I know, right?
Children, focus!
Well sure, any chump can read that as ユ. I was rather hoping for something that wasn’t utter gibberish, though.
moar context? can’t really guess anything sensible without knowing what’s going on…
I’m more confused about the だ honestly… I initally just saw that as a reversed ケ except there was a squiggle on the bottom right ![]()
Adding my one cent:
I think it looks more like a な than a だ, actually. Specially given the calligraphy.
But that answers nothing, of course.
こう見えても
な〇ると
コワイよ
ボクは
Grammatically it makes perfect sense, we just have to identify the verb.
I tried all the な〇る verbs I could come up with, but nothing seems to click (both visually and meaning wise).
なのる、なめる、なえる、なでる、なまる、、、
(The first panel is straight out impossible with only this scan, seriously)
I find it a bit of a stretch for the お, but it could be:
こう見えても
おこると
コワイよ
ボクは
It’s pretty natural Japanese and meaning wise it fits perfectly. Can’t say the same about the お and the こ visually, tho.
The こ I can see - it looks a bit more like ニ, but ニう makes no sense, so that pretty much leaves こ as the only option.
お however… that’s a hell of a stretch, the only way you get there from お is by lifting your pen for a pretty big part of one of the strokes. I can’t think of anything with な though… Maybe なさる but さ for that second character is an even bigger stretch than お for the first one, I feel.
I can see it, give or take some scanning/resolution/jpeg compression artifacts…I think it makes sense in context as well
Could it be that those two words in second image are names? Are there any characters with names that might fit?
As a long shot for the first one, you could try searching for the name / chapter / surrounding dialogue of the manga.
If the scan’s that unintelligible, it may have confused Japanese readers too, and someone out there’s random readthrough blog has helped me out with the weirdest phrases a few times in the past.
(I tried unsuccessfully with just the dialogue and got that it was ONE OUTS but nothing actually helpful)
For the first one, who’s the guy the arrow is pointing to? Do you know his role? Catcher? I’m almost completely certain that the final characters are に戻された, but I have no idea what the comment could be about.
EDIT: OK, here’s my best guess:「3塁…を…したので、また一塁…に戻された」I tried looking at the anime episode that seems to cover the same part of the story, and as far as I can tell, (spoiler tags for those who haven’t seen this bit and want to read/watch it) Tokuchi came up with some trick that involved passing something to the 3rd base defender. I don’t know if that’s relevant though.
Oh. Oho. By Jove, I think he’s got it.
That’s what I like best about your guess. ![]()
The main character does have a habit of making pretty scary faces in dramatic situations, similar to what he’s doing in the first panel of that page.
Which two words in particular?
He’s usually the pitcher, but because the team owner is trying to force him to give up runs (long story), in this game he’s serving as relief pitcher, which in turn means that when he’s not pitching, he has to play another position. Up until this point, it’s been first base.
Wait, wait, there’s an anime of this?
Indeed. Perhaps it’s something like “After something something third baseman, he’s back on first base again”?
Because I remembered this conversation I just realized that the “Top 500 Names in Japan” Anki deck I’ve been going through has kinda been misleading me… (although this appears to be a valid reading)

To throw in a relevant question here that I’ve been thinking about:
How common are strange names (that you wouldn’t see in real life) in slice of life or “realistic” anime? Do these kinds of shows often stray away from “generic” or overly common names to be more unique?
I’ve noticed when going through the most common family names in Japan that there’s a lot of them I don’t recognize at all despite having watched countless hours of anime, but that’s probably at least partly because of my bad memory
I assume outlandish names are about as common in Japanese fantasy (夜神 月, ㅤ霊幻, ㅤ爆豪) as in the West (Princess Bubblegum, Daenerys Targaryen, Frodo Baggins)
Those, which I thought were written in katakana, but first out of two is probably in hiragana - おこると and コクイ.
But looking at it again - could it be that first kanji is not 見, but 使. And it will go like this then:
こう使えても
おこると
コクイ
ボクは
コクイ doesn’t really make sense though, that’s probably コワイ as someone else said. And that doesn’t look like 使 to me either ![]()
In the audio examples, does anyone else hear the pitch pattern as low-high-high-low or is it just me? Apparently the word should be high-low-low-low.
It’s LHLL if you ask me. As for how come…
If you look at this 大辞林 entry (unfortunately this dictionary isn’t available for free online anymore, but people on Apple devices can download them for free, and it should be available for purchase in some dictionary apps), there are two possible pitch accents for this word. If I’m not wrong, the first pitch accent listed when there are multiple options is usually the traditional pitch pattern, whereas the second one is typically used by younger people, or has emerged more recently. In other words, what you’re hearing is the second pattern (second mora accented) instead of the first (first mora accented), which is what you were expecting.
I see, thanks for that!
(I fooled around here to see what the difference between LHLL and LHHL sounds like and they sound the same to me
)

The WaniKani Pitch Info script is great for spotting the cases where a word has multiple possible pitch accents without having to leave WK btw!


