Sandbox / Lost In Translation Wick Check

1. Marginal #4: Episode 10's main punchline hinges on some Japanese wordplay. The sick dance instructor, ever the workaholic, murmurs to himself about a face (men) that he wanted Magi 4 to finish choreography with. The boys only hear the tail end and get him soumen. The pun didn't work quite as well in the official subtitles.
2. Miimu Iro Iro Yume no Tabi None of the foreign dubbed versions released in the '80s and '90s kept the name of the title character — not French ("Ordy"), German ("Lexi"), Dutch ("Slimpie"^note It means "Smarty"), Arabic ("Labiba"), Serbo-Croatian ("Džini", read as Jeanie) or Spanish ("Mim" — close but no cigar, the Spanish word for "meme" is actually "mem"). Apparently no-one could quite get their head around this business about people discovering a "meme" on the "Information Network System".
3. Mobile Fighter G Gundam:
   • One possible explanation for the unusual names of the Devil Gundam's Four Kings; each is linked to a specific environment, and Grand and Walter might be corruptions of Ground and Water, their respective elements. Averted by Heaven's Sword, and not really an issue with Master.
   • One explanation for the G in G Gundam is that it's short for the God in God Gundam, which was renamed the Burning Gundam in the English dub.
4. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing:
   • The infamous "No machinegun for him!"; more egregious but lesser known is "Prince of the Stars".
     • The 'machinegun' line is actually more a case of Small Reference Pools. 'Machineguns' is, in military terms, giving a warning shot. Zechs was ordering NOT to give Heero a warning shot and to shoot him down immediately, since he knew of the incoming Operation Meteor. Naturally, anyone that doesn't know that slang would be confused by this. In addition to that, the "Prince of the Stars" line is a reference to Zechs and Relena's Episode Zero chapter, so that's more a case of All There in the Manual than Lost in Translation.
     • "Prince of the Stars" is the Japanese title for The Little Prince, which actually is an apt comparison since from Relena's perspective, Heero is a boy from space who rode a "shooting star" (his Gundam) to come to Earth. "Prince of the Stars" just makes her sound kind of ditzy. In some newer versions, the "Prince of the Stars" has been changed to "Is he a 'Little Prince'?" which clears at least that particular issue up.
   • The English dub is actually riddled with all sorts of weird translation mistakes and lines that just don't seem to make sense the way they're said. And in a plot this complicated... God help you if you want to understand it through the first viewing.
5. Monster Rancher:
   • Like the games, 'Muu' in Japanese means emptiness or darkness. In English we got 'Moo', like the sound a cow makes.
   • Mocchi's name is a pun on a Japanese snack food, mochi, with no real equivalent in English. Genki's inspired for the name in the anime by the food his mom gives him. To avert this, the dub calls the food 'sweet cakes', up until Genki names Mocchi when he realizes the monster's name is that 'cake'.