[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER KABUTO - EPISODE 03

So, right out of the gate, I echo Die's sentiments about the prison break sequence. Absolutely wonderful both for its raw comedy and for how much it illustrates Tendou and Kagami's characters, further refining the parallels thing the show has been doing. Tendou is a character I neither love nor hate (sorry Kurona), but when I see a scene like this, I start grinning, and then when the moment keeps escalating, I start grinning even harder. The first genuine emotion I've felt during this rewatch. Loved how even the very end, with Tendou telling Kagami to show his ZECT's power, makes it clear everything he does is part of the plan. Abandoning him there isn't about disrespecting Kagami; he just wants to test the limits of ZECT's ability to cover strange happenings up.

I also feel compelled to complain about translation errors even though I retired from that at the start of the Blade thread. The instincts just haven't left me, I'm sorry.

Earthly's scrubs of TV-Nihon's subs seem to be the kind that are mostly focused on things like removing honorifics rather than fixing the actual translation errors TV-N so frequently made back in the day. I don't doubt that this is still an upgrade, mind you (you'll see the proof in a second), but I noticed in the second episode some odd choices of phrasing, and now with some straight gibberish in episode 3, it's got me all tensed up. I don't know if I'll be spending the rest of the series doing this, but for now, I wanna set the record straight on a surprisingly important subplot in this episode.

That line up top from Tendou? Not what he's saying at all. He's responding to Juka asking what the new thing he's waiting for is now that the thing he was waiting for in the premiere (becoming Kabuto) has happened, and the response is a call back to the earlier scene of him stealing Kagami's mackerel. Kagami said he'd get Hiyori the best mackerel there is as thanks for making him the dish, to which Tendou enters the scene by replying that he'd better get Matsuwa Mackerel's Marutoku then. This is a reference to a specific (presumably pricy?) brand in Japan that is considered so high quality it's also referred to as "golden mackerel", something Tendou even explains in his dialogue. Maybe half of this is translated correctly.



But hey, Earthly's not to blame here, because they've merely inherited the mistake from TV-N, who seem to think there was a pun being made here.



(Trout is also "masu" by the way,)

And from TV-N's perspective, you know, I feel for them. The show is drawing on something very particular here, and you're not always going to have time to go figure all this out translating a show week by week. Heck, I needed a visual aid to figure out that the "Marutoku" thing was referring to a mark on the packaging that is literally the kanji for special (特/toku) in a circle (maru). As for where I got that visual aid? I'll mention that next time if I have to.

ANYWAY! Sorry for venting on everybody! I don't have much of a good answer for the question this episode. I pretty much always love a good protagonist duo, but some of my favorite Rider shows have them, and some don't, so there's no real hard pattern there. There's obviously merits to either, but I guess I prefer the duos as a concept?