Jungle no Ouja Taa-chan 35

There are many reasons for people to come to Africa, but most of the time it involves the animals, in particular capturing them in their natural habitat...

No. 35: Pro Cameraman Linda

21.
Caption: Chinkono River
Narrator: Betting a melon with a hippo, it’s a race to the other side!!
Ta-chan: O—h
Ta-chan: K
Ta-chan: Hahahaha, this isn’t something you can lead in at—all!! You were ten years early to challenge me!!
SFX: Kuni kuni kuni
Caption: In truth, it’s a hippo who dreams of coming to start in Barcelona…
(TN: By this point, the 1988 Seoul Olympics were in the past and Olympic hopefuls were looking forth to the 1992 games in Barcelona, Spain)

22.
Ta-chan: Strange—Up to now, I hadn’t lost in swimming but?
Hippo: Pea—ce
Ta-chan: Here, your promised melon.
SFX: Kasha
Woman: I’m sorry, I took a picture since you were too good friends.
Ta-chan: It’s a beauty.
Linda: I’m Linda Carter the photographer. Nice to meet you.
Ta-chan: King of the Jungle Ta-chan, how do you do?

23.
Linda: Can’t you hold my camera for a bit? I want to wash my body.
Linda: I’ve been going around Africa for a month already, taking pictures of animals. But I haven’t been happening across quite good subjects.
Linda: Hey, if you’re fine, can’t you be my guide? I want to take some animals along the river.
SFX: Kasha
Linda: No—way, you took it in this place…but that was a surprising nice shutter chance even for a pro.
Ta-chan: Eh?
Caption: Shutter Button

24.
Jane: Don’t take pictures of these interesting things. Take one of me too.
Ta-chan: Here, smile!!
SFX: Kasha
Jane: Are you mocking me!!
Ta-chan: My wife, Jane.
Jane: Take me as a beauty.
Linda: Nice to meet you.
Jane: Heh—you came from America to take pictures of animals?
Linda: Yes. I wanted to take pictures with a theme of “Animals and Humans”.
Jane: What is your school?
Linda: Harvard University, I came out of a photography study that was an art course.
(TN: Just as an aside: there are photography courses and classes at Harvard, available through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences)
Jane: Eh—aren’t you intelligent?
Caption: Ta-chan, who can’t enter into the topic anymore.
Linda: Photography has a possibility of exciting artistic expression that wins globally. If I can create with a natural point of view the form of a human being surrounded by animals, I can make a strong appeal to the general public.
Jane: Hmm hmm
SFX: Gari gari

25.
Ta-chan: Here, I’ll help you out and give you a drink.
Ta-chan: I can’t successfully help with both my hands—
Linda: That’s good—a human who will kindly help giraffe that bends seemingly rigidly it’s long legs and has to drink water. This sort of photo will absolutely be popular with the yuppies of New York.
(TN: Just for those who really don’t know who they are, “yuppies” or “young urban professionals” were a sub-culture of young middle class living in the cities who were notable for obsession with personal consumption and perception with their peers as opposed to the needs of society, making them out of touch with the way things really were. They were a major force in pop culture in the early-mid 1980s, but faded away after the stock market crash of 1987 and the recession of the early 1990s)
SFX: Goku goku

26.
Narrator: As such, Linda continued to photograph while going down the Chinkono River
SFX: Kasha
Linda: No good: I’m overediting it with something different. A connection of animals and humans with much more tension.
Ta-chan: It’s difficult.
Jane: It’s sort of like that with art.
Ta-chan: Ah, that squirrel is floating.
Ta-chan: It’s going to be waterfall ahead!
Ta-chan: Hold on, I’ll save you now!
Linda: That’s it: the feeling of tension!!

27.
SFX: Go—
SFX: Go—
Linda: This is the thing I’ve been wanting in Africa all along!!
Jane: But, Linda-chan, that does look like a squirrel but…
Jane: It’s a giant flying squirrel.
(TN: The “giant flying squirrel” here refers to the Japanese giant flying squirrel (Petaurista leucogenys), a flying squirrel that is endemic to three of the islands of Japan and Guangzhou of China)
SFX: Dododododododo | Sui—
Narrator: The next day, Linda hurried home to America.

TN: Somehow I sort of wonder how honest Linda was with her mission. I get "taking pictures of animals", but the whole "sell them to the rich and up-and-coming" in America bit felt a bit out of focus in me...but just me. (then again I just realized something: her name is "Linda Carter"...wait, so now Tokuhiro is a Wonder Woman fan?) It was a silly chapter though, for the most part harmless and fun so nothing really more to say...outside Ta-chan's skills in using boners to take pictures, but that's just who he is.