Chapter 58 Omake

tome today

Welcome to Build-a-Frog!

Click here to enter

Feather illustration for non-biologists! It occurred to me that some of you might find this useful. It starts with a necessary biology lesson, because I find that understanding the structure and function of feathers will greatly improve accurate rendering of those feathers.

A lot of this is general - obviously you can find all kinds of exceptions in the  natural world (penguins, ratites, I’m looking at you guys). But it should cover the bulk of the illustration needs if you’re not comfortable drawing feathers and want some ideas on how to improve.

For photo references, I highly recommend birdpixel (a very generous online art reference created by Leena and Vivek Khanzode), Cornell’s Macaulay Library, and Piranga, which is mostly aimed at North American bird banders but shows excellent close-ups of a variety of species.

Morning kisses 🤭

hermit picnic!

the teruki hanazawa arc seized me by the brain almost two years ago and still refuses to let go. teru is just warped in a slow-burn-horror kind of way, despite his apparent good cheer, and i find him tragically fascinating.

i looked up a word he attempts to bludgeon intimidate shigeo with in episode 5: 上下関係。

it's read じょうげかんけい (jougekankei). for context, here's teru's dialogue where it appears:

｢聞きたいことは いくつかあるけどその前にハッキリさせとかないとね。上下関係ってやつを差！」 ききたい　こと　は　いくつ　か　ある　けど　その　まえ　に　はっきり　させ　と　かない　と　ね。じょうげかんけい　って　やつ　を　さ！ k'kitai koto wa ik'tsu ka aru kedo sono mae ni hakkiri sase to kanai to ne. jougekankei tte yatsu wo sa! 'i have some questions i want to ask you, but first i have to clarify something. between the two of us, who answers to whom?'

the english subs translate 上下関係 as 'hierarchy', though it's a little closer maybe to 'pecking order' or 'senpai/kouhai dynamics'. i couldn't even find it on a 15000-word japanese frequency list. fortunately, this 四字熟語 (よじじゅくご・yojijukugo・four-character idiom)'s individual components are common and easily assimilated; i was able to understand what it meant on sight:

上下 = among other meanings, high and low, top and bottom... the ruling and the ruled. kanji: 'up, above' + 'below, down, inferior'.

関係 = relationship, connection, concern. kanji: 'gateway, connection' + 'thread'

the katakanized english loanword for hierarchy, ハイアラーキー, is far more common in japanese. so why would teru use this word? why might he just drop it on shigeo without explanation as he does?

much of the vernacular co-opted by criminal organizations -- at least in anime -- tends towards the archaic and/or formal, in keeping with samurai ideals they profess to uphold. was this language he picked up from fending off claw mooks, alone, throughout his childhood?

knowing the exact word teru uses for 'hierarchy' lends even more hilarity in japanese to shigeo's bafflement when he hears it. it's unlikely that he would know teru's peculiar choice of expression, given his lack of interest in academics. the joke in the english translation falls a little flat IMHO, as the boy doesn't seem so poor a student as to be unfamiliar with the word 'hierarchy' or the concept.

i... i want to examine more of teru's language now in this arc, to see how much of it is as elevated as this word and his sense of self-importance here.

an edit (2023.03.31) for some minor errors in this post:

上下関係 actually isn't a yojijukugo... not all four-character expressions are four-character idioms, of course. i should have consulted the monolingual japanese dictionaries i use on this. ごめんなさい！

my transliteration of the line 「聞きたいことは いくつかあるけどその前にハッキリさせとかないとね。」 should have been: k'kitai koto wa ik'tsu ka aru kedo sono mae ni hakkiri sasetokanai to ne. i still get stumped semi-regularly by 〜て＋おくcontractions in the wild. thank you @listlessnss for this and the previous erratum! させとかない is just させる (to cause or make someone do. usually taught to JSL learners as an inflection of する) in its conjunctive affirmative form させて + 置く (as an auxiliary verb, here meaning to do a thing in preparation for something else).

'formal' would have been a better word choice than 'archaic' for describing 上下関係。上下関係 is not an archaic word, but it is uncommon-ish and more likely to be found in formal writings.