Great! 
Now I just need to decide how to tear myself away from reading Pokemon and do some JLPT prep over the coming weeks 
2 Likes
Yes, its itadaku in chau form, he’s implying hes going to help himself to the phantom pokemon first.
3 Likes
Thanks, the katakana threw me off in that one.
2 Likes
It can get a bit confusing, yes … I think the katakana is getting used to put special emphasis on certain words, like with italicized text.
A couple of panels later on the same page he says “ん?アレ。。。はなんだあ?”
which I read as “Uh? What’s… that?”
2 Likes
Huh. I thought 幻 should be interpreted as “mythical” or “very rare”.
Source: 幻 - Jisho.org
But I do see that Mew looks phantom-like.
2 Likes
That’s just something about Mew in particular, who’s know as the “mirage/phantom Pokémon” because of his ability to disappear at will and being so elusive. At the time he was the only one in his category (ultra rare Pokémon that you could not even find inside the game without glitches, cheats, or attending special events where they would unlock it into your game cartridge). When other generations added more Pokémon similar to him (so, only obtainable through special events), they started getting called “mythical Pokémon” as a whole.
6 Likes
I also am not a professional translator and was not thinking about what nuance 幻 should have exactly because the chapter is called vs. Mew, and I know what Mew is, as Sisthra20 mentioned, I figured they were referring to it as a phantom/illusion because of it’s characteristics, not as the term as it exists today(mythical pokemon). No idea if that’s correct though.
3 Likes
I think it’s fine, the Japanese version of the games do call all mythicals 幻のポケモン now that I checked, so “Phantom Pokémon/Mirage Pokémon” should be fine. It’s just to emphasize that they are even rarer than legendary Pokémon that have myths and stories about them (and you actually find in the games and the plot usually revolves around)
3 Likes
@thworthwar The deck should be up soon! All the prep is done for it, just needs to be added to the site by one of our dev team 
Edit - Available now in thread description.
10 Likes
You aren’t alone in feeling the difficulty increase here! Looking forward to getting used to the slang usage to haha
4 Likes
Hello, on pg. 22 I was wondering as to the different uses of ending the sentences with じゃ. I’ve seen it being used as the colloquial version of では, and it’s explained in this grammar point, but in all of the examples it is placed at the beginning of a sentence so I might have the wrong grammar point? These are my (probably incorrect) guesses as to how it’s being used:
なんてことするんじゃ、この悪ガキ！！
In this sentence it feels like it’s adding emphasis similar to よ？
そんなワザとじゃ．．．
And in this sentence I think レッド tried to say じゃない to say ‘it wasn’t on purpose’ but couldn’t finish his sentence?
何匹か．．．ハアハア．．．外へ出てしまったようじゃの
Here chatgpt says it’s a contraction of だ - but I always try to double check everything it says
3 Likes
The じゃ used in the first and the third sentence you provided is classified as a 役割語（やくわりご）and is not related to the colloquial version of では. 役割語 is used in fiction to convey the age or social standing of a character.
The 役割語（やくわりご）じゃ is usually used to convey that the person speaking is an older person.
7 Likes
I’m already behind, because I randomly decided to power through the rest of my Magic Treehouse books on my vacation, but hopefully I’ll catch back up this week. 
Update: My reading really is getting better because it took less than an hour to catch up. I was worred for nothing lol.
5 Likes
So I got way behind because I just had two consecutive weeks of visitors/personal vacations that I was taking… I barely did my SRS so catching back up I’ve really felt the brain mush of neglecting my studies in that time 
Finally back to reading today 
Pg.7 - 17
オーキド博士 - Professor Oak.
The first kanji was nearly impossible to read on my digital reader lol, but we got there
Not really a ton of things to break down here - reading a bit more for speed than full comprehension til I catch up.
It’s interesting that Red a) is such a lil shit, and b) doesn’t know the professor yet. I’m liking the interpretation of the story thus far and Mew is cute as hell.
Pg. 17 - 29
Pg. 17 - なんて事しやがる
やがる, added to the -masu stem of a verb. “What the hell are you doing?”
I read to the end of 29 today! There’s a number of sentences that I’d like to look more closely into but I’m going to save that for the following days now that I’m caught up.
Red’s moment with bulbasaur was really nice - he might be a little cocky but he’s got a good heart and he gets on with his pokemon hehe.
30-31
知っとったー＞知っていた
しょってるー＞せおってる
Curious why it was written this way in the manga? Is it a dialect thing? The dictionaries I look at seem to indicate the way it was written doesn’t really indicate the meaning that was actually used in the context…
5 Likes
Red in chapter 1 definitely has a case of big-fish-in-a-small-pond syndrome
8 Likes
Just checking in to say I’ve read through Chapter three. I’d have to look at the page counts but these chapters feel short, I think it’s less text+easier dialogue than other stuff I’ve been reading lately.
7 Likes
Life keeps getting so busy now and unfortunately this is the first thing that gets cut off from my studies when im busy
Gonna get out of this rut, so Ch. 3 starts today
32-34
Red’s got the pokedex now and some sage words of advice from the professor, I’m excited to see how the plot evolves and diverges from what I generally know about Pokemon from this time hehe.
No particular grammar questions or lookups in this section
34-55
Caught up once again! Yet again just reading for speed here versus really digging into stuff I’m not sure about. Here’s hoping I’m back on track.
As for the story, it seems the rivalry between red and green is firmly established and capricious pikachu is finally in the story hehe.
3 Likes
This manga is pretty easy for me, so I’ll probably read the rest of it this week. I’ll absolutely be reading more volumes though. I’m halfway through this volume right now and it’s awesome so far. Love the art style and seeing pokmeon in a different light.
4 Likes
It’s slightly above my level, so I’m going slowly through it. I’ve also been in a Japanese reading rut lately, so things are going even slower than I really want it to be. Trying to pull myself out of it and make some progress with my reading skills in general.
7 Likes
This is the first book club that I join/The first Manga I read and I’m actually pretty happy about every little thing I know without looking up :’) Even thou I’m quite slow
I know it’s not the most importent part, but maybe someone could explain to me what “どうすっかな” means? I know どうmeans “how” but the rest…
Page 28
5 Likes