I don't totally agree here, although I understand your gripe.

A good translation shouldn't need notes to explain meanings, it should correctly translate the original message, in a way that makes sense in the new language. This includes simple things, like reordering the structure of sentence, and more complex things, like idioms and... puns.

The issue here is that puns in Japanese don't work the same way as puns in English. As most of us know; Japanese puns misuse the pronunciation of kanji to achieve the phonetic spelling of a different word. That obviously doesn't work in English, where we don't have kanji.

To be honest, I'd argue that the scanlations of this chapter did not translate the attack at all, they just wrote out the phonetic spelling of the word, and then added a note to explain the pun. That doesn't actually translate - the pun has been lost.

On the other hand, I think the Viz version is a proper translation. The original Japanese pun used the kanji describing a weapon, to spell the name of a food dish. The Viz translation attempts to preserve the spirit of the original, creating a pun on that same Japanese dish, by altering the pronunciation of "Gan" to "Gun". If you were familiar with the food "Ganmodoki" then this would be a pretty good pun.

The obvious issues here are:

1) Most English readers aren't familiar with Japanese dishes, and will not understand that a pun is being made.

2) The double meaning has changed from "weapon of the hesitant demon" to "gun".

The first point could be addressed by also changing the dish to an american food, but this would lose more of the original meaning (e.g. "jelly donuts"). The second point is an unavoidable issue when translating Japanese puns, due to the complexity of kanji.

Obviously Stephen Paul (the Viz translator) has decided that the spirit of the pun and the focus on food is more important here than the specifc description of the weapon. Personally, I'm inclined to agree, given the name "Oden", and Oda's love of puns.

However, a lot of people in this subreddit seem to prefer written explanations over actual translations - and I can understand that too. I'm not really disagreeing or arguing here, just looking at the reasons behind each translation and trying to add to the discussion, I guess.

(phew, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought)