I don’t know if this has been picked up on before, but I am losing my mind over it so I want to share my journey with you. May I present my descent into: Zen’s Algae Report.
It all started when I paused the beginning of episode 14 to see what Zen was writing about and was amazed and highly entertained to find that it seemed to be a report on, of all things, aquatic algae.
This naturally piqued my interest, so, being a loveable-yet-rather-obsessive-scamp with a passion for words and too much time on my hands, I set to work attempting to transcribe what he wrote in that brief scene.
In the transcription I put hyphens (---) wherever the next part was not visible and put asterisks around words I believed to have figured out, though they were partially obscured (Zen’s hand moves in the scene so more words were revealed). Multiple asterisks just mean I have a note about it at the end. 👍
"--- erie could experience one --- severe harmful** algal bloom --- a potential measure of 8.7 on --- the severity index, according --- oceanographic institution.
--- which have different colors *and textures*. Blooms can appear in a variety of colors that depend on the algal species. The aquatic ecosystem and organism --- cyanobacterial blooms, the formal name for the blue-green algae, are the problem here. Their presence means cities and local governments must *spend more* to --- water, puts swimmers in *high concentration*”.***
**this was written as one word - 'severeharmful' - and had me stumped for a while :') I like the thought of this word existing in the ans-verse and the characters using it :D
***after spending too much time rewinding and pausing to see parts of words as zen's hand moves to reveal them, I could make out 'hi --- oncentrat'. I believe it's meant to say 'high concentration' but WHO KNOWS
It was only AFTER typing all this that I found out The Truth.
The first half-word that was at the top of the page was bugging me because I couldn’t figure out the letters. So, being the loveable-yet-slightly-perfectionistic-scamp that I am, I racked my brains over it until I realised it could read as “-ake”. The following word, “erie,” hadn’t made sense at all, so I couldn’t see how I could use it to try to figure out what this “-ake” word before it could be. I decided to google the word “erie” in case it did mean something that I was unaware of. And guess what I found?
“Lake Erie” is apparently the fourth-largest lake (by surface area) of the five Great Lakes in North America. This may be common knowledge to Americans(?) but as a loveable-yet-entirely-European-scamp this was news to me. I was obviously thrilled as this worked for both words and made sense, but I was also surprised that Zen appeared to be writing about a very real, and not ans-verse, American lake. 🤔
I wanted to see just how much of His Algae-Loving Highness Zen’s report was true, so I searched for “lake erie cyanobacterial algae”
After getting over the humiliation of being grammatically corrected, I was thrilled at this confirmation that, yes, Lake Erie does in fact host the infamous cyanobacteria(l) algae from the report! 🎉 but now the question remained: Why the heck did they bother to make this random paragraph about lake algae and translate it into Clarinese??
WELL. I copy and pasted a line from the report along with my previous searches and....
Surprise surprise, an exact same phrase from the report came up in a science news website! (You can imagine I was ricocheting off the walls at this point) Which led to this:
The parts circled in yellow are directly copied into Zen’s report. (It is currently September, hence the apprehensive red addition) Honestly? I couldn’t stop laughing.
(Zen you can’t hand that report in, there’s a little something called ‘copyright’)
So, why did the animation team decide to lift this text from weather.com? What relevance does it have to the story, let alone Zen’s princely duties? Could they have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for this loveable-yet-meddling-scamp? I cannot say, but if anyone ever finds out more, please do let me know!
I’m going to leave it there, I just needed to get this out of my system, it was certainly a ride. 😂
Something Extra!
An example of a situation where the word ‘severeharmful’ may be used:
Kiki: You fight like an algal bloom.
Mitsuhide: !! D: No need to be so severeharmful!
Zen: Well, actually, if she is comparing you to a cyanobacterial algal bloom then that implies you have a potential measure of 8.7 on the severity index, according to the oceanographic institution.
Mitsuhide:
Zen: Which would mean you fight pretty well, I guess.
Mitsuhide: *turns to Kiki with question marks for eyes*
Kiki: Precisely, I thought that was an obvious reference, given the green-blue shade of your hair, the exact colour of certain cyanobacterial algal blooms.
Mitsuhide: WHERE DID ALL OF THIS ALGAE KNOWLEDGE COME FROM
obi crying actually means so much to me. it ties in perfectly with his arc earlier on in the story where zen and shirayuki have to spell out to him that they care about him and don't want him to do things on his own/get hurt. this moment of it sinking in that he's wholeheartedly wanted and that he found the people who accept him and want him by his side. the title given to him by zen. shirayuki asking shinsu jiran to let him stay. it must mean so much to hear that from shirayuki since he's had feelings for her for a while but repressed those feelings for her sake. also the fact that he asked permission to stay just a moment earlier, which he might've done partly because he feels like it's his duty (given to him by zen) in addition to his own personal feelings, makes her reassuring both of those sides by asking herself so comforting. the emotion he has when he hears what she says shows that he still struggled to fully understand that his company is wanted and that shirayuki cares for him. him gathering the courage to say what was on his mind and showing that vulnerability is so important. he deserves this and i'm so happy he got to cry.
