Extra Translation Notes for 9th Touhou M-1 Grand Prix Watching the full video before reading this is recommended if you'd like to avoid spoilers. SPOILERS BELOW --[YuuTen Paradise]-- "Pistils at Dawn" Their team alias in Japanese is "sekka shouryuu" (lit. "folding flowers, laughing willows"). This is a play on the Japanese idiom "sekka hanryuu" (lit. "folding flowers, climbing willows"). The original idiom is a euphemism for spending time in a red-light district, as it used to be common for willows to be planted in them, so much so that one of the ways to refer to a red-light district literally means "willow flower". --[Drunken Miko'chu!☆]-- "chu" is an onomatopoeia for a kiss. "Return of the Heroine" is a parody of "Return of Ultraman". Suika: "I'm gonna fight the 4D Killer Combo." The 4D Killer Combo is an opponent in the manga Kinnikuman. Suika: "Stupid." What Suika actually means here in Japanese is "I'm doing a fool act." But given how fast she conveys this information, there's really only room for one or two words of subtitle before the next line starts, so it was changed a bit. --[Drunken Miko'chu!☆ Judging]-- Rinnosuke: "No additives." The line he originally says is "junmaishu" which is sake made from just rice and yeast. --[MikoKoro Household]-- Kokoro: "I'd be getting the same yearly salary as Bill Gates." In the original line, Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank Group (a holding/investment company) is name-dropped. Kokoro: "I'm Guy Fieri!" In the original line, Hikomaro, a TV personality and food reviewer, is name-dropped. Kokoro's over-the-top reaction to the parfait is a parody of Ajiou (Taste Emperor) from the anime Mister Ajikko. --[Wing Beast Instrugentle]-- The Japanese name for this team is "Choujuu Kigaku", a play on "Choujuu Gigaku". "Gigaku" refers to a type of masked performance and "Kigaku" roughly means "Pleasing Music" which signifies a stark contrast to the way Choujuu Gigaku normally performs. "-tsute" Kyouko's "tsute" that she adds to some words was left untranslated to make the dialogue work, but to explain what this actually means, "[sentence]-tsute" is an informal way say that you are quoting someone, akin to saying "They were like, [quote]." Kyouko's "habit" of adding it to sentences refers to her nature of echoing words as a yamabiko. --[Amanojack!]-- Seija: "Burden of Regret Walk Fist!" This is a technique from "Fist of the North Star". --[MikoKoro Household FINALS]-- On the blackboard to the right of Miko, a blank date is written and the day of the week is "tanuki". It also says that Cirno and Koishi have class duty. Cirno's name is written incorrectly. The first character is written backwards making it another character entirely; it would be like writing "d" instead of "b". Miko: "Ah, looks like Nue is a NUE student." Miko says "Nuen" in the Japanese dialogue. It's a sound sometimes used to represent the sound of Nue wailing due to fanart. Kokoro: "Hell Ears has just scolded me." "Hell Ears" is actually an expression in Japanese that refers to one who overhears a lot of secrets and is privy to gossip. In the Japanese dialogue, Kokoro refers to Miko as "Hell Ears", but this is a normal phrase used in Japanese. In the subtitles, the line is written such that it sounds like Kokoro is calling Miko "Hell Ears" as a strange nickname. There isn't really a clean English equivalent to the term that carries the same meaning/feeling, so it was translated extremely literally because it ended up being funnier than any attempt at a more accurate translation. Kokoro: "This one comes from Daihon Sawajiri from the Outside World." Daihon Sawajiri is the person who's known as Healing Lily White. "CSI: Classroom Scene Investigation" The original TV program being parodied is "Gekiroku: Keisatsu Micchaku 24ji!!", an infrequently aired police documentary. --[Wing Beast Instrugentle FINALS]-- Mystia: "So it's just a snake, a dress shirt, and legs!" Parody of the song "Heya to Y-Shirt to Watashi / Our Room, Your Dress Shirt, and Me" Kyouko: "TV Tokyo might" TV Tokyo is a TV station that is basically known as the "anything goes" broadcaster. It has lax rules and generally low standards about what can be broadcasted on it. --------------------------- Kyouko: "A singing contest." Mystia: "Can they even sing well?" Kyouko: "If a horse has a hoarse throat then it can't sing well..." The format of this joke was modified quite a bit in English because there aren't really any English words that can replicate the original. Here are the original lines, worded a bit unnaturally to explain the joke: Relevant words: Uma = Horse Umasa = Skillfullness (i.e. Amount of Skill) Umai = Skilled Kyouko: "They'll have a singing skillfullness (umasa) competition." Mystia: "Would they be skilled (umai) at singing?" Kyouko: "Horse (uma) and skilled (umai)... overlap and it's the funniest thing ever..." The original exchange is that Kyouko creates a pun between "uma (horse)" and "umai (skilled)" which doesn't come off as intentional or funny, so she just explains the joke with no punchline. --[All Judgments]-- Here's a question: How much did you pay attention to the judges' scores? Did they feel unusually low this tournament? Did you happen to notice that they all seem to end in a 9? Or maybe you didn't notice anything or think much of it. There is a quirk to the judges' scores that's pretty ambiguous at first but may slowly become more apparent to Japanese-speaking viewers as more scores come out if they're paying attention. However, it's almost completely lost to English speakers because one would have to be able to understand something that was lost in translation in addition to realizing that something is going on in the first place. Until Seija is gone, every judge's score is flipped from what they inputted. For example, these were the scores for YuuTen Paradise's manzai: Futo - 69 Byakuren - 99 Shinmyoumaru - 59 Raiko - 79 Eiki - REC🔴 (with white on the outside) However, the scores they actually inputted were: Futo - 96 Byakuren - 99 Shinmyoumaru - 95 Raiko - 97 Eiki - White (with her usual white-filled circle) They key to figuring this out lies in Eiki's scores which are all ciphers in which the syllables of the words were flipped around. The Japanese words for white and black are "shiro" and "kuro" respectively. Eiki's scores are meant to be the following: REC🔴 (with a white outline) = white (circle with white inside) Roshia (Russia) = "shiro" (white) Roshi (filter paper) = "shiro" (white) Roku = "kuro" (black) Keishi (execution) = Shikei (capital punishment) This is the reason Eiki gets annoyed with Rinnosuke when he complains about the "REC🔴" score. It's also why Byakuren, who would love nothing more than to give 100 points to every team, only gave them 99. --------------------------- Disclaimer / Clarification: This document was voluntarily put together by the translator/subtitler. It was written based on my personal understanding and interpretation of the dialogue. It's possible that I've missed some jokes or references. This is not an exhaustive list of every joke--only ones obscured by language or cultural barriers. To demonstrate what I mean (and serve as a bonus for those who didn't get the reference), here is an example of a reference that wouldn't normally be noted: At the very beginning, when the judges are being introduced, Rinnosuke remarks, "Show No Mercy, Myouren Temple!" for Byakuren's introduction. "Show No Mercy" is a combat tactic that can be assigned to companions in the Dragon Quest series.