Metallica Metalluca: Research Notes (With special guest Twolfwood)

Tucker

Author:

• Mizuno, Teruaki 水野 輝昭（みずの てるあき）
  • Mee-zɯ-no, Teh-ɾɯ-ah-kee
  • Confused by the weird symbols? See my general notes about Japanese at the bottom!

Title:

• Metalika Metaluka メタリカメタルカ
  • Metallica, Metalooka
  • The first word is pretty obvious as being the Latin for  “pertaining to metals” and being reminiscent of the famous band. The second word makes more sense in Japanese, since the English word “metal” is pronounced as “me-ta-ɾɯ” (see the new reference notes below for more info about these symbols!), and slapping on a “ka” at the end to match the first word makes it contain the name of the protagonist, Luca (or ɾɯka, as it’s pronounced in Japanese.).
  • “ka “ is also a question marker in Japanese, so the second word also sounds in Japanese like you’re saying “is it a metal?” while also pronouncing the protagonist’s  name.
  • As Maxy B pointed out, “ka” is also a particle used for practitioners of arts, too (think “manga-ka” and “karate-ka”).

Characters:

• Luca
  • You know this.
• Gateau
  • French word for cake
  • Gah-toe
• Zuou ズオゥ
  • Zɯ-oh
  • Second syllable is just a long /o:/
• Bordeaux ボルドー
  • Region of France and variety of red wine produced there
  • Bor-doe
• Desulisa (?)
  • No idea what the fuck is up with this name.
  • Pronounce it however you want, it’s not real
• Trenka トレンカ
  • Train-kah
• 
  

Other:

• Minea ミネア
  • Apparently it’s supposed to be pronounced exactly the same as it’s spelled (with Italian/Spanish vowels, of course)
  • Mee-nay-ah
• Labyrim Prison ラビリム監獄
  • Lab-beer-im

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Reference Notes for Japanese in General:

• U (aka ɯ)
  • All of the vowel sounds in Japanese are pretty much the same as in Italian/Spanish, with one exception: the vowel usually written in Roman letters as “u,” but in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is signified by [ɯ].
  • This is pronounced about the same as the “oo” sound in “boot”/”chew,” but with your lips open and unrounded as opposed to the closed-lip way we English-speakers automatically use when we make a vowel sound where the root of the tongue moves toward the back of the mouth.
  • You can practice making this sound by making “oo” sounds or pronouncing words with this sound in them and moving your lips back and forth between rounded and unrounded positions, making note of how it feels and how it affects the sound you’re making.
• AE/OI/OE/AI/AU, etc.
  • Very important and useful note about Japanese: Japanese does not allow diphthongs whatsoever!
  • What’s a diphthong? It’s basically a vowel sound that starts at one position and then moves to another value, kind of like how a trombone can slide between notes.
  • In English we have loads of these diphthongs, like the vowel sounds in “bout” and “bite.” We even have some less obvious ones, like the vowels in “bait” and “boat”...these might just sound like a single sound at first, but pronounce these words very slowly and you can feel your tongue shift a bit during the vowel!
  • In standard American/British English, we no longer even allow non-diphthonized versions of these vowels anymore! Using these diphthongs instead of pronouncing steady vowel sounds when pronouncing words from pretty much any language other than English will give you a heavy American/English accent!
  • So…to reiterate, Japanese doesn’t allow any diphthongs whatsoever. Japanese people have a hard time even replicating them when learning English and other languages. Anytime you see clusters in Japanese of different vowels like “ae,” “ai,” “au,” etc., these are always pronounced as separate syllables!
  • The major exception to the point above is the note below:
• EI and OU (and OO and EE):
  • These are special spelling exceptions to the rule above! “EI” is the most common way of writing a long /e:/ sound (think “sensei”), and “OU” is the most common way of writing a long /o:/ sound (think “shounen”).
  • Why are they spelled all weird like this? These probably were pronounced as separate vowel sounds in the distant past, but a sound change happened after the spelling (particularly when writing syllables in hiragana) had been set in stone.
  • Some words with a long /o:/ will be spelled as “OO” (such as “ookami,” meaning “wolf,” and “ookii,” meaning “big”). Don’t confuse this with the vowel sound we use in English words like “boot”! Japanese “oo” is just a long /o:/ vowel, pronounced the same as words with “ou”!
  • It’s rarer, but there are also words where the long /e/ is spelled as “ee” instead of “ei,” such as in “nee-san” (older sister).
• TSU:
  • TS sounds are exactly the same as English, only Japanese allows it at the beginning of syllables, while English only allows it at the end!
  • Practice by repeating  “pots and pans,”  but then think of the words being spaced like “pah tsand pans” …congrats, you just made the ts sound!
  • In modern Japanese, this consonant only appears before U (which, as mentioned in the note further up, is actually the open vowel [ɯ])
• R (aka [ɾ])
  • The sound usually written in Roman letters as R when transcribing Japanese actually has almost nothing in common with the “R” sound we have in Standard American English.
  • Work in Progress! Pardon my dust!

MaxyBee

Author: Teruaki Mizuno

• Prior works:
  • Metalica Metaluca is their debut serialisation, but Mizuno has had some one-shots published from 2001-2008, so it took a while for the man’s career to launch.
• Later works:
  • Chosoku Henkei Gyrozetter (2012-2014, 7 volumes, Saikyo Jump)
    • Manga version of Square Enix multimedia franchise, including anime, video games, a card game. In a world where self-driving cars are the norm rather than a health risk, a child is given one that is also a mecha, and must work with other chosen drivers to fight the evil Xenon.
  • Marvel’s Future Avengers (2017, 1 volume, 6 chapters, Bessatsu Corocoro Comic)
    • Manga adaptation of Disney/Madhouse collaboration that you too can watch on Disney Plus. Three kids are trained and modified by Hydra to fight the Avengers, who they are told are the villains. They learn the truth and are taken under The Avengers’ wings as Future Avengers.
  • Pokémon The Movie: Secrets of the Jungle - Another Beginning (2020, 1 volume, 3 chapters, Corocoro Comic)
    • Manga adaptation of that Pokémon movie that isn’t The Jungle Book or Tarzan. Mizuno’s only work licensed in English, because Pokémon. (Available here: https://www.viz.com/read/manga/pokemon-the-movie-manga/product/6975 )
  • Good Morning! Poop-sensei (2021, 2+ volumes, published by Bunkyosha)
    • Manga counterpart to a wildly popular series of kanji drill books that teach elementary kids their kanji by relating everything to poop. This is the misadventures of the mascot, Unko-sensei (or Poop-sensei), and seems to be still be going, or at the least not formally ended. (Preview and Japanese volumes here: https://bookwalker.jp/series/332286/list/ )
      • Further reading: https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2017/04/20/poop-unko-kanji-drill/
  • Chain Rencer (2021, 2 volumes, 9 chapters, Corocoro Comic)
    • Manga counterpart to a sega toyline that’s like hot wheels, but you build tracks out of large bricks that pop up into stunt courses and stuff. How is this translated into a manga? Kid goes to sleep and wakes up in a death game wasteland where he has to win at life-size Chain Rencer courses. Of course. (Preview and Japanese volumes here: https://bookwalker.jp/series/333034/list/ )
• Who they were an assistant for:
  • Shohei Ishioka (Belmonde le Visiteur)
    • See vol.3 of Belmonde, available for free (in Japanese) here: https://vw.mangaz.com/virgo/view/2303/i:0
  • Toshiaki Iwashiro (Psyren)
    • One of several notable authors who’ve worked with Iwashiro, a gang we’ll have to go over if we ever do a series by him. I don’t actually own the volumes to check if the gang was listed in the volume extras, but the gang are frequently mentioned together, including…
  • Yuki Tabata (Black Clover)
    • Yuki Tabata is a bit of a staff-crediting chad, giving page space each volume over to assistants, editors, designers, and his wife, for them to do doodles and answer a fun question. Mizuno is in most volumes, a regular presence even when he has other work.
      • As a bonus in vol.22 of Black Clover, Mizuno talks about a summer memory of suffering intensely from the heat working in an office with poor air-con during the serialization of Metalica Metaluca, something he also talk about in the bonus pages of vol.2 of Metalica Metaluca! It really stuck with him.
• Notable assistants:
  • Yu Abiko (Higashi no Kurume to Tonari no Meguru)
  • Kentaro Sato (Magical Girl Site)
  • Kiyoto Shitara (Katagi Modoshi)
  • Atsushi Namikiri (Switch, Red Blue)
  • Naoya Matsumoto (Kaiju no.8)
  • Katsutoshi Murase (Arata Primal, Karada Sagashi)
  • Daisuke Miyata (August Outlaw)
    • All of these are listed in the backmatter of the collected volumes.
• A note:
  • As you’ve probably noticed, Mizuno is not a BIG author, but has a lot of licensed work, and a lot of assistants who have gone on to their own serials. You’d think of an author like this as a ‘good hand’; not an author who could ever have a hit, but is reliable enough to be suitable for any project and raises his assistants well. He’ll never be big, but he’ll NEVER be out of work.

Publishing

• Series it replaced:
  • Super Dog Rilenthal by Daisuke Ashihara (of World Trigger fame)
• Series that replaced it:
  • Light Wing by Hideo Shinkai (of Earthchild fame)
• Series in the same serialization round:
  • Shonen Shikku by Yuto Tsukuda (Food Wars writer)

Manga Itself

• The one-shot for this won the 2009 Golden Future Cup, continuing that award’s legacy of failure. Seriously, like two successes have come directly out of the cup since its inception almost two decades ago.
• Minea might seem like a typo of ‘miner’, but it’s written as ミネア, which is said like the first half of mineral with an ah at the end. It’s also written as 鋼探索士 (Hagane tansaku-shi), which is just ‘steel explorer’, in case you wondered what a minea even is.
• Saddlebirds are literally Chocobos, if you wondered what sort of media has an influence here. Rocks with special traits are a bit like materia as well, thinking about it.
• Rock collecting is a timeless and popular hobby with people of all ages, with kits one can buy, clubs one can join, but more than anything it has endured hundreds of years because you just have to PICK UP A ROCK. Metalica Metaluca is clearly trying to tap into this, you can see the merchandise already in your mind’s eye.
• The extra pages in volume 1 are used for profiles… for the rocks, that is…
• Vol.1 has the 2009 Golden Future Cup one-shot included. It’s kind of a mix of stuff that you see in the series. Luca breaks a statue, they go to a volcano, try to steal something precious from a dragon, make a big hammer, but it stands alone pretty well. Like it wasn’t just completely reused.
• Vol.2 extras: 4-koma, metal items, more rock profiles, and a bonus chapter about Trenka that tells us about his hatred of the villains with metal in their face, and how Luka reminds him of a dead guy he knew.
• Vol.2 also has the 2008 Akamaru Jump (earlier version of Jump GIGA) one-shot included. It’s completely different. Like it’s about metals, and the main guy is CALLED Luka, but he’s also a blonde older teen/young adult with a tiny girl assistant.
• Gein really looks like a Psyren character, so you can see Iwashiro’s influence on his former pupil.
• Starting a new test stage with only a couple chapters left kind of gave away that we were getting a King Crimson effect, and so time skips forward to a completely fucking bananas ending.
• Vol.3 extra include a metal profile, a fanservice gag strip, a maze puzzle, a 15-page epilogue starring all the post-timeskip heroes against a mecha, and the 2006 one-shot ‘Juuou Mujin’.

Twolf

chapter 1 notes: steel is just iron with .2-2% carbon. any more or less carbon would classify it as iron. iron is either fairly soft or really hard so the hammer Luca made would either bend or shatter upon being used

chapter 2: phylomium has the ability to be stretched into wires when really hot... just like all metals. in a metallurgical terms, it is ductile. also, toughness and hardness are not the same thing. hardness is the ability to withstand scratches and bending while toughness is resistant to breaking and fracturing. they are related to a point but usually the harder something becomes, the more brittle and easier it is to break. think a knife is hard but doesn't bend vs a metal ruler that can be bent a lot before breaking

chapter 3: all metals will expand with heat, but plastic will shrink with heat, so the bandit leader is using a plastic chain.

chapter 6: they used silver bromide in old photography to make photographs. could have said that instead of making up photometal.

chapter 8: oh hey our first bit of "realism" with the solenoid. it checks out, wish there was more of this

chapter 10: Gransten does exist in our world but with a different name; Wolfram aka Tungsten. It's used a lot for its extremely high heat and wear resistant properties but is also extremely heavy.

chapter 12: transten is a metal that needs to be heat treated to be worked with. whether it means that it needs to be heated up then let to cool for a very long time (annealing) or quenched to anneal like copper it doesn't specify.

chapter 16: libasten does have a real life counterpart; Nickel Titanium alloy. but unlike in the manga universe our world uses this fairly regularly in jet engines as dampeners and cars to help adjust seat positions.