Ginka & Glüna: Research Notes

Tucker

Six Word Summary: Boring horseshit’s never looked so pretty

—--

hello David

Hi Tucker

Holy shit my google doc is haunted

Are you dead david?

Im so spooked

Emotionally yes

Physically also yes

2

spoopy

Ill letcha be tho!

This manga sucks butt

—--------------------------------------------------------------spoopy-

Title:

• Ginka & Glüna ギンカとリューナ
  • Ok, I have no idea what’s going on with “Glüna.” The way it’s written with Roman letters, it should be pronounced like “Gluna,” but with the German umlauted U sound (“ee” with lip rounding added). In the Japanese version, though, it’s written as “Ryuuna.” Where did the “G” sound go?
  • The only way I can think of it making any sense at all is if the first consonant is supposed to be like the “gl” sound in Italian….? But then why the Germanic umlaut?
  • Ok, I’ve landed on the conclusion that the author is going for a feeling of some sort of fantasy language that combines aspects of different European languages (perhaps countries near the Alps?), and so Glüna’s name reflects spelling conventions of both Italian and German. It sure as hell is far from intuitive, though!

Author

• Watanabe, Shinpei 渡辺 シンペイ（わたなべ シンペイ)
  • Wah-tah-nah-bae, Sheem-pay
  • (n before p is usually pronounced like an M sound)

Characters

• Ginka
  • Gheen-kah
• Glüna リューナ
  • Option 1 (the way Viz insinuates it’s pronounced with a “silent G”): “Loo-nah”
  • Option 2 (Italian “gl,” ignoring the umlaut): “Lyoo-nah”
  • Option 3 (both insinuated exotic phonemes intact): “Lyü-nah”
    • German umlauted U sound is like “ee” with lip rounding added
    • Note that this is probably the closest to the author’s intention, and is also very hard for anyone to say out loud who isn’t me.
  • Option 4 (exactly as it’s written in katakana): “ryɯɯ-nah”
  • Option 5 (The way an English-speaker would want to instinctively pronounce it without any other knowledge): “Gloo-nah”
• Beretta ベレッタ
  • Beh-reh-tta
  • From Italian, name of an arms manufacturer (last name of the founder)
• Anemone
  • Is the name of a genus of flowers (sea anemones are named after them). The scientific name comes from Latin, and the Japanese pronunciation of this is much closer to Latin than how we English-speakers say it.
  • Latin/Japanese pronunciation: “Ah-ney-mo-neh”

Other

• Verokia Era
  • vair-o-kee-ah
  • Might be a play on “baroque”?
• Magaraka
  • Mah-gah-rah-kah

MaxyBee

Six word summary: I barely consider this a comic

Author: Shinpei Watanabe

• Prior works:
  • Four one-shots from 2017-2021
    • Social Game (honourable mention for an online Jump rookie award, 2017) read here: http://r-cbs.mangafactory.jp/c16286/c210-17223/
    • Immortal Spirit Honemi-chan (Jump GIGA WINTER issue 3, 2019) PRINT DEBUT
    • Tsugihagi's Eight Mysteries (Jump GIGA Summer issue 3, 2019)
    • Pekopeko Disease (Weekly Shonen Jump double issue 21-22, 2021)
• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • Kei Kamiki (Magu-chan)
    • Confirmed in the final volume. Good thing we did a podcast that explicitly made me read the final volume!
• Notable people they had as assistants:
  • Unknown
• Bonus info:
  • Confirmed in a profile page in Jump GIGA that he's a fan of Hunter x Hunter, Gantz, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Publishing

• Series it replaced:
  • Earthchild by Hideo Shinkai
• Series that replaced it:
  • Do Retry by  Jun Kirarazaka (Bone Collection)
• Series in same serialisation round:
  • Tokyo Demon Bride Story by Tadaichi Nakama
• Cover appearances:
  • 41/2022 (debut) https://comicvine.gamespot.com/weekly-shonen-jump-2664-no-41-september-26-2022/4000-946563/
  • 4-5/2023 (group cover) https://comicvine.gamespot.com/weekly-shonen-jump-2679-no-4-5-january-22-2023/4000-962679/
  • 6-7/2023 (group cover) https://comicvine.gamespot.com/weekly-shonen-jump-2680-no-6-7-january-29-2023/4000-963596/

Manga Itself

• Scheherazade as a name comes from the storyteller of the 1001 Nights (aka Arabian Nights). It is not clear why this name was picked for a sadistic villain. To further complicate things, Methuselah refers to her as Hera, which would be the greek god of wisdom, or just the middle bit of her name. Read about Scheherazade here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade
• Methuselah is named for the exceptionally long-lived religious figure in Judaic, Christian, and Islamic text. Suitably, in G&G she is a deceptively youthful-looking character who is in fact old enough to have trained all the elite magicians. Read about the auld fella here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah
• Hugin and Munin are named for Odin’s ravens in norse mythology, who bring him information from all over midgard. Read about these two birds here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huginn_and_Muninn
• Nosferatu is named for the Romanian word for Vampire. Bit on the nose, really. Read about the etymology here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosferatu_(word)
• Locke is almost definitely named for John Locke, renowned philosopher and empiricist, which probably explains his skepticism. Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
• A Beretta is an Italian make of small gun that is held in the hand.
• Verokia is an interesting name for a fallen kingdom, which I’ve only seen before in Verokia Dragoon Story, a webnovel by Ryukishi07 (of When They Cry fame), but that was about a small country invaded by fascist forces after world war 1, who fight back by donning armour powerful enough to deflect tank shells. Probably unrelated, but read more here: https://07th-expansion.fandom.com/wiki/Verokia_Dragoon_Story
• There are several other characters that Watanabe seems to just forget to name, so why not make up your own!

Just some venting, because I hate this fucking comic, you can ignore this part entirely:

• Just know that I deeply dislike this series. Nice illustrations but not a clue how to write a story or draw an honest to goodness panel to panel, page to page comic. Pile of shite. Author needs to read some Scott McCloud.
• “Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which facts in the world of a fictional work which have been established through the narrative are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subsequently published work which recontextualizes or breaks continuity with the former.” That’s this. That’s this comic. It just inserts events into the past when it needs a dramatic or poignant moment without earning the fucker. Which is stupid because it has AND USES a good moment in the hat and scarf stuff. It can have earned moments, but the author just adds other shit that doesn’t have the same impact on top of it all, constantly!
• It adds a magic system down the line that’s both incredibly limited, not really used by the main cast and hitherto unmentioned to this point! It may have been intentional, but by leaving it until the end of volume 1 to establish something so fundamental is some rookie bullshit.
• There’s a bit where a wand gets snatched, and the author has to put a note in THE FUCKING GUTTER that this is an embarrassing thing for wizards, instead of communicating this pretty important aspect of wizard culture in, y’know, THE FUCKING COMIC.
• The author is a rookie, which is worth considering, but any editor worth a shit would help catch this stuff and guide them around bad decisions. It clearly didn’t happen here, so the editor should be pretty ashamed of themselves.