Animé titles are so often weird

glennmagusharvey

So, just counting English-language titles, you have things like Kiddy Grade, Please Twins!, Kite Liberator, Mirage of Blaze, Record of Lodoss War, and such.

That's not counting weird titles like Durarara!.

Why aren't there more titles like The Castle of Cagliostro or Arc the Lad or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya?  I mean, I'm fine with specialized terms like RahXephon, grammatically-sensible titles like Angel Beats, and such, but still...why couldn't they simply say something like "The Record of the Lodoss War"?

Also, what is with their inability to translate titles to include articles (i.e. "the" and "a"/"an")?

Bob

>Kiddy Grade

http://i1237.photobucket.com/albums/ff473/IanExMachina/Reaction Images/Myregister.jpg" alt="image">

vacasama

Because articles don't exist in the Japanese language.

snowbull

Deadman Wonderland makes sense, since its about deathrow prisoners in a prison set up to be an amusement park.

DYRE

Though, some of those titles are translations of Japanese titles (as opposed to English titles made by Japanese people), so the company that translated it could easily have put articles in...

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It's because they tend to suck at English.

glennmagusharvey

^^ Okay fine, removing that one.  I wasn't familiar with it so I guess I shouldn't have used it as an example.

DYRE

^^

Though, some of those titles are translations of Japanese titles (as
opposed to English titles made by Japanese people), so the company that
translated it could easily have put articles in... not suck at English.

Malkavian

Pretentiousness, that's why.

glennmagusharvey

@Bob: ROFL

@Malkavian: Stupid pretentious titles, not appealing to the common man.

snowbull

Because glorious nippon?

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I don't know which one was the Japanese to English one.

LouieW

I think part of it is that the English in Japanese titles is often just used to sound cool. Being accurate seems to be far from the purpose there as far as I can tell. I have seen French used similarly for certain merchandise in the U.S. Actually, I think Japanese and Chinese are occasionally used like that in the U.S. as well.

At least anime series do not have titles like "Lacking Perception Of The Scarlet Weather Rhapsody Of Subterranean Animism In The Imperishable Night ~ Chase The Enigma Of The Perfect Cherry Blossom Superdreadnought Guignol Mountain Of Faith, Shoot The Bullet" or at least none that I know of do.

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Did you not use commas on purpose Louie >_>

I think part of it is that the English in Japanese titles is often just used to sound cool.

-stares at Neon Genesis Evangelion-

DYRE

^^^ "Lodoss Tou Senki" -> "Record of Lodoss War"

"Onegai Twins!" -> "Please Twins!"

"Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuuutsu" -> "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya"

Possibly others.

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Oh wait. I can't believe I forgot Record of Lodoss War and Haruhi had originally Japanese titles. >_>

Well okay not really the first one since it's been like forever since I watched that but the second...

glennmagusharvey

Mountain of Faith #14: Tomorrow is Feast and Yesterday is not

glennmagusharvey

Actually I think the ones that actually HAVE articles in them tend to be translated titles.

Stellvia of the Universe / Uchuu no Stellvia
The Sacred Blacksmith / Seiken no Blacksmith

DYRE

Well, obviously.  There are no articles in Japanese, so Japanese creators would be less likely to put articles in titles that are in English. 

Malkavian

I think NGE actually has a different title in Japan and the English version is a bunch of word salad.

DYRE

Apparently, yeah.  It's Shin Seiki Evangelion.

Oh, also, as for non-translated titles with articles... THE iDOLM@STER has a "THE" in it, I guess...

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...I need to stop getting so used to American internet.

glennmagusharvey

Shin Seiki Evangelion, if translated into English and leaving the Greek word as is, would be like New Record Evangelion or New Gospel Evangelion.  So, assuming you wanted to make sense of the title grammatically, you could reorder it as "Evangelion, the New Gospel" or "The New Gospel, Evangelion".

Then again, English has titles like "Murder, She Wrote"...

TheMightyAnonym

The Japanese in general have weird names for things.

I don't see how that's a flaw though. In fact, those crazy titles are awesome and I wish that other cultures could be more creative.

Chagen

"Because articles don't exist in the Japanese language."

Articles actually exist mainly in European languages. They're a rarity and Europe is very odd for having so many languages with them.

Vorpy

How do you pronounce Neon Genesis Evangelion in Japanese?

DonZabu

Shin Seiki Evangelion.

glennmagusharvey

shin seiki evangerion, more like.

Stormtroper

Pronunciation? Shin Sehki Evangherion.

Chagen

It should be "Ebangherion". Japanese doesn't have the voiced labiodental fricative.

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The what