she is probably the kind of Card Captor Sakura viewer that made fanfic or fancomics of Touya being a womanizer and “just friends” with Yukito… yes this fics exist, and an acquaintance just complained about their existance today and that is why is the first example it comes to my mind.
It’s like when I hear people use proper Arab pronunciations instead of the typical English modifications. I appreciate the effort but it’s like the uncanny valley of language
Coma
But then there’s things such as professionally dubbed anime series with its names pronounced in a completely wrong way. In everyday life and as long as people understand you, use whatever pronunciation you know or came up with, but if a company making a living out of dubbing an anime does that, they should seriously reconsider their profession.
(Happened over here like a decade ago with “Naruto”, I tried to watch it in TV as a young teen but couldn’t, because while it was censored as hell – don’t ask me why, but they thought it a gread idea to simply erase all the blood and sometimes even weapons – they also couldn’t say some of the main characters names correctly, as in Sasuke saying “Sa-sU-ke” instead of “Saske” or Itachi as “ItaSHi” instead of using an ch sound as in China).
foamy
I know of stuff where they screw up character names *without* even the excuse of a translation :(. For example, the Last Airbender.
Eldritch Gentleman
You want horrible? Look up One Piece by 4Kids. They replaced all guns with super sucker guns or whatever (the ones that fire suction bolts). Removed all blood, cigarettes and alcohol. Removed an ENTIRE arc and generally did horrible, horrible things to poor One Piece.
CoMa
Ah, I know that too, I kinda would want to laugh about it, if it weren’t so sad. It is exactly as bad as Naruto being censored.
I mean, what goes on in their heads? Either the children know that characters are getting hurt, even without the blood etc. OR if they are too young to understand that, the worst that could happen is that (in case just the blood is eradicated and not the weapons) a knife wound isn’t that bad because it doesn’t bleed, so let’s go stab the next person (of course I’m exaggerating).
Eldritch Gentleman
I know, right? And probably the worst (fridge logic way) thing they did was that they erased Death. Like, characters don’t die, they just disappear, get kidnapped or something. This is what happened with Bellemere, adoptive mother of one of the characters. The villain didn’t kill her, he just locked her away somewhere. And now you have this horror scenario, did she die of starvation/dehydration. Is she still locked up there after all these years and no one knows where because she is not present during the after-victory party. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT POOR WOMAN!?
Leo
I wouldn’t mind if they erased the Foxy Arc(s). Sadly, they are canon.
Eldritch Gentleman
Yeah, but what they erased was the entire Little Garden arc. Giants, Elbaf, everything that happened there ceased to exist in 4Kids continuity.
Mr D
HERESY! Boxing Afro Luffy is Best Luffy.
Kryss LaBryn
See, and here I am watching “The Ancient Magus Bride” and enjoying the hell out of the Japanese actor’s mispronunciation of the English names. “Elias Ainsworth” just sounds so much cooler somehow when it’s being pronounced “ELLIE-as AYN-seh-WORT-uh”, or with “Ruth” being pronounced “ROOT-seh”, heh.
On the other hand, the Japanese name “Chise” is pronounced anywhere from “CHEE-say” to “Seh”, depending on which actor is saying it, which confuses the heck out of me, ha ha (I go with “Seh” in my head simply because I like that actor’s voice the best, lol). You’d think that one they’d be consistent on, but nope. Weird.
(Still a great show, though! <3 )
CoMa
Oh yeah, I’m waiting for it to finish until I watch it 🙂
Idk why, but in Japanese shows etc. I don’t care so much about mispronunciation in an original production, it kinda gives it a charm, and I’m used to English terms being adapted (e.g. Christmas being “kurisumasu” with only slight u-sounds). But I’m mostly angry because in all the anime they showed before Naruto they never mispronounced names, at least not that I know of. It sounded weird at first, but much more authentic than adapting an own variant of saying a name.
geno
You sweet summer child. If you think dubbing is bad now you would lose your mind at the 80’s-90’s dubs
CoMa
Oh, I’m just talking about the dubbing of certain shows, there are some really good dubs of anime and other animated shows out there.
Though, I have to agree, there were really bad ones back then too. But as a child, I was much more prone to overlook many things that are probably unwatchable to the me I am now.
Dave
Goku isn’t pronounced the way you think. Once you realize THAT, you sort of stop caring about dub pronunciations.
This is one of the aspects of how the first Finnish dub of Digimon was hilariously painful.
They couldn’t seem to decide whether to call Agumon ‘Agmon’ or ‘Agemon’.
The spelled Kabuterimon as ‘Gabteri-Mon’ and pronounced it in a way that to some sounded like ‘Kopterimon’. Note that ‘kopteri’ is the Finnish word for a copter (as in, helicopter).
And then there is the whole Saksi/Kuwagamon/Beetlemon business.
djhash
as an arab, THIS! Seriously it takes me off gaurd even when my wife does it! Specially my name!
Paidraig
One of my professors once told me my (arabic) last name was spelled wrong, to which I responded that I also pronounce it wrong, so it all works out.
Unless it’s too hard to pronounce the proper way, I try to say it properly or at the very least, say it in a way that sounds good.
For example, I will pronounce valet as va-lay not as val-let as valet was a French word orginally.
thejeff
Well, valet is pronounced va-lay in English, so you’d be right. Probably because it got absorbed into English back when the English nobility still spoke French.
Other words aren’t necessarily pronounced the same as in the languages they originated from. Depends partly on how recent the theft of the word was and how much of the population is familiar with the other language.
Agemegos
The English upper class pronounce “valet” as VAL-et, because they have been using the word since before Norman French silenced its final consonants and they don’t consider it to be a French word. Attempting to pronounce “valet” as though it were French is a thing that started in America in the 20th Century or perhaps late 19th. That is, the etymology of “valet” in British upper-class use is from the Norman pronunciation of mediaeval French vaslet, and not from modern French valet, and in that dialect it is now no more a French word than “marriage” is.
thejeff
Interesting. Did not know.
Mr D
Wait what kind of ass backwards way do you americans pronounce Anime? Is it REALLY that hard to pronounce shit PROPERLY that you have to mock people who do?
Oh god look at what you’ve made me do! I’M DEFENDING MARY FFS!
I’m not even sure where you’d get “aw Ni may” from.
letting my weeb out to play, you’d get something approaching Ah Ni Meh with stress on each capital.
Kryss LaBryn
Back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime”, so I’ve always thought (and heard) it pronounced the same as the beginning of the English word “animation,” since it’s an abbreviation of it.
Daibhid C
Nope! Anime is what they call it in Japan. Or rather, anime is what they call animation in Japan, and therefore what we in the West call Japanese animation.
Of course, you’re still right that it’s derived from “animation”, and I don’t know how it’s pronounced in Japan, but I generally hear people saying anni-me.
(Wikipedia says it’s pronounced ˈænəˌmeɪ/, but I don’t actually know what that means.)
Roborat
What Khryss said, it is just the japanesification of an English word, that then circled back into English vocabulary. It happens all the time with English words in Japan.
thejeff
It’s rarer that it makes it back to English though.
Mr D
Not quite. America got into the Anime craze way later than the rest of the world, ya? Specifically, Latin America got into it way earlier, and in fact most early American dubs translated from Mexican dubs.
If your talking about Mary, probably not since she knows the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon.
If your talking about Malaya, most definitely, but she isn’t a wannaweeb, since a weeb is a type of nerd.
I meant Mary. But everyone and their mother knows that the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon. Yet I see anime pluralized as animes all the goddamn time, even in anime enthusiast communities. It’s astoundingly and annoyingly common.
Pope William T Wodium
I always thought that was people being deliberately ironic. Like “animus,” or referring to the internet as a series of tubes.
Well, Mary thinks that what she’s doing is anime, so yeah…
Mel
I know, that was the biggest cringe for me, using anime instead of manga. That and “it’s my style”.
Kryss LaBryn
Aargh mispronunciation of words is no one’s “style”. It’s just stupid, and a stupid, stupid excuse for doing it. Like fanfic writers who claim “artistic license” when they get something wrong that’s as basic as knee-length skirts in the Victorian period. ><
The way you lay lines down on the page is your "style". Your preferred clothing combinations and/or hairstyle is your "style". But you can't claim a speshul way of pronouncing a word (or a speshul definition of a word, a la "No, when I use this common word I mean it in a completely different way!”) is your style. YOU ARE JUST WRONG.
Oh my God. I was mostly just annoyed by Mary before this, but now that I know she pronounces it “Ani-mee” I suddenly think she’s way worse than Malaya… or at least a little worse
The way the last syllable seems stressed, I’d wager she’s very incorrect. Japanese always has equal stress on all syllables. Unless the font stress is meant to signify that the last syllable’s where Mary and Malaya are differing, then I might be overthinking it.
Meta
I think that’s Malaya emphasizing Mary’s pronunciation
Pope William T Wodium
Mary does it first, though.
Meta
Oh good point
Kazumi
I think the fact that the pronunciation starts with “aw” instead of just “an” says a lot, too.
394 thoughts on “Anime”
Ana Chronistic
are we witnessing the art
school beating the anime out of Mary
Ana Chronistic
dang it word wrap
DailyBrad
I totally forgot that Mary’s an anime fangirl. Guessing she’s not too into CLAMP or Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Romanticide
she is probably the kind of Card Captor Sakura viewer that made fanfic or fancomics of Touya being a womanizer and “just friends” with Yukito… yes this fics exist, and an acquaintance just complained about their existance today and that is why is the first example it comes to my mind.
Nezumi
Tomoyo was robbed.
SomeDumbGuy
“aw-nih-MAY”
Would cringe IRL
Ronnie
I actually DID cringe IRL. Yikes.
Plasma Mongoose
https://youtu.be/WznegGPXnb0
keithcurtis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-pI5PgNvIw
heh
Beef
To be fair I get it but ehh
It’s like when I hear people use proper Arab pronunciations instead of the typical English modifications. I appreciate the effort but it’s like the uncanny valley of language
Coma
But then there’s things such as professionally dubbed anime series with its names pronounced in a completely wrong way. In everyday life and as long as people understand you, use whatever pronunciation you know or came up with, but if a company making a living out of dubbing an anime does that, they should seriously reconsider their profession.
(Happened over here like a decade ago with “Naruto”, I tried to watch it in TV as a young teen but couldn’t, because while it was censored as hell – don’t ask me why, but they thought it a gread idea to simply erase all the blood and sometimes even weapons – they also couldn’t say some of the main characters names correctly, as in Sasuke saying “Sa-sU-ke” instead of “Saske” or Itachi as “ItaSHi” instead of using an ch sound as in China).
foamy
I know of stuff where they screw up character names *without* even the excuse of a translation :(. For example, the Last Airbender.
Eldritch Gentleman
You want horrible? Look up One Piece by 4Kids. They replaced all guns with super sucker guns or whatever (the ones that fire suction bolts). Removed all blood, cigarettes and alcohol. Removed an ENTIRE arc and generally did horrible, horrible things to poor One Piece.
CoMa
Ah, I know that too, I kinda would want to laugh about it, if it weren’t so sad. It is exactly as bad as Naruto being censored.
I mean, what goes on in their heads? Either the children know that characters are getting hurt, even without the blood etc. OR if they are too young to understand that, the worst that could happen is that (in case just the blood is eradicated and not the weapons) a knife wound isn’t that bad because it doesn’t bleed, so let’s go stab the next person (of course I’m exaggerating).
Eldritch Gentleman
I know, right? And probably the worst (fridge logic way) thing they did was that they erased Death. Like, characters don’t die, they just disappear, get kidnapped or something. This is what happened with Bellemere, adoptive mother of one of the characters. The villain didn’t kill her, he just locked her away somewhere. And now you have this horror scenario, did she die of starvation/dehydration. Is she still locked up there after all these years and no one knows where because she is not present during the after-victory party. WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT POOR WOMAN!?
Leo
I wouldn’t mind if they erased the Foxy Arc(s). Sadly, they are canon.
Eldritch Gentleman
Yeah, but what they erased was the entire Little Garden arc. Giants, Elbaf, everything that happened there ceased to exist in 4Kids continuity.
Mr D
HERESY! Boxing Afro Luffy is Best Luffy.
Kryss LaBryn
See, and here I am watching “The Ancient Magus Bride” and enjoying the hell out of the Japanese actor’s mispronunciation of the English names. “Elias Ainsworth” just sounds so much cooler somehow when it’s being pronounced “ELLIE-as AYN-seh-WORT-uh”, or with “Ruth” being pronounced “ROOT-seh”, heh.
On the other hand, the Japanese name “Chise” is pronounced anywhere from “CHEE-say” to “Seh”, depending on which actor is saying it, which confuses the heck out of me, ha ha (I go with “Seh” in my head simply because I like that actor’s voice the best, lol). You’d think that one they’d be consistent on, but nope. Weird.
(Still a great show, though! <3 )
CoMa
Oh yeah, I’m waiting for it to finish until I watch it 🙂
Idk why, but in Japanese shows etc. I don’t care so much about mispronunciation in an original production, it kinda gives it a charm, and I’m used to English terms being adapted (e.g. Christmas being “kurisumasu” with only slight u-sounds). But I’m mostly angry because in all the anime they showed before Naruto they never mispronounced names, at least not that I know of. It sounded weird at first, but much more authentic than adapting an own variant of saying a name.
geno
You sweet summer child. If you think dubbing is bad now you would lose your mind at the 80’s-90’s dubs
CoMa
Oh, I’m just talking about the dubbing of certain shows, there are some really good dubs of anime and other animated shows out there.
Though, I have to agree, there were really bad ones back then too. But as a child, I was much more prone to overlook many things that are probably unwatchable to the me I am now.
Dave
Goku isn’t pronounced the way you think. Once you realize THAT, you sort of stop caring about dub pronunciations.
Sunny
Yeah, it’s really pronounced as “wukong”.
Delicious Taffy
You don’t pronounce it “go-KOO”?
the Nerdytimes
This is one of the aspects of how the first Finnish dub of Digimon was hilariously painful.
They couldn’t seem to decide whether to call Agumon ‘Agmon’ or ‘Agemon’.
The spelled Kabuterimon as ‘Gabteri-Mon’ and pronounced it in a way that to some sounded like ‘Kopterimon’. Note that ‘kopteri’ is the Finnish word for a copter (as in, helicopter).
And then there is the whole Saksi/Kuwagamon/Beetlemon business.
djhash
as an arab, THIS! Seriously it takes me off gaurd even when my wife does it! Specially my name!
Paidraig
One of my professors once told me my (arabic) last name was spelled wrong, to which I responded that I also pronounce it wrong, so it all works out.
Plasma Mongoose
Unless it’s too hard to pronounce the proper way, I try to say it properly or at the very least, say it in a way that sounds good.
For example, I will pronounce valet as va-lay not as val-let as valet was a French word orginally.
thejeff
Well, valet is pronounced va-lay in English, so you’d be right. Probably because it got absorbed into English back when the English nobility still spoke French.
Other words aren’t necessarily pronounced the same as in the languages they originated from. Depends partly on how recent the theft of the word was and how much of the population is familiar with the other language.
Agemegos
The English upper class pronounce “valet” as VAL-et, because they have been using the word since before Norman French silenced its final consonants and they don’t consider it to be a French word. Attempting to pronounce “valet” as though it were French is a thing that started in America in the 20th Century or perhaps late 19th. That is, the etymology of “valet” in British upper-class use is from the Norman pronunciation of mediaeval French vaslet, and not from modern French valet, and in that dialect it is now no more a French word than “marriage” is.
thejeff
Interesting. Did not know.
Mr D
Wait what kind of ass backwards way do you americans pronounce Anime? Is it REALLY that hard to pronounce shit PROPERLY that you have to mock people who do?
Oh god look at what you’ve made me do! I’M DEFENDING MARY FFS!
Khyrin
I’m not even sure where you’d get “aw Ni may” from.
letting my weeb out to play, you’d get something approaching Ah Ni Meh with stress on each capital.
Kryss LaBryn
Back in the Eighties it was just called “Japanese animation,” which then got shortened to “Japanimation,” and thence to “anime”, so I’ve always thought (and heard) it pronounced the same as the beginning of the English word “animation,” since it’s an abbreviation of it.
Daibhid C
Nope! Anime is what they call it in Japan. Or rather, anime is what they call animation in Japan, and therefore what we in the West call Japanese animation.
Of course, you’re still right that it’s derived from “animation”, and I don’t know how it’s pronounced in Japan, but I generally hear people saying anni-me.
(Wikipedia says it’s pronounced ˈænəˌmeɪ/, but I don’t actually know what that means.)
Roborat
What Khryss said, it is just the japanesification of an English word, that then circled back into English vocabulary. It happens all the time with English words in Japan.
thejeff
It’s rarer that it makes it back to English though.
Mr D
Not quite. America got into the Anime craze way later than the rest of the world, ya? Specifically, Latin America got into it way earlier, and in fact most early American dubs translated from Mexican dubs.
Jhon
When trying to pronounce Japanese words, give each syllable an even stress, and you won’t go too far wrong.
Willinwoods
Impressive archive dig, Ana.
foamy
it’s actually about ethics in cartoon faces mary
Kim
😀
Wack'd
…i just realized that mary has seen marcie naked, and i feel like this is gonna come up at some point
threePwny
Ugh, I bet she pluralizes it as “animes”, too. Friggin’ wannaweeb
No Name
If your talking about Mary, probably not since she knows the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon.
If your talking about Malaya, most definitely, but she isn’t a wannaweeb, since a weeb is a type of nerd.
threePwny
I meant Mary. But everyone and their mother knows that the plural of Pokemon is Pokemon. Yet I see anime pluralized as animes all the goddamn time, even in anime enthusiast communities. It’s astoundingly and annoyingly common.
Pope William T Wodium
I always thought that was people being deliberately ironic. Like “animus,” or referring to the internet as a series of tubes.
Leo
…when it really is a bundle of pipes.
Emperor Norton II
Well, Mary thinks that what she’s doing is anime, so yeah…
Mel
I know, that was the biggest cringe for me, using anime instead of manga. That and “it’s my style”.
Kryss LaBryn
Aargh mispronunciation of words is no one’s “style”. It’s just stupid, and a stupid, stupid excuse for doing it. Like fanfic writers who claim “artistic license” when they get something wrong that’s as basic as knee-length skirts in the Victorian period. ><
The way you lay lines down on the page is your "style". Your preferred clothing combinations and/or hairstyle is your "style". But you can't claim a speshul way of pronouncing a word (or a speshul definition of a word, a la "No, when I use this common word I mean it in a completely different way!”) is your style. YOU ARE JUST WRONG.
–Yes, it touched a nerve. Apologies. ><
Clif
I find this comment to be really linear.
Roborat
Seeing “anime” used instead of “manga” that made my inner weeboo twitch as well. I assumed Willis was doing it on purpose.
Jhon
You seem to believe that there is a manga style of drawing that is distinct from an anime style. This puzzles me. Please explain.
Roborat
Manga – drawing, anime – animation, ie cartoons.
Jhon
So “anime” is animation rendered in a manga style?
Roborat
Backwards. You can draw Manga in the style of amime, but if you just say anime, people are going to interpret that as cartoon, not drawing.
Bagge
Nothing wrong with being a wannabee
Jamie
Do you wannabe a wannabe!?
Willinwoods
I wanna really,
really,
_really_
wanna zigazig-ah.
Yumi
The world needs wannabes
Djenk
So hey hey do that brand new thing!
Bagge
I love that a whole bouquet of Daisies went together to comment my post.
Roborat
True, but being a wannaweeb is very bad.
Shiro
Today Malaya is all of us
SgtWadeyWilson
As opposed to most days, when she’s just me and/or a handful of other people, tops.
AnvilPro
Oh my God. I was mostly just annoyed by Mary before this, but now that I know she pronounces it “Ani-mee” I suddenly think she’s way worse than Malaya… or at least a little worse
ZerglingOne
I think the implication is that she’s pronouncing it *too* correctly. And it makes her seem like the unbelievable douche we all know she is.
threePwny
The way the last syllable seems stressed, I’d wager she’s very incorrect. Japanese always has equal stress on all syllables. Unless the font stress is meant to signify that the last syllable’s where Mary and Malaya are differing, then I might be overthinking it.
Meta
I think that’s Malaya emphasizing Mary’s pronunciation
Pope William T Wodium
Mary does it first, though.
Meta
Oh good point
Kazumi
I think the fact that the pronunciation starts with “aw” instead of just “an” says a lot, too.