三ツ星カラーズ — Week 11 Discussion (ABBC)

三ツ星カラーズ Week 11: Pages 77–85

We’ve reached part one of the for-real-this-time last split-across-two-weeks chapter of the volume!

Start Date: 22nd of January

Home Thread: Link
Last Week: Link
Next Week: Link

Page Numbers Guide

Due to a general lack of page numbers, it can be difficult to know which page you’re asking a question on. You can use the thumbnails below to see at a glance which page number each is.

Thumbnails with page numbers for this week's reading. (Spoiler warning!)

Vocabulary List

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
  • Join the conversation — it’s fun!

Participation

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m planning to catch up later
  • I’m no longer reading

0 voters

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

Vital Information

  • :panda_face:
  • :tiger:

0 voters

Disclaimer

Be prepared for Sacchan’s puns.

8 Likes
Looking at page 80...

…I want to trade zoos with Ueno.

i-080x

6 Likes

I thought $30 for the Vancouver zoo was asinine… My goodness.

3 Likes

かわいい :elephant: not to be confused with かわい :elephant:

9 Likes

Looks like someone misread the OP and thought this chapter was going to be the first we read in one week and continued to make entries into the vocab sheet past what we are actually supposed to read this week. who is this dumby?!:roll_eyes:
I can do it, but would it make sense to remove the extraneous entries?

3 Likes

I wouldn’t remove the vocab, but just insert a line indicating the end of this week’s vocab and the start of next week’s, like in previous iterations of the vocab sheets.

5 Likes

Done and done.

4 Likes

Join us! かわいそうなぞう Reading Club!

Physical: Amazon

Book info (Japanese): Wikipedia

Book info (English): Wikipedia

Book Summary:

“Faithful Elephants” (literally “The Poor Elephants") is a children’s story by the children’s literature writer Yukio Tsuchiya. It is based on the true story of three elephants, John, Tonky and Wanly, that were put down as beasts of prey at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during the Pacific War (Greater East Asia War).

EDIT - this is not a real book club…

8 Likes

It is a real book though! After reading Ogawa Mimei and now seeing this, I wonder whether there are any happy stories for Japanese children to read growing up? :neutral_face:

9 Likes

So, uh… yeah. This chapter’s in Ueno Zoo.

For some more specific locations:

Closest I’ve ever come to actually entering Ueno Zoo is doing a raid in Pokemon Go at a gym that’s inside the zoo, but close enough to reach from outside the fence. :slightly_smiling_face: Though, looking at my photos now, it was closed that day anyway…

According to the zoo’s website, the zoo has been closed indefinitely since the 11th. New lockdown, perhaps? I’d heard things were getting worse in Japan, but I hadn’t heard they’d locked down.

Here’s how that board looked in 2017. (This manga was first published in 2015.)

You can buy an annual pass at Ueno Zoo for less than that…

Taronga Zoo here in Sydney costs $44.10 AUD for an adult ( = $32 USD or $40 CAD), though for a while you could enter on your birthday for $1. They ended that offer back in 2020, sadly. Before my birthday. I was all ready to go visit once we’d gotten out of our first lockdown…

7 Likes

The good news is this helps things out for next week =D

3 Likes

Page 79, Panel 2, Sachan

かわいそうなんだぞう

Wasn’t sure if this was two sentences or one; struggling with なんだ
poor <なんだ> elephant

Page 80, Panel 2, Sachan

ということで今日は

Struggling with ということ (feels like it’s ‘again’)
Again, not sure if it’s one or two sentences.
Is that the topic particle?

Page 81, Panel 5, Sachan

パンモロだー

Couldn’t find this, bread moro ?

Page 83, Panel 4, Kotoha

この街でかなり大きい人といったら

Struggling with the といったら

この街でかなり大きい人 - quite big people in this town
いったら - if I say, when I say

when I say there are quite big people in this town…

ah… literally the next panel helps

if I say quite a big person in this town…

漫画(まんが)先生(せんせい)手伝(てつだ)ってくれてありがとうございます🙏

7 Likes

The whole sentence actually begins in the previous panel:
このゾウってなかわいそうなんだそう。

“It’s that this elephant is pitiful”

なんだ is なのだ, where な is basically a version of だ that can connect to の.
I suspect (but I’m not confident) that the last ぞう is the sentence ending ぞ that adds emphasis, and not the animal (it is also spelled two different ways in the sentence). They play with ぞう a lot for the whole of this story.

Again, the sentence is completed in the next panel:
ということで今日は動物園に行こう!

“Which means that today we shall go to the zoo!”

ということ takes what has been previously said, quotes it, and makes it into a noun (こと).

Some pun I still haven’t identified :slight_smile:

9 Likes

thank so much.

Just when I’ve gotten the hang of sentences rolling over lines, then conjoined bubbles, now its separate bubbles in different panels… :man_facepalming:

5 Likes

Sooo, a quick image search answered this particular question… In case you don’t want to come across nsfw images, I’ll just say that モロ means “conspicuously, openly, completely”, and パン can be short for パンツ… A rather unfortunate thing to shout at the zoo.
Edit: I could have just searched in weblio and have avoided the images… :roll_eyes:

といったら is apparently used for emphasis, to express admiration, extremes etc. Some explanation and example sentences here.
So, “such a big person in this town…”

10 Likes

We all learn that lesson the hard way at some point in our life. :wink:

4 Likes

I tried, but those puns are not easy for me! Thanks for all the discussion so far. A few more questions:


Page 80, Panel 1

悲しい話にギャグはさむのやめてよぉ

I read this as “stop making gags at a sad story”. What is 「さむの」 here? Looking at it again, 「さむ」 could be “cold”, as in “about gagging in sad stories, stop being cold”, but I’m not sure how 「の」 fits in with that.

Page 81, Panel 4

略さないでっ

Is she saying “don’t abbreviate it” because the previous bubble said かわい instead of かわいそう (almost saying “cute elephant” I assume)? Or is it “that’s not abbreviated”, as in “the elephants actually are cute, that’s not abbreviated”.

Page 83, Panel 4

笹だけに

Literally I think it says “it’s just bamboo grass”, but it seems to be a pun since in the next panel さっちゃん seems satisfied with herself and ことは is laughing. ゆい doesn’t get the joke and neither do I!

I’m also not sure what the に is doing at the end either.


Thanks in advance!

6 Likes

It’s はさむ, definition 2. の is functioning as a nominaliser.

The previous bubble said かわいゾウ instead of かわいそうなゾウ - that’s what’s being abbreviated.

She’s compressed さっさと into 笹. But yeah, it’s not all that funny.

8 Likes

I have to say that ichi.moe really is having a hard week with this chapter, sometimes it feels like it contributes to misunderstanding rather than assisting with it.

being a case in point

5 Likes

One of the graded readers is the story of Tonky… I cried

It’s still difficult now… :cry: I try not to think about it

4 Likes