天下制覇

It's honestly kind of a relief.

I missed the note, but the candy show thing is off this week and will be returning on the 18th, same bat time, same bat place. Had I been a little more on the ball, I might've prepared something. Unfortunately, all I have are screencaps from the Komugi episode where she fought Comiket by turning into Falcon Force Five and shooting herself down, and a riddle/mystery that's been bothering me for a long time now, which I posed to Clyde Mandelin, but he was unable to answer either.

I first encounted the phrase 夏塩蹴り in fighting game lingo, and it's been a personal thorn in my side to try to figure out the etymology. It means somersault kick, but literally, it's written as "summer salt kick", as in someone took "somersault", broke that up into "summer" and "salt", and then translated each of those individually. It's such a weird artifact of mistranslation that I can't help but wonder. Street Fighter 2 (Guile's [2]8) seems to be what gave it its rise to prominence, and it's come into common(ish) use for that kind of backflip kick all across the board. It's used in Baldr Sky too, if you need some manner of pornographic game reference. I can't really find any particular reason it ended up that way though. I have found a few traces that it may have been a pro wrestling move, always a big thing in Japan, where if you take the kana for it (サマーソルトキック), which is what Guile's move actually was called, and split it up into component parts instead of understanding that it's only two words, not three, you could end up with the wacky-ass kanji for "summer salt", but nothing directly in or with SF2 or any publication misusing it that suggests what first ignited it.

And now you know! Or don't know, as the case may be, and share my annoyance. Or not. Maybe someday, we can discuss the glorious disasterathon that is Japanese Shadowgate.