[OOC][PLOT] The Third Thread of Planning for Arc 1 - Arrivals

[Labster]

Okay, just got a chance to look it over.  It looks great so far.  

If Fate is coming to the party, then that'd include Nanoha.  And with all the red flags Ben's raised, that's not a good idea to go haring off with them just like that.  Besides, if you ran that bit of Nanoha's Japanese through Google, you'd see that she was saying that she was done with her chores, and if it was okay to go out with Fate.

Maybe you'd better run that phrase back through Google - it says she was saying that she was done with her chores, and if it was okay to go out with her family.

I think Google's in the wrong here.  When I look up "feito" in the Japanese dictionary, the first definition is Fate Testarossa.

"That's really pedantic, Aika-sempai," muttered Alice.

And speaking of pedantry... I doubt either Aika or Alice know the Japanese language.  If they're from a world like reality, then they know the local Italian and English, because they work in tourism.  Both of them have English derived surnames, too.  And from printed material we saw on-screen, we know Italian or Veneto is the dominant language of Neo Venezia.  You could make a case that Aika is haafu, because her name has a Japanese spelling.   But unless someone convinces me otherwise, what we saw in the anime was a Japanese dub on an Italian reality.

Good point. As a counter-point, Aika calls Alice "kohai" more than she calls her "Alice", so I'm thinking they're saying something that refers to the sempai-kohai relationship, no matter which language they're saying it in. We just need to figure out what they're saying.

Use of "kohai" in Japanese in this way would be really unusual.  It has the same level of endearment as "peon" does in English.  I've heard it used as a term of endearment in English language comedy, though.  So it suggests either an organization that used the words in its founding, but don't carry quite the same connotation as in Japanese -- Himeya could be suitable here -- or it suggests an Italian or English word translated back to Japanese, like "apprentice".