Today we'll be looking at another one of my favorite mangas, and it is unquestionably my favorite love story involving alien babies who float around, Daa! Daa! Daa!
Daa! Daa! Daa! (UFO Baby) Volume 4 by Kawamura Mika
This is another one of those mangas I bought long before I could read Japanese. I spent hours looking up kanjis just trying to figure out what was going on. Since I didn't know how to use a kanji dictionary, it turned out that looking at pictures was really my safest bet.
But seriously... I love this show. So much so that I have most of the DVDs (which are really hard to get a hold of), the manga, the sequel manga, a few shitajiki, and some postcards. I don't even buy that much for shows I really like. That's the level of love I have for this series.
Daa! Daa! Daa! is named for the sounds babies make. If we were to literally translate the title, it would probably be "Goo goo ga ga" but that seems rather silly. In English, it's usually referred to as as UFO Baby, which is a bit odd because it's never been officially released in America. If it ever gets slated to be translated for the United States, I pray fervently that I would be the one to do it. I've read it a million times, and I could do it in an instant!
The story is really silly. So silly it's embarassing telling people about it because it's hard to get them to believe in the fact that it is great after I explain the plot.
It's like Dean Koontz's Watchers.That book legitmately scared me, but when I try to tell people it's about a genetically altered baboon bent on murdering a super intelligent dog because it felt the dog got all the love, I just get funny looks! I can sense you're doing it right now! Stop it! It's really scary!
In any case, the story revolves around the blossoming love affair of Miyu and Kanata. Miyu's parents go away to America to work for NASA leaving Miyu with a family friend who's son is Kanata. Said family friend is a Buddhist priest, and he is offered a once in a lifetime chance to study with a guru in India. Miyu, unable to stand the guilt trip, consents to let him go and finds herself sharing a house with his surly son.
And yeah... they're fourteen.
So, it's sounds horrible so far right? What if I told you that night, a UFO crashed in the temple grounds, and from the craft emerged a floating baby and its babysitter, a giant talking cat. Now it's fun! The baby thinks Miyu and Kanata are his parents, and Miyu and Kanata can't stand the thought of making it feel sad, so they go along with the charade as best they can. The whole premise of the show is a comedy of errors as they try to hide the baby's alien origins from everyone, and they fact they are not related to one another and living together in the same house. It's fun. It's cute. And, it has a satisfying ending.
But on to grammar!
I'm a little confused about MAI because I thought it was used primarily by old men. That's why my friend Aki told me, in any case, and I don't like to think her a liar. But in the example I have, a fourteen year old girl is clearly using it.
- 「少女まんが」じゃあるまいしっ。。。
- "Shoujo manga" jyaaru mai shi...
So, the context of this scene is that Miyu had a very embarrassing dream where Hanakomachi Kirita confessed to liking her and moved in for a kiss. She's still very much bothered by it at breakfast time. Kanata, who is consistently perceptive in the story, states that this is because she saw him without his glasses and she realized his true beauty and has now fallen in love with him
Our example sentence is her rejection of this idea.
MAI, in this situation, means ないだろう, and I put that in hiragana because it's not an easy concept to translate. I figure it you're at JLPT II level, you know what DAROU means and I don't have to struggle to define it as "an ambiguous phrase to imply that one isn't necessarily sure, usually used to soften the phrase and make one sounds less jack-assy". I should put that in a dictionary....
The translation, then, would be:
- This isn't a romance comic!!!
As I said, this is not really used very often. I want to believe in Aki when she tells me old men use it. Or, I could believe a website that says it's for formal writing. Both, sadly, seem to be not be in favor of cute little teenager Miyu using it. Above, I mentioned that it usually means NAI DAROU, which is only really half true. It's a negative form, for sure. You can use with a pre-MASU form to say someone will not do something with a hint of "probably" in there.
I'm going to have to go on a much more extensive search to really figure this out. Stay tuned, eh?
Isn't it generally accepted that manga/anime use unusual terms and are kind of making up their own version of Japanese, though? It might be a slip from the middle-aged man who wrote the script:P.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with you, but the whole point of her character is to be a normal middle school girl. I suppose she could be making her own language, but I'm not really sure. I think I'll have to ask my friend about it. As for a middle aged man slip up, it's unlikely. Usually mangakas write their own scripts, and since Mika Kawamura is a girl, it's not likely she would make that mistake :)
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