFi’s tag title challenge. Once again, we saw a very rare instance of traditional heel tactics showing up in TJPW, when Nao Kakuta removed one of the corner pads, and Hikari hit Mizuki into the exposed steel and then pinned her shortly afterward. Afterward, an enraged Yuka Sakazaki grabbed the corner pad and came into the ring and beat Nao and Hikari with it, as the bell started to ring telling her to knock it off.
Again, because this is TJPW, you can’t exactly expect things to go how the typical wrestling narrative goes, so we’ll just have to see how things develop from here, but I’m enjoying how things are going. The upcoming preview match for both championships (Princess of Princess belt and the tag belts), with Misao, Hikari, and Nao on one side vs all three champions (Yuka, Mizuki, and Shoko) should be loads of fun, considering that the challengers have all been resorting to heel tactics haha. I like how one of my friends described Free WiFi as having “I can make her worse” energy.
I think I understood Yuka and Mizuki’s post-match comments, but wanted to double-check in case I missed something. Yuka said: “アホなんじゃないかなって思います。勝つために考えたことだと思いますけど、そっちがその気なら、こっちだって”. I wasn’t quite sure about the exact connotation of アホ. I tried googling it and found (Japanese) sites comparing and contrasting it with バカ, but it was a little bit above my level trying to understand the nuance from reading those.
This was my best attempt at a translation: “I think they’re assholes. I think they considered it in order to win, but if that’s the way you’re going to do it, then we’ll do it that way, too.” “Assholes” might be too harsh of a word to use, but it was one of the DeepL suggestions, and it made more sense to me than “fool”, “idiot”, or “simpleton”, which were the direct dictionary translations. I think Yuka is saying here that if Free WiFi is going to play dirty, then she’s going to play dirty, too?
Mizuki said: “これが2人の戦い方なら、その土俵に立った上で、ちゃんと勝ちを獲り返したい。もちろん防衛できるように。やり返したい”. My best attempt at a translation was: “If this is the way the two of them fight, I want to get back in the ring and get our win back the proper way. So that we can defend the belts, of course. I want to get back at them.” I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with ちゃんと here. It seemed like she was almost saying the opposite of what Yuka was saying? Yuka wants to do this Free WiFi’s way, but Mizuki wants to win “properly”. If this is indeed the case, then that might be cause for trouble for MagiRabbi…
From the part of the comments that was not transcribed on the website, Yuka and Mizuki had a funny exchange where Yuka was still refusing to acknowledge Free WiFi’s challenge and claiming that they still didn’t have a signal, but when Mizuki said that she wants to get revenge, Yuka changed her mind and decided that they’re going to do it after all.
There was also a fun exchange between Maki Itoh and Miyu Yamashita. I was confused why they were talking about “cactus” (サボテン) suddenly, but I think it must be the name of one of their tag moves that they attempt to do every match haha and which almost never works out for them.
This one:
Miyu also said that even though the サボテン got interrupted, things went smoothly for them as a tag team, so maybe it’s all right if they keep their distance and just team up occasionally. Itoh said basically that spending time apart makes the heart grow fonder.
And with that, I am caught up! Until they have two shows in fairly quick succession, haha, and then the Korakuen show shortly after that 
. I’ll just have to try my best 