hontou ni Stripey Insists Sisters Cry Oniichan Now

Black Lagoon 15

Note on the poster. What Revy said, way back in Ep 3, about her childhood was: "??????????" In a literal sense, "it's not an interesting thing to talk about" but, in this context, she's indicating she doesn't want to talk about it. The Shinsen subtitle is just sooo brilliant though - official fansubs simply can't cut to the chase like that.

And a meta note before the episode summary. I've tended to believe that one should learn Japanese to watch anime rather than the other way round. Learning Japanese from anime can ingrain bad habits, such as use of informal speech in formal contexts e.g. addressing your teacher as "kisama" or "omae". Much unnecessary social embarrassment can also result from, sometimes unconscious, emulation of favourite characters' speech patterns e.g. speaking about yourself in the third person with "-chan" honorific.

Nonetheless, I've found watching raws to be a good test of listening comprehension. Besides trying to understand the gist of the conversation, I also try to remember how some of the kanji is written for those words that I already know the meaning of. For words I don't understand, I try to tease out their phonetics correctly and then deduce their dictionary form. When the subs come out, I then can check my translation notes in the blog post. Most importantly, the raws are the proverbial kick up the arse every week - they remind me how poor my grasp of the language actually is and that I need to study the language harder. orz