“Almost C.FIRSTmas” means it wasn’t C.FIRSTmas.
The original 1koma on 315 PASSION CONTENTS can be read here, and my original translation thread can be found here.
Momohito: Oh, I just got a LINK from Akizuki-kun.
……Hehe, he and the rest of F-LAGS went to the family restaurant we did promo for.
Shu: Really? Glad to hear it.
Tell Ryo that they’ll obviously have to order the shumai.
Eishin: No, I think they’d prefer the gyoza.
Momohito: Nope! Too bad I already put my recommendation in for the momoman.
Shu: Oh.
Momohito: Just kidding. I told him to try them all. The gyoza,
And Shu-kun’s shumai, too ♪
Shu: You really like calling me that don’t you, Momohito-senpai.
Eishin: ……If you like it so much, I don’t think Shu would mind if you called him by his first name.
Shu: Huh?
Momohito: You think so? I might as well, since we’re unitmates.
Shu-kun, Eishin-kun…… No, wait.
I’ll go with Shu and Eishin…… Is that alright?
Shu: Of course it’s alright. Eishin-senpai already calls me Shu, and I call you guys by your first names anyway.
Eishin: Yeah, I don’t mind either.
End
TL Notes:
To reiterate what I wrote in the original Twitter thread, I took liberties with the title translation. It more literally translates to “The Way to Say [Your] Name” or “How to Say [Your] Name”, things to that effect.
One important part of this 1koma is that when Momohito is trying to decide what he’ll call his unitmates, he first says “Shu-kun”/“Eishin-kun” in katakana (pictured above, left) , and then ultimately goes with “Shu-kun”/“Eishin-kun” in hiragana (right). This isn’t easily translatable so I opted to drop the honorific in the second instance to (somewhat) better convey the potential connotation. Compare this to katakana “Amamine-kun” and “Mayumi-kun” that Momohito has been referring to them as since C.FIRST’s debut.
As mentioned by myself in the thread and from a few Producers I’ve talked to/seen talk about this, the switch from katakana (remember katakana is mostly used for foreign words transliterated into a Japanese syllabary) to hiragana might symbolize a shift from Momohito’s sense of “foreignness” or unfamiliarity towards his unitmates to something more friendly, as well as designating them as special people on the same level as Producer (who he also calls Piichan in hiragana). Of course this is just reading between the lines so far, but this 1koma has been a hot topic among C.FIRST fans since its release yesterday and I think many of us agree it’s a significant shift in the unit dynamic, especially after F@ncom and Circle of Delight!
SideMinh 