„Kore wa Zombie desu ka?“, one of the more enjoyable animes of the winter season introduced new lingo to our beloved nerd community in form of a chain-saw wielding young girl that calls herself a “masou shoujo”. There is some serious confusion out there on what that exactly translates to.
The term “masou shoujo” is obviously a word play on “mahou shoujo” or “magical girl”, as it is also called in the western anime community.
Crunchyroll leaves it at that with no further explanation for whatever reason and just slams “masou shoujo” in its full Nipponese beauty into the viewer’s face, apparently hoping for it to be perfectly selfexplanatory – because you know, it’s like a mahou shoujo, just more…s-y with less h!
Seriously, it’s not that hard to find a decent English expression, but let’s start from the beginning:
“Mahou shoujo” is written as 魔装少女 in Japanese. We can ignore the last two characters for “shoujo” (which is “girl” or “young woman”) and focus on “masou”. You won’t find an established word “masou” in dictionaries, so we have no choice but to look at the kanji themselves (or morphems to be exact) and try to make some sense out of them (just like any Japanese otaku also has to do). I like to refer to KanjiDB at such opportunities. The respective results are:
魔 (ma) witch, demon, evil spirit
—
魔術 (majutsu) black magic, sorcery
魔女 (majo) witch
魔法 (mahou)magic, witchcraft, sorcery
使い魔 (tsukaima) familiar (spirit or otherwise magical creature which aids a magician or sorcerer), familiar spirit
魔法使い (mahoutsukai) magician, wizard, sorcerer, witch
It is important to not just look at the kanji entry alone but also at associated compounds to really get a sense of the meaning and usage. In this case, it becomes obvious that “ma” can be understood as “magic” or something similar (in the given context of the anime).
Now to the really interesting part, same procedure with “sou”:
装 (sou) attire, dress, pretend, disguise, profess
—
偽造 (gizou) disguise, camouflage, masquerade
正装 (seisou) uniform, full dress
包装 (souhou) packing, wrapping
塗装 (tosou) coating
仮装 (kasou) costume, fancy dress, masquerade, disguise, converted (cruiser)
You get the idea, “sou” is basically all about clothes or dresses, which makes sense: Said masou shoujo does the transformation into her magical girly dressy thing but rather than relying on supernatural powers (=magic) to fight monsters, she just uses her…well, chainsaw. She is just magically dressed and no full-fledged magical girl – and there we have our translation: A masou shoujo is a “magically-dressed girl”. That’s even close to “magical girl” and kind of conveys the original pun. I won’t say, its a perfect translation (which would pretty hard to find in general, when facing puns etc.), but it’s accurate enough.
Takaii from Random Curiosity suggests the following:
From what I can figure out the characters “魔装” Ma + Sou is just a compound of two different kanji. Ma from Mahou (magic) and Sou from clothing. If you look up Sou, you see that when you put a character in front of it, it’s usually a type of equipment or clothing. IE: 偽装 Fake + Clothing = disguise.
The only thing I can think that makes sense is Magical Equipped Girl. So, if you look at her chainsaw, you can almost see it as an extension of her powers. So I think the the focus is on the weapon rather then the user. (This being the first episode, who knows)
This is basically the same translation I proposed, he just interpreted “sou” slightly differently. The problem is that this suggestion doesn’t fit as well if you take one more look at “sou” and the anime itself:
Returning once more to the compounds listed above, one notices that “sou” – in a more general sense – tends to lean into the direction of a hull wrapped around a body, especially taking words like “souhou” (packing, wrapping) or “tosou” (coating) into consideration; “sou” refers to what is directly worn onto the body. In some cases, that might be called an “equipment” (think of kevlar vests) but you would usually call that something like a “clothing”.
Also, remember the final battle of the first episode: Said masou shoujo can wield her chainsaw despite having lost all of her magic powers and after the transformation of the main character, he even comments about getting nothing but clothes by all the hocus pocus.
Thus, the whole magic thing is about the dress, not the chainsaw-equipment.
Conclusio: “Magically-dressed girl” is the superior translation, “magical equipped girl” is misleading.
@Crunchyroll: Honestly, was that so difficult? Your subs suck hard, man – but that’s all quiet on the western front.
Sources: KanjiDB, Random Curiosity