this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A lone H in Japanese words is a holdover from phonetic mistranslations that were common in the 1980s and 90s.

What it means is that the written Japanese for Goku translates (in Hepburn) to “Go Ku U.”

The last U means the speaker holds the end of Ku a little longer. This is different from a full-width dash ー meant to extend any sound that came before it, it’s an actual separate character that can be written as う in Hiragana (phonetic Japanese characters) but won’t always be seen when reading Kanji.

In the past, the presence of the U sound after another sound was often miswritten in Roman letters as H because that’s what it sounds like to a lot of people.

Example: Touzai used to be written Tohzai because to the western world, the latter is what it sounds like.

But these “extensions” of a sound can also be written with an accent dash over the previous vowel when written in Roman characters to make the word more readable.

Tokyo is actually suppose to be written Toukyou (To U Kyo U), if you look at the Hiragana spelling of the Kanji. So as a compromise, you can write Tōkyō to properly represent all the sounds presented in the original Japanese word.

(I am far from a Japanese teacher, but this is what I’ve learned over the years.)

[–] AbsolutelyNotSpez@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You learn something new every day. Thank you for the detailed explanation. :)

[–] big_slap@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

kinda looks like the H is different from the other letters on his nametag if you zoom in

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

... Goku needs a spacesuit? O.o

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mehn: he can fly, teleport and is basically a god, isn't he? Doesn't seem out of place for him not needing a spacesuit.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Who are you talking about, Goku or Batman? :P

[–] Aralakh@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago
[–] usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Whoa, a Shortpacked reference! Haven't thought of that comic in quite awhile

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

My guess would be that this scene takes place before he achieved Super Saiyan and thus became essentially a demigod.

Because... iirc... he is shown to... essentially not actually really need to breathe, or at least be able to survive in the vacuum of space for a superhuman amount of time, at the end of the Freiza saga / start of the Android saga.

EDIT:

Sorry, but if you haven't seen DBZ, uh, spoilers technically I guess on this like 25 yo anime, but that's when he first becomes Super Saiyan.

I... can't actually remember the pictured scene happening... in DBZ?

Maybe it was in an episode that somehow didn't make it over to Toonami, or I think more likely, its from Dragon Ball, basically the prequel... which I have yet to actually see all of, lol.

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

I watched Z Kai recently, i don't think i remember any scene showing he can survive the vacuum of space. In fact he's shown rushing toward a frieza spade pod to survive. However they did show Bardock fighting Frieza Force in space at the beginning. That scene in op image doesn't seems to be in z kai though, probably in DB

[–] Soulg@ani.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This scene happens on his way to namek, so yes before he turns super Saiyan.

That being said, neither before or after that can he breathe in space. I'm only aware of frieza and his race being specifically called out as being able to survive in open space, plus probably buu

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I could have sworn that the Freiza/Goku battle involves them both or each being in space, outside of the atmosphere of Namek, for at least small periods of time.

Yeah, the Freiza race can just exist in space, but I thought there were some scenes of Goku being in space for at least longer than a normal human could possibly survive.

... and then of course in the battle between Bardock and Freiza, Bardock, despite not being a Super Saiyan... along with a lot of other people... just full on have a battle in space above planet Vegeta.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rBb3TsrV4ps

So... I'm going with the coherence/canonicity of 'who can breathe in space' is... kinda nonsense, lol.

[–] Soulg@ani.social 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Curious if any of those scenes are represented like that in the manga, because I do know of what you're referring to, I just generally assumed the atmosphere is different on Vegeta/exaggerated proportions.

And well, Goku is explicitly not a human at all, let alone a normal human, so it's entirely possible they can last longer than humans could. But just not indefinitely survive, I guess?

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

I mean, the scene with Bardok... like... the amount of curvature of the planet you can see behind them...

Nah, they're in the equivalent of roughly MEO, like GPS Satellite altitude.

Assuming gravity is still the same basic thing, no, no they are not in any kind of substantial atmosphere, unless we're going with 'Saiyans can breathe trace amounts of hydrogen or helium'.

I do not know how it is portrayed in the manga vs the anime.

I think its just rule of cool in this scene, but yeah its kinda... nonsense.

Unless there is some kind of... sci-fi bio modifaction of ... many? of Freiza's soldiers going on, that somehow enables them to ... not need to breathe, amongst other extraodinary capabilities for beings that seemingly originally developed on some kind of planet, with some kind of atmosphere.

https://dbzeta.net/threads/how-was-bardock-able-to-breathe-in-space.19947/

Apparenty the scene isn't actually depicted in the manga, and most of these peeps are going with 'well there is still technically some atmosphere' to which I would say No, not without rewriting the laws of physics.

On Earth, you have 1 atm of pressure at sea level, 10^-7 atm of pressure at 100km altitude.

MEO is like 2000 to 35000km altitude.

Its well into 'hard vacuum', where we can't really even meaningfully measure 'atmospheric pressure'.

[–] makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

This specific instance was when he was flying to Namek right after beating Vegeta for the first time at the beginning of DBZ. Where he needed to go outside the ship while it was in transit. He'd never been to space and had no reason to think he'd be fine without a suit

By the beginning of Dragon Ball Super he does go into space to fight Beerus, but he's not there for long. It seems he can go in space for a bit, but needs to come back to breathe. This also tracks because he's had to learn to control his breathing in multiple different ways

Not as bad as seeing "Zolo" in the wild

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 points 1 week ago

It's not 'Songo'?