#like i assure you ‘booyah’ is not ‘booyah’ in jp but i have no idea what it could be lol

[elibean]

So Splatoon tends to have a lot of fun references and easter eggs and whatnot, but I am loving the thing that appears after you secure the ultra signal! Excuse the bad picture, it’s taken from here— https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Sprinkler_of_Doom

In English this is called the Sprinkler of Doom, which I’ll get into why that’s a fantastic translation in a second. The Japanese is just マトイ. Here’s the explanation from Wikipedia— A matoi (纏/まとい) was a flag used in Edo period Japan by firemen (火消し, hikeshi) to notify people of a fire near or within a building. It was taken up on a roof near the burning building by the matoi holder (纏持, matoimochi) and waved to draw the attention of other groups of firefighters, who would then hurry to the site of the fire to assist. Each different group of firemen in the Edo period had their own matoi to identify themselves.

Here’s a picture of a matoi!

(If any of you have seen the anime Fire Force, you’ll also recognize it as what Benri uses in the Asakusa fight…which is how I recognized it at all lol)

So what’s fun about this is the localization of “Sprinkler of Doom”— because of course you can’t just call this “matoi” in English, no one will know why it’s called that or what it means. “Sprinkler of Doom” is campy and silly, but so is the rest of Splatoon, so why the hell not, right? Splatoon’s translations are so funny sometimes, it makes me curious what other choices have been made in localization…