Chapter 4 … Nonchalantly, casually, Iroha Isshiki assembles a future.
1 “I Want to Make Miracles with You” is the title of a pop song by the band Sambomaster.
2 “So you’re Machi Tawara, huh?” Waaaay back in Volume 2, Hachiman brought up this tanka by the poet Machi Tawara: “So you said to me, / ‘I like this flavor a lot,’ / so, well, that means the / sixth of July is now the / salad anniversary.” This line is also worded like the Pop Team Epic meme “So you’re an anti, huh?”
3 The Straw Millionaire is an old folktale, probably written in the Heian period, about a poor man who starts with a piece of straw and trades up over and over until he becomes wealthy.
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Chapter 5 … But surely, the girls will also continue to go wrong.
1 “…on the metaphorical conveyor belt of conversation…” The original line here was “finding the right moments to place [words from] the sa column like a work operation.” All his stock replies in Japanese start with sa, and he’s also punning “sa column” (sagyou) with “work operation” (sagyou). As you can imagine, this is wildly untranslatable.
2 “The most popular is, of course, this one, Komachi Hikigaya and She’s the classmate I’m most looking forward to seeing more of! I hope she gives it all she’s got! and then she’d be the favorite to win the race.” This is probably a reference to the idol game Umamusume.
3 “Since both our parents have the inheritance factors ‘Corporate slave ,’ at this rate, I’ll wind up inheriting that, too.” More Umamusume. This is part of the inheritance system, where a girl can become a “parent” to a trainee who will inherit her traits.
4 “Wow, that Okome-chan nickname has actually stuck… Maybe I’ll call her Rice-chan at home, too! But Rice-chan won’t call me ‘Brother’ in that refined and respectful way.” Isshiki calls Komachi “Okome-chan” because of the brand of rice (okome) called Akita Komachi. But here Hachiman is talking about a character from Umamusume, Rice Shower, who calls the player onii-sama, a respectful term for “big brother.”
5 “Komachi is simply conducting herself as the club president. Komachi wouldn’t designate this as an impression of Yukino.” “Ohhh, you nailed it—she does talk pretentiously like that.” In Japanese, Komachi ends both sentences with nodakeredo, which is Yukino’s verbal tic in Japanese, but it has no direct meaning in English; it does communicate a certain haughty formality.
6 “…Komachi briskly poured the black tea into the cups—she was hardly green at this, after all (ha-ha).” The original line here is “briskly poured it (since it’s tea),’ punning “brisk” (chaccha) and “tea” (ocha).
7 “Mm, I’m feeling great today, and the tea is, too…” “I’m feeling great today, and this cigarette tastes good” is an old ad slogan from Ikoi brand cigarettes, which sold tobacco products in Japan from the 1950s to 1970s. Hachiman is being a little witty here, because the word commonly used to take a puff of a cigarette (ippuku) is also less commonly used for taking a sip of tea.
8 “She was shrugging like Tora-san going, If you’re gonna tell me that, it’s over.” Tora-san is the protagonist of the long-running film series Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It’s tough being a man) from the 1960s, last referenced in Vol. 9. “If you’re gonna tell me that, it’s over” is the line he says in every film once his uncle finally snaps at him, and he leaves on a journey.
9 “Oh my, all aboard the SS KomaIro!” In Japanese, Hachiman is literally saying “Oh my, how nice,” but in a very feminine manner, referencing a meme for what yuri fans say when they see yuri content.
10 “After seeing his footwork, [the shoryuuken] was easy” is a quote from the fighting game legend Daigo Umehara.
11 “…yesterday that our drum-type washing machine has a mysterious ‘air iron’ function. Oh look, another function I won’t touch with a ten-foot pole.” The original Japanese for this last line is punning on kinou (function) and kinou (yesterday).
12 “Third year of middle school—in other words, fifteen years old—is the age when you race out on a stolen bike and go around breaking the windows of the school at night.” The first half of this is referencing the previously mentioned lyrics of the song “Juugo no Yoru” (A Night at 15) by the late Yutaka Ozaki, which describes racing out on a stolen bike at night when he’s fifteen, as well as other delinquent behavior. He does not talk about breaking windows, however.
13 “But what does it all meeeeean?” This line from Naruto was originally just Naruto saying, “What do you mean?” but then it turned into a meme on Futaba Channel. There were a number of nonsensical memes only understood by insiders (“It’s Izanami”; “It’s become a sacrifice”), prompting people who weren’t in on the joke to respond with this line, which then became a meme in its own right.
14 “…got herself pumped up. Zoi!” This references ganbaru zoi, the cutesy but meaningless sentence-ending zoi from the protagonist of the manga New Game! when she tries to get herself motivated for her day.
15 “Komachi and Isshiki both went ‘Mumu!’ like the Rakuten Card Man, attention fully on me.” This is from an ad campaign for the online shopping site Rakuten. The Rakuten Card Man has cards for eyes, staring straight at the viewer as he goes “Mumu!”
16 “This is the birth of the Full-Wallet Alchemist.” The original Japanese here was kogane no renkinjutsushi, meaning “pocket change alchemist,” in reference to the manga by Hiromu Arakawa, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist).