Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin: Tucker Report

Tucker's episode notes (including name pronunciation/meaning) for our Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin episode

NOTES

• Author: 田村隆平 / Tamura Ryuuhei
  • Don’t stress the second syllable if you can help it. The Ta- and -mura are two separate units (rice field + village)
• Series
  • Japanese name of series is totally different from the official English name, as we’ve encountered before
  • Japanese title is 灼熱のニライカナイ/Shakunetsu no Nirai-Kanai. The “shakunetsu” has a double-meaning as both “Shakunetsu’s (protagonist) Narai-Kanai” and “Red-Hot Nirai-Kanai”
  • Narai-Kanai is the land of gods from which all life originates in the traditional Ryukyuan belief system (southernmost islands of Japan that used to be their own country and still have distinct cultures and several languages distinct from Japanese)
• Characters
  • Officer Samejima 鮫島 灼熱, Samejima Boiru/ Samejima Shakunetsu
    • Name is chock-full of wordplay
    • Samejima literally means “shark island”
    • Given name is not actually “Boyle,” but that’s a play on the English-term “hard-boiled,” as I’m sure you already noticed
    • Given name in Japanese is written as “Shakunetsu,” which means “red-hot.”
  • Nanase Umi 七瀬 宇海（ななせ うみ）
    • More water-themed naming!
    • “Nanase” is written as “seven rapids/shallows” and “umi” just means “sea” (but there’s an extra silent character there that means “roof” or “heavens”)
  • Chako
    • Just means “chalk.”
  • Lt. Orpheus/ オルフェウス・F・リッパー/ Orpheus F. Ripper
    • Family name is written out phonetically as “rippaa,” which probably is supposed to be the English word “ripper” (long “aa” at the end of a word originally borrowed from English usually corresponds to English “-er”)

OTHER

• Rolling sobat: move used by Guile in Street Fighter