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superdry
Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
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 Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 8:05 pm
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| erinfinnegan wrote: | | (I'm a bad spelled in any language) |
Was that intentional? :p
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zensunni
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1294
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 8:47 pm
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| erinfinnegan wrote: |
| zensunni wrote: | | I don't really understand why you would have confused it with a fox deity-based title, since there are not fox-dieties in the show. Yes, the title refers to a wolf, but not a wolf-deity. |
It has "kami" in the title, doesn't kami mean god? A deity schoolgirl with pointy canine ears... that seemed to be the salient point. |
OK, now I am wondering if you really watched the same show as I did... The word Kami is not in the title anywhere. The letters 'k' 'a' 'm' and 'i' happen to be in a row in one of the words, but not by themselves, and following Kami with 'san' would be highly disrespectful. It would almost always be Kami-sama. Really, that is kind of like thinking Wil Smith was doing a porno when he starred in the movie 'Handcock'.
As for pointy canine ears.. WHAT???? Though there may be one or two scenes where Ōkami-san is shown with ears to highlight the fact that she is, indeed, the big bad wolf, those are few and far between (if any... I don't really recall, but I think there might be one or two cases in the early episodes...) I really don't recall any from the promotional picures used by Hulu, Funimation, or here on the ANN site. What is far more salient is Little Red Ridinghood, which should highlight the fairytale aspect of the whole thing more than suggesting wolf-girl.
| erinfinnegan wrote: |
| zensunni wrote: | | Sure, anime has some that are 'peculiar' to it, like bloody noses, etc... but for the most part, they are all over the place in every form of entertainment.
... But really, it was just one cliche after another! That Shakespeare guy is a real hack! |
Usually when I talk about anime tropes, I'm talking about them in the Otaku database sense of the word, as in Otaku: Japan's Database Animals by Hiroki Azuma. I haven't watch enough Elizabethan theater (that wasn't a Shakespeare comedy) to compare anime tropes to Elizabethan theater tropes, but that does sound like a grad student thesis paper... (for someone else to write, not me) |
Yes, it would be a fantastic (or at least fantastically fun) thesis paper! However, my point was that entertainment of all forms uses cliche, tropes, and common elements in order to do things like reduce expository material and lend a sense of familiarity to the characters. In addition, the root of the entire concept for the Okami-san story is fairytales. What is more cliche ridden than fairytales! You can't escape them, so instead of trying to escape, the author chose to have fun with them, twist them, take the classic fairytale concepts and present them in ways that are prototypical of anime (really light novels, since that is where the stories all originated...). In a sense, it is a parody of both anime cliches and fairytale cliches. I found it very clever, though a few of the shots missed the mark, that is to be expected in any form of comedy. But really, the cliches are almost all used in service of the concept in this show, for instance, the "Favor-based agency" that you site as an example in your review, other than being a good set-up for introducing many different sub plots from various fairytales, is in itself an aspect of one of the fairytales featured. The Japanese folk tale of the Crane who becomes the wife of the man who saved her in order to repay the favor (Tsuru no Ongaeshi). The "maid" character, Otsū Tsurugaya (note the similarity with the fairytale name) who is obsessed with repaying favors is based on the crane. So the entire set-up of having the main characters being part of a "fixer" organization that uses favors as collateral is in service to the parody of Tsuru no Ongaeshi. Not so much of a cliche usage of the trope, is it?
This is why your cursory mention of the fairytale theme troubles me. If you didn't realize that the theme pervades each and every creative decission of the light novel author, then it is no wonder that you thought it was just chock full of cliches.
Oh, and they are kitty-knuckles (or Neko Neko Knuckles), not wolf faced boxing gloves. (Note the meow sound when the first oni-student is knocked out in the very first scene of the first episode. I believe ringo and the narrator even call them kitty-knuckles more than once.)
| Zalis116 wrote: | | Ookami Ryouko = 大神涼子 = "Great/Big God + Cool Girl" (though to my knowledge she's not actually a deity unless you count dem thighs), but as mentioned earlier, ookami also sounds like 狼, wolf. Thus, "Cool Wolf Girl." |
No, actually Oukami would mean "king god" or something like that, but not ookami. That means wolf. (But I concur with your comment in the spoiler... LOL!)
Last edited by zensunni on Tue May 22, 2012 9:10 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter
Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23863
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 8:57 pm
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| Quote: | | Before getting on the road (or in the air), I decided to take a look at Ōkami-san and Her Seven Companions. Honestly, I'd avoided reviewing this one at first because I confused it for some other fox deity-based titles like Kanokon, Inukami!, and Our Home's Fox Deity. Can you blame me? |
Yeah, actually. Our Home's Fox Deity is a lovely, funny show. It is not a fanservice or ecchi title. It's definitely not what you think it is.
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walw6pK4Alo
Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:02 pm
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| Blood- wrote: |
| Quote: | | Before getting on the road (or in the air), I decided to take a look at Ōkami-san and Her Seven Companions. Honestly, I'd avoided reviewing this one at first because I confused it for some other fox deity-based titles like Kanokon, Inukami!, and Our Home's Fox Deity. Can you blame me? |
Yeah, actually. Our Home's Fox Deity is a lovely, funny show. It is not a fanservice or ecchi title. It's definitely not what you think it is. |
I don't get the dislike for Inukami, that's just a modern redo of Urusei Yatsura with a bit more blatant sexual (mostly from naked men) imagery. There's zero female nudity, which UY did have. Clearly, a curvy space oni only wearing a tiger-striped bikini and go-go boots for most of the show wasn't highly sexualized at all.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter
Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23863
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:06 pm
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I haven't seen either Kanokon or Inukami! yet. A poster here at ANN got confused and ordered Kanokon when he thought he was getting Our Home's Fox Deity. And as luck would have it, his wife was around when he started watching Kanokon.  Needless to say, I don't think his protestations that he accidentally got the wrong show were entirely believed.
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zensunni
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1294
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:06 pm
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| erinfinnegan wrote: |
| Chagen46 wrote: | | Kami can also mean "paper".
Eastern Asian languages are infamous for their abnomally large amounts of homophony. |
Oh, I know, I've been studying Japanese for years. I'm still really bad at it, though (I'm a bad speller in any language). Knowing the kanji helps with homonyms so...
オオカミさんと七人の仲間たち
AUUGHH!! It's spelled in katakana. Why not 狼 (wolf)? Or god 大神 (okami)? According to jisho.org, the "boy who cried wolf" is also in katakana: オオカミ少年 (ookami shonen). That actually adds a lot to my understanding of the words in the title. She is more the fairy tale wolf than the other kind of wolf. |
Well, I have only started studying Japanese, so I usually read the English language synopses and things like that, but the title, put into google translate, comes out as Mr. Wolf and the seven colleagues. No god to be found. I have never seen okami for god, only Kami (神). (I realize it is an automatic translator, but if you put 大神 into google translate, it comes back with the romanji - okami, not Big God, suggesting that it is not directly translatable by the system.)
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superdry
Joined: 07 Jan 2012
Posts: 1309
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:09 pm
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| zensunni wrote: |
| Zalis116 wrote: | | Ookami Ryouko = 大神涼子 = "Great/Big God + Cool Girl" (though to my knowledge she's not actually a deity unless you count dem thighs), but as mentioned earlier, ookami also sounds like 狼, wolf. Thus, "Cool Wolf Girl." |
No, actually Oukami would mean "king god" or something like that, but not ookami. That means wolf. (But I concur with your comment in the spoiler... LOL!) |
Zalis is right. 大神 can be read as great god. Whether it's used that way is another matter, but that is a correct reading just breaking down the kanji.
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zensunni
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1294
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:18 pm
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| superdry wrote: |
| zensunni wrote: |
| Zalis116 wrote: | | Ookami Ryouko = 大神涼子 = "Great/Big God + Cool Girl" (though to my knowledge she's not actually a deity unless you count dem thighs), but as mentioned earlier, ookami also sounds like 狼, wolf. Thus, "Cool Wolf Girl." |
No, actually Oukami would mean "king god" or something like that, but not ookami. That means wolf. (But I concur with your comment in the spoiler... LOL!) |
Zalis is right. 大神 can be read as great god. Whether it's used that way is another matter, but that is a correct reading just breaking down the kanji. |
Probably the reason that the name is spelled オオカミ in the title, so as not to confuse people by having 神 in there at all. (though they do use the symbol in her name on the official web-site, they also include this version...)
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dragon695
Joined: 28 Nov 2008
Posts: 1377
Location: Clemson, SC
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:19 pm
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| erinfinnegan wrote: | |
オオカミさんと七人の仲間たち
AUUGHH!! It's spelled in katakana. Why not 狼 (wolf)? Or god 大神 (okami)? According to jisho.org, the "boy who cried wolf" is also in katakana: オオカミ少年 (ookami shonen). That actually adds a lot to my understanding of the words in the title. She is more the fairy tale wolf than the other kind of wolf. |
They use katakana for any animal kanji that isn't in the ministry of education's official list of "daily use" kanji: jouyoui kanji. Mostly, it is done for the sake of kids who have a hard enough time learning the 2000+ jouyou kanji, using the katakana as opposed to hiragana spelling to denote that it is a species of plant or animal and not the other homophones. Otters, foxes, bears and many birds are the same way, off the top of my head.
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crosswithyou
Joined: 15 Dec 2007
Posts: 2892
Location: California
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 9:53 pm
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| Raneth wrote: | | I've been watching Space Brothers, and I love it so far, but yes, the pacing is a bit on the purposefully slow side. It's debatable whether or not that's bad in this case, though-it artfully builds a lot of tension with its pacing, IMO, that makes the show suck the viewer in. It makes me really, really want to know what happens, and I haven't reached the point that it frustrates me yet.
Then again, I kind of require my shows to leave me hanging a lot-if too much is resolved at once, I get bored, and won't be able to get up the motivation to watch more episodes. So far, Space Brothers is doing a good job keeping me watching. |
The series is set for I think 4 cours and there are currently 17 volumes of manga so I'm not surprised at the pacing. I don't mind it so much, though possibly because I've already read the manga. Things will just keep getting better and better! =D There'll be a lot of suspense later and I'm really excited to see it all animated.
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maaya
Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 976
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Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 12:30 am
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dragon695 is right. Animal names, as well as plant names, are very often spelled in Katakana. And of course in this case, the phonetic spelling allows for the word play on Ryoko's family name. Because she is not called "wolf", but "great god". The latter actually exists as a real family name in Japan. "Wolf" maybe doesn't, or it would have been too much "in your face".
And of course, the word Ookami 大神 "great god" (also pronounced Ogami, Omikami) exists and is used, most prominently when talking about "Amaterasu", but also for Zeus etc.
Other series using the word play of "god" and "wolf" are Okami Kakushi or the video game Ōkami, where "great god" Amaterasu takes the form of a wolf.
| erinfinnegan wrote: | | My parents always told me "Erin" was the girl version of the name, |
I don't think it is. Both names come from different cultural backgrounds (click on "related names"), and I suppose any association of one with the other based on phonetics is very recent and exists only in english-speaking countries. Where I live the names Aaron and Erin sound nothing alike (even Japanese katakana won't turn them into the same name).
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Mikeski
Joined: 24 Sep 2009
Posts: 608
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 11:29 am
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| walw6pK4Alo wrote: |
| Chagen46 wrote: | | Kami can also mean "paper".
Eastern Asian languages are infamous for their abnomally large amounts of homophony. |
It can also be used for hair, depends on the kanji. Point is, the annunciation of ookami and okami are different enough to warrant different spellings. |
Also "spice" or "flavor". There's a Japanese restaurant near here named Kami, with the name written in hiragana. Unfortunate if you only know the word as "hair", eh? (Then again, we also have a Mexican restaurant named after a song: La Cucaracha.)
O[ou]kami could also be read "large upper body", but I don't recall if the show had a flat-chest joke based on that.
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Cheesecracker
Joined: 01 Sep 2007
Posts: 240
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Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 12:40 pm
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| Zac wrote: |
| Fencedude5609 wrote: | |
Is there a reason that pointing a misspelled title prompts such a vitriolic reaction? |
Now you're just being a drama queen. I fixed it and then I made a joke about it. Christ. |
I was like 'Joke? what joke?'
This? A joke? no...joking, yes...(I'm still not sure why this distinction makes sense to me :/ )
| Zac wrote: | | Feel free to celebrate. |
I thought it was sarcasm. Sarcasm is funny but it also offends people a large part of the time. Do I *need* to point out that text is a weak delivery system for emotion? I'm kidding of course, couldn't you tell. 
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zensunni
Joined: 05 Mar 2010
Posts: 1294
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Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 1:59 pm
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| maaya wrote: | | dragon695 is right. Animal names, as well as plant names, are very often spelled in Katakana. And of course in this case, the phonetic spelling allows for the word play on Ryoko's family name. Because she is not called "wolf", but "great god". The latter actually exists as a real family name in Japan. "Wolf" maybe doesn't, or it would have been too much "in your face".
And of course, the word Ookami 大神 "great god" (also pronounced Ogami, Omikami) exists and is used, most prominently when talking about "Amaterasu", but also for Zeus etc.
Other series using the word play of "god" and "wolf" are Okami Kakushi or the video game Ōkami, where "great god" Amaterasu takes the form of a wolf.
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Very informative. Thank you! (But I never got any indication that Ōkami meant anything other than wolf in Ōkami-san... Doesn't mean other people didn't, but it seemed rather straight forward to me that her name was all about the fairytale wolf parody.)
| maaya wrote: |
| erinfinnegan wrote: | | My parents always told me "Erin" was the girl version of the name, |
I don't think it is. Both names come from different cultural backgrounds (click on "related names"), and I suppose any association of one with the other based on phonetics is very recent and exists only in english-speaking countries. Where I live the names Aaron and Erin sound nothing alike (even Japanese katakana won't turn them into the same name). |
True, other than phonetically, the two names are entirely unrelated.
I have a daughter named Erin, and the Korean mothers of several of her friends had a load of trouble with her name. It seems to just be hard for them to pronounce or something and was a name they were entirely unfamiliar with. After a few years the got used to it...
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erinfinnegan
ANN Columnist
Joined: 31 Jan 2005
Posts: 598
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Posted: Thu May 24, 2012 11:51 am
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| maaya wrote: |
| erinfinnegan wrote: | | My parents always told me "Erin" was the girl version of the name, |
I don't think it is. Both names come from different cultural backgrounds (click on "related names"), and I suppose any association of one with the other based on phonetics is very recent and exists only in english-speaking countries. Where I live the names Aaron and Erin sound nothing alike (even Japanese katakana won't turn them into the same name). |
I also mentioned that "Aaron" had a biblical origin. As for one of your sources saying "Anglicized form of EIREANN." I'm pretty sure my parents didn't know that bit. Erin was a very popular name in the late 70's and early 80's. My parents may have looked in some baby name books in 1979, but they didn't have the internet to cross check these things...
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