This manga got me reading up on lampreys. Lampreys are actually a different fish from eels, believed to have diverged from the cartilaginous fishes before bony fish even existed. Lampreys are the big blood-sucking critters with the scary sucker-like mouths that hang onto other fish. They can be visually distinguished from true eels by the freaky mouth, the absence of the pectoral and other paired fins, and a line of 7 gill pores on each side behind the respective eye. The presence of the side (pectoral) fins on the fish in the bucket seems to indicate they are actually regular eels rather than true lampreys.
This manga uses the term "unagi" which refers to freshwater eels, but primarily the Japanese Eel, which is not a lamprey. Lampreys are called "yatsume-unagi", which apparently refers to the 8 orifices (1 eye and 7 gill pores) on each side of the head. Both lampreys and regular eels are used to make kabayaki, but the way they are drawn here suggests to me that the text should be translated as "eel" rather than "lamprey".
This manga got me reading up on lampreys. Lampreys are actually a different fish from eels, believed to have diverged from the cartilaginous fishes before bony fish even existed. Lampreys are the big blood-sucking critters with the scary sucker-like mouths that hang onto other fish. They can be visually distinguished from true eels by the freaky mouth, the absence of the pectoral and other paired fins, and a line of 7 gill pores on each side behind the respective eye. The presence of the side (pectoral) fins on the fish in the bucket seems to indicate they are actually regular eels rather than true lampreys.
This manga uses the term "unagi" which refers to freshwater eels, but primarily the Japanese Eel, which is not a lamprey. Lampreys are called "yatsume-unagi", which apparently refers to the 8 orifices (1 eye and 7 gill pores) on each side of the head. Both lampreys and regular eels are used to make kabayaki, but the way they are drawn here suggests to me that the text should be translated as "eel" rather than "lamprey".
Otherwise all true, but Mystia's stand canonically sells lamprey and not eel. If there's a confusion between lamprey and eel, it's really on the author's side, but I chose to call them lampreys specifically because I'm also aware that they're not the same thing. I mean, maintaining the author's wrong/ambiguous language in the translation and having all the characters call them "eels" when we know they're supposed to be lampreys would also have been an option, but it would've just caused the same confusion anyway.
Kanako does call them yatsume-unagi a grand total of one time (on the bottom right), but for the most part I went with the assumption that they were just called unagi as a shorthand and supposed to be lamprey, since there's nothing indicating that Mystia's abandoned her business model or anything.
Updated
—Well.
[With this in the bag, the festival is ours!]
Village Autumn Festival
Wouldn't be so sure about that.
In the end, all we caught were these plain old lampreys...
GRAAAH—!!
OUR LAMPREY!!
That's playing dirty!
Don't tell me you forgot the river belongs to us!?
A giant fish-catching mecha I built for just such an occasion!