Tuesday, November 22, 2011

カタカナ ピロジェクト (まんが)

わたし の ピロジェクト は 漫画 (まんが) です。 あにめ で ドラゴンバル (DragonBall) が いちばん ゆめい です。
この まんが を よんで ください。





とても よかった ですね。 わかりますか。
Due to the internet, this is a famous scene in he Dragon Ball Z series. The plot of Dragon Ball Z is a group of heroes continuously protect earth (the galaxy, the dimension...) from extraterrestrial (intergalactic, extradimensional) villains. That's about it. The series measures each fighter's strength as Ki: "life energy" in Japanese or, in English, "power level".

The original scene looked a little like this:


This scene became popular because of this remix that appeared on YouTube years later (Warning: you may or may not lose brain cells...):



I decided to use this scene for the Katakana project for two reasons: 1) It has to do with anime, the original reason for pursuing the Japanese language, 2) The manga scene allowed me to use Katakana in three ways: loan words (Vegeta's name), onomatopoeia (the wind blowing, eg), and for emphasis (It's Over 9000! Note that in the original Japanese, Vegeta actually says "はっせん いじょう だん", meaning level greater than eight thousand, but 9000 apparently sounds better in English than 9000).