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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - What We Do in the Shadows House
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 514 Location: Poland |
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Thanks for reviewing this, though I wish you've said more about Kate and Emilico relationship, which is clearly very different from what is expected in Shadows House and quite sweet on it's own.
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harminia
 Posts: 2006 Location: australia |
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Ughh I want the manga to get licensed so everyone can read it haha...
I love John, he's such a good boy. Shaun is too buy John is so stupid I love him the most. Patrick and Ricky are good boys. TBH all the main characters are good boys/girls and I like them all. The anime has so far been a mostly really good adaptation. There's been some changes but a good amount of it is so perfectly adapted. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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I was expecting some snarky comment about the grammatical error in the show's title. There's no apostrophe in "Shadows" (if it's supposed to be a noun) and we don't pluralize adjectives in English (I've seen English learners making plural adjectives all too often). Yet at the same time the Japanese title (written in katakana) actually is pronounced, "Shadow House." Perhaps there's some kind of hidden meaning in this discrepancy.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11407 |
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The hedge maze is another Shining reference, at least to the Kubrick film.
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LoriasGS
Posts: 89 |
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Shadow isn't usually used as an adjective and I don't think it is in this situation. It's only used as an adjective to describe people hidden like say a Shadow Leader or in British politics the Shadow Cabinet. I know they call them their Shadow Master but I don't think it's used in the same meaning. Since their masters are also just called Shadows I think Shadow Master is just shorthand for "The Shadows who are our Masters" rather than "The Masters in Shadow", Due to the unique use of the word Shadow in the show it's definitely being used as a noun but it could ALSO be pluralised in the title. There's no reason to assume it's only either a singular noun or plural adjective, it could be a plural noun in which case Shadows House is grammatically correct. As for the Japanese title, Japanese doesn't indicate plurals the same way English does (especially not in nouns). There is no "add an s" equivalent, there are some suffixes and sometimes they'll add another word for a plural but often in nouns they will just leave it it to context, the word Kage (if used as a noun) could be used as a singular or plural. Of course without directly consulting the manga's creators we can't know for sure which they meant. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11407 |
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Fruits Basket :: Shadows House
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 284 |
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Although I'd love to believe that there's some hidden secret in the weird discrepancy (aren't all shadows one shadow, really?), as a person who has now lived in Japan for a frighteningly long time I can basically guarantee you that the intended meaning of both titles was "House of Shadows." Whoever created the title simply wasn't sure of the correct way to form that structure, and tried different angles in English and Katakana to increase the chances of hitting their target. (Sadly, as usual, the target remained unhit.) |
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#Synaesthesia
Posts: 158 |
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yes I'd love to get the manga adapted into English but what are these "surveys" you speak of?
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2950 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Some licensors will do surveys to gauge fan interest in specific titles. Seven Seas is pretty well known for doing this, almost monthly I think? Here's their May survey (haven't updated for June yet): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwwaHigjWYhc2ngv2rUxhDRWUM08JOfAtwYoryBctpSZWaYw/viewform |
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LoriasGS
Posts: 89 |
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Ah fair enough I must have misunderstood the original comment. Eve though it may not be what they originally meant I suppose if we view Shadows as a name/title it would make more sense. e.g. I'm a big fan of the Dragon Age games and the home of main character Hawke in DA2 is called The Hawke Estate or Hawke Manor. You could view Shadows in the same manner. It could just be a double meaning that Shadows in the title refers to both a metaphorical/traditional use of shadow, to infer secrets and darkness and the literal sense in that's what the characters are called. A lot of anime and manga creators like using that sort of word play in their titles like Mai Hime where every iteration of the words both their meaning, what they sound like in English and their unique terminology for the show all fit together in context. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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LoriasGS
Posts: 89 |
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Words migrate from language to language all the time and it is the age old argument of what language it belongs to. To be fair for a lot of people whatever side of the argument they're on usually comes down to which one their native language is. I once witnessed someone claim that a word that migrated from French to English was a French word (and they were criticising Americans for using it and calling it an English word) and then in the same comments thread claim that a different word that migrated from Dutch to French was also a French word. No Prizes for guessing what nationality this person was. When I see someone use English in anime I think "Oh that's an English word" but I would, because I'm English. I'd imagine it seems perfectly normal to someone who is Japanese, they might know the word has English origins but to them it's a ordinary Japanese word. To be honest what language loanwords belong to is a matter of preference because it's both and it's not wrong to make either claim, the people who argue strongly for one or the other are just needlessly pretentious. |
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SHD
Posts: 1752 |
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The English title has been discussed above, just a tidbit on this:
Actually, it's an extension/consequence of a pun. In Japanese the dolls call the shadows "okagesama"/お蔭様, pretty much the same as in the phrase "okagesama de" which is used when expressing gratitude for something good that happened to you due to someone's help. The story takes the phrase and treats it as a literal thing, having actual Respected Shadows. It's kind of like taking the phrase "holy crap!" and writing a story where there's a saint that is an actual piece of turd going around doing stuff. (And yes, I'm aware of the etymology of "kage" in "okagesama" but I'm also pretty sure that it's irrelevant in this case, the mangaka most likely just wanted to have some fun with puns.) |
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Neko-sensei
Posts: 284 |
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However, the title シャドーハウス does not consist of loanwords. It's English phonetically rendered into Japanese, the same way ドラゴンボール is Dragon Ball. (To carry on the French-in-English metaphor, in US English "entrée" is a loanword that now has a different meaning than it carries in the original French. However, Le Morte d'Arthur is a French name given to an English-language book. シャドーハウス is in the latter category, not the former.)
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Alternative Ice
 Posts: 95 |
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iirc in a tweet from the author explaining why the spanish license of the manga changes the title to shadow house they say that when coming up with the original title they didn't know that shadows house wasn't grammatically correct.
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