Fly Me to the Moon Volume 2 Review (Tonikaku Cawaii)
Tonikaku Kawaii Fly Me to the Moon Vol. 2

The Tonikaku Cawaii manga is one I really love. As such, it is not only sad, but EXTREMELY rage-inducing to see how Viz used the manga to wipe their extremely nasty arse.

My Philosophy on Adaptation

I know I’ve said this tons of times before. However, it bears repeating. When it comes to adapting something from Japanese (or any other language), I believe the translation/adaptation should be accurate but readable. That way, the non-Japanese audience still gets what the Japanese author said.

With “localization”, the thought process is, “The Japanese author wrote for Japanese people. I need to rewrite what the author wrote so that it is too hip to be square in my localized area!” 😑 As such, the adapter (whether the original translator, or a separate adapter) goes about being too clever by half in rewriting what was said.

The result usually ends up with things like inserted jokes that weren’t in the original material. Or Japanese jokes get rewritten for English audiences, but the English jokes end up being VERY topical (meaning they make no sense after a short period of time), or very stupid. The adapter may decide to insert all kinds of profanity that isn’t present in the Japanese. And the adapter will often change text so that it may still vaguely reflect what was in the Japanese. At worst, they’ll just make crap up at times ’cause “localization!”

Rubbish Adaptation

When I reviewed the first volume of this series, I did spot some things that I didn’t like. But I didn’t do a deep dive to see how much the manga was being trashed. However, when I first opened Fly Me to the Moon Volume 2, my eyes were IMMEDIATELY assaulted with localization rubbish. I knew this to be the case without even consulting the source manga OR the recent anime, which is getting a proper adaptation in English. Here’s the frame in question.

To the uninitiated, this may seem OK. However, Kaname’s words don’t match her teasing expression. She’s snapping at Nasa. And as someone who’s read the Tonikaku Cawaii manga for a long while now, I know this wording isn’t in line with Kaname’s character. She doesn’t snap at people while laughing for some reason. She trolls them in a soft fashion. So what did she really say? Here’s an accurate but readable (but unofficial) adaptation.

Notice the tone. She’s not shouting. She’s teasing and trolling him at the same time. And this moment establishes Kaname as a master troll character who enjoys teasing Nasa.

For further comparison here’s the official anime subtitles, which I also consider to be fairly accurate but readable.

Although exclamation marks are being used in the subtitles, she’s not yelling and the audience can hear that. That aside, Kaname’s last line may be somewhat different than the manga, the rest of the text is pretty spot on. Further, the tone of the anime subtitles matches the unofficial manga adaptation text.

I’m Done With This Rubbish!

Sadly, things went downhill from there. This volume is packed full of rewrites galore that at best, vaguely convey what the original text said, but lose so much tone and flavor in the process. Jokes are added where they shouldn’t be. I spot-checked at places, but it just kept being awful trash. So instead of a proper adaptation, we get this squat, rewrite nonsense.

While the adapter for Fly Me to the Moon Volume 2 does make use of some honorifics, they decided to scrap “senpai”. This makes NO sense as that’s how Kaname addresses Nasa. It further adds to her trolling of Nasa–she’s properly addressing Nasa as “Senpai”, but she’s not showing the accompanying respect.

Chitose’s addressing Tsukasa as “Neesama” (or “Nee-sama” if you prefer) is scrapped for the cringe-sounding “Big Sis”. Yeah, that conveys things from the Japanese REAL well.

The result of this is that I’m done with this series and will never pay Viz another cent for their trashing a great manga series. It’s sad and reminds me of how the early volumes of Negima! were trashed in a similar fashion. But while Kodansha had the good sense to fix this with later releases, I don’t see any chance that Viz will do the same.