Oh Foia. His in-game skill is totally useless, but aside from that his story has a real feel-good quality to it and I do recommend reading it. Foia is passionate, like really passionate, about his dreams, and he is all too happy to tell you all about them. Despite his monologues about magic and science, Foia was relatively easy to translate and he didn’t have any weird speech patterns.
The one thing that originally I translated wrong in my rough drafts (but was able to fix) was the name of Foia’s project: アークプラント. In Japanese, that ク in アーク could be romanized with a 'c' or a 'k'. Of course my brain immediately went to Iron Man and I spelled it 'Arc' (like Arc Reactor). Thankfully Foia does the reader and the main character a favor and explains how he named the facility after a boat, so I was able to switch my spelling to the more accurate ‘Ark’. Because the name is using foreign words (if it had been in Japanese, 'ark' is 箱舟), that is also the reason for the main character's initial confusion when Foia gives his explanation for the name in Chapter 4.
Also, I wanted to mention Foia’s family name: Salamande. Clearly a derivative of 'salamander,' this isn't the first time I've seen the salamander associated with fire in Japanese media. If you know the manga/anime Fairy Tail, the main character who uses fire magic has the nickname Salamander. And in Japanese itself, we see the term火の精, which is translated as either 'fire spirit' or 'salamander'. The reason behind this association, given that real salamanders have nothing to do with fire, is that in ancient mythological texts, both western and eastern, the salamanders of old were associated with dragons and had an affinity for fire. Even magic and alchemy would call upon salamanders as the embodiment or guardians of fire in spells and rituals. So despite everyone knowing now that salamanders don't really breathe fire, the connection between the two still persists. And that is your random factoid of the day!
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