Most Bizarre Moment In Yamato

[Tabunne]

The more I seem to get into SSY as I translate it, the more I find myself just staring at the page and saying the same thing: "Well then. I wasn't expecting THAT!" Granted I'm almost done with volume 9 and there's... 26 total. So I'm very sure there's more like this to come.

So board, what scene did you find to be the most WTF so far? For me, it's definitely gotta be Sarugami, the gorilla descendant from an 1800's shipwreck, interrupting a mafia hit on Yamato. Suddenly the alien worms that resurrect dogs doesn't feel as bizarre If I missed anything else in my brief skim through, I'd love to hear about it!

[Digsu]

For me, that would probably be Rara, whose existence is not explained at all beyond "flying squirrel was befriended by an asshole kid and this somehow made her grow giant and become carnivorous, also she somehow managed to have kids in this state". It just comes right the hell out of nowhere, is never explained, and nobody ever mentions it ever again afterwards.

Either that or this:

There's a chapter of SSY where a dude and his weird St. Bernard just show up for absolutely no reason other than they're from a series by Hiroshi Motomiya, who used to have Yoshi as his assistant. Nobody thinks this is particularly weird, in fact the SSY characters outright have a very OOC fourth-wall-breaking moment where they make fun of Yoshi for "resorting to such cheap tricks to pad the page numbers" or something like that.

But that's not all, oh no. Them showing up out of nowhere isn't just a silly gag, their appearance ends up being vital to the plot as they beat up a bunch of thugs who were supposed to attack Yamato. Again, absolutely nobody comments on the fact that this weird St. Bernard just stands up on his hind legs and goes fucking ham on a bunch of people and somehow this all is played completely, non-ironically straight.

This is roughly like if during Gin's battle against Kurojaki, the dude from Fist of The North Star just showed up out of nowhere, went OMAE WA MOU SHINDEIRU (NANI?! *splat*) on all the Koga dogs to ensure they don't meddle with their duel, refused to elaborate, then left. All just because Tetsuo Hara used to be Yoshi's assistant.

[Tenrou24]

I'm on Yamato chapter 36 (or whichever is the latest up on SFReader) so I've only gotten to the wild Gorilla...so uhh? Giant flesh eating squirrel? Neat but...weird.

[Gingaddict]

While I've not been able to read the whole thing for odvious reason, I still think the Nazi Symbol on the fighting dog is the oddest thing in the series. Does anyone know why that was a thing? I even heard that was removed from future publication on the manga.

[Tora]

While I've not been able to read the whole thing for odvious reason, I still think the Nazi Symbol on the fighting dog is the oddest thing in the series. Does anyone know why that was a thing? I even heard that was removed from future publication on the manga.

The Nazi symbol was on the German Shepherd named Bayern, and his masters, a son named Wohlen Becker and a father named Bernhard Becker.

In the 5th edition, 2014 edition, the Nazi symbol was removed.

I will check if any dialogue might have changed when I'm home

[Digsu]

While I've not been able to read the whole thing for odvious reason, I still think the Nazi Symbol on the fighting dog is the oddest thing in the series. Does anyone know why that was a thing? I even heard that was removed from future publication on the manga.

The Nazi symbol was on the German Shepherd named Bayern, and his masters, a son named Wohlen Becker and a father named Bernhard Becker.

In the 5th edition, 2014 edition, the Nazi symbol was removed.

I will check if any dialogue might have changed when I'm home

I couldn't find any differences in the dialogue myself, though I checked it a while ago and did it pretty quickly so I might've missed something. I don't think there were any references to the Nazi symbols in the dialogue to begin with, though.

For further context, Bayern was Germany's (specifically West Germany's) representative in an international fighting dog tournament, which featured several dogs from different countries, eg. Mustang was Canada's representative, Grease was the US's, etc.. Japan doesn't - or at least didn't - have the same taboo against Nazi imagery that Western countries generally do, for example there's also The Dictator from Dragon Ball and Brocken Jr. from Kinnikuman. So Yoshi's thought process was most likely simply "how do I make it obvious that these guys are German", without any ill or weird intent, and thus we ended up with the absolute yikes of a design that is Bayern. Also I'm pretty sure the context of "have an international tournament arc and make Germany's representative obvious Nazis" manages to somehow make his design even more yikes.

As an aside, the FIG's got separate topics for Bayern's original design as well as the censored version, and I have to say I'm glad the latter exists; not just for the obvious reasons, but I think his design without the swastikas is genuinely pretty nice. Also I do sometimes wonder who was the poor intern who had to spend their afternoon photoshopping hate symbols out of an ancient dog manga.