1 I always thought it was "urya!", which may actually be borrowed from Russians in 1905, because the traditional "banzai!" was harder to anounciate in combat.

2 You may be right. What does it mean in Russian?

3 I think it's the same stem as English "hurray". It means nothing as a word, and is only used to yell out, when troops charge. Also, 3-time yell "ura" is used in reply when a superior officer congratulates ranks.

4 It's probably "Uryah!" or something.
Arie doesn't work grammatically.

1 Those looked more like rooms from love hotels, and sure enough, the pictures were all copied from the Wired review of a book titled, appropriately enough, Love Hotels. The anime bondage room photo is one of the pages in the Amazon preview.

-j

2 OK, that makes a lot of sense. I can't really imagine a lot of those being in real brothels, but for love hotels it's completely plausible.

1 I only hear "yabai" and "ia/ya da". Not watched the two listed examples though.

2 Sad thing is that if it weren't for the (supposedly) cleavage down there, I would think "ugh, bishounen". It's a good pose, though.

3

I better explain the joke.

This is what she normally looks like, in the right foreground. It's Miss Maria, and she is by far the oldest of the otome. I would guess she's in her 60's.

It would seem that this is the first time in many, many years that she's used her robe, and apparently when she does her body changes to the age she was when she first became an otome.

That's how some of the other characters reacted to her.

4 By the way, the rejuvination isn't permenant. In Mai Otome Zwei she's shown back in her normal gray-haired form, both before and after she again uses her robe.

5 You're correct. 'yaba' is a shortening of 'yabai' that's very common.

6 I wonder if Sanae Sanemori can transform at will and if it costs her anything.

7 By the way, thanks for the great dictionary link!

8 They also short "dekai" like this often.

9 So is Mai Otome overall worth watching?

10

So is Mai Otome overall worth watching?

I didn't watch it all. I only watched the first 5 episodes and the last 8.

11 Fans of the franchize say that in generall continuations are better than originals for HiME/Otome.

12

I certainly like Mai Otome Zwei a hell of a lot.

The original series has a lot of angst. Zwei is too short, and has too much else going on, for the angst to become overwhelming. Nina is still angsty as all get-out, but she gets her act together in the end, and she isn't in the show for very long.

There were some logic breaks. What happened to the Nekogami-sama didn't really make sense, and they never really tried to explain it. And a piece of tension in the very first set-piece wouldn't be tense for anyone familiar with the series continuity.

There's a point where everyone is concerned that Arika might have just been killed. Except that it's clearly established that if an otome dies, their master dies too. Mashiro was standing right there and nothing bad was happening to her, so that meant Arika was still alive -- even though she was out of communications for a bit.

But that's all minor stuff. Overall it's really well done, and I've watched it a lot of times.

13

By the way, the rejuvination isn't permenant.

Man, I really must have been out of it this morning. The rejuvenation isn't permanent.

14 Not permanent... that brings to mind a rarely seen trope, "Why would I ever change back?"

15 Wait.  Do you mean that in the future when she uses the clothing, she doesn't age revert?  Or just that the age revert only lasts while she wears the clothing?

16

The robe is more than clothing. It's better thought of as a powered suit.

It is materialized by the gem each otome wears as an earring in her left ear, and there are only a limited number of them. I'm not totally clear on this, whether the same set of gems are reused endlessly or whether it's possible to create new ones. I think maybe it's both, but creating new gems isn't easy, which is why the planet isn't knee deep in otome.

I do know that some old ones do get reused. Arika's gem, the "blue sky saphire" used to belong to Arika's mother. And there's one called "Neptune's Emerald" which shows up in Zwei that was thought to be lost.

On the other hand, when Fiar is killed, her master also dies and, though it is not explicitly stated, I'm pretty sure her gem is destroyed as well.

Anyway, when Miss Maria activates her robe powered suit, she seems to rejuvenate. When she shuts it down, she physically returns to her proper age. This happens once in Mai Otome and again once in Zwei.

She may be the first to reach an age where this would become evident. Most otome retire before they reach about age 30, if they don't die in action.

A lot of them do die in action. Otome have become a favorite weapon of war for the various city states, since a single otome can quite easily defeat an entire conventional army. In Zwei there's a meeting called "SOLT", "Strategic Otome Limitation Talks", which is interrupted by a planetary existential threat that leads to all the world's otome fighting together against a terrible danger. Whether this will lead to future peace and comity isn't clear.

The easiest way for an otome to retire is to get laid. After that, they aren't able to activate their robes. (there's some sort of double-talk about how male hormones deactivate the nano-machines in the blood of the otome. Which is to say that boy germs ruin it all. something idiotic like that.)

But even after that happens, former otome are still somewat special, and have potential that normal people do not -- as the fate of Arika's mother demonstrates.

And as best I've been able to piece together, Arika's mother kept her gem even after she got pregnant.

It's an interesting alternate world with a lot of interesting characters and an intriguing idea at the foundation of it all. The gems straddle Clarke's Law -- they're definitely technological in origin, but they might as well be thought of as being magic, in practice.

17 I just ran into another example: Saki ep 7, about 07:50. Mako says it.

18

Isn't there another series after Zwei?

Do you think you'll watch the eps you skipped? Your description of the ones you saw sounds better than most of the anime this season.

19

Isn't there another series after Zwei?

There's a prequel called Sifr. I have it. I doubt I'll ever watch it.

Do you think you'll watch the eps you skipped? Your description of the ones you saw sounds better than most of the anime this season.

Unlikely. The middle episodes of the series are drenched in angst, mainly Nina's. Also, I don't particularly want to watch Erstin die.

1 A cutesy abbreviation of "-chan".

2 I wondered if it might be something like that. I had a hard time believing it, with a junior member of the military using it for a senior officer he doesn't even know all that well. Sounds like a serious case of insubordination.

3 I suppose we could hand-wave it by saying that politeness conventions are different in Midchild than on Earth, couldn't we?

4 This is seen in modern school setting in anime a lot, e.g. students of Yabe's class in Mitsudomoe call him "Yabe-cchi". He even appears startled and dispirited the first couple of times it happens. I would agree that in the military that seems rather out of place, but if the object of it does not come hard down on the perps right away, it is likely to stick.

5 It's definitely a cutesy diminutive (not "little girl" cutesy so much as "the person saying this is being very familiar and a little whimsical").

I'll check the scene you're talking about in Strikers. It would be utterly inappropriate for a conventional military setting; on the other hand, no conventional military setting has captains not old enough to drink!

6 A Google image search for "Yunocchi" tells you everything you need to know about what the -chi honorific means and how it is used.

7 Come to think of it, don't the kids in Shingu call their teacher Yamamoto "Yama-chi"? (Or was it something else?)

8 No, wait, they called him "Yama-chu", right? Presumably it's the same kind of thing, though.

9 I think I remember the line as 'Yagami-chuui'.  I translated the show but it was so long ago now I'd be hard pressed to remember.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that it wasn't the 'chi' dimunitive though.

10 Just rewatched the scene. It sure -sounded- like "Yagami-chi" (though not quite the same sound as "Yagamicchi", which would be the diminutive). Dunno, honestly. I'm tempted to chalk it up to formal Japanese military speech, which has plenty of nooks and crannies that I've never been exposed to.

Can't be "-chuui", anyway, she was a captain, not a lieutenant.

11

There are a lot of ways in which the Midchild military doesn't really match what we know. For instance, when Caro and Erio first meet Ginga, they salute.

Ginga is a sergeant, and you  don't salute non-coms in our military. And that's not the only time we see that: in the first episode, Subaru and Tia salute Rein, whose nominal rank is Sergeant Major, so they say. That's a pretty high rank for a noncom, but even so.

Another is the whole rank structure of the 6th Division. Tia, Subaru, Caro, and Erio are the "forwards", the lowest ranked part of the strike force, which also consists of Nanoha, Fate, Vita, Signum, and Hayate. As such, they de facto outrank everyone else in the unit, and are shown acting like they're in command, despite the fact that all four of them hold the rank of "private".

12 What I meant was, "At certain times they're shown being in command, despite being of such lowly rank." For instance, After the attack on their HQ, Tia is shown coordinating the cleanup and investigation, until she's relieved by Fate, who sends her to the hospital.

13 In Red/Soviet/Russian army, you salute everyone who outranks you, and they are supposed to return it (unless standing orders are in effect to cancel salute). The only exception is, you never salute without a headgear.

1 "namaru" = "to become less capable; to grow dull; to become blunt; to weaken." Written 鈍る.

-j

2 OK, I can buy that. Sounds perfect. And the translation was pretty accurate, in fact.

1 Man, how pathetic.

What part of "otaku" do you still not understand? 

Every once in a while I see one of these and think, "I ought to get one, just for kitsch value." Then I think, "Naah, if I do then it'll mean I've gone completely around the bend."

This is a concise encapsulation of my own thoughts on these things.  The only reason I don't have one is fiscal:  I haven't got the $$ for wallowing in otaku excess like that.  As much as I may want to.

2 But you still lack a dakimakura.

3

Those things really are around the bend. That entire concept freaks me out royally. DO NOT WANT.

Another thing that freaks me out is known as a "dollfie". There was an anime blog I used to read, whose owner eventually got a dollfie and started doing posts about all the clothes he was getting for her, including pictures. It didn't take me long to reach my squick limit.

Of course, everyone has a different squick limit. I'm sure I've driven readers away myself. (To some extent I've been doing that on purpose, in fact. Part of the reason I started doing an anime blog was to drive away all the earnest people who used to read USS Clueless.)

4 IMHO, daikimakura and "punimune" are about the same level. Dolfie is kinda ugh though. I noticed they tend to suck people in, like Chris Fritz.

5 I should probably say that I doubt I'll ever buy another of these oppai mouse pads. And I doubt I'll ever use this one.

6 Part of the reason I started doing an anime blog was to drive away all the earnest people who used to read USS Clueless.

I still read you.  Sorry.

7 I like the way "preview" removes the formatting.  The following bit should have been blockquoted:

<blockquote>Part of the reason I started doing an anime blog was to drive away all the earnest people who used to read USS Clueless.</blockquote>

8 *Sigh*  Remove posts as needed.  Sorry for the noise.

9

Put the word "quote" inside of square brackets.

Like this.

And close it with a matching "/quote" in square brackets.

1 In the first series I recall seeing that first kanji on Ranma's rice bowl.

2 Perhaps it was a pun intended.

3 I think that's likely.

1 They made Kagami and Tsukasa honorary citizens of the town, after all...

And hey, for the things that can put a little town on the map, being an otaku site isn't so bad. They come in, they spend money, they go home, they don't get into fights or get drunk or trash the place. Bit rough on the actual shrine folks (it's not the most respectful thing to the religion that the shrine represents... but Japan is a lot less picky about that in the first place, no?)

2

Picky or not, lotta choice they got about it.

I just wonder how long it'll last.

3 A little follow up, as I've updated the post.
After a bit of digging, I found that the local chamber of commerce, not the shrine, commissioned the ginger sauces.
The shrine which has been there between 800 and a thousand years is unlikely to be affected (they were getting over a hundred thousand visitors over New Years before this).

As to Stevens 64,000 dollar question, 'how long can this last?'that is of some interest to the Japanese biz publication I link in the update. The author notes with some surprise that the turnout seemed to actually be higher this year.However the town, as of March was annexed by Kuki which doesnt have any Kyo-Ani related items on their website save a picture of a festival parade that has the Lucky Star float in it.

1 It's the standard dialect for girls taken over my evil magic books.

/I got nuthin'.

2 That -ya is Kansai Accent 101.

3 Wikipedia offers one possibility, Kansai dialect: "The standard Japanese copula da is replaced by the Kansai-ben copula ya." Might not be the correct reason in this case, of course.

-j

4 I'm going to vote "Kansai-ben" as well. 

/I got nothin'.

/I got nothin'.

...oops.

1 I think it must be "wakatteruyo" which is "wakatte" (-te of wakaru) + "ru" (shortening or "iru") + "yo" (ending).

2 For the second one, perhaps a heavily slurred shitsurei-shimasu?

-j

3

Alright, here's a 2MB WMV. Sorry about the aspect ratio; they completely changed the UI of Movie Maker and I can't figure out how to do it right. (The thing that should control the aspect ratio doesn't seem to affect the publish options, for some weird reason, and I can't find an a-la-carte publish choice.)

...no advice, please...

4 Looks like Mr.Greely nailed it, judging by the clip.

5 I could be convinced that what he's saying is shireishimasu. Which would be a shortening of shitsureishimasu kind of like how English "going to" becomes "gonna" or like how shikatta ga nai becomes shouganai.

6 Yes, as Pete says, the first one is probably wakatteruyo, a short form of wakatteiru. That -te+iru form is used either for things that are ongoing in the present, or continuing results of things that happened in the past. The Japanese "present" dictionary form is actually more commonly a future tense.

The second is definitely shitsurei shimasu. He actually enunciates every syllable pretty clearly, but because Japanese doesn't really have stress accent (and because of the way the vowels in syllables like tsu and shi are often whispered) a lot of clearly spoken syllables tend to just disappear to the English ear- we look for the cues we're used to, like stress accent, and miss the things that are important in Japanese, like pitch accent and timed syllables (well, mora if you want to nitpick.)

7 Yup, very clearly shitsurei-shimasu, although it comes out closer to "shtsrei".

-j

8 To build on tds' point a bit, where wakarimasu means "I understand" (or more pedantically, "X is clear to me"), wakatte-iru means "I already understand" (so stop telling me, okay? I get it!).

-j

9 In context, that makes perfect sense.

10 Yeah, it's kind of odd that you can say "wakaru/wakarimasu" at all in this sense, but wakaru is kind of odd for reasons that are probably best not gone into here (but that J Greely is referring to in his "pedantic" note, I think.) It would be really odd to say "shiru" to mean "I know [some specific thing]." Odd enough that it would probably be considered an outright mistake- that is almost always "shitteiru."