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Dylan asked a question about a quote from The Last Blade 2 , a cool fighting game I recall playing back in the day:

Hello! In the SNK fighting game ‘Last Blade 2’, there’s a character named Zantetsu who is very serious. He doesn’t yell out his attack names, unlike every other character, and in fact barely speaks at all – even his taunt is just him adjusting his hat. Which makes this win quote of his very strange: ’I can’t kill weenies.’ Wha-? The game’s feudal japan themed, so ‘weenies’ is a very odd word choice. Unfortunately I was unable to find video of the JP version, or a japanese rom, but if you can find an arcade runthrough of the JP version with Zantetsu, the line should appear at some point, since he only has a few win quotes. Also: As a suggestion, SNK fighting games in general have had very strange translations all the way up to the present day. The win quotes border on near-nonsensical in places. A brief look at, say, the King of Fighters series would be very interesting!

This is a pretty simple request, so I tracked down the Japanese quote for comparison:

In Japanese, he says something like, “I do not kill the weak.” or “I do not strike down the weak.” Just stuff along that line, basically. He actually speaks in an old, serious style usually used with samurais and ninjas and stuff in entertainment. It’s a bit hard to convey in English sometimes, but it’s usually doable without too much work.

Anyway, there are literally dozens upon dozens of possible translations, but the translators definitely made a weird choice by using the word “weenie” here, as that’s indeed the exact opposite of the type of speech style he uses.

Hopefully that helps answer the question a bit – I realize that SNK games are filled with these things, so who knows, maybe it was all intentional? It definitely gives the games a unique charm, at least!

If you enjoyed this article and know any fellow The Last Blade fans, let them know about this article. I appreciate it!