#german release

German DVD Edition of the Wotakoi OVAs.

Lobby card for German release of "Limelight" 1952

Calvero holding some kippers (small oily fish).

Anything Goes, 1956 

with Bing Crosby, Zizi Jeanmaire, Mitzi Gaynor and Donald O’Connor

Volume 1 in German. The first print run comes with some stickers. A bit on the more pricey side at 8€ (incl. tax) with just 125p. I guess, it is a bit of a niche audience within a niche genre within a nice media category. The typographic elements (the title, volume numbers, author name, publisher logo, etc) on both front and back cover have a gloss effect you'd see when held against light.

The translation is internally very sound on its own. There is only two things I picked up when I was comparing it to my memory after reading it. One was that it removes the usage of the term "flag" that I remember as rather prevalently repeated in JP edition doesn't seem to show up here at all (there is only one mention of a "trigger"). The older JP chapers on pixiv have mostly vanished into the void tho, so can't compare anymore. Maybe it'll show up yet or it keeps using "trigger")

The second involves one of my favorite punchlines from early on:

Japanese:

Scanlation:

German:

And so the trap was already sprung. As soon as they get home, they'll come at each other like wild animals, because they won't even make it to the bedroom. He had no chance.

ダシにされる as defined by Weblio's dictionary means "to be used for the profit of others". (It comes from the ingredient dashi in cooking. It's a sort of Japanese fond, and always just there to support the main flavor of the dish rather than standing in the spotlight itself.) That's the main punchline of this chapter, that Mob-kun got used. Clearly he doesn't like it, but as other instances will prove he's still going to be willing to choose this, because being that Mob-kun used by the narrative for somebody else's romance is still better than falling into one yourself.

The scanlation nails that in its translation. However, it makes itself entirely clunky with how it chooses to phrase the second line. That one is a good showcase of how JP can and will pack even entire phrases, expressions and factual info dumps, actual quotations or kinda quotation looking thinking into something isolated on its own and then grammatically treat the whole thing the same as a simple noun. These constructions are often quite a challenge to unwind in Western languages. (Break it up into multiple sentences? Make side clauses at the risk of convoluted long sentences with commas? Actually use quotation marks?) The scanlation version in that sense doesn't make particularly any sense at all grammatically. It also completely ignores the parody style of censoring one letter of the icky word. If kept, this should have been something like "s*x", but this admittedly just looks weird typographically in manga font.

The German version opts out for language cohesion by breaking it up into separate sentences. It's also using known idiomatic expressions as a replacement of the pseudo-censoring and enhances the cynic commentary vibe with some more such expressions and mood markers. - That bit is quite great, and reading it on its own entirely fits the plot and joke just fine.

But it still entirely removes the ダシにされた, the bit that Mob-kun was being used as a mere support ingredient, and with it vanishes that early deadpan sardonicism that he knows it. (Before he later doubles down and starts to systematically use and explain to the reader how playing along to avoid trouble.)

It's nothing that really gets so much lost on the whole, because it shows up again, but that just happened to be one of my favorite lines.

....

Me, a few minutes later.

When you make the mistake and browse a few pages before that punchline accidentally and see something more:

Japanese:

People will think of us as strange...! Everyone's indifferent to their surroundings. Nobody notices anything, and nobody cares. I do. I'm totally bothered by your groping play.

Scanlation:

German:

People will notice something [if you go on] Never mind them, as if anyone's interested. Just relax, nobody's noticing anything. But I do. [Naughty] Plays like these are quite conspicuous.

I mean, nothing to note, if you don't actually compare it next to each other. It's internally very sound and if you didn't know better it's perfectly fine. But the German version kinda does leave stuff out again, does it?

.....