Embalmer 3
December 16, 2008
So, how long have I been reading manga now? Ten years? It’s taken me this long to get what I want: a manga about Pittsburgh.
So yes, Embalmer just shot way up my list for a superficial reason that means a lot to me. I grew up about an hour outside of Pittsburgh, just across the state line.
As a nitpicky point, there’s a part where Shinjyurou complains about his lack of mastery of the English language and the hard time he has with American slang. He doesn’t understand at first that “y’all” is a colloquial plural form of “you.” This is wrong though, because if you were in Pittsburgh, it would of course be “yinz” and not “y’all.” Know that everyone in this volume spoke in my head with a Pittsburgh accent.
Aside from the heavy dose of exciting nostalgia, this was actually a really awesome volume. The entire thing went through Shinjyurou’s past, from his disgust with his dad for spending more time with dead bodies than his family, his reason for the change of heart about the profession, his studies in Pittsburgh, and an internship he took in San Francisco. My favorite part about it was probably the way his struggles were portrayed in Pittsburgh, since he had to succeed in a highly competitive school with no textbooks and nothing to copy from notes while speaking very little English. This was much of the volume, and it made me like the character a lot more.
Of course, there was still the heavy-handed business of coming to terms with his dad’s profession, being disgusted by it initially, not understanding, and all that (or, as you prefer, n’at). It takes a lot to get his change of heart, and much of the first part of the book is spent on this. I didn’t mind too much though, it was a pretty good story, and at least I know the character well enough at this point.
This volume also scored brownie points for having a part where Shinjyurou and his Chinese roommate painted nonsense kanji characters on clothing and sold it to people who thought it looked cool. It just made me laugh so hard. I hope that somewhere there’s a reverse engrish.com for just that type of thing.
I liked this volume A LOT, but I don’t think this will necessarily reflect on how I will like the next volume. We’ll see, because now I know the main character really well, so maybe there will be some present plot-oriented stories, as opposed to this flashback voume.
December 16, 2008 at 1:21 pm
[...] order to enjoy vol. 5 of King of Fighters 2003 at Comics Village. Connie reviews vol. 4 of Nana and vol. 3 of Embalmer at Slightly Biased Manga. Kris turns her gaze to vol. 2 of Clear Skies at Manic About [...]
December 16, 2008 at 3:53 pm
We say y’all down here all the time. And I’m always, ALWAYS happy to see it with the apostrophe in the wrong place. Lamentably, too many people down here put it after the A.
We may be Southern, but we don’t need to be grammatically incorrect! :)
December 16, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Heh heh… Connie, I think that nitpick is with me and not Mihara-sensei. If memory serves (and it was a LONG time ago that I worked on this volume), I think the translation did read “yinz,” but I didn’t know what that meant and assumed it was either a poor translation or that Mihara was confused about the vernacular. I made the change to “y’all,” figuring that it got her point across and in a way most readers would be familiar with.
I apologize for making the book less accurate! I honestly didn’t know. I guess I need to spend some time in Pittsburgh, eh?
I hope you enjoy Vol. 4. I look forward to reading your review!
December 17, 2008 at 5:12 am
Holy crap! I can’t believe that “yinz” made its way into a manga! I was only joking about that… it’s a colloquialism I’ve never seen or heard anywhere else. I think it would give most Americans pause, so it kind of amused me to think of it as the word Shinjyurou was hung up on. I can’t believe it was in the original. I’m really astounded at the level of research that must have went into that, especially since you could visit Pittsburgh several times and never once hear someone say it. It’s not terribly common in polite speech.
Thank you for sharing that, it made my day. It’s pretty impressive you remember such a small detail from a book that came out two or so years ago. And to be fair, “y’all” really does seem more appropriate, even if it’s not the Pittsburgh way.
December 17, 2008 at 5:25 am
Jun: Oh, y’all definitely makes more sense in context, but yinz is… hm, very Pittsburgh, which is the only reason I mentioned it. I would have been remiss not to when given the opportunity to correct a character who lives in Pittsburgh on their use of colloquialisms :p Apparently it was yinz in the original too, which is really amazing given how obscure that is.
There are a lot of people that use y’all around where I (used to) live, it tends to go with a more West Virginia accent. Where are you from, by the way?
I want to say that it’s hard to imagine that anyone would spell y’all with the apostrophe in the wrong place since it’s a contraction, but it is sadly not at all hard to imagine.
edit: Apparently the new “reply to comment” function doesn’t quite work the way I think it does. it would be better if these comments appeared below what I was responding to.