It is episode 32 of Dragon Ball Z. Vegeta has gone full monkey mode, creating an enormous shining star of energy to trigger his transformation into a giant beast monkey, which increases his power by 10x (10倍), and he’s got Goku on the ropes. He’s crushed Goku’s legs, rendering them useless, and now, he’s going for the final kill, with a single finger, moving to squash Goku like a bug, and it looks very dire for Goku. But suddenly, as monkey Vegeta brings his finger of doom down, Goku throws up an arm and fires off a powerful laser blast, shooting it straight into Vegeta’s giant red eye, his right eye, and blowing it up. Vegeta screams, immediately recoils, holds his face and cries out in agonizing pain. And there is a shot of Goku, laying there with his broken legs, chuckling, and he says – 「イタチの最後っ屁ってやつで」
That is, itachi no saigo ppe yatsu de.
Now, this was totally unexpected. We thought that, we all thought that it was over for Goku. Vegeta definitely thought this was the end of Goku, but Goku had one last gasp. And me, who is listening so intently, I am completely stumped by Goku’s line. I rewind, I listen three times. I hear “itachi”, so it seems, and I hear “no saigo”, and then whatever is at the end… but, itachi means “weasel”, and saigo means “final”. Surely, Goku is not talking about a weasel, and “the weasel’s final”? That doesn’t even make sense.
I turn on the English subtitles for guidance, relying on translators past, and I see this incredible English:
“That’s what you call the weasel’s last fart.”
So, the truth is that our hero Goku was actually saying “weasel”. The weasel’s last fart. Now, I had to Google this, because, what the hell are we talking about here? Is there truly a known Japanese phrase, in common usage, that is, the weasel’s last fart?
Well people. Yes there is. The phrase is exactly what Goku said here:
イタチ → Weasel
の最後 → ‘s last
屁 → fart
That is, イタチの最後っ屁. This is a known phrase used by the Japanese. We can easily infer from the context that we are talking about “a last ditch effort” or “last gasp”. My favorite dictionary, Jisho.org, chooses not to give a literal translation. As you can see, they say “final emergency measure” or “final defence when one is cornered”. It is basically “a last ditch effort.” And this makes you wonder, if you didn’t know already, do weasels fart in self-defence? Surely they must. Like a skunk?
Some brief research confirms that this is true.
The English subtitle translations are very trustworthy. As we can see from this example, and across the board, the translation team often stays very close to the original Japanese, which makes the subtitles especially useful for language study. In this case, they didn’t just preserve the meaning, but the imagery itself. Choosing “the weasel’s last fart” was probably a deliberate decision, even knowing it might sound strange or confusing to English speakers. Rather than choosing something familiar like “last-ditch effort,” they let the original metaphor stand. That’s a confident choice, and you have to respect that. It suggests the translators wanted viewers to know exactly what Goku said, regardless of it being received as quirky or strange.
It is interesting to hear the Japanese and then see what the translators ended up translating it as. For example, after Tenshinhan has blasted Nappa with his final, most powerful move, and Nappa survives with barely a scratch, there is a shot of Krillin and Piccolo who are both shocked and horrified, and Piccolo says, 「まさか！やつ不死身か！」”Masaka! Yatsu fujimi ka!” The second part of this line, やつ不死身か, is relatively straightforward. やつ→He/This guy (Nappa), and 不死身(ふじみ), is a great word to have in the bank, meaning immortal/undying/invincible. In this case I would choose invincible as the closest meaning. But the first word, まさか, is one of those Japanese words that is flexible, used in various scenarios, and pretty “Japanese”, so you could translate it in quite a few ways. (Jisho offers 5 different situations and usages with many offered definitions.)
I would translate Piccolo’s line as: “No way! He’s immortal??” or “You’re kidding me! He’s invincible!” You could also say “Unbelieveable!” or “I can’t believe it!” All of these would be fine choices here.
The DBZ subtitling team went with this as their translation: “Don’t tell me he’s immortal!” I think that also captures the meaning accurately and is a good translation.
HAKUMUSU 