#final flash

[danizinhaut]

Final Flash!!

[mrtoptenlist]

Dragon Ball time! Sam and I talk about the "Failed Finishing Moves" in the series, as in, the moves with all the buildup of a finisher, but ultimately, couldn't take down their foe despite the appearance.

[binding-vow]

"Are you brave enough to take this one!?"

[dbfandom]

Uh, seems I should give a crash course of Japanese needed to understand Dragon Ball 101... and some things you see in the fandom lol

Just out there: I'm a linguist / grammar nerd, my knowledge of Japanese as a whole is very limited. I just use the following tips to understand most of what's happening and how I deconstruct things, as well as why/how certain things are written!

So here, please check it out if you're interested in how I decipher most of it!

Today.. writing systems !

Japanese uses three writing systems (well, 4):

Hiragana: syllables; mostly used for prepositions and words. They're round and have few strokes.

Katakana: syllables; mostly used for foreign-loan words, emphasis, sounds, and machine-caused onomatopoeia. They're square and have few strokes too.

Kanji: ideograms; Kanji are (usually) words/concepts on their own and there's thousands of them. They come from Chinese. On their own, or coupled with each other, Kanji carry their own meaning. They're also combinatory (aka one kanji can contain many kanji within; check how tree 木, woods 林 and forest 森 are written for example; yup, it's just more trees squished together lol)

Romanji: latin alphabet letters (if I write "watashi", this is romanji). The transcription of japanese to the latin alphabet actually follows some rules, put a pin on it I'll explain that later.

Hiragana and Katakana are the same syllables, if it helps you out, think of them as lower and upper case letters (they don't have the same uses tho). Together, they're called kana.

In green: しかし (shi-ka-shi), means "however"); this is written in hiragana

In red: マシン (ma-shi-n ; machine) and ドクターゲロ (dokutoru—gero ; doctor gero)

in blue: 人造人間 has the kanji for man/person twice. It literally translates to "man-made human being" (and in English we've translated this to Artificial Human or Android, while some other languages translated it to Cyborg).

You can see that next to the blue square with 人造人間, there's tiny hiragana (じんぞうにんげん; ji-n-zo-u-ni-n-ge-n); those are called furigana and are present to tell the reader how the kanji is read (and what it means haha). Most shonen manga have them because they're aimed at kids who don't know all of the kanji yet! Furigana are also important because kanji can be read in two different ways (the kanji for mountain is either read as yama or san for instance; it's got to do with the Chinese pronunciation or the word as well as whether the kanji is on its own or combined with another).

Same here: everything is in hiragana except for Gohan's name (with the little furigana to tell you to read it as go-ha-n) and Gohan's age of 4 (they use the romanji /latin for numbers instead of the proper kanji).

If you remember Death Note, there's a moment in which Misa reads Light's full name above his head, but she reads his first name's kanji (月) as "tsuki" and then she's told it's actually read "light" (ライト; ra-i-to; aka the katakana transcription for the English word light)

Now, remember that pin about romanji? And if you remember some old (oooold) fanfics where Vegeta's name is written Bejïta? Well, this comes from that. Japanese syllables don't allow to transcribe everything, and phonology makes it so that Japanese speakers tend to pronounce loan words according to their syllables.

Dragon Ball's katakana name is ドラゴンボール (do-ra-n-go- bo—ru, or Doragon Bōru in the proper transcription system (the — means "longer vowel" which transcribes to an ō). This is why you sometimes see Goku's name written Gokū or, in old books, Gokuh or Gokou, and his furigana is go-ku-u). And there's a lot of loan-words used as names in Dragon Ball. Vegeta's name are the katakana for BE JI (+ longer vowel) TA.

Of course, when you know "all Saiyans are named after Vegetables", you can easily transcribe "back" to the origin-word that it was supposed to represent (you don't go around and write doragon boru, you write dragon ball, after all). Some are easier than others, and Toriyama (with his dad!boomer energy who loves bad puns) also switched some syllables around... Hell, even Saiya-jin (saiyans) (with jin as the kanji for people/population) is actually rearranged syllables for Yasai (vegetables). With that knowledge, Raditz could be transcribed as Radis or Radish (depending on your language) and Kakarot could be carot (or cacarot).. To go back to the original reference instead of playing translating back and forth forever lol.

Same for Bulma. Her katakana name is bu-ru-ma which is the transcription for "bloomers" (aka those gym shorts). This is why in old doujins, you'll see her name be written as Bluma or Bloomer or any other option around that. Bulma's name is written with latin letters very early on though, so there's consensus about her name, but there are others...

So let's talk about ブラ(bu-ra), the second kid of Vegeta and Bulma.

Until DBS came around, it was generally accepted that her name is Bra (like Trunks' name is Trunks and not Torankusu or Tolanks.. even if some people will write torankusu and I find that hilarious), because everyone in Bulma's family is named after undergarments (Bloomers, Panties (Panchy), Brief (Dr Briefs in English, professor Brief elsewhere), Trunks... and Bra for brassiere or plain old bra).

But in DBS, the anime gave her the Bulma treatment and showed her name in latin letters (Bulla).

Now.. why does it look so weird sometimes?

Because Katakana (and Hiragana) are syllable systems, and as such, no consonant (except for N) exists on its own. All consonants must have a vowel attached to them! And when a foreign word is transcribed to katakana, this is how they (generally) do it:

Base on the pronunciation, not on the actual spelling of the word.

If there's a consonant sound alone, add u (except T and D, those get an o)

If the sound doesn't exist as-is in the syllables available, pick the next best thing (fa will be fu + tiny a to let people know how to read it FA and not FUA). The L and R sounds are grouped together into the transcription with R, but they're more or less pronounced the same (in the middle). If you need a harder R, refer to the next point.

Use "longer vowel before this symbol" (ー) and "harder consonant after this symbol" (ッtiny version) symbols as needed to emphasize stress syllables or. (ベジータ (bejita) カカロット (kakarotto)

Profit.

This is why sometimes you'll see "Furiza" and you'll be "wait what" and then pronounce it and say "ooo.. Freezer". Why does English write it as Frieza? idk. French does Freeza and Spanish Freezer (the name is not the exact transcription for Freezer, since they removed a —; it's フリーザ instead of フリーザー)

Here's a fun example:

ファイナルフラッシュ

Fu-(tiny a)-i-na-ru- fur-a- (harder consonant)shu;

Fainaru Furasshu.

You know those "U" are usually there because of how the syllables work. Let's remove them.

Fainar Frassh.

You also know those R letters aren't hard strong R, so pronounce them a little softer, without rolling them. Pronounce this out loud now.

Did the piano start playing???

As my scanner now works, I'll show you how older fandom people used to transcribe the katakana names in latin letters before there was an official "decision" about such things!

Please feel free to share, correct, expand, etc!

And you can always buy me a doujin to support my work haha

[ask-the-prototypes]

Project complete!

For Multiverse May I wanted to put together an animation featuring ALL TEN versions of Nuke! Now in one perfect loop!

Here’s a list of the numbers, names, and general vibes for all 10 of them! 235 - Nuclear Fission - "local mad scientist mellows out and becomes single father of 14" 232 - Bright Future - "apologizes for apologizing and WILL cry" 223 - Nuclear Dawn - "4chan user actually as intelligent as he thinks he is, world trembles in fear" 293 - Halflife - "the concept of time literally does not exist in his dimension; the depressed hoe still manages to be late to everything" 233 - Nukette - "local mellow scientist goes mad and becomes single mother of 14" 209 - Nuclear Powered - "14 local mad scientists become parents to a single android; he flexes on them by not having any mental illness" 239 - Final Flash - "why yes, we DID give that mare access to a pony-portable nuclear cannon, what could go wrong?" 003 - Cold Fusion - "I'm the sexiest researcher at this green energy convention" 226 - Bombshell - "I'm the sexiest assassin in this illegal crime ring" 210 - Polyatomics - "marecel literally discovers the concept of atoms; still can't get a date"

[final300flash144]

Just a Kid

2023-2024 Theme Song

[somewouldsayimthereverse]

[pencilequipped]

Goku Vs Vegeta - Buu Saga

These went by pleasantly quickly. I love this fight. It still gets my HYPED.

[coreybass84]

Final Flash and KameHame Ha. Not much else to it.

[pizzamasternamelesslang-blog]

Final Flash, Eh?

[devileaterjaek]

Dragon Ball FighterZ (Switch)

[ricoricogringo]

Angela mi amor, NYU girl from SC 🔥

[nm-mattuz]

Vegeta: ARE YOU BRAVE ENOUGH TO TAKE THIS!!!

Bernie: No!!!!

[d3monicas]

death note if it was a slasher lol... smile, L

[farvann]

Valora when she was out finding her current look 🩸

Comp done by FDV!

[ask-the-prototypes]

Behold, the nuclear family! (lol) I expanded on the alternate versions of Nuke! There are now seven others, and their isotope numbers have been updated! This means that the numbers seen on the previous drawing are now obsolete.

Lore and details below the cut!

Nuclear Fission is the original! His rift is the first functional one, and it unwittingly kickstarts the other machines into operation.

Nuclear Dawn comes from a dimension where personalities are somewhat flipped, and then exaggerated. He is, with little doubt, an evil bastard.

Half-Life’s dimension is timeless - the concept doesn’t exist. Events happen in any order, at any speed, and the ponies there simply take things in stride.

Nukette is a gender-flipped dimension. Everypony, even the androids (though less so Sync) have opposing sexes and gender identities.

Bright Future’s dimension is one of incredible peace. Very few evils exist, but those evils run unopposed due to naivete or trickery.

Nuclear Powered flips the script on The Prototypes! Rather than Nuke being the one building a family of android prototypes, this dimension has a herd of scientists and researchers working together to create a single, highly modular, highly advanced prototype.

Cold Fusion is a chromatic anomaly; so far, no other dimension has strayed too far from the red color family. Reds and blues are swapped, as are names. Personalities seem to mostly be identical.

Final Flash is the ponified version of China’s ‘Nuke Cannon’ artillery unit from Command & Conquer: Generals. No less brilliant than her others, but has a sort of obsessive reverence for the weapon she hauls and the warheads she fires.

235 - Uranium: The primary isotope used in nuclear reactors and weapons 223 - Francium: Highly volatile isotope that reacts violently with water, and even moisture in the air 293 - Tennessine: The isotope with the shortest recorded half-life ever, clocking in at a mere 25/1000th of a second! 233 - Uranium: A less common isotope, still used in reactors and weapons 232 - Thorium: An alternative proposal to uranium in nuclear reactors, decreasing danger and risk 209 - Bismuth: The isotope with the longest discovered half-life, so much so that its theorized to outlast the universe itself 3 - Hydrogen: The isotope responsible for fusion reactions 239 - Plutonium: Almost exclusively used in nuclear warheads