I read a chapter or two of a manga a couple of years ago and, at the time, it didn’t grab me enough to keep reading it. But my son wanted me to try an anime he liked and, after an episode, I realized it was the same one: Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy. After watching a few episodes, I decided to read the manga, Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu. (I have not read the light novel, though it might be interesting to do so.)
I mentioned to Philip that I was watching the anime. I said something like, “It’s an isekai about a guy who is dropped into a kind of wasteland. He makes some powerful allies and things just go pretty well for him.”
“It sounds like slime,” he said, meaning That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime.
“It is!” I said. “It’s exactly like slime! But completely different.”
What I really want to write about, however, is how Tsukimichi manages representing different languages. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a manga that tries to manage so many languages like this.
The protagonist, Makoto, is picked up from Japan (where he spoke Japanese) and is sent to the other world where he meets with the “goddess” who is repulsed by his ugliness. She banishes him to the “edge of the world” but gives him “the ability to understand what demons, monsters, and other non-human races say”, but not to speak the “hyuman” language.
The Edge of the World is a wasteland inhabited by powerful monsters where hyumans (people) rarely go. And, sure enough, he can seamlessly communicate with monsters and a girl orc that he encounters there. She is rather puzzled that a (seeming) hyuman can speak her language. When she teaches him magic, she apologizes that the chant “isn’t in orcish”. It’s represented in the manga with some weird script.
You don’t learn the background of what the script actually represents for another hundred chapters. But this is one of the ways that other languages are represented.
When Makoto first encounters hyumans, their speech is represented in a different odd script and (as the goddess had said) he can’t understand them and they can’t understand him. (He writes a tanka about it — see the top graphic above and read the alt text for the translation of the tanka.)
He subsequently discovers that basically everyone can speak a “common tongue” — except him. Even when he studies it, although he gets so that he can understand it, he can’t make himself understood by speaking. But he discovers he can generate written speech with magic that people can see and read.
In this graphic, you can see the protagonist using the written speech that someone can see. But you can also see a speech balloon with a doubled line that is a horse (actually a kind of monster called a “bicorn” hiding its two horns) that is talking to him in a language that others can’t read, represented with the doubled line — what others can hear “buhii”. And then his thought balloon with the hashed outline.
A little girl explains the common language to Makoto. She says its a blessing of the goddess that people receive after visiting a shrine. It makes it seem like she considers it something separate from just learning a language as a child. But her description makes it seem indistinguishable from just learning a language as a child. The demihumans, who lack the blessing of the goddess have to learn it in addition to their native language. But basically all of them seem to do so.
As an aside, I would be interested to learn more about the common language. It seems like it could be Esperanto-like. But we really haven’t learned much about it at this point or why hyumans don’t have separate languages or even regional variation. In Japanese, of course, there are a lot of regional variants (e.g. Kansai and Osaka-ben).
In the end, he needs to address most hyumans using magic writing. But he discovers an alchemist who can speak an “ancient language” (normally used for spellcasting) and can speak with them. He can also speak with demons and all of the demihumans, including bicorns (pictured above), werewolves, forest ogres, etc. There are a vast number of different kinds of demihumans.
In addition to speech, some characters can use telepathy with the protagonist. This one is a bit complicated but represents the linguistic complexity being represented pretty well. Read top-to-bottom, right-to-left.
First, the upper panel. The first statement, “They even had quite the fanbase in Tsige” is a telepathic communication by an interlocutor (not the person represented in the panel). The statements, “Aqua-san went to Rotgard?! Our Eris-sama!!” are comments made by those people in the common tongue, but recollections — not part of the current conversation. Makoto says, “And won’t fans be sad about their departure?” is a telepathic communication from him that is part of the conversation.
In the lower panel, Eris (a demihuman forest ogre) is speaking the common tongue (which you can tell by the font), to which Makoto replies in the forest-ogre language. Then Makoto switches to using a new form of secure telepathy that Eris can’t eavesdrop on, which is identified by the thick black inner border.
There are also a number of nods to Japanese. The only characters that can speak Japanese are Makoto and his contracted magical servants, that gain it through their connection with him — plus two other characters that were isekaied from Japan. One of his servants is a dragon who decided to contract with him after studying his memories and becoming fascinated with period dramas. She styles herself as a samurai and adopts various aspects of samurai dress and speech (using “washi” instead of “watashi” as a pronoun, for example.) Another older, more powerful dragon, is revealed to have lived with a previously isekaied person who has since passed away. They haven’t yet had that character speak Japanese, but I’m looking forward to it.
It’s a charming story and I’ve enjoyed reading it so far. I’m looking forward to further releases as they become available.
