Manga

[Review] Minori no Te by Scarlet Beriko in German

As some of you already know, I’m a HUGE fan of Scarlet Beriko, and this week she finally had her German manga debut with Minori no Te!

I had high hopes for this one, because I love her manga and while I know that Ehapa, the German publisher, has a weird way of phrasing things in their translations (especially when it comes to slang or anything youth-related) it’s always a little over the top or sounds forced in the way they word things. Tokyopop does a way better job with that, I’m just not sure if it’s because their translators are younger or because they maybe have their scripts read by proofreaders.

By now I’m pretty sure it’s probably a combination of both though.

 

In this title there are quite the number of typos, for once. The worst of all is that they got name main character Minori’s name, which is part of the JAPANESE MANGA TITLE, wrong three times. Not one time. THREE times. At least. Even though his name always has furigana (pronunciation help that comes with kanji which are hard to read). Excuse me. Besides horrible grammar (“Tu dein Bein nicht so anspannen!”) and awkward misspellings (“Brunstzeit”) that was definitely the worst error you can make when translating a manga.

That being said, the designs and typesetting were good and what you’d expect from a company that has been working with manga for so long already.

And I just really hope that they won’t make the same mistake with Yondaime Ooyamato Tatsuyuki, the Minori no Te spin-off about the young yakuza from chapter 1, coming out in January.

(If anyone from Ehapa happens to read this: Ich liebe euch trotzdem, aber ich hoffe, dass wenigstens die Fehler mit dem Namen verbessert werden in der zweiten Auflage. Ich biete mich auch gern als Übersetzer oder Korrekturleser für Yondaime an, hab ich ja schon mal gemacht lol)

Like in the Japanese version, the manga also contains one of Beriko’s older oneshots, Shiawase no Katachi B4 Size, which is an early display of her affection for older, long-and-dark-haired oyaji uke. You can see how inexperienced she still was in using tones and drawing details, which has greatly improved over the years, and it’s a cute one-shot about a handsome and popular mangaka and his friend/lover/housewife.

 

If you’re still interested in buying the manga (even after my rant on typos, I’m so sorry), you can buy it on Amazon.de:

Paperback | Kindle

Or the Japanese version:

Amazon.jp: Paperback | Kindle

CDJapan


And for those of you who want to preorder Yondaime Ooyamato Tatsuyuki in German:

Paperback | Kindle (Release: 12 January, 2017)

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