Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Engrish Titles Only Sometimes Get Corrected For America?
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2918 |
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The Testament of Sister New Devil and Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, though they make sense within context (more or less) have really bizarre, head-shaking names.
No Game, No Life felt like it was a few words shy of a proper title. Fate/Stay Night and its variation iterations suffer from the same issue imho. Diabolik Lovers More, Blood bugs me to no end for its nonsensical comma placement. Dramatical Murder, E's Otherwise, Guilty Crown, Hunter x Hunter, BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad, Blast of Tempest: The Civilization Blaster, and the movie SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers: The Next come to mind as well. I love a lot of these series regardless of their silly names. |
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Paiprince
 Posts: 593 |
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What's wrong with this? Unless it's supposed to be "in" in place of "of." Then again, I'm hardly an expert in prepositions. Shit's confusing. I'm fine with Engrish. What I am not though is when sequels come out and they just add weird symbols. Sometimes it's as inoffensive as a period, but then you get crap like double musical notes, @$$% or just single letters. Makes it really hard to look them up.
Dramatical Murder and Guilty Crown sound natural to me. They'd fit in with your typical young adult fiction or movie. Beck: MCS also isn't as awkward as it looks at first. I've heard crazier band names that could go toe to toe with Engrish and they're not Japanese bands either. The rest I pretty much agree. EDIT: A few titles spark to mind for funny sounding Engrish. Legend of the Galactic Heroes already sounds like a mouthful in English, but look up its German translation straight from the show, Heldensagen von Kosmosinsef. It would drive a purist mad. Mobile Suit Gundam sounds weird once you put more thought behind the title. What's so mobile about a suit? Macross: Do you Remember Love? Timeless classic, but your title sounds goofy regardless. Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor Yep, I'm not even going to try to justify this mangling of grammar and syntax. Fang of the Sun: Dougram The Sun bites. I know. NieA_7 Made hilarious with its subtitle: Domestic Poor Animation. Selector Infected Wixoss alongside its sequel Selector Spread and the upcoming Selector Destructed. A syntax nightmare of the same level as Fafner. Oreimo in English is both wordy and stupid, as is most LN titles. I'm glad we just abbreviated the original Japanese title. And much more. Last edited by Paiprince on Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:44 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2210 Location: Springfield, MO |
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"The Testament of Sister New Devil" is irritating (more than just awkward-sounding) because the "new" is supposed to be describing "sister" (the "shinmai" in the Japanese title being "new (younger) sister") not "devil". Anything with "new" before "sister" would have made more sense.
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Beltane
Posts: 32 |
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I was under the impression that the author of No Game No Life was inspired by the corporate slogan of Tower Records in Japan, which is "No music, no life.", and that's how he came up with the title for his light novel series.
Snow White with the Red Hair is awkward, but I've seen much worse than that. Blood Blockade Battlefront is pretty all right. It has a nice ring to it. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2458 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Let's pretend instead there's a group of 4chan users who set out to write a doujin visual novel about cute disabled girls, and manage to give it a Japanese title whose archaic and insensitive terminology effectively translates to "Cripple Girl". Annnd… go! |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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The second example I remembered is technically not the actual title, but since it appears on the logo I believe it's fair game. It's Bennett the Sage's internet show Anime Abandon. The word "abandon" is translated in the logo as 捨てる, which is a verb whose primary meaning is "to throw away", making the whole phrase basically mean "to throw away anime". As for what to call this phenomenon, well, if you don't mind the name being rather insulting you could derive something from a certain slang term starting with a "w"... Edit: @invalidname How the heck did I not think of that example before the others?! Although to be fair, the name was given by the Japanese artist who drew the original concept art that inspired the game, who probably did it as a (rather insensitive) joke and never actually intended to produce a game and market it under that title. Still, a little lexical research would have gone a long way. Last edited by vonPeterhof on Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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RoverTX
 Posts: 424 |
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This isn't an anime title, but it is still my favorite engrish moment, though if it really did happen is up for debate.
We Pray for McCAuthors's Erection |
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meruru
Posts: 472 |
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I think it's more a problem when titles sound correct, but they just missed on connotation in a big way. There's been multiple shows I've come across now where the title sounds like it's possibly a fetish show, but the actual show is anything but, but from the title I nearly didn't watch. Bodacious Space Pirates' title sounded like that, but moreso is Maria the Virgin Witch.
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jirg1901
Posts: 150 |
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I always felt like Horizon on the Middle of Nowhere works in a perverse way, since Horizon is a character and the locations are generally floating ships or islands.
Pretty much every variation of super dimension has never made any sense. Special note for Schwarzesmarken which is in blatantly incorrect German but made an in-universe excuse for it by saying the name came from Russians. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Ah, I love that show. But, I can never remember the full romanji or english names...so it either ends up being Kawaisou or Kawai Complex. 
As for "Engrish", the one that immediately came to my mind is a show currently airing - A Tale of Worst One. For some reason, that name sticks in my mind more than Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Now, for a manga, one of my personal favourites doesn't have the best name. NG Life (which some people think is No Game, No Life whenever I mention it) sounds weird on its own. But, in one of the extras at the end of one of the volumes (can't remember which), it's mentioned that the NG = No Good. So, I'm unsure if I'd actually like the manga to be No Good Life or NG Life...
Either way, I don't believe the title describes the manga's story at all. |
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Tenebrae
Posts: 487 |
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Most of what I can recall offhand have already been mentioned, so I'll just have the Department of Redundancy Department present: the Legend of Legendary Heroes... though I understand this is the actual title in japanese too.
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Fabe
 Posts: 219 |
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I really don't understand why people have such a problem with that title. |
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Weazul-chan
 Posts: 625 Location: Michigan |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2272 Location: Online Terminal |
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It's grody to the max. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9878 Location: Virginia |
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vonPeterhof wrote:
Based on the content of the show, both readings are correct, which is an advantage of the pun. The girl is both a new "little" sister of the hero and a novice devil. Ignoring the pun, the literal title would be "The story of a (the, my?) new younger sister a novice devil", quite an awkward wording. |
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