DBZ pun names even cross over into English sometimes. Vegeta and Bulmas kids are Trunks and Bra. King Cold’s kids are Freiza (Freezer) and Cooler. Saiyanss are from planet Vegeta (short for Vegetables) and all of their names are modified vegetables like Kakarot (carrot), Raditz (Radish), Nappa (Napa Cabbage), Broli (Broccoli). Mr. Satan’s daughter is Videl (anagram for Devil). Bibidi, Babidi, and Buu (Bibbidi-babbidi-boo from Disney Cinderella movie). Bubbles is named after Michael Jackson’s chimp. Whis and Beerus are Whiskey and Beers, and Champa is Champagne. King Piccolo’s minions are Piano, Tambourine, Cymbal, and Drum, all instruments. There’s a ton.
Also, “bloomers” (Bulma) are a type of female underwear.
Without knowing any Japanese, I feel I kinda knew this back in middle school.
The worst part of Japanese is having to learn Chinese just to read and write in Japanese
As a Japanese person, I’ve always hated this trope. It just feels so lazy.
Light Yagami
It’s not just a japan thing.
Comics do it a lot. Especially DC.
Edward Nygma, Harley Quinn, Victor Fries, Roy G. Bivolo, Julian Gregory Day, Scott Free, …But Marvel has a whole bunch too:
Mar-Vell, Telford Porter, Cassandra Nova, Klara Prast, Jack Russell…Ah, you’re right. I didn’t grow up reading DC or Marvel, so I was under the impression that Western comics didn’t do that as much. Another one I don’t like is characters having names for each one of their attacks and screaming it out loud. As much as I love shonen mangas, it always felt super weird. I’d be very interested in knowing when/why these tropes became popular.
I feel like in trying to be clever with wordplay, sometimes nuance and suspense is removed from the story. SMT:IV for example has a character that shows up and is kind of out of place, just a regular (but weird) school girl roaming the streets of a demon infested Tokyo with little care for the situation. It’s obvious that there’s more to her than meets the eyes, and the writers are trying to set up for some kind of reveal, but her name is so on the nose that there’s no need to speculate who she really is.
She’s called “Hikaru”, and anyone that’s played any SMT game and has a general idea of what usually goes down will clock her as Lucifer the moment her name is established.
Then again, it’s not like Thorman, Lous Cyphre, or Louisa Ferre are any less on the nose.
I was living in Japan when Naruto first released. I recognized his name because it’s the little pink and white swirly fishcake slice they put on ramen.
His full name is Uzumaki Naruto, which translates to “Whirlpool Fishcake.” So of course, his greatest tool/weapon is a swirling ball of concentrated energy in his hands. And he’s obsessed with ramen.
Negima! also released while I was living in Japan, and the main character’s name, “Negi,” basically means “Green Onion” in Japanese. He’s from Wales, where the national symbol is a Welsh onion (same thing).
Negi is a 10-yr old genius mage who takes on a teaching job at a private academy. His students, who are all older than him, sometimes call him “Negi-bozu,” which is an honorific that’s basically like calling a child “kiddo” or “sport.” But “Negibozu” is also a slang term meaning “onion head,” which is a way to refer to someone as being young and inexperienced.
And it’s not just the Japanese language. The Japanese love English and try to squeeze it into their pop culture everywhere they can, whether it makes sense or not.
I became obsessed with the Berserk manga while I was there. The main character is named “Guts” (Gattsu), which is just an English word.
It not only describes how he was found (a baby nestled in the eviscerated guts of his dead mother who was hanged while pregnant with him), but also his determination and extreme willpower. Dude never gives up, no matter how much the situation is stacked against him. He’s got real guts.
Similarly, One Piece stars “Monkey D. Luffy,” who is basically a human monkey. He’s dumb, a wild child, constantly getting into trouble and scrapping with people. Plus he loves to climb stuff. With his rubber powers, he can stretch and climb pretty much anything.
His powers in Japanese are the “gomu-gomu” ability, which just means “rubber-rubber.” All the devil fruit power names in One Piece are just describing the ability in Japanese.
His crew member, “Usopp,” is a habitual liar. He has a long nose like Pinocchio, and “Uso” means “to lie” in Japanese.
Another crew member, “Zoro,” is an expert swordsman, just like the classic Disney hero Zorro.
There are puns everywhere in Japanese anime, but those are the first few that came to mind from my experience there.
the classic Disney hero Zorro
“Disney hero”?? Zorro dates to 1919, although Disney did make a
movieTV show about 40 years later…I didn’t even know Disney had a Zorro movie. Reminds me of this other Disney Character Hercules.
The classic Disney Hero Hercules. I heard the greek made up some huge story about him and his whole family later.
My apologies, I grew up with the 1957 Zorro TV show, which was a Disney product. I didn’t know he existed before that; I thought Disney created him.
EDIT: Fun fact: when One Piece first came to America, Zoro was original renamed “Zolo.” Because the American translators were afraid of starting beef with Disney over the Zoro/Zorro name.
Also, the Japanese language doesn’t have any “L” characters in it; any words with an “L” get turned into a Japanese “R,” sound, which is basically pronounced like a blend between an “L” and a “D.”
So any Japanese words with an “R” in them could easily be translated as “L.” Zolo and Zoro are pronounced the same to a Japanese person.
Frieren is the same kind of stuff. All the names are misused German words that describe the defining trait of the character in question.
It’s like OP took the Japanese word for the trait, tossed it through Google Translate and used whatever came out as the name for the character.
Not to forget:
ONI GIRIBro u hungry or what?
Can’t forget Dragon ball and having characters named Bibidi, Babidi, and Buu.
I love that Dragon Ball is seen as the quintessential Japanese anime show to Americans, but its plot, setting, and themes are heavily influenced on Chinese culture.
Heck, the series started with Goku as a small, monkey-like boy with a tail, an infinitely-extending pole for a weapon, and he flew across the skies on a small cloud. That’s literally just The Monkey King from Chinese mythology.
you don’t even have to look that far, the Monkey King’s name is Sun Wukong in chinese, but Son Goku in japanese
The main character is named “Guts” (Gattsu), which is just an English word.
Goetz von Berlichingen might have been an inspiration here
Would never have known!
Have you seen berserk in anime form? Any good?
I’ve seen the various anime shows. They’re decent, but since the original manga is still not complete, none of them have a real end. They just kind of stop.
The original 1997 anime told the whole story up to The Eclipse event. The first episode was actually right after The Eclipse, then the rest of the series is a flashback to Guts’ whole life leading up to The Eclipse.
In 2012-13, a 3-movie series released called The Golden Age Arc, which basically summed up the story leading up to The Eclipse. I’d recommend watching this instead of the 1997 show. It’s 3 movies instead of 25 episodes, so it’s a bit more focused and doesn’t drag between events.
The 2016 anime picks up after The Eclipse, but didn’t have a complete story to tell, so it basically just goes over some of the bigger events and battles in more recent manga volumes before just stopping. They also tried to CG animate this series too, so the style is a little weird to me.
In 2022, the Golden Age Arc films were extended into 13 TV episodes with some new scenes added. They dubbed this version the Memorial Edition, in honor of Kentaro Miura, the original creator of Berserk who suddenly passed away in 2021.
His manga team is still continuing his work, trying to finally wrap up the manga. According to Miura’s best friend, Berserk was almost finished, and he got enough clues from Miura on the direction of the story that he’s confident he can finish the story the way Miura wanted.
So maybe one day we’ll get an anime that tells the complete story from start to finish.
Sometimes you don’t even need to learn Japanese. Dragonball characters are like 75% English transliterations.
Frieren is a big offender too. Everyone and everything is just a feeling or item in German pronounced in some weird way.
When you know German and guy called Lügner shows up, why does anyone trust him? (literally means liar)
Or when a guy called Stark(strong) thinks he is weak. I wonder what power the girl called Laufen(running) has hmmmm
We play a bunch of pen and paper games in my group. Every DM of ours just does this. Like this Is the guardsman “Honesto”. Oh look the Thief “Guilteon” was cought.
It is also customary to fuck everyone over once in a while by calling the nice king “Darth” or the evil bad guy “Saviourious”. Trust nothing.
And Übel (bad) is a gorgeous baddie!
And Frieren meaning old hag.
Actually it means to be cold.
It… It was a joke… That what stark calls her
The baddie in Doom 3 is literally called Betruger
You know whats the worst? English Transliterations where the family name is something like Alan or Rodderick and the characters first names are Fitzgerald or Caldwell. And some translators can’t figure it out so they type up the name Gram as Garham or the name Alice as Arisu.
Bobson Dugnutt is perfection.
Sleve McDichael lets you know right away what you’re in for.
ProZD did a video calling these in an announcer voice, which I come back to every year or so for a good chuckle.
He has the perfect voice for this
Bertholdt from Attack on Titan is my favorite misspelled character name.
Kuririn
Meanwhile, American names in a Japanese game:
Bobson Dugnutt is an American hero damnit
I’ll pit my Mario McRlwain against your Bobson Dugnutt any day.
Honestly though Im impressed how well they managed to make those names sound Americanand nonsensical at the same time
This analysis of these names was very informative:
https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/t1xx6g/why_bobson_and_why_dugnutt_a_deep_dive_into_why/
I need to use Sleve McDicheal for a game sometime…
So, what’s the pun behind “Light Yagami”?
Just looked it up, and I’m seeing that his name is a sort of contradiction. His first name is “Light”, and the characters in his last name mean “night god”.
It sounds like sort of a “light vs dark” / “good vs evil” wordplay, although I don’t know if that counts as a pun.
And they spell “Light” with the Kanji for moon. (夜神 月) So just the reading of the Kanji is “Moon Nightgod”.
Extra Funfact: His pen name " Kira" means “glitter/sparkle”. As in stars are “kirakira”.
it’s supposed to be killer (キラー), but japanese is excellent at butchering foreign languages.
Some say Japanese is…mildly difficult. Like three chili pepper level.
Speaking Japanese is mildly difficult.
Reading Kanji makes even native adults cry.
I imagine it’s easy, with English as a starting point, up until you get into the larger set of pictograms.
It’s more difficult from first-language English because the languages are so different, but Japanese is fundamentally a very simple language. There’s no complicated articles, plurals, prepositions, etc. There’s not 100 different verb conjugations (like Spanish for example), there’s only a few basic ones that can be used indiscriminately for first-, second-, and third-person. You don’t really need to use pronouns and most syntax can be omitted if it doesn’t add necessary context.
The biggest thing making Japanese an “easy” language to learn is the huge amount of learning material available. It’s probably second only to English (and maybe Spanish) in the amount of popular TV, movie, and music that can be used for practice.
Even kanji is not really difficult once you get into it; only time-consuming.
The syntax is fine, but learning kanji can be grueling
Yup, kanjis made me drop my attempt of learning Japanese a few years ago. I got through the two sets of kanas okay (though シ and ツ being completely different characters is bullshit), but then I got to kanjis, and realised how illogical many of them are, like they often have multiple meanings and pronunciations depending on context, or the same sound syllable often can be written as multiple kanjis depending on the meaning, and I noped the fuck out.
Coming from Hungarian, English is already pretty bad in that you can’t always tell how a word is pronounced from how it’s written down*, Japanese is like that up to 11.
* E.g. even after years of fluency I sometimes can’t remember if the “ch” in “chore” and “chasm” are pronounced like in “chord” or “choice”.
(edit: spelling)
Your asterisk example is correct. For those less fluent: The “ch” in “chore” is the same as in “choice” and the “ch” in “chasm” is the same as “chord”.
Which is yet another example that english is really just three languages in a trench coat that mugs other languages in dark alleys for spare syntax.
You’re not wrong. I’ve been watching clips of this series and have been un-learning Japanese faster than I can pick it up.
Naming things is hard okay
Like in Reincarnated as a Slime, when Rimuru names all the monsters: that’s actually just a power fantasy for the writer imagining being able to just shit out endless names when needed. Rimuru’s subsequent mana exhaustion is just an allegory for the author’s own exhaustion after having to come up with names for that scene. /s
It really isn’t. Slap random syllibles together. Use words from a dead language. Random name generators. Any of the other suggestions in this post.
I didn’t like Slime. If the writer struggles with coming up with names for his character as much as you say they did, I’m not surprised by the quality of the rest of the writing.
Aw slime is excellent, it’s a shame you didn’t like it.
As I understand it names in Japan names tend to have secondary cultural meaning, this is pretty limited in the West at this point. Best you’ll get is family names and me naming a rooster Agamemnon because he was an asshole.
that’s actually just a power fantasy
Way too many anime are just some dude writing himself into a fantasy. So much cringe fanservice that you 100% know is just the writer’s internal spankbank put on paper.
90% of the anime out there is some shit I’d be embarrassed to be caught watching.
Even the Reze skinny dipping scene in chainsaw had me and my little brother rolling our eyes
I can see your point, but that’s the part of Chainsaw Man that made you uncomfortable?
I was never uncomfortable, just cringing
Ehh I hear ya but at a certain point its just camp. 90% has some cringe scene every few episodes maybe but it only seems to happen when your mom or wife walks in
Required reading material includes the English localization of Ace Attorney in order to acclimate yourself.
Holy fuck I’ve been playing AA5 in Japanese for practice, and the names kill me, both for being stupid and/or for making me sad that I don’t get the puns right away. But I’ve laughed at a couple already, and looking at the localization comparisons (French too) is entertaining.
But on a serious note I fucking HATE reading when the prosecutor of this game, Blackquill (Yugami in JP ver) talks because he speaks with this delinquent/yankee + archaic fusion that is absolute hell for an intermediate learner to read. Like if he would just talk normally, I’d know immediately what he’s saying, but then bro drops some edo-period word and I have to look up sword metaphors.
I actually thought the fan translations of AAI2 were more well thought out than the official localization which makes some of them so cheesy haha.
Mandatory mention of Amagi Brilliant Park where many character names are based on American rappers.
Is that a JoJo reference?
It gets fun though, because now you have context and can understand so many jokes that translators just put something else or don’t realize it’s a pun and translate literally.
“Hi! I’m bunny of the moon!”
Yummy bunny
Worst? Nah. Best. One of my favorite anime of all time is Yakitate!! Japan. So many puns and wordplays.
