They came! They came! I knew they would, but mail other than bills is always exciting.
Based on a tip from the Giantess Video blog, I identified two manga I wanted to purchase. I realize Aoi Mashirō’s Big Girl on Small Island is a very gentle, nonsexual story, yet it’s still a Size document. The other, Great Maid Iro-chan (aka Wakase Omusume Maid-chan), is a refined publication by UruUru, someone I’ve been following for a very long time over Twitter, DeviantArt, Pixiv, and other places. When I saw this book came out, I absolutely had to support the artist and own the book. By “refined” I mean that parts of this story were very familiar to the series UruUru developed online, but now the illustrations are more lavish and the story is stretched out a little. Which is great! Now I get to own a permanent copy of a series that could disappear online.
I was disappointed to have to order them over Amazon (even the Japanese version), but the alternative Japanese stores wouldn’t process my transaction.
Best of all, I don’t have to be proficient in Japanese to read these. Which is good, because I’m not in the least. I have a funny story about the time I asked a Japanese teenager how to get to Narita train station—I phrased the question well enough to surprise him, but of course I couldn’t understand one syllable of his response.
No! Now, if the visual narrative isn’t clear enough, all I have to do is run the image through Google Lens and let it approximate the translation. Of course it’s not perfect but close enough to be parsed successfully.
It’s a little time-consuming, but only slightly, because Google Translate only needs, like, two seconds to translate (and adjust) all the copy on the page. And there’s even an option to have an electronic voice read it all out. Mind, it’s very literal, so when the woman says “let’s play” (see image), the voice recites it as “let’s play tilde musical note.” Which, at worst, is cute.
For that matter, people should be aware that among the online resources for translation, the two best and most accessible would be Google Translate and DeepL. Incalculable work has gone into each of these, and they each produce excellent results, even if they vary in style.
Here, I’ll show you by grabbing a sample paragraph from the aforementioned Japanese-only blog Giantess Video.
Original Text
そういうと彼女は、カメラの前に立ってポーズを取り始めた。ちなみに彼女の身長の想定イメージとしては、およそ2kmありその大きさに見合った迫力のあるポーズを取る彼女にカメラマンさんたちも思わず、カメラの液晶を前に見とれてしまっていたようだった。しばらくして我に返ったカメラマンさんは慌ててカメラを構えなおすと再び彼女へとカメラを向けたのだった。その後の撮影は順調に進んでいき、最後の締めとなるラストシーンの撮影となったのだ。最後のシーンは、彼女がプラモデルを
DeepL
She then stood in front of the camera and began posing for the camera. The photographers seemed to be gaping at the LCD screen of the camera as she struck a powerful pose that matched her height of approximately 2 kilometers. After a while, the cameraman came to his senses, hurriedly readjusted his camera, and pointed it at her again. The shooting went smoothly after that, and it was time to shoot the last scene, which would be the final scene. The final scene was shot with her holding the plastic model and saying
Google Translate
With that, she stood in front of the camera and started posing. By the way, the assumed image of her height is about 2 km, and the photographers seemed to be fascinated by her camera’s liquid crystal in front of her without thinking about her striking poses that match her size. After a while, the cameraman who came to her senses hurriedly repositioned the camera and pointed it at her again. After that, the shooting progressed smoothly, and it was the last scene that was the final closing. The last scene shows her with a plastic model
See the difference? Either is fine for interpreting the translation, with only a little work left on the reader’s part. One program does some things well, and another program makes better stylistic choices, but neither dominates in my opinion. And it’s tremendously easier than learning another language. Don’t be shy about availing yourself of these resources.
Speaking of advances in consumer-grade technology, I have to point out an ad I’ve seen a few times on Instagram. Is it someone pulling a visually challenging stunt, or is Adobe/Instagram targeting me specifically? Bear in mind that I have two IG accounts, and one of them is solely to follow BBW and Size models/artwork, and sometimes sharing my own work, so it’s totally reasonable that I would see this ad on my GTS account and not my daylight version.
This is Adobe’s ad for video collage work, made simple by their tool. The video ad runs through the process of filming the woman model before a greenscreen, tracking where the giant hand will drag her through the video, and other techniques. The point is that Adobe wants you to know how easy it is to create something pretty good-looking like this.
But also, Adobe is saying “we see you, Aborigen. We made something for you to play with. Give us your money, now.”
And I’m like… looking around the room, wondering where I’d hang some bright green drapery…
Aborigen 