Since every time I examine something at length, people seem to go TL;DR, I'll beat my drum for the third time (pun not intended).
The joke in Marisa's ability name 三度目の粉飾魔 works like this.
First of all, there's a Japanese idiom 三度目の正直, which is the equivalent of "third time's the/a charm", meaning "even if results of the first two divinations were bad, the third divination will return a good result" or "even if the first two times were lost, the third time will be a victory". Obviously in HM, this refers to how Marisa's every fourth attack is stronger.
粉飾魔 is a rather esoteric reference for the Japanese, and none of them seem to have gotten it. Aside from HM itself, there's only one single instance of this expression on the internet, but once I saw it, I became sure of its relevance.
In Japanese, a serial killer is colloquially known as a "serial man-killing demon" 連続殺人鬼 or 連続殺人魔. Thus, Al Gore's infamous nickname, "serial embellisher", can be rendered as 連続粉飾魔 ("serial embellishing demon") in Japanese. We know Marisa's habits; we know HM's religious war is a parody of modern elections (this is even more apparent in the newspaper headlines).
Since 魔 is also the character for "magic", 粉飾魔 might be understood by a Japanese speaker as "embellished magic". Either way, it still sounds weird and unfamiliar to Japanese ears.
With the two combined, perhaps Marisa's ability should be translated as "Third Time's the/an Embellisher"? What do you think?
