ドラゴンボール #1, by 鳥山明
by
Stuart Holland
本当のまんがを初めて読みました！よかった！クリスタルハンターのまんがよりドラゴンボールはもっと難しいですよ。クリスタルハンターは日本語を教えます。ドラゴンボールはこのことがありません。キャラクターの名前はよく漢字に書きます。（とふりがな、ありがとう鳥山さん）テクストは本当に小さいですね。ふりがなを読むことはよく難しいです。クリスタルハンターは同じ言葉をよく使います。ドラゴンボールは一度使う言葉が多くあります。
ドラゴンボールの話はもう知りました。長年前にドラゴンボールのアニメをみました。でもまんがはまだ読んでいませんでした。まんがの話はアニメの話似ています。この話は１９８０ｓの文化の話です。ブルマはよく裸です。二つ目の半分にブルマはうさぎのスーツを着ます。（プレイボーイのモデル似ています。）悟空も（数回）裸です。
私はドラゴンボールよりドラゴンボールZよく知ります。でもたくさん私を知るキャラクターを出ることは私にびっくりしました。ウーロンはもっと大切な敵です。チチとヤムチャとぷアールもいますね。
All right, we’re back. That was even more Japanese, I think. And appropriately so! For my English readers, this is me talking about the first issue of the Dragon Ball manga! And as I said above, hot damn, I’m excited to have read a real, honest-to-goodness normal manga for the first time! Not aimed at language learners (and you can tell), just there for entertainment. It was slow. Like holy crap was I slow at reading this. And I had to look up so much. But sometimes there would be a streak and things would all be making sense for a few pages. Very satisfying.
Also as I touched on in the Japanese section, I’m surprised at how many famous and long-running Dragon Ball characters appear right away. But also by the order of them - who starts with Oolong? Names tripped me up a few times, because they when I don’t recognize them, they also don’t translate, so I have to work around them for a while, but I think I got them all by the end. The added context of knowing the characters made that possible (like when I recognized Master Roshi’s name phonetically).
I had great fun with 牛魔王（ぎゅうまおう）, which I worked out pretty quickly was a name, but didn’t know who it was. Who was this evil guy who lived in the castle on the mountain that was constantly on fire, where the 6 star dragon ball is? (Also what’s up with the counter words for the stars in the dragon balls? I worked out what those were, but absolutely do not understand them. 羽 and 匹 please.) I could piece together some meaning from evil guy’s name’s kanji (beef/cow and lord/king). It all finally clicked when he appeared for the first time (right at the end) and I realized it was “Ox King” (ChiChi’s father). Like, I probably should’ve been able to work that out beforehand.
Anyway, a remarkable start to an enormous series and a challenging one from a reading difficulty perspective for me. I would happily keep going, but the way I picked up learner mangas in Japan was to get first issues of a lot of series I knew (betting on my existing context being helpful - which it absolutely has been). But that does mean I only have issue 1. I’ll have to pick up some more next time (or find/import them).
Dragon Ball is a product of its time, but it’s still a great romp through some silly fun. It set up a whole decades-long series that took over the world for a reason.
