Be my cucumber

Love or desire? Connections or severance?

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What are brothers, really

Are connections really worth it in the end?

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A journey can mean many things to many different people

But not every departure can end with a smile.

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We got some Yuri Kuma vibes going on here

Tooi cutest boi.

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What if…

What would you give up?

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This idol wants the C

Not all families are made the same. I also just realized that I think I haven’t been mentioning that all the kappa zombies’ names are puns on their desires. There’s nothing deeper than that, just saying exactly what they want. There’s also a minor detail of the name of the building the event is at, where 5656 is read as ゴロゴロ, the sound of rumbling thunder.

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You can bet I would

Thus, the importance of what is said and what is not becomes clear. We’re really in the meat of things now, and the untranslatable puns™ keep getting more difficult to integrate easily. With all these visual metaphors, subtle hints, and unknowable foreshadowing, how is one to keep up? Well, that’s just par for Ikuhara’s course. Couple things to mention this time.

Tooi and Chikai

Their names mean far and near, respectively.

I want to soba you

And here we go. Soba (蕎麦) is buckwheat noodles, and the food shown throughout the episode. Soba (側) means next to, so “そばにいたい” means “I want to stay by you”. We did our best, but regardless of how so badly we wanted to integrate it, it’s nigh impossible. In other words, just learn moon.

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Erratum: The episode title was the major fix here. It was supposed to be “I’m not by your side” instead of “I want to stay by you”. While that may sound like the opposite (and it is), in Japanese it’s the difference of only a single character. They did a last minute swap on me and I missed it.

I’d take Nee-chan fishing

What secrets will be leaked this time? The answer might surprise you. I also have a handful of TL and culture notes because Japanese is a weird language. These are minor spoilers so be aware.

Kawausoiya Song

Okay, I should’ve done this one last week. “Soiya soiya” is just the chant that’s used during certain Japanese religious festivals, it doesn’t particularly have a meaning. However, here it’s been mixed together with kawauso, which means otter, and of course represents the antagonists. So it’s basically just a pun.

Keith, kiss, and kiss

All homonyms. Keith’s name sounds like kiss, and the common Japanese name of the sillago fish is also kiss. It is not, however, the same as the kissing fish, known as kissing gourami. His full name, Keith Mottoclay, is written properly as キスもっとくれ, meaning “give me more kisses”.

Sanmai Fillet

Another word deriving from Sarazanmai. A sanmai fillet (of fish) is when it is sliced into three parts—two of each side, and one in the middle containing the spine. How this relates to kissing people, only Ikuhara knows. I think he’s just going for the wordplay.

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Edit: Whoops, forgot something. If you look closely at the phone (around 6 minutes), they misspell Jinnai Otone’s name as Jinnanai. No idea what’s going on there.

My precious person is also voiced by Kugyuu

You thought episode 1 was crazy? Well think again. We should’ve probably gotten this out yesterday (winkwink), but circumstances and all that. In any case, the story and development is moving right along, maybe even faster than usual with less repetition than Ikuhara normally uses by this point. The only point of note I want to comment on is the following: The Luxury Fish that they feed Nyantarou have the term “zanmai” in it, just another little reference to the title. Once again, be sure to watch this episode until the very end.

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