Let’s work together to understand this manga panel!
To start, let’s create a word bank so that we understand each of the words.
** For this post, you need to be able to read hiragana and katakana as I won’t be providing romaji readings**
This picture is from volume one of the manga “花野井くんと恋の病” You can check it out for yourself here!
Word Bank
- 僕・ぼく・me, I
- ちゃんと・properly, sufficiently
- 今日・きょう・today
- 君・きみ・you
- お姫様・おひめさま・princess
- できる・to make; to be able to do
Let’s get translating!
The first speech bubble says:
僕
This is just one word, so we can translate it easily!
1
僕
- This is just one of many words that means “me.”
- 僕 is more masculine in nature, but a little more childish than other options.
To translate this word, we need to look at everything he’s saying in the panel. Because it ends with a question mark, we can assume he’s asking a question! So, rather than just translating it as “I.”, I think it would be a good idea to look at it as “Was I…?” or “Did I…?“
Now, let’s take a look at the second speech bubble! This one is longer than the first, so we’ll have to break it down a little bit.
The second sentence is:
ちゃんと今日君をお姫様にできた？
1
ちゃんと今日
- ちゃんと can be translated as “properly” or “to one’s satisfaction”
- 今日 means today
While this is by no means a complete sentence, we can still make some sense out of it. While making note of the fact that there’s a question mark at the end of this sentence, we can roughly translate this part as “Was today properly…?“, or “Did today…….to your satisfaction?“
2
君をお姫様にできた？
- 君 is a casual way of saying “you.”
- お姫様 means princess! The お at the beginning of the word makes it just a little bit more pretty, or formal. We can say 姫様 and mean the exact same thing, the overall tone would just ever so slightly be changed.
- While できる is the potential form of the する verb, it can also be used to mean “to make.” As in, “to make a friend.”
This part of the sentence can be translated as “(Did I) make you into a princess?”
Putting all three parts together, we can translate it as “Was I able to properly make you a princess today?“
And that’s it! If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below!
Maddies Manga 
Leave a comment