Learning Japanese with Berserk: Millennium Falcon
Added 2022-10-23 17:10:08 +0000 UTCBerserk gets a new dynamic in volume 22 with the return of Femto in the physical world, having been incarnated into a new Griffith. This starts a new story arc called 千年帝国の鷹 with ミレニアム・ファルコン added as furigana in Japanese. In English, we follow the furigana and simply call it the Millennium Falcon arc.
As you might have guessed, the name is an homage to Han Solo's ship from Star Wars. Miura was a fan of the original trilogy, being in the demographic for whom it revolutionized cinema. However it's not a gratuitous reference.
The kanji for the name literally means "the falcon of the thousand years empire". As we've seen before, 鷹 (TAKA) can mean both "hawk" and "falcon" in Japanese, while 千年 (SEN NEN) means a thousand years (or a millennium) and 帝国 (TEIKOKU) means an empire. So without the furigana, it would be pronounced せんねんていこくのたか (SEN NEN TEIKOKU NO TAKA).
It's worth pointing that の (NO) in Japanese doesn't always just mean "of" and can actually have a relatively wide range of translations depending on the context. For example in this case it could also be "the falcon from the millennium empire", "the falcon in the millennium empire", "the falcon (who is) the millennium empire", etc. It could even be understood as implying that the Falcon will establish a millennium empire.
