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Started watching "Attack on Titan". Pretty good so far, but I have a question:

Why the westernized names for things? "Wall Maria", Eren Yaeger, Mikasa Ackermann...

Is it a way to appeal to a western audience, or maybe to provide an exotic appeal to the japanese audience?

And is it consistent with the #manga?

#attackontitan #anime
#anime #Manga #attackontitan
chiasm
never read the manga so I can't say for sure, but western names are super common in anime. I remember watching one of the first shows I ever saw, and wondering why they picked names that were impossible for the Japanese voice actors to pronounce. 😄 It happens so commonly I don't even notice it now.
Janne
@chiasm Yeah, it's a bit odd. I haven't seen a lot, of anime, but I do remember it from the #Evangelion series as well.

Any guess as to why this is a thing?
#Evangelion @chiasm
chiasm
I can only speculate... There are so many loan words in Japanese, there's been a great deal of cross fertilization among cultures over the centuries. Given the close connection with the US if you want to call it that, after world war II, I can imagine that maybe the western names don't sound as strange to them as they do to us out of context?
Janne
@chiasm It probably works better from japanese point of view.
@chiasm
chiasm
so much of Japanese goes back and forth between English/other languages and Japanese, it probably doesn't sound as odd, yeah. I learned the word for "rules" the other day but in anime all I ever hear is "ruru" for rules...
David Green
The architecture is aligned with a central European area, so the names for many are similarly aligned. So, Germanic sounding names are not so unexpected.
Janne
@David Green Good point! Now that you mention it, I recall Mikasa's mother being explicitly described as "asian" or something to that degree.
@David Green
That Guy You Read On Accident
It doesn't take place in Japan. Why use Japanese names?
Janne
@linktr.ee/otakureview Where does it take place? Is it mentioned somewhere?

I automatically figured it to take place in Japan... *oops*
@That Guy You Read On Accident
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