Yotsuba&!/Headscratchers

• What is it with that girl and dairy?
  • Eh -- it's just a phase. A few more months her time (a couple years for us) she'll be on to some other obsession, like dinosaurs or samurai or Hello Kitty.
  • There is the Edible Theme Naming of her and her father. "Yotsuba" and "Koiwai" are both dairy companies in Japan.
• The imageboard that uses her as a mascot bans people who post Rule34 of her on said imageboard. Why?
  • They never banned for it, unless one of the mods felt like being cute. They don't even care about it anymore, really.
    • They do actually.
    • What's happening here is that you're confusing 4chan's actual feelings with 4chan's memetic feelings. In reality they more often than not just leave it.
• The four-leaf clover hairstyle — she wears it even in bed, why? Wouldn't it be kinda adorable if we can see her hair flowing sometimes?
  • It's easier to keep hair from tangling overnight if it's tied back, assuming it's long enough to be "flowing" if untied.
• Why is Yotsuba so dumb? Honestly, she doesn't even know what a swing is and Ena has to show her how it works. Really? Five-year-olds practically live on playgrounds. I also find it hard to swallow that Yotsuba wouldn't realize that Cardbo is simply Miura in a cardboard box. Kids that age often have remarkable deductive reasoning, albeit less linear, and any moderately intelligent kid would figure it out rather quickly. A lot of situations stem from Yotsuba's remarkable lack of common sense, to the point where one might start pointing fingers toward her father, even though he seems to do a good job instructing her overall. Maybe Yotsuba is simply a few crayons short of a box. Poor Mr. Koiwai.
  • well, it does say she's from a foreign, undetermined country. I always assumed she was from a primitive country where there were no playgrounds and children didn't have schooling or anything.
• What exactly does Mr. Koiwai translate? Does he do what ever translation jobs he told for a company? Is he an Independent translator for mangas and such? And what languages does he translate things into? He speaks Japanese, that much is for sure, but being a translator, he must know a few more, right?
  • I dunno, maybe English?
    • In the manga, there were absolutely no hints at all at the language he's translating to/from, the topic of his material or even his employer. Intentionally.
    • There's no hints what he works with, but he is shown being comfortable with English.
  • Whatever it is, its probably technical. Duralumin/Juralumin is an actual building material used in various industries. Yotsuba must have overheard him saying it or maybe read it, liked the sound of it and remembered it for a name for a teddy bear. A quick 'other wiki' search shows that Duralumin is an older material, originally from Germany, now used mainly in the aircraft and automobile industry. Koiwai must do technical translations for some company in those fields.
• What's the release schedule for this series? Monthly? It's been how many years since this series has been published and the characters are barely near Christmas. Not complaining about lack of chapters (Azuma can take all the time he wants if it means making a quality series in the end) but I just wanted to know when to expect new chapters.
  • It is indeed monthly, but Azuma takes a remarkable number of months off, especially when redrawing backgrounds for a volume release. (He apparently does more of the work himself than typical for a commercial mangaka, with only one or two assistants.) As a result, it takes about a year to put out the seven chapters needed for a volume.
• Why do Yotsuba's neighbors mention global warming as a reason not to use their airco? Most households in Japan get their electricity from nuclear plants, which don't have an effect on global warming at all.
  • It's not the power source that's the issue here, but the fact that air conditioners have refrigerants in them -- chemicals that can lead to ozone depletion.
    • Ozone depletion has nothing to do with global warming. Also, they already own the aircos anyway, so they might as well use them.
      • One air conditioner was the built-in sort, and I think the other was the kind that didn't necessarily come with the house, but would have been a hassle to bring along after moving, so they might not have been bought by Koiwai and the neighbors.
  • Carbon dioxide emissions, I believe.
  • Keep in the mind the source was a child, not a verified source.
  • Actually, most of Japan's electricity does come from fossil fuels, so it's a legit concern.

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