flemmings | (no subject)

Whoever altered this sign is my kind of person. Extracted from underground guerilla signs in the tube.

Meanwhile in the 'don't know whether or laugh or cry dep't, a novel about steampunk Japan misses the mark to hit fanboi lows.

"Let's start with my primary nails-on-a-chalkboard issue, the usage of the words "hai" and "sama", shall we? Here are a few examples of these words in action in Stormdancer:

Sama:

"That is more than fair." [...] "Ameterasu (J note: the goddess who shines on candy) bless your kindness, sama."
"I want for nothing. Thank you, sama."
"He slew Boukyaku, young sama. The sea dragon who consumed the island of Takaiyama."
"Forgiveness, sama."
"Apologies, sama."
...
Hai:

"These cloudwalkers were men of the kitsune clan, hai?"
"The solitude is pleasant, hai?"
"I can get into the trees, hai."
"Just deck-hands on a sky-ship, hai?"

Which is a pity, because Japanese steampunk immediately makes me think of Kunitoshi woodblocks of trains and ships set in a Kiyochika-like atmosphere of dark and rain that feels like darkest London of the 1890s.

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(winces a lot) At least I now know to avoid that book.

And I hope that if I ever do anything like that, or similar, someone will rap my knuckles and point it out.

I can't see you ever doing anything even remotely that egregious. But why did no one rap *this* guy's knuckles? Why didn't he notice, in his reading of Akira or whatever, that -sama is always attached to a name? Purblind and tone deaf, I say.

Phew. I am relieved. (I'm just paranoid, that's all.)

And yes, one would expect someone to have caught this before it went through to publication. It's hard to be that purblind and tone-deaf these days. (Or at least I would like to think so.)

What ... the ... ? Back in my fangirl days, before I ever cracked the covers of Nakama, it was very obvious even in the "guide to sailor moon japanese omg kawaiiiiii" pages that -sama is a suffix.

grumble grumble.

Well, you can't expect a *guy* to be reading guide to sailor moon japanese omg kawaiiiiii webpages, now can you? ^_^ The ones geared to men are all about what this or that gundam can do, and don't mention language at all.

An excellent point, and makes perfect sense. XD (Sigh)

Japanese steampunk sounds awesome, though somehow I have managed to miss all the homegrown versions. Surely some anime/OVA/movie has gone there. Video games don't quite count, but if they did, there's FFVII and to a lesser extent, FFIX.

There's an argument that Fullmetal Alchemist is steampunk, and since its ethos is Japanese in spite of the 'foreign' setting, I'll call it Japanese steampunk. Ghibli's version of Howl's Moving Castle is totally steampunk but it may be in an 'hommage to the west' way (not because of DWJ's novel, mind you.) Not sure if Legend of Blue Water is the same: the examples I can think of are distinctly influenced by or playing off of western steampunk, which is probably only to be expected.

I should think video games count just as much as anime myself.

Try "Steamboy."

Oh thanks. That looks interesting.