I'm reading up on some lore in piece of Japanese fiction, and I'm finding it
rather difficult to parse the short paragraph below due to confusion on two
specific points.

To add a little context, a character named レーミhas abilities/powers that can
cause a man to collapse and lose consciousness by scoping out (観察) weaknesses
in the opponent's エーテルのパターン (their power source) and intensifying the
weakness, he's done this before with powerful opponents but when he tried it
on a guy named アンソニー the following happened:

> だが、肝心のアンソニーに対して行おうとした結果『観察しても無駄だよ。エーテルのパターンなど秒単位で変化させるのは基本だろう』と断言されてしまう。
>
> 実際、変化し続けるパターンに観察が追いつかず、アンソニーがレーミの身体に仕込んだ装置による電気ショックを喰らう事となってしまった。

My questions are:

(A) why is there an 肝心の~ in front of the guy's name? I've seen this in other
writings too but I didn't think much of it.

(B) is the ~のは基本 equivalent to the word "basically" in this passage? Or
something closer to "it's a basic thing", e.g. _however, as a consequence of
attempting to use it against アンソニー , he got the assertion that "it's pointless
to even scope me out. It's a basic thing to make changes to things like
エーテルのパターン in seconds."_

(C) who is receiving the 電気ショック? I'm not sure if the subject is omitted or if
it's アンソニー, a friend tells me the subject is omitted but I'm quite doubtful.

I would be very interested to see how a more adept or native speaker
interprets this passage, thanks!
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-25T17:44:01.987
56872
2018-02-26T00:50:37.573
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
-1
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question
translation syntax parsing
Parsing help, (understanding 肝心の~/ ~のは基本 / target of Xを喰らう)
(1) "肝心の" is there to (non-restrictively) modify "アンソニー". "肝心のアンソニー" indicates
that アンソニー is the real target. What truly matters to レーミ is to do his trick on
him and him only. The guys he/she has already knocked out, they were just some
poor guinea pigs or fools who got in his/her way.

(2) "~のは基本" would be similar to the construction "[doing something] is a basic
thing" or "It's a basic thing [to do something]". So you got it right in your
translation.

(3) It's レーミ that gets zapped. "アンソニーが" is the subject in the relative clause
"アンソニーがレーミの身体に仕込んだ" on "装置", in case that's part of the cause of your
misgivings. Your friend is right that the subject ("レーミ") for the verb "喰らう"
is omitted.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-02-25T23:18:00.637
56878
2018-02-26T00:50:37.573
2018-02-26T00:50:37.573
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answer