4 Comments...

1. KINchan
   October 15th, 2014 at 6:59 pm

   In the manga page, Miki is saying “Miki boots!” right? The horizontal line in-between the letter ブ and the letter ツ should be vertical. That’s just the way this sign works: It’s horizontal when writing in a line and vertical when writing in a column.
   Then, if she’s calling it like a technique or a special item (which they are), you should definitely consider putting an ! at the end of the line. Japanese in manga usually doesn’t have punctuation when speaking in a neutral tone, but always shows the inflection of the voice when shouting or asking a question with the appropriate ! or ?
   However I fear that it was your intention to make her say something along the line of “Let’s go with the Miki boots!” because I can definitely make up that the two letters at the bottom of the right column must be 行く, “to go”. In that case I can guess that the whole sentence may look like this: 美記ブーツで行く！ “I’ll go with the Miki boots (my boots)!” In japanese comics speech bubbles are written from top to bottom, right to left, which means you should swap the two columns for it to make sense.
   I really like your comic and I feel it would be a shame that such errors be printed out in the physical edition if it can still be avoided. (even if I’m the only one who sees them)

   Also, calling her comic Miki with those letters is a very nice touch. It could translate something like “Chronicles of Beauty”. While being the name of the main protagonist, it definitely emphasize her being as much a book as an individual (seeing as she comes from a comic and not from the real world). The name Miki would usually be spelled like this 美紀, so the fact that the spelling you chose looks so similar to the original character really works well… Intentionally I’m sure 😉

   Keep up the good work!

2. Dylan
   October 16th, 2014 at 11:14 am

   Wow – I need you as a copy editor! Sadly, it’s too late to correct the errors in the first printing, but if I get a chance to correct it at some point I will. The dialogue there is meant to be the equivalent of Miki’s trademark phrase “Miki boots GO!” And I’m pleased someone picked up the double meaning of Miki’s name. That was indeed intentional (I discovered it after deciding to call her Miki, but before lettering that page). I’ve seen it translated as “Beautiful story,” which would be just too perfect – but that might have been a mis-translation.

   You can probably tell, I had some help with the characters for the title MIKI, but did the dialogue without any expert assistance on a tight deadline. 😉

3. KINchan
   October 17th, 2014 at 1:31 am

   “Beautiful Story” works as well as a translation. Some Japanese titles can be quite open to interpretation, and this is one of them.
   Yeah, I thought you meant the speech bubble as a catch-phrase. For “Miki Boots GO!” you could go with 美記ブーツ行くわよ！ (Miki Boots iku wa yo) which has a feminine albeit adventurous feel. Or you could even go with 美記ブーツＧＯ！which is very punchy. (thanks go to my Japanese wife for the “iku wa yo”. I’m not sure I would have been able to come up with it on my own.)

4. Dylan
   October 17th, 2014 at 9:40 am

   I oughta put you on a retainer. Fair warning: there’ll be a couple more bits of bad Japanese in upcoming pages.

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