Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 6 - What is a Duelist Chastity Belt, anyway?
Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Part 6 - What is a Duelist Chastity Belt, anyway?
The weirdest translation in Viz Media history
On Wednesdays, we’re reading Yu-Gi-Oh! here on JonathanLack.Com – specifically, as explained in Part I of this series, we’re looking at how many people are killed in the surprisingly violent original manga, and which characters rack up the biggest kill counts. And today, we’re continuing with Volumes 21 through 23 of the manga.
In Volume 21, we learn Ryota Kajiki's (Mako Tsunami in the dub) father was brutally murdered by The Sea in a fierce battle. And you might say "Jonathan, The Sea is water, it can't do murder," to which I reply "Look at Ryota's passionate personification of The Sea and tell me I'm wrong!" 1 Kill for The Sea.
Volume 21 also introduces the term "Duelist Chastity Belt", which has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this entire ‘kill count’ project but is such a bafflingly bizarre choice of words I had to share it. We’ve got some investigating to do.
I was super curious whether this phrase was actually said in Japanese or someone doing the translation at Viz Media was just being a massive weirdo, so I did some digging. Here is the same panel in Japanese: he calls it (in the brackets) a "決闘封じの枷" - read as "Dueru fuu ji no kase."
The Kanji 決闘 is usually used within Yu-Gi-Oh! as 決闘者, spelled with furigana for "Duerisuto," for Duelist. That is basically what those Kanji mean (決闘 = duel) but not how they're usually read, hence the furigana. It's sort of like capitalizing Duelist to make it a proper noun.
決闘封じ adds 封 (fuu) to make "Duerufuu." 封 = Seal, and 封じる is the verb "to seal." Then that's combined with 枷 (kase) which means 'shackles' or 'restraints.' So 決闘封じの枷 would roughly translate as "Duelist Sealing Restraints," or "Duelist Sealing Shackles."
The word for Chastity Belt in Japanese is 貞操帯 (teisoutai). None of the same kanji are used between that term and the one in Yu-Gi-Oh!, and while I am no expert on the Japanese etymology of chastity belts – if you know one, let me know I guess – I don't see a synonym that uses the Kanji Yu-Gi-Oh! employs here.
So – I conclude it's really a stretch, and a pretty gosh darn weird one, to take what it says in Japanese and go for "Duelist's Chastity Belt." Especially when you look at this later panel, where they say it again in English, but in Japanese, he just says "その枷" or "those restraints."
So yes, whoever was translating Yu-Gi-Oh! at Viz that day was a big ol' weirdo who inserted the phrase "chastity belt" into a children's manga where a simpler term - "Duelist Handcuffs?" - would have sufficed. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
Back to business, though. Volumes 22 & 23 feature one of the best stories in the series – Yugi vs a mind-controlled Jonouchi. Everyone's under threat of death, including a knife to Mokuba's throat and a cyanide capsule for Anzu. That last one didn't make it to the anime even in Japanese.
And speaking of the anime, if you've only seen that version (especially the dub), you might be surprised at just how powerful and emotional it is on the page, in part because Takahashi's art is just on fire through this whole section. Beautiful stuff.
While our heroes make it out alive, there is a double homicide here, as I'm pretty sure Kaiba just murders these two henchmen. I'm not even joking. We never see them again, he tells them to die, he's absolutely furious about his Blue-Eyes...I think we gotta give 2 Kills to Seto Kaiba.
And finally, one more murder in Volume 23, where Yami Bakura explicitly murders Ghost Kozuki, the zombie boy from Duelist Kingdom. He will not be missed. 1 Kill for Yami Bakura.
OFFICIAL YU-GI-OH! KILL COUNT AS OF VOLUME 23
Yami Yugi: 11 kills
Seto Kaiba: 6 kills
Yami Bakura: 4 kills
Creepy Mime: 2 kills
Katsuya Jonouchi: 2 kills
Shadi: 2 kills
Baby Joji: 1 kill
Marik Ishtar: 1 kill
Pegasus J. Crawford: 1 kill
The Sea: 1 kill
NEXT WEEK: Battle City takes to the skies and a new competitor emerges in the form of the ultra-violent Yami Marik with Volumes 24, 25, 26, and 27!
Catch Up on the Complete Yu-Gi-Oh! Kill Count Series:
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