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Answerman - Why Are So Many Anime's English Titles Total Nonsense?

Heishi wrote:

Some of my favorite weirdo titles are "Destiny of the Shrine Maiden". Why not just call it "Priestesses of the Godless Month"? ".Hack//SIGN". Is this some kind of code??

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.hack// is a classic unusual title. I think it's meant to emulate an internet TLD.

I never got into Bleach but was there ever any explanation as to what that title was suppose to mean or why the author named it such?

Manga, yes, but isn't "BLAME!" supposed to be "BLAM!" (as in gunshot)?

The original English name for SukaSuka, that anime that aired last season, was:
"Do you have what THE END? Are you busy? Shall you save xxx?"

I find that hilarious.

If it means anything to readers here, the Chinese title for "Bleach" is 净化 which loosely translates to "purification". Considering the whole premise of the series from the little I've read about it is about "Soul Society" and what to do with the aberrations which threaten the peace of the afterworld, what probably happened was the Japanese creator of the franchise thinking about a catchy English title to describe the whole franchise and using the wrong word from a thesaurus or Japanese-to-English translator.

Odd as the title is for native English speakers, there's no denying any stigma that used to be attached to the title for its improper usage of the noun has long since been forgiven by fans of the series.

nechronius wrote:

Attack on Titans Attack of Titans Titan Attack

As I said, none of those is what the title is supposed to mean.
spoiler[The last one would actually work if it was switched around. Though it would've still gotten people saying it was weird English until the reveal. ]

Read BodaciousSpacePirate's comment for the answer.

Priss is the only musician in the group. (Some of the later episodes use songs by all the voice actors credited collectively as the Knight Sabers, but they're not "in universe" songs (like "Konya wa Hurricane" from episode 1), and were mostly a way to get around Kinuko Ohmori's contract restrictions.)

Reportedly, the title is supposed to evoke the image of blowing a bubble when chewing gum; if you go too far, the whole thing blows up. So the title is trying to represent a precarious situation (the "crisis" part) that's on the verge of exploding.

I hear ya. There are so many titles out there that almost make me start twitching from how badly they mutilate basic English structures. What really gets me are the titles that just ThRoW cApItaL leTtErS everywhere, a la CLAMP, or those teeth-grating random semicolons in that series of visual novels. Ugh. The best part is how so many people out there will absolutely crucify local distributors for a flubbed line, while blissfully ignoring the fact that the original franchise butchers their own language all over the place.

"Jinki Extend". How do you extend a "jinki"?

Do you have a similar reaction to extremely bizarre names in Hunter X Hunter and Bleach? They get a laugh out of me. Curarpikt, Fulunkln, Hyskoa, Chzzok, Phalcnothdk, Quwrof Wrlccywrlir... (Quwrof's name was actually spelled that way on the packaging of a figure of him. And for the record, Viz's spellings, respectively, are Kurapika, Franklin, Hisoka, Shizuku, Pakunoda, and Chrollo Lucilfer.)

There's some evidence that the "Bodacious Space Pirates" name was even designed for the English-speaking anime market... after all, the original light novel's title translates to "Miniskirt Space Pirates"!

I'm not sure why they made "Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou" into "The Kawai Complex Guide to Manors and Hostel Behavior." Seems like an odd English title to me.

The original Japanese title is very fitting because it's also a pun one of the character's name. But since you can't really translate that, it should have just been something like "We're All a Little Pathetic."

Ultimately the question gets punted back to the original creator, or "gensakusha." This person may or may not actually have a decent grasp of English, but often they think they do, and they might ignore everybody's advice and come up with something that's basically the grammatical equivalent of a 3-year-old pounding on a QWERTY keyboard.

If you want real nonsense titles try looking at a lot of hentai english titles. Have fun with that.

Pretty much this. The Japanese do not have as strong a grasp on the English language as they seem to think they do. It's why you get weird names for things like spells or skills.

Harleyquin wrote:

If it means anything to readers here, the Chinese title for "Bleach" is 净化 which loosely translates to "purification".

Never heard of anyone using that term in the past decade at any anime-related forum using Chinese, simplified or traditional.

In Taiwan, it's called 死神, literally "the Death" (with capital D).

In Hong Kong, it's called 漂靈, literally "wondering spirit."

In PR China, the legally licensed version did not appear almost a decade later, so most fans there have adapted Taiwan's translation (most HK forum users type written Cantonese instead of standard Chinese while participating online discussions; non-Cantonese-speaking people would find it difficult to read). After title like 死神 and 净灵 (literally "purifying spirits") have been rejected by GAPP (Chinese censors are usually very sensitive to supernatural and occult themes), the final approved title is 境·界, which I find it very smart by using characters of the same pronunciation (境界 means "realm" or "status," which tells very little to readers what exactly it is, but 境 has the exactly same pronunciation to 净 (cleansing, purifying)), with the help of a middle dot breaking apart two characters.

Oh jeez, I've vaguely come across one or two of those before, but I'd never seen the full horror. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed. And yeah, Bleach got pretty brutal in its later going too: I'm still firmly convinced that "Yhwach" is onomatopoeia for a sneeze.

Top Gun wrote:

Oh jeez, I've vaguely come across one or two of those before, but I'd never seen the full horror. Thankfully wiser heads prevailed. And yeah, Bleach got pretty brutal in its later going too: I'm still firmly convinced that "Yhwach" is onomatopoeia for a sneeze.

Personally, I would say Aaroniero Arreruerie's appearance wasn't not really that much "later" into Bleach, but yeah, it didn't get common until later. At the very least though, Bleach character names follow logical consonant-vowel patterns (except for Yhwach), even if the cluster itself is confusing. Hunter X Hunter names (all of the ones I listed were HxH) just look like someone punched a keyboard.