Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are So Many Anime's English Titles Total Nonsense?
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Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
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I always considered "Titan" to be acceptable as plural, akin to "Pokémon." It's more Funimation's fault for making the title sound like Titans are the victims, as opposed to the literal translation as "Advancing Giant." |
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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True, but that original title, directly translated, would've more-or-less been "Boogiepop Does Not Laugh" or "Boogiepop Never Laughs," which is definitely a more informative (and less silly-sounding) title for someone who doesn't know anything about the series. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11451 |
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I don't know how you could look at my screenname (or I yours) and think I don't know all that about Bebop.  But regardless of how apt these titles may be, if you haven't seen their series, they just sound delightfully weird, like Fooly Cooly.
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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I always think of the 1989 racing manga/1990 OVA that was for whatever reason called "Goddamn!!".
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Fatt_One
Posts: 131 Location: Ohio USA |
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I could be wrong, but I always thought Fooly Cooly was named after the sound of hands groping breasts. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1525 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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You're telling me you don't like any of that? Son, I am disappoint. 
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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It certainly makes it hard to suggest this show to adults! Nijuu Mensou no Musume literally translates to "The Daughter of Twenty Faces." Nijuu Mensou is a well-known character in Japan. He's the Moriarty-like villain in a series of detective stories written by Edogawa Rampo. In the anime he is more heroic, rescuing young Chizuko, an orphaned heiress later nicknamed "Chiko," who is being slowly poisoned to death by her greedy aunt and uncle. The official English title for the show is "Chiko: Heiress of the Phantom Thief." While Chiko is an heiress, she most definitely is not Nijuu Mensou's daughter nor heir but becomes his surrogate daughter. Nor does she need his inheritance; she has plenty of wealth of her own. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5419 |
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ninjamitsuki
 Posts: 607 Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology) |
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Encouragement of Climb always amused me. Same with I! My! Me! Strawberry Eggs! and Plastic Little.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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For you strange punctuation pleasure, there is the manga A, A' (pronounced "A, A Prime"). Really good manga, but the first time I saw that title, I kind of looked at it and went "huh?"
Actually, the improper usage of English resulting on hilarious outcomes reminds me heavily of Peepo Choo. Not the title in this case, but within the series, there's a Japanese character obsessed with American gangster movies and he learns al of his (very limited) English through them. So in the first volume, he kills this dude and carves the words "SO/COOL/GROOVE/DEAD" into the guy's chest and acts like it's the coolest thing while all the English readers are looking at it going "my god, he's so bad at it!" Of course, this series has the distinction of being done by an American (who was living in Japan at the time), so he did it on purpose. Also reminds me of the name Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes. I read somewhere (I forget where though, been a while) that Suda51 specifically picked the name to sound cool to the Japanese but stupid as sin to English speakers. It worked. Also unusually, the second game in the series doesn't even have a Japanese dub, not even in Japan (it's subtitled for them using the English dub) |
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nechronius
 Posts: 275 Location: So Cal, USA |
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I'm quite up to date on the manga so I know what you're talking about. It's still awkward and even in that context it's still poor English. But hey, that's ok. Its success or failure is firmly in its own control and has nothing to do with the janky English title. I agree it does flow off the tongue easily as-is. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11451 |
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But, but...you remembered Marshal Banana. oO It wasn't up any longer than Gina was (ok, maybe half a second longer, since Ed types slower than Ein can think), in the same episode!
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nechronius
Posts: 275 Location: So Cal, USA |
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Pokemon is an invented Japanese word in the past few decades so they set the standard for using it as singular and plural. Titans as plural however goes back farther in its common usage by an order of magnitude at least. If you choose to accept "Titan" as plural that's fine, but you'd still be wrong. Not questioning the aesthetics or flow of the title. "Attack on Titan" flows well and has been its accepted title from the start. But that wasn't the original subject of the Answerman question. If Attack on Titan was being genuine, it should have been an epic far future sci-fi series about interplanetary war for control of Saturn's largest moon or something. |
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Fullmetal Archivist
 Posts: 5 |
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To me the question on why Bleach was called Bleach was answered early on during the manga. spoiler[You see Ichigo commented on how teachers and classmates would find him to be suspicious because of the color of his hair. They thought he *bleached* his hair due to its color which is why Ichigo would try and be a good student so that he would look less suspicious.] To me this always made sense for the title after this conversation and fit in with the theme of Ichigo trying to prove himself whether it was as a protector, a student, or as a Soul Reaper. |
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Yuki_Kun45
Exempt from Grammar Rules
 Posts: 725 Location: U.S.A. |
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Funny enough Geneon did release Destiny under the original Japanese title Kannazuki no Miko. I assume Sentai went with the translation title because Destiny is one of the story's themes. The more literal title is probably a bit more culturally obscure to non Japanese. I didn't even know that's what the title meant until I read the trivia section here. .hack// is a classic unusual title. I think it's meant to emulate an internet TLD. One title that's always baffled me was Phantom ~Requiem for the Phantom~ why the series went so flowery with its title over the original VN's more simple Phantom of Inferno is beyond me. |
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