Monster Hunter Orage: Research Notes

Tucker Report:

Author:

Mashima, Hiro 真島 ヒロ

Title: Monster Hunter Orage モンスターハンター オラージュ

• “Orage” is French for “thunderstorm”
• “Orage” is like mirage, but replace “mi” with “oh”

Characters:

• Shiki Ryûhô (シキ・リュウホウ, Shiki Ryūhō)
• Ailee Jeskar (アイリィ・ジェスカー, Airii Jesukā)
  • First name written in a super weird way that seems to suggest it’s supposed to be a Western-style name in general, so I think the author is suggesting it’s supposed to get an L sound as opposed to an R sound
  • The “Irie” spelling in the translation I’m reading honestly seems like a poor decision on the translator’s part.
  • First name pronounced like “eye-lee”
  • “Jeskar” pronounced pretty much how it looks (Jess + car)
• Greylee(?) Jeskar グレリィ・ジェスカー
  • Ok, this one’s even weirder than the above
  • Personal name ends in the same bizarre リィ construction as the daughter’s name (this combination of characters is never used for Japanese words and I guess is just being used to make it seem more fantasy/exotic)
  • Let’s just…go with it being pronounced like Gray + Lee
• Kowloon “Prince” Versus
  • Yep, I think the rival character’s last name is literally supposed to be a Japanese transliteration of the Latin word “Versus”! How on-the-nose is that?
  • Remember that Kowloon means “nine dragons” in Chinese. Probably just named that to contrast with the Japanese word for dragon (“ryuu”) in the protagonist’s name.
• Sakuya
  • Sacku-yah
• Kibarion
  • Key-bah-ree-own

Other:

• 双風刃【颪（おろし）】Soufuujin: Oroshi
  • “Oroshi” is a word for winds which blow from the mountains
  • “Soufuujin” is pronounced like so + foo + jeen, but each of the syllables receives two morae (beats of rhythm), so take your time with each syllable (think of each syllable as sounding like its own word)
  • Fun fact: if you pronounce it with short syllables (sofujin), you’re basically saying “grandfather blade” instead of “dual wind blades”\
• “Forbidden Hunter” (封印のハンター):
  • I honestly think this is a pretty shitty translation, which is part of the reason why it doesn’t seem to make sense. I would have translated it as something like “seal-bearing hunters” or “Hunters of the Seal” (the “seal” probably referring to the symbol they wear as a tattoo).
• Miogaruna
  • Mee-oh-gah-roo-nah

MaxyBee:

• Prior works: Look, if you need me to tell you this guy’s previous works then something’s gone wrong somewhere. Groove Adventure Rave/Rave Master was HUGE. Fairy Tail was BIGGER THAN THAT, with its own magazine just for spin-offs, a rare feat in manga! Since 1999 Hiro Mashima (pen name, by the way) has been the golden boy of Weekly Shonen Magazine. And of Kodansha im general, a huge name of global success, and no amount of us calling him an Oda rip-off or mocking stuff like him putting a bomb in a rectum is gonna change that. Anyway, all this is to say that people know him for: Groove Adventure Rave/Rave/Rave Master (1999-2005, 35 volumes), Fairy Tail (2006-2017, 63 volumes), and Edens Zero (2018-present, 21 volumes). All of these have anime, games, and so on.Who they were an assistant for: NOBODY, EVER. Mashima has claimed to learn manga from reading books, from editors, AND HIS OWN ASSISTANTS, WHICH IS A WEIRD FLEX.
• Notable assistants:
  • Miki Yoshikawa (Yankee-kun to Megane-chan, Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches)
  • Kina Kobayashi (Nameless Asterism) (this author really loves stories that play with gender, which is interesting)
  • Bobby Ohsawa (Renaissance Overkill)
  • There’s also Kouji Nakamura, Shin Mikuni, Ai Ueda and a few others, but they’re only notable in a “made stuff that qualifies for Shonen Flop” sorta way.
• Mashima is a big fan of Akira Toriyama and Hiroshi Tanaka, and if you look up the latter’s art and early Rave Master you totally get it,
• Dude used rpg maker to put together a game about Rebecca from Edens Zero IN HIS SPARE TIME. AS A WEEKLY MANGA AUTHOR. SPARE. TIME. I fear the guy’s talent, no matter what I think of his work.

Publishing

• Series it replaced: didn’t. It was a debut series for Monthly Shonen Rival, a magazine that no longer exists
• Series that replaced it: nothing, I guess the magazine had enough that it didn’t need to.
• Monthly Shonen Rival was an odd magazine. Almost definitely made as a response to Jump SQ’s early success (similar to SQ replacing Monthly Shonen Jump, this replaced Comic Bombom), it had a line-up with a bunch of popular authors and works  including Seishi Kishimoto (known for 666 Satan/O-Parts Hunter author, brother to a certain other Kishimoto who did some little ninja series in Weekly Shonen Jump), Rando Ayamine (known for Getbackers), Chikara Sakuma (MAGiCO, which ran in this magazine as its only real hit), and of course Hiro Mashima. But no-one cared, and it just kinda ticked along for a few years and got canceled. The whole magazine.
• Orage launched a month after Monster Hunter Freedom Unite came out on PSP in Japan, a game that sold a million in its first week over there, so people REALLY liked Monster Hunter at this time. And yet. Four volumes. Maybe Mashima was bored.

Manga Itself

• I got nothing, I read this over a decade ago. It’s a Mashima series about Monster Hunter?
• The protagonist follows Mashima’s seasonal naming conventions, but instead of being a clear season like Haru (spring) or Natsu (summer), he’s literally just Shiki (seasons). Mashima must have like the name, as he reuses it in edens zero for that series’ main character.