MOTHER 2 vs. EB: Deep Darkness

1st comment! Anywayz, pretty cool Mato.

Does “Makyou” use the “魔” kanji? I see that one a lot in video-games, but I wonder: does it always have a negative connotation? Because I thought it could also be closer to just “strange” or “mystical,” like in an “unknown” sense.

Wasn’t his in-battle name Master Barf, not Master Puke?

Yeah, he rattles off several synonyms for vomit, but the in-battle name is Master Barf.

“Deep Darkness” also brings to mind phrases like “The Heart of Deepest Darkest Africa”, as in discussing some safari expedition into the most uncharted parts of the jungle. It works well in that way.

I didn’t know the poem Casey at the Bat, but knowing it now the translated name makes perfect sense and works well, if not awkwardly named (I’d probably have called it Casey’s Bat, like it formerly belonged to him).

Mato, I stumbled upon an anime called “Sora no Manimani” (it was translated as “At the Mercy of the Sky” on Wikipedia).

Does this “manimani” word have something with the Japanese name of the Mani Mani?

Kris: yeah, the word is 魔境. 魔 has so many connotations it’s crazy. Usually in games and such it winds up getting used for things like sorcery / demon / monster / supernatural and such. Here are some examples of words that start with it: http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/srch/je/%E9%AD%94/m0u/

Sir Ilpalazzo: Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ll have to fix that later. That’s why I wish I had taken screenshots of his in-battle name 😛

BlackSmith: I don’t think they’re related, but you never know. A Japanese fan site I know of tried to dig into it (and ran across that term you found) but in the end they feel it was probably just because the word gives off an “悪魔” (demon/devil) vibe.

Thanks for all the updates recently Mato, I love reading these. 🙂

That’s interesting about the “breathe deep” part. I remember that fortune teller in Food Fight (ep 9?) doing that and it grossed me out.

I think that was where I first learned that onomatopoeia actually 😛

Hey, I remember the word Makyou from DBZ. The Garlic Jr. filler (ugh) had a planet called the Makio Star. I’ve heard Japanese has a word that can refer to both planets and stars, but I’ve never even tried to understand any Japanese.

TBird: Yeah, in Japanese it’s called the Makyou-sei, just as Namek is Namekku-sei. The kanji 星 has “hoshi” as its kun-reading, and “sei” as its on-reading, and can mean either star or planet, depending on context.

Well “star” used to refer to every single one of those points of light in the sky, including the “planets”, a word that just meant “wanderer” or “wandering star”, until eventually Copernicus suggested that Earth itself was a wanderer, so I can see how lots of older languages might have similar double meaning words like that.

I always thought of Manimani referring to money, even as a kid. How would “money” be written in kana? I mean, it’s made out of gold, it makes people selfish and powerful, one of the guys who has it is incredibly rich, and it’s found underground out of the ground like the giant diamond. Money’s the root of all evil, right?

…But I don’t think money makes you hallucinate. Unless maybe you ingest it. Or it’s saying all rich people are junkies.

Of course, now that I think of it, there is the term “Badlands” in English but it refers to a different sort of terrain than Deep Darkness.

But that reminds me of a translation anecdote I heard once: Jules Verne refers to the “mauvaises terres” of the midwestern United States in one book, but a translator got confused and didn’t realize this was a real thing and translated it as “evil country” or something like that.

I feel like the name “The Abyss” would have been a really cool name for the Deep Darkness. It means a dark void, while also having a connotation of Hell.

As for the Casey Bat, it is a good name, but I never knew what the name meant as I didn’t know the poem. I would have preferred a name like “Whiff Bat,” or somehow incorporating the term “whiffer.” That’s what we always called someone who swung hard at pitches and missed.

Doesn’t the Player’s Guide mention, or at least refer to, “Casey at the Bat” in its description of the Casey Bat? I knew of the poem (from Reading Rainbow!) before I played Earthbound, but I’m not sure I would have made the connection without having it pointed out to me. But it does make a lot of sense, and I like the name.

How much of the Return of Belch dialogue is actually there in Japanese?

Does he just say “Hi we’ve fought before. (breathes stinky breathe on you) I changed my name” and that’s it?

Is the whole dialogue about “drown to death in puke” and all that made up for EB? What’s the actual Mother 2 text?

It’s all basically the same besides what I mention there. The English version embellishes it all slightly of course, but that’s to be expected.