Original Charnames

[Sun-Ku]

Rakusu --> Lacus
Asuran --> Athrun
Kagari --> Cagalli
and so on...

Why doing the fansub group this? In many other Animes were the names to95% right why not in Gundam Seed? Whats behind this change? the Us Licese or the original Distributer to sell it more in us?

It pains me, thats not Gundam. Is there a Fansub group that write the original names in destiny?

[srb]

Because the Japanese creators are inventing names that make no sense what-so-ever?

I mean, it's pretty difficult to mess up a name like Sakura or Miyu or Shinji, but with fantasy names?

Lux, Rakusu, Lacus... I personally prefer the first one since it means light, but still - there's bound to be confusion.

I'm ok with Athrun even if Asran och Asuran makes more sense to me, especially after reading Narnia for so many years - it would simply be Aslan, but with an R.

Now Cagalli is just weird. How the hell am I supposed to pronounce it? I say "Kagari" but the officiall spelling is "Cagall" as seen on the picture with Kira and Cagalli as babies.

And it's the creators that decide the names, and the translators to make them less idiotic (Fllay to Flay [should have been Freya since Frey is a male god], Ssigh to Sai and such).

[HaRoRuleZ]

Originally Posted by Sun-Ku

Rakusu --> Lacus
Asuran --> Athrun
Kagari --> Cagalli
and so on...

Why doing the fansub group this? In many other Animes were the names to95% right why not in Gundam Seed? Whats behind this change? the Us Licese or the original Distributer to sell it more in us?

It pains me, thats not Gundam. Is there a Fansub group that write the original names in destiny?

That was because the official English names were released to the public very late. MS Gundam SEED Official File / Character Vol. 1 was printed on 2003/02/17 and MS Gundam SEED Official Guide Book 1 was printed on 2003/03/01. You can see that how many months they were released behind the first TV episode.

Even you see them in the official book, some mistake can be there. Page 43 of MS Gundam SEED Official Guide Book 1 completely misspelt the names of all characters and mechanics on that page until Official Gund Book 2 corrected them.

When official English names are known it depends on the fansubbers whether they will adopt or not. For Gundam SEED fansubs, A-Kingdom announced clearly that they would be based on the official names but some other groups remained what they had been spelling. You can see below quote from runpsicat of Ani-Kraze below from her recent post how much the frustration was to deal with the official names. You may like to ask Sanrock of A-Kingdom of what kind of medicine he had to take after the Aube vs Orb incident .

Originally Posted by runpsicat

As long as no one launches a 50-page thread about how the names were "Westernized" (god I became so sick of this debate too)... I refuse to take responsibility for how Japanese has limited phonetics and therefore theoretically allows names to be transliterated in various ways.

For SEED DESTINY, if you look at my scans from MS Gundam SEED DESTINY The Formally Fastest Guide book here you will not find any English name of the characters. From several Japanese magazines I buy monthly until now they do not have English name except Newtype November issue (I haven't scrutinised Animage and Animedia yet because this month I may not buy them) that shows one name, Shinn Asuka, but this name already appears on Core Sprender in Phase 1 and that should be confirmed.

Names appear in the magazines can be wrong sometimes. Dengeki Hobby Magazine October issue spells "Blast Impulse Gundam" as "Blust Impulse Gundam" and "Saviour Gundam" as "Saber Gundam" but in November issue they have correct names.

Even I saw several English character names in Zero Attack video but there is no guarantee that the names in the subsequent official books would be the same as in that video.

Finally, if you know official names and no matter you like them or not then just use them at least that help reducing irritation and prove that you learn something.

[InsiderGamer]

To add to all the confusion, in one instance in Gundam SEED, Cagalli is playing around with a mobile suit simulator inside the Archangel. Upon reaching a high score, she enters her name as "Kagari." I'm sure a lot of you remember this as well.

~IG

[wao]

Oh, for crying out loud, let's just go use the IPA... anyone got IPA versions of "kagari", "rakusu" and so on?

I personally never thought there was anything that wrong with "Athrun", "Lacus" and "Cagalli", it looks okay... guess it's because I watched it all along with the official spellings. However, while "Murrue" looks okay, it doesn't with the pronounciation... and "Mwu" is just... meh. "Ssigh" was absurd (but they don't use that now, right?)... And IMO "Cruz" >>> "Creuset", anything beats "Fllay", but still, it's all a matter of personal preference.