[larethian]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

On the one hand, I can see certain marketing cleverness in turning a (short) synopsis into a (very long) title. It's a way of ensuring that people who even just glance at the cover of your LN are likely to know its synopsis. Basically, its a way of getting the core "starting point" idea of your LN out there without someone having to actually pick it up and find it elsewhere (presumably on the back cover, or on the first page).


On the other hand, let's face it - These names are very long and cumbersome, and that does have some potential downsides. And while we foreign anime fans tend to have an easy time shortening these names to something actually usable for quick references, I have to wonder if it's so easy for the Japanese.

I mean, one of these titles in Japanese in romaji are basically just a series of random syllables to us, so shortening it down to a few key syllables is child's play. But in Japanese, "Ore no Imouto" might be nonsensical or overly generic like "She my sister" or something like that. In other words, "Ore no Imouto" might read and sound fine to us, but I wonder if it works that well in Japan itself.


While I applaud Xion Valkyrie's creativity and cleverness in using this title approach for several popular anime titles with shorter names, I can also say that for those that I'm familiar with, I greatly prefer the actual title of the show (the possible exception being "One Piece"; in this case, laying out the synopsis of the show sounds way cooler than "One Piece", imo).



As for the quality of an anime based on one of these long "Synopsis Titles" - I wouldn't assume anything about the quality of the show in a general sense, but it does make me think "romcom" because the shows with these sorts of titles tend to be "romcoms" in my experience. Of course, the Synopsis Title itself will tend to gives its genre away anyway.

You might want to know that these titles usually get contracted by volume 2.
Sometimes, the contraction is official and appears right in the afterword of volume 1 (usually created by the author him/herself): one example is Haganai (Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai which contracts by eliminating kanji; also adopted unofficially by some other titles like Towanai - Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko). Other times, the fans made a contraction in 2ch discussions and these are adopted by the author: example Otaria (Omae wo OTAku ni Shiteyaru kara, Ore wo RIAjuu ni Shitekure!).
There are also times where contractions are created officially when the series gets a twitter, and the fans start following this official contraction (eg. OreShura - Ore no Kanojo to Osananajimi ga Shuraba sugiru).

For your info, it's not just 'sentence-based titles' that get shortened, practically any LN that has more than a few words have their own contractions, some of them official, some of them unofficial but always used in discussions. Some examples of non sentence-based titles with contractions:
Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu: Denyuuden
Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagai: Itsuten
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei: Mahouka
Infinite Stratos: IS
Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon: Horizon
The list goes on......

Incidentally, the contractions do not always need to make sense. The Japanese have a knack of shortening stuff that makes it catchy. At least, AFAIK, everyone active in the LN community knows which contraction is for what title. In fact, you can even call the habit of contraction a 'disease' of the Japanese . Even not looking at titles, this is already evident in the language itself, where many English loan words get shortened:
American Football: Amefuto
Animation: Anime
Anime Song: Anison
Department Store: Depaato
Family Restaurant: Famiresu
Personal Computer: Pasokon
Convenience Store: Konbini
Photo Sticker (Print Club): Purikura

Come to think of it, even some native Japanese names or nouns get contracted sometimes:
Nihon Kezai Shinbun (japan economic times): Nikkei
Toukyou Daigaku (tokyo university): Toudai

So BOT, these long titles do get contracted ultimately, one way or another


EDIT: I just remembered another one, Pocket Monster = Pokemon (yup, contracting things is in the blood of the Japanese)