Are you like me, a rabid Zoider with minimal Japanese skills who looks at all these boxes and manuals and thinks, “Gee, I wonder what all this says? Eh, hell with it, I can see the pictures, lets just get to the building!” Now that I’m old enough to need these here spectacles, I figured I might as well look and act the brainy part and break out the ol’ kanji dictionary and take a hack at it.

So yes, A lot of it was as predictable as I was expecting, but there were also some surprising gems in there. Like a “thank you” note from Takara Tomy. Seriously. How often does that happen? Or a curious double translation where it says “Wild Blast” in katakana (English for Japanese) but “Instinct release” in kanji (Japanese for Japanese). I’ve seen the “wild blast” term used all over but personally find “instinct release” a lot more evocative. Or how about that “Radar organ”?

For that reason, I’ve intentionally left the translations a bit goofy and literal rather than rephrasing everything so it looks right to a native English speaker. They say a lot is lost in translation, and that’s true, but I think you can learn a lot in how languages view things differently by seeing some of the clumsiness of the translation.

Or, ya know, maybe you’re a zoider with pretty good Japanese skills, and you’re going to look at these and roll around on the floor laughing at how bad I am at it…Well, then I’m glad I could bring some humor to your day. Its all good!

Once I figure out how I want it to look, I’ll be posting a full write-up on Kuwaga; not because I particularly like it more than others, it just happened to be what was on my desk at the time. Meanwhile, enjoy my stumbling attempts at translation!