Disrespectful to dirt

I found something great today: A Mr. Sparkle screensaver. It’s hilariously… something.

My only beef with it is the Japanese text in the background. It says 掃くークリーン, which is far from grammatically correct, and was not what the Mr. Sparkle box originally said as far as I could remember. I looked into it, and found that the screensaver author’s source was a Wikipedia article.

First of all, don’t trust the picture in the article, as it’s a very poor reproduction (specifically, the ン is mangled beyond recognition). Check out originals via a Google Image search.

Whoever wrote the caption in that article seems to have completely made it up. Part of the problem is that the original text was drawn very poorly, and most closely resembles ハワーワリーン, which is completely nonsensical. Clearly the second line is supposed to be クリーン, which makes sense for this context. Taken separately, the first line is probably パワー, but the animators forgot the ° and drew the ワ identically to the ク. If you have a lot of faith in the animators and assume that they intentionally drew everything as they did, it would be ハクー, which is meaningless and certainly should not be rendered as 掃くー.

In short, it probably was supposed to be パワークリーン.

Incidentally, the correct Japanization of “Mr. Sparkle” would be ミスタースパークル, not ミスタースパーコル.

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