Ask John: What Anime Jargon Has Actually Come From Anime?

Question:
There is probably one “catch phrase” (for want of a better word) which virtually every anime enthusiast in the Western world is familiar with – the one-word exclamation, “Baka” (“Idiot”), which, if I recall accurately, was made prominent via Ruri Hoshino (Nadesico TV series). Are there any other examples of “catch phrases” – either commonly recognized by Western fans, or those which may be relatively unknown outside of Japan – that come to mind?

Answer:
I have to admit that I’m fascinated by this question because it clearly illustrates, to me, a generational gap in the American anime fan community. The 1996 Nadesico TV series did introduce the Japanese insult “baka” to numerous Americans through its frequent utterance by character Ruri Hoshino. But the term was actually well known to hardcore American anime fans long before 1996. It was actually Lum’s frequently shouted phrase “Darling no baka!” from the 1982 Urusei Yatsura television series that introduced the word “baka” to American anime fans. In fact, I clearly recall seeing automobile bumper stickers adorned with Lum and the phrase “Darling no baka” available for sale in the late 1980s. However, there’s not been as much carry over from the American fan heritage of the 1970s and 1980s into the 1990s and 2000s as one may expect. So American fans that have come into the hobby since the mid 1990s may not be aware of aspects of American otaku community culture from the 1980s.

Coinciding with both the rising popularity of anime in America, and advances in global communication technology, Japanese language, phrases, and terms have become much more familiar to Americans than such words were prior to the 1990s. It’s probably possible to compose an entire book on the subject of just specific Japanese terms and their adoption into American use. Imported Japanese jargon like “anime,” “manga,” “hentai,” “yaoi,” “lolicon,” “guro,” “eroge,” “futanari,” “yuri,” “danmaku,” “tsundere,” “yandere,” “shonen,” “shoujo,” “shota,” “Akiba-kei,” “manga-ka,” “doujin,” “moe,” “gachapon,” “cosplay,” and countless other words have all filtered into English use largely within the past ten years. I can’t practically address all of these imported words, but I will discuss a few prominent ones, with an attempt to focus on ones imported from specific anime.

The term “Japanimation” has almost entirely attritioned out of American usage because its reference to the abbreviation “Jap” recalls WWII era racism. It’s still used occasionally in Japan, though. I don’t know exactly when this term originated, although I believe it dates to at least the mid 1970s. I also don’t know if it was coined in Japan or the US. The term was commonly used in English in the 1980s before the term “anime” became widely recognized and supplanted “Japanimation.”

The Japanese term “hentai” became adopted as an American moniker for erotic anime and manga in the early 1990s. Although never especially widely adopted, the term “sukebe,” adopted from the popular 80’s anime City Hunter, was a periodically used jargon term for lechery in the American fan community of the 1980s. The City Hunter specific term “mokkoki” also occasionally appeared in English during the 80s and early 90s, but this later term was exclusively used in reference to City Hunter specifically.

Although Gainax’s 1991 Otaku no Video OVA was not the studio’s biggest success, nor has it ever been especially popular or well known, it’s probably the catalyst that introduced the now commonplace term “otaku” to America’s fan community. My own recollection may be limited and incomplete, but I don’t recall hearing the word used in the English speaking fan community prior to 1991.

Otaku no Video may also be responsible for fueling the popularization of the phrase, “Itano circus,” a reference to intricate fighter and missile contrails and complicated mecha dogfighting animation introduced to anime by animator Ichiro Itano’s work in the 1982 Macross television series.

The English language anime phrase “Gainax jiggle,” referring to animation of naturally bouncing female breasts, originated from the first episode of Gainax’s 1988 Gunbuster OVA series.

Despite appearing in anime well prior to 1995’s Gundam W, Duo Maxwell’s reference to himself as a “shinigami” briefly popularized the term in the English speaking fan community following the series’ English language broadcast on the Cartoon Network in 2000. The term and concept “shinigami” remain familiar to English speaking fans through shows including Bleach and Soul Eater, but the popularity of the term “shinigami” seems to have largely crested with the popularity of Gundam Wing.

Not a catch-phrase but similar in concept, anime characters that end their sentences with distinctive sounds or words goes back to at least the 1977 Yatterman television series, but the 1995 Fushigi Yuugi and 1999 Di-Gi-Charat anime seem to be primarily responsible for making American anime fans aware of this distinctive speech quirk that now occasionally appears in informal written communication by English speaking anime fans. Naruto’s tendency to end his statements in “datebayo,” hasn’t exactly become a widely used English catch phrase, but it is a term that’s now widely recognized in the English speaking fan community.

On a related note, I think it’s interesting that that 2000 FLCL OVA series clearly tried to coin “furicuri” as a euphemism for sex, but the catch-phrase never caught on, although the FLCL anime itself was very popular. I guess these things just happen naturally, and trying to force them doesn’t work.