In the Wiki the pronunciation is given as オーナインシステム, so I don’t see 鬼 anywhere. ナイン is very different from に.
Is this pun confirmed? Do you know for certain that is the intent behind it? Because I don’t see it at all
I think people definitely know how the numbers are pronounced in English, but 語呂合わせ/puns using the two native readings (or abbreviations of those) are also very common.
For example things like 4649 = よろしく
I’m aware the original dub for Evangelion added this line to Ritsuko where she says that “As in Oni, a Japanese devil” and all English sources quote it since then, but I must agree with everyone else that it sounds like quite of a jump.
Not only the second dub removed that line altogether, but Japanese internet seems to have nothing on it. Anno and Yamashita have both declared in interviews that Onis were one of the inspirations for the Eva’s design, so that’s definitely a recurring theme. But saying that the name オーナイン is a reference to that feels a bit of a stretch.
It could be the case it indeed passed through their minds while writing Evangelion, but I don’t think the average Japanese native thinks of オニ when they hear オーナイン. Not only the ナイン is clearly different, but Japanese usually perceive these prolongations as different words.
Considering Tristan MacAvery himself went as far as saying the original dub was based on fan translations, I wouldn’t give it much credit.
It would help to know more about the game this is from, but anyway, I did a quick search and found a blog containing the texts of other similar inscriptions from this game (I didn’t check what the game was about) and I read a few more inscriptions to get a feel. If you’re sure that the speaker is the spy, and is the one who has entered Hell, then my interpretation would be ‘he cannot die while on an espionage mission’. In other words, somewhat more literally, he ‘cannot do an espionage line-of-duty death’. Otherwise, like you said, it doesn’t make much sense. Therefore, we have to interpret 役 as referring to his job, not him as a person.
I’m presuming that since you managed to make a guess, you know that ぬ is an old equivalent of ない. I think that a lot of this game attempts to sound archaic without going into full-blown Classical Japanese (e.g. I saw 求むる in another excerpt, which I believe is the noun-modifying form of 求む, the classical version of 求める).
The game is GetsuFumaDen (月風魔伝). There’s not much to the story, but the basic gist is that you’re part of an old family tasked with going down to hell to kill a bunch of demons (the 魑魅魍魎 from the text) generation through generation. While travelling there, you sometimes come across messages from your ancestors that were there before you - the pic I posted was one of them.
I’m pretty sure that’s the case since these messages are not interconnected, so the only context to go by is the content of the message itself. Also, it opens up by saying he received an order to investigate the leader of the demons.
Right, I get it now. I was stuck thinking 諜報役 meant the spy (aka the speaker). Thanks!
Yeah, it’s supposed to take place in ancient Japan. So much so that it looks like you’re playing an Ukiyo painting. It’s pretty cool.
So I came across this word, 素質値, while reading and I’m pretty sure it refers to skill points or talent values but I’m at a loss as to how it’s pronounced.
I suppose all on’yomi like そしつち and that fits with how 経験値 is read but does anyone know for sure?
I would say the nuance is different. 全力 is kind of similar to “best effort”, but it’s more about pouring all one’s energy/strength into doing something.
To add on to what’s been said, you’ll notice that 全力 is often used in phrases like 全力で戦う=‘to fight will all one’s strength’. Now, if we concentrate on the English translation, that doesn’t tell us much, but if we look at the Japanese, we might notice that 全力 is being used as a noun here, coupled with the means particle で. That means that 全力 is not simply ‘all one’s strength’, but a single word representing that mass of strength as a concept, and not so much as a quantity. It’s a type of strength, not an amount of strength, one’s ‘all-strength’, one’s full strength, the maximum of one’s capacities. That’s why it doesn’t make much sense to say the equivalent of ‘my 全力 is gone’, because that can never happen: your 全力 is the limit of the power or effort you can invest into anything at a given point, and therefore by definition is something that’s always present; what changes is the specific quantity of strength that corresponds to based on an external scale. (Perhaps more intuitively, by a similar token, you’d never say ‘I’ve lost my full strength’ in English, right?)
What’s the best word for saying something has certain functionality in a digital context? For example, my Kindle has a built-in dictionary or Chrome has spell check. Honestly, I’m tempted to just use ある, but surely there’s a more precise word.
To be completely honest, I’m not even sure I know the best word for physical capabilities either, like a phone having a camera or flashlight. I originally wanted to say 備わる, but after double checking the definition I’m leaning against that. (It seemed that 備わる would be more for things like my room including a ceiling fan.)
