#cooler1303

Regular setting: > First date as high school students! The two of them wait by the Hachiko statue but miss each other because they’re facing the other way, which prompts them running around in circles for a while before meeting each other, then a nice sweet date ensues, with clumsy Maki saying things that might hurt Nico but then trying to make it up to her senpai with sweet, bumbling words. So basically a date in Tokyo.

Pearl (Hôzuki Hime)

First-Person Classifier: “Atashi” for singular “I”, “Uchi” for plural “We”

Speech Style: Rude, Shounen-like masculine (sentences end in ”ze, zo, daze”, says “kuu” instead of “taberu”, “nee” instead of “nai”, etc.)  uses with occasional feminine traits (like female-specific slang, or ending sentences in “ne”), energetic, uses a lot of anglicisms and slang. 

How the localization changed her: Not at all. Even if Treehouse ocassionally added lines where Pearl seems more “abrasive” in English than in Japanese if you attempt to “translate literally” (which, as I keep saying, is a stupid idea, always), in context the effect of the original and translated dialogue is identical. If anything, it’s scary how well the way Pearl was written originally meshed with Treehouse’s style of translating. She must have been like a gift from god to them. She comes across exactly the same.

Marina Ida (Îda Mariné) 

First-Person Classifier: “Watashi” in Katakana

Speech Style: She speaks literal textbook Japanese(as in, the sort foreigners learn from textbooks), aside from using a lot of feminine traits to soften it up, sometimes to the point that it almost seems artificial. This is because in the Japanese version it’s made abundantly clear that Inkling isn’t Marina’s first language (it’s Octarian), and while her grammar is perfect, her use of the language is still rather unnatural in places, hence why her speech style is a lot more rigid than Pearl’s and has barely any slang in comparison. Oftentimes words will also be written in Katakana when they should be in Hiragana or Kanji which, according to the devs, usually either means that she’s mispronouncing them, or saying them in Octarian by accident.  However, contrary to what you may think that doesn’t make her sound “dumb”, since her grammar is impeccable and she still uses a lot of “big words”, it still does her intelligence justice. If anything, it makes her sound cute, humble and reserved when she’s searching for the right words. Generally, she comes across as a smart, polite and humble young immigrant. 

How the localization changed her: Okay, so, while Japanese Marina has *some* sass (like, she does occasionally tease Pearl about her height and inability to ride a bike without training wheels), the localization cranked it WAY up to eleven. In Japanese, Marina’s teasing never goes further than “ahaha, that’s so silly, Senpai!”, while in English she often roasts the living daylight out of her partner.  This is something Marina would never do in Japanese; not because she can’t, but because it goes against her own standards for herself. She’s trying extremely hard to be supportive to everyone she meets, even if it sometimes makes her internally facepalm (that comes out in Octo Expansion as well).That doesn’t mean Marina doesn’t have any opinions and never voices her thoughts, in fact she’s very quick to disagree or point it out when Pearl is wrong, she just never is rude about it. She just has very good manners, I guess. Another thing is that in Japanese, not only does Marina call Pearl “Senpai”, she’s also a self-admitted fangirl of hers, openly admiring Pearl’s self-esteem and often saying out loud that she needs to try and be more confident and outspoken like that herself, even if she thinks that Pearl can sometimes way overdo it. I guess, in a way, English Marina is what Japanese Marina wants to be like in the future. So maybe you could make the excuse that English Splatoon 2 is set later than the Japanese? But that’s a stretch, really. 

Additional details:

Marina and Pearl both love video games and have regular gaming nights together. One of the few things that gets Marina angry at Pearl in the Japanese version in Pearl saying she might cancel game night or forgetting about it. 

The most sassy Marina got in Japanese was when she responded to Pearl saying that she likes shopping for clothing at the Reef with “Weird, I didn’t think they carried XXXS sized clothes.” 

W-What kinda question is that?

Please wait warmly as experiments are conducted to get you the most accurate answer possible!

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Nico tops: Maki (Sekihara Umina propaganda)

Mutual: Maki, Kotori, Rin (conditional), Nozomi, Hanayo, Umi